And The Devil Will Drag You Under (1979) (36 page)

"You're God?" Mac Walters gasped.

"Of course not, you idiot!" Jill almost hissed at him. "God's a University Department back on the Main Line. He's the
other
one!"

Mogart almost blushed and bowed politely. "At your service," he said mockingly. "Satan, Beelzebub, Old Scratch, Asmodeus-whatever your pleasure." He grinned. "Megalomania is such
a
wonderful
illness!"

"So the jewels, even individually, have a lot more power than you let on," Mac pressed. "I remember now Abaddon's demonic show and his comment that he ran cults on hundreds of worlds with just his jewel. I should have figured it out then."

"Don't feel too bad," Mogart replied. "After all, you had time running out and more pressing puzzles to solve. And don't feel bad about giving me the Eye. After all, there was a danger, and only one solution. You had no choice."

"So now what?" Mac asked him. It was a legitimate question.

Mogart gestured with his now-imposing satanic head at the strange product of fusion he held in his right hand. "See that? An Eye of Baal, it's called. The single jewel, as you've now seen, is very powerful. Six of them in close proximity give a minimum of ten to the sixth power output of one.

But the fusion is more economical, thus giving me ten to the tenth amplifica-tion-roughly ten billion times as much power as one. An Eye can deal with almost anything. It's the power of pure applied thought. Matter to energy, energy to matter, on any scale you want, and by tapping the central Main Line computers, you don't even have to know the composition or formulae. Just think of what you want and you've got it. Only ten of these are needed to create a new Alternative level.

Come outside with me! I'll show you!"

The bar still felt as if it were going to be ripped apart, and Mac and Jill watched nervously as the demon reached over and pulled the door right off its hinges, flinging it to one side like a matchstick.

The scene outside was one of utter desolation. The whole city looked as if it had been the victim of some ancient war; buildings that remained standing at all were mere shells; I-80 was down and twisted, the ca-sino and motel signs were long smashed to dust. An evil-smelling wind blew dust and dirt around in swirling maelstroms; there were cracks in the Earth, faults large enough to swallow whole buildings, and it was cold as hell.

It was daylight, but the stars were out, at least the nearest ones. The sky was a deep, dark blue, as it would be during a total eclipse. Mogart stepped into the street confidently and they followed hesitantly, realizing that safety lay only with Mogart. With the jewel gone, the bar, too, would fall victim to the holo-caust.

They were almost blown over by the howling winds, and bitter cold ate into them. The very mountains all around them seemed to be trembling.

Jill grabbed Mac's arm for support, coughing, and managed to look up. The sky-almost a third of it-was filled with a monstrous object hurtling down upon them, cold and black as the deepest night.

Mogart stopped and turned toward the looming specter in the sky, his dark form itself almost as eerie against the bleak ruins of the city of Reno.

But the Eye of Baal shone brightly in his hand. He put both arms out in front of him, tightly clenching his hands together over the Eye, which nonetheless radi-ated from every visible break in his grip.

Then, raising his arms high as if in supplication to the dark god overhead, staring directly at the great object, he intoned in a voice like thunder, cutting through the pounding wind, commanding the object:
"BEGONE!"

And it was.

Suddenly the sky was bright; the sun was up there in its normal position for midday, there were no stars visible, and the wind and most of the tremors in the Earth had ceased. It was still bitterly cold, but already they could feel warmth starting once again to bathe the Earth from its mother the sun.

Mogart lowered his arms and turned to them with satisfaction. "See? Minor problems can be dealt with quickly."

"Yeah, but now what?" Mac asked glumly. "Some world you've just saved. Probably only a handful of people left alive-maybe just us. Everything in ruins. You say you prepped hundreds, maybe thousands, of people for the job. Yet when you called, only the two of us showed up.

Maybe only the two of us were
able
to show up. That doesn't say much for the rest of hu-manity."

Mogart nodded agreement. "Yes, I believe there are only a few left, and probably most of these are still on the night side. But that's all right, you see. It is good that the old civilizations are swept away. Now something new can be built, to my specifications, in my image." That last was said in a tone of smug menace that sent chills through both of them.

The demon turned again, facing the desolation, the hulking shapes of former buildings and the wreckage of smashed signs. As he looked again at the Eye of Baal in his right palm, there came a sudden rumble like a small earthquake. They watched as the ruins in front of them shimmered, then faded to nothingness, leaving only a barren plain against the still, unmoving mountains.

Then there came another sound, like that of a far-off Chinese gong, and out of the plain a single huge building arose-a massive fortress gleaming golden in the restored sunlight, ten stories high at the very minimum. Through the open golden doors to the main hall they could see a great throne encrusted in precious gems, adorned with red satin and ermine trim.

Jill McCulloch looked sharply at Mac Walters. "How much longer do you think you can stand all this bullshit?" she asked disgustedly.

"About another second and a half," he replied in the same tone, feeling the same frustration she was feeling, thinking of the experiences they had undergone to bring this petty lunatic to power.

The awe was gone, and fear simply didn't fit the unreality of the situation.

They were angry, and perhaps more than a little mad themselves.

Mogart walked close to the great palace, studying it with admiration, chuckling to himself in confident satisfaction.

Jill moved to Mogart's left. Mac found he had been standing on a large, partially broken two-by-four that had been unaffected by the land transformation because it was part of the landscape
behind
Mogart, to which the demon had not yet paid attention. Mac reached down and picked up the board, then walked to Mogart's right.

The demon was oblivious to them. He had totally forgotten anyone else was there in his ecstasy over achieving absolute power.

Jill waited until Mac seemed to be in position and gave her a slight nod. Then, glancing around, she found a large gray rock and tested its heft; there was a look of determination on her face.

"Okay, Mogart, this has gone far enough!" Jill yelled at the demon, and tossed the rock as hard as she could at his head. It struck him a glancing blow on the left arm, but his expression showed fury and his eyes blazed with contempt as he whirled to face her.

"So!" he snarled. "What is a little earthworm to
me?"
He lifted up the Eye of Baal, and she felt real panic.

Mac made his move, running up on Mogart and swatting the creature's outstretched right hand.

The board struck with every ounce of power Mac could muster. Mogart was taken completely off guard; he cried out in fury and surprise, and as he jerked from the blow, the Eye of Baal slipped from his hand and hit the ground, bouncing several times and then rolling to a stop.

Mogart was so furious that he hardly noticed, whirl-ing instead to face his new attacker. He grabbed Mac by his left arm and pulled the human to him violently. Mac was simply outclassed in the muscle department no matter how hard he struggled.

Jill didn't wait to see the great, gnarled blue hands close on the man's throat; she dived for the Eye of Baal and scooped it up into her hands. Something like a great electric shock coursed through her as she gripped the thing. She felt the same enormous, almost limitless power potential that Mogart had experienced flow to every cell of her being. In a way it felt something like that experience in the pentagram with O'Malley, but this was of an incalculable magnitude stronger, power beyond belief and beyond full com-prehension. The world seemed to slow. She turned to the two who were fighting-the huge creature and the man, locked in a slow-motion death grip.

She wondered how the hell to work the damned thing.

Mogart had just seemed to wish something and it had been so,
the rational corner of her brain whispered to her. She looked at the two men and projected the thought with all her mental might that the two would be repelled from each other.

Nothing happened.

For a moment she couldn't understand why. The power was there, and it
could
be tapped; she knew it, felt it pulsing within her from the great fused jewel.

Mogart abruptly realized that he no longer held the Eye. He flung Walters away from him and turned, snarling, advancing on Jill.

Mac groaned and coughed, then looked up to see what was going on. Instantly he sensed she was trying to work the thing and couldn't-and he also guessed why.

"Jill! Look at the jewel, not Mogart!" he managed to cry out in a voice still hoarse from the creature's death grip on his throat.

Her momentary panic subsided as she realized what he meant. It took all her willpower, particularly with the demon only a few paces in front of her and coming on strong, to look away from the charging apparition and at the Eye. She managed, picturing in her mind a simple concept.

She felt no sensation, no release, noth-ing, and braced herself for what could only be the in-evitable strong grasp.

"Jill?" She jumped, almost screaming in panic. She stepped back involuntarily and looked away from the jewel.

It was Mac.

It took a few seconds longer for that to sink in. Then, still in some shock, she looked around in all di-rections.

The great palace was still there, but not Asmodeus Mogart.

Everything drained out of her, and she sat down in the dirt. Mac sighed, understanding, and sat down beside her.

"I-I just wished he'd go away," she told him, "and I guess he did."

Mac nodded. "I don't know where he went, but I'll tell you he just winked out-one moment he's running for you and the next, gone.
Pffft!"

She suddenly looked up, eyes still dull. "No, I -I think I
do
know where he went. I think I told him to go to Hell."

He considered this. "Hmmm . . . I doubt if you can make an Alternative, even with
that,"
he thought aloud. "So-well, I would say you'd better proclaim a Heaven, too. There's a Hell now even if there wasn't one before. And since he's the devil himself, I don't think we've seen the last of him."

She thought about that and laughed, slowly at first, then in roaring peals. She couldn't stop for several minutes, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Finally, she sighed and lay back on the dirt.

Mac looked at the Eye of Baal, still clutched in her right hand. He pointed to it. "May I see it?"

he asked curiously.

Suddenly emotion shot back through her, irrational and strange. "No!" she snapped and quickly stood up, clutching the Eye to her and backing away from him.

He stared at her in amazement. "Oh, come on," was all he could manage.

She was looking at him strangely, as if seeing him for the first time. There was a glint of something not quite right in her expression. Her mouth was slightly open as if she, too, were sensing the changes inside her in wonder. Behind her eyes a mental battle seemed to be going on.

Finally she appeared to come to a de-cision and looked again at the jewel.

He watched, a sickening sensation in his stomach, as she began to undergo a transformation, changing, growing, glowing.

She became, once again, the Queen of Darkness-and more besides. She was Venus, and Aphrodite, and the Queen of the Amazons all rolled up into one. She was a true goddess, radiating and reflecting all the power, awe, and mystery that those imagined deities supposedly possessed.

Mac Walters felt all the primal feelings of the an-cients rise within him, all those emotions associated with the presence of a goddess: awe, wonder, fear, worship, and yes, love, too. He felt himself kneeling, then prostrating himself before Her, the supreme, the sublime being who was, in fact, the center of his creation.

And yet something of his modern rational self re-mained, and deep within a fading corner of rationality there came the thought, unbidden but deeply felt, that said,
Oh, no! Not again!

The Goddess, sole ruler and Supreme Being of the ravaged Earth, looked down in satisfaction at Her sup-plicant. The feeling was tremendous, exhilarating in ways She had never known before.

The sight of wor-ship, even by one lone worshipper, fed and nurtured Her heady feelings of omnipotence. She understood now what Mogart had been feeling, what he had striven for and so briefly attained, why he had felt as he'd felt and done what he'd done.

Megalomania was, in fact, a wonderful disease, at least it was when the sufferer really attained the power to match the mentality. Or was it the other way around?
Did
absolute power corrupt absolutely? Was that why so many of the demons were forever imprisoned, kept away from the Main Line and prevented by special safeguards from stealing other jewels? Were those whom she had seen imprisoned in their worlds because they had been so tainted with the disease they couldn't be allowed home?

She put such thoughts from Her mind.
This
was Her home, and
here
was where She had the power.

She turned and looked at Mogart's castle.
So crude,
She thought.
So common. Gods should
have no need of fortresses; they lived in beauty.

Working the Eye of Baal, She altered the structure. Great Grecian columns, sparkling fountains, marbled walkways, and inviting pools dripping with flowers ap-peared everywhere. Again She felt the headiness of the Eye; to think it was to have it.