"Rise!" he commanded. "Dugou!"
The girl got up. She stood limply, blankly, as if she were an animated corpse, her eyes on the jewel Jill was sure she could not see. It was unsettling to watch such power being wielded, yet there was some reassurance as well. Each jewel amplified the ones before by a factor of ten, Mogart had said. Six might well deflect an asteroid.
"Enter the pentagram!" Mogart ordered, stepping back to the far limit of its small border to accommodate her. The girl stepped forward, up onto the table, close to him and inside the figure. The cubes did not close behind her.
Mogart turned to Jill. "Your turn," he called softly. "Enter by the opening. I think we'll all fit."
She found herself walking to the table, walking up onto the hard surface, as if she had no will of her own.
The onyx cubes closed behind her, forming a tight fit. Jill felt a little more herself now, although she found, just by trying to step back a bit, that she could not escape the pentagram. It was like a brick wall.
She looked down and saw that the boy still sat, watching the whole thing with interest but no fear.
Then Mogart stepped literally into the girl, so that both were occupying the same space. It was a weird sight, to say the least, to see the two together, yet not merging, as if they were some strange three-dimensional double exposure.
The girl's mouth opened and uttered a stream of gibberish that sounded very much like the language the two young people had spoken. It was not her voice, nor Mogart's, but her voice trying to be his. The effect was ghastly, like a voice from the dead, but it didn't seem to bother the boy at all. Instead, he nodded and responded to the girl. For over three minutes Mogart, through the girl, and the boy, who sat outside the pentagram, engaged in a dialogue Jill could not follow. Finally it ended, and Mogart stepped outside the girl's body and turned.
"Go up to the girl and touch her," he ordered softly.
Jill suddenly became hesitant. "I'm not sure I like-" she started, but found herself doing as ordered, anyway.
"Remember-only the jewel can return you to me," she heard Mogart's voice warn her. "Fail, and you are here as long as you live."
With that she felt an enormous shock, as if suddenly colliding with a wall at high speed, her head seemed to explode in pain, and she sank into unconsciousness.
Inside the room the boy watched as the fire and wind diminished; there was a sharp but not loud cracking sound, and the cubes suddenly and violently shot out in all directions across the room, banging against the adobe walls. He had to raise his hands to fend off one, and it stung.
On the table the body of the girl collapsed into an unmoving heap.
2
They were strange dreams, and yet somehow familiar. She had dreamed a part of these dreams before, long ago, in the twilight of childhood and on the threshold of adolescence. True, some of the settings were odd, even bizarre, yet others were not, and there were human universals involved.
Some of the dreams were pleasant, some nightmarish; many were erotic in one way or another. She tossed and turned through them, barely aware that they were dreams.
Then one began to dominate: a world where bison roamed and the people looked like American Indians and a funny little devil named Mogart, who told her to go steal some jewels to help prevent the end of her world.
"You awake?" came a voice, that of a young boy whose prepubescent soprano was slightly tinged with the promise of forthcoming manhood.
Jill McCulloch awoke and opened her eyes. Her body ached; she felt as if she'd been sleeping for hours on a bed of concrete.
This is the room, that straw-filled adobe room, she thought wonderingly. And over there, reclining on a woven mat and munching something, was a boy-no, the boy.
This isn't a dream, she realized with growing horror. This is real!
She sat up unsteadily and shook her head to clear the remaining cobwebs. She was still on the table! No wonder 1 feel so black-and-blue, she thought. She looked down at herself as if to confirm the impossible that she already knew, somehow, would be there.
Small, bony limbs with almost no body development, covered by a skin of deep reddish brown like the boy's. She was inside the girl's body! She was the girl!
"How-how long have I been out?" she managed, feeling awkward and ill at ease.
The boy shrugged. "Hour maybe, maybe two. I wasn't sure if the whole thing had come off or not."
He was talking very differently than she'd expected. Then she realized he was talking in his own language, as was she. It came easy, as if native to her, and it sounded natural, Only traces, nouns mostly, of English remained in her mind-words like "airplane" and "electricity" and countless others that had no counterpart here.
"You know I'm not-ah, not the girl," she stammered, trying to open an impossible conversation.
He nodded. "Oh, sure. I knew that the moment you opened your mouth. Your manner's different, too."
"You're not-ah-surprised?" she ventured, amazed at his matter-of-fact attitude.
He shook his head. "Naw. This is-lemme see-about this many times this year alone." He_ held up three fingers, and she realized that he couldn't count. With a start she realized she couldn't, either. The ability was there, sort of, but she didn't seem to be able to get to it, pull it out, use it.
She understood that she was dealing with the limits of the beggar girl; whatever the girl knew, so did she. The rest was locked away, perhaps in the same mental closet as the girl herself.
"The others," she prompted. "They also used the girl's body?"
Again he shook his head from side to side. "Naw. Different folks'. She's only been with me a little bit, since the short days. But you got to remember that you are her now, to everybody but you and me, so get used to it."
His attitude astonished her, and she pursued it. "These others-what did they come for?"
He shrugged. "Different things. One for wine, I remember that. One for some kinda seeds. I dunno what the third was after. They was all trouble, though." Her eyebrows rose. "Problems?"
He nodded. "Dumb. Didn't know how to behave or anything like that. Lots of trouble. I think you're gonna be the worst."
That got to her. "Me? Why?"
"You got to get a jewel from the Holy Elder, and I never heard of nobody in religion ever givin' anything. They always want you to give. And I understand the Holy Elder don't know you're here and wouldn't give you this jewel, anyway, right?"
She nodded. "Something like that."
He sighed. "Well, you might as well relax, then. You're gonna hav'ta learn the ropes around here pretty quick, and I kinda think that once you do, you'll see you're gonna be here an awful long time."
Jill didn't like that at all. "What do you mean?"
The boy chuckled. "The Holy Covenant states that none may take what belongs to another without the consent of the one it belongs to," he explained patiently. "In other words, if the Holy Elder don't wanna give it to you, there's just no way you can get it."
She exhaled slightly and murmured under her breath, "We'll see about that." She glanced about. "Where are my clothes? I'd like to look around outside just to see what sort of place this is."
The boy howled with laughter. "I knew it! Boy! You girls is dumb!"
"What do you mean?" she snapped angrily.
He was still laughing. "The Holy Covenant," he responded. "I guess in the spirit world or wherever you all come from it's different, but this is Zolkar. You got to obey the Holy Covenant. You got to, whether you like it or not. Had one of you a while back who was a grown-up-married, too, although her husband was out of town so she didn't hav'ta worry about that part. Wouldn't wear the veil. Stepped outside into public, Holy Spirit struck her, zam! She don't have no nose or mouth or anything! Started chokin' to death, of course. I got the veil on her all right, but she wouldn't repent. Dumb, you see?"
Jill was aware of a queasy feeling in her stomach. "What happened to her?"
"Died, of c
ourse," the boy replied, still chuckling slightly. "How long can anybody live without breathing?"
She sighed. "All right, you made your point with your little story. I'll do what you tell me. But I only asked for some clothes . . ."
He nodded. "That's it exactly. You're a girl! Girls don't wear clothes. When you change into a woman, then some man'll claim you for a wife. Then you put on clothes and veil and all, and nobody but he and his family see you any other way again. That's the system, see? That's the way things work."
She was appalled. Clearly females weren't people here, they were objects. It was like a Middle Eastern harem, only worse.
She wanted out of this world as quickly as possible. "So what happens if it's cold?" she asked, trying to keep her outrage under control.
He shrugged. "Then you don't go out, of course. Don't happen often around these parts anyhow, and not now for sure, not with the long days here. Cools down at night, sure-that's why the fire's here. But it's mostly wetness. Tomorrow will be warm, even hot. You won't have no trouble."
Except being naked in public, she thought sourly. Aloud she said, "Then I can just go out now, like this?"
He nodded. "If you want. Dumb, though. After dark, this much, the air'll go right through you. Gonna rain, too. Heard some thunder a little bit ago. Besides, all you got are dark streets and a bunch of grown-ups with night jobs. Wouldn't help you see anything or find anything you couldn't do better in the morning, and you'd probably get at least a cold. Might as well relax, try to sleep-bed's over there. Tomorrow morning I'll take you on a tour." He yawned.
She sighed, got up, and went over to the bed. It was only a slight improvement over the table and she didn't feel all that sleepy, but there was not much else she could do. The boy was right.
Medieval sexism and divine punishment, she thought, and shook her head in helplessness. Nothing had ever looked so hopeless.
As she lay there; trying to sleep, her thoughts went back curiously to her father. "Never quit," he'd told her. "Quitters are losers."
But this is a little bit different from getting a ten on the floor exercise, Daddy, she answered him, but he was still there, still staring down at her, urging her on, insisting she was the best, that she could do anything.
And it was with those memories of a dead man and an alien world that she finally drifted off into sleep.
"Wake up!" the boy's voice called through a fog.
She groaned slightly and came a little bit awake, just enough to assure her mind and body that she'd rather go back to sleep. "What time is it?" she mumbled.
"After dawn," the boy replied. "The streets are sunlit and soon townsmen and traders will be about. It is the start of the day."
"I think I'd rather start the day a little later," she managed, and started to drift back into sleep.
Suddenly within her mind came a voice, a vast and ancient voice that was at once fatherly and chiding but nonetheless quite inhuman.
"SLOTH!" it charged, and then was gone. Suddenly she felt a force, a current, run through her entire mind and body. It wasn't painful, but it was certainly powerful, as powerful a stimulant as she'd ever known or received.
She was wide awake now and virtually leaped from her bed. She felt like a coiled spring, supercharged, and somewhat frustrated at not really knowing just what it was she was supposed to do. It frightened her a little, too, and she said, more to herself than to the boy, "What's happening to me?"
The boy smiled. "Welcome to Zolkar," he replied playfully. "I don't know how it is beyond the world where you come from, but here you will act in the manner that the Holy Covenant says-whether you want to or not. Don't worry, you'll calm down in a little bit. That was only your first reminder. It gets worse the more times you do it."
His words held little comfort for her, now or for the future, but this little taste of Divine Will had a sobering and frightening effect on her. What kind of a place was this, anyway? And what kind of a life?
"Let's go get something to eat," the boy suggested, and moved toward the door. She followed, glad to be doing something.
Although it was probably not a half hour after sunrise, a lot of people were up and moving about. The air was filled with a curious mixture of odors, those of excrement and drying mud and garbage mixing with exotic smells of freshly baking bread and other active kitchen odors.
The temperature was already warm; there had been a thunderstorm during the night and the signs of it in mud puddles and drying walls were everywhere, but now, with the sun, starting to bear down and evaporation well under way, the air was almost like a steambath. If in fact her nudity presented no barrier or threat except to her modesty, then she was better off than the boy, who obviously was expected to wear the heavy if ragged robe.
Her shyness quickly wore off as they turned a corner and walked down a main street crowded with numerous robed and long-haired men and women dressed in colorful but baggy cloth dresses wearing "veils"-actually pieces of cloth tied in such a way that they were not so much veils as kerchiefs over nose and mouth. All the women looked like a gang of female bank robbers in some western drama. None of them paid her the slightest attention, and the final barrier dropped when she saw many female infants and girls as naked as she.
The supercharging that had gotten her up was wearing off, and she could think more clearly now. "Where are we going?" she asked the boy.
"Just up ahead," he replied, gesturing but not breaking stride. "A small cantina that sells to the merchants and people in town from the farms. Just relax and keep quiet and let me do all the talking. You don't want to make any more mistakes, 'specially out in public," he warned. She didn't mind this in the least. If she could help it, she wasn't going to hear that weird voice again.
A number of kids were gathering near the cantina-perhaps a dozen or so, all of whom seemed to be in boy-girl pairs. They ranged in age from about five or six to eleven, which, she guessed, was close to her own age. She found the numbers difficult to dredge up; when she thought, Five or six, her mind said, About the age of her friend Cathy's daughter. The concept of age was there, but not the figures.
The other children seemed to recognize them.
"Just don't say anything you don't have to," the boy cautioned her.
"These others-they are all orphan beggars, too?" she whispered.
He nodded. "It happens. There is no dishonor in it."
"I-I didn't mean that there was," she shot back, a bit startled by his reaction.
They joined the crowd of children, and she shut up as he made no further comments. She felt a little awkward and there was a creeping depression growing inside her. Nothing was going right; nothing she said or did was right. The objective looked more and more hopeless every passing moment.
The boy greeted several other boys by name; they were regulars and friendly. The girls, she saw, generally kept quiet and deferred to the males, which was culturally irritating but, considering her situation, provided a comfortable blanket in which she had no obligations to screw up.
One problem surfaced immediately, and it was almost comic. The Zolkarian language was most compact; a number of sounds went together to form different words depending on the mere arrangement of this syllable or that. As a result, names tended to be single long terms that, nonetheless, meant graphic things to the listener. It was awkward-the language went in for elaborate names, yet provided no simple way for nicknames or shortenings. It made for long-winded talks.
"Hey! Shadow of the City! I hear you did real good in the Street of the Nine Thousand Buffaloes yesterday!" a chubby eight-year old called.
"Not bad, Whisperer of the Long Marsh Grasses," Shadow of the City responded. He looked around. "Flower of the Long, Dark Hills is no longer with you, I see."
The pudgy Whisperer of the Long Marsh Grasses nodded. "You know how it is. Man came along a couple days ago and offered her Solace. Said she looked like his dead daughter or something. I dunno. Who can ever understand 'em?"
"Women?" Shadow of the City responded quizzically.
"Naw. Grown-ups," the pudgy one replied. "I may have something working with Flower of the Deep Orange Sunset, though. We'll see. Free Wind of the Black Earth is turnin' grown-up fast, and he may just decide to give up the life and turn shareholder."
And so it went, with the massively complex names coming quickly and the conversation, while very human, running on an alien cultural level. The words were there, but not the meanings.
The children were all there because of the cantina, run by an elderly man named Winged Dancer of the Buffalo Stampede. He dealt mostly in confections and bite-sized, open-faced sandwiches. The culture had no refrigeration, and therefore storage of such things was impossible. Rather than just throw the stuff out, the next morning he gave it to the poor kids, showing kindness and charity at absolutely no cost. Sometimes he had nothing, of course, but the beggar children's sub-culture had a way of knowing just how much was available.
The sandwiches smelled really rancid, and Jill passed when they were offered to her. The trouble was, she didn't know whether they were truly rancid or if that was the way they were supposed to smell. It didn't matter; the other kids wolfed them down happily, and she got a good share of the sweet pastries and rolls, which tasted excellent despite being hard and more than a little stale. When you're hungry that doesn't matter much, and if she were starving, even the sandwiches would look attractive, she knew.
The appetite of Bright Star of the Night Skies, whose body she now wore, was almost birdlike, and Jill was soon full. It took a bit longer to satisfy Shadow of the City, and there was little left by the time he, too, was filled. Finally he turned and said, "All right, now let's go see if we can find your jewel."
They got up, although it took about another fifteen minutes of saying goodbye to all those long-named types and wishing them good days and good fortunes before they were able to break loose. Finally on their way someplace, Jill felt free again to talk and question her young guide.
And the Devil Will Drag You Under Page 4