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, whirling 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 comprehension. 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, nothing, and braced herself for what could only be the inevitable 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 directions.
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 decision 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 ancients 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 remained, 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 supplicant. The feeling was tremendous, exhilarating in ways She had never known before. The sight of worship, 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 appeared everywhere. Again She felt the headiness of the Eye; to think it was to have it.
She turned back to Walters for a moment. No use making Mogart's mistake, She told herself. She walked slowly, majestically, forward, trying to decide what to do with him. Replace his memories, She decided, so that he would never even know, guess, or doubt the power of the Goddess. She was already making plans. A perfect world, an extension of that valley all over the Earth, happiness, kindness, no want or fear, all presided over by Her, of course. A perfect world, where the mistakes of the past would not be made.
So deeply was She thinking of this new world She was going to create, She failed to see the board with which Mac had struck Mogart. She stepped on it, and it flew out from under Her, as did Her feet.
Her Supreme Holiness, Goddess of the Earth Jill McCulloch, fell flat on Her magnificent fanny.
Mac heard her cry out as she slipped and chanced a look up. She fell hard on her left side, with no chance to break her fall or time to get herself out of it by way of the Eye. The great jewel came loose from her right hand when she opened the hand to try to cushion the fall. As she hit the ground, the jewel rolled almost in front of him.
Incredulous, he picked it up. She realized what had happened almost immediately and jumped quickly to her feet. Mac, fighting back those still-present primal emotions, looked at the glowing orb and thought: You have no desire for the Eye of Baal. You want me to have it.
&n
bsp; She stopped, looking momentarily confused. In that same moment Mac Walters started feeling what first Mogart and then Jill McCulloch had felt when gripping the Eye of Baal-the sense of stored-up energy, of near limitless power and potential now within him.
He stared hard at her. She was still as incredibly beautiful as she had made herself, and he still felt strong emotions for her.
A queen! he thought triumphantly. A queen fit for such as I!
Slowly his shape also changed. He was still himself, but all had been made perfection-the Grecian ideal of manhood. She was awed in spite of herself.
He smiled, seeing in her face that the transformation was perfect. He turned to the Grecian palace she had built. It would do, he decided. Grand and glorious, a seat of ultimate power.
"What will you do now?" she asked in a voice as beautiful and wondrous as her appearance.
He thought a moment. "We shall remake the world, you and I!" he almost shouted in anticipation. "We shall remake it into something better than it was! And while we reign, the people of Earth shall know no want or fear, for we have learned so much and undergone so much that it is only just that we should determine the new way of the world!"
She joined Him, stood beside Him, and together they looked at the glorious palace.
"Where do we begin?" she asked him, sharing his vision.
"At the beginning, probably, which is the first step amateurs face in their attempts to muck things up," came a strange voice behind them.
They whirled and saw that they were no longer alone. Nine creatures stood upon the plain, huge and imposing. All looked much like Mogart had looked when he'd possessed the Eye of Baal-imposing, powerful, like something out of a primal mythos. But there was something else there, too, that had been absent in Mogart: a sense of tremendous dignity and quiet wisdom.
Each wore a great golden chain around his neck, and hanging from each chain was an Eye of Baal.
Five were male, four female, although there was no appreciable difference between them unless you looked in the region of the genitalia.
Mac could only think of Mogart's boast that only ten Eyes were needed to create an entire Alternative level-a whole universe!
And, counting his, there were ten now in this small space.
"Who are you?" he asked, guessing the answer.
"We are the Security Council of the Main Line," responded the one in the middle who' had first spoken. "We are the heads of the nine colleges which make up the University. We are the ones who authorize the power jewels to be crafted, and the ones who authorize the creation and destruction of Alternatives." The demon looked him squarely in the eye. "We did not authorize you to have an Eye of Baal."
Mac Walters felt nervous panic rising inside him and fought to control it. "It's mine now! Ours! We went and got it! We worked for it! We earned it!"
The creature sighed. "Don't you think this godly horse-trading foolishness has gone far enough? Surely the lessons taught you in your experiences have demonstrated to the rational part of your mind that no single human being is capable of handling such power." "You do," Mac responded defensively.
"We do not," the demon told him. "While we hold our positions we live together, eat together, sleep together, do all things together. We do this for a set period of time and then we surrender our power and position. And during this period of time when we do have the power, none of us can abuse it without being detected and corrected by the other eight." The creature looked down at the Eye dangling from the thick gold chain. "This is not power. This is responsibility. It is what we have and accept, and what you do not. It is why you must surrender the Eye to us, so that it might once more be split and returned to its owners-after those owners undergo a great deal of work and meditation to prove that they deserve it." A clawed hand reached out. "Give the Eye to me."
Walters stepped back a bit. "No! It's mine!"
The creature shook his head. "Why is it yours? More than hers? More than Mogart's? More than the owners of the original gems from which it was crafted?"
"It's mine because I have it," Mac responded defiantly. "Nobody has any right to take it from me!"
The leader sighed. "We can. You must know that, logically. As powerful and godlike as the Eye is, it is not limitless power. Two Eyes can undo one. You face nine. And your own actions prove your unworthiness to use it. Surely there is still a rational part of you that realizes that such power must corrupt the emotions of the wielder even as it did our brother Asmodeus and the woman beside you. Consider what you defy. Nine Eyes are fifty-four jewels in parallel series. Each jewel amplifies by a power of ten, and the efficiency is raised so that there is an additional factor of thirty-six. Ten to the ninetieth power. With one Eye you might rule a galaxy. With nine you might well create one."
There was dead silence, save for the now-gentle wind coming through the mountain passes. Jill McCulloch moved, turning to Mac Walters, who stood as if frozen, and gently removed the Eye from his hand. He offered no protest, although she sensed that he was not under any sort of spell of command. There was simply no purpose in making these creatures use that power. Turning once more, she walked to the creatures standing there in a line, just in front of the bar which had been so much the center of their existence recently, and handed the Eye of Baal to the leader. Then she looked into those incredibly wise and so very tired-looking eyes and asked the question that had to be asked.
"What is to become of our world-and of us?"
The leader's gaze showed deep compassion, compassion mixed with understanding for what they had been through, and why, and what they faced now. It was very different from the feelings generated by any of the other demons they had known. We know, it seemed to say. We're only human, too.
"When you wished Asmodeus to go to Hell, he naturally appeared immediately in the Board of Ethics hearing room at the University," the old one explained. "You see, Hell is a subjective place-and that was the place he feared the most. It was no trouble at all to get the story out of him-a bit one-sided, I will admit, but our devices were able to sort and balance. He's not really a bad man, you know. Despite his excesses, the similarity between what he would do with the Eye and what either of you would do is rather striking. He is, quite simply, human. That, of course, is the tragedy we all must bear."
They understood, she knew. Understood what it must be like to be just an ordinary individual in a multiplicity of universes where such power existed.
The leader read her thoughts. "He was a philosophy instructor. He was close to us, could see the sort of power being wielded and the type of people who decided it. Just people. Ordinary people, like himself. And he found others-five others-who felt the same, who craved the power and knew that they would be better gods than those who acted the part. Like prideful men for all time, they were well-meaning, utopian idealists, really. They really did think, in their conceit, that they would be better at it than we. Like you, they saw the power but did not comprehend the responsibility that goes with it, that must always be present so that the power can be used properly and with respect. They procured power jewels, supposedly to pursue minor projects on some of the neglected or abandoned areas. They were to meet later and fashion an Eye, thence to create their own visions."
All nine seemed to sigh in unison.
"But there were six such, of course, and their visions differed, even as two people look at the same flower and perceive different aspects of it. Each was trapped. They dared not join together because they were jealous and mistrustful of one another; they could not return to the University without their plot being unmasked-as now it has been. They became prisoners of their own scheme, trapped in their own petty greeds and ambitions in the backwaters of reality. Be not deceived by the manner of some of them. They were the five from whom you procured the jewels, and Asmodeus, of course. They have been trying to steal one another's amplifiers for tens of thousands of years now.”
Mac Walters seemed to snap out of it. "
But this is our reality," he pointed out, moving his arm in a sweeping gesture. "Desolation. Ruin. Death."
"What is done may be undone," the demon leader replied. "Not exactly, of course, but a close approximation. You wish this area-by which I mean this planet-restored. It is possible. But that is not the full answer to your question, nor can I give it. You must give it. Tell us-how would you wield the power of nine Eyes in regard to your own planet and also to yourselves?"
Jill looked at Mac and saw the same message on his face that she had on hers. "We fought-and killed-to save our world. For all that to mean anything at all, our world must be saved, restored. We realize that now.”
"But your society had its evils; it was a race that lived in pain and faced new threats daily. Is this the society you would recreate?"
Mac stepped in. "I think we were fools," he admitted. "We were thinking of godhead and a land of pastoral peace. But such a land has no value if it is imposed from above and maintained by dictatorial power, no matter how benignly applied."
"The more I think of myself a few minutes ago, the more ashamed of myself I am," Jill added. "The first world I went to had this godlike morality, and it was a stagnant, dreary world. I should have remembered. The most perfect society that I saw was the valley I was forced to destroy, and it was not imposed, merely protected. Human beings created it. Not all that world, or all humanity, but it showed that such things are possible if people truly want them and work for them. That is the only enduring type of human utopia."
Mac Walters nodded in agreement. "I, too, saw an imposed, hierarchical society-and hated it, and hated you for imposing the limitations on those people. Now I see that I, too, was ready to do the same sort of thing here, to my own world. Like Jill, I feel a little ashamed of myself."
The demon leader smiled kindly. "Don't be ashamed, either of you, for you have learned some great lessons. You have gained a great wisdom that few would have received from your experiences, and that makes you greater than most human beings. Be proud, for in this moment you have shown yourselves greater than Asmodeus, who is unrepentant. In a few brief days and nights you have learned that millennia could not teach him. Your words gladden us and make our decisions much easier. Your world has been ignored, a backwater-but it did produce such as you. It will no longer be ignored."
And the Devil Will Drag You Under Page 28