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"You lied to us!" Jill accused him. "You never cared about this
world! You just needed somebody to do your dirty work for you!"
He grinned evilly. "Clever one, aren't you? Yes, this is what it is all about,
but I think you have
yet to perceive the fullness of my genius. Many times through the millennia I
have tried to secure an Eye of Baal to replace the one taken from me so long
ago. They said I was misusing the power, establishing myself as a
self-indulgent god. As if-as if constructs, mere creations of a
fertile imagination, artificial creatures formed by superior
intelligence and science, had some sort of rights! In the past I failed.
Security was too good. It was too easy for them to spot me, and when
I sent others they were incompetent. What my envoys lacked, I decided, was
motivation. When they had to face the problems, worlds, and creatures you
faced, they were working for me, not for themselves, and the difficulties
sapped their will to carry out the job." His grin widened.
"Do you think," he continued, "that it' was just a coincidence that the two of
you were here, in this spot, when you were needed? Did you think you
accom-plished what you did without help, without training? I planned for
years for this! Years! Ever since I detected the gravitational
imbalances almost twenty years ago. I picked people, many people, to be my
agents. They didn't know it, of course. Using what powers I had, I endowed
them with superb bodies and even better minds. Thoughts and motivations
planted in their parents', teachers', and all other close-contact people's
brains shaped and molded their interests, their person-alities, so they would
be the people
best equipped to succeed in the Alternatives. There were thousands of such
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people, not just the two of you!"
Mogart paused, enjoying the delicious shock on their faces, then continued. He
was thoroughly delighting in this.
"
Such activities took a lot out of me. The jewel and its powers have very
definite limits; as hard as it is for you to comprehend, there are immutable
natural laws applicable to all the universes.
What it took out of me left me that pitiful, drunken weakling you saw.
Almost too much. The story I told you about being on a drunk for key weeks
when I should have been gathering and sending out my agents was true.
All of it was true, except why I was exiled here. It wasn't for
alco-holism, but for what they termed incurable megalo-mania." He
shrugged. "They were
, probably right. It didn't matter to them. I resisted treatment
because megalomania is such a wonderful thing to have. This is a
working universe-projects go on here. But Earth was just a byproduct
of the forces set in motion. As I think I told you, there are no real ongoing
projects closer than the Andromeda galaxy. I was safely out of the way. And I
accepted exile, since the alternative was a brainwipe, the destruction of my
entire personal-ity and memory. I would still be here, a prisoner, had not a
number of fortuitous events coincided."
"The asteroid, Jill breathed.
"
He nodded. "Getting the idea into the right people's heads to try and
hold it captive was a problem-the project was so costly! Then it was
discovered that the asteroid really did contain riches, and the way was
cleared. Just as important a factor was that this event should not come about
until there was adequate tech-nology to implement the plan. After that the
pride and greed that are reflections of me in your race took over."
"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 dont even have to know the composition or formulae.
Just think of
'
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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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]