Read Online And The Devil Will Drag You Under (1979) by Jack L. Chalker - Free Book Online

into her mind.
    "Then I'm stuck here, in the middle of the street, in the praying position?" she moaned.
    The boy thought it over. "Well, there's one way. Every once in a while people run into problems like yours-not for being this dumb, though. Sometimes you just get caught in the system whether you want to or not, and it's hard to feel guilty when the whole thing wasn't your fault. Then we take them to somebody with the power."
    "The power?"
    He nodded, although she couldn't see. "Yeah. We sit you there and they look at you and give you a po-tion to drink that makes you kinda sleepy, and then they tell you how you gotta feel and you do."
    A hypnotist, she thought. Maybe that would work long enough to get her out of this!
    "Look," she said. "Maybe that's the way. Then it'll be all right, it'll wear off, and we'll-"
    "No good," he responded, cutting her off. "It doesn't wear off. If it did you'd be back on the ground. Oh, sure, if he just looks at you, to get rid of a headache or something, the effect wears off-but this problem would take the potion, and that doesn't wear off."
    And that wouldn't do at all, she understood. If the hypnotist made her believe not only in the system but in its rightness and naturalness, she'd accept it, even want to live in it. She'd be a good Zolkarian girl and wait anxiously to be taken into a household and have babies.
    No way.
    "There's no other way?" she moaned.
    He thought for a moment. "You gotta understand, this wouldn't even be a problem if you was one of us. No, I guess the only thing you can do is take The Risk."
    "The Risk?" she repeated, then recalled that that meant petitioning the Holy Spirit directly-but not knowing what would be done about your problem. "What would I tell Him?" she asked, a little frightened.
    The boy shrugged. "Tell Him the truth. He might excuse your ignorance. Then again, His ways are not for folks to understand. He might just make you Zolkarian, and that would solve the problem."
    This problem, and this world's problem, she thought glumly. Not hers. "There is no other way?"
    "Nope. That's about it. You can think on it a little."
    She did, and grew increasingly uncomfortable, while drawing the same blank as he.
    "There's really no choice, is there?" she said at last, and he admitted ruefully that there wasn't.
    Ever since she was a little girl, religion had played little or no role in her life. A nominal Catholic, her less-than-pious father seldom got, her to church or catechism classes-too much time out from gymnastics practice. Later there were the meets themselves, and the training. She went to church, usually, at Easter and Christmas time, and the most religious she had been in recent years was a few blasphemous oaths and little prayers before a meet. And now here she was, stuck, having to pray to a God she knew was there but somehow couldn't take seriously.
    She waited a little, composing in her own mind what she must say, then took a deep breath and decided she was as ready as she'd ever be. She felt the same way she had before big and important meets, standing there at the starting line, only a good deal more helpless since the result here did not depend on her effort alone. "Here goes," she thought aloud, and plunged in.
    "Oh, Holy Spirit, hear my prayer," she began, closing her eyes. "Please-I need your help. I am a stranger here, a spirit from another world, inside this body from your world. My name is Jill McCulloch, and my world is close to its end from a great moon that is going to hit it." She paused a second, hoping that flattery would work. "We cannot stop the Moon alone. We need the aid of your Holy Elder to save us. I was sent here to get that aid, and I have not been able to figure out how to reach him. It was this desperation that caused me to miss the ending of the prayers, for when I heard his voice I could think only of my own home in terrible danger and that this was the man who could save my people. Can you excuse a poor foreigner whose