A Logical Magician

40

It waddled towards them from the other end of the railway yard, its intense bellowing shaking the walls. Seventy feet long, the Great Beast stood twelve feet high at the shoulder, balanced on four short, stumpy legs, and was ten feet wide. Fifteen feet of its length consisted of a gigantic mouth filled with teeth the size of bar stools. Its milky white eyes were the size of pizza tins. Assorted spikes decorated its back and sides. Dark brown, with splotchy spots of green, the monster bore an uncanny resemblance to a gigantic alligator.

It wasn’t hard to guess its true identity. At least, not for Jack. After reading hundreds of fantasy novels from Adams to Zelazny, he was an expert on mythical creations. The monster could only be Leviathan, the monstrous sea creature mentioned in the Book of Job. Though the Bible described the creature as a serpent, according to earlier Babylonian and Canaanite myths, the creature was actually a giant sea dragon. Or, in more prosaic terms, an alligator the size of a steam locomotive.

Watching the Great Beast approach, Jack experienced a curious sort of déjа vu. His mind flashed back to dozens of 1950’s science fiction B-movies, filled with giant ants, flies, wasps, and grasshoppers. But now the menace was a monstrous alligator demon, and instead of watching the film, he was living it. He only hoped that his plan was the equal of those dreamt up by Kenneth Tobey, Steve McQueen, or Peter Graves.

For all its immense size Leviathan moved surprisingly fast. The beast ignored minor obstacles in its path like Border Redcaps, stomping over any of von Bern’s henchmen too slow or too stupid to get out of its way. Though it kept its gaze fixed on Jack and Cassandra, the monster allowed itself a few quick snacks as it approached, swallowing several gang members foolish enough to dart in front of its huge mouth. Chewing and swallow its prey didn’t slow it down a step.

Jack estimated the Great Beast would reach them in only a few minutes. While he had a general concept of how he planned to stop the monster, he was still short on specifics. He would have to improvise on the run.

“What should we do?” yelled Cassandra. Even though she was screaming at the top of her lungs, it was hard to hear what she was saying, between Leviathan’s bellowing and the horrified cries of the imprisoned women. The Border Redcaps, for all their faults, perished quietly.

“Split up,” shouted Jack. “Leviathan’s after me. Keep out of its way and knock over the rest of the bonfires. Von Bern’s troops are pretty well scattered and they shouldn’t prove much opposition. In the meantime, I’ll handle the Great Beast.”

“On your own?” cried Cassandra, looking concerned. “That thing’s awfully big. Jack. And it looks pretty hungry. Floppy discs and pocket calculators won’t stop a Great Beast. I hope you brought something special to handle it.”

Jack pulled off his backpack and emptied the contents onto the concrete floor. “You take all the discs and calculators,” he shouted to the Amazon. His hands latched onto a thin box the size of a small attaché case. “This baby is going to give Leviathan indigestion.”

Then there was no more time for talk. Grabbing the hard plastic case, Jack sprinted for the tunnel from which they had first emerged into the underground railway yard. As he predicted, Leviathan ignored Cassandra and pounded after him. The Great Beast evidenced no signs of great intelligence, but obviously it possessed more brains than the dinosaurs it resembled. Jack was its quarry, and wherever he went, the monster followed.

Running full speed from the creature, Jack vowed to take up jogging if he survived this latest round of supernatural battles. Being a hero, at least in his case, seemed to involve a tremendous amount of running from various menaces. That thought annoyed him, though he had no plans to stop moving in this instance in protest. In most of the novels he read, the hero rarely ran. Usually, the protagonist walked towards his enemies, not ran in terror from them. That was the dividing line, he decided, between fact and fiction.

As he ran, Jack fumbled with the lock holding his briefcase closed. Unfortunately, the clasps required more attention than he could spare. Risking a quick glance over his shoulder, he noted that Leviathan was less than fifty feet away and closing fast. The tunnel entrance was about half that distance ahead. Performing some quick estimates and algebraic calculations in his head, Jack concluded he would reach the passage mouth two seconds ahead of the Great Beast. Considering a margin of error of plus or minus three seconds, Jack redoubled his efforts, forcing his aching muscles to try harder.

He hurtled into the opening with two-tenths of a second to spare. The Great Beast’s head crashed into the concrete passage with rock-shattering force. The entire corridor shook from the impact, and thin spiderwebs of cracks darted hundreds of feet into the darkness. But, try as it might, the creature’s head was too large to fit into the tunnel. Jack collapsed in a heap ten yards into the passage, praising an orderly universe that dictated underground tunnels in Chicago were no more than six feet wide by nine feet high.

The corridor’s measurements provided the Great Beast with no pleasure, as it tried again and again to widen the passage by pounding the cement opening with its head. Fortunately, the founders of the underground railway system had built it to last. Except for the hairline cracks in the walls, the tunnel was otherwise unaffected by Leviathan’s attention. Jack wondered, however, if high above on the streets of Chicago, residents were experiencing a mild earthquake.

Steadying himself on the concrete, he managed to pop open the lock on his case. Opening the top, he examined the insides of the portable laptop computer with extreme pleasure.

If floppy discs and miniature calculators served as minor modem icons in the eternal battle between order and chaos, then a 486DX, 33 megahertz computer, albeit a portable one with backlit screen, had to be the equivalent of St. George’s lance or St. Patrick’s staff. And, knowing the type of monster he was going to face. Jack had loaded the computer memory with something special.

Ignoring the beast huffing and puffing only a few steps distant, Jack powered up the laptop. Getting a C prompt in DOS, he pulled up the Bible search program he had installed on the hard drive earlier in the day. After entering “Exodus” for the book name, he specified Chapter 20, Verse 3.

“Thou Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me,” Jack read aloud. According to Simon’s explanation, that was the commandment that had doomed the ancient gods to the outer darkness. What worked once, Jack reasoned, applying the most basic tenet of logical thought, should work a second time.

Rising to his feet, he waited patiently for Leviathan to open its mouth and bellow in rage. The monster obliged less than a minute later.

“For I am a jealous God,” declared Jack, and he flung the portable computer as far as he could into the Great Beast’s throat. When the machine finally made contact, Leviathan screamed. It continued to scream for an eternity.

Picking himself off the tunnel floor some minutes later, Jack decided that there were certain sounds so painful that mere words could not adequately describe them. He had always felt that human fingernails drawn slowly across a blackboard led that list. Not any more. Leviathan’s shriek of fury/agony/pain/distress dropped that noise to twentieth position. The beast’s cry of dissolution filled all the other spots.

Both Great Beast and laptop computer were gone. Jack regretted losing the machine. It was a lot nicer model than any he had ever owned. In retrospect, he decided, it was a small price for vanquishing one of mankind’s oldest foes.

Emerging from the tunnel, Jack spotted Cassandra a hundred feet away, ripping to pieces another of von Bern’s bonfire devices. There were no Border Redcaps in sight. Jack suspected the death cry of the Great Beast had taken the fight out of the remaining gang members. For all of their nastiness, the villains remained true to their basic character and were, at heart, cowards.

Not so Dietrich von Bern. The Wild Huntsman’s proud voice rang through the underground rail station.

“You’ve defeated my underlings, Collins. And triumphed over the Great Beast as well. But not me! I still hold your woman and her father captive. They are my prisoners. Come, release them if you dare. Fight me for them. I, Dietrich von Bern, Lord of the Wild Hunt, am waiting for you!”

Sighing heavily, Jack shook his head in despair. A hero’s job was never done. He was tired and sore and weary of combating the forces of darkness. But Megan and Merlin needed rescuing. And he was the only one capable of defeating the Huntsman.

Lifting his secret weapon. Jack checked the wiring for the fiftieth time. Everything was in order. Feet throbbing, back aching, he set out on his final quest. Softly, he began humming “You Light Up My Life.”