Operation Chaos

by Poul Anderson

  So huge was the force of that final malevolence that I was cast free.

  V

  I OPENED MY EYES. For a while I was aware entirely of the horror. Physical misery rescued me, driving those memories back to where half-forgotten nightmares dwell. The thought flitted by me that shock must have made me briefly delirious.

  A natural therianthrope in his beast shape isn't quite as invulnerable as most people believe. Aside from things like silver-biochemical poisons to a metabolism in that semifluid state?damage which stops a vital organ will stop life; amputations are permanent unless a surgeon is near to sew the part back on before its cells die; and so on and so on, no pun intended. We are a hardy sort, however. I'd taken a blow that probably broke my neck. The spinal cord not being totally severed, the damage had healed at standard therio speed.

  The trouble was, they'd arrived and used my flash to make me human before the incidental hurts had quite gone away. My head drummed and I retched.

  "Get up." Someone stuck a boot in my ribs.

  I lurched erect. They'd removed my gear, including the flash. A score of them trained their' guns on me.

  Tiger Boy stood close. In man-shape he was almost seven feet tall and monstrously fat. Squinting through the headache, I saw he wore the insignia of an emir?which was a military rank these days rather than a title, but pretty important nevertheless.

  "Come,' he said. He led the way, and I was hustled along behind.

  I saw their carpets in the sky and heard the howling of their own weres looking for spoor of other Americans. I was still too groggy to care very much.

  We entered the town, its pavement sounding hollow under the boots, and went toward the center. Trollburg wasn't big, maybe five thousand population once. Most of the streets were empty. I saw a few Saracen troops, antiaircraft guns poking into the sky, a dragon lumbering past with flames flickering around its jaws and cannon projecting from the armored howdah. No trace of the civilians, but I knew what had happened to them. The attractive young women were in the officers' harems, the rest dead or locked away pending shipment to the slave markets.

  By the time we got to the hotel where the enemy headquartered, my aches had subsided and my brain was clear. That was a mixed blessing under the circumstances. I was taken upstairs to a suite and told to stand before a table. The emir sat down behind it, half a dozen guards lined the walls, and a young pasha of Intelligence seated himself nearby.

  The emir's big face turned to that one, and he spoke a few words?I suppose to the effect of "I'll handle this, you take notes." He looked back at me. His eyes were the pale tiger-green.

  "Now then," he said in good English, "we shall have some questions. Identify yourself, please."

  "I told him mechanically that I was called Sherrinford Mycroft, Captain, AUS, and gave him my serial number.

  "That is not your real name, is it?" he asked.

  "Of course not!" I replied. "I know the Geneva Convention, and you're not going to cast name-spells on me. Sherrinford Mycroft is my official johnsmith."

  "The Caliphate has not subscribed to the Geneva Convention, said the emir quietly, "and stringent measures are sometimes necessary in a jehad. What was the purpose of this raid?"

  "I am not required to answer that," I said. Silence would have served the same end, delay to gain time for Virginia, but not as well.

  "You may be persuaded to do so," he said.

  If this had been a movie, I'd have told him I was picking daisies, and kept on wisecracking while they brought out the thumbscrews. In practice it would have fallen a little flat.

  "All right," I said. "I was scouting."

  "A single one of you?"

  "A few others. I hope they got away." That might keep his boys busy hunting for a while.

  "You lie," he said dispassionately.

  "I can't help it if you don't believe me," I shrugged.

  His eyes narrowed. "I shall soon know if you speak truth," he said. "If not, may Eblis have mercy on you."

  I couldn't help it, I jerked where I stood and sweat pearled out on my skin. The emir laughed. He had an unpleasant laugh, a sort of whining growl deep in his fat throat, like a tiger playing with its kill.

  "Think over your decision," he advised, and turned to some papers on the table.

  It grew most quiet in that room. The guards stood as if cast in bronze. The young shavetail dozed beneath his turban. Behind the emir's back, a window looked out on a blankness of night. The sole sounds were the loud tickings of a clock and the rustle of papers. They seemed to deepen the silence.

  I was tired, my head ached, my mouth tasted foul and thirsty. The sheer physical weariness of having to stand was meant to help wear me down. It occurred to me that the emir must be getting scared of us, to take this much trouble with a lone prisoner. That was kudos for the American cause, but small consolation to me.

  My eyes flickered, studying the tableau. There wasn't much to see, standard hotel furnishings. The emir had cluttered his desk with a number of objects: a crystal ball useless because of our own jamming, a fine cut glass bowl looted from somebody's house, a set of nice crystal wineglasses, a cigar humidor of quartz glass, a decanter full of what looked like good Scotch. I guess he just liked crystal.

  He helped himself to a cigar, waving his hand to make the humidor open and a Havana fly into his mouth and light itself. As the minutes crawled by, an ashtray soared up from time to time to receive from him. I guessed that everything he had was 'chanted so it would rise and move easily. A man that fat, paying the price of being a really big werebeast, needed such conveniences.

  It was very quiet. The light glared down on us. It was somehow hideously wrong to see a good ordinary GE saintelmo shining on those turbaned heads.

  I began to get the forlorn glimmerings of an idea. How to put it into effect I didn't yet know, but just to pass the time I began composing some spells.

  Maybe half an hour had passed, though it seem more like half a century, when the door opened and a fennec, the small fox of the African desert, trotted in. The emir looked up as it went into a closet, to find darkness to use its flash. The fellow who came out was, naturally, a dwarf barely one foot high. He prostrated himself and spoke rapidly in a high thready voice.

  "So." The emir's chins turned slowly around to m "The report is that no trace was found of other tracks than yours. You have lied."

  "Didn't I tell you?" I asked. My throat felt stiff and strange. "We used owls and bats. I was the lone wolf."

  "Be still," he said tonelessly. "I know as well as you that the only werebats are vampires, and that vampires are?what you say?4-F in all armies."

  That was true. Every so often, some armchair general asks why we don't raise a force of Draculas. The answer is routine: they're too light and flimsy; they can't endure sunshine; if they don't get a steady blood ration they're apt to turn on their comrades; and you can't possibly use them around Italian troops. I swore at myself, but my mind had been too numb to think straight.

  "I believe you are concealing something," went on the emir. He gestured at his glasses and decanter, which supplied him with a shot of Scotch, and sipped judiciously. The Caliphate sect was also heretical with respect to strong drink; they maintained that while the Prophet forbade wine, he said nothing about beer, gin, whisky, brandy, rum, or akvavit.

  "We shall have to use stronger measures," the emir said at last. "I was hoping to avoid them." He nodded at his guards.

  Two held my arms. The pasha worked me over. He was good at that. The werefennec watched avidly, the emir puffed his cigar and went on with his paperwork. After a long few minutes, he gave an order. They let me go, and even set forth a chair for me, which I needed badly.

  I sat breathing hard. The emir regarded me with a certain gentleness. "I regret this," he said. "It is not enjoyable." Oddly, I believed him. "Let us hope you will be reasonable before we have to inflict permanent injuries. Meanwhile, would you like a cigar?

  The old third degree pr
ocedure. Knock a man around for a while, then show him kindness. You'd be surprised how often that makes him blubber and break.

  "We desire information about your troops and their plans," said the emir. "If you will cooperate and accept the true faith, you can have an honored position with us. We like good men in the Caliphate." He smiled. "After the war, you could select your harem out of Hollywood if you desired."

  "And if I don't squeal-" I murmured.

  He spread his hands. "You will have no further wish for a harem. The choice is yours."

  "Let me think," I begged. "This isn't easy."

  "Please do," he answered urbanely, and returned to his papers.

  I sat as relaxed as possible, drawing my throat arid letting strength flow back. The Army geas could be broken by their technicians only if I , gave my free consent, and I didn't want to. I considered the window behind the emir. It was a two-story drop to the street. Most likely, I'd just get myself killed. But that was preferable to any other offer I'd had.

  I went over the spells I'd haywired. A real technician has to know at least one arcane language?Latin; Greek, classical Arabic, Sanskrit, Old Norse, or the like?for the standard reasons of sympathetic science. Paranatural phenomena are not strongly influenced by ordinary speech. But except for the usual tag-ends of incantations, the minimum to operate the gadgets of daily life, I was no scholar.

  However, I knew one slightly esoteric dialect quite well. I didn't know if it would work, but I could try.

  My muscles tautened as I moved. It was a shudder some effort to be casual. I knocked the end of ash on my cigar. As I lifted the thing again, it collected some ash from the emir's.

  I got the rhyme straight in my mind, put the cigarette to my lips, and subvocalized the spell.

  "Ashes-way of the urningbay,

  upward-way ownay eturningray,

  as-way the arksspay do yflay,

  ikestray imhay in the aye-way!"

  I closed my right eye and brought the glowing cigar end almost against the lid.

  The emir's El Fumo leaped up and ground itself into his right eye.

  He screamed and fell backward. I soared to my feet. I'd marked the werefennec, and one stride brought me over to him. I broke his vile little neck with a backhanded cuff and yanked off the flash that hung from it.

  The guards howled and plunged for me. I went over the table and down on top of the emir, snatching his decanter en route. He clawed at me, wild with pain, I saw the ghastliness in his eye socket, and meanwhile I was hanging on to the vessel and shouting:

  "Ingthay of ystalcray

  ebay a istralmay!

  As-way 1-way owthray,

  yflay ouyay osay!"

  As I finished, I broke free and hurled the decanter at the guards. It was lousy poetics, and might not have worked if the fat man hadn't already sensitized his stuff: As if was, the ball, the ashtray, the bowl, the glasses, the humidor, and the windowpanes all took off after the decanter. The air was full of flying glass.

  I didn't stay to watch the results, but went out that window like an exorcised devil. I landed in a ball on the sidewalk, bounced up, and began running.

  VI

  SOLDIERS WERE AROUND. Bullets sleeted after me. I set a record reaching the nearest alley. My witch-sigh showed me a broken window, and I wriggled through that. Crouching beneath the sill, I heard the pursuit go by.

  This was the back room of a looted grocery store plenty dark for my purposes. I hung the flash around my neck, turned it on myself, and made the change over. They'd return in a minute, and I didn't want to be vulnerable to lead.

  Wolf, I snuffled around after another exit. A rear door stood half open. I slipped through into a tour yard full of ancient packing cases. They made a good hideout. I lay there, striving to control my lupine nature, which wanted to pant, while they swarmed through the area.

  When they were gone again, I tried to considered my situation. The temptation was to hightail out of this poor, damned place. I could probably make it ad technically fulfilled my share of the mission". )~ the job wasn't really complete, and Virginia was alone with the afreet?if she still lived?and?

  When I tried to recall her, the image came as a she-wolf and a furry aroma. I shook my head angrily. Weariness and desperation were submerging my reason and letting the animal instincts take over. I'd better do whatever had to be done fast.

  I cast about. The town smells were confusing, but I caught the faintest sulfurous whiff and trotted cautiously in that direction. I kept to the shadows, and was seen twice but not challenged. They must have supposed I was one of theirs. The brimstone reek grew stronger.

  They kept the afreet in the courthouse, a good solid building. I went through the small park in front of it, snuffed the wind carefully, and dashed over street and steps. Four enemy soldiers sprawled on top, throats cut open, and the broomstick was parked by the door. It had a twelve-inch switchblade in the handle, and Virginia had used it like a flying lance.

  The man side of me, which had been entertaining stray romantic thoughts, backed up in a cold sweat; but the wolf grinned. I poked at the door. She'd 'chanted the lock open and left it that way. I stuck my nose in, and almost had it clawed off before Svartalf recognized me. He jerked his tail curtly, and I passed by and across the lobby. The stinging smell was coming from upstairs. I followed it through a thick darkness.

  Light glowed in a second-floor office. I thrust the door ajar and peered in. Virginia was there. She had drawn the curtains and lit the elmos to see by. She was still busy with her precautions, started a little on spying me but went on with the chant. I parked my shaggy behind near the door and watched.

  She'd chalked the usual figure, same as the Pentagon in Washington, and a Star of David inside that. The Solly bottle was at the center. It didn't look impressive, an old flask of hard-baked clay with its hollow handle bent over and returning inside-merely a Klein bottle, with Solomon's seal in red wax at the mouth. She'd loosened her hair, and it floated in a ruddy cloud about the pale beautiful face.

  The wolf of me wondered why we didn't just make off with this crock of It. The man reminded him that undoubtedly the emir had taken precautions and would have sympathetic means to uncork it from afar. We had to put the demon out of action . . . somehow . . . but nobody on our side knew a great deal about his race.

  Virginia finished her spell, drew the bung, and sprang outside the pentacle as smoke boiled from the flask. She almost didn't make it, the afreet came out in such a hurry. I stuck my tail between my legs and snarled. She was scared, too, trying hard not to show that but I caught the adrenalin odor.

  The afreet must bend almost double under the ceiling. He was a monstrous gray thing, nude, more or less anthropoid but with wings and horns and long ears, a mouthful of fangs and eyes like hot embers. His assets were strength, speed, and physical near-invulnerability. Turned loose, he could break any attack of Vanbrugh's, and inflict frightful casualties on the most well-dug-in defense. Controlling him afterward, before he laid the countryside waste, would be a problem. But why should the Saracens care? They'd have exacted a geas from him, that he remain their ally, as the price of his freedom.

  He roared something in Arabic. Smoke swirled from his mouth. Virginia looked tiny under those half unfurled bat membranes. Her voice was less cool than she would have preferred: "Speak English, Marid. Or are you too ignorant?"

  The demon huffed indignantly. "O spawn of a thoussand baboons!" My eardrums flinched from the volume. "O thou white and gutless infidel thing, which I could break with my least finger, come in to me if thou darest!"

  I was frightened, less by the chance of his breaking loose than by the racket he was making. It could be heard for a quarter mile.

  "Be still, accursed of God!" Virginia answered. That shook him a smidgen. Like most of the hell-breed, he was allergic to holy names, though only seriously so under conditions that we couldn't reproduce here. She stood hands on hips, head tilted, to meet the gaze that smoldered down upon
her. "Suleiman bin Daoud, on whom be peace, didn't jug you for nothing, I see. Back to your prison and never come forth again, lest the anger of Heaven smite you!"

  The afreet fleered. "Know that Suleiman the Wise is dead these three thousand years," he retorted. "Long and long have I brooded in my narrow cell, I who once raged free through earth and sky and will now at last be released to work my vengeance on the puny sons of Adam." He shoved at the invisible barrier, but one of that type has a rated strength of several million p.s.i. It would hold firm-till some adept dissolved it. O thou shameless unveiled harlot with hair of hell, know that I am Rashid the Mighty, the glorious in power, the smiter of rocs! Come in here and fight like a man!"

  I moved close to the girl, my hackles raised. The hand that touched my head was cold. "Paranoid type," she whispered. "A lot of these harmful Low Wonders are psycho. Stupid, though. Trickery's our single chance. I don't have any spells to compel him directly. But-Aloud, to him, she said: "Shut up, Rashid, and listen to me. I also am of your race, and to be respected as such."

  "Thou?" He hooted with fake laughter. "Thou of the Marid race? Why, thou fish-faced antling, if thou'dst come in here I'd show thee thou'rt not even fit to-" The rest was graphic but not for any gentlewere to repeat.

  "No, hear me,' said the girl. "Look and hearken well." She made signs and uttered a formula. I recognized the self-geas against telling a falsehood in the particular conversation. Our courts still haven't adopted it?Fifth Amendment?but I'd seen it used in trials abroad.

  The demon recognized it, too. I imagine the Saracen adept who pumped a knowledge of English into him, to make him effective in this war, had added other bits of information about the modern world. He grew more quiet and attentive.