Operation Chaos

by Poul Anderson

  "Don't hand me that guff. I saw!"

  He collapsed on the ground. "It was only for fu he whimpered. "I didn't know-"

  Well, I thought grimly, that was doubtless true.

  There's the trouble with the Art: with every blindingly powerful force man uses, fire or dynamite or atomic energy or goetics. Any meathead can learn how to begin something; these days, they start them in the third grade with spelling bees. But it's not always as easy to halt the something.

  Student pranks were a standing problem at Trismegistus, as at all colleges. They were usually harmless, like sneaking into the dorms after curfew with Tarnkappen, or chanting female lingerie out through the windows. Sometimes they could be rather amusing, like the time the statue of a revered and dignified former president was animated and marched down town singing bawdy songs. Often they fell quite flat, as when the boys turned Dean Hornsby into stone and it wasn't noticed for three days.

  This one had gotten out of hand. The salamander could ignite this entire city.

  I turned to the fireman, who was jittering about trying to flag down a police broom. In the dim shifty light, none of the riders saw him. "What'd you figure to do?" I asked.

  "I gotta report back for duty," he said harshly. "And we'll need a water elemental, I guess."

  "I have experience with the Hydros," offered tinny. "I'll come along."

  "Me too," I said at once.

  Abercrombie glowered. "What can you do?"

  "I'm were," I snapped. "In wolf shape I can't easily be harmed by fire. That might turn out useful."

  "Wonderful, Steve!" Ginny smiled at me, the old smile which had so often gone between us. Impulsively, I grabbed her to me and kissed her.

  She didn't waste energy on a slap. I collected an uppercut that tumbled me on my stern. "Not allowed," she clipped. That double-damned geas! I could see misery caged within her eyes, but her mind was compelled to obey Malzius' rules.

  "That's . . . ah . . . no place for a woman . . . a lady as charming as you," murmured Abercrombie. "Let me take you home, my dear."

  "I've work to do," she said impatiently. "What the devil is wrong with those cops? We've got to get a lift out of here."

  "Then I shall come too," said Abercrombie. "I am not unacquainted with blessings and curses, though?ha!?I fear that ever-filled purses are a trifle beyond my scope. In any event, the Treasury Department frowns on them.'

  Even in that moment, with riot thundering and hell let loose on earth, I was pleased to note that Ginny paid no attention to his famous wit. She scowled abstractedly and looked around. The Campus Queen was huddled near the benches, wearing somebody's overcoat. Ginny turned and waved her wand. The Campus Queen shucked the coat and ran toward us. Thirty seconds later, three police broomsticks had landed. The fireman commandeered them and our party was whirled-over the stadium and into the street.

  During that short hop, I saw three houses ablaze. The salamander was getting around!

  X

  WE GATHERED AT the district police station, a haggard and sooty crew with desperate eyes. The fire chief and police chief were there, and a junior officer going crazy at the switchboard. Ginny, who had collected her own broom at her lodgings, arrived with Svartalf on one shoulder and the Handbook of Alchemy and Metaphysics under her arm. Abercrombie was browbeating the terrified MacIlwraith till I told him to lay off.

  "My duty-" he began. "I'm a proctor, you know."

  I suppose it's necessary to have witch-smellers on campus, to make sure the fellows don't 'chant up liquor in the frat houses or smuggle in nymphs. And every year somebody tries to get by an exam with a familiar under his coat whispering the answers from a cribsheet. Nevertheless, I don't like professional nosy parkers.

  "You can deal with him later," I said, and gave the boy a push out the door. "The salamander can fight back."

  President Malzius huffed into the room. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded. His pince-nez bobbed above full jowls. "I'll have you know, sir, I was preparing a most important address. The Lions Totem is holding a luncheon tomorrow, and-"

  "Might not be any lunch," grunted the cop who had fetched him. "We got a salamander loose."

  "Sala?No! It's against the rules! It is positively forbidden to?"

  The man at the switchboard looked toward us. It just kindled the Methodist church at Fourteenth and Elm," he said. "And my God, all our equipment is already in service."

  "Iimpossible!" cried Malzius. "A demon can't go near a church."

  "How stupid does a man have to be to get your job?" Ginny fairly spat. "This isn't a demon. It's an elemental.' When her temper was again sheathed in ice, she continued slowly: "We haven't much hope of using a Hydro to put out the salamander, but we can raise one to help fight the fires. It'll always be three jumps behind, but at least the whole city won't be ruined.

  "Unless the salamander gets too strong, cut Abercrombie. His face was colorless and he spoke through stiff lips. "Then it can evaporate the Hydro."

  "Summon two water beings," stammered Malzius "Summon a hundred. I'll waive the requirement formal application for permission to-"

  "That possibility is limited, sir," Abercrombie told him. "The restraining force required is an exponential function of the total embodied mass. There probably aren't sufficient adepts in this town to control more than three at a time. If we raised four . . . we'd floo4 the city, and the salamander need merely skip elsewhere

  "Alan?- Ginny laid her handbook on the desk and riffled its pages. Abercrombie leaned over her shoulder, remembering to rest one hand carelessly on hip. I choked back my prize cusswords. "Alan, for starter, can you summon one Hydro and put it to work at plain fire fighting?"

  "Of course, gorgeous one," he smiled. "That is a, ha, elemental problem."

  She gave him a worried glance. "They can be as tricky as Fire or Air," she warned. "It's not enough just to know the theory."

  "I have some small experience," he preened. "During the war?After this is over, come around to my place for a drink and I'll tell you about it." His lips brushed her cheek.

  "Mr. Matuchek!" yelled Malzius. "Will you please stop growing fangs?"

  I shook myself and suppressed the rage which had been almost as potent as moonlight.

  "Look here," said the police chief. "I gotta know what's going on. You longhairs started this trouble and I don't want you making it worse."

  Seeing that Ginny and Pretty Boy were, after all, legitimately busy, I sighed and whistled for a cigaret. "Let me explain," I offered. "I learned a few things about the subject, during the war. An elemental is not the same as a demon. Any kind of demon is a separate being, as individual as you and I. An elemental is part of the basic force involved: in this case, fire, or more accurately energy. It's raised out of the basic energy matrix, given temporary individuality, and restored to the matrix when the adept is through with it."

  "Huh?"

  "Like a flame. A flame only exists potentially till someone lights a fire, and goes back to potential existence when you put the fire out. And the second fire you light, even on the same log, is not identical with the first. So you can understand why an elemental isn't exactly anxious to be dismissed. When one breaks loose, as this one did, it does its damnedest to stay in this world and to increase its power."

  "But how come can it burn a church?"

  "Because it's soulless, a mere physical force. Any true individual, human or otherwise, is under certain constraints of a . . . a moral nature. A demon is allergic to holy symbols. A man who does wrong has to live with his conscience in this world and face judgment in the next. But what does a fire care? And that's what the salamander is?a glorified fire. It's only bound by the physical laws of nature and paranature.

  "So how do you, uh, put one out?"

  "A Hydro of corresponding mass could do it, bye mutual annihilation. Earth could bury it or Air withdraw from its neighborhood. Trouble is, Fire is the swiftest of the lot; it can flick out of an area before any other sort of e
lemental can injure it. So we're left with the dismissal spell. But that has to be said in the salamander's presence, and takes about two minutes."

  "Yeah . . . and when the thing hears you start the words, it'll burn you down or scram. Very nice. What're we gonna do?"

  "I don't know, chief," I said, "except it's like kissing a sheep dog." I blew hard and immediately smacked my lips. "You got to be quick. Every fire the critter starts feeds it more energy and makes it that much stronger. There's a limit somewhere?the square-cube law?but by then, it could be too powerful for humans to affect it."

  "And what'd happen next?"

  "Ragnarok . . . . No, I suppose not quite. Men wool naturally raise correspondingly strong counter-elementals, like Hydros. But think of the control difficulty and the incidental damage. Compared to that, i~ Caliphists were pikers."

  Ginny turned from the desk. Abercrombie was chalking a pentagram on the floor while a sputtering Malzius had been deputized to sterilize a pocket knife with match. (The idea was to draw a little blood from somebody. It can substitute for the usual powders, since it contains the same proteins.) The girl laid a hand on mine. "Steve, we'd take too long getting hold of every local adept and organizing them," she said. "I'm afraid the same's true of the state police or the National Guard. God knows what the salamander will do while this office is calling for help. We, though, you and I, we could at least keep track of it, with less danger to ourselves than most. Are you game?"

  "Sure," I agreed. "It can't hurt me in my wolf shape . . . not permanently . . . not if I'm careful. But you're staying put."

  "Ever hear about the oath of my order? Come on." As we went out the door, I gave Abercrombie a smug look. He had nicked his wrist and sprinkled the Signs; now he was well into the invocation. I felt cold dampness swirl through the room.

  Outside, the night remained autumnally sharp, the moon high. Roofs made a saw-toothed silhouette against the leaping red glare at a dozen points around us, and sirens howled in the streets. Overhead, across the small indifferent stars, I saw what looked like a whirl of dry leaves, refugees fleeing on their sticks.

  Svartalf jumped to the front end of Ginny's Cadillac, and I took the saddle behind hers. We whispered skyward.

  Below us, blue fire spat and the station lights went out. Water poured into the street, a solid roar of it with President Malzius bobbing like a cork in the torrent.

  "Unholy Sathanas!" I choked. "What's happened now?"

  Svartalf ducked the stick low. "That idiot," groaned Ginny. "He let the Hydro slop clear over the floor ... short circuits-" She made a few rapid passes with her wand. The stream quieted, drew into itself, became a ten-foot-high blob glimmering in the moonlight. Abercrombie scuttled out and started it squelching toward the nearest fire.

  I laughed. "Go visit his place and listen to him tell about his vast experience," I said.

  "Don't kick a man when he's down," Ginny snapped. "You've pulled your share of boners, Steve Matuchek."

  Svartalf whisked the broom aloft again and we went above the chimney pots. Oof! I thought. Could she, really be falling for that troll? A regular profile, a smooth tongue, and proximity ... I bit back an inward sickness and squinted ahead, trying to find the salamander.

  "There!" Ginny yelled over the whistle of cloven air. Svartalf bottled his tail and hissed.

  The University district is shabby-genteel: old pseudo-. Gothic caves of wood which have slipped from mansions to rooming houses, fly-specked with minor business establishments. It had begun burning merrily, a score of red stars flickering in the darkness between street lamps. Rushing near, we saw one on the stars explode in a white puff of steam. The Hydro must have clapped a sucker onto a fireplug and blanketed the place. I had a brief heretical thought that the salamander was doing a public service by eliminating those architectural teratologies. But lives and property were involved-

  Tall and terrible, the elemental wavered beside house on which it was feeding. It had doubled in s' and its core was too bright to look at. Flames whirl about the narrow head.

  Svartalf braked and we hovered a few yards off, twenty feet in the air and level with the hungry mouth. Ginny was etched wild against night by that intolerable radiance. She braced herself in the stirrups began the spell, her voice almost lost in the roar as the roof caved in. "O Indra, Abaddon, Lucifer, Moloch, Hephaestos, Loki-"

  It heard. The seething eyes swung toward us and it leaped.

  Svartalf squalled when his whiskers shriveled?perhaps only hurt vanity?and put the stick through an Immelmann turn and whipped away. The salamander bawled with the voice of a hundred blazing forests. Suddenly the heat scorching my back was gone, and the thing had materialized in front of us.

  "That way!" I hollered, pointing. "In there!"

  I covered Ginny's face and buried my own against her back as we went through the plate-glass front of Stub's Beer Garden. The flame-tongue licked after us, recoiled, and the salamander ramped beyond the door.

  We tumbled off the broom and looked around. The tavern was empty, full of a fire-spattered darkness; everyone had fled. I saw a nearly full glass of beer on the counter and tossed it off.

  "You might have offered me a drink," said Ginny. "Alan would have." Before I could recover enough to decide whether she was taunting or testing me, she went on in a rapid whisper: "It isn't trying to escape. It's gained power-confidence-it means to kill us!"

  Even then, I wanted to tell her that red elflocks and a soot-smudge across an aristocratic nose were particularly enchanting. But the occasion didn't seem appropriate. "Can't get in here," I panted. "Can't do much more than ignite the building by thermal radiation, and that'll take a while. We're safe for the moment."

  "Why . . . oh, yes, of course. Stub's is cold-ironed. All these college beer parlors are, I'm told."

  "Yeah." I peered out the broken window. The salamander peered back, and spots danced before my eyes. "So the clientele won't go jazzing up the brew above 3.2?Quick, say your spell."

  Ginny shook her head. "It'll just flicker away out of earshot. Maybe we can talk to it, find out-"

  She trod forth to the window. The thing crouched in the street extended its neck and hissed at her. I stood behind my girl, feeling boxed and useless. Svartalf, lapping spilled beer off the counter, looked toward us and sneered.

  "Ohe, Child of Light!" she cried.

  A ripple went down the salamander's back. Its tail switched restlessly, and a tree across the way kindled. I can't describe the voice that answered: crackling, bellowing, sibilant, Fire given a brain and a throat. ; "Daughter of Eve, what have you to say to the likes of Me?"

  "I command you by the Most High, return to your a proper bonds and cease from troubling the world.

  "Ho?oh, ho, ho, ho!" The thing sat back on its haunches-asphalt bubbled-and shuddered its laughter into the sky. "You command me, combustible one?"

  "I have at my beck powers so mighty they could wither your puny spark into the nothingness whence it came. Cease and obey, lest worse befall you than dismissal."

  I think the salamander was, for a moment, honestly, surprised. "Greater than Me?" Then it howled so the tavern shook. "You dare say there are mightier forces than Fire? Than Me, who am going to consume the earth?"

  "Mightier and more beautiful, O Ashmaker. Think. You cannot even enter this house. Water will extinguish you. Earth will smother you, Air alone can keep you alive. Best you surrender now-"

  I remembered the night of the afreet. Ginny must be pulling the same trick-feeling out the psychology of the thing that raged and flared beyond the door?but what could she hope to gain?

  "More beautiful!" The salamander's tail beat fury, rows in the street. It threw out bursting fireballs and a rain of sparks, red, blue, yellow, a one-being Fourth of July. I thought crazily of a child kicking the floor in a tantrum.

  "More beautiful! Stronger) You dare say- Haaaaa-" Teeth of incandescence gleamed in a mouth that was jumping fire. "We shall see how beautiful you are when you lie a c
hoked corpse!" Its head darted to the broken glass front. It could not pass the barrier of cold iron, but it began to suck air, in and out. A furnace wave of heat sent me gasping back.

  "My God . . . it's going to use up our oxygen .... Stay here! I sprang for the door. Ginny shrieked, but I scarcely heard her "No!" as I went through.

  Moonlight flooded me, cool and tingling between the unrestful guttering fires. I crouched to the hot sidewalk and felt a shudder when my body changed.

  Wolf I was, but a wolf that my enemy could not kill ... I hoped. My abbreviated tail thrust against the seat of my pants, and I remembered that some injuries are beyond the healing powers of even the therio shape.

  Pants! Hell and damnation! In the excitement, I'd forgotten. Have you ever tried being a wolf while wrapped in shirt, trousers, underwear, and topcoat designed for a man?

  I went flat on my moist black nose. My suspenders slid down and wrapped themselves about my hind legs. My tie tripped me in front and my coat gleefully wrapped everything into a bundle.

  Frantic, I rolled over and tore at the cloth with my fangs. The salamander grew aware of me. Its tail slammed across my back. For a moment of searing pain, hair and skin scorched with the fabric. But that burning shredded it and I was free. The labile molecules of my body rebuilt themselves in seconds. The salamander had turned its attention away, deeming me out of action. Hardly realizing what I did I snatched with my jaws a shoe which had dropped from my now smaller foot, laid it on the salamander's nearest white-hot toe, and bore down with both forepaws.

  It bellowed and swung around to attack me afresh. That mouth gaped wide enough to bite me in half. I skittered aside. The monster paused, gauged the distance, flicked into nothingness, and materialized right on top of me.

  This time I had no escape. Weighted down, I inhaled the fire that cooked my flesh. Agony sent my being whirling out of me like another flame.

  XI

  ALONENESS WAS NOT broken by the face which looked upon me, a face for which I have no words save that it was huge and its eyes were those of a corpse. But then, I did not see it, nor feel the cold which was deeper and stabbed me more cruelly than any I had known since last the thought-voice came through notspace and not-time to shake the senses I did riot have. And the end of every hope and every faith was upon me.