Operation Chaos

by Poul Anderson

  "I'm not going henhouse on you. Remember, all this has just been sprung on me without warning. I'm bound to raise the arguments that occur to me. I don't believe that encouraging Valeria's parents to commit suicide will do her any good."

  "What do you mean?' Barney asked.

  "Do I misunderstand? Isn't your intention to send Steven and Virginia?my patients?into the hell universe?"

  That brought me up cold. I'd been ready and raging for action; but this was as if a leap had fetched me to the rim of Ginnungagap. The heart slammed in me. I stared at Ginny. She nodded.

  The whole group registered various degrees of consternation. I scarcely noticed the babble that lifted or Barney's quelling of it. Finally we all sat in a tautstrung silence.

  "I must apologize to this committee," Barney said. His tone was deep and measured as a vesper bell's. "The problem that I set most of you was to collect and collate available information on the Low Continuum with a view to rescue operations. You did magnificently. When you were informed of Steve's findings, you used them to make a conceptual breakthrough that may give us the method we want. But you were too busy to think beyond the assignment, or to imagine that it was more than a long-range, rather hypothetical study: something that might eventually give us capabilities against further troubles of this nature. Likewise, those of you I discussed the political or religious aspects with didn't know how close we might be facing them in reality.

  "I saw no alternative to handling it that way. But Mrs. Matuchek reached me meanwhile, surreptitiously." I gave her the whole picture, we discussed it at length and evolved a plan of campaign." He bowed slightly toward Ashman. "Congratulations on your astuteness; Doctor."

  She knew, I thought in the shards of thinking, and yet no one could have told it on her, not even me?not till this instant, and then solely because she chose.

  A part of me wondered if other husbands experience corresponding surprises.

  She raised her hand. "The case is this," she said with the same military crispness as when first I'd met her. "A small, skilled group has a chance of success. large, unskilled group has none. It'd doubtless sufl more than the Army or the Faustus teams did, sing they retreated quickly."

  "Death, insanity, or imprisonment in hell with everything that that implies-" Ashman whispered. "You assume Steven will go."

  "I know better than to try stopping him," she said.

  That gave me a measure of self-control again. I not unconscious of admiring glances. But mainly listened to her:

  "He and I and Svartalf are as good a squad as you' find. If anybody has a hope of pulling the stunt off, we do. The rest of you can help with preparations a with recovering us. If we don't make it back, you'll have the repositories of what has already been learned. Because this is a public matter. It goes far beyond our girl . . . agreed. That's your main reason for assisiting us. To try and make sure your children and grandchildren will inherit a world worth having;"

  She reached in her purse. "Damn," she said, "I'm out of cigarets."

  She clung a lot of offers, but accepted mine. Our hands clung for a second. Ashman sat staring at his intertwined fingers. Abruptly he straightened and said, with a kind of smile:

  "All right, I apologize. You must admit my reaction was natural. But you're an able group. If you think you've found a way to enter hell and return unharmed, you could be right and you have my support. May I ask what your scheme is?"

  Barney relaxed a trifle. "You may," he said. "Especially since we've got to explain it to some of the others."

  He stubbed out his cigar and began on a fresh one. "Let me put the proposition in nickel words first," he said, "then the experts can correct and amplify according to their specialties. Our universe has a straightforward space-time geometry, except in odd places like the cores of white dwarf stars. Demons can move around in it without trouble?in fact, they can play tricks with distance and chronology that gave them the reputation of being supernatural in olden days?because their home universe is wildly complicated and variable. Modern researchers have discovered how to get there, but not how to travel around or remain whole of body and mind.

  "Well, Steve's information that we could reach any point in hell time, if we knew the method opened a door or broke a logjam or something. Suddenly there was a definite basic fact to go on, a relationship between the Low Continuum and ours that could be mathematically described. Dr. Falkenberg set up the equations and started solving them for different conditions. Dr. Griswold helped by suggesting ways in which the results would affect the laws of physics; Bill Hardy did likewise for chemistry and atomistics; et cetera. Oh, they've barely begun, and their conclusions haven't been subjected to experimental test. But at least they've enabled Dr. Nobu, as a metaphysicist, and me, as a practical engineer, to design some spells. We completed them this morning. They should protect the expedition, give it some guardianship when it arrives, and haul it back fast. That's more than anybody previous had going for them."

  "Insufficient." Charles was the new objector. "You can't have a full description of the hell universe?why we don't have that even for this cosmos?and you absolutely can't predict what crazy ways the metric 'there varies from point to point."

  "True," Barney said.

  "So protection which is adequate at one place will be useless elsewhere."

  "Not if the space-time configuration can be described mathematically as one travels. Then the spells can be adjusted accordingly."

  "What? But that's an impossible job. No mortal man?"

  "Right," Ginny said.

  We gaped at her.

  "A passing thing Steve heard, down in the crypts, was the clue," Ginny said. "Same as your remark, actually, Admiral. No mortal man could do it. But the greatest geometers are dead."

  A gasp went around the table.

  XXIX

  WITH APPROPRIATE SEEMINGS laid on, and Svartalf indignantly back in the sample case, our community left the plant on a company carpet. It was now close to four. If my FBI shadow didn't see me start home around five or six o'clock, he'd get suspicious. But there wasn't a lot I could do about that.

  We landed first at St. Olaf's while Pastor Karlslund went in to fetch some articles. Janice Wenzel, seated behind us, leaned forward and murmured: "I guess I'm ignorant, but isn't this appealing to the saints a Catholic rather than a Lutheran thing?"

  The question hadn't been raised at the conference. Karlslund was satisfied with making clear the distinction between a prayer?a petition to the Highest, with any spells we cast intended merely to ease a way for whoever might freely respond-and necromancy, an attempt to force our will on departed spirits. (While the latter is illegal, that's mainly a concession to public taste. There's no reliable record of its ever having succeeded; it's just another superstition.)

  "I doubt if the sect makes any odds," Ginny said. "What is the soul? Nobody knows. The observations that prove it exists are valid, but scattered and not repeatable under controlled conditions. As tends to be the case for many paranatural phenomena."

  "Which, however," Dr. Nobu put in, "is the reason in turn why practical progress in goetics is so rapid :5 once a correct insight is available. Unlike the force-fields of physics?gravitation, electromagnetism, and , so on?the force-fields of paraphysics?such as similarity and ergody?are not limited by the speed of light. Hence they can, in principle, shift energy from any part of the plenum to any other. That is why a vanishingly small input can give an indefinitely large output. Because of this, qualitative understanding is more important to control than quantitative. And so, a mere three days after learning about the time variability of hell, we feel some confidence that our new spells will work . . . But as for the soul, I incline towards the belief that its character is supernatural rather than paranatural."

  "Not me," Ginny said. "I'd call it an energy structure within those parafields. It's formed by the body but outlives that matrix. Once free, it can easily move between universes. If it hangs around here for some reason, disembod
ied, isn't that a ghost? If it enters a newly fertilized ovum, isn't that reincarnation? If the Highest allows it to come nearer His presence, isn't that salvation? If the Lowest has more attraction for it, isn't that damnation?"

  "Dear me," Janice said. Ginny uttered a brittle laugh.

  Barney turned around in the pilot's seat. "About your question that started this seminar, Janice," he said, "it's true we Lutherans don't make a habit o? calling on the saints. But neither do we deny they sometimes intervene. Maybe a Catholic priest or a Neo-Chassidic rabbi would know better how to pray for help. But I couldn't get any on short notice that I dared co-opt, while I've known Jim Karlslund for years . . . Speak of the, er, pastor?" Everybody chuckled in a strained way as our man boarded with an armful of ecclesiastical gear.

  We took off again and proceeded to Trismegistus University. Sunlight slanted gold across remembered lawns, groves, buildings. Few persons were about in this pause between spring and summer sessions; a hush lay over the campus, distantly backgrounded by the city's whirr. It seemed epochs ago that Ginny and I had been students here, a different cycle of creation. I glanced at her, but her countenance was unreadable.

  Wings rustled near, a raven that paced us. An omen? Of what? It banked as we landed and flapped out of sight.

  We entered the Physical Sciences building. Corridors and stairwells reached gloomy, full of echoes. Desertion was one reason we'd chosen it, another being Griswold's keys to each lab and stockroom. Karlslund would have preferred the chapel, but we were too likely to be noticed there. Besides, Ginny and Barney had decided in their plan-laying that the religious part of our undertaking was secondary.

  We needed someone whose appeal would be unselfish and devout, or no saint was apt to respond. However, they seldom do anyway, compared to the number of prayers that must arise daily. The Highest expects us to solve our own problems. What we relied on-,what gave us a degree of confidence we would get some kind of reaction-vas the progress we'd made, the direct access we believed we had to the Adversary's realm and our stiff resolve to use it. The implications were too enormous for Heaven to ignore . . . we hoped.

  I thought, in the floating lightheadedness to which stress had brought me: Perhaps we'll be forbidden to try.

  We picked the Berkeley Philosophical Laboratory for our calling. It was a new, large, splendidly outfitted wing tacked onto the shabby old structure that housed Griswold's department before the salamander episode. Here senior and graduate physical-science students learned how to apply IM forces to natural research. So it had every kind of apparatus we could imagine needing. The main chamber was wide and high, uncluttered by more than a few shelves and workbenches along the walls. Light fell cool through

  Cray-green glass in the Gothic windows. Zodiacal symbols on the deep-blue ceiling encircled a golden Bohr atom. You'd never find a place further in spirit from that cathedral at Siloam. My kind of people had raised this. I felt some measure of its sanity enter me to strengthen.

  Griswold locked the door. Ginny took off the Seemings and let Svartalf out. He padded into a corner, tail going like a metronome. Karlslund laid an altar cloth on a bench, arranged on it cross, bell, chalice, sacred bread, and wine. The rest of us worked under Barney. We established a shieldfield and an antispy hex around the area in the usual way. Next we prepared to open the gates between universes.

  So the popular phrase has it, altogether inaccurately. In truth there are no gates, there are means of transmitting influences from one continuum to another, and fundamentally it does not depend on apparatus but on knowing how. The physical things we set out Bible and Poimanderes opened to the appropriate passages, menorah with seven tall candles lit by flint and steel, vial of pure air, chest of consecrated earth, horn of Jordan water, Pythagorean harp-were symbolic more than they were sympathetic.

  I want to emphasize that, because it isn't as well known as it should be: one reason why Gnosticism caught on. The Petrine tenet goes along with the higher non-Christian faiths and the findings of modern science. You can't compel Heaven. It's too great. You can exert an influence, yes, but it won't have effect unless the Highest allows, any more than a baby's tug on your trouser cuff can turn you from your path by itself.

  Our prayer was an earnest of our appeal, which God had already read in our hearts. In a way, its purpose was to convince us that we really meant what we said we wanted. Likewise, our spells would help any spirit that chose to come here. But he or she didn't really need assistance. What would matter was that we were doing our best.

  Hell is another case entirely. In physical terms, it's on a lower energy level than our universe. In spiritual terms, the Adversary and his minions aren't interested in assisting us to anything except our destruction. We could definitely force our way in and lay compulsions on the demons by sheer weight of wizardry?if we swung enough power!?and we would definitely have to if Val was to be rescued.

  The formulas for trying to summon Heavenly aid aren't common knowledge, but they aren't hidden either. You can find them in the right reference works. Our hell spells were something else. I will never describe them. Since you may well guess they involve an inversion of the prayer ritual, I'll state that we employed these articles: a certain one of the Apocrypha, a Liber Veneficarum, a torch, a globe of wind from a hurricane, some mummy dust, thirteen drops of blood, and a sword. I don't swear to the truthfulness of my list.

  We didn't expect we'd require that stuff right away, but it was another demonstration of intent. Besides, Ginny needed a chance to study it and use her trained intuition to optimize the layout.

  Karlslund's bell called us. He was ready. We assembled before the improvised altar. "I must first conesecrate this and hold as full a service as possible," he announced. I looked at my watch?damn near five?but dared not object. His feeling of respect for the process was vital.

  He handed out prayer books and we commenced. The effect on me was curious. As said, I don't believe any set of dogmas is preferable to any other or an upright agnosticism. On the rare occasions I've been in church, I've found that the high Episcopalians put on the best show, and that's it. Now, at first, I wanted to whisper to Ginny, "Hey, this is a secret service." But soon the wish for a joke slipped from me together with the racked emotions that generated it. Out of that simple rite grew peace and a wordless wonder. That's what religion is about, I suppose, a turning toward God. Not that I became a convert; but on this one occasion it felt as if some aspect of Him might be turning toward us.

  "Let us pray."

  "Our Father, Who art in Heaven-"

  There was a knock on the door.

  I didn't notice at first. But it came again, and again, and a voice trickled through the heavy panels: "Dr. Griswold! Are you in there? Phone call for you. A Mr. Knife from the FBI. Says it's urgent."

  That rocked me. My mood went smash. Ginny's nostrils dilated and she clutched her book as if it were a weapon. Karlslund's tones faltered.

  Griswold pattered to the door and said to the janitor or whoever our Porlockian was: "Tell him I've a delicate experiment under way. It can't be interrupted. Get his number, and I'll call back in an hour or so."

  Good for you! half of me wanted to shout. The rest was tangled in cold coils of wondering about God's mercy. Thy will be done . . . but what is Thy will? Can't be everything that happens, or men would be mere puppets in a cruel charade.

  God won't frustrate us. He won't let a little girl stay in hell.

  He's done it on occasion. Read police records.

  But death finally released those victims, and they were given comfort. Or so the churches claim. How do the churches know? Maybe nothing exists but a blind interplay of forces; or maybe the Lowest and Highest are identical; or-No, that's the despair of hell, which you have met before. Carry on, Matuchek. Don't give up the crypt. "Onward, Christian so-oldiers" in your irregular baritone. If this doesn't work out, we'll try something else.

  And at last we had struggled through the service to the benediction. Then Ka
rlslund said, troubled: "I'm not sure we're going to get anywhere now. The proper reverence is lost."

  Hardy replied unexpectedly, "Your church puts its prime emphasis on faith, Pastor. But to us Catholics, works count too."

  Karlslund yielded. "Well?all right. We can make the attempt. What exact help do you wish?"

  Barney, Ginny, and the rest exchanged blank looks. I realized that in the rush, they'd forgotten to get specific about that. It probably hadn't seemed urgent, since Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell. Our formula could be anything reasonable . . . presumably.

  Barney cleared his throat. "Uh, the idea is," he said, "that a first-rank mathematician would go on learning, improving, gaining knowledge and power we can't guess at, after passing on. We want a man who pioneered in non-Euclidean geometry."

  "Riemann is considered definitive," Falkenberg told us, "but he did build on the work of others, like Hamilton, and had successors of his own. We don't

  230 know how far the incomparable Gauss went, since he published only a fraction of his thought. On the whole, I'd favor Lobachevsky. He was the first to prove a geometry can be self-consistent that denies the axiom of parallels. Around 1830 or 1840 as I recall, though the history of mathematics isn't my long suit. Everything in that branch of it stems from him."

  "That'll do," Barney decided, "considering we don't know if we can get any particular soul for an ally. Any whatsoever, for that matter," he added raggedly. To Falkenberg: "You and the pastor work out the words while we establish the spell."

  That took time also, but kept us busy enough that it wasn't as maddening as the service had been after the distraction. We mad e the motions, spoke the phrases, directed the will, felt the indescribable stress of energies build toward breaking point. This was no everyday hex, it was heap big medicine.

  Shadows thickened out of nowhere until the windows shone down like pale lamps at night. The seven candle flames burned unnaturally tall without casting a glow. The symbols overhead glowed with their own radience, a mythic heaven, and begain slowly turning. St. Elmo's fire crawled blue over our upraised hands and Ginny's wand, crackled from Svartalf's fur where he stood on her shoulders and from her unbound hair. The harp played itself, strings plangent with the music of the spheres. Weaving my way back and forth across the floor I couldn't see for the darkness, hand in hand as one of the seven who trod the slow measures of the bransle grave, I heard a voice cry "Aleph!" and long afterward: "Zain."