Operation Chaos Read online

  "You know," she remarked, "that's one good thing about the technological age. Did you know there used to be widespread anti‑Semitism in this country? Not just among a few Johannine cranks; no, among ordinary respectable citizens."

  "Fact?"

  "Fact. Especially a false belief that Jews were cowards and never found in the front lines. Now, when religion forbids most of them to originate spells, and the Orthodox don't use goetics at all, the proportion of them who serve as dogfaces and Rangers is simply too high to ignore."

  I myself had gotten tired of comic‑strip supermen and pulp‑magazine heroes having such monotonously Yiddish names‑don't Anglo‑Saxons belong to our culture too? but she'd made a good point. And it showed she was a trifle more than a money machine. A bare trifle.

  "What'd you do in civilian life?" I asked, chiefly to drown out the incessant noise of the rain.

  "I told you," she snapped, irritable again. " I was with the Arcane Agency. Advertising, public relations, and so on."

  "Oh, well," I said. "Hollywood is at least as phony, so I shouldn't sneer."

  I couldn't help it, however. Those Madison Avenue characters gave me a pain in the rear end. Using the good Art to puff some self‑important nobody, or to sell a product whose main virtue is its total similarity to other brands of the same. The SPCA has cracked down on training nixies to make fountains spell out words, or cramming young salamanders into glass tubes to light up Broadway, but I can still think of better uses for slick paper than trumpeting Ma Chere perfume. Which is actually a love potion anyway, though you know what postal regulations are.

  "You don't understand," she said. "It's part of our economy‑part of our whole society. Do you think the average backyard warlock is capable of repairing, oh, say a lawn sprinkler? Hell, no! He'd probably let loose the water elementals and flood half a township if it weren't for the inhibitory spells. And we, Arcane, undertook the campaign to convince the Hydros they had to respect our symbols. I told you it's psychosomatic when you're dealing with these really potent beings. For that job, I had to go down in an aqualung!"

  I stared at her with more respect. Ever since mankind found how to degauss the ruinous effects of cold iron, and the goetic age began, the world has needed some pretty bold people. Apparently she was one of them.

  Abrams brought in two plates of rations. He looked wistful, and I would have invited him to join us except that our mission was secret and we had to thresh out the details.

  Captain Graylock `chanted the coffee into martinis?not quite dry enough?and the dog food into steaks‑a turn too well done; but you can't expect the finer sensibilities in a woman, and it was the best chow I'd had in a month. She relaxed a bit over the brandy, and I learned that her repellent crispness was simply armor against the slick types she dealt with, and we found out that our first names were Steven and Virginia. But then dusk had become dark outside, and we must be going.

  III

  YOU MAY THINK‑ it was sheer lunacy, sending two people, one of them a woman, into an enemy division on a task like this. It would seem to call for a Ranger brigade, at least. But present‑day science has transformed war as well as industry, medicine, and ordinary life. Our mission was desperate in any event, and we wouldn't have gained enough by numbers to make reinforcements worthwhile.

  You see, while practically anyone can learn a few simple cantrips, to operate a presensitized broomstick or vacuum cleaner or turret lathe or whatever, only a small minority of the human race can qualify as adepts. Besides years of study and practice, that takes inborn talent. It's kind of like therianthropy: if you're one of the rare persons with chromosomes for that, you can change into your characteristic animal almost by instinct; otherwise you need a transformation performed on you by powerful outside forces.

  My scientific friends tell me that the Art involves regarding the universe as a set of Cantorian infinities. Within any given class, the part is equal to the whole and so on. One good witch could do all the runing we were likely to need; a larger party would simply be more liable to detection, and would risk valuable personnel. So Vanbrugh had very rightly sent us two alone.

  The trouble with sound military principles is that sometimes you personally get caught in them.

  Virginia and I turned our backs on each other while we changed clothes. She got into an outfit of slacks and combat jacket, I into the elastic knit garment which would fit me as well in wolf‑shape. We put on our helmets, hung our equipment around us, and turned about. Even in the baggy green battle garb she looked good.

  "Well," I said tonelessly, "shall we go?"

  I wasn't afraid, of course. Every recruit is immunized against fear when they put the geas on him. But I didn't like the prospect.

  "The sooner the better, I suppose," she answered. Stepping to the entrance, she whistled.

  Her stick swooped down and landed just outside. It had been stripped of the fancy chrome, but was still a neat job. The foam‑rubber seats had good shock absorbers and well‑designed back rests, unlike Army transport. Her familiar was a gigantic tomcat, black as a furry midnight, with two malevolent yellow eyes. He arched his back and spat indignantly. The weatherproofing spell kept rain off him, but be didn't like this damp air.

  Virginia chucked him under the chin. "Oh, so, Svartalf," she murmured. "Good cat, rare sprite, prince of darkness, if we outlive this night you shall sleep on cloudy cushions and lap cream from a golden bowl." He cocked his ears and raced his motor.

  I climbed into the rear seat, snugged my feet in the stirrups, and leaned back. The woman mounted in front of me and crooned to the stick. It swished upward, the ground fell away and the camp was hidden in gloom. Both of us had been given witch‑sight?infra‑red vision, actually?so we didn't need lights.

  When we got above the clouds, we saw a giant vault of stars overhead and a swirling dim whiteness below.

  I also glimpsed a couple of P‑56 s circling on patrol, fast jobs with six brooms each to lift their weight of armor and machine guns. We left them behind and streaked northward. I rested the BAR on my lap and sat listening to the air whine past. Underneath us, in the rough‑edged murk of the hills, I spied occasional flashes, an artillery duel. So far no one had been able to cast a spell fast enough to turn or implode a shell. I'd heard rumors that General Electric was developing a gadget which could recite the formula in microseconds, but meanwhile the big guns went on talking.

  Trollburg was a mere few miles from our position. I saw it as a vague sprawling mass, blacked out against our cannon and bombers. It would have been nice to have an atomic weapon just then, but as long as the Tibetans keep those antinuclear warfare prayer wheels turning, such thoughts must remain merely science-fictional. I felt my belly muscles tighten. The cat bottled out his tail and swore. Virginia sent the broomstick slanting down.

  We landed in a clump of trees and she turned to me. "Their outposts must be somewhere near," she whispered. "I didn't dare try landing on a rooftop; we could have been seen too easily. We'll have to go in" from here.'

  I nodded. "Okay. Gimme a minute.'

  I turned the flash on myself. How hard to believe that transforming had depended on a bright full moon till only ten years ago! Then Wiener showed that the process was simply one of polarized light of the right wavelengths, triggering the pineal gland, and the Polaroid Corporation made another million dollars or so from its WereWish Lens. It's not easy to keep up with this fearful and wonderful age we live in, but I wouldn't trade.

  The usual rippling, twisting sensations, the brief drunken dizziness and half‑ecstatic pain, went through me. Atoms reshuffled into whole new molecules, nerves grew some endings and lost others bone was briefly fluid and muscles like stretched rubber. Then I stabilized, shook myself, stuck my tail out the flap of the skin‑tight pants, and nuzzled Virginia's hand.

  She stroked my neck, behind the helmet. "Good boy," she whispered. "Go get 'em."

  I turned and faded into the brush.

  A lot of writers h
ave tried to describe how it feels to be were, and every one of them has failed, because human language doesn't have the words. My vision was no longer acute, the stars were blurred above me and the world took on a colorless flatness. But I heard with a clarity that made the night almost a roar, way into the supersonic; and a universe of smells roiled in my nostrils, wet grass and teeming dirt, the hot sweet little odor of a scampering field mouse, the clean tang of oil and guns, a faint harshness of smoke‑Poor stupefied humanity, half‑dead to such earthy glories!

  The psychological part is the hardest to convey. I was a wolf, with a wolf's nerves and glands and instincts, a wolfs sharp but limited intelligence. I had a man's memories and a man's purposes, but they were unreal, dreamlike. I must make an effort of trained will to hold to them and not go hallooing off after the nearest jackrabbit. No wonder weres had a bad name in the old days, before they themselves understood the mental changes involved and got the right habits drilled into them from babyhood.

  I weigh a hundred and eighty pounds, and the conservation of mass holds good like any other law of nature, so I was a pretty big wolf. But it was easy to flow through the bushes and meadows and gullies, another drifting shadow. I was almost inside the town when I caught a near smell of man.

  I flattened, the gray fur bristling along my spine, and waited. The sentry came by. He was a tall bearded fellow with gold earrings that glimmered wanly under the stars. The turban wrapped around his helmet bulked monstrous against the Milky Way.

  I let him go and followed his path until I saw the next one. They were placed around Trollburg, each pacing a hundred‑yard arc and meeting his opposite number at either end of it. No simple task to?

  Something murmured in my ears. I crouched. One of their aircraft ghosted overhead. I saw two men and a couple of machine guns squatting on top of the carpet. It circled low and lazily, above the ring of sentries. Trollburg was well guarded'

  Somehow, Virginia and I had to get through that picket. I wished the transformation had left me with I full human reasoning powers. My wolf‑impulse was simply to jump on the nearest man, but that would bring the whole garrison down on my hairy ears.

  Wait‑maybe that was what was needed!

  I loped back to the thicket. The Svartalf cat scratched at me and zoomed up a tree. Virginia Graylock started, her pistol sprang into her hand, then she relaxed and laughed a bit nervously. I could work the flash hung about my neck, even as I was, but it went more quickly with her fingers.

  "Well?" she asked when I was human again. "What'd you find out?"

  I described the situation, and saw her frown and bite her lip. It was really too shapely a lip for such purposes. "Not so good," she reflected. "I was afraid of something like this."

  "Look," I said, "can you locate that afreet in a hurry?"

  "Oh, yes. I've studied at Congo U. and did quite well at witch‑smelling. What of it?"

  "If I attack one of those guards and make a racket doing it, their main attention will be turned that way. You should have an even chance to fly across the line unobserved, and once you're in the town your Tarnkappe‑"

  She shook her red head. "I didn't bring one. Their detection systems are as good as ours. Invisibility is actually obsolete."

  "Mmm‑yeah I suppose you're right. Well, anyhow, you can take advantage of the darkness to get to the afreet house. From there on, you'll have to play by ear."

  "I suspected we'd have to do something like this," she replied. With a softness that astonished me: "But Steve, that's a long chance for you to take."

  "Not unless they hit me with silver, and most of their cartridges are plain lead. They use a tracer principle like us; every tenth round is argent. I've got a ninety percent probability of getting home free."

  "You're a liar," she said. "But a brave liar."

  I wasn't brave at all. It's inspiring to think of Valley Forge, or the Alamo, or San Juan Hill or Casablanca where our outnumbered Army stopped three Panther divisions of von Ogerhaus' Afrika Korps‑but only when you're safe and comfortable yourself. Down underneath the antipanic geas, a cold knot was in my guts. Still, I couldn't see any other way to do the job, and failure to attempt it would mean court‑martial.

  "I'll run their legs off once they start chasing me," I told her. "When I've shaken 'em, I'll try to circle back and join you."

  "Okay." Suddenly she rose on tiptoe and kissed me. The impact was explosive.

  I stood for a moment, looking at her. "What are you doing Saturday night?" I asked, a mite shakily.

  She laughed. "Don't get ideas, Steve. I'm in the Cavalry."

  "Yeah, but the war won't last forever." I grinned at her, a reckless fighting grin that made her eyes linger. Acting experience is often useful.

  We settled the details as well as we could. She herself had no soft touch: the afreet would be well guarded, and was plenty dangerous in itself. The chances of us both seeing daylight were nothing to feel complacent about.

  I turned back to wolf‑shape and licked her hand. She rumpled my fur. I slipped off into the darkness.

  I had chosen a sentry well off the highway, across which there would surely be barriers. A man could be seen to either side of my victim, tramping slowly back and forth. I glided behind a stump near the middle of his beat and waited for him.

  When he came, I sprang. I caught a dark brief vision of eyes and teeth in the bearded face, I heard him yelp and smelled the upward spurt of his fear, then we shocked together. He went down on his back, threshing, and I snapped for the throat. My jaws closed on his arm, and blood was hot and salty on my tongue.

  He screamed again. I sensed the call oing down the line. The two nearest Saracens ran to Up. I tore out the gullet of the first man and bunched myself for a leap at the next.

  He fired. The bullet went through me in a jag of pain and the impact sent me staggenn But he didn't know how to deal with a were. He should have dropped on one knee and fired steadily till he got to the silver bullet; if necessary, he should have fended me off, even pinned me with his bayonet, while he shot. This one kept running toward me, calling on the Allah of his heretical sect.

  My tissues knitted as I plunged to meet him. I got past the bayonet and gun muzzle, hitting him hard enough to knock the weapon loose but not to bowl him over. He braced his legs, grabbed my neck, and hung on.

  I swung my left hind leg back of his ankle and shoved. He fell with me on top, the position an infighting werewolf always tries for. My head swiveled; I gashed open his arm and broke his grip.

  Before I could settle the business, three others had piled on me. Their trench scimitars went up and down, in between my ribs and out again. Lousy training they'd had. I snapped my way free of the heap-half a dozen by then?and broke loose.

  Through sweat and blood I caught the faintest whiff of Chanel No. 5, and something in me laughed. Virginia had sped past the confusion?riding her stick a foot above ground, and was inside Trollburg. My next task was to lead a chase and not stop a silver slug while doing so.

  I howled, to taunt the men spilling from outlying houses, and let them have a good look at me before making off across the fields. My pace was easy, not to lose them at once; I relied on zigzags to keep me unpunctured. They followed, stumbling and shouting.

  As far as they knew, this had been a mere commando raid. Their pickets would have re‑formed and the whole garrison been alerted. But surely none except a few chosen officers knew about the afreet, and none of those knew we'd acquired the information. So they had no way of telling what we really planned. Maybe we would pull this operation off?

  Something swooped overhead, one of their damned carpets. It rushed down on me like a hawk, guns spitting. I made for the nearest patch of woods.

  Into the trees! Given half a break, I could?

  They didn't give it. I heard a bounding behind me, caught the acrid smell, and whimpered. A weretiger could go as fast as I.

  For a moment I remembered an old guide I'd had in Alaska, and wished to blazes
he were here. He was a were‑Kodiak bear. Then I whirled and met the tiger before he could pounce.

  He was a big one, five hundred pounds at least. His eyes smoldered above the great fangs, and he lifted a paw that could crack my spine like a dry twig. I rushed in, snapping, and danced back before he could strike.

  Part of me heard the enemy, blundering around in the underbrush trying to find us. The tiger leaped. I evaded him and bolted for the nearest thicket. Maybe I could go where he couldn't. He ramped through the woods behind me, roaring.

  I saw a narrow space between a pair of giant oaks, too small for him, and hurried that way. But it was too small for me also. In the half second that I was stuck, he caught up. The lights exploded and went out.

  IV

  I WAS NOWHERE and nowhen. My very body had departed from me, or I from it. How could I think of infinite eternal dark and cold and emptiness when I had no senses? How could I despair when I was nothing but a point in spacetime? . . . No, not even that, for there was nothing else, nothing to find or love or hate or fear or be related to in any way whatsoever. The dead were less alone than I, for I was all which existed.

  This was my despair.

  But on the instant, or after a quadrillion years, or both or neither, I came to know otherwise. I was under the regard of the Solipsist. Helpless in unconsciousness, I could but share that egotism so ultimate that it would yield no room even to hope. I swirled in the tides and storms of thoughts too remote, too alien, too vast for me to take in save as I might brokenly hear the polar ocean while it drowned me.

  ?danger, this one‑he and those two‑somehow they can. be a terrible danger‑not now (scornfully) when they merely help complete the ruin of a plan already bungled into wreck‑no, later, when the next plan is ripening, the great one of which this war was naught but an early leaf?something about them warns thinly of danger?could I only scan more clearly into time they must be diverted, destroyed, somehow dealt with before their potential has grown?but I cannot originate anything yet?maybe they will be slain by the normal chances of war?if not, I must remember them and try later?now I have too much else to do, saving those seeds I planted in the world?the birds of the enemy fly thick across my fields, hungry crows and eagles to guard them‑(with ever wilder hate) my snares shall take you yet, birds‑and the One Who loosed you!