Operation Chaos

XXI

The night fell moonless, a slight haze dulling the 1 stars. We left soon after, clad alike in black sweaters and slacks, headlights off. Witch-sight enabled us to make a flight that was safe if illegal, high over the city’s constellated windows and lamps until our stick, swung downward again toward the industrial section. It lay still darker and emptier than was normal at this hour. I saw practically no tiny bluish glimmers flit around the bulks of shops and warehouses. The Good Folk were passing up their nocturnal opportunity for revels and curious window-peeking when man wasn’t around. That which was going on had frightened them.

It centered on Nornwell’s grounds. They shone forth, an uneasy auroral glow in a air. As we neared, the wind that slid past, stroking and whispering to me bore odors-flesh and sweat, incense, an electric acridity of paranatural energies. The hair stood erect along my spine. I was content not be in wolf-shape to get the full impact of that last.

The paved area around the main building was packed close to solid with bodies. So was the garden that made our workers’ warm-weather lunches pleasant, nothing remained of it except mud and cigaret stubs. I estimated five hundred persons altogether, blocking any except aerial access. Their mass was not restless, but the movement of individuals created an endless rippling through it, and the talk and footshuffle gave those waves a voice.

Near the sheds, our lot was less crowded. Scattered people there were taking a break from the vigil to fix a snack or flake out in a sleeping bag. They kept a respectful distance from a portable altar at the far end, though from time to time, someone would kneel in its direction.

I whistled, long and low. “That’s arrived since I left.” Ginny’s arms caught tighter around my waist.

A Johannine priest was holding service. Altitude or no, we couldn’t mistake his white robe, high-pitched minor-key chanting, spread-eagle stance which he could maintain for hours, the tau crucifix that gleamed tall and gaunt behind the altar, the four talismans—Cup, wand, sword, and Disc—upon it. Two acolytes swung censers whence came the smoke that sweetened and, somehow, chilled the air.

“What’s he up to?” I muttered. I’d never troubled to learn much about the new church. Or the old ones, for that matter. Not that Ginny and I were ignorant of modern scientific discoveries proving the reality of the Divine and things like absolute evil, atonement, and an afterlife. But it seemed to us that so little is known beyond these bare hints, and that God can have so infinitely many partial manifestations to limited human understanding, that we might as well call ourselves Unitarians.

“I don’t know,” she answered. Her tone was bleak. “I studied what’s public about their rites and doctrines, but that’s just the top part of the iceberg, and it was years ago for me. Anyhow, you’d have to be a communicant—no, a lot more, an initiate, ultimately an adept, before you were told what a given procedure really means.

I stiffened. “Could he be hexing our side?”

Whetted by alarm, my vision swept past the uneasy sourceless illumination and across the wider scene. About a score of burly blue policemen were posted around the block. No doubt they were mighty sick of being jeered at. Also, probably most of them belonged to traditional churches. They wouldn’t exactly mind arresting the agent of a creed which said that their own creeds were finished.

“No,” I replied to myself, “he can’t be, or the cops’d have him in the cooler this minute. Maybe he’s anathematizing us. He could do that under freedom of religion, I suppose, seeing as how man can’t control God but can only ask favors of Him. But actually casting a spell, bringing goetic forces in to work harm—” I interrupted my thinking aloud. “The trouble is,” she said, “when you deal with these Gnostics, you don’t know where their prayers leave off and their spells begin. Let’s get cracking before something happens. I don’t like the smell of t he time stream tonight.”

I nodded and steered for the principal building. The Johnny didn’t fret me too much. Chances were he was just holding one of his esoteric masses to encourage the demonstrators. Didn’t the claim go that his church was the church of universal benevolence? That it actually had no need of violence, being above the things of this earth? “The day of the Old Testament, of the Father, was the day of power and fear; the day of the New Testament, of the Son, has been the day of expiation; the day of the Johannine Gospel, of the Holy Spirit, will be the day of love and unveiled mysteries.” No matter now.

The police were interdicting airborne traffic in the immediate vicinity except for whoever chose to leave it. That was a common-sense move. None but a minority of the mob were Johnnies. To a number of them, the idea of despising and renouncing a sinful material world suggested nothing more than that it was fashionable to wreck that world. The temptation to flit overhead and drop a few Molotov cocktails could get excessive.

Naturally, Ginny and I might have insisted on our right to come here, with an escort if need be. But that could provoke the explosion we wanted to avoid. Altogether, the best idea was to slip in, unnoticed by friend and foe alike. Our commando-type skills were somewhat rusty, though; the maneuver demanded our full attention.

We succeeded. Our stick ghosted through a skylight left open, into the garage. To help ventilate the rest of the place, this was actually a well from roof to ground floor. Normally our employees came and went by the doors. Tonight, however, those were barred on two sides-by the bodies of the opposition, and by protective force-fields of our own which it would take an expert wizard to break.

The Pinkerton technician hadn’t conjured quite fast enough for us. Every first-story window was shattered. Through the holes drifted mumbled talk, background chant. Racking the broom, I murmured in Ginny’s ear-her hair tickled my lips and was fragrant “You know, I’m glad they did get a priest. During the day, they had folk singers.”

“Poor darling.” She squeezed my hand. “Watch out for busted glass.” We picked our way in the murk to a hall and upstairs to the R & D section. It was defiantly lighted. But our footfalls rang too loud in its emptiness. It was a relief to enter Barney Sturlason’s office.

His huge form rose behind the desk. “Virginia!” he rumbled. “What an unexpected pleasure.” Hesitating: “But, uh, the hazard—”

“Shouldn’t be noticeable, Steve tells me,” she said. “And I gather you could use an extra thaumaturgist.”

“Sure could.” I saw how his homely features sagged with exhaustion. He’d insisted that I go home and rest. This was for the practical reason that, if things went sour and we found ourselves attacked, I’d have to turn wolf and be the main line of defense until the police could act. But he’d stayed on, helping his few volunteers make ready. That, far more than his best competence as a research man, was his mark of bosshood.

“Steve’s explained our scheme?” he went on. His decision to accept her offer had been instantaneous. “Well, we need to make sure the most delicate and expensive equipment doesn’t suffer. Quite apart from stuff being ruined, imagine the time and cost of recalibrating every instrument we’ve got, from dowsers to tarots! I think everything’s adequately shielded, but I’d certainly appreciate an independent check by a fresh mind. Afterward you might cruise around the different shops and labs, see what I’ve overlooked and arrange its protection.”

“Okay.” She’d visited sufficiently often to be familiar with the layout. “I’ll help myself to what I need from the stockroom, and ask the boys in—in the alchemistry section did you say, dear?—for help if necessary.” She paused. “I expect you two’ll be busy for a while.”

“Yes, I’m going to give them one last chance out there,” Barney said, and in case somebody gets overexcited, I’d better have Steve along for a bodyguard.”

And I still believe you might as well save your breath,” I snorted.

“No doubt you’re right, as far as you go,” Barney said; “but don’t forget the legal aspect. I don’t own this place, I only head up a department. We’re acting on our personal initiative after the directors agreed to suspend operations. Jack Roberts’ approval of our plan was strict sub rosa. Besides, ownership or not, we can no more use spells offensively against trespassers than we could use shotguns. The most we’re allowed is harmless defensive forces to preserve life, limb, and property.”

“Unless we’re directly endangered,” I said.

“Which is what we’re trying to prevent,” he reminded me. “Anyhow, because of the law, I have to make perfectly clear before plenty of witnesses that we intend to stay within it.”

I shrugged and shed my outer garments. Underneath was the elastic knit one-piecer that would keep me from arrest for indecent exposure as a human, and not hamper me as a wolf. The moonflash already hung around my neck like a thick round amulet. Ginny kissed me hard. “Take care of yourself, tiger,” she whispered.

She had no strong cause to worry. The besiegers were unarmed, except for fists and feet and possibly some smuggled billies or the like—nothing I need fear after Skinturning. Even knives and bullets and fangs could only inflict permanent harm under rare and special conditions, like those which had cost me my tail during the war. Besides, the likelihood of a fight was very small. Why should the opposition set on us? That would launch the police against them; and, while martyrdom has its uses, closing down our plant was worth more. Nonetheless, Ginny’s tone was not completely level, and she watched us go down the hall till we had rounded a corner.

At that time, Barney said, “Wait a tick,” opened a closet, and extracted a blanket that he hung on his arm. “If you should have to change shape,” he said, “I’ll throw this over you.”

“Whatever for?” I exclaimed. “That’s not sunlight outside, it’s elflight. It won’t inhibit transformation.”

“It’s changed character since that priest set upshot. I used a spectroscope to make certain. The glow’s acquired enough ultraviolet-X500 angstroms to be exact that you d have trouble. By-product of a guard against any that we might try to use offensively.

“But we won’t!”

“Of course not, It’s pure ostentation on his part. Clever, though. When they saw a shieldfield established around them, the fanatics and naive children in the mob leaped to the conclusion that it was necessary; and thus Nornwell gets reconfirmed as the Enemy.” He shook his head. “Believe me, Steve, these demonstrators are being operated like gloves, by some mighty shrewd characters.”

“You sure the priest himself raised the field?”

“Yeah. They’re all Maguses in that clergy, remember—part of their training—and I wonder what else they learn in those lonesome seminaries. Let’s try talking with him.”

“Is he in charge?” I wondered. “The Johannine hierarchy does claim that when its members mix in politics, they do it strictly as private citizens.”

“I know, Barney” said. “And I am the Emperor Norton.”

“No, really,” I persisted. “These conspiracy theories; are too bloody simple to be true. What you’ve got is a—uh, a general movement, something in the air, people, disaffected—”

But then, walking, we’d reached one of the ornamental glass panels that flanked the main entrance. It was smashed like the windows, but no one had thought to barricade it, and our protective spell forestalled entry. Of course, it did not affect us. We step through, onto the landing, right alongside the line bodies that was supposed to keep us in.

We couldn’t go farther. The stairs down to ground were paced solid. For a moment we weren’t noticed. Barney tapped one straggle-bearded adolescent on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said from his towering height. “May I?” He plucked a sign out of the unwashed hand, hung the blanket over the placard, and waved his improvised flag of truce aloft. The color was bilious green.

A kind of gasp like the puff of wind before a storm, went through the crowd. I saw faces and faces and faces next to me, below me, dwindling off into the dusk beyond the flickering elflight. I don’t think it was only my haste and my prejudice that made them look eerily alike.

You hear a lot about long-haired men and shorthaired women, bathless bodies and raggedy clothes. Those were certainly present in force. Likewise I identified the usual graybeard radicals and campus hangers-on, hoodlums, unemployables, vandals, True Believers, and the rest. But there were plenty of clean, well-dressed, terribly earnest boys and girls. There were the merely curious, too, who had somehow suddenly found themselves involved. And everyone was tall, short, or medium, fat, thin, or average, rich, poor, or middleclass, bright, dull, or normal, heterosexual, homosexual, or I know not what, able in some fields, inept in others, interested in some things, bored by others, each with an infinite set of memories, dreams, hopes, terrors, loves-each with a soul.

No, the sameness appeared first in the signs they carried. I didn’t count how many displayed ST. JOHN 13:34 or I JOHN 2:9-11 or another of those passages; how many more carried the texts, or some variation like LOVE THY NEIGHBOR or plain LOVE: quite a few, anyway, repeating and repeating. Others were less amiable:

And so it was as if the faces-worse, the brains behind them had become nothing but placards with slogans written across.

Don’t misunderstand me. I wouldn’t think much of a youngster who never felt an urge to kick the God of Things As They Are in his fat belly. It’s too bad that most people lose it as they get old and fat themselves. The Establishment is often unendurably smug and stupid; the hands it folds so piously are often bloodstained.

And yet . . . and yet . . . it’s the only thing between us and the Dark Ages that’d have to intervene before another and probably worse Establishment could arise to restore order. And don’t kid yourself that none would. Freedom is a fine thing until it becomes somebody else’s freedom to enter your house, kill, rob, rape, and enslave the people you care about. Then you’ll accept any man on horseback who promises you’ll have some predictability back into life, and you yourself will give him his saber and knout.

Therefore isn’t our best bet to preserve this we’ve got? However imperfectly, it does function; it’s ours, it shaped us, we may not understand it too well but surely we understand it better than something untried and alien. With a lot of hard work, h thinking, hard-nosed good will, we can improve it.

You will not, repeat not, get improvement if wild-blue-yonder theorists who’d take us in one leap outside the whole realm of our painfully acquired experience; or from dogmatists mouthing the pat words of reform movements that accomplished something two generations or two centuries ago; or college sophomores convinced they have the answer to every social problem over which men like Hammurabi, Moses, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, Jefferson, Burke, Lincoln, a thousand others broke their heads and their hearts.

But enough of that. I’m no intellectual; I try to think for myself. It depressed me to see these mostly well-meaning people made tools of the few whose aim was to bring the whole shebang down around their ears.