Operation Chaos

XIV

A short interlude this time. We finished our first academic year okay. Ginny was proud of my straight A’s in shamanistics and calculus, and assisted me over some humps in arcane languages. (Griswold did me a similar service for electronics.) She had to modify her own plan of further study somewhat, if we were to get married in June.

You might think a former high-salaried New York witch would be anything but innocent. Certainly Ginny had a temper and her special kind of sophistication. However, quite apart from a stubbornly loyal and clean personality, she’d concentrated on those branches of the Art which require maidenhood. That kind of specialist commands fees in proportion to rarity.

Now my fire—and-ice girl was to become only another bride. And what’s so only about that? Next year she could acquire the techniques necessary to compensate for being wedded.

We couldn’t entirely hide our roles in snuffing the salamander from the news media; but with the eager cooperation of Malzius, who kept blaring about how the University Team had saved this fair city, we managed to obfuscate it so that we soon dropped out of the public eye. Griswold was conscience-stricken at receiving more credit than he thought he deserved, and indignant at our receiving less than we deserved, till we pointed out that the first was essential to getting his department modernized and the second to protecting our privacy. Besides, if we wanted to be sure the rule on dating was rescinded, and that conditions at Trismegistus would remain tolerable for us in other respects, we had to give Malzius tacit cooperation in rescuing his pride and not getting stuck with a craven image.

So, in brief, that winter and spring were wonderful and full of wonder. I could skip well ahead, but can’t help dwelling on-oh, at least the moment when:

“No,” I said to my bride’s business associate. “You are not coming along on the honeymoon.”

He laid back his ears. “Meeowrr!” he said resentfully.

“You’ll do fine by yourself in this apartment for a month,” I told him. `The superintendent has promiced to feed you every evening, the same time as he sets out the milk for the Brownie. And don’t forget, a when the Brownie comes in here, you are not to chase after him. After the last time you did that, three times in a row when Ginny and I went out to dinner, the, Good People sweetened our martinis.”

Svartalf glowered, yellow-eyed, and switched his tail. I imagine that was cat for, Well, dammit, anything the size of a mouse, which scuttles like a mouse, has got to expect to be treated like a mouse.

“He’ll be here to dust and change your litterbox,” I reminded Svartalf in my sternest voice. “You’ll have the run of the place, and you can fly up the chimney’s on the whisk broom anytime you want fresh air. But, the Brownie is off limits, bucko, and if I come back and hear you’ve been after him, I’ll take wolf-shape and tree you. Understand?”

Svartalf jerked his tail at me, straight upward.

Virginia Graylock, who had for an incredible few hours been Mrs. Steven Matuchek, entered the living room. I was so stunned by the view of tall slenderness in a white dress, straight aristocratic features and red hair shouting down to her shoulders, that the voice didn’t register except as a symphonic accompaniment. She had to repeat: “Darling, are you absolutely sure we can’t take him? His feelings are hurt.”

I recovered enough to say, “His feelings are made of tool steel. It’s okay if he wants to share our bed when we get back, I guess—within reason—but fifteen pounds of black witchcat on my stomach when I’m honeymooning is out of reason. Besides, what’s worse, he’d prefer your stomach.”

Ginny blushed. “It will be odd without my familiar, after these many years. If he promised to behave—”

Svartalf, who had been standing on a table, rubbed against her hip and purred. Which was not a bad idea, I thought. However, I had my foot down and wasn’t about to lift it. “He’s incapable of behaving,” I said. “And you won’t need him. We’re going to forget the world and its work, aren’t we? I’m not going to study any texts, nor visit any of my fellow theriomorphs, even that were-coyote family down at Acapulco who invited us to drop in. It’s going to be just us two, and I don’t want any pussy—” I braked as fast as possible. She didn’t notice, only sighed a little, nodded, and stroked a soothing hand across the cat’s back.

“Very well, dear,” she said. With a flick of her earlier self: “Enjoy wearing the family pants while you can.”

“I intend to do so all the time,” I bragged.

She cocked her head. “All the time?” Hastily: “We’d best be on our way. Everything’s packed.”

“Check, mate.” I agreed. She stuck out her tongue at me. I patted Svartalf. “So long, chum. No grudges, I trust?” He bit a piece out of my hand and said he supposed not. Ginny hugged him, seized my arm, and hurried me out.

The home to which we’d be coming back was a third-floor apartment near Trismegistus University. Our wedding this morning had been quiet, a few friends at the church, a luncheon afterward at somebody’s house, and then we made our farewells. But Ginny’s connections in New York and mine in Hollywood have money. Several people had clubbed together to give us a Persian carpet: a somewhat overwhelming present, but show me the bridal couple who don’t like a touch a of luxury.

It lay on the landing, its colors aglow in the sun. Our baggage was piled in the rear. We snuggled down side by side on cushions of polymerized sea foam. Ginny murmured the command words. We started moving so smoothly I didn’t notice when we were airborne. The carpet wasn’t as fast or flashy as a sports-model broomstick, but the three hundred dragonpower spell on it got us out of the city in minutes.

Midwestern plains rolled green and enormous beneath us, here and there a river like argent ribbon; but we were alone with birds and clouds. No wind off’ our passage got by the force screen. Ginny slipped her dress. She had a sunsuit beneath it, and now I understand transistor theory; the absence of material has as real an existence as the presence. We sunbathed on our way south, stopped at twilight for supper at a charming little restaurant in the Ozarks, and decided not to stay in a broomotel. Instead we flew on. The carpet was soft and thick and roomy. I started to raise the convertible top, but Ginny said we’d keep warm if we flew low, and she was right. Stars crowded the sky, until a big yellow Southern moon rose to drown half of them, and the air was murmurous, and we could hear crickets chorus from the dark earth below, and nothing else is any of your business.