Operation Chaos

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, disembodied, 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 Karlslund 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 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.”

At that we halted, the harp ceased, the eternal silence of the infinite spaces fell upon us, and the zodiac spun faster and faster until its figures blurred together and were time’s wheel. What light remained lay wholly on the pastor. He stood, arms lifted, before the altar. “Hear us, O God, from Heaven Thy dwelling place,” he called. “Thou knowest our desire; make it pure, we pray Thee. In Thy sight stand this man Steven and this woman Virginia, who are prepared to harrow hell as best as is granted them to, that they may confound Thine enemies and rescue an unstained child from the dungeons of the worm. Without Thine aid they have no hope. We beg Thee to allow them a guide and counselor through the wilderness of hell. If we are not worthy of an angel, we ask that Thou commend them unto Thy departed servant Nikolai Ivanovitch Lobachevsky, or whomever else may be knowledgeable in these matters as having been on earth a discoverer of them. This do we pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

There was another stillness.

Then the cross on the altar shone forth, momentarily sun-bright, and we heard one piercing, exquisite note, and I felt within me a rush of joy I can only vaguely compare to the first winning of first love. But another noise followed, as of a huge wind. The candles went out, the panes went black, we staggered when the floor shook beneath us. Svantalf screamed.

“Ginny!” I heard myself yell. Simultaneously I was whirled down a vortex of images, memories, a bulbous-towered church on an illimitable plain, a dirt track between rows of low thatch-roofed cottages and a horseman squeaking and jingling along it with saber at belt, an iron winter that ended in thaw and watery gleams and returning bird-flocks and shy breath of green across the beechwoods, a disordered stack of books, faces, faces, hands, a woman who was my wife, a son who died too young, half of Kazan in one red blaze, the year of the cholera, the letter from Gottingen, loves, failures, blindness closing in day by slow day and none of it was me.

A thunderclap rattled our teeth. The wind stopped, the light came back, the sense of poised forces was no more. We stood bewildered in our ordinary lives. Ginny cast herself into my arms.

“Lyubimyets,” I croaked to her, “no, darling—Gospodny pomiluie-” while the kaleidoscope gyred within me. Svartalf stood on a workbench, back arched, tail bottled, not in rage but in panic. His lips, throat, tongue writhed through a ghastly fight with sounds no cat can make. He was trying to talk.

“What’s gone wrong?” Barney roared.