Operation Chaos

XXX

Ginny took over. She beckoned to the closest men. “Karlslund, Hardy, help Steve,” she rapped. “Check him, Doc.” I heard her fragmentarily through the chaos. My friends supported me. I reached a chair, collapsed, and fought for breath.

My derangement was short. The recollections of another land, another time, stopped rocketing forth at random. They had been terrifying because they were strange and out of my control. Poko’y sounded in my awareness, together with Peace, and I knew they meant the same. Courage lifted. I sensed myself thinking, with overtones of both formalism and compassion:

—I beg your pardon, sir. This re-embodiment confused me likewise. I had not paused to reflect what a difference would be made by more than a hundred years in the far realms where I have been. A few minutes will suffice, I believe, for preliminary studies providing the informational basis for a modus vivendi that shall be tolerable to you. Rest assured that I regret any intrusion and will minimize the same. I may add, with due respect, that what I chance to learn about your private affairs will doubtless be of no special significance to one who has left the flesh behind him.

Lobachevsky! I realized.

Your servant, sir. Ah, yes, Steven Anton Matuchek. Will you graciously excuse me for the necessary brief interval?

This, and the indescribable stirring of two memory sets that followed, went on at the back of my consciousness. The rest of me was again alert: uncannily so. I waved Ashman aside with an “I’m okay” and scanned the scene before me.

In Svartalf s hysterical condition, he was dangerous to approach. Ginny tapped a basin of water at a workbench sink and threw it over him. He squalled, sprang to the floor, dashed to a corner, crouched and glowered. “Poor puss,” she consoled. “I had to do that.” She found a towel. “Come here to mama and we’ll dry you off.” He made her come to him. She squatted and rubbed his fur.

“What got into him?” Charles asked.

Ginny looked up. Against the red hair her face was doubly pale. “Good phrase, Admiral,” she said. “Something did. I shocked his body with a drenching. The natural cat reflexes took over, and the invading spirit lost its dominance. But it’s still there. As soon as it learns its psychosomatic way around, it’ll try to assume control and do what it’s come for.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know. We’d better secure him.”

I rose. “No, wait,” I said. “I can find out.” Their eyes swiveled toward me. “You see, uh, I’ve got Lobachevsky.”

“What?” Karlslund protested. “His soul in yours? Can’t be! The saints never—”

I brushed past, knelt by Ginny, took Svartalf’s head between my hands, and said, “Relax. Nobody wants to hurt you. My guest thinks he understands what’s happened. Savvy? Nikolai Ivanovitch Lobachevsky is his name. Who are you?”

The muscles bunched, the fangs appeared, a growing ululation swept the room. Svartalf was about to have another fit.

—Sir, by your leave, the thought went in me. He is not hostile. I would know if he were. He is disconcerted at what has occurred, and has merely a feline brain to think with. Evidently he is unacquainted with your language. May I endeavor to calm him?

Russian purled and fizzled from my lips. Svartalf started, then I felt him ease a bit in my grasp. He looked and listened as intently as if I were a mousehole. When I stopped, he shook his head and mewed.

—So he was not of my nationality either. But he appears to have grasped our intent.

Look, I thought, you can follow English, using my knowledge. Svartalf knows it too. Why can’t his . . . inhabitant . . . do like you?

—I told you, sir, the feline brain is inadequate. It has nothing like a human speech-handling structure. The visiting soul must use every available cortical cell to maintain bare reason. But it can freely draw upon its terrestrial experience, thanks to the immense data storage capacity of even a diminutive mammalian body. Hence we can use what languages it knew before.

I thought: I see. Don’t underrate Svartalf. He’s pure-bred from a long line of witch familiars, more intelligent than an ordinary cat. And the spells that’ve surrounded him through his life must’ve had effects.

-Excellent. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

Svartalf nodded eagerly. “Meeoh,” he said with an umlaut.

“Guten Tag, gnadiger Herr. Ich bin der Mathematiker Nikolai Iwanowitsch Lobatschewski, quondam Oberpfarrer zu der Kasans Universitdt in Russland je suis votre tres humble serviteur, Monsieur.” That last was in French, as politeness called for in the earlier nineteenth century.

“W-r-r-rar-r.” Claws gestured across the floor.

Ginny said, wide-eyed with awe: “He wants to write . . . Svartalf, listen. Don’t be angry. Don’t be afraid. Let him do what he will. Don’t fight, help him. When this is over, you’ll have more cream and sardines than you can eat. I promise. There’s a good cat.” She rubbed him under the chin. It didn’t seem quite the proper treatment for a visiting savant, but it worked, because at last he purred.

While she and Griswold made preparations, I concentrated on meshing with Lobachevsky. The rest stood around, shaken by what had happened and the sudden complete unknownness of the next hour. A fraction of me hearkened to their low voices.

Charles: “Damnedest apparition of saints I ever heard of.”

Karlslund: “Admiral, please!”

Jan ice: “Well, it’s true. They shouldn’t have intruded in bodies like, like demons taking possession.”

Griswold: “Maybe they had to. We did neglect to provide counter-transferral mass for inter-continuum crossing.”

Karlslund: “They aren’t devils. They never required it in the past.”

Barney: “Whoa. Let’s think about that. A spirit or a thought can travel free between universes. Maybe that’s what returned saints always were—visions, not solid bodies.”

Karlslund: “Some were positively substantial.”

Nobu: “I would guess that a saint can utilize any mass to form a body. Air, for instance, and a few pounds of dust for minerals, would provide the necessary atoms. Don’t forget what he or she is, as far as we know: a soul in Heaven, which is to say one near God.

How can he fail to gain remarkable abilities as well as spiritual eminence—from the Source of power and creativity?”

Charles: “What ails these characters, then?”

“Messieurs,” my body said, stepping toward them, “I beg your indulgence. As yet I have not entirely accustomed myself to thinking in this corporeal manifold. Do me the honor to remember that it is unlike the one I originally inhabited. Nor have I assimilated the details of the problem which led to your request for help. Finally, while confined to human form, I have no better means than you for discovering the identity of the gentleman in the cat. I do believe I know his purpose, but let us wait, if you will, for more exact knowledge before drawing conclusions.”

“Wow,” Barney breathed. “How’s it feel, Steve?”

“Not bad,” I said. “Better by the minute.” That was an ultimate understatement. As Lobachevsky and I got acquainted, I felt in myself, coexistent with my own thoughts and emotions, those of a being grown good and wise beyond imagining.

Of course, I couldn’t share his afterlife, nor the holiness thereof. My mortal brain and grimy soul didn’t reach to it. At most, there sang at the edge of perception a peace and joy which were not static but a high eternal adventure. I did, though, have the presence of Lobachevsky the man to savor. Think of your oldest and best friend and you’ll have a rough idea what that was like.

“We should be ready now,” Ginny said.

She and Griswold had set a Ouija board on a bench, the easiest implement for a paw to operate. She perched herself on the edge, swinging legs whose shapeliness my associate noticed too, though mainly he worked out in my head the equation describing them. Svartalf took position at the gadget while I leaned across the opposite side to interrogate.

The planchette moved in a silence broken only by breathing. It was sympathetic with a piece of chalk under a broomstick spell, that wrote large on a blackboard where everyone could see.

ICH BIN JANOS BOLYAI VON UNGARN

“Bolyai!” gasped Falkenberg. “God, I forgot about him! No wonder he—but how—”

“Enchante, Monsieur,” Lobachevsky said with a low bow. “Dies ist fur mich eine grosse Ehre. Ihrer Werke sint eine Inspiration fur apes.” He meant it.

Neither Bolyai nor Svartalf were to be outdone in courtliness. They stood up on his hind legs, made a reverence with paw on heart, followed with a military salute, took the planchette again and launched into a string of flowery French compliments.

“Who is he, anyhow?” Charles hissed behind me.

“I . . . I don’t know his biography,” Falkenberg answered likewise. “But I recall now, he was the morning star of the new geometry.”

“I’ll check the library, ’ Griswold offered. “These courtesies look as if they’ll go on for some time.”

“Yes,” Ginny said in my ear, “can’t you hurry things along a bit? We’re way overdue at home, you and I. And that phone call could be trouble.”

I put it to Lobachevsky, who put it to Bolyai, who wrote ABER NATUERLICH for the lack of an umlaut and gave us his assurances—at considerable length that as an Imperial officer he had learned how to act with the decisiveness that became a soldier when need existed, as it clearly did in the present instance, especially when two such charming young ladies in distress laid claim upon his honor, which honor he would maintain upon any field without flinching, as he trusted he had done in life ....

I don’t intend to mock a great man. Among us, he was a soul trying to think with the brain and feel with the nerves and glands of a tomcat. It magnified human failings and made well-nigh impossible the expression of his intellect and knightliness. We found these hinted at in the notes on him that Griswold located in encyclopedias and mathematical histories, which we read while he did his gallant best to communicate with Lobachevsky.

Janos Bolyai was born in Hungary in 1802, when it was hardly more than a province of the Austrian Empire. His father, a noted mathematician who was a close friend of Gauss, taught him calculus and analytical mechanics before he was thirteen and enrolled him in the Royal Engineering College in Vienna at fifteen. Twenty years old, he became an officer of engineers, well known as a violinist and a swordsman dangerous to meet in a duel. In 1823 he sent to his father a draft of his Absolute Science of Space. While Gauss had anticipated some of its ideas in a general, philosophical way—unknown at the time to Bolyai, the young Hungarian had he done the first rigorous treatment of a non-Euclidean geometry, the first solid proof that space doesn’t logically need to obey axioms like the one about parallel lines.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t published till 1833, and just as an appendix to a two-volume work of his father’s which, being in Latin, bore the gorgeous title Tentatem Juventutem Studiosarn, in Edementa Matheseos Puree Introducendi. By then Lobachevsky had independently announced similar results. Bolyai remained obscure.

It seemed to have discouraged him. He settled down in the same place as his father, who taught at the Reformed College of Maros-Vasahely, and- died there in 1860. His lifetime covered a rising Hungarian nationalism, Kossuth’s rebellion in 1848, its failure and the reactionary oppression that followed; but the articles said nothing about his conduct or opinions. He did see the end of martial law in 1857 and the increasing liberalization afterward: though his land did not achieve full national status under the dual monarchy till seven years past his death. I wondered if his ghost had hung around that long, waiting, before it departed for wider universes.

We found more on Lobachevsky. He was born in 1793, in Nizhni Novgorod. His mother was widowed when he was seven. She moved to Kazan and raised her boys in genteel but often desperate poverty. They won scholarships to the Gymnasium, Nikolai at the age of eight. He entered the local university at fourteen, got his master’s degree at eighteen, was appointed assistant professor at twenty-one and full professor at twenty-three. Presently he had charge of the library and the museum. It was a tough distinction—both were neglected, disordered, so short of funds that he had to do most of the sheer physical labor himself—but over the years he made them a pride of Russia. In addition, while Czar Alexander lived, he was supposed to keep tabs on student politics. He managed to satisfy the government without finking; the kids adored him.

In 1827 he became rector, head of the university. He built it up in every way, including literally; he learned architecture so he could design proper structures. In 1830, when cholera struck, he pulled the academic community through with scant mortality, by enforcing sanitation as opposed to the medieval measures taken elsewhere in Kazan. Another time a fire totalled half the town. His new observatory, his best buildings went. But he rescued the instruments and books, and two years later had restored what was lost.

As early as 1826, he’d discussed non-Euclidean geometry. He might as well have done it in Kansas as Kazan. Word spread to western Europe with a slowness that would have driven a less patient, unegotistical man up the wall. But it did travel. When Gauss heard, he was impressed enough to get Lobachevsky elected to the Royal Society of Gottingen in 1842.

Maybe that xenophobia, or simple spiteful jealousy—was what prompted the Czarist regime in 1846 to bounce him as rector. They let him keep his study at the university, but scant else. Heartbroken, he with drew to his mathematical work. His eyesight failed. His son died. He thought on, dictating the Pangeometry that crowned his life. In 1856, shortly after he finished the book, that life ended.

Of course he was a saint!

—No, Steven Pavlovitch, you should not raise me above my worth. I stumbled and sinned more than most, I am sure. But the mercy of God has no bounds. I have been . . . it is impossible to explain. Let us say I have been allowed to progress.

The blackboard filled. Janice wielded an eraser and the chalk squeaked on. To those who knew French—which the Russian and the Hungarian had switched to as being more elegant than German—it gradually became clear what had happened. But I alone shared Lobachevsky’s degree of comprehension. As this grew, I fretted over ways to convey it in American. Time was shrinking on us fast.

—Indeed, Lobachevsky answered. Brusque though contemporary manners have become (pardoranez-rnoi, je vous en prie), haste is needed, for I agree that the hour is late and the peril dire.

Therefore I called the group to me when at last the questioning was done. Except for Ginny, who couldn’t help being spectacular, and Svartalf, who sat at her feet with a human soul in his eyes, they were an unimpressive lot to see, tired, sweaty, haggard, neckties loosened or discarded, hair unkempt, cigarets in most hands. I was probably less glamorous, perched on a stool facing them. My voice grated and I’d developed a tic in one cheek. The fact that a blessed saint had joint tenancy of my body didn’t much affect pain, scared, fallible me.

“Things have got straightened out,” I said. “We made a mistake. God doesn’t issue personal orders to His angels and saints, at least not on our behalf. It appears, Pastor, from the form of your invocation, you understood that. But consciously or not, the rest of us assumed we’re more important than we are.” Lobachevsky corrected me. “No, everybody’s important to Him. But there must be freedom, even for evil. And furthermore, there are considerations of—well, I guess you can’t say Realpolitik. I don’t know if it has earthly analogues. Roughly speaking, though, neither God nor the Adversary want to provoke an early Armageddon. For two thousand years, they’ve avoided direct incursions into each other’s, uh, home territories, Heaven or hell. That policy’s not about to be changed.

“Our appeal was heard. Lobachevsky’s a full-fledged saint. He couldn’t resist coming down, and he wasn’t forbidden to. But he’s not allowed to aid us in hell. If he goes along, it has to be strictly as an observer, inside a mortal frame. He’s sorry, but that’s the way the elixir elides. If we get scragged there, he can’t help our souls escape. Every spirit has to make its own way—No matter. The result was, he entered this continuum, with me as his logical target.

“Bolyai’s different. He heard too, especially since the prayer was so loosely phrased it could well have referred to him. Now, he hasn’t made sainthood. He says he’s been in Purgatory. I suspect most of us’d think of it as a condition where you haven’t got what it takes to know God directly but you can improve yourself. At any rate, while he wasn’t in Heaven, he wasn’t damned either. And so he’s under no prohibition as regards taking an active part in a fight. This looked like a chance to do a good deed. He assessed the content of our appeal, including the parts we didn’t speak, and likewise chose me. Lobachevsky, who’s more powerful by virtue of sanctity, and wasn’t aware of his intent, arrived a split second ahead of him.”

I stopped to bum a cigaret. What I really wanted was a gallon of hard cider. My throat felt like a washboard road in summer. “Evidently these cases are governed by rules,” I said. “Don’t ask me why; I’m sure the reasons are valid if we could know them; in part, I guess, it’s to protect mortal flesh from undue shock and strain. Only one extra identity per customer. Bolyai hasn’t the capability of a saint, to create a temporary real body out of whatever’s handy, as you suggested a while back, Dr. Nobu. In fact, he probably couldn’t have used organized material if we’d prepared some. His way to manifest himself was to enter a live corpus. Another rule: the returned soul can’t switch from person to person. It must stay with whom it’s at for the duration of the affair.

“Bolyai had to make a snap decision. I was preempted. His sense of propriety wouldn’t let him, uh, enter a woman. It wouldn’t do a lot of good if he hooked up with one of you others, who aren’t going. Though our prayer hadn’t mentioned it, he’d gathered from the overtones that the expedition did have a third member who was male. He willed himself there. He always was rash. Too late, he discovered he’d landed in Svartalf”

Barney’s brick-house shoulders drooped. “Our project’s gone for nothing?”

“No,” I said. “With Ginny’s witchcraft to help-boost his feline brain power-Bolyai thinks he can operate. He’s spent a sizable chunk of afterlife studying the geometry of the continua, exploring planes of existence too weird for him to hint at. He loves the idea of a filibuster into hell.”

Svartalf s tail swung, his ears stood erect, his whiskers dithered.

“Then it worked!” Ginny shouted. “Whoopee!”

“So far and to this extent, yeah.” My determination was unchanged but my enthusiasm less. Lobachevsky’s knowledge darkened me—I sense a crisis. The Adversary can ill afford to let you succeed. His mightiest and subtlest forces will be arrayed against you.

“Well,” Karlslund said blankly. “Well, well.”

Ginny stopped her war dance when I said: “Maybe you better make that phone call, Dr. Griswold.”

The little scientist nodded. “I’ll do it from my office. We can plug in an extension here, audio-visual reception.” We were far too groggy to give a curse about the lawfulness of that, though I do believe it’s permissible, not being an actual scryertap.

We had a few minutes’ wait. I held Ginny close by my side. Our troops muttered aimlessly or slumped exhausted. Bolyai was alone in his cheerfulness. He used Svartalf to tour the lab with eager curiosity. By now he knew more math and science than living men will acquire before world’s end; but it intrigued him to see how we were going about things. He was ecstatic when Janice found him a copy of the National Geographic.

The phone awoke. We saw what Griswold did. The breath sucked in between my teeth. Shining Knife was indeed back.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” the professor said. “It was impossible for me to come earlier. What can I do for your”

The G-man identified himself and showed his sigh. “I’m trying to get in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Steven Matuchek. You know them, don’t you?”

“Well, ah, yes . . .haven’t seen them lately—” Griswold was a lousy liar.

Shining Knife’s countenance hardened. “Please listen, sir. I returned this afternoon from a trip to Washington on their account. The matter they’re involved in is that big. I checked with my subordinates. Mrs. Matuchek had disappeared. Her husband had spent time in a spyproof conference room. He’d not been seen to leave his place of work at quitting rime. I sent a man in to ask for him, and he wasn’t to be found. Our people had taken pictures of those who went into the plant. A crime lab worker here recognized you among the members of the conference. Are you sure the Matucheks aren’t with you?”

“Y-yes. Yes. What do you want with them? Not a criminal charge?”

“No, unless they misbehave. I’ve a special order enjoining them from certain actions they may undertake. Whoever abetted them would be equally subject to arrest.”

Griswold was game. He overcame his shyness and sputtered: “Frankly, sir, I resent your implication. And in any event, the writ must be served to have force. Until such time, they are not bound by it, nor are their associates.”

“True. Mind if I come look around your place? They might happen to be there . . . without your knowledge.”

“Yes, sir, I do mind. You may not.”

“Be reasonable, Dr. Griswold. Among other things, the purpose is to protect them from themselves.”

“That attitude is a major part of what I dislike about the present Administration. Good day to you, sir.”

“Uh, hold.” Shining Knife’s tone remained soft, but nobody could mistake his expression. “You don’t own the building you’re in.”

“fm responsible for it. Trismegistus is a private foundation. I can exercise discretionary authority and forbid access to your . . . your myrmidons.”

“Not when they arrive with a warrant, Professor.”

“Then I suggest you obtain one.” Griswold broke the spell.

In the lab, we regarded each other. “How long?” I asked.

Barney shrugged. “Under thirty minutes. The FBI has ways.”

“Can we scram out of here?” Ginny inquired of him.

“I wouldn’t try it. The area probably went under surveillance before Shining Knife tried to call. I expect he stayed his hand simply because he doesn’t know what we’re doing and his orders are to proceed with extreme caution.”

She straightened. “Okay. Then we go to hell.” Her mouth twitched faintly upward. “Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“Huh?” Barney grunted, as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. “No! You’re as crazy as the Feds think you are! No preparation, no proper equipment—”

“We can cobble together a lot with what’s around here,” Ginny said. “Bolyai can advise us, and Lobachevsky till we leave. We’ll win an advantage of surprise. The demonic forces won’t have had time to organize against our foray. Once we’re out of American jurisdiction, can Shining Knife legally recall us? And he won’t keep you from operating our lifeline. That’d be murder. Besides, I suspect he’s on our side, not glad of his duty. He may well offer you help.” She went to Barney, took one of his hands between both of hers, and looked up into his craggy face. “Don’t hinder us, old friend,” she pleaded. “We’ve got to have you on our side.”

His torment was hurtful to see. But he started ripping out commands. Our team plunged into work.

Griswold entered. “Did you—Oh. You can’t leave now.”

“We can’t not,” I said.

“But you haven’t . . . haven’t had dinner! You’ll be weak and—Well, I know I can’t stop you. We keep a fridge with food in the research lab, for when a project runs late. I’ll see what it holds.”

So that’s how we went to storm the fastness of hell: Janice’s borrowed shoulder purse on Ginny, and the pockets of Barney’s outsize jacket (sleeves haggled short) on me, a-bulge with peanut butter sandwiches, tinned kipper for Svartalf-Bolyai, and four cans of beer.