Operation Chaos

V

I opened my eyes. For a while I was aware entirely of the horror. Physical misery rescued me, driving those memories back to where half-forgotten nightmares dwell. The thought flitted by me that shock must have made me briefly delirious.

A natural therianthrope in his beast shape isn’t quite as invulnerable as most people believe. Aside from things like silver-biochemical poisons to a metabolism in that semifluid state—damage which stops a vital organ will stop life; amputations are permanent unless a surgeon is near to sew the part back on before its cells die; and so on and so on, no pun intended. We are a hardy sort, however. I’d taken a blow that probably broke my neck. The spinal cord not being totally severed, the damage had healed at standard therio speed.

The trouble was, they’d arrived and used my flash to make me human before the incidental hurts had quite gone away. My head drummed and I retched.

“Get up.” Someone stuck a boot in my ribs.

I lurched erect. They’d removed my gear, including the flash. A score of them trained their’ guns on me.

Tiger Boy stood close. In man-shape he was almost seven feet tall and monstrously fat. Squinting through the headache, I saw he wore the insignia of an emir—which was a military rank these days rather than a title, but pretty important nevertheless.

“Come,’ he said. He led the way, and I was hustled along behind.

I saw their carpets in the sky and heard the howling of their own weres looking for spoor of other Americans. I was still too groggy to care very much.

We entered the town, its pavement sounding hollow under the boots, and went toward the center. Trollburg wasn’t big, maybe five thousand population once. Most of the streets were empty. I saw a few Saracen troops, antiaircraft guns poking into the sky, a dragon lumbering past with flames flickering around its jaws and cannon projecting from the armored howdah. No trace of the civilians, but I knew what had happened to them. The attractive young women were in the officers’ harems, the rest dead or locked away pending shipment to the slave markets.

By the time we got to the hotel where the enemy headquartered, my aches had subsided and my brain was clear. That was a mixed blessing under the circumstances. I was taken upstairs to a suite and told to stand before a table. The emir sat down behind it, half a dozen guards lined the walls, and a young pasha of Intelligence seated himself nearby.

The emir’s big face turned to that one, and he spoke a few words—I suppose to the effect of “I’ll handle this, you take notes.” He looked back at me. His eyes were the pale tiger-green.

“Now then,” he said in good English, “we shall have some questions. Identify yourself, please.”

“I told him mechanically that I was called Sherrinford Mycroft, Captain, AUS, and gave him my serial number.

“That is not your real name, is it?” he asked.

“Of course not!” I replied. “I know the Geneva Convention, and you’re not going to cast name-spells on me. Sherrinford Mycroft is my official johnsmith.”

“The Caliphate has not subscribed to the Geneva Convention, said the emir quietly, “and stringent measures are sometimes necessary in a jehad. What was the purpose of this raid?”

“I am not required to answer that,” I said. Silence would have served the same end, delay to gain time for Virginia, but not as well.

“You may be persuaded to do so,” he said.

If this had been a movie, I’d have told him I was picking daisies, and kept on wisecracking while they brought out the thumbscrews. In practice it would have fallen a little flat.

“All right,” I said. “I was scouting.”

“A single one of you?”

“A few others. I hope they got away.” That might keep his boys busy hunting for a while.

“You lie,” he said dispassionately.

“I can’t help it if you don’t believe me,” I shrugged.

His eyes narrowed. “I shall soon know if you speak truth,” he said. “If not, may Eblis have mercy on you.”

I couldn’t help it, I jerked where I stood and sweat pearled out on my skin. The emir laughed. He had an unpleasant laugh, a sort of whining growl deep in his fat throat, like a tiger playing with its kill.

“Think over your decision,” he advised, and turned to some papers on the table.

It grew most quiet in that room. The guards stood as if cast in bronze. The young shavetail dozed beneath his turban. Behind the emir’s back, a window looked out on a blankness of night. The sole sounds were the loud tickings of a clock and the rustle of papers. They seemed to deepen the silence.

I was tired, my head ached, my mouth tasted foul and thirsty. The sheer physical weariness of having to stand was meant to help wear me down. It occurred to me that the emir must be getting scared of us, to take this much trouble with a lone prisoner. That was kudos for the American cause, but small consolation to me.

My eyes flickered, studying the tableau. There wasn’t much to see, standard hotel furnishings. The emir had cluttered his desk with a number of objects: a crystal ball useless because of our own jamming, a fine cut glass bowl looted from somebody’s house, a set of nice crystal wineglasses, a cigar humidor of quartz glass, a decanter full of what looked like good Scotch. I guess he just liked crystal.

He helped himself to a cigar, waving his hand to make the humidor open and a Havana fly into his mouth and light itself. As the minutes crawled by, an ashtray soared up from time to time to receive from him. I guessed that everything he had was ’chanted so it would rise and move easily. A man that fat, paying the price of being a really big werebeast, needed such conveniences.

It was very quiet. The light glared down on us. It was somehow hideously wrong to see a good ordinary GE saintelmo shining on those turbaned heads.

I began to get the forlorn glimmerings of an idea. How to put it into effect I didn’t yet know, but just to pass the time I began composing some spells.

Maybe half an hour had passed, though it seem more like half a century, when the door opened and a fennec, the small fox of the African desert, trotted in. The emir looked up as it went into a closet, to find darkness to use its flash. The fellow who came out was, naturally, a dwarf barely one foot high. He prostrated himself and spoke rapidly in a high thready voice.

“So.” The emir’s chins turned slowly around to m “The report is that no trace was found of other tracks than yours. You have lied.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” I asked. My throat felt stiff and strange. “We used owls and bats. I was the lone wolf.”

“Be still,” he said tonelessly. “I know as well as you that the only werebats are vampires, and that vampires are—what you say—4-F in all armies.”

That was true. Every so often, some armchair general asks why we don’t raise a force of Draculas. The answer is routine: they’re too light and flimsy; they can’t endure sunshine; if they don’t get a steady blood ration they’re apt to turn on their comrades; and you can’t possibly use them around Italian troops. I swore at myself, but my mind had been too numb to think straight.

“I believe you are concealing something,” went on the emir. He gestured at his glasses and decanter, which supplied him with a shot of Scotch, and sipped judiciously. The Caliphate sect was also heretical with respect to strong drink; they maintained that while the Prophet forbade wine, he said nothing about beer, gin, whisky, brandy, rum, or akvavit.

“We shall have to use stronger measures,” the emir said at last. “I was hoping to avoid them.” He nodded at his guards.

Two held my arms. The pasha worked me over. He was good at that. The werefennec watched avidly, the emir puffed his cigar and went on with his paperwork. After a long few minutes, he gave an order. They let me go, and even set forth a chair for me, which I needed badly.

I sat breathing hard. The emir regarded me with a certain gentleness. “I regret this,” he said. “It is not enjoyable.” Oddly, I believed him. “Let us hope you will be reasonable before we have to inflict permanent injuries. Meanwhile, would you like a cigar?

The old third degree procedure. Knock a man around for a while, then show him kindness. You’d be surprised how often that makes him blubber and break.

“We desire information about your troops and their plans,” said the emir. “If you will cooperate and accept the true faith, you can have an honored position with us. We like good men in the Caliphate.” He smiled. “After the war, you could select your harem out of Hollywood if you desired.”

“And if I don’t squeal—” I murmured.

He spread his hands. “You will have no further wish for a harem. The choice is yours.”

“Let me think,” I begged. “This isn’t easy.”

“Please do,” he answered urbanely, and returned to his papers.

I sat as relaxed as possible, drawing my throat arid letting strength flow back. The Army geas could be broken by their technicians only if I , gave my free consent, and I didn’t want to. I considered the window behind the emir. It was a two-story drop to the street. Most likely, I’d just get myself killed. But that was preferable to any other offer I’d had.

I went over the spells I’d haywired. A real technician has to know at least one arcane language—Latin; Greek, classical Arabic, Sanskrit, Old Norse, or the like—for the standard reasons of sympathetic science. Paranatural phenomena are not strongly influenced by ordinary speech. But except for the usual tag-ends of incantations, the minimum to operate the gadgets of daily life, I was no scholar.

However, I knew one slightly esoteric dialect quite well. I didn’t know if it would work, but I could try.

My muscles tautened as I moved. It was a shudder some effort to be casual. I knocked the end of ash on my cigar. As I lifted the thing again, it collected some ash from the emir’s.

I got the rhyme straight in my mind, put the cigarette to my lips, and subvocalized the spell.

I closed my right eye and brought the glowing cigar end almost against the lid.

The emir’s El Fumo leaped up and ground itself into his right eye.

He screamed and fell backward. I soared to my feet. I’d marked the werefennec, and one stride brought me over to him. I broke his vile little neck with a backhanded cuff and yanked off the flash that hung from it.

The guards howled and plunged for me. I went over the table and down on top of the emir, snatching his decanter en route. He clawed at me, wild with pain, I saw the ghastliness in his eye socket, and meanwhile I was hanging on to the vessel and shouting:

As I finished, I broke free and hurled the decanter at the guards. It was lousy poetics, and might not have worked if the fat man hadn’t already sensitized his stuff: As if was, the ball, the ashtray, the bowl, the glasses, the humidor, and the windowpanes all took off after the decanter. The air was full of flying glass.

I didn’t stay to watch the results, but went out that window like an exorcised devil. I landed in a ball on the sidewalk, bounced up, and began running.