Operation Chaos

VI

Soldiers were around. Bullets sleeted after me. I set a record reaching the nearest alley. My witch-sigh showed me a broken window, and I wriggled through that. Crouching beneath the sill, I heard the pursuit go by.

This was the back room of a looted grocery store plenty dark for my purposes. I hung the flash around my neck, turned it on myself, and made the change over. They’d return in a minute, and I didn’t want to be vulnerable to lead.

Wolf, I snuffled around after another exit. A rear door stood half open. I slipped through into a tour yard full of ancient packing cases. They made a good hideout. I lay there, striving to control my lupine nature, which wanted to pant, while they swarmed through the area.

When they were gone again, I tried to considered my situation. The temptation was to hightail out of this poor, damned place. I could probably make it ad technically fulfilled my share of the mission”. )~ the job wasn’t really complete, and Virginia was alone with the afreet—if she still lived—and—

When I tried to recall her, the image came as a she-wolf and a furry aroma. I shook my head angrily. Weariness and desperation were submerging my reason and letting the animal instincts take over. I’d better do whatever had to be done fast.

I cast about. The town smells were confusing, but I caught the faintest sulfurous whiff and trotted cautiously in that direction. I kept to the shadows, and was seen twice but not challenged. They must have supposed I was one of theirs. The brimstone reek grew stronger.

They kept the afreet in the courthouse, a good solid building. I went through the small park in front of it, snuffed the wind carefully, and dashed over street and steps. Four enemy soldiers sprawled on top, throats cut open, and the broomstick was parked by the door. It had a twelve-inch switchblade in the handle, and Virginia had used it like a flying lance.

The man side of me, which had been entertaining stray romantic thoughts, backed up in a cold sweat; but the wolf grinned. I poked at the door. She’d ’chanted the lock open and left it that way. I stuck my nose in, and almost had it clawed off before Svartalf recognized me. He jerked his tail curtly, and I passed by and across the lobby. The stinging smell was coming from upstairs. I followed it through a thick darkness.

Light glowed in a second-floor office. I thrust the door ajar and peered in. Virginia was there. She had drawn the curtains and lit the elmos to see by. She was still busy with her precautions, started a little on spying me but went on with the chant. I parked my shaggy behind near the door and watched.

She’d chalked the usual figure, same as the Pentagon in Washington, and a Star of David inside that. The Solly bottle was at the center. It didn’t look impressive, an old flask of hard-baked clay with its hollow handle bent over and returning inside-merely a Klein bottle, with Solomon’s seal in red wax at the mouth. She’d loosened her hair, and it floated in a ruddy cloud about the pale beautiful face.

The wolf of me wondered why we didn’t just make off with this crock of It. The man reminded him that undoubtedly the emir had taken precautions and would have sympathetic means to uncork it from afar. We had to put the demon out of action . . . somehow . . . but nobody on our side knew a great deal about his race.

Virginia finished her spell, drew the bung, and sprang outside the pentacle as smoke boiled from the flask. She almost didn’t make it, the afreet came out in such a hurry. I stuck my tail between my legs and snarled. She was scared, too, trying hard not to show that but I caught the adrenalin odor.

The afreet must bend almost double under the ceiling. He was a monstrous gray thing, nude, more or less anthropoid but with wings and horns and long ears, a mouthful of fangs and eyes like hot embers. His assets were strength, speed, and physical near-invulnerability. Turned loose, he could break any attack of Vanbrugh’s, and inflict frightful casualties on the most well-dug-in defense. Controlling him afterward, before he laid the countryside waste, would be a problem. But why should the Saracens care? They’d have exacted a geas from him, that he remain their ally, as the price of his freedom.

He roared something in Arabic. Smoke swirled from his mouth. Virginia looked tiny under those half unfurled bat membranes. Her voice was less cool than she would have preferred: “Speak English, Marid. Or are you too ignorant?”

The demon huffed indignantly. “O spawn of a thoussand baboons!” My eardrums flinched from the volume. “O thou white and gutless infidel thing, which I could break with my least finger, come in to me if thou darest!”

I was frightened, less by the chance of his breaking loose than by the racket he was making. It could be heard for a quarter mile.

“Be still, accursed of God!” Virginia answered. That shook him a smidgen. Like most of the hell-breed, he was allergic to holy names, though only seriously so under conditions that we couldn’t reproduce here. She stood hands on hips, head tilted, to meet the gaze that smoldered down upon her. “Suleiman bin Daoud, on whom be peace, didn’t jug you for nothing, I see. Back to your prison and never come forth again, lest the anger of Heaven smite you!”

The afreet fleered. “Know that Suleiman the Wise is dead these three thousand years,” he retorted. “Long and long have I brooded in my narrow cell, I who once raged free through earth and sky and will now at last be released to work my vengeance on the puny sons of Adam.” He shoved at the invisible barrier, but one of that type has a rated strength of several million p.s.i. It would hold firm-till some adept dissolved it. O thou shameless unveiled harlot with hair of hell, know that I am Rashid the Mighty, the glorious in power, the smiter of rocs! Come in here and fight like a man!”

I moved close to the girl, my hackles raised. The hand that touched my head was cold. “Paranoid type,” she whispered. “A lot of these harmful Low Wonders are psycho. Stupid, though. Trickery’s our single chance. I don’t have any spells to compel him directly. But-Aloud, to him, she said: “Shut up, Rashid, and listen to me. I also am of your race, and to be respected as such.”

“Thou?” He hooted with fake laughter. “Thou of the Marid race? Why, thou fish-faced antling, if thou’dst come in here I’d show thee thou’rt not even fit to—” The rest was graphic but not for any gentlewere to repeat.

“No, hear me,’ said the girl. “Look and hearken well.” She made signs and uttered a formula. I recognized the self-geas against telling a falsehood in the particular conversation. Our courts still haven’t adopted it—Fifth Amendment—but I’d seen it used in trials abroad.

The demon recognized it, too. I imagine the Saracen adept who pumped a knowledge of English into him, to make him effective in this war, had added other bits of information about the modern world. He grew more quiet and attentive.

Virginia intoned impressively: “I can speak nothing to you except the truth. Do you agree that the name is the thing?”

“Y-y-yes,” the afreet rumbled. “That is common knowledge.”

I scented her relief. First hurdle passed! He had not been educated in scientific goetics. Though the name is, of course, in sympathy with the object, which is the principle of nymic spells and the like—-nevertheless, only in this century has Korzybski demonstrated that the word and its referent are not identical. ,

“Very well,” she said. “My name is Ginny.”

He started in astonishment. “Art thou indeed?”

“Yes. Now will you listen to me? I came to offer you advice, as one jinni to another. I have powers of my own, you ]snow, albeit I employ them in the sere vice of Allah, the Omnipotent, the Omniscient, the Compassionate.”

He glowered, but supposing her to be one of his species, he was ready to put on a crude show of courtesy. She couldn’t be lying about her advice. It did not occur to him that she hadn’t said the counsel would be good.

“Go on, then, if thou wilst,” he growled. “Knowest thou that tomorrow I fare forth to destroy the infidel host?” He got caught up in his dreams of glory. “Aye, well will I rip them, and trample them, and break and gut and flay them. Well will they learn the power of Rashid the bright-winged, the fiery, the merciless, the wise, the . . .”

Virginia waited out his adjectives, then said gently: “But Rashid, why must you wreak harm? You earn nothing thereby except hate.”

A whine crept into his bass. “Aye, thou speakest sooth. The whole world hates me. Everybody conspires against me. Had he not had the aid of traitors, Suleiman had never locked me away. All which I have sought to do has been thwarted by envious ill-wishers. Aye, but tomorrow comes the day of reckoning!”

Virginia lit a cigaret with a steady hand and blew smoke at him. “How can you trust the emir and his cohorts?” she asked. “He too is your enemy. He only wants to make a cat’s-paw of you. Afterward, back in the bottle!”

“Why. . .why. . .” The afreet swelled till the spacewarp barrier creaked. Lightning crackled from his nostrils. It hadn’t occurred to him before; his race isn’t bright; but of course a trained psychologist would understand how to follow out paranoid logic.

“Have you not known enmity throughout your long days?” continued Virginia quickly. “Think back, Rashid. Was not the very first thing you remember the cruel act of a spitefully envious world?”

“Aye-it was.” The maned head nodded, and the voice dropped very low. “On the day I was hatched . . . aye, my mother’s wingtip smote me so I reeled.”

“Perhaps that was accidental,” said Virginia.

“Nay. Ever she favored my older brother—the lout!”

Virginia sat down cross-legged. “Tell me about it,” she oozed. Her tone dripped sympathy.

I felt a lessening, of the great forces that surged within the barrier. The afreet squatted on his hams, eyes half-shut, going back down a memory trail of millennia. Virginia guided him, a hint here and there. I didn’t know what she was driving at, surely you couldn’t psychoanalyze the monster in half a night, but—

“Aye, and I was scarce turned three centuries when I fell into a pit my foes must have dug for me.”

“Surely you could fly out of it,” she murmured.

The afreet’s eyes rolled. His face twisted into still more gruesome furrows. “It was a pit, I say!”

“Not by any chance a lake?” she inquired.

“Nay!” His wings thundered. “No such damnable thing . . . ’twas dark; and wet, but-nay, not wet either, a cold which burned . . .

I saw dimly that the girl had a lead. She dropped long lashes to hide the sudden gleam in her gaze. Even as a wolf, I could realize what a shock it must a have been to an aerial demon, nearly drowning, his fires hissing into steam, and how he must ever after deny to himself that it had happened. But what use could she make of—

Svartalf the cat streaked in and skidded to a halt. Every hair on him stood straight, and his eyes blistered me. He spat something and went out again with me in his van.

Down in the lobby I heard voices. Looking through the door, I saw a few soldiers milling about. They come by, perhaps to investigate the noise, seen the dead guards, and now they must have sent for reinforcements.

Whatever Ginny was trying to do, she needed time for it. I went out that door in one gray leap and tangled with the Saracens. We boiled into a clamorous pile. I was almost pinned flat by their numbers, but kept my jaws free and used them. Then Svartalf rode that broomstick above the fight, stabbing.

We carried a few of their weapons back into the lobby in our jaws, and sat down to wait. I figured I’d do better to remain wolf and be immune to most things than have the convenience of hands. Svartalf regarded a tommy gun thoughtfully, propped it along a wall, and crouched over it.

I was in no hurry. Every minute we were left alone, or held off the coming attack, was a minute gained for Ginny. I laid my head on my forepaws and dozed off. Much too soon I heard hobnails rattle on pavement.

The detachment must have been a good hundred. I saw their dark mass, and the gleam of starlight off their weapons. They hovered for a while around the squad we’d liquidated. Abruptly they whooped and charged up the steps.

Svartalf braced himself and worked the tommy gun. The recoil sent him skating back across the lobby, swearing, but he got a couple. I met the rest in the doorway.

Slash, snap, leap in, leap out, rip them and gash them and howl in their faces! After a brief whirl of teeth they retreated. They left half a dozen dead and wounded.

I peered through the glass in the door and saw my friend the emir. He had a bandage over his eye, but lumbered around exhorting his men with more energy than I’d expected. Groups of them broke from the main bunch and ran to either side. They’d be coming in the windows and the other doors.

I whined as I realized we’d left the broomstick outside. There could be no escape now, not even for Ginny. The protest became a snarl when I heard glass breaking and rifles blowing off locks. That Svartalf was a smart cat. He found the tommy gun again and somehow, clumsy though paws are, managed to shoot out the lights. He and I retreated to the stairway. They came at us in the dark, blind as most men are. I let them fumble around, and the first one who groped to the stairs was killed quietly. The second had time to yell. The whole gang of them crowded after him. They couldn’t shoot in the gloom and press without potting their own people. Excited to mindlessness, they attacked me with scimitars, which I didn’t object 3 to. Svartalf raked their legs and I tore them apart—whick, snap, clash, Allah-Akbar and teeth in the night!! The stair was narrow enough for me to hold, and their own casualties hampered them, but the sheer weight of a hundred brave men forced me back a tread at a time. Otherwise one could have tackled me and a dozen more have piled on top. As things were, we gave the houris a few fresh customers for every foot we lost.

I have no clear memory of the fight. You seldom do. But it must have been about twenty minutes before they fell back at an angry growl. The emir himself stood at the foot of the stairs, lashing his tail and rippling his gorgeously striped hide.

I shook myself wearily and braced my feet for the last round. The one-eyed tiger climbed slowly towards us. Svartalf spat. Suddenly he zipped down the banister past the larger cat and disappeared in the gloom. Well, he had his own neck to think about—

We were almost nose to nose when the emir lifted paw full of swords and brought it down. I dodged somehow and flew for his throat. All I got was a mouthful of baggy skin, but I hung on and tried to work my way inward.

He roared and shook his head till I swung like a bell clapper. I shut my eyes and clamped on tight. He raked my ribs with those long claws. I skipped away but kept my teeth where they were. Lunging, he fell on me. His jaws clashed shut. Pain jagged through my tail. I let go to howl.

He pinned me down with one paw, raising the other to break my spine. Somehow, crazed with the hurt, I writhed free and struck upward. His remaining eye was glaring at me, and I bit it out of his head.

He screamed! A sweep of one paw sent me kiting up to slam against the banister. I lay with the wind knocked from me while the blind tiger rolled over in his agony. The beast drowned the man, and he went down the stairs and wrought havoc among his own soldiers.

A broomstick whizzed above the melee. Good old Svartalf! He’d only gone to fetch our transportation. I saw him ride toward the door of the afreet, and rose groggily to meet the next wave of Saracens.

They were still trying to control their boss. I gulped for breath and stood watching and smelling and listening. My tail seemed, ablaze. Half of it was gone.

A tommy gun began stuttering. I heard blood rattle in the emir’s lungs. He was hard to kill. That’s the end of you, Steve Matuchek, thought the man of me. They’ll do what they should have done in the first place, stand beneath you and sweep you with their fire, every tenth round argent.

The emir fell and lay gasping out his life. I waited for his men to collect their wits and remember me.

Ginny appeared on the landing, astride the broomstick. Her voice seemed to come from very far away. “Steve! Quick! Here!”

I shook my head dazedly, trying to understand. was too tired, too canine. She stuck her forgers in her, mouth and whistled. That fetched me.

She slung me across her lap and hung on tight as Svartalf piloted the stick. A gun fired blindly from below. We went out a second-story window and into the sky.

A carpet swooped near. Svartalf arched his back and poured on the Power. That Cadillac had legs! We left the enemy sitting there, and I passed out.