Poul Anderson - Operation Chaos

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OPERATION CHAOS

Poul Anderson

[20 apr 2001 – scanned for #bookz, proofread and released – v1]

HELLO, OUT THERE!

If you exist, hello!

We may well never find out. This is a wild experiment, test of a wilder hypothesis. But it is also a

duty.

I lie dream-bound, only half-aware of my world. They are using me to call for them across the time

streams because that which happened to me, so many years ago, has left its traces beneath my

ordinariness; they believe a message thought by me has a better chance of finding a resonance in you

than if it came from almost anyone else.

Not that the chance is good. My ordinariness quite overwhelms what little mana may still drift

smokelike within. And in any case, I may well be-I probably am-radiating into nothingness.

It is only a philosophical idea, that time has more than one dimension, that any number of entire

universes may coexist, some utterly alien, some whose differences from ours are perhaps too subtle to

detect ... Why am I dreaming in this language? It isn't my normal speech. The preparations have cast me

into a strange state. Damnation, I will be myself, not only myself again when I wake tomorrow but

myself now and throughout the night .... Earths where Lee won at Gettysburg or Napoleon at Waterloo;

Earths where Mithraism won over Christianity in the Roman Empire; Earths where Rome never was;

Earths where another animal than man evolved toward a rational soul, or none did; Earths, whole

cosmoses where the laws of nature are something else, where it is possible to do what we forever cannot,

but they will never accomplish what we do with ease ...

Well, I am told that a little more than philosophy supports the hypothesis. There are certain

indications in modern physical theory, too abstruse for me. There are anecdotes, cases of appearance or

disappearance or both, which suggest that the body itself can transfer between such time

currents-Benjamin Bathurst, Kaspar Hauser ... There is what happened to me and mine, though that isn't

the same thing. It is, however, the source of our duty.

You see, if parallel worlds exist, they must be linked in a very fundamental way; otherwise the

hypothesis is unverifiable in principle and therefore meaningless. Deriving from the same source,

embedded in the same matrix, they must in some fashion have a common destiny. Whatever manifold

forms it takes, the war of Law and Chaos surely goes on in them all.

We have learned certain things. We ought to broadcast the lesson and the warning.

To you out yonder, this may appear nothing but a dream. It feels that way to me, though I recall

matters which truly happened. We doubt if you-any of you whom we may reach-will be able to reply,

even if willing. Otherwise we would already have gotten messages from elsewhere. But think over what

you receive. Ask yourselves how you could have a simple dream that was quite like this one.

While we have no certain idea what you are like, assuming you are more than a void, we can guess.

You probably do not live in worlds radically foreign to ours, or communication would be impossible.

How could uncomplicated I resonate with a true alien? No, you too must be human, of technological

culture at that. You too must remember Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Watt; the chances are that you too

are an American. But we have diverged at some point. Have you had an Einstein? And if you did, what

did he think about after his early papers on Brownian movement and special relativity? The questions go

on without end.

You will have such questions about us, of course. So I'm going to ramble through my story. (That's

hard to avoid anyway, in this drowsy twilight they've laid on me.) No doubt I'll often belabor the

obvious. If you already know how electric generators work or how the First World War came out-or

whatever-bear with me. Better too much information than too little. This is more than vital to you.

If you exist.

Where to begin? I suppose where the affair really began for me, during World War II, though of

course the roots run much deeper and further back; the strife is older than creation ....

IT WAS SHEER bad luck, or maybe their Intelligence was better than we knew, but the last raid,

breaking past our air defenses, had spattered the Weather Corps tent from here to hell. Supply problems

being what they were, we couldn't get replacements for weeks, and meanwhile the enemy had control of

the weather. Our only surviving Corpsman, Major Jackson, had to save what was left of his elementals

to protect us against thunderbolts; so otherwise we took whatever they chose to throw at us. At the

moment, it was rain.

There's nothing so discouraging as a steady week of cold rain. The ground turns liquid and runs up

into your boots, which get so heavy you can barely lift them. Your uniform is a drenched rag around

your shivering skin, the rations are soggy, the rifles have to have extra care, and always the rain drums

down on your helmet till you hear it in dreams. You'll never forget that endless gray washing and

beating; ten years later a rainstorm will make you feel depressed.

The one consolation, I thought, was that they couldn't very well attack us from the air while it went

on. Doubtless they'd yank the cloud cover away when they were ready to strafe us, but our broomsticks

could scramble as fast as their carpets could arrive. Meanwhile, we slogged ahead, a whole division of

us with auxiliaries-the 45th, the Lightning Busters, pride of the United States Army, turned into a wet

misery of men and dragons hunting through the Oregon hills for the invader.

I made a slow way through the camp. Water ran off tents and gurgled in slit trenches. Our sentries

were, of course, wearing Tarnkappen, but I could see their footprints form in the mud and hear the boots

squelch and the tired monotonous cursing.

I passed by the Air Force strip; they were bivouacked with us, to give support as needed. A couple

of men stood on guard outside the knockdown hangar, not bothering with invisibility. Their blue

uniforms were as mucked and bedraggled as my OD's, but they had shaved and their insignia-the winged

broomstick and the anti-Evil Eye beads-were polished. They saluted me, and I returned the gesture idly.

Esprit de corps, wild blue yonder, nuts.

Beyond was the armor. The boys had erected portable shelters for their beasts, so I only saw steam

rising out of the cracks and caught the rank reptile smell. Dragons hate rain, and their drivers were

having a hell of a time controlling them.

Nearby lay Petrological Warfare, with a pen full of hooded basilisks writhing and hissing and

striking out with their crowned heads at the men feeding them. Personally, I doubted the practicality of

that whole corps. You have to get a basilisk quite close to a man, and looking straight at him, for

petrifaction; and the aluminum-foil suit and helmet you must wear to deflect the influence of your pets is

an invitation to snipers. Then, too, when human carbon is turned to silicon, you have a radioactive

isotope, and maybe get such a dose of radiation yourself that the medics have to give you St. John's

Wort plucked from a graveyard in the dark of the moon.

So, in case you didn't know, cremation hasn't simply died out as a custom; it's become illegal under

the National Defense Act. We have to have plenty of old-fashioned cemeteries. Thus does the age of sci-

ence pare down our liberties.

I went on past the engineers, who were directing a gang of zombies carving another drainage ditch,

and on to General Vanbrugh's big tent. When the guard saw my Tetragrammaton insigne, for the

Intelligence Corps, and the bars on my shoulders, he saluted and let me in. I came to a halt before the

desk and brought my own hand up.

"Captain Matuchek reporting, sir," I said.

Vanbrugh looked at me from beneath shaggy gray brows. He was a large man with a face like

weathered rock, 103 percent Regular Army, but we liked him as well as you can like a buck general. "At

ease," he said. "Sit down. This'll take a while."

I found a folding chair and lowered myself into it. Two others were already seated whom I didn't

know. One was a plump man with a round red face and a fluffy white beard, a major bearing the

crystal-ball emblem of the Signal Corps. The other was a young woman. In spite of my weariness, I

blinked and looked twice at her. She was worth it-a tall green-eyed redhead with straight high-cheeked

features and a figure too good for the WAC clothes or any other. Captain's bars, Cavalry spider . . . or

Sleipnir, if you want to be official about it.

"Major Harrigan," grumfed the general. "Captain Graylock. Captain Matuchek. Let's get down to

business."

He spread a map out before us. I leaned over and looked at it. Positions were indicated, ours and the

enemy's. They still held the Pacific seaboard from Alaska halfway down through Oregon, though that

was considerable improvement from a year ago, when the Battle of the Mississippi had turned the tide.

"Now then," said Vanbrugh, "I'll tell you the overall situation. This is a dangerous mission, you

don't have to volunteer, but I want you to know how important it is."

What I knew, just then, was that I'd been told to volunteer or else. That was the Army, at least in a

major war like this, and in principle I couldn't object. I'd been a reasonably contented Hollywood actor

when the Saracen Caliphate attacked us. I wanted to go back to more of the same, but that meant

finishing the war.

"You can see we're driving them back," said the general, "and the occupied countries are primed

and cocked to revolt as soon as they get a fighting chance. The British have been organizing the

underground and arming them while readying for a cross-Channel jump. The Russians are set to advance

from the north. But we have to give the enemy a decisive blow, break this whole front and roll 'em up.

That'll be the signal. If we succeed, the war will be over this year. Otherwise, it might drag on for

another three."

I knew it. The whole Army knew it. Official word hadn't been passed yet, but somehow you feel

when a big push is impending.

His stumpy finger traced along the map. "The 9th Armored Division is here, the 12th Broomborne

here, the 14th Cavalry here, the Salamanders here where we know they've concentrated their

fire-breathers. The Marines are ready to establish a beachhead and retake Seattle, now that the Navy's

bred enough Krakens. One good goose, and we'll have 'em running."

Major Harrigan snuffled into his beard and stared gloomily at a crystal ball. It was clouded and

vague; the enemy had been jamming our crystals till they were no use whatsoever, though naturally we'd

retaliated. Captain Graylock tapped impatiently on the desk with a perfectly manicured nail. She was so

clean and crisp and efficient, I decided I didn't like her looks after all. Not while I had three days' beard

bristling from my chin.

"But apparently something's gone wrong, sir," I ventured.

"Correct, damn it," said Vanbrugh. "In Trollburg."

I nodded. The Saracens held that town: a key position, sitting as it did on U.S. Highway 20 and

guarding the approach to Salem and Portland.

"I take it we're supposed to seize Trollburg, sir," I murmured.

Vanbrugh scowled. "That's the job for the 45th," he grunted. "If we muff it, the enemy can sally out

against the 9th, cut them off, and throw the whole operation akilter. But now Major Harrigan and Cap-

tain Graylock come from the 14th to tell me the Trollburg garrison has an afreet."

I whistled, and a chill crawled along my spine. The Caliphate had exploited the Powers

recklessly-that was one reason why the rest of the Moslem world regarded them as heretics and hated

them as much as we did-but I never thought they'd go as far as breaking Solomon's seal. An afreet

getting out of hand could destroy more than anybody cared to estimate.

"I hope they haven't but one," I whispered.

"No, they don't," said the Graylock woman. Her voice was low and could have been pleasant if it

weren't so brisk. "They've been dredging the Red Sea in hopes of finding another Solly bottle, but this

seems to be the last one left."

"Bad enough," I said. The effort to keep my tone steady helped calm me down. "How'd you find

out?"

"We're with the 14th," said Graylock unnecessarily. Her Cavalry badge had surprised me, however.

Normally, the only recruits the Army can dig up to ride unicorns are pickle-faced schoolteachers and the

like.

"I'm simply a liaison officer," said Major Harrigan in haste. "I go by broomstick myself." I grinned

at that. No American male, unless he's in holy orders, likes to admit he's qualified to control a unicorn.

He saw me and flushed angrily.

Graylock went on, as if dictating. She kept her tone flat, though little else. "We had the luck to

capture a bimbashi in a commando attack. I questioned him."

"They're pretty close-mouthed, those noble sons of . . um . . . the desert," I said. I'd bent the Geneva

Convention myself, occasionally, but didn't relish the idea of breaking it completely-even if the enemy

had no such scruples.

"Oh, we practiced no brutality," said Graylock. "We housed him and fed him very well. But the

moment a bite of food was in his throat, I'd turn it into pork. He broke pretty fast, and spilled everything

he knew."

I had to laugh aloud, and Vanbrugh himself chuckled; but she sat perfectly deadpan.

Organic-organic transformation, which merely shuffles molecules around without changing atoms, has

no radiation hazards but naturally requires a good knowledge of chemistry. That's the real reason the

average dogface hates the technical corps: pure envy of a man who can turn K rations into steak and

French fries. The quartermasters have enough trouble conjuring up the rations themselves, without

branching into fancy dishes.

"Okay, you learned they have an afreet in Trollburg," said the general. "What about their strength

otherwise?"

"A small division, sir. You can take tie place handily, if that demon can be immobilized," said

Harrigan.

"Yes, I know." Vanbrugh swiveled his eyes around to me. "Well, Captain, are you game? If you can

carry the stunt off, it'll mean a Silver Star at east-pardon me, a Bronze."

"Uh-" I paused, fumbling after words. I was more interested in promotion and ultimate discharge,

but that might follow too. Nevertheless . . . quite apart from my own neck, there was a practical

objection. "Sir, I don't know a damn thing about the job. I nearly flunked Demonology 1 in college."

"That'll be my part," said Graylock.

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OPERATIONCHAOSPoulAnderson[20apr2001–scannedfor#bookz,proofreadandreleased–v1]HELLO,OUTTHERE!Ifyouexist,hello!Wemaywellneverfindout.Thisisawildexperiment,testofawilderhypothesis.Butitisalsoaduty.Iliedream-bound,onlyhalf-awareofmyworld.Theyareusingmetocallforthemacrossthetimestreamsbecausethatwhichha...

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Poul Anderson - Operation Chaos

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