Operation Chaos

XXXI

We had some equipment, notably Ginny’s kit. This included Valeria s primary birth certificate, which Ashman had brought. The directions he could give us for using it were the main reason he’d been recruited. She put in her own bag, clipped to her waist, for the time being.

Nobody, including our geometers, knew exactly what would and would not work in hell. Lobachevsky was able to tell us that high-religious symbols had no power there as they do here. Their virtue comes from their orientation to the Highest, and the fundamental thing about hell is that no dweller in it can love. However, we might gain something from paganism. Its element of honor and justice meant nothing where we were bound, but its element of power and propitiation did, and although centuries have passed since anyone served those gods, the mana has not wholly vanished from their emblems.

Ginny habitually wore on her dress the owl pin that showed she was a licensed witch. Griswold found a miniature jade plaque, Aztec, carved with a grotesque grinning feathered serpent, that could be secured to the wereflash beneath my shirt. A bit sheepish under Pastor Karlslund’s eye, Barney fished out a silver hammer pendant, copy of a Viking era original. It belonged to his wife, but he’d carried it himself “for a rabbit’s foot” since this trouble broke, and now passed the chain around Svartalf s neck.

Projectile weapons weren’t apt to be worth lugging. Ginny and I are pretty good shots in the nearly Euclidean space of this plenum. But when the trajectory is through unpredictable distortions that affect the very gravity, forget it, chum. We buckled on swords. She had a slender modern Solingen blade, meant for ritual use but whetted to a sharp point and edge. Mine was heavier and older, likewise kept for its goetic potency, but that stemmed from its being a cutlass which had once sailed with Decatur.

Air might be a problem. Hell was notoriously foul. Scuba rigs were in stock, being used for underwater investigations. When this gets you involved with nixies or other tricky creatures, you need a wizard or witch along, whose familiar won’t be a convenient beast like a seal unless you have the luck to engage one of the few specialists. Accordingly there are miniature oxygen bottles and adjustable masks for a wide variety of animals. We could outfit Svartalf, and I tied another pint-size unit to the tank on my back—for Val, in case.

That completed the list. Given time, we could have done better. We could have ridden a dragon instead of two brooms, with an extra beast packing several tons of stuff against every contingency that a strategic analysis team might propose. Still, the Army had used that approach and failed. We had fresh knowledge and a unique scout. Maybe those would serve.

While we bucked ourselves with several helpers, Barney and Nobu made the final preparations to transmit us. Or almost final. At the last minute I asked them to do an additional job as soon as might be.

At the center of the Nexus drawn on the door, whose shape I won’t reveal, they’d put a regular confining pentacle set about with blessed candles. A giant bell jar hung from a block and tackle above, ready to be lowered. This was for the counter-mass from the hell universe, which might be alive, gaseous, or otherwise troublesome. “After we’ve gone,” I said, “lay a few hundred extra pounds of material in there, if the area’s not too dangerous to enter.

“What?” Barney said, astonished. “But that’d allow, uh, anything” pursuer—to make the transition with no difficulty.

“Having arrived here, it can’t leave the diagram,” I pointed out. “We can and will, in a mighty quick jump. Have spells ready to prevent its return home. Thing is, I don’t know what we’ll find. Could be an item, oh, of scientific value; and the race needs more data about hell. Probably we won’t collect any loot. But let’s keep the option.”

“Okay. Sound thinking, for a lunatic.” Barney wiped his eyes. “Damn, I must be allergic to something here.”

Janice didn’t weep alone when we bade good-bye. And within me paced the grave thought:

—No more may I aid you, Steven Pavlovitch, Virginia Williamovna, Janos Farkasovitch, and cat who surely has a soul of his own. Now must I become a mere watcher and recorder, for the sake of nothing except my curiosity. I will not burden you with the grief this causes me. You will not be further aware of my presence. May you fare with God’s blessing.

I felt him depart from the conscious part of my mind like a dream that fades as you wake and try to remember. Soon he was only something good that had happened to me for a couple of hours. Or no, not entirely. I suspect what calm I kept in the time that followed was due to his unsensed companionship. He couldn’t help being what he was.

Holding our brooms, Ginny and I walked hand in hand to the Nexus. Svartalf paced ahead. At the midpoint of the figure, we halted for a kiss and a whisper before we slipped the masks on. Our people cast the spell. Again the chamber filled with night. Energies gathered. Thunder and earthquake brawled. I hung onto my fellows lest we get separated. Through the rising racket, I heard my witch read from the parchment whereon stood the name Victrix, urging us toward her through diabolic space-time.

The room, the world, the stars and universes began to rotate about the storm’s eye where we stood. Swifter and swifter they turned until they were sheer spinning, the Grotte quern itself. Then was only a roar as of great waters. We were drawn down the maelstrom. The final glimpse of light dwindled with horrible speed, and when we reached infinity, it was snuffed out. Afterward came such twistings and terrors that nothing would have sent us through them except our Valeria Victrix.