Poul Anderson - Operation Chaos

Heigh-ho. I drew my coat tighter about me and shivered in the wind. That air smelled wrong somehow . . . probably only my bad mood, I thought, but I’d sniffed trouble in the future before now.

The Old Grad blasted my ears off as the teams trotted out into the moonlight, Trismegistus’ Gryphons and the Albertus Magnus Wyverns. The very old grads say they can’t get used to so many four-eyed runts wearing letters. Apparently a football team was composed of dinosaurs back before the goetic age. But of course the Art is essentially intellectual and has given its own tone to sports.

This game had its interesting points. The Wyverns levitate off and their tiny quarterback turned out to be a werepelican. Dushanovitch, in condor shape, nailed him on our twenty. Andrevski is the best line werebuck in the Big Ten, and held them for two downs. In the third, Pilsudski got the ball and became a kangaroo. His footwork was beautiful as he dodged a tackle—the guy had a Tarnkappe, but you could see the footprints advanced—and passed to Mstislav. The Wyverns swooped low, expecting Mstislav to turn it into a raven for a field goal, but with lightning a-crackle as he fended off their counterspells, he made it into a pig … greased. (These were minor transformations, naturally, a quick gesture at an object already sensitized, not the great and terrible Words I was to hear before dawn.)

A bit later, unnecessary roughness cost us fifteen yards: Domingo accidentally stepped on a scorecard which had blown to the field and drove his cleats through several of the Wyverns’ names. But no real harm was done, and they got the same penalty when Thorsson was carried away by the excitement tossed a thunderbolt. At the end of the first half, score was Trismegistus 13, Albertus Magnus 6, the crowd was nearly ripping the benches loose.

I pulled my hat back off my ears, gave the Old Grad a dirty look, and stared into the crystal. Ginny was more of a fan than I, she was jumping and hollering, hardly seeming to notice that Abercrombie had draped an arm around her. Or perhaps she didn’t mind-? I took a long, resentful drag at my flask.

The cheering squad paraded out onto the field.

Their instruments wove through an elaborate aerial maneuver, drumming and tootling, while they made the traditional march to the Campus Queen. I’m told it’s also traditional that she ride forth on a unicorn to meet them, but for some reason that was omitted this year.

The hair rose stiff on my neck and I felt the blind instinctive tug of Skinturning. Barely in time I hauled myself back toward human and sat in a cold sweat. The air was suddenly rotten with danger. Couldn’t anyone else smell it?

I focused my crystal on the cheering squad, looking for the source, only dimly aware of the yell—

“Hey, what’s wrong, mister?” The coed shrank from me, and I realized I was snarling.

“Oh . . . nothing . . . I hope.” With an effort I composed my face and kept it from sprouting a snout.

The fattish blond kid down among the rooters didn’t look harmful, but a sense of lightning-shot blackness swirled about his future. I’d dealt with him before, and—

Though I didn’t snitch on him at the time, he was the one who had almost destroyed Griswold’s chemistry class. Premed freshman, rich boy, not a bad guy at heart but with an unfortunate combination of natural aptitude for the Art and total irresponsibility. Medical students are notorious for merry pranks such as waltzing an animated skeleton through the girls’ dorm, and he wanted to start early.

Griswold had been demonstrating the action of a catalyst, and MacIlwraith had muttered a pun-spell to make a cat boil out of the test tube. However, he slipped quantitatively and got a saber-toothed tiger. Because of the pun, it listed to starboard, but it was nonetheless a vicious, panic-raising thing. I ducked into a closet, used my pocket moonflash, and transformed. As a wolf I chased Pussy out the window and into a tree till somebody could call the Exorcism Department.

Having seen MacIlwraith do it, I took him aside an warned him that if he disrupted the class again I’d chew him out in the most literal sense. Fun is fun, but not at the expense of students who really want to learn and a pleasant elderly anachronism who’s trying to teach them.

“TEAM!”

The cheerleader waved his hands and a spurt of many-colored fire jumped out of nothingness. Taller than a man it lifted, a leaping glory of red, blue, yellow, haloed with a wheel of sparks. Slitting my eyes, I could just discern the lizardlike form, white- , hot and supple, within the aura.

The coed squealed. “Thrice-blessed Hermes,” choked the Old Grad. “What is that? A demon?”

“No, a fire elemental,” I muttered. “Salamander. Hell of a dangerous thing to fool around with.”

My gaze ran about the field as the burning shape began to do its tricks, bouncing, tumbling, spelling out words in long flame-bands. Yes, they had a fireman close by in full canonicals, making the passes that kept the creature harmless. The situation ought to be okay. I lit a cigaret, shakily. It is not well to raise Loki’s pets, and the stink of menace to come was acrid in my nostrils.

A good show, but—The crystal revealed Abercrombie clapping. Ginny, though, sat with a worried frown between the long green eyes. She didn’t like this any better than I. Switch the ball back to MacIlwraith, fun loving MacIlwraith.

I was perhaps the single member of the audience who saw what happened. The boy gestured at his baton. It sprouted wings. The fat fireman, swaying back and forth with his gestures, was a natural target for a good healthy goose.

“Yeowp!”

He rocketed heavenward. The salamander wavered. All at once it sprang on high, thinning out till it towered over the walls. We glimpsed a spinning, dazzling blur, and the thing was gone.

My cigaret burst luridly into flame. I tossed it from me. Hardly thinking, I jettisoned my hip flask. It exploded from a touch of incandescence and the alcohol burned blue. The crowd howled, hurling away their smokes, slapping at pockets where matches had kindled, getting rid of bottles. The Campus Queen shrieked as her thin dress caught fire. She got it off in time to prevent serious injury and went wailing across the field. Under different circumstances, I would have been interested.

The salamander stopped its lunatic shuttling and materialized between goalposts that began to smoke: an intolerable blaze, which scorched the grass and roared. The fireman dashed toward it, shouting the spell of extinguishment. From the salamander’s mouth licked a tongue of fire, I heard a distinct Bronx cheer, then it was gone again.

The announcer, who should have been calming the spectators, screeched as it flickered before his booth. That touched off the panic! In one heartbeat, five thousand people were clawing and trampling, choking each other in the gates, blind with the maniac need to escape.

I vaulted across benches and an occasional head, down to the field. There was death on those jammed tiers. “Ginny! Ginny, come here where it’s safe!”

She couldn’t have heard me above the din, but came of herself, dragging a terrified Abercrombie by one wrist. We faced each other in a ring of ruin. She drew the telescoping wand from her purse.

The Gryphons came boiling out of their locker room. Boiling is the right word: the salamander had materialized down there and playfully wrapped itself around the shower pipes.

Sirens hooted under the moon and police broomsticks shot above us, trying to curb the stampede. The elemental flashed for a moment across one besom. The rider dove it till he could jump off, and the burning stick crashed on the grass.