Poul Anderson - Operation Chaos

“Huh?”

“Like a flame. A flame only exists potentially till someone lights a fire, and goes back to potential existence when you put the fire out. And the second fire you light, even on the same log, is not identical with the first. So you can understand why an elemental isn’t exactly anxious to be dismissed. When one breaks loose, as this one did, it does its damnedest to stay in this world and to increase its power.”

“But how come can it burn a church?”

“Because it’s soulless, a mere physical force. Any true individual, human or otherwise, is under certain constraints of a . . . a moral nature. A demon is allergic to holy symbols. A man who does wrong has to live with his conscience in this world and face judgment in the next. But what does a fire care? And that’s what the salamander is—a glorified fire. It’s only bound by the physical laws of nature and paranature.

“So how do you, uh, put one out?”

“A Hydro of corresponding mass could do it, bye mutual annihilation. Earth could bury it or Air withdraw from its neighborhood. Trouble is, Fire is the swiftest of the lot; it can flick out of an area before any other sort of elemental can injure it. So we’re left with the dismissal spell. But that has to be said in the salamander’s presence, and takes about two minutes.”

“Yeah . . . and when the thing hears you start the words, it’ll burn you down or scram. Very nice. What’re we gonna do?”

“I don’t know, chief,” I said, “except it’s like kissing a sheep dog.” I blew hard and immediately smacked my lips. “You got to be quick. Every fire the critter starts feeds it more energy and makes it that much stronger. There’s a limit somewhere—the square-cube law—but by then, it could be too powerful for humans to affect it.”

“And what’d happen next?”

“Ragnarok . . . . No, I suppose not quite. Men wool naturally raise correspondingly strong counter-elementals, like Hydros. But think of the control difficulty and the incidental damage. Compared to that, Caliphists were pikers.”

Ginny turned from the desk. Abercrombie was chalking a pentagram on the floor while a sputtering Malzius had been deputized to sterilize a pocket knife with match. (The idea was to draw a little blood from somebody. It can substitute for the usual powders, since it contains the same proteins.) The girl laid a hand on mine. “Steve, we’d take too long getting hold of every local adept and organizing them,” she said. “I’m afraid the same’s true of the state police or the National Guard. God knows what the salamander will do while this office is calling for help. We, though, you and I, we could at least keep track of it, with less danger to ourselves than most. Are you game?”

“Sure,” I agreed. “It can’t hurt me in my wolf shape . . . not permanently . . . not if I’m careful. But you’re staying put.”

“Ever hear about the oath of my order? Come on.” As we went out the door, I gave Abercrombie a smug look. He had nicked his wrist and sprinkled the Signs; now he was well into the invocation. I felt cold dampness swirl through the room.

Outside, the night remained autumnally sharp, the moon high. Roofs made a saw-toothed silhouette against the leaping red glare at a dozen points around us, and sirens howled in the streets. Overhead, across the small indifferent stars, I saw what looked like a whirl of dry leaves, refugees fleeing on their sticks.

Svartalf jumped to the front end of Ginny’s Cadillac, and I took the saddle behind hers. We whispered skyward.

Below us, blue fire spat and the station lights went out. Water poured into the street, a solid roar of it with President Malzius bobbing like a cork in the torrent.

“Unholy Sathanas!” I choked. “What’s happened now?”

Svartalf ducked the stick low. “That idiot,” groaned Ginny. “He let the Hydro slop clear over the floor ... short circuits—” She made a few rapid passes with her wand. The stream quieted, drew into itself, became a ten-foot-high blob glimmering in the moonlight. Abercrombie scuttled out and started it squelching toward the nearest fire.

I laughed. “Go visit his place and listen to him tell about his vast experience,” I said.

“Don’t kick a man when he’s down,” Ginny snapped. “You’ve pulled your share of boners, Steve Matuchek.”

Svartalf whisked the broom aloft again and we went above the chimney pots. Oof! I thought. Could she, really be falling for that troll? A regular profile, a smooth tongue, and proximity ... I bit back an inward sickness and squinted ahead, trying to find the salamander.

“There!” Ginny yelled over the whistle of cloven air. Svartalf bottled his tail and hissed.

The University district is shabby-genteel: old pseudo-Gothic caves of wood which have slipped from mansions to rooming houses, fly-specked with minor business establishments. It had begun burning merrily, a score of red stars flickering in the darkness between street lamps. Rushing near, we saw one on the stars explode in a white puff of steam. The Hydro must have clapped a sucker onto a fireplug and blanketed the place. I had a brief heretical thought that the salamander was doing a public service by eliminating those architectural teratologies. But lives and property were involved—

Tall and terrible, the elemental wavered beside house on which it was feeding. It had doubled in s’ and its core was too bright to look at. Flames whirl about the narrow head.

Svartalf braked and we hovered a few yards off, twenty feet in the air and level with the hungry mouth. Ginny was etched wild against night by that intolerable radiance. She braced herself in the stirrups began the spell, her voice almost lost in the roar as the roof caved in. “ O Indra, Abaddon, Lucifer, Moloch, Hephaestos, Loki- ”

It heard. The seething eyes swung toward us and it leaped.

Svartalf squalled when his whiskers shriveled—perhaps only hurt vanity—and put the stick through an Immelmann turn and whipped away. The salamander bawled with the voice of a hundred blazing forests. Suddenly the heat scorching my back was gone, and the thing had materialized in front of us.

“That way!” I hollered, pointing. “In there!”

I covered Ginny’s face and buried my own against her back as we went through the plate-glass front of Stub’s Beer Garden. The flame-tongue licked after us, recoiled, and the salamander ramped beyond the door.

We tumbled off the broom and looked around. The tavern was empty, full of a fire-spattered darkness; everyone had fled. I saw a nearly full glass of beer on the counter and tossed it off.

“You might have offered me a drink,” said Ginny. “Alan would have.” Before I could recover enough to decide whether she was taunting or testing me, she went on in a rapid whisper: “It isn’t trying to escape. It’s gained power-confidence-it means to kill us!”

Even then, I wanted to tell her that red elflocks and a soot-smudge across an aristocratic nose were particularly enchanting. But the occasion didn’t seem appropriate. “Can’t get in here,” I panted. “Can’t do much more than ignite the building by thermal radiation, and that’ll take a while. We’re safe for the moment.”

“Why . . . oh, yes, of course. Stub’s is cold-ironed. All these college beer parlors are, I’m told.”

“Yeah.” I peered out the broken window. The salamander peered back, and spots danced before my eyes. “So the clientele won’t go jazzing up the brew above 3.2—Quick, say your spell.”

Ginny shook her head. “It’ll just flicker away out of earshot. Maybe we can talk to it, find out—”

She trod forth to the window. The thing crouched in the street extended its neck and hissed at her. I stood behind my girl, feeling boxed and useless. Svartalf, lapping spilled beer off the counter, looked toward us and sneered.