Poul Anderson - Operation Chaos

“Nay,” said Maledicto. “And truth to tell, however glad of your society, ’tis belike well she was spared sight of such loveliness as is yours. ’Twould but excite envy and wistfulness.”

From him, somehow, unbelievably, in that flowering night above the great dim sea, under stars and sheer cliffs, that speech to another man’s wife wasn’t impudent, or affected, or anything except precisely right. By the half-illumination on the patio, I saw Ginny blush. Her eyes broke free of Maledicto’s, the lashes fluttered birdlike, she answered confusedly: “It’s kind of you . . . yes . . . won’t you sit down?”

He bowed again and flowed into a chair. I plucked at Ginny’s dress, drew her back toward the house and hissed furiously: “What the devil are you thinking of? Now we won’t get rid of this character for an hour!”

She shook free with an angry gesture I remembered from past quarrels. “We have some cognac, Senor Maledicto,” she said. It would have been her best smile she gave him, slow and sideways, except that the faintest tremble remained upon her lips. “I’ll get it. And would you like a cigar? Steve brought some Perfectos.”

I sat down while she bustled inside. For a moment I was too outraged to speak. Maledicto took the word. “A charming lass, sir. A creature of purest delight.”

“My wife,” I growled. “We came here for privacy.”

“Oh, misdoubt me not!” His chuckle seemed to blend with the sea-murmur. Where he sat, in shadow, I could only make him out as a white and black blur, those oblique eyes glowing at me. “I understand, and shall not presume upon your patience. Mayhap later ’twould please you to meet my sister—”

“I don’t play bridge.”

“Bridge? Oh, aye, indeed, I remember. ’Tis a modern game with playing cards.” His hand sketched an airy dismissal. “Nay, sir, our way is not to force ourselves unwanted. Indeed, we cannot visit save where some desire for us exists, albeit unspoken. ’Twas but . . . how should a man know aught from our dwelling, save that neighbors had arrived? And now I cannot churlishly refuse your lady’s courtesy. But ’tis for a short time only, sir.”

Well, that was as soft an answer as ever turned away wrath. I still couldn’t like Maledicto, but my hostility eased till I could analyze my motives. Which turned out to be largely reaction to a third wheel. Something about him, maybe the perfume he used, made me desire Ginny more than ever before.

But my rage came back as she hovered over him with the cognac, chattered too loudly and laughed too much and insisted on having the Maledictos to dinner tomorrow! I hardly listened to their conversation. He talked smoothly, wittily, never quite answering my questions about himself. I sat and rehearsed what I’d say after he left.

Finally he rose. “I must not keep you,” he said. “Moreover, ’tis a stony path to the Fortaleza, one with which I am not well familiar. Thus I must go slowly, lest I lose my way.”

“Oh! But that could be dangerous.” Ginny turned to me. “You’ve been over the trail, Steve. Show him home.

“I’d not afford you that trouble,” demurred Maledicto.

“It’s the least we can do. I insist, Amaris. It won’t take you long, Steve. You said you felt like a run in the moonlight, and look, the moon is almost due up.”

“Okay, okay, okay!” I snapped, as ungraciously as possible. I could, indeed, turn wolf on the way back, and work some of my temper off. If I tried to argue with her now, the way I felt, our second night would see one Armageddon of a quarrel. “Let’s go.

He kissed her hand. She said farewell, in a soft, blurry voice, like a schoolgirl in love for the first time.,

He had a flashlight; it made a small, bobbing puddle of radiance before us, picking out stones and clumps of sagebrush. The moonglow on the eastern ridges grew stronger. I felt it tingle along my nerves. For a while, as we wound across the mountainside, only the scrunch of our shoes made any noise.

“You brought no torch of your own, sir,” he said at last. I grunted. Why should I tell him of my witchsight-to say nothing of the fact that I was a werewolf who in my alternate species had no need of flashlights? “Well, you shall take mine back,” he continued. “The way were perilous otherwise.”

That I knew. An ordinary human would blunder off the trail, even in bright moonlight. It was a dim, nearly obliterated path, and the land was gnarled and full of shadows. If he then got excited, the man would stumble around lost till dawn—or, quite probably, go off a precipice and smash his skull.

“I will call for it tomorrow evening.” Maledicto sighed happily. “Ali, sir, ’tis rare good you’ve come. New-wedded folk are aye overflowingly full of love, and Cybelita has long been as parched as Amaris.”

“Your sister?” I asked.

“Yes. Would you care to meet her this eventide?”

“No.”

Silence fell again. We dipped into a gut-black ravine, rounded a crag, and could no more see the lodge. Nothing but the dim sheen of waters, the moonglow opposite, the suddenly very far and cold stars, lit that country. I saw the broken walls of the Fortaleza almost over my head, crowning their clifflike teeth in a jaw. Maledicto and I might have been the last living creatures on Midgard.

He stopped. His flashlight snapped out. “Good night, Senor Matuchek!” he cried. His laughter rang evil and beautiful.

“What?” I blinked bewildered into the murk that had clamped on me. “What the hell do you mean? We’re not at the castle yet!”

“Nay. Proceed thither if thou wilst. And if thou canst.”

I heard his feet start back down the path. They didn’t crunch the gravel any more. They were soft and rapid, like the feet of a bounding animal.

Back toward the lodge.

A moment I stood as if cast in lead. I could hear the faintest movement of air, rustling dry sagebrush, the ocean. Then my heartbeat shook all other noises out of me.

“ Ginny! ” I screamed.

I whirled and raced after him. My toes caught a rock, I pitched over, bloodied my hands with the fall. I staggered up, the bluffs and gullies flung my curses back at me, I went stumbling down a slope and through brush and cactus.

Again my foot snagged on something and I fell. This time I cracked my head against a boulder. The impact wasn’t serious, but pain speared through me, lights burst, and for a minute or two I lay half-stunned.

And I felt a new presence in the night.

And through the hopeless aloneness that streamed from it and into my heart and marrow, I felt wire-taut expectation.

—success in my grasp, this third time-both of them, he dead and she corrupted, afterward broken by remorse-safety from the threat that can be seen: over them like a storm cloud as that certain moment draws nigh safety at last —

And the thought jagged more dreadfully sharp than any pain: Maledicto couldn’t affect her by himself, not that strongly anyhow, not overcoming the love and, pride and decency of her . . . no, the Tempter hasp worked in person on my girl—

I did not know what evil was intended. But in flash, the vision of her alone with Maledicto burned me free of everything else, of hurt, weakness, sense and even for a while the memory of a sneering Observer. I howled forth my rage and desperation, sprang erect, and ran.

That was sheer berserkergang. I didn’t consciously notice what I was doing. Doubtless this had been planned, so I’d fall over a cliff to my death. But half-animal instincts and reflexes—I suppose—guarded me.

Presently I’d exhausted my wind and had to stop and gasp a while. That forced pause gave my sanity a chance to take over.

Glaring around, I saw neither castle nor lodge. I’d lost my way.