Poul Anderson - Operation Chaos

At that we halted, the harp ceased, the eternal silence of the infinite spaces fell upon us, and the zodiac spun faster and faster until its figures blurred together and were time’s wheel. What light remained lay wholly on the pastor. He stood, arms lifted, before the altar. “Hear us, O God, from Heaven Thy dwelling place,” he called. “Thou knowest our desire; make it pure, we pray Thee. In Thy sight stand this man Steven and this woman Virginia, who are prepared to harrow hell as best as is granted them to, that they may confound Thine enemies and rescue an unstained child from the dungeons of the worm. Without Thine aid they have no hope. We beg Thee to allow them a guide and counselor through the wilderness of hell. If we are not worthy of an angel, we ask that Thou commend them unto Thy departed servant Nikolai Ivanovitch Lobachevsky, or whomever else may be knowledgeable in these matters as having been on earth a discoverer of them. This do we pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

There was another stillness.

Then the cross on the altar shone forth, momentarily sun-bright, and we heard one piercing, exquisite note, and I felt within me a rush of joy I can only vaguely compare to the first winning of first love. But another noise followed, as of a huge wind. The candles went out, the panes went black, we staggered when the floor shook beneath us. Svantalf screamed.

“Ginny!” I heard myself yell. Simultaneously I was whirled down a vortex of images, memories, a bulbous-towered church on an illimitable plain, a dirt track between rows of low thatch-roofed cottages and a horseman squeaking and jingling along it with saber at belt, an iron winter that ended in thaw and watery gleams and returning bird-flocks and shy breath of green across the beechwoods, a disordered stack of books, faces, faces, hands, a woman who was my wife, a son who died too young, half of Kazan in one red blaze, the year of the cholera, the letter from Gottingen, loves, failures, blindness closing in day by slow day and none of it was me .

A thunderclap rattled our teeth. The wind stopped, the light came back, the sense of poised forces was no more. We stood bewildered in our ordinary lives. Ginny cast herself into my arms.

“ Lyubimyets, ” I croaked to her, “no, darling— Gospodny pomiluie- ” while the kaleidoscope gyred within me. Svartalf stood on a workbench, back arched, tail bottled, not in rage but in panic. His lips, throat, tongue writhed through a ghastly fight with sounds no cat can make. He was trying to talk.

“What’s gone wrong?” Barney roared.

Ginny took over. She beckoned to the closest men. “Karlslund, Hardy, help Steve,” she rapped. “Check him, Doc.” I heard her fragmentarily through the chaos. My friends supported me. I reached a chair, collapsed, and fought for breath.

My derangement was short. The recollections of another land, another time, stopped rocketing forth at random. They had been terrifying because they were strange and out of my control. Poko’y sounded in my awareness, together with Peace , and I knew they meant the same. Courage lifted. I sensed myself thinking, with overtones of both formalism and compassion:

—I beg your pardon, sir. This re-embodiment confused me likewise. I had not paused to reflect what a difference would be made by more than a hundred years in the far realms where I have been. A few minutes will suffice, I believe, for preliminary studies providing the informational basis for a modus vivendi that shall be tolerable to you. Rest assured that I regret any intrusion and will minimize the same. I may add, with due respect, that what I chance to learn about your private affairs will doubtless be of no special significance to one who has left the flesh behind him.

Lobachevsky! I realized.

Your servant, sir. Ah, yes, Steven Anton Matuchek. Will you graciously excuse me for the necessary brief interval?

This, and the indescribable stirring of two memory sets that followed, went on at the back of my consciousness. The rest of me was again alert: uncannily so. I waved Ashman aside with an “I’m okay” and scanned the scene before me.

In Svartalf s hysterical condition, he was dangerous to approach. Ginny tapped a basin of water at a workbench sink and threw it over him. He squalled, sprang to the floor, dashed to a corner, crouched and glowered. “Poor puss,” she consoled. “I had to do that.” She found a towel. “Come here to mama and we’ll dry you off.” He made her come to him. She squatted and rubbed his fur.

“What got into him?” Charles asked.

Ginny looked up. Against the red hair her face was doubly pale. “Good phrase, Admiral,” she said. “Something did. I shocked his body with a drenching. The natural cat reflexes took over, and the invading spirit lost its dominance. But it’s still there. As soon as it learns its psychosomatic way around, it’ll try to assume control and do what it’s come for.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know. We’d better secure him.”

I rose. “No, wait,” I said. “I can find out.” Their eyes swiveled toward me. “You see, uh, I’ve got Lobachevsky.”

“What?” Karlslund protested. “His soul in yours? Can’t be! The saints never—”

I brushed past, knelt by Ginny, took Svartalf’s head between my hands, and said, “Relax. Nobody wants to hurt you. My guest thinks he understands what’s happened. Savvy? Nikolai Ivanovitch Lobachevsky is his name. Who are you?”

The muscles bunched, the fangs appeared, a growing ululation swept the room. Svartalf was about to have another fit.

—Sir, by your leave, the thought went in me. He is not hostile. I would know if he were. He is disconcerted at what has occurred, and has merely a feline brain to think with. Evidently he is unacquainted with your language. May I endeavor to calm him?

Russian purled and fizzled from my lips. Svartalf started, then I felt him ease a bit in my grasp. He looked and listened as intently as if I were a mousehole. When I stopped, he shook his head and mewed.

—So he was not of my nationality either. But he appears to have grasped our intent.

Look, I thought, you can follow English, using my knowledge. Svartalf knows it too. Why can’t his . . . inhabitant . . . do like you?

—I told you, sir, the feline brain is inadequate. It has nothing like a human speech-handling structure. The visiting soul must use every available cortical cell to maintain bare reason. But it can freely draw upon its terrestrial experience, thanks to the immense data storage capacity of even a diminutive mammalian body. Hence we can use what languages it knew before.

I thought: I see. Don’t underrate Svartalf. He’s pure-bred from a long line of witch familiars, more intelligent than an ordinary cat. And the spells that’ve surrounded him through his life must’ve had effects.

-Excellent. “ Sprechen Sie Deutsch? ”

Svartalf nodded eagerly. “Meeoh,” he said with an umlaut.

“ Guten Tag, gnadiger Herr. Ich bin der Mathematiker Nikolai Iwanowitsch Lobatschewski, quondam Oberpfarrer zu der Kasans Universitdt in Russland je suis votre tres humble serviteur, Monsieur .” That last was in French, as politeness called for in the earlier nineteenth century.

“W-r-r-rar-r.” Claws gestured across the floor.

Ginny said, wide-eyed with awe: “He wants to write . . . Svartalf, listen. Don’t be angry. Don’t be afraid. Let him do what he will. Don’t fight, help him. When this is over, you’ll have more cream and sardines than you can eat. I promise. There’s a good cat.” She rubbed him under the chin. It didn’t seem quite the proper treatment for a visiting savant, but it worked, because at last he purred.