The Incompleat Enchanter

by L. Sprague De Camp

  “Why does it take Odinn so long to get to Hell?” said Shea, puzzled.

  “He goes in disguise, as you saw him on the moor, riding a common pony. The spae-wife Grua is of the giant brood. Be sure she would refuse to advise him, or give him ill advice, did she recognize him as one of the Æsir.”

  Gold Top was up out of the clouds, riding the rainbow that seemed to stretch endlessly before. Shea could think only how many steaks one could get from the huge animal. He had never eaten horseflesh, but in his present mood was willing to try.

  The sun was already low when they pierced the cloud-banks again. This time they dropped straight into swirls of snow. Beneath and then around them Shea could make out a ragged, gloomy landscape of sharp black pinnacles, too steep to gather drifts.

  * * *

  The rainbow ended abruptly, and they were on a rough road that wound among the rock towers. Gold Top’s hoofs clop-clopped sharply on frozen mud. The road wound tortuously, always downward into a great gorge, which reared up pillars and buttresses on either side. Snowflakes sank vertically through the still air around them, feathering the forlorn little patches of moss that constituted the only vegetation. Cold tore at them like a knife. Enormous icicles, like the trunks of elephants, were suspended all around. There was no sound but the tread of the horse and his quick breathing, which condensed in little vapour plumes around his nostrils.

  Darker and darker it grew, colder and colder. Shea whispered — he did not know why, except that it seemed appropriate — “Is this Hell of yours a cold place?”

  “The coldest in the nine worlds,” said Heimdall. “Now you shall pass me up the great sword, that I may light our way with it.”

  Shea did so. Ahead, all he could see over Heimdall’s shoulder now was blackness, as though the walls of the gorge had shut them in above. Shea put out one hand as they scraped one wall of the chasm, then jerked it back. The cold of the rock bit through his mitten into his fingers like fire.

  Gold Top’s ears pricked forward in the light from the sword. They rounded a corner, and came suddenly on a spark of life in that gloomy place, lit by an eerie blue-green phosphorescence. Shea could make out in that half-light the tall, slouch-hatted figure of the Wanderer, and his pony beside him. There was a third figure, cloaked and hooded in black, its face invisible.

  Odinn looked towards them as they approached. “Hai, Muginn brought me tidings of your captivity and your escape. The second was the better news,” said the sonorous voice.

  Heimdall and Shea dismounted. The Wanderer looked sharply at Shea. “Are you not that lost one I met near the crossroads?” he asked.

  “It is none other,” put in Heimdall, “and a warlock of power he is, as well as the briskest man with sword that ever I saw. He is to be of my band. We have Hundingsbana and Head. Have you won that for which you came?”

  “Enough, or near enough. Myself and Vidarr are to stand before the Sons of the Wolf, those dreadful monsters. Thor shall fight the Worm; Frey, Surt. Ullr and his men are to match the hill giants and you the frost giants, as already I knew.”

  “Allfather, you are needed. The dog Garm is loose and Surt is bearing the flaming sword from the south with the frost giants at his back. The Time is here.”

  “Aieeee!” screeched the black-shrouded figure. “I know ye now, Odinn! Woe the day that my tongue —”

  “Silence, hag!” The deep voice seemed to fill that desolate place with thunder. “Blow, son of mine, then. Rouse our bands, for it is Time.”

  “Aieeee!” screeched the figure again. “Begone, accursed ones, to whatever place from whence ye came!” A hand shot out, and Shea noticed with a prickling of the scalp that it was fleshless. The hand seized a sprinkle of snow and threw it at Odinn. He laughed.

  “Begone!” shrieked the spae-wife, throwing another handful of snow, this time at Heimdall. His only reply was to set the great horn to his lips and take a deep breath.

  “Begone, I say!” she screamed again. Shea had a bloodcurdling glimpse of a skull under the hood as she scooped up the third handful of snow. “To whatever misbegotten place ye came from!” The first notes of the roaring trumpet sang and swelled and filled all space in a tremendous peal of martial, triumphant music. The rocks shook, and the icicles cracked, and Harold Shea saw the third handful of snow, a harmless little damp clot, flying at him from Grua’s bony fingers. . . .

  * * *

  “Well,” said the detective, “I’m sorry you can’t help me out no more than that, Dr. Chalmers. We gotta notify his folks in St. Louis. We get these missing-person cases now and then, but we usually find ’em. You’ll get his things together, will you?”

  “Certainly, certainly,” said Reed Chalmers. “I thought I’d go over the papers now.”

  “Okay. Thanks. Miss Mugler, I’ll send you a report with my bill.”

  “But,” said Gertrude Mugler, “I don’t want a report! I want Mr. Shea!”

  The detective grinned. “You paid for a report, whether you want it or not. You can throw it away. So long. ’By, Dr. Chalmers. ’By, Mr. Bayard. Be seein’ you.” The door of the room closed.

  Walter Bayard, lounging in Harold Shea’s one good armchair asked: “Why didn’t you tell him what you think really happened?”

  Chalmers replied: “Because it would be — shall I say — somewhat difficult to prove. I do not propose to make myself a subject of public ridicule.”

  Gertrude said: “That wasn’t honest of you, Doctor. Even if you won’t tell me, you might at least —”

  Bayard wiggled an eyebrow at the worried girl. “Heh, heh. Who was indignantly denying that Harold might have run away from her maternal envelopment, when the detective asked her just now?”

  Gertrude snapped: “In the first place it wasn’t so, and in the second it was none of his damn business, and in the third I think you two might at least cooperate instead of obstructing, especially since I’m paying for Mr. Johnson’s services!”

  “My dear Gertrude,” said Chalmers, if I thought it had the slightest chance of doing any good, I should certainly acquaint your Mr. Johnson with my hypothesis. But I assure you that he would decline to credit it, and even if he did, the theory would present no — uh — point of application for his investigatory methods.”

  “Something in that, Gert,” said Bayard. “You can prove the thing in one direction, but not the reverse. If Shea can’t get back from where we think he’s gone, it’s a cinch that Johnson couldn’t. So why send Johnson after him?” He sighed. “It’ll be a little queer without Harold, for all his —”

  Wham! The outward rush of displaced air bowled Chalmers over, whipped a picture from the wall with a crash of glass, and sent the pile of Shea’s papers flying. There may have been minor damage as well.

  If there was, neither Gertrude nor Chalmers nor Bayard noticed it. In the middle of the room stood the subject of their talk, swathed in countless yards of blanket-like woollen garments. His face was tanned and slightly chapped. In his left hand he held a clumsy broom of willow twigs.

  “Hiya,” said Shea, grinning at their expressions. “You three had dinner yet? Yeah? Well, you can come along and watch me eat.” He tossed the broom in a corner. “Souvenir to go with my story. Useful while it lasted, but I’m afraid it won’t work here.”

  “B — but,” stammered Chalmers, “you aren’t going out to a restaurant in those garments?”

  “Hell, yes? I’m hungry.”

  “What will people think?”

  “What do I care?”

  “God bless my soul,” exclaimed Chalmers, and followed Shea out.

  Book Two

  The Mathematics Of Magic

  Chapter One

  “STEAK,” SAID HAROLD Shea.

  “Porterhouse, sirloin — ?” asked the waitress.

  “Both, so long as they’re big and rare.”

  “Harold,” said Gertrude Mugler, “whatever this is all about, please be careful of your diet. A large protein intake for a man who doesn’t
do physical labour —”

  “Physical labour!” barked Shea. The last meal I had was twenty-four hours ago, and it was a little dish of oatmeal mush. Sour, too. Since then I’ve fought a duel with a couple of giants, done acrobatics on a magic broomstick, had a ride on a god’s enchanted brewery-horse — Well, anyway, I’ve been roasted and frozen and shaken and nearly scared to death, and by Thor’s hammer I want food!”

  “Harold, are you — are you feeling well?”

  “Fine, toots. Or I will be when I surround some grub.” He turned to the waitress again: “Steak!”

  “Listen, Harold,” persisted Gertrude. “Don’t! You pop out of nowhere in that crazy costume; you talk wildly about things you couldn’t expect anyone to believe —”

  “You don’t have to believe I popped out of nowhere, either,” said Shea.

  “Then can’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, and I’m not going to talk about it until I’ve consulted Dr. Chalmers.”

  “Well,” said Gertrude, “if that’s your attitude — come on, Walter, let’s go to a movie.”

  “But,” bleated Walter Bayard, I want to listen —”

  “Oh, be a gentleman for once in your life!”

  “Oh, all right, Gert.” He leered back at Shea as he went. “Anyway, you didn’t bring back any dream-girls.”

  Shea grinned after them. “There goes the guy who used to kid me about how Gert had gotten the psychological jump on me,” he said to Chalmers. “I hope she rides herd on him.”

  Reed Chalmers smiled faintly. “You forget — uh — Walter’s infallible defence mechanism.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When the pressure becomes too great, he can simply go to sleep on her.”

  Shea gave a suppressed snort. “You know not what you — ah, food! He attacked his plate, working his mouth around a piece of steak big enough to choke a horse; with effort like a snake engulfing a toad. An expression of pure bliss spread over his face as he chewed. Chalmers noted that his colleague ignored the fact that half the restaurant was staring at the tableaux of a long-faced young man in baggy Norse woollens.

  “A — uh — somewhat less rapid rate of ingestion —” Chalmers began.

  Shea shook a finger, gulped down his mouthful, and spoke: “Don’t worry about me.” Between mouthfuls he told his story.

  * * *

  Reed Chalmers’ mild eyes bugged as he watched and listened to his young friend. “Good gracious! That’s the third of those steaks, somewhat inadequately called small. You’ll — uh — render yourself ill.”

  “This is the last one. Hey, waitress! May I please have an apple pie? Not just a segment; I want a whole pie.” He turned back to Chalmers. “So the spook said, ‘Go on back to where you came from,’ and here I am!”

  Chalmers mused: “While I have known you, Harold, to commit venial sins of rhetorical exaggeration incompatible with true scientific accuracy, I have never known you to engage in deliberate fabrication. So I believe you. The general alteration in your appearance and bearing furnishes persuasive corroboration.”

  “Have I changed?” asked Shea.

  “You show the effects of physical hardship, as well as exposure to the sun and wind.”

  “That all?”

  Chalmers pondered: “You would like me to say, would you not, that your air of self-conscious brashness has been replaced by one of legitimate self-confidence?”

  “Well — uh . . .”

  Chalmers continued: “Those conscious of shortcomings are always eager to be informed of radical improvement. Actually such improvements, when they occur at all in an adult, take place slowly. No miraculous change is to be expected in a couple of weeks.” He twinkled at Shea’s discomfort and added: “I will admit that you seem to show some alteration of personality, and I think in the right direction.”

  Shea laughed. “At least I learned to appreciate the value of theory. If you’d been along we’d really have gotten somewhere in applying the screwy laws of the world of Scandinavian myth.”

  “I —” Chalmers stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Of course,” said Shea, “you’d never have stood the physical end of it.”

  Chalmers sighed. “I suppose not.”

  Shea went on: “It checked your theory of paraphysics all right. In that universe the laws of similarity and contagion held good — at least, the magic spells I figured out with their help worked.”

  Chalmers brushed his grey mop out of his eyes. “Amazing! I asserted that the transfer of the physical body, to another spacetime frame by symbolic logic — what did you call it? A syllogismobile! was possible. But it is a shock to have so — uh — far-fetched a deduction confirmed by experimental proof.”

  Shea said: “Sure, we’ve got something all right. But what are we going to do with it?”

  Chalmers frowned. “It is rather obscure. Presents a whole new world-picture, unlike anything but some of the Oriental religions. An infinity of universes, moving along parallel but distinct space-time vectors. But, as you put it, what can be done with it? If I publish the results of your experiment they’ll simply say poor old Chalmers has . . . uh . . . a tile loose, and in any case an experimental psychologist has no business venturing into physics. Think of Oliver Lodge!” He shuddered. “The only satisfactory proof would be to send some of the doubters to another universe. Unfortunately, we could hardly count on their encountering Grua with a handful of enchanted snow. They would be unable to return, and the doubters left behind would be doubters still. You perceive the difficulty.”

  “Huh-uh. Wonder how the fight came out? It might be worth while going back to see.”

  “It would be inadvisable. The Ragnarök was only beginning when you left. You might return to find the giants had won and were in charge. If you wish adventure, there are plenty of other and less —” The voice trailed off.

  “Other what?”

  “Well, perhaps nothing of importance. I was about to say — systematic attainable universes. Since you left I have been engaged in the development of the structural theory of a multiple-universe cosmology, and —”

  Shea interrupted. “Listen, Dr. Chalmers. We both know too much psychology to kid each other. Something’s eating you besides paraphysical mathematics.”

  “Harold” — Chalmers gave a sigh — “I’ve always maintained that you’d make a better . . . uh . . . salesman or politician than psychologist. You’re weak on theory, but in offhand, rule-of-thumb diagnosis of behaviour patterns, you are incomparable.”

  “Don’t evade, Doctor.”

  “Very well. Were you perhaps thinking of making another journey soon?”

  “Why, I just got back and haven’t had time to think. Say! You aren’t suggesting you’d like to go along, are you?”

  Reed Chalmers rolled a fragment of bread into a precise grey pill. “As a matter of fact that’s what I was suggesting, Harold. Here I am, fifty-six years old, without family or intimate friends — except you young men of the Garaden Institute. I have made — or believe I have — the greatest cosmological discovery since Copernicus, yet its nature is such that it cannot be proved, and no one will credit it without the most exhaustive proof.” He shrugged slightly. “My work is done, but to a result that will afford me no appreciation in this world. May I not . . . uh . . . be permitted the foible of seeking a fuller life elsewhere?”

  * * *

  Back in Shea’s room and seated in the best armchair, Chalmers stretched his legs and meditatively sipped a highball. “I’m afraid your suggestion of Cuchulainn’s Ireland does not meet with my approval. An adventurous life, no doubt — but culturally a barbarism, with an elaborate system of taboos, violations of which are punished by the removal of heads,”

  “But the girls —” protested Shea. “Those piano-legged Scowegian blondes — they all reminded me of Gertrude —”

  “For a person of my age amorous adventure has few a
ttractions. And as my partner in this enterprise I must ask you to remember that while you have . . . uh . . . certain physical skills that would be useful anywhere, I am limited to fields where intellectual attainments would be of more value than in ancient Ireland. The only non-warriors who got anywhere in those days were minstrels — and I can neither compose lays nor play the harp.”

  Shea grinned maliciously. “All right, you leave the girls to me, then. But I guess you’re right; we’ll have to drop Queen Maev and Ossian.” He peered around the bookshelves. “How about this?”

  Chalmers examined the volume he handed down. “Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Mm-m-m — “vision unrolled after vision to the sound of varying music,” as Dr. Johnson said. Certainly a brilliant and interesting world, and one in which I personally might have some place. But I am afraid we should find it uncomfortable if we landed in the latter half of the story, where Queen Gloriana’s knights are having a harder time, as though Spenser were growing discouraged, or the narrative for some reason were escaping from his hands, taking on a life of its own. I’m not sure we could exercise the degree of selectivity needed to get into the story at the right point. After all, in your last experience, you attempted Ireland and arrived in Scandinavian myth.”

  “But,” protested Shea, “if you’re going adventuring you can’t avoid —” and then stopped, his mouth open.

  “You were about to say ‘danger’, were you not?” said Chalmers, with a smile. “I confess —”

  Shea got to his feet. “Doctor . . . Doc —” he burst out. “Listen: why shouldn’t we jump right into that last part of the Faerie Queene and help Gloriana’s knights straighten things out? You said you had worked out some new angles. We ought to be better than anyone else in the place. Look what I was able to do in the Ragnarök with the little I know!”

  “You are immodest, Harold,” replied Chalmers, but he was leaning forward. “Still, it is an . . . uh . . . attractive plan; to look in another world for the achievement denied in this. Suppose you fill my glass again while we consider details.”