Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  And slowly, as the miles passed far beneath them, Charley teamed what lay behind all this mess, and it was sadder still for being so, well, petty.

  Lang had been a professor at Princeton at the time; a boy genius he'd had his Ph.D. and his voter's card at about the same time, and had already accomplished a lot by the time he first met the man who was to become his enemy.

  Lang's interests lay in the far edge of theoretical physics; the kind of pure intellectual activity in which men still sat in small offices and thought deep thoughts and imagined the unimaginable and then built mathematical and computer models to illustrate various principles that, in fact, probably had no practical application ever, and in which only the mathematics would ever indicate whether or not they were right, or had wasted their whole lives on a falsehood.

  He became particularly attracted to a relatively new field called Chaos Science, which sought to really explain the unexplainable. How could a random explosion of dense matter from the monoblock that created the universe form into such a useful and beautiful pattern, with its own very comfortable natural laws and limitations? Why did the freezing of water vapor form such complex and beautiful crystalline structures, and why were no two apparently exactly alike? Order, often highly complex order, almost always resulted from the most random events. There had to be a law, or a set of laws, that explained it, at least to a degree.

  Doctor Lang became a leading theoretician of the relatively new science, and, as such, those also interested in it wanted to study under him. Among them, and the best of them, was a young Cambodian refugee born Kieu Lompong, who adopted the Americanized first name of Roy, a combination he joked he'd gotten by playing with numero logic at tables. He was young, intense, brilliant, but with no social life and no outside interests and, most of all. Boolean noted, no sense of humor at all.

  Little wonder. As a child, he'd already been to hell, having seen his parents slowly hacked to death in front of him while black-clad revolutionary soldiers held him and made him watch, then put into virtual slavery in the rice paddies where he had to pretend to be a peasant and disguise his genius at all costs, for the new rulers killed the whole intellectual class.

  He had finally escaped, and his genius had been recognized in the refugee camp, and he was made one of the exceptions to be brought to the United States under foster care of distant relatives who now lived there. His now unshackled brilliance produced an even greater rise in academic achievement than had Lang's; he was, under Lang, a Ph.D. candidate at the age of seventeen.

  Under Lang's tutelage, and with access to the big university computers, Roy Lompong, in just a few short months, was able to come out with something that apparently had been percolating in his head for years: a unifying mathematical principle, a single equation, in its own area as significant as Einstein's in his, that unified and revolutionized the whole chaos science community. The thing was, he was in such a pure intellectual area that he didn't realize what kind of a breakthrough he'd made. To him, it was Just a tool to use in studying specific phenomena. It was a whole new mathematics that made work in the field really amount to something in much the same way as Newton had invented calculus just so he could do the mathematical proofs of the theories he was interested in. Instantly obvious to Lang, it nonetheless would never have occurred to him. And yet, only the Princeton team knew it

  "He was so wrapped up in his projects on the creation of the universe, already with the best minds in the field, and he simply never got around to publishing it. He'd stopped reading the literature anyway; it was all beneath him, in the same way that Hemingway wouldn't bother to ever read Doctor Seuss. But I was his advisor and the head of his doctoral committee. And it was published, under my name, with Roy and three others credited with assists, just a few months after he got his degree and accepted a chair at Cal Tech. I doubt if he was even aware of the furor the article caused his head was always in the clouds. In fact, I think it wasn't until three years later, when I got the Nobel for it, that it really hit him what I'd done."

  Charley gasped. "You stole his idea? And took full credit for it?"

  "Yep. And the money and the worldwide acclaim and all the rest. I mean, they looked at me with my reputation, and they looked at this twenty-one-year old who was my 'protege,' and drew the obvious but wrong conclusions. It wasn't the first time it was done. In fact, it's done all the time, it's just rare to win the Nobel for it, and particularly in so short a time. I did, and he flew into a rage about it. It was his life's work to date and it was all his, and I'd taken it from him. More importantly, I'd hit him right in his Asian sense of honor. The fact that it was done fairly often didn't mean that he knew that. That the young discoverers often get professorships and posts elsewhere as rewards by their tutors who take the credit. It's not science, it's a crooked way of getting ahead in money, power, and prestige in the university environment. And he had no forum. Oh, the news was interested in his accusations about me, for about three days. But when the newsmen discovered they couldn't even comprehend the basics of what I'd stolen, it was old news fast. And the scientific and academic community, well, they were more comfortable with good old establishment me than with young firebrand Lompong, whom they'd hardly heard of. What he was doing just wasn't done—not cricket, old boy. You'll get your turn later. You see where it got him."

  "Yeah. Nowhere. So Klittichorn's from the same world as you, huh? You must have a pretty nasty home world from what you say about those soldiers and his parents and all that. I never even heard of the country you said he was from."

  "It's irrelevant. Your world's history and ours diverge quite sharply because of various key assassinations and a major nasty war we lost that yours didn't fight, but yours had its share of misery as well. All of them do. At any rate, I went from obscurity in an obscure field to department head at a quarter of a million bucks a year at M.I.T., and I was on top of the world. He was a bad boy, bitter at his colleagues as much as at me, bitter about everything. He became unglued and started thinking about some practical applications for his theories. He went up to Livermore Labs, which is a think tank run by the university for the government, it's where they sit around and invent new bigger and better terror weapons. They have a hell of a budget, though as close to bottomless as you can get and among the most sophisticated computers that world ever dreamed of. I'm not sure what led him to it, but he got real interested in crazy phenomena. The wolf boy in Germany, people disappearing in full view of onlookers, spontaneous human combustion, rains of frogs—all sorts of weird stuff. A fellow named Charles Fort used to write books on it. Unexplained appearances and disappearances and oddball phenomena of every sort."

  "Flying saucers and stuff."

  "That, too, but there's a lot weirder and more substantiated stuff as well. Somehow, in trying to explain it, he hit upon the theory of the Changewind and its key Maelstrom. I don't think he was prepared for the Changewind effect, but the multidimensional effect, the worlds over worlds, tied in with other areas of new physics. He wanted the primal cause, the mechanism, for random events, both major and minor, to tie it in with overall chaos theory. He needed Livermore's computers to finish the work, and somehow he managed to convince some politicians that it had weapons potential. Maybe he had a weapon in mind from the start—I don't know. But it boiled down to a practical experiment many years ago out on the Nevada test ranges, where they blew up the atom bombs. Some kind of device, maybe part Testa and part Lompong, that would create a weak spot in the dimensional walls. He got more than he bargained for. He drew a Changewind, and he was dead center in it, and he dropped all the way down to here. They say the whole plateau just vanished with everything on it, leaving only virgin-colored sheetrock."

  "Tesia?"

  "Nikola Tesia, one of the types like Einstein, so much a genius we have units of measure in science named for him. He was obsessed with controlling the weather and, back before the turn of the century, and in full view of everybody, he did. But his device was banned, it
s principles still classified to this day, even to people like me, and experiments in that are even banned today in the Geneva Convention. The connection of weather and magnetic forces and fields should not be lost on you."

  "Well, I think I'm sort of following it," she told him, fascinated but not real sure. "It's still magic to me, though."

  "Magic has rules, Charley. That's why you need the charms and amulets sometimes or the magic words to focus the spell or anything else. Before the miracle can take place, the priest must incant and say 'Hocus Pocus!' That's all a magic spelt is, either in the legends and racial memories and religious rites that are all that's left in our world, and the spells here that do almost anything—if you can figure them out. Roy had a leg up. He recognized the spells here as being a variant form of his own mathematics. Unlike the ones here, he had his computer and much of his notes and a thorough grounding in conventional science and physics in particular. It's probable that the Akhbreed were mathematical geniuses with a high order civilization while ours was still in caves or maybe worse off. Over the years here, they lost much of their ancient knowledge, becoming fat and static, unmoving, comfortable with their spells and their empires. Most science vanished, leaving only the sorcery, as happened many times, apparently, with many civilizations. The main thing here was—the magic still worked, if you had sufficient mathematical aptitude to use it. The better your aptitude, the higher you rose in the magical priesthood. That's the difference between Dorion, here, and me. I can solve equations thousands of lines long in my head. He couldn't add two and two without pen and paper."

  Dorion bristled. "Come on! I'm not that bad!"

  "Uh-huh. Well, it's higher math, I admit, but you can't keep a ten variable equation in your head, so your spells have to be looked up and done step by step out of a cookbook. Your highest achievement was a unique formula that gave everybody electric shocks."

  "Okay, you two! Enough!" Charley responded. "Those electric shocks came in handy on this trip, sir, which is more than you did. I mean, if you knew all this and could sneak out, and you can fly and all that, then why did we have to suffer like we did all this time, and go through me hell we went through?"

  Boolean sighed. "It's hard to explain. It was only a few months ago that, quite by accident, I discovered I was being conned. That the substantial and hostile Second Rank presences I felt all around the border were being faked. Roy came up with some kind of projection device. I can't begin to imagine what or how, but he did. It only betrayed itself as a convincing false signal when he had to do that close-in demonstration of how he could guide and project a Changewind over in Qatarung. It caused him to lose contact for a while with his illusion, caused all sorts of flickering in and out of it. Until then, I was convinced that I would have to face several of my colleagues and maybe Roy himself if I stepped out of there, and they sent that message loud and clear. Even when I did find out, it didn't do me much good. Between my duties here to an increasingly nervous king and country, as it were, and my attempts to find out just who was working for Klittichorn and what they were planning, I didn't have much time to spare. I was also trying to track down just where his projector was. In the back of my mind, I figured that if you all got in any real trouble I could break off and either get you out or send some of my adepts to do it. Then, when Sam just sort of vanished off the map, as it were, we went frantic. I'm afraid your side just got lower priority."

  "Thanks a lot," she said dryly.

  "Well, without Sam this isn't going to mean anything. With her, then you have a certain importance as well."

  "Me!"

  "Wait a while. We'll get to it. I think, in fact, that if we can beat them to Sam this might well all work out for the best. Enough for now. Suffice it to say that you aren't crucial to the scheme, but you are none the less important."

  He would say no more on it, and she finally didn't press, but it started her mind wondering like crazy and coming up with the most outrageous, and unappetizing, possibilities.

  Eating with a Second Rank sorcerer was an experience as well. He just picked a clear, remote, uninhabited spot and set them down, and, almost with a wave of his arms and a few mumbled phrases of sheer nonsense, materialized a full table complete with hot dishes, silverware, and the right wines, all uninterrupted by company, weather, or even ants and flies. It was pretty bizarre, but they were the best meals any of them had enjoyed since Covanti hub. Nothing to wash or clear away, either another few waves and incantations and it was gone.

  Boolean could say what he wanted about physics and math and chaos theories; this was sheer fairytale magic.

  It was at the first meal stop, too, that she discovered that the green fuzz had not only a life of its own, but a voice that was so deep and raspy it sounded like a small child speaking by continuously belching. Dorion described the creature, whose name was Cromil, as a small pea-green monkey with jackass ears and a nose that resembled an eggplant. A longtime companion of and familiar to Boolean and his remote "eyes," in much the same way as Shadowcat, he was not nearly the quiet type that the cat had been, although he disliked speaking around strangers more than he had to.

  "You just love to show off, don't you, you big ham." Cromil croaked as Boolean did the meal with extra flourishes. Boolean chuckled. "That's why I keep Cromil around. He keeps me in my proper place because he doesn't care what happens to him."

  "You need me more than I need you," the creature reminded him. "Without me, who would act as intermediary with the nether-hells? Who'd make the best deals with all those imps and demons you love to use?"

  Now, at the one rest and sleep stop Boolean had decided upon for all their sakes, Charley and Dorion were both at last able to get themselves clean of days of grime and garbage. The sorcerer had merely picked, not materialized, the water, rail and pools, but he'd made certain that the water was both warm and pure, and he even provided her with scented soap. It seemed to Dorion that she was never going to get out of the water, and that she was going to compulsively scrub her skin completely off. He was out and dried off long before she first considered coming out, and that meant he had to play lifeguard for her,

  It was Boday, as usual, who gave him an answer. "Boday felt die same way after those foul beasts had her on the rocks back in the Kudaan," she whispered In his ear. "We all did, but Charley, she did not experience what we went through. Now she has. She is trying to wash them out of her. All of them out of all of her. She will not succeed, any more than Boday has even after all this time. but, let her try. Sooner or later she will realize that, once you have been violated like that, you can never wash it all away."

  It explained much, but left Dorion with the same confusion over the sexes he'd always had. Charley'd been a whore, damn it. One, two guys some days, for a year, and after that she'd screwed almost anything with a male voice and it hadn't been anything but fim, and most of the countless guys she'd had were strangers, too, about which she'd known little or nothing. Hell, she even did sexy come-ons to the townies and border guards. And yet, somehow, that gang-bang orgy with her at the center back at the camp had been different, had really changed her. It was one thing for a violent-type guy to stalk and pounce on a woman, any woman, and force himself on her. That he could understand. But, damn it, if you're going to glory in being a sex object and advertise the fact, how'd this one really differ except that they were rougher, cruder, and smellier. It wasn't even the bruises and soreness she still had it was something inside, like Boday said. There was something new—fear, maybe, although she still had guts enough to cross that camp and go into the null and a personality decisive enough to shape her own destiny if she could. Maybe it wasn't fear. Maybe it was doubt. Self-doubt.

  Maybe it was just that the one night back there at camp she had to face what she really had become—and what she'd been all along—and she didn't like it. He wondered.

  He'd been fascinated at what Boolean had been telling her. The man had always been very chatty, but Dorion had trouble following this
story and all its references, even though Charley apparently knew what he meant. All those references, even though they didn't come from the same worlds. Who or what was an Einstein or a Tesia, and what was so wonderful about a Nobel Prize, whatever that was, that it would cause such misery? And what was so unusual about mysterious appearances and disappearances and frog rains and the like? Hell, they happened all the time….

  For Charley, the sudden rescue from the continual bottom of the heap she'd been forced into for so long had come first as a shock and now as a joy. She no longer was even all that nervous about falling off the damned saddle, although, tied in as she was and short of aerial saddle fights, there was little chance of that. Being able to talk with someone, even one of great power with a surface personality that was pleasing, masking something she knew she could never really comprehend, and being treated as an equal, at least for social purposes, by that man was something she hadn't really thought she'd ever experience again. It little mattered that he came from a world which had known far more wars and experienced even more tyranny than hers—whose last major war, except a few banana republic ones, was the one against the Germans and Japanese. Or that had apparently successfully somehow torn its way from England in revolution back in the Seventeen Hundreds sometime and as a result had had to fight a bloody civil war over slavery in the middle Eighteen Hundreds instead of being forced to obey the British abolition back in the Thirties, and had something called a Congress instead of a parliament.

  But by their common times there were more similarities than differences. She knew Einstein and MIT and Cal Tech, and there were a lot more similarities than differences between them now from her point of view. He was no more out of touch with rock and roll, or TV stars, or fashion than anybody else who'd been stuck here and out of touch for thirty years.