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 professor-
ships 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 ba-
sics of what I'd stolen, it was old news fast. And the scien-
tific 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
232 Jack L. Chalker
you, huh? You must have a pretty nasty home worid 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 odd-
ball 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 com-
puters to finish the work, and somehow he managed to con-
vince 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
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 233
he was dead center in it, and he dropped all the way down to
here. They say the whole plateau just vanished with every-
thing 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, its principles still classi-
fied 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, Chariey. 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 worid, 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 proba-
ble that the Akhbreed were mathematical geniuses with a high
order civilization while ours was still in caves or maybe
worse off. Over me 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, appar-
ently, with many civilizations. The main thing here was—the
magic still worked, if you had sufficient mathematical apti-
tude 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
234 Jack L. Chalker
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 1 was being
conned. That me substantial and hostile Second Rank pres-
ences I felt all around the border were being faked. Roy came
up with some kind of projection device. 1 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 dem-
onstration 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 1
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, men 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."
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 235
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 re-
minded him. "Without me, who would act as intermediary
with the netherhells? 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
236 fack L. Chalker
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 life-
guard 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 Chariey, 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 Char-
ley apparently knew what he meant. All those references,
even though they didn't come from the same worlds. Who or
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 237
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 compre-