Rescue From Hell

Operation Chaos, XXXIII.

In the hell universe:

a monstrous towered castle, several square miles in area;

within the castle, a courtyard;

at the center of the courtyard, a small, stone, steepled, windowless house like a perverted chapel;

within the house, a single room with a lighted altar, a pattern of objects to be used for a magical transit, the changeling not yet transmitted to the goetic universe and refuse from the Matuchek's house displaced by the demon who has gone to kidnap Valeria.

Matuchek knows that Virginia's familiar, the cat Svartalf, fought the demon who then departed with Virginia but has not yet arrived back in the hell universe:

"At this moment, if simultaneity had meaning between universes, the fight ramped and Svartalf's blood was riven from him." (p. 267)

Simultaneity cannot have any meaning between two different space-time continua (see Time And Times). However, for practical purposes, Matuchek can think in terms of simultaneity because he has arrived at the demon's departure point before the demon's return to it. He then makes a perfectly straightforward point which I previously misunderstood because I misinterpreted it as a time travel paradox (see Two Air Fights With Demons). When Virginia draws a diagram for defense against the demons trying to follow the Matucheks into the small stone house, she must not disturb the pattern of objects that has been laid out for the demon's transit between worlds:

"They were the demon's return ticket. Given them, he need simply cast the appropriate spell in our cosmos... If the kidnaper found himself unable to make it back with his victim, God alone knew what would happen. They'd certainly both leave our home and a changeling replace them. But we'd have no inkling of how this came about or where they'd gone. It might provide the exact chance the enemy needed to get his project back on the rails." (p. 267)

I thought that the situation was as follows:

Matuchek knows that the demon had arrived back in the hell universe with Valeria;

therefore, to prevent that arrival would be to "change the past" with all the complications or contradictions that that always entails.

However, the situation is much simpler:

Matuchek knows that the demon had departed from the Matuchek household with Valeria;

however, he does not yet know for sure that the demon had arrived back in the hell universe with Valeria,

therefore, to prevent that arrival will not be to "change the past" but would be to generate a new problem - where did they go instead?