John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

“Less noise, please,” said Dr. Fell.

I screamed to Miss Daw, “Don’t let them do this to me, Miss Daw! Please!”

She said in a voice emotionless and remote: “The choice is not mine to make, child.” She turned and handed a small key to Grendel, who was limping in short half-hops past where she stood. He had not been maimed long enough to learn how to walk one-legged with any grace.

She said to him, “You will have to unlock her, Grendel. None of us can work the lock.”

He scowled at the key and snatched it gracelessly from her hand.

I tossed my body with all my strength back and forth in the grip of Twitchett and Fell. Twitchett snorted when my flying hair slapped her in the face. I screamed and panted and arched my back and kicked with my legs.

I saw Grendel, staring at my writhing, struggling body in fascination. His expression slipped for a moment. Instead of the normal lust he might have felt seeing a helpless and nubile girl writhing around in a torn nightshirt, something like pity flickered in his eyes. He didn’t like seeing me hurt. Maybe, in his perverted mind, he wanted me to be afraid, but he only wanted me to be afraid of him . He didn’t like seeing other people make me scream. He didn’t like seeing me imprisoned, not just then.

Reality slipped a bit, too. One of my higher senses flickered on, like a bruised eye prying its lids open for a moment.

I could see Dr. Fell. He looked… more flat… than the other people in the room. As if he were just made of matter, a random clockwork made of atoms, nothing else. I saw the drugs and potions he was carrying in a little case clipped to his belt. Atomic structures glistened in rows and long chains, suspended in the fluid of several hypodermics.

Time to do something. I was not sure what. Something.

I saw time-images overlapping the light-picture. In these images, one of the needles was destined go into my arm; one of the drugs was going to affect my nervous system.

I bent that world-line into a knot. The controlling monad for that group of chemicals was inert, and the final causes of the atoms were deterministic, controlled entirely by Newtonian cause-and-effect. The monad tilted in the Fourth Dimension and came awake, bringing its meaning-axis to bear. Quantum uncertainty increased in the atomic mixture. No different than what I had done to restore Quentin’s memory to him. New branches and stalks erupted on the monad’s tree of possible futures. It was no longer determined and inert.

It was done. The chemical in the hypo now had free will.

I found an energy wave passing between me and the controlling monad for that atom group. I impressed a communication force into the wave, and it passed on to the monad. I asked it not to hurt me.

The echo was an emotional wave, not words. But it was a feeling of puppyish friendliness, a sort of, “OK! Whatever you say!” enthusiasm.

Miss Daw saw it. She opened her mouth to speak.

I bent a world-line between me and Boggin, as if I were about to imprint a communication-wave running to him. Miss Daw saw the strands of moral order snarl around the both of us. If she betrayed my secret, I would tell Boggin that she had told me about Myriagon. Maybe Boggin would not care. Maybe he would.

Miss Daw glanced over at where Mestor lay on the floor. She closed her lips again, and assumed the mask she always wore; all prim and proper, distant and remote.

Headmaster Boggin said, “I just felt something bend destiny.” He stepped over to the disc player which was on the shelf. He measured the distance between it and my cot, frowning.

He tried to get it open, but I had jammed it shut.

Dr. Fell was no more thrown off balance or moved by my violent struggles than a statue might have been. He said in a bored voice, “Permit me, Headmaster.”

I did not see whatever magnetic force Fell reached across the cell with, but the disc player went sprong, and the little door snapped open.

Boggin said, “It seems the little dangerous one got the disc out somehow.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even change expression. All I did was pause in my struggles a little, and look at Sister Twitch-ett in surprise.

Boggin, Fell, and Miss Daw noticed it. They all turned and looked at her, too.

Sister Twitchett said in fear, “I had it on last night! I swear I hit that little switch!”

Boggin said smoothly, “We will discuss the matter of your dereliction… ah, of your gross dereliction, once we are done here. With the example of Mestor so, shall I say, evident? Yes, evident, before the eyes of everyone, nothing… overt… needs to be done to you. You and I will come to some understanding, I am sure. Meanwhile, check your purse and your locker to see where you left Miss Daw’s delightful little digital recording of her music.

“Also, you and Doctor Fell will have to examine the girl quite closely to see that she did not write herself some note, or scratch any signs or marks into her flesh with her fingernails, or swallow anything which might… ah… come out later, and give her some clue as to what she is about to forget. The more thorough you are at that little bit of cleanup, the more lenient I will be when discussing this… unfortunate… oversight of yours. The music was not playing last night, and her powers are already beginning to stir. Grendel, if you will do the honors…?”

Grendel hopped over to me, propped his crutch under his armpit, and took my head between his hands. His palms were rough on my cheeks.

My higher senses went dead. I was just the powerless girl he wanted me to be.

His eyes stared into mine. My vision started to fade around the edges, as if a tunnel of smoke were forming, with Grendel’s eyes, Grendel’s hungry, angry eyes, at the axis of the tunnel. My head felt light, like a balloon about to float away…

I licked my dry lips. “Master…,” I whispered. Or maybe I only formed the words with my lips.

The tunnel wobbled. His eyes lost strength. I could see the willpower leaking out of his gaze, the certainty evaporating.

In his paradigm, he could have anything he desired. If he desired it truly, and with all his heart. If he desired it, deep down, right to the core of his being, without any hesitation or doubt.

Such an easy paradigm to work with. But it had a flaw. Wanting to desire something is not the same as desiring it to the core of your being. You can’t really order yourself to be obsessed with something.

That was my theory, at least. That was my hope.

And my theory, and my hope, seemed pretty flimsy when Grendel just smirked and squinted, and the darkness from the edges of my vision filled my eyes. This time, my head was a balloon with its string cut, and my thoughts and memories, just like that, just as quick as that, went up and away and were scattered.

Dimly, as from a great distance, I felt Grendel lower me gently (ever so gently!) to the floor stones. I wondered how he managed that with just one leg. Maybe it was something he really, really desired to do.

His voice: “I’ve made her body be just made of atoms, like you wanted, Doctor.”

I felt a dab of cold cotton on my arm, and then a needle slid in. “She’ll wake in the infirmary, and we’ll tell her what we told the others; that she was gravely ill with pneumonia.”

I kept thinking: We failed: It is over, all over, ended, all ended . Our little children’s crusade, our rebellion against the gods and monsters pretending to be our elders, had failed. Once my memory was wiped out all five of us would be back where we had been at the beginning: merely dumb children again, weak, powerless, unaware of our heritage, our strange abilities. Gone, all gone, all of it is gone .

There was nothing to hold on to, no way to keep my thoughts my own. Have you ever woken up suddenly, eager to remember some perfect dream lingering in your thoughts, only to have it vanish, like fog, at daybreak? So it was for me. The prison doors were shut again: I was lost to myself.