John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

Quentin said, "She's making a break for it."

"Let's crawl. How fast can she go?"

So we both crawled.

When we came out into the snow again, there were columns of fire burning near the truck, which was scattered all across the slope behind. A complex-looking machine, blocky and square, made of engine parts, lenses, wires, lay on its side in a puddle of flickering gasoline. It had a big tube issuing from one end like a gun barrel, but I think that was only from the muffler.

There were craters pockmarking the snow here and there, and fantastic, bubbles of oily-colored ice, like half-buried skulls, protruding from the snow.

Victor was standing on bare earth. He was wearing the chain-mail jerkin.

There was a wide ring of steaming snow all around him, but no snow where his feet were. His third eye was open, and there was light coming from it. That, and the light from billowing columns of fire to his left and right, illuminated the scene.

We saw Mrs. Wren. She had her back to us and was facing Victor. Her shoulders hunched up as if in shock and surprise. She raised her crooked hands. "I call upon the spirits of earth and below earth!

Wood! Water! Welkin! Fire and Iron! I call…"

Victor looked impatient. As clearly as if he had spoken it aloud, his expression said, Inanimate elements cannot listen to you, you superstitious old woman ,

A blue-gold spark left his head and touched her. She slid and sat down in the snow, giggled, and slumped over.

He turned his head. There was Colin lying not far away. Vanity sat in the snow with Colin's head in her lap. Victor played the beam from his third eye back and forth across Colin's body once and twice. Colin blinked and sat up. "Jesus! It's cold!" He looked around. "What the hell happened here?"

Vanity said, "Everybody did stuff but me."

I said, "Fell?"

Victor closed his third eye and pointed off to the left. Fell lay like a broken doll, arms and legs spread out at odd angles.

Quentin said, "I hope you didn't kill him."

Colin said, "And I hope you did! Do you know what that horse's ass gave me on my last dom rag?"

Quentin said, "If we commit a murder, it will go very, very badly for us. The influences friendly to us will turn."

Victor said, "Don't worry. He's just stunned."

Victor explained in a few curt sentences that he had used a catalyst to precipitate out of the atmosphere the "nanites" (as he called them) that Fell had shot at him in the open thrust of the duel.

Victor said, "They just rained down on top of him. He did not notice them until it was too late.

Apparently they were topically active. The nerves near his skin carried the cryptognostic signals to the motor centers of his brain, and shut him off."

Quentin pointed at the squat machine with the protruding muffler, which Victor had apparently put together out of bits and parts of the engine. "And what did that thing do?"

"That gave him something to look at while invisible nanite particles settled on his skin." Victor gave one of his rare smiles. It was a small smile, just a tension of muscles in his cheeks, but I thought it made him look wonderful. "He was not expecting me to waste energy building something merely to distract him. That expectation made it not a waste. You are the one who taught me the principle, Quentin. The hand the stage magician waves in the air is not the one to look at. Fell was too much of a scientist. He should have studied stage magic."

I said, "What about her?" I nodded at Mrs. Wren.

He said, "Cryptognosis. Her body is adjusted to react to alcohol. I triggered the habitual reaction in her glands. I sent the false signal that she was drunk to her midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata. The cells in her body will run through the cycle they learned to get rid of alcohol poisons in the bloodstream, which includes sleep and liver activity."

I said, "They'll die if we leave them asleep here in the snow."

Colin said, "Bugger 'em, if you don't mind my saying so, Dark Mistress."

I looked around at the group. "Ah, wait a minute. I want to resign as leader! Both Victor and Quentin have their powers back, and Victor seems to have his memory back."

Victor nodded. "I remember the first escape attempt. Everything up till when we were on the beach, and Miss Daw started playing."

I said, "I want to put Victor back in charge! He can decide what to do about the sleeping people in the snow."

Victor said, "Bad policy to change leaders in mid-mission. Besides, you clearly figured out more than I have. I don't know whether you talked to Daw or Boggin or where you got your information, but you still know more than I do, and I am not sure you can fill me in on all the details quickly enough."

Quentin said, "You're doing a fine job, Amelia. And we can't stop to debate. Where is Boggin? I thought you said he could fly and bend space."

"And spanks," said Colin. "Don't forget he spanks."

I said, "I want a vote. Thumbs up or down. I've messed up practically everything so far, trust me."

Quentin said, "No time. Sorry, Amelia, but the whole point of having a leader is to have someone make the decisions—even bad decisions—when there is no time to debate things. When there is time to debate, we don't need a leader, because we can form a committee."

Colin said, "Besides, Victor already said, and Quentin agrees. That's two. I vote yea, just because I like saying the phrase 'Dark Mistress.' Three is a majority. Vanity, your vote is wasted."

Vanity turned her head. She said, "He just heard us. Boggin. I don't know where he was or what he was doing before, but he's listening now."

I had wanted to see if I could get the molecular life-form to come out of Victor's body and inject itself into Fell, either to erase his memory, or make him loyal to us, or something. Now there was no time to experiment, and no piece of paper to write it on, and only fitful light to see by. However, there was enough heat coming from the twin columns of fire that I did not think Mrs. Wren would die of exposure, not in the short time it would take Boggin to get his coat off and fly here.

I said in a loud, clear voice, "Boggin! Two of your people are lying here in the snow, unconscious. I don't know how long they can keep. You can either chase us or go save them. You decide. Okay, people!

We're splitting up! Pick a direction and run!"

Vanity tugged on my arm, looking like she was dying to tell me something, and she pointed at the burial mound. She made little finger-walking pantomimes, opened and shut her hands a few times, waved her arms___

I tapped myself on the head and pointed at her. There. You are in charge .

Ho ha. Them and their policy of no votes during missions.

1.

Vanity pointed at Victor, made flapping bird motions with her hands, pointed at each of us in turn, and pointed left, right, here and there. Then she made a circle with her arms, flapped them again, and pointed at the mound.

I got it. I sprinted off to the East. Colin and Quentin and Victor each went other directions. Vanity ran, too.

After less than a minute, long enough to leave many clear footprints in the snow leading away from the mound, I saw Victor fall gracefully and silently out of the sky and hover a few feet off the ground before me.

I put my arms around his neck, and he hoisted me up with his hands.

Funny. He did not do even as well as Quentin had. Like I was a sack of potatoes, or something.

I flew. My hair streamed and whipped in the quick wind, and I clung close to Victor. In the nocturnal darkness, there was little to see, just the bumpy texture of snow underfoot, the barrows and hills in the moonlight. With no sense of height, it seemed curiously close and small.