John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

I said, "I don't know and I don't care. You decide. This time I am quitting and for real. I resign as leader."

Victor said, "Not wise. You still have a lot of information we don't know yet."

I said stiffly, "When a leader loses one of the men under her command, she can resign."

Quentin said softly, "We do not know for sure he's dead."

Bitterness crept into my voice. "You're right. He may only be captured."

And I wondered how much of his memory they would have to erase to blot out all memories of us. All of them, I suppose. They would have to turn him back into a baby. Which, for all practical purposes, would erase him as a person. It was the same as death.

Quentin turned and looked at Victor. "It still seems like we need a leader. Someone has to decide how long we wait, whether we go back to look for his… to look for him, or where we go."

Vanity said, "And what about me?"

In my heart, I had to agree with Vanity. Why was Quentin automatically assuming Victor would be leader if I was not? I said, "Good point! Why can't Vanity be leader? Are we just all assuming girls can't do anything right? Is that it?"

Vanity looked embarrassed. "Um, actually, I mean, what about getting my memory back ? You said something in the safe might help me. We haven't even looked at that stuff yet. Where do I fit in on your table of oppositions, Amelia?"

I sighed, feeling an immense weariness. I had been awake now, for how long? Two days? I lay back on the dock and tucked my hands behind my head, staring up at the sky. The zenith was mauve and dark blue, and the armies of the sunrise had not yet defeated that last rearguard of night. A star was there, faint, but not yet blotted out. One last holdout against the inevitable.

I just wanted to rest. I just wanted someone else to do the thinking for the group. I just wanted…

I just wanted Quartinus not to be dead. Once, at one of the irregular birthday parties Mrs. Wren used to throw for us (we had had three that year, I remember, and none the year before) Quartinus had been frightened by a party balloon. It had deflated, spitting with a rude noise, and when he ran from it, it flopped at random, here and there. Blind chance had made it seem to come after him, at least for a moment. Then he had cried, because the thing was limp, and he thought it was dead. He had been very young. I had held him in my lap and fed him a slice of birthday cake, and wiped his tears___

I said dully, "Of the four powers, two of them are equal and opposite to each other. Me and Quentin; Victor and Colin. I had the hypothesis—really just a guess in the dark—that the two other powers we know exist, the Olympian and the Phaeacian, are combinations of two opposites. The Phaeacians seem to be able to bend space. I do not know by what mechanism. Dreams, or other levels of consciousness might be involved. They find shortcuts through some sort of dream-universe, where distances are meaningless. The Olympians clearly have something both in common with my paradigm and with Quentin's. They operate on moral principles. You have to break a promise to them, or break a rule, for them to get power over you."

Victor commented darkly, "That explains why religions have rules no one can follow. If everyone is a sinner, by definition, everyone is under their power."

"But they also control the fabric of time. They can bless and curse; they can create destiny. Hermes

'created' coincidences to make me visit him. I think the things Boggin can do are similar. In Victor's model, time is an absolute; it is not an object. It cannot be manipulated or affected. In my model, time is one aspect of time-space, it is relative, and certain conditions, such as proximity to event horizons, can distort time. On a quantum level, the arrow of time is ambiguous."

Vanity said, "Losing audience. Come again?"

I shook my head. "Sorry. I just think Olympians somehow combine Quentin's morality-based magic and my multidimensional time-space manipulation. If Phaeacian power is a combination of the other two—and don't ask me how pure materialism and pure mysticism can be combined!—but if it were, if the two of them worked together, they might be able to…"

The two of them were Victor… and Colin.

My voice trailed off. The one star that had been holding out against the dawn had been vanquished. I could not see it any longer.

I closed my eyes.

Vanity said softly, "Then, I'm not getting my memory back… ?"

Quentin said, "Is she asleep?"

I was not asleep. I just did not feel like talking at the moment.

Victor said, "We should decide how long we should keep waiting."

Quentin said, "I vote for you to be leader. Do we have any other candidates? Vanity, unless you want the job again?"

Victor said, "We have a chance to talk things out; let's not pick a leader till we need one. How long should we wait?"

Vanity: "I don't know. Is there going to be a time, you know, like noon and we know he's… Colin's not coming, but at eleven fifty-nine, we think he still might be coming? How do you pick a time like that?"

Quentin said, "We all have powers. Maybe I could read the cards, try to get a clue as to what is happening."

Victor said, "Does that create a signal of some sort? Is it detectable?"

Quentin sighed. "I don't know. I don't think tarot cards are radioactive or something. But I don't know.

They clearly pick up influences from their environment. That is why they have to be kept in a cedarwood box."

Victor said, "Try to read Vanity's fortune. She can tell us if she feels something 'watching' her."

I heard the rustle of cards. Quentin briefly explained the positions in a cross-and-scepter spread, and started depicting a rather gloomy future, with Towers and Moons and the Seven of Swords opposing Vanity's path to happiness.

Vanity said, "Stop. I can feel it. There are some sort of creatures in the upper atmosphere that are looking at me when you do that. And you might want to redraw your magic circle. I wanted to tell you something. Amelia, are you asleep?"

Of course I was not asleep. I could hear them perfectly well.

"Guys, I think Amelia is planning on slipping away. Boggin has her bugged somehow. He can tell where she is. He's not doing it now. I assume that means Colin knocked Boggin out, if he didn't kill him dead.

But if Boggin pulls through… well, you see what I mean? The only way the group can get away is if she's not in it. That's what she's thinking."

Damn her. Sometimes I underestimate Vanity.

Vanity said, "While she was leader, I wasn't going to say anything, because, well, you know how Churchill let Coventry get bombed, so the Axis would not figure out we'd broken their codes? I thought it was like that. But if she's not Churchill anymore, then she doesn't have the right to decide to sacrifice herself… well, you see what I mean?"

Victor said, "I am not sure what we can do to stop her. If Colin were here, he could stop her from walking through walls. But even for that, we'd need a wall. We don't have anything."

Quentin said, "We have the talismans from the safe. Do we have time to examine them? We still haven't decided whether to get into the motorboat now or later."

Victor said, "We ought at least to wait the amount of time it would take a man on foot to walk here from the estate. If Colin is wounded, but can still walk averaging at one mile an hour, he would get here within the next thirty minutes, assuming he set out the moment after he fell. Let's wait at least half an hour, then decide our next step."

Vanity said, "Make it an hour. You know how Colin is with directions and maps and stuff."

Quentin said, "I agree. An hour. Okay, Vanity, let's see what you've got."

"Item number one is this fine necklace. Note the alluring craftsmanship!"