John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

Colin said, "Examinate, exschmaminate. You saw what you wanted to see, Big Q. It was magic."

Quentin raised his finger. "And that is my point! Amelia, Vanity, and Colin operate without conscious thought.."

I sat on the divan, murmuring, "I could have told you that about Colin years ago…"

"But what you and I do, Victor, requires specific knowledge and liberal arts. Natural sciences, knowledge of the correspondences between herb and constellation, phases of the moon, and their angelic governors and principles. And these molecules and atoms and void and what-not you believe in. Specific knowledge."

Victor said, "Is this comment leading to something?"

"Note the symmetry in the table of oppositions. The Phaeacians tie together you and Colin: one intellectual with one nonintellectual paradigm. The Olympians, likewise, with me and Amelia. But the Phaeacians, or at least Vanity, operates without conscious knowledge. She does not know how she creates secret passages. She does not even believe it is she herself doing it!"

"So?"

"So, assuming the symmetry is maintained throughout the whole table, the Olympians must operate by a specific science or body of law. Once we know the law, the specifics, we can stop them. A technology can be foundered on the rocks of detail, in a way that emanations from a nonintellectual force cannot be."

Colin stretched his arms and yawned. "I prefer the terms esprit de finesse and esprit de geometrie . I'll just wish our foes into oblivion! I really, really want that. By the way, has a busty cat burglar in skintight black with a whip shown up yet, or Seven Year Itch girl? Amelia and Vanity in their underwear don't count."

Quentin said, "According to the book, your power doesn't work that way."

Colin straightened up. "Since when? Amelia said…"

Quentin came across the salon from where he had been sitting and settled in the chair opposite me, saying, "Ah! Listening to Amelia in this one case was a mistake."

"Hey!" I said, feeling a little put out.

"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Amelia!" Quentin said. "But what is going on is— Ah, wait, I will show you. Colin! Ready for a question?"

Colin shrugged, looking curious. "Ask away."

"Do you understand what it is I do? My 'magic,' as you call it?"

"Sure. You wish for things to happen, and they do. You go through a lot of rigmarole with wands and chalk and candles and junk because it impresses the ladies. Or maybe you need it as a crutch."

"What could I do to do it better?"

"That's obvious, Big Q. If I were you, I'd throw all that mumbo-jumbo away and just do it by concentrating. I mean, it is obvious you already have the power, but you are wasting energy by putting power—putting belief— into things like wands."

Quentin grinned and turned toward me. "Did Colin give me good advice?"

I said, "I don't think he knows what it is you do. Not that I do, either…"

"He gave me the worst advice imaginable. Do you know what they call a practitioner of the Art without his wand?"

"What?"

"Unemployed." Quentin turned and hooked one arm back over the chair. "Just out of curiosity, Victor, what would your advice be?"

Victor said, "To do what?"

"Be better at what I do?"

"Define'better.'"

"Oh, come now. More able. You know what 'better' means."

Victor said, "You are the victim of a complex cryptog-nostic trick. A set of nerve paths has been instilled in you, each one of which creates a distinct reaction in your environment when they are triggered. Each nerve path runs through your hypothalamus and reticular formations, and affects and is affected by reaction-complexes from symbols embedded there. Your specific pseudo-science relates to discovering which symbols create which reactions. So, first advice: learn all the symbols and their correlated reactions."

Quentin said, "That is basically what's in the Oneiro-critia . What else?"

Victor said, "The things you call 'spirits' are electromagnetic entities of specific voltage, wavelength, and properties, who have been programmed to react to certain commands given in certain ways, gestures and so on. They are made of matter just as everything else is.

"Also, the molecular combinations which make up this world—Mulciber's world—have been impregnated with command and control codes to react to signals passed through the electromagnetic entities.

"Were I you, I would use your symbol codes to condition certain selected bundles of entities to react to a separate and simpler set of symbols, a set specific to your personal nerve structure, rather than taken from general mythological themes. This will make your commands simpler and more flexible, and prevent interference from other practitioners of your art."

Quentin looked considerably impressed. He turned to me. "And his advice? Was it good or bad?"

I spread my hands. "I can't tell. You'd have to try it and see."

"No, I do not have to try it. He just revealed, in his own quaint metaphor, of course, what it is each practitioner does when he becomes a master of the One True Art. All knowing is reflected in all other knowing. He just told me to find and construct my own mythology, my own special runes and tools, which expresses my personal relationship to the infinite, and to have a cadre of cacodemons and eudemons swear personal fealty to me."

I looked skeptical. "Victor, is that what you said?"

Victor looked up. His answer surprised me. "Yes. Of course, I said it in precise terms, and Quentin is speaking in the sloppy metaphors he uses to express himself , but his symbols were fact-to-fact associations."

Victor looked down again, but continued talking. "Also, Quentin, the other thing you should do is discover the programming language for the electromagnetic entities. Since they react to a word-and-gesture code, they must each have a listing of their codes embedded in each entity."

Quentin looked very impressed. "You refer to the Enochian language in which the Creator's Word spoke the universe into being?"

I snapped my fingers in front of Quentin's face. "Hey! Hello! You were going through this big long digression to tell me why Colin should not listen to me, when I told him how his powers work."

Quentin smiled. "Because you have no idea how his powers work, you told him all the wrong things, and, what's more, you will never understand how his powers work any more than Colin will understand mine, or I will understand Victor's. Our paradigms each have a blind spot. It influences our psychology."

I pointed at Colin. "So you tell me. How does Colin's power work? What can he do and can he not do?"

"He is a shaman, what Victor would call a psychic. He comes from an earlier tradition than mine, before the boundaries between man and angel were established."

I said to Colin, "Can you translate that from Quentin-speak into the common tongue of Westron?"

Quentin answered me. "Colin is psychic. Telekinesis, telepathy, mind-over-matter, metamorphosis."

Colin said, "I can't make things fly through the air like Victor can. I've tried."

"But you can metamorphosize objects at a distance. Turn a knot into something no one can untie, for example. Grendel could turn cold iron into a lightweight metal."

"And I can't read minds."

"Not when they are awake. You are Phobetor, Prince of Nightmares. I suspect those starlets in Hollywood went to sleep before they were influenced to write back to you."

Colin: "Okay. How's it work?"

Quentin: "Not by desire. Not by willpower."

Colin said, "But it is so by willpower! It worked! When I was falling from the sky, boy oh boy, did I desire to fly. And Amelia was—well, you are too young and innocent to know what she agreed to let me do to her. It turned me back into a man, though."