John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

"Colin, I room with you. No one stays young and innocent who talks to you every night after lights out.

But you don't know what you are talking about. It's not desire. Or, I should say, it is not just desire."

I said, "Okay. So what is it?"

"It's inspiration."

I looked at Colin. "Translate. Inspiration is a type of desire, right? It's a driving passion from your subconscious mind."

Colin looked like an idea was forming in his head. He said, "I think Big Q is using the word literally.

Inspiration. Spirits come in."

Quentin nodded at Colin. "The reason why Amelia misidentified what she saw is that there is no category for this in her paradigm. To her, a genius is a man who is particularly brilliant. To me, a genius is a spirit who inspires a man to brilliance.

"Look at the cases we saw," Quentin continued. "Just now, Vanity and Amelia tried to inspire, ahem, manly feelings in you. I suspect what they actually did was summon a cupid into the room. Invisible lust energy, if you will. The energy passed through your soul, and it wanted you to turn into a man.

"Your soul acts like a conduit between the physical and the spiritual realm. Normally spirits cannot affect matter, not directly. But any spirit that passes into and through your soul, can, and does.

"Second case: falling. I remind you that you were riding the back of the master of the gods of the winds, with other wind gods coming to save him. Every spirit in the area was thinking about flying."

I said, "What about the time I tricked Grendel? When his desire to have me remember being kidnapped by him outweighed his desire to erase my memory, his attempt failed. Only Dr. Fell's medicine had any effect, and it did not affect me very much."

Quentin said, "I suspect it was your pity for Grendel, and not the lust you tried to instill in him, which drove away the spirits which otherwise would have given him power over you."

I said, "You are trying to interpret it in terms of good and bad. Pity is a finer emotion than lust, so it wins, is that your idea? But that is not the way psychological reactions work. The mind is a self-referencing infinitely regressive set of meanings; there are any number of possible relations within that set."

Colin said, "And what about my getting better? Amelia said Grendel kicked my ass, but here I am fit as a fiddle!" He raised his arms and tensed his muscles, our own private Charles Atlas.

Quentin said, "Good point. Third case: rapid healing. You tried to heal the splinters that struck you when Amelia blew up the safe. Nothing happened. Not ten minutes later, you are riding Boreas down to destruction, like Ahab clinging to Moby Dick. Actually, you were doing a little better than Ahab, but not by much.

"You had broken the wing of Boreas. Maybe there was some healing power in the area, being thrown on him by his friends to fix his wings. When you changed into a bird, your wings seemed to be healed first. I am thinking

Boreas' allies released essential potentates of Aesculapius into the area, what you would call healing energy."

I said, "No. That was something else. The rapid healing."

"What was it?" asked Quentin.

"I, um, I did that. I really, really did not want Colin to die when he was a bird, and I asked him to get better."

Quentin squinted at me. "That, by itself, would not do it. Just asking."

"I kind of, um, promised him that I would do something for him, if he got better. Would that summon a spirit? Build up this energy you say passes through his body?"

Quentin said, "I do not think he has a body. He is made of aery substance, not matter. That's why he can bridge the veil. What did you promise him?"

"I'd do him a favor…"

"What kind of favor?"

Colin was looking on with great interest. "You were not wearing that little white number during this promise-making, were you?"

I blenched. Actually, I had been wearing that dress, hadn't I? Or had Grendel stripped it off me by then?

"I think I was naked under a bearskin rug."

"Oh, this gets better." Colin smiled. "And your promise was, what, again, exactly… ?"

"Oh. I, um, don't feel like talking about this now. I need to go stick my finger down my throat or something right now." I jumped to my feet.

Colin said, "While you're up—is there anything to drink in this stateroom?"

I said, "There's an automatic bar thingie. I think it charges room service when you open the little door."

"Well, I'd ask you to get me some liquor—but…" He grinned at me wickedly. "I don't want it to count as this 'favor' you still owe me. We are talking about sexual favors, aren't we? Was Vanity telling the truth about you in there? You know…"

My face was turning red; I could feel the heat in my cheeks. "The part about she and I being lesbian lovers is true, of course. But I don't make her pretend to be you before the nightly spanking sessions. She pretends to be Quentin, I play you, and we act out what everyone knows you English schoolboys do at night in your dorm rooms!" And I stomped off toward the wet bar.

Colin said, "Actually, I'm Irish."

Quentin said softly, "What does she think we do at night? I mean, aside from listening to Victor tell you to shut up and go to bed."

"I don't know, loverboy. Maybe she noticed the missing hamsters."

"The missing what?"

"Never mind. I told you how to improve. According to your theory, you understand my power better than I do— hey—!"

"What?"

"I should understand Amelia better than she does. I mean, if this all goes in a circle around the diagram."

"Try doing what you do when you shut her powers off, but do it in reverse."

"What about me, Big Q, my guru, mojo macho master of the mystic arts, necromancer of naughty gnosticism?"

"What about you? You are a babbling dunderhead. The great Oz has spoken."

"Thank you, mystic master. Seriously, did you have a real idea how to improve my powers? I do not want to have to jump on Boggin's face every time I want to turn back into a bird."

"Amelia told you exactly the wrong thing to do. One hundred eighty degrees wrong. You have to learn to meditate, to relax, and to let the spiritual energy flow through you and inspire you. You must be like a crystal window. Your own thoughts and desires cloud the window. The real you, your oversoul, stands in the light beyond it."

This little bit of nonsense seemed to impress Colin deeply. He looked at Quentin with awe and wonder on his face. Since I had never seen that expression on Colin's face before, I assumed he was just suffering from a bit of upset stomach.

5.

Vanity was still sitting. She breathed more. Victor was still monitoring her pulse. He did not look bored. I do not think he has any circuits in his brain that do the "bored" function. Maybe he had them removed.

I drew up a chair and sat down. I had three bottles of beer in hand, which had come out of the automatic wet bar that came as part of the room. Colin looked interested, and I passed them around.

I called across the salon. "Victor? I couldn't find the fork screw. Whatever that thingie is called… bottle opener. Would you… ?"

Quentin said, "I think these twist off."

But it was too late. Victor, without looking up, waved his hand in our direction. Bottle caps sprang away from bottle necks with a loud noise and hovered in the air.

"Never tried this before," said Colin. He and Quentin clinked bottles, and both quaffed.

"Blech," said Colin. "It's gone bad."

Quentin was puckering and licking his lips. "Is it supposed to taste that way?"

I also took a sip, and put the beer in the same category as the coffee I had had earlier that day. Why do adults drink foul-tasting stuff? I said, "It's not champagne, that's for sure."