John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

"below" and "above" the (now flat-seeming) plane of hyperspace. It began issuing concentric pressure waves into the solid neutronium medium of five-space.

The range of echo response in five-space was very short, so I had to touch the ring with my other hand to be able to "sense" it. The sense was more like hearing than sight. Sort of.

Even though my hand was five-dimensional, and Colin's was only three-dimensional, he closed his fingers around my hand when I touched his ring. The fingers felt normal to me, not flat They were round, warm, strong. I could feel my sense perceptions beginning to slip, as if I were about to collapse back into three-space, but I used an energy-balancing technique to let the ring affect my lower vision centers. If I did not "look" at the impossible hand-clasp Colin had me in, the uncertainty wave would not collapse, and he would not collapse me out of my shape back into 3-D girldom.

Instead, I looked at the ring.

I could no longer see the morality webs—they were too thin and insubstantial to be seen, since they were merely made of flimsy four-dimensional material—but I could sense the extensional, relational, and existential measurements of the ring of Gyges.

Hie ring's extension degree was congruent with the light-cone it gave off, and it reached to all observers.

The relation degree was a moral one. Apparently the ring imposed an obligation onto any onlookers not to look at the wearer. Anyone who violated that prohibition was penalized by being forced to obey the imperative to look away; but, logically, also had to "look away" from the fact that he was being forced to look away. By definition, a person is always unaware of what he is unaware of The existence degree was metaphorical rather than literal. Although I could no longer see them, I now knew where those longer arms of the morality strands were leading. They were going into the place behind the walls of the tunnels Vanity created. They were going into the dream continuum. But whether they were reaching in the dreamlands surrounding Earth, or the dreamlands of some unknown sphere or region of matter-energy outside the star-filled universe of Earth, that I could not say.

I tried to explain this as best I could to the boys. My explanation seemed to confuse more than it illuminated. I said, "The ring may have a weak spot. Innocent eyes will not be deceived by it. A person who bears you no ill will, or a child perhaps. Someone without sin. Eye unclouded by hate."

"Oh, great!" said Colin. "Now I know what my friends think of me."

I folded up my sphere and pulled my hand back "down" into three dimensions.

3.

Colin held my hand for a moment longer than he should have. I tried to yank it "up" into the red or

"down" into the blue continuum. That would have worked on anyone else in the universe, but his fingers still seemed real and solid, no matter what.

I looked at him, "Let go of my hand, and I'll tell you the answer."

He said, "Tell me the answer, and I'll let go."

I said, "Music."

Both the boys looked at each other, saw their mutual confusion, and looked at me. Colin said, "Great.

Now tell me the question."

"How do you get Tantor to come? How do you attract spirits, since you are not a warlock, and cannot call them by ritual? Music."

"You mean, I play 'Elephant Walk' for elephants, and 'Flight of the Bumblebee' to turn into a bug, and maybe theme from 'Batman' to change into a bat…"

"I'm serious. Quentin, tell him to let go of my hand."

Quentin said, "Be nice, Colin, or I will have the girls do another striptease for you."

Colin said, "What is the downside of that, again, exactly?"

"They will have to do it to return you to human form," Quentin said darkly. "Remember, don't make promises you don't intend to keep. It makes you vulnerable to certain operations."

Quentin's stick flew from across the room and into Quentin's grasp.

Quentin reached the quivering wand toward Colin's hand, and the look on Quentin's face was so grim and so un-pitying, that even I said, "Quentin! Wait a minute! We can't just use our powers on each other—! Quentin! Stop! Stop!"

Quentin did not stop. The wand drew closer.

I shouted, "Victor, do something!"

Victor, across the room, did not look up. "Check your premises."

Quentin touched Colin on the knuckle with the wand. Quentin's lips did not move, but we heard a voice, a thin version of Quentin's voice, begin to mutter and chant: " Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres!

Arma virumque cano! Res ipsa loquitur .…"

Colin's nerve broke. He dropped my hand and jumped back as far as his chair would allow. "Keep off!

Keep off! Damn! He's gone mad with power!"

Quentin smiled and put his stick aside. "Yeah. Be careful, or I'll tell you the name of the Father of Salmons."

"Hey! I've got this ring! I am supposed to be immune to magic powers now!"

"Yes, Colin, but I have said before I do not do magic. I only seem to. It's a trick done with mirrors. Your ring cannot stop me from pulling a rabbit out of my hat."

"You… tricked me!"

"Ah, grasshopper! You have learned everything there is to know about magic! Now you shall be the master! Go, and rule the world in my name!"

"Don't single me out for your magic curses. I am not the only one! Amelia made some sort of promise to me, she's not saying. What about that promise?"

"I can tell her the name of the Father of Salmons, too. It's Gwion. Now listen to what she has to say."

" 'Music'… ?" Colin looked at me.

"The Lamia said it. Remember, Quentin?"

Quentin said, "I would say, there are some things you just don't forget, but I think I forgot that scene twice." He shivered and looked unhappy. "I remember."

"In the story you told us? The Lamia was complaining that right under everyone's noses, Boggin had been teaching us the paradigms we needed to control our powers. They taught me Einstein, and Newton to Victor, Aristotle to you, and to Colin…"

Quentin muttered, "'He taught music to the wild prince of Night and Dreams…'"

Colin said, "That doesn't make sense. Not only do I hate music, but Miss Daw is the music teacher, and she's the one who uses Amelia's paradigm. Daw is a four-dimensional squid with wings, right?"

"Actually, she looks like wheels within wheels with eyes on every rim," I said. "But, you are wrong about one thing. She used her music to stop me. That's not part of my paradigm. That's against my paradigm."

I turned to Quentin. "Could she be something, I don't know, sort of halfway between my position and Colin's?"

Colin said, "Glum did not use music."

Quentin said, "But he did use a bearskin to turn into a bear. That was his beast-shape-cloak, his bear-sark. He was doing a shamanistic thing. It also sounds like he had a fetish."

I rolled my eyes. "I'll say!"

"No, I mean a real fetish."

"It was a real fetish," I said.

Quentin gave up on me and turned to Colin. "It sounds like Grendel used some shaman props to work his art That would put Grendel halfway between you and me, sharing some of the properties of both."

Colin said, "Who else fits where? And why does everything have to be so complicated?"

I said, "If things were simple, everything would have been solved long ago."

Quentin said, "At a guess… ? And this is just a blind guess, I'd say the Hecatonchire are a cross between Victor's people and Amelia's. And who knows? I can't think of anything that could possibly fit between me and Victor. He and I have nothing in common, really. No overlap."

I said, "Maybe the Cyclopes. I've been assuming Dr. Fell is just like Victor, but maybe he actually does semi-magical stuff like potions and alchemy as well as molecular engineering. Some of the enemy called his stuff 'potions.' We don't have any evidence either way."