John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

2.

There were more wonders aboard the finest ship afloat on the second day. One of the meals (breakfast or luncheon, I do not recall which) was served buffet style, so that I could eat what I chose, as much as I chose, and go back for seconds without asking anyone's leave. They had slabs of peach pie with ice cream for breakfast (or perhaps it was lunch). I ate my dessert before I ate my meal, and was certain that Caesar's concubines in all their pampered luxury did not know such a sheer decadence as that.

More swimming; more sporting; more time in the spa. I discovered the delight known as the Jacuzzi, which is a heated tub where warm, warm water bubbles and massages your limbs. I had been cold, so cold, for so long,

shivering in my dorm room at night, plunged in icy waters, naked in the snow, that I determined now that the goal and pinnacle of my life, indeed, my purpose on Earth, was to luxuriate in the Jacuzzi till the end of time. If Grendel had only had a Jacuzzi, I would have stayed with him. I know a girl should have her standards, true, but on fee other hand, in life, there seem to be certain temptations that a girl cannot resist Vanity finally saved me from my circle of admirers, oglers, and onlookers. She had picked a rather flattering bathing suit for me, hadn't she?

Dinner was a formal affair, and she and I wore our nicest dresses from Paris, and nice polite young men in long white coats saw to our every need and pleasure. They poured us wine when we asked, and we did not need to speak in any sort of pass-the-whathaveyou code.

Quentin still did not talk of any serious matters when the waiters were too near. He saw no reason to involve the human beings in our affairs. And if any Olympian had made it "fated" for men to be kept in ignorance of immortal matters, he might detect the event, even an unwitting one, which sought to undo his decree.

When the waiters were not near, Quentin said, "I spent today in the library. I tried to look myself up. I am sad to report that, according to what I found, Proteus had two sons and one daughter. Both sons were killed by Hercules in wrestling matches; the daughter was named Eidotheia. She is the one who betrayed her father's secrets and taught Menelaus how to capture him. Apparently I am a girl."

Colin looked up from his food. 'The mold of clay into which your soul was poured may have had a different shape back then. The poet says so."

Quentin said, "I beg your pardon… ? What poet?"

Colin surprised me (and, I think, surprised us all) by saying, "Milton. Book I. Lucifer marshals his forces on the fiery plain. The poet recites the names by which the Damned were known in times after, as pagan gods and goddesses. Some are male and some are female.

He says:

For Spirits, when they please

Can either sex assume, or both; so soft

And uncompounded is their essence pure

Not tied or manacled with joint or limb

Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones

Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose,

Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,

Can execute their airy purposes,

And works of love or enmity fulfil.

Vanity gaped in astonishment. "Is that Colin? Reciting poetry…?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "You are the one who helped me study for my examination on that one, Freckle Fox. You know I knew it."

Vanity gaped in astonishment still greater: "Colin remembered something he crammed for a test?"

I said to Quentin, "I do not think you are Eidotheia. We have undone all the memory-erasing tricks done to us, but no memory of former lives has come back. I don't think there was anything to bring back. I think we were children when we were taken."

Vanity said, "But we overheard Lelaps also calling me a 'daughter of Alcinuous.'"

I said, "He was speaking in poetry at the time. He may have meant it the way Quentin called human beings the 'sons of Adam/ or Greeks are called the 'Helenes,' you see?"

Colin said, "I like the theory that Quentin was a girl better, personally. It explains why I had such trouble turning him into a man."

Vanity said, "Quiet! Or you will set off another round of English schoolboy comments."

Colin said, "Has anyone got a flaming fag to smoke? I'd like to put one between my lips and suck."

Quentin said, "If you like the girl theory, you'll love this. Victor is supposed to have flippers for hands and the head of a dog. That's what myth says the Telchines are."

Victor looked interested. "Anything else about the Telchines?"

"They forged the adamantine sickle with jagged teeth Saturn used to castrate his father Uranus."

Colin said, "I love old myths. So very graphic, you know? Just the thing for small impressionable children to hear."

Quentin said, "One myth says they reared Poseidon. They discovered iron and the art of working metals by fire, and were the first to cast bronze statues of the gods. When they slowly turned into vicious magicians, and took up the practice of pouring the water of the infernal river Styx mixed with sulfur upon animals and plants with the purpose of destroying them, the Telchines were cursed and scattered. Their city of Ialysus was destroyed by Zeus and flooded; another version says Poseidon, out of tender regard for the good they did to him once, despite their present crimes, took the city underwater, but the people were preserved as fishmen."

Colin said, "And how about you, robot-man? What have you been doing all day, Victor?"

Vanity said, "I saw him. He was napping."

Victor smiled, an event I no longer thought of as rare. "Not quite. I went up to their business call center here on ship. They have mechanisms for allowing computer uplinks through satellite systems to ashore-based stations. So that businessmen can send electronic mail, I suppose, or encrypted phone calls. I studied the wave-forms and the 'handshake' procedure, till I thought I could imitate it just with the neurocircuitry in my head."

Colin said, "Oh my God! Victor was surfing the Net! He was downloading porn! Go, Victor!"

Victor said, "Not quite. I did not have an account. I only had limited access. But there were still other channels of radio traffic being used by the satellites, and my signals were traveling faster than the pulses they use to talk to each other, so I was able to dither them and break in. I was listening in on military satellites talking to each other."

I said, "What do you mean, faster?"

"Their broadcasts were only moving at 186,000 miles per second. I simply added more velocity to my return signals."

I said, "But nothing moves faster than that."

"Of course it does. Light is only made of atoms, like everything else. Little hard pellets. Any object, no matter how fast, if you add speed, moves faster. I do not know why they all limited themselves to that one speed. It allowed me to intercept their lock-and-key signals, so I could hear what password they wanted me to give back before they could call down to their synchronous command center to get confirmation."

Colin saw I was about to start arguing physics, and he waved his hand to me to shush me up, saying to Victor, "You believed in your ability to break in more firmly than they believed in your ability to keep you out. What did you find out?"

"Branshead estate does not exist. I saw reconnaissance photographs, and examined electronic maps.

Everything is mapped on this planet, down to the meter. There is no village called Abertwyi. There is a town called Rhossily in about the position our village is supposed to be. But there are no huge burial mounds to the north, no tall hills to the west, no forest to the south. Arthur's Table is in a place called Tefn Mawr, which is about fifteen miles away. The highways are there, but in the wrong positions. There is an Oxwich Green, a Swansea, and a Bristol, however."