Fugitives of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  He pointed.

  Out in the harbor was the silvery ship. She rested on the waves, bright as a naked sword blade, slim as a swan. The eyes to either side of the prow did not seem as blind as painted eyes should be; the long bronze ram extending sloping into the waterline gave the ship a friendly, almost comical look, like the nose of Cyrano. There was a crystal lantern shining (pale as the moon seen by day) on the mast, but no sails.

  There was something so odd and so dreamlike about the silvery ship, that I looked again with my upper senses. The ship was not actually floating on the waters of Earth, not fully. The waters below her keel were an ocean that extended in another direction, becoming ever more mystical, haunting, and phantasmagorical in the distance. The two oceans overlapped when the silver ship met the sea, so that she was actually afloat in the ocean of dream, but her deck was exposed to the airs of Earth.

  Quentin took the bird gently from my hand and frowned at him, scratching his head gently and muttering over him.

  We all started to walk toward the pier. I put one hand through Victor's arm, and Vanity took my other hand. Quentin walked behind, stroking the bird.

  The boardwalk boomed under our footsteps. Vanity said, "So this is a new look for you, isn't it, Amelia?

  The sort of grungy, baggy, two-pairs-of-pants look?"

  "Look who is talking! Where did you get those clothes?"

  "Paris. We sailed up the Seine. Humans can't see Argent Nautilus. That's her name. We spent some of the money you got us."

  I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. "You went—to France—? Without me? You went shopping! In another country! In Paris! And I missed it!"

  It was one of the worst moments of my life. Imagine if your friends got married, had a party, went to Alpha Cen-tauri, discovered an alien civilization, and got to name all the planets in the new solar system with new names, but they did not invite you. You were off being burnt and choked by a one-legged sex maniac. The boat sailed without me. One of the worst moments of my life.

  Vanity said, "I would have invited you, but you were drowned by Grendel."

  Victor said calmly, "They were buying scuba gear to help me look for you. Vanity's boat ignores distance considerations. Timewise, Paris was just as close as Oxwich Green or Swansea."

  "I am not blaming you—I'd like to, but I'm not. Oh! Before I forget! Her boat is detectable. Each time she calls her or sails her, Mestor's lodestone points at it."

  Victor said, "We already have a plan for that. We are going to have the Argent Nautilus tow Lily's motorboat into the sea lanes somewhere near Australia or America, or some other English-speaking country, and then lead them away on a goose chase. We'll flag down a passing ship and say we're lost at sea."

  "You really went and bought clothes without me… ?"

  Vanity said, "Victor took his drug. Quentin read his book. I waved the necklace around my head and shouted at it, but nothing happened. We all looked at the card."

  The second most horrible moment in my life. My friends were doing experiments, fascinating scientific experiments, and getting new super-powers, all without me!

  I said, "A vulture swooped from the sky and killed Grendel. Tore out his throat and he fell off a cliff! I felt bad about it before, but now I feel like celebrating. Did you guys buy any champagne? That's what made me think this was Colin; the curse of Mavors is protecting him."

  Vanity said, "Why would we buy champagne? We were outfitting a rescue expedition!"

  "You bought new clothes, didn't you?" I admit I was green with envy. After a whole life of school uniforms, I could not even imagine choosing your own clothes. From a store! With your own money! Not asking anyone's permission!

  Vanity said, "We got some for you, too."

  Quentin said, "Are you sure this is Colin… ? He is not reacting to my charms."

  "Oh!" I said, "And I've got this! Grendel dropped it."

  And I pulled out the ring.

  Vanity looked impressed; Quentin whistled. Victor said only, "Is there a way to tell if it is booby-trapped, or carries a location signal?"

  2.

  The Argent Nautilus breasted the waves as swiftly as an arrow flies. The waters under her keel, however, were unruffled. The passage was silent, with only the most graceful of sea-motions to impart a sense of travel, mystery, and delight to the sailor. The winds of the world we passed through were surely supersonic, but only a stiff sea breeze, a token of that wind, passed within the rail of the ship, enough to bring a brisk chill, not enough to blind or stun us. Magic. It was the way folks sail in dreams of flight, faster than was reasonable, without seasickness or strenuous effort.

  I stood at the stern, watching the island of Worm's Head sink away behind us. I had never seen the far side of that rock before, though I had seen its hither face many times. It was like seeing the dark side of the moon, or the strange constellations of the antipodes.

  Victor was standing next to me, also looking astern, concentrating.

  I stepped close to him, till my shoulder almost touched his. He did not seem to notice. I told myself that his task must have absorbed his concentration.

  Astern of us, bouncing and sending up wild spray, like a drunken water-skier, was Lily's motorboat, which we towed on the end of a long rope. The motorboat was in water that retained the properties of Earthly water, mass, resistance, and so on, and so the boat made noise, a great deal of noise, as it was yanked through the water at blinding speed. As fast as the speed of sound? I could not estimate. But the poor motorboat was leaping from wave crest to wave crest in sheets of exploding foam, and it spent half the time in the air, tumbling and careening.

  It was Victor who was keeping the motorboat from capsizing, using magnetic force-beams to try to stabilize the worst of the turbulence.

  Vanity was seated on the bench, facing forward, smiling into the sun, which was now declining into the afternoon. This bench was of ivory, curiously carved, and fair to the eye. I stood next to it. The bench was fixed to the deck in the place where a steersman would sit on a boat that had a steering board.

  Quentin was seated at her feet, drawing circles on the deck in chalk around the bored-looking eagle.

  Quentin was looking fretful.

  The eagle was looking (you guessed it) bored.

  3.

  The first thing I wanted to know was how much money was left. It looked to me as if Vanity and the others had bought several department stores' worth of material. The boys had bought Aqua-Lungs and fish-spears, camping equipment, food, chemicals. Victor had bought half a dozen textbooks on advanced neurological psychology, which he (before injecting himself) had memorized, flipping pages as quickly as he could, and then thrown aside. Quentin had bought a knapsack full of crystals and rune-stones and candles and other litter from a fortune-teller's shop. Quentin commented that he now knew not to be a fool when he shopped: none of the things he bought did what the fortune-teller said, and they were made of impure substances. None of it worked; none of it was real magic.

  Apparently the amount of money ap Cymru had given us was enormous, or maybe the exchange rate between the pound sterling and franc was good for England at the moment, or something.

  4.

  The next thing we did was have a birthday party. It was a very strange birthday party, because I was the only one opening presents.

  Vanity insisted on showing me everything she had gotten for me in the Paris shops, and as we opened dress-boxes and hat-boxes and shoe-boxes, the sea wind caught the crepe paper some of the goods were wrapped in, and blew it off the stern. Like confetti.

  Everything was beautiful and wonderful. Things I had only seen in magazines, or only heard described, were there, and Vanity has exquisite taste. Or maybe her taste is bad, but at least it matches mine.

  I realize that to people who have things, mere material possessions seem tawdry and unimportant. But to a girl who has only ever worn the uniforms assigned to her, the ability to pick whether to put on a pale blue blou
se or a black dress with pearls was the doorstep of paradise. It is what freedom is for, being able to pick, in little matters as well as in great ones.

  Vanity also knows me. Guess what else she got for me! Running shoes. The things were as light as feathers, made of god-knows-what space-age materials. They were gorgeous.

  After spending an endless time selecting an outfit and accessories, shoes and stockings, I suddenly looked up and looked around.

  I said, "There is no cabin on this boat. There is no place to change."

  It was true. There was a little deck in the stern, and there were lines of rowing benches (I have no idea what for, on a ship without oars) and a tiny gangway that ran from the bow to the stern.

  Quentin said, "Vanity is very proud of her ship. But, because she is so swift, Argent Nautilus was not designed to be at sea for more than a few hours, or a day at most. So, no cabin, no galley. There is a sail, apparently for times when you go into nonliving waters."

  Vanity said, "I think there is a rain tent in the storage locker we can set up on deck. You could change in there. Or the boys could just close their eyes."

  I started putting stuff back in boxes. "No. Let me keep on this filthy stuff, at least until we are out of danger. There might be a fight if we are overtaken, and I won't care if Grendel's ratty stuff gets ripped."

  That comment ended the party atmosphere. We started exchanging histories.

  I was still wearing the baggy dungarees and flannel shirts of Grendel. But I did put on the running shoes, and, because the wind was still slightly chill here, I put on the new coat Vanity had bought for me: a long black affair of silky fur, with gold buttons to match my hair.

  I sat sideways on the stern bench while Vanity brushed out my tangles with her new silver brush, and we talked.

  5.

  Vanity had shrieked and commiserated while I told her of Grendel's various depredations. She is simply a wonderful person to tell stories to, because she hangs on every word, her eyes glowing with sympathy for the heroine, her lips pouting with boos and catcalls for the villain.

  And Victor patted me on the hand, and told me he was proud of me for how bravely I had endured the ordeal. I thought that was a funny thing to say, because the worst part of my adventures had been that I had not been anywhere as brave as I would have liked.

  I told them about what Grendel had said about Echidna and Beowulf, and his several dead brothers. I described the ripping of the mermaid's cap, choking, being healed by Grendel and then waking up all tied up in his bearskin rug. I glossed over the parts where he was threatening me with conflagration and strangulation, and I described the fight in gory enough detail that it made Vanity queasy and she begged me to stop.

  I told them about the mysterious town I saw, resting where Abertwyi is in our world A different time? A different time line? We wasted some time discussing theories.

  Quentin recalled that the enemy had mentioned multiple worlds during the meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors.

  I even gave them a brief precis of my conversation with Sam the dray-driver. My encounter with Corns I repeated word for word.

  Vanity was enormously upset about Sam the dray-driver, for reasons I did not quite understand. She shook her hair with anger, so that red strands the color of fire stood up from her furry hood and whipped in the wind. "I've been thinking of nothing else for two days except how I was going to tell the newspapers! Maybe get a book deal out of it! You know, 'I was a teenage love slave of a pagan god.'

  Good title, eh? And now your Sam—the entire Sam you met, as far as I'm concerned, is dead, or as good as. What's the point?! What's the point of knowing the secret truth about the world if you cannot tell anybody!"

  Quentin did not really understand her anger either. He said, half to himself, in a voice as if he were quoting a poem: "An eighteenth I know, which to none I will tell, not to maiden nor another man's wife—what is known to oneself and oneself alone is warded best. Only to my sister, would I say it, or the wife I hold in my arms…"

  Victor summed up their adventures in a few terse lines, to which Vanity added comments, examples, descriptions, and digressions. Vanity had called her Swift Silver Ship; they had sailed to Paris. Their passports and visas did not seem to be needed; they changed some of the pound notes to francs, and bought gear. At sea again, Quentin slept on the boat, and read the first three chapters of his book, the Arcanum Oneirocritica. Victor took his drug. Vanity fretted. After, they circled spots Quentin divined I might be. Victor dove.

  Victor was now about three inches taller than when I had last seen him. He explained: "I've been modifying myself. I rearranged some clumsy joint structures and muscle tissue connections. My muscle pressure has increased, and I have increased the rate of nerve firings per second, to give myself finer motor control.

  "The extra height? I created spare abdominal spaces, and I compressed other organs, to make room for certain amplifiers and storage cells I am in the process of growing; also focusing elements and sensory adaptations. The blueprints were coded into my memory by the ampoule.

  "I have made additional ganglia connections between various sections of my cortex and lower brain functions, to give myself more direct access to involuntary activity.

  "The library has a wide listing of coded commands to impose into other people's nervous systems to trigger their reaction cycles. The system is called cryptognosis.

  "Certain of the molecular chains take much longer to put together than others, and I have to build step-by-step certain molecular-construction tools and processes which the library-compiler evidently thought would be already installed in me, or automatic.

  "However, the work proceeds very slowly. Whoever put together the coded molecules of memory-stuff that was in the syringe seemed to have no understanding of biology, or terrestrial conditions. I have instructions and reflexes set up in my nervous system now, which, if I set into motion, would turn me into something that could not exist on Earth. There were also no safety features in this library, no warnings for what nerve cells are needed for other functions or not.

  "Quentin keeps telling me it is dangerous for a scientist to experiment on his own brain, but I tell him that a magician's credo is to know, to dare, to will, and to be silent. Obviously, to know all, the magician must dare all, and be silent about the risks."

  Victor smiled one of his rare smiles. I listened with surprise. Was Victor actually telling a joke?

  Quentin, despite that he was fussing over the bird, had a much more relaxed and confident poise to him than I had seen before. There was a glint in his eye, and he talked back to Victor in a way which, when he was younger, he never would have done: "And I keep telling him that the principle of empirical experiment requires the experimenter to remain objective, a scientist who monkeys with his own mental hardware compromises his ability to observe.

  "Victor!" Quentin spoke firmly. "I've warned you that my science, the true science, cannot fix you once you render the humors in your brain impure; your disbelief in magic casts a negative ward around you.

  You are a soul who has convinced himself he has no soul; damage your brain, and that silly belief may turn out to have a self-fulfilling character, my friend."

  Victor, still smiling his small smile, said to me confidentially, "Quentin now is convinced he knows everything, because he has read the first three chapters of his book. I tell him the book is just gibberish, and he is only reading it in his dreams, and he agrees with me. Perhaps I have not drawn out the implications of my comment with sufficient clarity."

  Vanity was probably also not used to the idea of Victor kidding around. She reacted as if he were serious, saying hotly, "The book is just great! The first chapter tells about the creation of the world; chapter two is the hierarchies of eternity and those ions and emissions .. "

  Quentin said gently, "Aeons and Emanations. Gnostic words referring to angelic reflections or subdivisions of the divine."

  She turned to him. "Chapter thr
ee was the bestiary, right?"

  Quentin said, "The names Adam gave to beast and bird, crawling things and swimming things. But each name is a true name, and contains the tale of the beast, the history of the first two of each of their kind, and how long they stayed in the garden in Eden after the departure of Man. The hour and the gate of their departure defined their roles in the world. The hound and the horse, the swine and the kine, left with him, through the gate called Peace, but the cat actually left before him, sniffing out the ground, which is why those domesticated beasts, the sons of Cadwal and Rahal, Ghiuor and Muor, retain their loyalty to humanity, whereas the sire of all cats, Greymalkin, was granted a degree of independence, a reward for his curiosity. The serpent, Issrashah, most wise of beasts, was the last to depart. There are several references and tales about creatures of great beauty and power, who I am assuming were wiped out during the deluge of Noah."

  Quentin smiled, looking young and handsome and eager, and he continued: "I am looking forward to chapter four tonight. I hope it contains the original language of Enoch, who built the first of the cities of man on Earth. I will also have to learn the lore of Tubalcaine, to be able to cast influences on things man-made of metal and brass; and likewise for Jubalcaine, in order to influence the doings of poets and singers."

  I wondered if Quentin's newfound boldness came from his memory, now restored, of nerving himself and defeating his shyness to kiss sweet Vanity for the first time. I think he did it three times, and he got me, too. Not to mention, he now recalled spitting in the eye of the Lamia bent over him to kill him. All those bold memories were part of him now, back where they belonged, and it was forming part of his character.

  6.

  Victor said, "Enough about the past. Let's discuss the immediate future. First, which way do we go? A point is approaching where Vanity will have to decide whether to head for Australia or America, straight across the Atlantic or south to the Horn. Second, Vanity's memory. Third, Colin's body. And apparently his brain, too, because he does not seem any smarter than a bird in that shape."