Fugitives of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  Exasperated, I shrugged her grip away. "Oh, stop it Spanking isn't kinky, or sexy, or anything. It just hurts and it's humiliating. Like getting your foot caught in a slamming door. Vanity, this is really not working. Let's get dressed."

  Vanity said, "One last idea. And this one I know is going to work! Please? You did promise."

  "Okay, what is it?"

  "Here. Turn toward the door. Let me put my arms around you again…"

  "Okay, fine. Now what?"

  Vanity suddenly seized my wrists and pushed them behind my back, crossing them and extending them toward Colin. "Quick, Colin! Amelia wants you to tie her up! She's into that sort of thing!"

  I threw my arms up, so that she stepped back, off-balance. "Oh! That's the last straw!" I said. My face felt hot. I was blushing with anger or embarrassment, or both. "What a terrible thing to say! You owe me a big…"

  But Vanity's face was slack with shock; her eyes were round as saucers. I heard a noise behind me. A rustle. Something larger than a bird was on the bed.

  Vanity screamed.

  I turned. I don't know what I expected to see, a monster or something. It was Colin. He was standing on the same bed where we had thrown our clothes, so we could not exactly get to them. There he was, large as life. And naked as a jaybird.

  And erect. I didn't know they could turn purple colored. Like a big, sort of, tree, I guess, coming out of a fuzzy black bush.

  I screamed, too. It seemed the thing to do at the time. I suspect my brain had sprung a leak at the sight of a naked Colin.

  We both ran out the door, shrieking with the shock of it, the unadulterated embarrassment.

  Victor and Quentin had just got done leaping to their feet by the time we nigh-unto-naked girls came running into the room, jiggling, I am sure, and wiggling all sorts of exposed surfaces we normally keep covered.

  Even Victor, the unflappable, looked flapped at that moment. Quentin had his mouth open as the two-girl train of unclad beauty drove toward him, and I could see he did not know whether to laugh or cry or just drool.

  We hopped behind the boys. I got behind Victor, and Vanity was behind Quentin, which, in hindsight, was good, because had it been the other way around, my chin would have been on Quentin's head (making him feel not very protective) and Vanity would have been unable to see what happened next, with Victor's shoulder blades blocking the view.

  Victor, his eyes on the door, put his hand back in that cliche protective male gesture to make sure your woman is behind you. Whether by accident or design, the hand touched my nude hip (or maybe there was a wisp of mist draped over it), and I could feel all my little goose flesh hairs stand up. His fingers were warm.

  Quentin was having trouble swallowing. He, too, kept his eyes on the door, but Vanity was huddling much closer to him than I was to Victor, had her arms around his waist and chest, and her breasts were mashed up into his back. I don't know much about men, but I knew enough to know that every one of Quentin's nerve signals was concentrating on increasing the sensitivity and reception from that area of his upper back.

  Victor said sharply, "What happened?"

  Vanity could not talk. She had just realized (I could see it on her face) that she was standing in her panties and bra, with her risque French garter belt, silky stockings and high heels, in a position where, if either boy moved, they would see her. Again. She could not get back to her clothes without being put on display. Again.

  So she was blushing. It was almost fun to watch, because her whole face glowed red, and her neck, and shoulders, and even the tops of her breasts. That is the price you pay for having such a clear complexion.

  We girls with tans, at least during the summer, can hide shame better.

  I said, "It worked as planned."

  Colin, from the other room, called out, "Don't shoot me! It's me, Colin. Or maybe it's some horror from the pit who learned to impersonate Colin's voice."

  Quentin asked (quite reasonably, I thought), "Shoot you with what?"

  Colin shouted back: "Where the hell am I?"

  Victor said, "You are in the Caledonia suite on deck four of the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth II, one day out of Bristol, bound for New York. What happened in there? Why are the girls wearing costumes?"

  "I think it is part of an important master plan. Send the naked girls back in, and I will investigate, and then report back. What happened to Boggin?"

  Quentin shouted, "We don't know. What happened to you?"

  "Ah! I put myself in a situation where I really, really wanted to fly. My thoughts became, how to put it—?

  Focused. Very focused. You should try it some time. How long has it been?"

  I said, 'Tell him it's been twenty years. It'll be funnier that way."

  Colin shouted, "Is that Amelia? Nice dress, Amelia. I think your dressmaker just saved me from the doom of eternal birdhood. Thank you."

  I was trying really, really hard to see the humor in this situation, but there are certain things that are just too embarrassing. I put my head down and pressed my closed eyes into the fabric of Victor's shoulder. I could feel hot tears beneath my lids.

  Colin shouted, "And your breasts, of course. They saved me, too. I did not realize how large your aureoles were. I would like to thank your breasts more personally, later."

  Colin appeared in the doorway. We all gawped at him. He was wearing Vanity's skirt, with the frilly top of one of my outfits from the dress box over him like a shirt. The top was too small for him to button.

  He looked down at the clothes, and squinted.

  Quentin said, "Colin, this will sound like an odd question, and I want you to think it over before answering. Why are you in drag?"

  Colin was red-faced when he looked up. "Ah. Hum. I thought that the bird thing was so successful, you know. The key to my powers. If you just want something hard enough, right? So I thought I could turn this into my clothes, if I… you know… I really, really do not want you to be seeing me dressed this way… And I thought… well, I'd rather die than have my friends see me this way, so… and, there weren't any clothes in the drawers in there——-Whose room is this? Are we on a ship?"

  Victor shrugged out of the long buff jacket he was wearing and, without turning his head, passed it over his shoulder to me. His chain mail glinted and gleamed in the light from the cabin fixtures.

  Victor said, in the exact same tone of voice as before: "You are. in the Caledonia suite on deck four of the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth //, one day out of Bristol, bound for New York."

  Colin said, "Nice room. Do you guys have any spare, um, boy clothes?"

  I said from over Victor's shoulder, "We thought you were dead."

  Vanity had recovered a little, and she dug her fingers into Quentin's ribs. "Hey! What about me! Get me something to wear."

  Quentin said, "Well, I mean, you are wearing something."

  She poked him again, and stamped her foot.

  Colin craned his head to one side, trying to catch a glimpse of more of Vanity's bestockinged legs.

  Quentin's normal "mine not yours" guy-instincts turned on, and he swirled the huge black cloak from his back and gathered up Vanity in it.

  Quentin escorted Vanity past Colin back toward our room. Vanity said over her shoulder, "Colin, I got you some things. When we were in Paris. I bought you clothes."

  "You went to Paris? Without me? And you thought I was dead? You thought I was dead so you went to Paris to buy me clothes, without me? You bought clothes for a guy you thought was dead, so you went to Paris?"

  Vanity waved her hand toward some of our boxes on the couch. "Just because you were dead doesn't mean I wouldn't get you anything! What kind of person do you think I am?"

  1.

  I tried to get Victor to escort me back to my room, but he just pointed at that door and inclined his head slightly.

  Once we were both back inside, I turned to Vanity angrily, intending to claw her eyes out for embarrassing me so thoroughly. Or at least give her a seve
re tongue-lashing. But at the same time, through the closed door, came Colin's voice, soft and young with wonder: "You mean… we're free … ?

  We made it… ?"

  Victor's voice, calm and measured: "Amelia arranged the escape and got us this money, passports, and once we were at sea, Vanity called her ship…"

  Colin interrupted with a huge long howl of triumph, like something from an Old West movie: "

  Yeeeeeaaaaa-haahhhh!"

  All three boys started singing a Christmas carol, something full of sound and joy, peace on Earth, goodwill to men. It was a happy thing to hear, and it made me smile. And I admit being pleased with Victor's comment: Amelia arranged the escape.

  After that, I did not have the heart to stay mad at Vanity.

  2.

  I was sure that the "wedding dress" from Grendel would be hexed, or impossible to take off, or something, so it came as a pleasant surprise that it just unlaced in the back and slipped off over my head.

  I folded it carefully and packed it in tissue paper, and put it in one of the empty dress boxes.

  Vanity donned her blouse and skirt and was back into the other room. At one point, I heard Colin's voice suddenly get louder: "You bought scuba gear? You thought I was dead, so you went to Paris without me and bought scuba gear? Without me? To Paris? So this scuba gear is… French?"

  I selected a slim black dress with a necklace of pearls, black shoes with silver clasps. Once again, examining myself in the mirror, I was puzzled as to how much money we had spent, how much things cost, how much Vanity had bought.

  I came back out into the salon; Colin, seated at ease on the divan, with his feet up on the chair facing him, was staring at the pamphlet that came with the room, which explained how the television worked, listed the ship's computer-use fees, gave the menus, and so on. He had the rebreather of the scuba unit in his mouth, which he puffed like a hookah.

  He was wearing a white loose shirt with puffed sleeves gathered at the wrist, and cream-colored whipcord riding breeches that showed off the muscles in his legs. He looked like something between a flower child and a king's musketeer. I was surprised Vanity had not also bought him a hat with a plume.

  Colin looked up when I entered, tried to wolf-whistle but could not, and tried to applaud, but could not, his mouth blocked by the rebreather, his hands by the menu.

  Quentin was picking up some of the litter off our carpet from the impromptu picnic, and was staring in puzzlement at a clearly labeled box of spoons.

  Vanity was sitting in a chair with her eyes half-closed; Victor had one hand on her wrist and was looking at his new watch, like a doctor taking her pulse.

  Colin spat out his rebreather. It hissed at him. He said, "Don't you clean up pretty, Amelia? Nice dress."

  Quentin glanced up from his spoon-frowning activity. "Yes. Very attractive, Amelia."

  I said thank you and turned around with my arms out, giving them a little catwalk spin.

  Colin said, "The other one was nice, too. The breast-exposer dress, I mean. Very Minoan."

  I made that noise one tends to make in one's throat when Colin talks, a sort of half-gargle, half-sigh, as if one is preparing to spit out a bad taste. "Well! Enough about me! Let's see to item number two on our agenda. Vanity's memory. What do we do?" I said.

  Colin emitted a short, high laugh, and put his re-breather back in, bending his head over the entertainment listings.

  I gave Colin a sharp look. "What? What?"

  Quentin answered. "It's done. We're done. Victor and Colin performed the operation while you were getting dressed. It didn't take long."

  Victor looked up at me. "Colin impressed his view of Vanity onto her while I sent a cryptognostic probe into her long-term memory areas. The enemy could not seem to actually destroy the memories, but they misfiled them."

  Colin spat the rebreather out again. "He's telling it wrong. Miss Daw increased the amount of time surrounding each memory, so it happened a million years ago, instead of last week. No wonder Freckle Fox couldn't remember anything! And Mrs. Wren cast an enchantment on her, so it seemed like a dream, and faded."

  I was still blinking. "So… you already did it? It's over?"

  Quentin said, "Our part is over. Vanity is on a spirit quest. She may be gone all night."

  Missing something because I had been kidnapped, that was one thing. Missing something because I had paused to get dressed, that seemed downright rude, somehow.

  I said, "Well? Are you going to tell me what happened? What did you do to her?"

  Victor said, "There was almost nothing to do. Quentin's book, the chapter on the Ancient Art of Memory, described a method of approach. Vanity was subconsciously hypnotized into believing in

  'magic,' and so she was the one actually suppressing her own memories, due to her faith in, Mrs. Wren's so-called spell. Once nerve paths were opened between her cortex and the hypnagogic areas of her brain, she became aware of the deception."

  Colin said, "I will translate from Victor-babble into the common tongue of Westron. Miss Daw thrust a million years of time-energy into Vanity's brain. Once Vanity realized that time is an illusion, the million years went away. There was also some sort of spell, too, but Victor neutralized it with his magical anti-magic ray that magically pops out of his head and magically shoots out magic beams of blue magic."

  Quentin said, "There is no such thing as magic. Victor does not believe in magic."

  Colin said, "Victor does not believe in magic because that mind-set is one of the ingredients in the magic spell he uses to throw magic blue beams from his magic third eye. It's just an ingredient, like having eye of newt or toe of frog."

  "It's not magic," insisted Quentin.

  "Guess I was fooled by the big blue extra eyeball! Extra eyeball! Or didn't you notice he has an extra eyeball? Count them. I get at least to three before I get confused. Isn't that one more than you or me, and two more than Popeye the sailor? Check my math here."

  Victor spoke without looking up from his watch: "Your dispute is terminological. Check your definitions."

  3.

  We all sat or stood, watching Vanity breathing. She breathed deeply and slowly. It did not look to me as if she were asleep.

  I spent more than an hour trying to catch up Colin on some of the things he'd missed while he was a bird, including hordes upon hordes of information I had already told the others while we all were waiting in the motorboat.

  He seemed disinterested after a while, and I let the conversation lag. Eventually things trailed into silence, and we sat watching Vanity. In, out. In, out. I assume the guys got more fun out of seeing her chest rise and fall than I did.

  4.

  Quentin looked up from his grimoire (where, I assume, he was only looking at the pictures) and he said to Victor, "I notice that three of the paradigms, Vanity's, Colin's, and Amelia's, do not seem intellectual in nature."

  I stirred from my lethargy and said, " It is so intellectual in nature! What I do? It's geometry."

  Quentin said to me, "How did you give the molecular engine living in my bloodstream free will?"

  I blinked. "Um. I turned the moral energy strands back on themselves to form an infinitely recursive fractal loop. Once the awareness was self-reflexive, it was self-aware. See? That was a very intellectual-in-nature thing to do."

  Quentin said, "And how did you know to do that? How were you able to 'turn' this moral energy?

  Manipulate it?"

  I said, "That's not really a fair question. An eyeball cannot see itself. No mind, by definition, can be aware of the subconscious foundation of its own thought; nor can any mind exist without such a foundation.

  How can I de-scribe a process when I am part of that process, and the act of making up a description changes the process? I have limbs and organs and energy-manipulation systems in the fourth dimension.

  They do things. I am not a biologist; I cannot tell you the mechanism."

  Victor said, "I am a biologist. It takes a c
hild months or years to learn to develop nerve paths to control a limb or organ. If you discovered a new hand grafted to you tomorrow, it would take you months or years to learn how to use it, because you would have to develop the nerve structures and reflexes one at a time, like a child."

  I said, "So what are you saying?"

  Victor said, "Those nerve paths must have been impressed upon you without your knowledge."

  Quentin said, "Or you have always had them, you and every member of your race. Or maybe I should say, everyone who follows your metaphor of the universe." To Victor, he said, "Amelia is basically agnostic; she has theories about the limitations of human knowledge, she believes in the uncertainty principle. All knowledge is relative to a frame of reference. For her, 'Chaos' is that which by definition is unknown and unknowable. The fourth dimension is her metaphor for it."

  I said, "It's not a metaphor. I've seen the fourth dimension."

  Quentin spread his hands. "And I have seen aetheric spirits dancing in palest raiment by the light of the moon around a mushroom ring, and I've heard the harps the Four Living Beings play who ward the dancers sacred to Endymion. Where those light feet had passed, I drew up a residuum through a wand of willow-wood, into an alembic, and sealed those vapors there by virtue of the key of Solomon. Explain my experience."

  I said, "I can't. What cannot be explained is a given, like a premise."

  Victor said to Quentin, "Undeveloped sections of your nervous system were reacting to energies around you, and presenting childlike images to your cortex in response. A sufficiently detailed examination of the motions of the atoms in your brain would reveal what causes these images to arise."

  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."