Victor said, "Is this comment leading to something?"
"Note the symmetry in the table of oppositions. The Phaeacians tie together you and Colin: one intellectual with one nonintellectual paradigm. The Olympians, likewise, with me and Amelia. But the Phaeacians, or at least Vanity, operates without conscious knowledge. She does not know how she creates secret passages. She does not even believe it is she herself doing it!"
"So?"
"So, assuming the symmetry is maintained throughout the whole table, the Olympians must operate by a specific science or body of law. Once we know the law, the specifics, we can stop them. A technology can be foundered on the rocks of detail, in a way that emanations from a nonintellectual force cannot be."
Colin stretched his arms and yawned. "I prefer the terms esprit de finesse and esprit de geometrie. I'll just wish our foes into oblivion! I really, really want that. By the way, has a busty cat burglar in skintight black with a whip shown up yet, or Seven Year Itch girl? Amelia and Vanity in their underwear don't count."
Quentin said, "According to the book, your power doesn't work that way."
Colin straightened up. "Since when? Amelia said…"
Quentin came across the salon from where he had been sitting and settled in the chair opposite me, saying, "Ah! Listening to Amelia in this one case was a mistake."
"Hey!" I said, feeling a little put out.
"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Amelia!" Quentin said. "But what is going on is— Ah, wait, I will show you. Colin! Ready for a question?"
Colin shrugged, looking curious. "Ask away."
"Do you understand what it is I do? My 'magic,' as you call it?"
"Sure. You wish for things to happen, and they do. You go through a lot of rigmarole with wands and chalk and candles and junk because it impresses the ladies. Or maybe you need it as a crutch."
"What could I do to do it better?"
"That's obvious, Big Q. If I were you, I'd throw all that mumbo-jumbo away and just do it by concentrating. I mean, it is obvious you already have the power, but you are wasting energy by putting power—putting belief— into things like wands."
Quentin grinned and turned toward me. "Did Colin give me good advice?"
I said, "I don't think he knows what it is you do. Not that I do, either…"
"He gave me the worst advice imaginable. Do you know what they call a practitioner of the Art without his wand?"
"What?"
"Unemployed." Quentin turned and hooked one arm back over the chair. "Just out of curiosity, Victor, what would your advice be?"
Victor said, "To do what?"
"Be better at what I do?"
"Define'better.'"
"Oh, come now. More able. You know what 'better' means."
Victor said, "You are the victim of a complex cryptog-nostic trick. A set of nerve paths has been instilled in you, each one of which creates a distinct reaction in your environment when they are triggered. Each nerve path runs through your hypothalamus and reticular formations, and affects and is affected by reaction-complexes from symbols embedded there. Your specific pseudo-science relates to discovering which symbols create which reactions. So, first advice: learn all the symbols and their correlated reactions."
Quentin said, "That is basically what's in the Oneiro-critia. What else?"
Victor said, "The things you call 'spirits' are electromagnetic entities of specific voltage, wavelength, and properties, who have been programmed to react to certain commands given in certain ways, gestures and so on. They are made of matter just as everything else is.
"Also, the molecular combinations which make up this world—Mulciber's world—have been impregnated with command and control codes to react to signals passed through the electromagnetic entities.
"Were I you, I would use your symbol codes to condition certain selected bundles of entities to react to a separate and simpler set of symbols, a set specific to your personal nerve structure, rather than taken from general mythological themes. This will make your commands simpler and more flexible, and prevent interference from other practitioners of your art."
Quentin looked considerably impressed. He turned to me. "And his advice? Was it good or bad?"
I spread my hands. "I can't tell. You'd have to try it and see."
"No, I do not have to try it. He just revealed, in his own quaint metaphor, of course, what it is each practitioner does when he becomes a master of the One True Art. All knowing is reflected in all other knowing. He just told me to find and construct my own mythology, my own special runes and tools, which expresses my personal relationship to the infinite, and to have a cadre of cacodemons and eudemons swear personal fealty to me."
I looked skeptical. "Victor, is that what you said?"
Victor looked up. His answer surprised me. "Yes. Of course, I said it in precise terms, and Quentin is speaking in the sloppy metaphors he uses to express himself , but his symbols were fact-to-fact associations."
Victor looked down again, but continued talking. "Also, Quentin, the other thing you should do is discover the programming language for the electromagnetic entities. Since they react to a word-and-gesture code, they must each have a listing of their codes embedded in each entity."
Quentin looked very impressed. "You refer to the Enochian language in which the Creator's Word spoke the universe into being?"
I snapped my fingers in front of Quentin's face. "Hey! Hello! You were going through this big long digression to tell me why Colin should not listen to me, when I told him how his powers work."
Quentin smiled. "Because you have no idea how his powers work, you told him all the wrong things, and, what's more, you will never understand how his powers work any more than Colin will understand mine, or I will understand Victor's. Our paradigms each have a blind spot. It influences our psychology."
I pointed at Colin. "So you tell me. How does Colin's power work? What can he do and can he not do?"
"He is a shaman, what Victor would call a psychic. He comes from an earlier tradition than mine, before the boundaries between man and angel were established."
I said to Colin, "Can you translate that from Quentin-speak into the common tongue of Westron?"
Quentin answered me. "Colin is psychic. Telekinesis, telepathy, mind-over-matter, metamorphosis."
Colin said, "I can't make things fly through the air like Victor can. I've tried."
"But you can metamorphosize objects at a distance. Turn a knot into something no one can untie, for example. Grendel could turn cold iron into a lightweight metal."
"And I can't read minds."
"Not when they are awake. You are Phobetor, Prince of Nightmares. I suspect those starlets in Hollywood went to sleep before they were influenced to write back to you."
Colin: "Okay. How's it work?"
Quentin: "Not by desire. Not by willpower."
Colin said, "But it is so by willpower! It worked! When I was falling from the sky, boy oh boy, did I desire to fly. And Amelia was—well, you are too young and innocent to know what she agreed to let me do to her. It turned me back into a man, though."
"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."
Colin said, "This is our first night of freedom. Let's get some champagne!"
"There's the phone," Quentin said, reaching up to pluck the three hovering bottle caps, one after another, from the air. "You just call, a guy named Miguel brings it. Oh, and you hide in the closet, because you're not supposed to be in here. We did not buy a ticket for you."
Colin said, "Oh, come on. Hide in the closet?"
"Aha!" I said. "You will be the master of hiding! I have a present for you, Colin! Victor? Where did Vanity put it? The ring?"
Victor plucked the ring out of Vanity's pocket and tossed it across the room to me.
I held it out to Colin. "This is for you," I said.
'This is all so sudden," he said, sniffing. "I—I don't know what to say. Of course I will many you, but you will have to give up other women…"
"No, you moron!"
"Shouldn't you be kneeling?"
I proffered the ring to Quentin. "You give it to him."
Quentin waved it away. "And run the risk of another round of English schoolboy jokes? Not me. No.
No, thank you
."
I said in anger to Colin, "It's a magic ring!"
"Of course. I expected that. What's it do?"
"Turns you invisible!"
"I expected that. Of course. Does it inevitably corrupt the ring-bearer?"
Quentin said, "It's from Plato. It's a symbol of absolute power corrupting absolutely."
"And I am getting this fine, fine gift of corruption, why, again, exactly?"
Quentin said, "Dwarfs make less noise when they fall than giants. You know, less distance to the muck.
So when the word 'corruption' popped up in conversation, the name 'Colin' sprang up on our lips almost of its own accord!"
I said, "It will protect you from Miss Daw's magic. No more being flung off cliffs. You'll be the strongest person in our group. It won't really corrupt you."
"I'll be the strongest person in the group… ?"
"Yes," I said.
"And it won't corrupt me… ?"
"One never knows."
"Will I be able to command the Nibelungs with it?"
"Do you want it, or not?"
"You are sure about the 'no corruption' thing, right?"
"Do you want me to stuff this up your nose?"
"No. Give it here! It already seems very precious to me, yessss… Precioussss… Is anyone hungry for fisssssh or is it jusssst me?"
"Will you stop fooling around?"
"Ach! They hates us, my precious! Nasty elfish blondes!"
1.
Colin slipped the ring on his finger. "Well? Am I invisible yet? I want to know when I can start taking off my clothes."
Quentin said, "The clothes turn invisible, too."
"Yeah, but I get to walk around in the buff, with no one staring. I can pick my nose, scratch my bum, you know…"
"Um, well. In cold weather, you can put on clothes, and your socks will no longer need to match,"
Quentin said.
"What about things I pick up? What if I just lean against something, and pretend I am picking it up? If I turn a laser beam invisible, can I make it harmless? What about radio waves? Am I also stealthed to radar? Can I blind an enemy by making his retinas invisible?"
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