Fugitives of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  Colin said, "I said that. I said what she just said. She thinks mind and body are part of one underlying thing. How come no one listens to me?"

  Victor said, "Everything is inanimate, if by that you mean things that operate according to cause and effect. Free will is an epiphenomenon, a misjudgment impressed upon us and sustained by the actions of brain molecules in motion."

  Colin said, "Are we going to do philosophy? Everything is animate. Cause and effect is illusionary. We are all omnipotent, perfectly tranquil, and at rest. Our real selves. But we are dreaming. In our omnipotency, one of us or all of us conceived the desire to meet a challenge equal to our strength. Since we could have everything we wanted, voila! One of the things we must have wanted was not to be able to have everything we wanted. We got trapped in the illusion. Be careful what you wish for."

  Quentin said, "You folks know what I think. The pituitary gland is the point where the spirit is connected to the flesh."

  Colin said, "Since it is my birthday—I am the one getting presents here—I officially ban all further philosophy until further notice. Amelia is going to start talking in equations if we don't cut this off.

  "And we are never going to agree," Colin continued. "In fact, I think, if any two of us did agree, one of the two would lose all his powers. Okay? Instead of figuring out the nature of the universe, let's figure out the nature of this card. It is smaller than the universe, and should be simpler to figure out, and we are all bright guys with big brains, so what the hell does it do? Do I eat it? Rub it on my head? Sleep with it under my pillow? Burn it? It seems like pretty much of a dud, to me. I got gypped."

  I said, with some surprise, "Colin? Didn't I tell you who is on that card when I was under its amnesia spell?"

  Colin shook his head.

  "Ohh…" I did not say it aloud, but I knew why my earlier (and now lost) version of me had not said anything. I wanted to see and remember his reaction when I told him.

  "You know something about the card?"

  I said, "I recognize the man. He is your father. That's Morpheus. The beautiful woman lowering the cradle into the water must be your mother. I don't know her name. The baby is you. This is your family.

  This is what it looked like when your parents lost you. They were forced under threat of death to turn you over. That landscape in the background is your homeland, where you were supposed to grow up and be happy. That white spiral tower is your home."

  Colin took out the card and stared deeply into it. A haunted, lost look came into his eyes. The look of a baby who lost his mother, a toddler whose parents never saw his first step, the child who spoke his first words to strangers, the youth who was robbed of his life and his loved ones, the man who was robbed of his true identity. And then the expression stiffened, and it became the look of the prince who was robbed of his kingdom, his fatherland, his people.

  Tears came next.

  The tears flowed down his stiff cheeks like water trickling over iron. He did not bother raising a hand to wipe them away. It was strange and horrible to look on Colin and see him as a man so grim and fell.

  Now that I had done it, I was sorry I waited to tell him. I would have preferred that this scene be blotted from my memory after all.

  "What's happened to you, Colin?" I said softly.

  "I am still the same Colin," he said in a voice like ice. "But now I'm… inspired."

  I did not want to ask him, Inspired with what?

  He must have sensed the unspoken question, because he answered anyway. "I feel like I'm turning into your crystal window, Quentin. My real self is on the other side. He is fire and the firelight is shining through him. He has a question for the group. When is the enemy going to show up next?"

  It was Vanity who spoke next: "They are going to try to kill us, the next group that finds us."

  We all turned to look, some with surprise, some slowly. There she sat on the chair with her eyes open.

  "How'd it go?" asked Quentin.

  She said, "I had to travel back a million years to find my memories. Boggin hid them a long way away.

  He let something slip in front of me, and I figured it out."

  Victor said, 'Tell us."

  "Boggin wants to find out which group sent the Lamia. So we are being left to dangle out here in the wide outside world until the Lamia feels safe to strike again. We have our powers now, so she is going to have to get someone very strong—in other words, her boss—to come kill us. Boggin wants to find out who that boss is. Boggin has some way of finding us again, or driving us back to him. We are not free. We were let go. We're bait."

  1.

  Vanity told us her tale.

  She had been sitting in Boggin's office while the Headmaster, peering down at her from behind his huge desk, with jovial threats and smiling intimidations, was trying to get her to agree to promise not to attempt escape again. Vanity sat and nodded, agreeing to nothing, and saying, "Go on," each time he came to a full stop.

  Mr. Sprat had called on the intercom, an urgent voice warning Boggin that he had a guest, who could neither be delayed nor denied.

  Boggin had evidently not wanted Vanity to be seen by the guest. A switch in his desk had opened a panel behind the portrait of Odysseus.

  Boggin took Vanity by the elbow and roughly hustled her in through the secret panel. In she went. The door slammed shut behind her and locked with a click.

  Inside was a narrow room lit by an even narrower window. There was a cot, a washbasin, several locked cabinets, a locked rolltop desk.

  If this was the inner sanctum of the Headmaster, he certainly did not coddle himself. The room was spartan. There was no fireplace, no heat; the cot was hard.

  The only ornament in the room was a cabinet containing a miniature shrine. Behind the cabinet doors was a nine-inch-high statue of a stern and kingly figure on a throne, an eagle on his shoulder and a crooked lightning bolt made of brass in his marble hand. There was a cutting board and knife rack before it. The cutting board was bloodstained, and there were tiny bits of down and feather littering the surface.

  Vanity was certain that an evil mastermind like Boggin must have an escape exit from his inner lair, but the only thing she found was a hidden hatch leading to a defunct dumbwaiter shaft. She stuck her head into the hatch. There was a skylight high above, and the shaft below fell sheer into darkness. No one without wings would be able to use this route.

  She also was curious about the conversation she was not able to overhear, and wondered at the identity of the guest Mr. Sprat dared not to stop nor delay. Evil masterminds simply had to have methods of listening in on what happened in rooms adjacent to them. They had to! It was an article of faith with her.

  Sure enough, when she looked for a peephole hidden in the panel behind the Odysseus portrait, there one was. There was a mechanism for listening, basically a bell with an earpiece, sort of a crude stethoscope.

  2.

  The visitor was standing. Boggin was kneeling on one knee before it, with his mortarboard in his hand, his long red braid of hair, normally hidden, now trailing down his back.

  The visitor was thin and tall, like a leopard or a jaguar might look if standing on hind legs. Parts of its skin were made of bronze, or perhaps metal plates had been fused to its chest and back, metal scales along its upper arms and metal greaves on its lower legs. Because its neck was long and flexible, its head looked small. It had long hair like a woman, but its teeth were sharp like a lion's teeth. Its lips and cheeks were so plastic that it could flex its mouth from a tiny pink rosebud to a white grin whose corners touched the spot where, on a human, there were visible ears.

  It wore a scarlet cloak. In one hand it gripped a short stabbing-spear with a metal head and a wooden shaft, a weighted spike at the butt end; in the opposite elbow it held a narrow-cheeked bronze helmet with a drooping red plume. As a gratuitous anachronism, the warrior-creature also carried a stub-nosed submachine gun of squat design at its hip, a bandolier of magazines looped
over its shoulder.

  Vanity did not hear the beginning of the conversation.

  The creature was saying, "… Uranians have demonstrated that they could escape your confinement. A second escape is likely to be believed. The Lamia will no doubt make a second attempt at that time. Our military intelligence department estimates the chance of Lamia making a second attempt while the Uranians are still in custody to be a small one."

  Boggin spoke in his normally hearty and self-interrupting fashion. He did not speak as a kneeling man should. "Ah… ! I am certain, my dear Centurion Infantophage (and a fine name you have chosen for yourself!), that the military intelligence department of the Laestrygonians—are you familiar with the word

  'oxymoron'? No? I thought not—a department that enjoys such fame, or, one is tempted to say, such notoriety for the accuracy and timeliness of its predictions and warnings, well, such an august institution is one with which it is certainly, ah, futile, if not to say, pointless, to remonstrate."

  The creature's eyes glittered with hate. "You are mocking us, air-blower?"

  Boggin lowered his head, but his voice was still rich with good humor: "Oh, my dear Centurion Infantophage (a most excellent name, have I said how well it fits you?), certainly I would not wish to be understood by you if I were mocking you to your, ah, shall we call it a face? To your face. No, indeed. I hold the Laestrygonians in the greatest possible respect! The greatest, indeed, possible to grant to Laestrygonians. Your fine military intelligence department was charged, I believe, with the duty of bodyguarding the Lord Terminus, was it not? During the battle of Phlegra. The late Lord Terminus, I should say. The late, departed, once-alive but now-dead, which is to say, no-longer-alive, Lord Terminus. No doubt the sincere grief of your master, the Lord Mavors, at the departure of his father Lord Terminus was modified, if not ameliorated, by his joy on discovering (no doubt, to his complete surprise) that he stood to inherit the throne of heaven. The rulership of the entire sidereal universe must be a heavy burden."

  "My master does not care for the throne. He assumes it as a matter of duty, no more and no less."

  "What an unlucky day that was for him, then, when the Laestrygonians failed to protect his father from Typhon of Chaos! I am certain that the punishments visited upon the Laestrygonians by Lord Mavors when they fail at their duties are as great as the generous rewards he heaps upon them when they succeed!"

  "Lord Mavors is harsh to those who fail him, but just. He is a good leader."

  "And may I also take this opportunity to congratulate you and your department for its recent elevation to the status of the Praetorians? The halls and palaces that you now occupy on the lower slopes of Olympos are indeed splendid, as well I know, since I and my brethren inhabited a very similar station of rank under the rulership of Lord Terminus."

  "I do not see how that comment is relevant to this conversation."

  "Of course not, Centurion. Of course you would not see. Forgive my digression. What in the world could I have been thinking?"

  "You will arrange the release of the Uranians. Lord Mavors has laid a malediction upon whoever should kill one or more of them. The nature of Olympian curse allows the maledictator to become aware of opposition or resistance to the malediction…"

  "Ah, indeed?" muttered Boggin. "I am grateful, certainly grateful for your instruction upon this obscure point. You will tell me more about the operation of the Olympian art of destiny-manipulation when you have opportunity, I hope, Laestrygonian."

  "Enough! Why do you speak with such insolence?"

  "Every teacher learns lessons from his own students, Centurion."

  "You, are insubordinate."

  "As the term is usually used, Centurion, in fact, I am not. I am not under the orders of Lord Mavors, nor does he have authority to command me.

  "Indeed," continued Boggin in that same hearty tone, "Lord Mavors is asking me to go directly against the last orders I received—one might, without undue exaggeration, almost call it the dying wish—of Lord Terminus. 'Protect those infants!' Those were his last words to me, Centurion: 'Your life, and the life of Cosmos itself, is forfeit, if they are harmed.' Actually, his very last words to me were: 'We shall impart further instructions by Our next messenger."

  "Well, that never eventuated, did it, my dear Centurion? His last messenger, Lord Trismegistus, had (so to speak) turned in his two weeks' notice, and was busy showing the Phaeacians where to go to ship the hulking mass of Lord Typhon of Chaos to the foot of Mount Olympos at the time, and Lady Iris was busy trying to run his errands for him.

  "I do not recall receiving any message from Lord Terminus saying, 'Obey Mavors, he is Our royal heir,'

  or anything like that. The present situation might be more, how shall I say, unambiguous, had a message of that nature been received by any party."

  The Laestrygonian smiled, which was a truly alarming sight. (Vanity was reminded of a shark opening its mouth.) "Lord Mavors says this is the only method to arrange for the safety of the hostages. Until the traitor is identified and rooted out, they are not safe here, or anywhere. It will reduce rather than increase the danger. Lord Mavors is not contradicting your previous orders."

  Boggin said, 'The traitor could be anyone, could he not?"

  The Laestrygonian nodded his graceful head. "You are above suspicion, Boreas. You have had too ample an opportunity to kill the hostages in the past, if that were your scheme. But the traitor must be someone who wishes to break the present truce with Chaos."

  Boggin might have been tired of kneeling. Or perhaps he felt there were some things that one must stand on one's feet to say.

  He rose up, and said, still in a pleasant and good-natured voice, "Well, well, who could it be? If war broke out, to whom would everyone turn to lead us in war against our mutual foes? I do not think it would be the god of the toy-makers, would it? It is surprising how quiet fraternal discord becomes, when an enemy none of us can resist separately marches against us, burning planets as it comes."

  The Laestrygonian's eyes glittered like the eyes of a cat in the dark, and its shark grin dwindled to an amazingly small pucker of disapproval.

  "You suspect Lord Mavors of favoring war?"

  "Well, they do say it is the quickest time to rise up through the ranks, wartime. Success in war carries many a general on the shoulders of clamoring crowds to Caesar's purple."

  "And failure in war leads to bonds, stripes, imprisonment, crucifixion, and the death of one's baby sons and lady wives. Mavors knows we cannot prevail against the Chaoticists, divided as we are, if the foe makes a coordinated and intelligent attack. Even a victory would make the Cosmos suffer losses in men and territory we cannot spare. You are said to be quick-witted, lord of the snowy winds, a lover of intrigue: Does your crooked mind find no more likely candidate than Lord Mavors for the power that sent Lamia to attack young Eidotheia, child of the Gray Sisters?"

  "You are, as the expression goes, too kind for belief, Centurion. Were I a real master of intrigue, I would not have the reputation for being a master of intrigue. As for who it is? The person I least suspect would be Lord Mul-ciber. He has a smooth pathway leading him to the purple; why should he shoot arrows into his own shoe?"

  The Laestrygonian sneered, "You overestimate the chances of the god of toil and stench. Which one of us prefers to have the horseshoe-maker lead us in glorious war, rather than the horse-master?"

  "Who prefers to have the master of creating be the master of creation, rather than the master of destroying? Not everyone savors the smell of burning villages, or prefers the clash of iron to the clink of gold."

  The Laestrygonian made a dismissive gesture. "Let us agree the Lame God is beyond suspicion."

  "As if our agreement mattered, my dear Centurion…"

  "I do not bother suspecting the Unseen One. If he wished for the throne of heaven, he could take it by force of his terror. Even my master, Lord Mavors, admits that no one can stand against the Cold Lord of the House of Woe; every
soldier slain on either side during the fray awakens on the next day, marching beneath the black and unadorned banners of the God of Eternal Torments."

  "Let us, as they say, work down the list from oldest to youngest. Lord Pelagaeus is next in age after the Lord Who Wept But Once. Pelagaeus, or the Earthshaker, if I may so call His Lordship, has always opposed the rule of Lord Terminus, and always sought to increase his own kingdom. Remember the deluge of Deucalion?"

  "He is a candidate. And yet one of his principal grievances against Lord Terminus was that the quarrelsome and short-lived humans were given dominion over the fertile and beautiful dry land, while the peaceful and long-lived nymphs, naiads, nereids, and sea elves were forced to live amid the muck and filth of the sea bottom, exposed on several borders to attacks from Pontus. Ever since the petrification of Phaeacia, however, Atlantis has grown in wealth, power, and prestige. Neptune's continent now covers an area equal in extent to all the lands of all the worlds; and all his peaceful sea folk enjoy pastures of surpassing splendor. But notice that it lies between Olympos and the likely attack routes from Pontus and Chaos beyond. Lord Pelagaeus would be the most to suffer, and the greatest to suffer, should the truce between Cosmos and Chaos fail."

  "Ah… really… ? I suppose you are right. What a funny coincidence…"

  "You are the one who recommended to Lord Terminus the grant of the fair continent of Atlantis to Lord Pelagaeus, and who suggested the position. Are you still dismayed at how little the intelligence branch of the Laestrygonian discovers? You can rely on us to remind you of things you have forgotten."

  Boggin said, "Pelagaeus is still a suspect. Suppose the Chaoticists offered to let him keep the living sea and the island of Atlantis, if he would help them tear down the sky and sink the lands and mountains occupied by human beings into the brine? The offer would tempt him."