Fugitives of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  There was one, a black-and-white Western starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, about a man who has to save an ungrateful town from four bad guys coming to kill him. Everyone tries to talk him out of it, his friends, his newlywed wife, everyone. She leaves him. In the end, when he does away with the bandits, they don't even thank him. It made me cry. I don't remember the name of the film, but I hope it won an Academy Award for its year. Marshal Kane was the character's name. I told Vanity that this was the way I wanted to act: to do what was right without fear of failure, without expectation of reward. The wife came back, in the end, Grace Kelly's character.

  We rang in the New Year that night. The ballroom was splendid with decorations. I found the images of Father Time with his scythe a bit sinister, though. We went dancing, both swing-time dancing and formal ballroom dancing. Victor is always fun to waltz with because he never loses the beat and never makes mistakes, but Colin was fun to waltz with, too, and he seemed almost polished and polite when he spoke.

  Colin and I spun around the dance floor to the lilting strains of "The Blue Danube" by Strauss, and I said,

  "Have you been replaced by a Colin-shaped robot duplicate?"

  "What's the matter, Amelia?" He smiled down at me. His eyes were blue and warm.

  "A whole hour has gone by, and you haven't used the word 'breast' or even 'nipple' once in the conversation. You said 'Please' earlier this evening. I heard it. It's like seeing a wild boar use a litter box.

  Has someone domesticated you?"

  He grinned his normal the-devil-may-care-but-Colin-does-not-care grin and said, "Well, Amy, being poked by Dr. Fell and sneered at by Boggin and ear-pulled by the porcelain Daw, and ruler-whipped by baggy Mrs. Wren gets to a fellow after a while. I was never the teacher's pet like you were, and I couldn't be the iceman like Victor. And I couldn't even shut up and keep my head down like Big Q.

  Vanity could hypnotize the male teachers and staff with her industrial-strength, king-sized breasts, of course, or threaten to hose down rioters with milk from her nipples. What did I have? I could take the heat for you guys. So I took it."

  "Took what?"

  "You know. When you guys got in trouble, I would throw myself on the hand grenade for you. When you broke some small rule, I'd break some huge rule, and you'd get off with a little delicate slap on your little delicate wrist while I went into the hotbox."

  "Hotbox" was Colin's word for solitary detention in the library, which, in summer, was quite hot.

  'Then when I got out of the hotbox, you guys would be finishing up some game I was too late to get into, or you'd be playing tennis doubles and there was no room for me. If I didn't make a fuss, you guys ignored me. And if I did make a fuss, Amelia the Great Blond Valkyrie would kick my ass. That was back in the days when your arms were longer than mine."

  "You must be from a parallel universe, Colin. None of it happened that way."

  "You think I made trouble for myself because I like trouble? You think I enjoyed having Mr. Glum threaten me with an awl?"

  "When did Mr. Glum ever threaten you with an awl?"

  "The time he thought I stole his pornography magazines he had hidden in his tool shed."

  "You did what?"

  "Now you are doing it again, Amy. Instead of, 'Thank you, Colin, for deflecting trouble from me,' now you are trying to change the subject to Mr. Glum's pornography. Anyway, that is why. Every day before today, I've been under someone's boot Now the boot is gone. I'm a new man. Want to feel my new manhood, Amy-doll?

  I said, "Don't call me Amy."

  "Melly?"

  "No."

  "Melanomia."

  "No."

  "Melon breasts. Megamammary."

  "You just turned back into the boar. The dance is over."

  "The music is still playing!"

  "The dance is over for you and me. Take me back to my chair."

  He walked me back, frowning.

  But then, at the chair, I turned and I kissed his cheek, and said, "Thank you, Colin, for deflecting trouble from me."

  He said, "You're welcome. Oh, and, Amelia…"

  He kissed me on the lips. Before I could decide whether to pull away or not, he just kissed me, just like that. He was certainly a better kisser than Quentin in midair, or Vanity. It was warm and nice, and I felt my limbs go soft, so he put his arms around me to hold me.

  He pulled his head back.

  "Damn you," I said. I had been trying to save at least one of my first few kisses for Victor.

  He just grinned his little half-grin. "You are welcome, too. Thanks for breaking us out of Devil's Island."

  "Let go of me."

  He put me back on my feet. "About that favor you owe me… ?"

  I looked at him. "Yes?"

  "What did you promise exactly? And did it involve a can of chilled whipped cream, warm fudge, and a lot of licking?"

  A girl can only take a finite amount of Colin at a time.

  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 purpose
s,

  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."

  Colin looked very smug and leaned back in his seat, and said, "I am the only one who has a right not to be surprised by the news. Didn't I always say the Earth we were learning about was not the Earth on which the estate stood? And I knew that a village with a dumb name like Abertwyi was something made up by Boggin. And I bet he let Mr. Glum make up that dumb island called Worm's Head. That cannot be a real name."

  Victor said, "Worm's Head is real."

  Quentin said, "It is the skull of the dragon whose spine forms the land throughout the peninsula." Then he muttered to himself. "I wonder on what world I stood when I opened the old mound at midnight? Or what king he was, who rose up before me, pale and glimmering in the moon?"

  3,

  I made a new discovery on the third day; there was a place to rent something like a roller skate, but the wheels were lined up in a line, like the blade of an ice skate, and the whole affair was encased in this huge plastic boot with snaps and clasps going halfway up one's thigh. Helmets and elbow pads and knee pads and thick gloves completed the kit, so the skater looked like some crazed warrior who had thrown away his breastplate, but kept his gauntlets and greaves.

  There were only certain places and times where one was supposed to skate. Being released from so many arbitrary rules in my life, and not being Colin, I obeyed the traffic laws and stayed on the track and certain areas of deck set aside for this sport.

  It was my turn to buddy up with Victor that day. I provoked him into racing me on skates. I won the first lap, but he figured out an energy-conserving glide step to use, and he had more mass to throw into the sharp turns. Awkward at first, he mastered the skill with effortless grace, as he did every thing he put his mind to.

  Afterwards, over lemonade, I brought up a topic that had been gnawing at me.

  I began with an apology. He just looked puzzled. We sat at a small cafe table, which was set along a balcony overlooking the indoor swimming pool (or "the great lake" as it should have been called). Sharp echoes reflected from the roof. Below us, there were sedate old men and women moving with timid pleasure through the water.

  Victor had a towel around his neck, and he glowed from the sweat of our skate-race. A thin shirt of skintight stuff showed off the sculpted planes of his shoulders and chest. He was muscled like a swimmer, built for streamlined endurance, not for bulk. Yellow sunlight slanted through polarized windows and gave his contours a hard look, as if he were a statue of cast gold, or fine copper, machine-lathed to a perfect shape and hand-polished.

  I said, "I'll never question your leadership again. If it hadn't been for me—"

  He said, "Is this about the thing on the dock? Glum's attack?"

  "If we had all gotten in a circle like you said, he would not have been able to carry off both me and Vanity. If he had only gotten one of us, you could have stopped him. I saw him turn visible when you demagnetized the ring of Gyges…"

  "I'd like to point out that you are merely speculating about might-have-beens. Were we in a circle with our backs to the spot where he smashed up through the boards. It might have gone better or worse if you had been closer; I don't see that your conclusion is at all clear."

  "If we had all been in the boat as I said, he would have capsized us and maybe killed us all."

  "Possibly. On the other hand, we don't know what his swimming speed was. Again, you are
speculating.

  Since the situation is unlikely to rise again, the speculation does not seem to be one to lead to a provable theory one way or the other. Is there some experiment you can think of that would settle the question as to whether things would have gone better or worse had we acted otherwise?"

  "Quentin was right, and I should have listened to him! I should not have been arguing with the leader!"

  "I am not sure, legally, I was the leader at that moment in time. We attempted to settle the question of leadership by vote, and came to a tie. As far as that goes, everything was done by proper Robert's rules.

  My only criticism against you is that you resigned leadership before an unambiguous next leader was chosen." He looked thoughtful, saying, half to himself, "Although, since you had appointed me second-in-command previously, I do not know if resigning your commission would have elevated me to leader or would have acted as my resignation, as well…"

  I broke in on his ruminations: "You are our leader! Our chief. Only you; you always have been. There was no ambiguity."

  He smiled and sipped his lemonade. "Amelia, when we were young, you and I had to be the ones leading the others, just because we were older. We had the self-control they lacked; we knew things they didn't.

  I don't think those conditions obtain anymore. If anyone, Quentin is the natural leader at this point; the information in his book is giving him insights the rest of us don't have. I have made several suggestions as to how to defend ourselves against the next attack, which we have reason to believe will be a lethal one.

  Mostly, I have been ignored." His eyes twinkled, and he threw back his head to drain the sour and sweet dregs of the lemonade.

  He stood, as if preparing to have us depart. I put my hand out and took his hand. It was still warm and sweat-touched by the exertion of skating.

  I said, "Wait. There's something I want to ask you."

  He looked down at me, his gaze level and patient.

  "It's about—oh! Can't you sit down?"

  "You wanted to ask me whether I can sit down?"