Fugitives of Chaos

I turned toward Victor.

Colin said, 'I could make the obvious joke at this point…'

I said to Quentin, 'Give me the hypo.'

He passed over the syringe he'd stolen from Dr. Fell.

Colin muttered, 'Quick, Watson, the needle!'

I took out some of the filter paper I had filched, made a crude funnel, held my hand over it.

My palm and fingertips turned red. Vanity crinkled up her nose in a silent Eyew, gross expression as blood dripped into the filter.

I said, 'This is a creature that exists on a molecular level. It knows how the brain is put together. I have asked it to unblock Victor. It might work; it might not. Miss Daw is the one who knocked his memory askew, by manipulating the fourth dimension; but if Dr. Fell tried to erase any brain segments by purely mechanical means, this might undo the damage. There is a risk of—'

Victor yanked his sleeve back and thrust out his arm.

I thought about Lily Lilac. That made it easy to thrust the needle in.

Everyone stood waiting to see if Victor would keel over or something.

I said, 'A brisk jog will get your blood moving. And we don't have time to wait.'

Vanity and Colin were giving Victor worried looks. Nonetheless, we set off at a brisk trot to the North.

9.

I spoke in white, puffing whispers as we ran. 'Three stages to powers. First. Vision powers. ESP. Tarot cards. They can't stop at all. Second. Little powers. Make things light, heavy. Fly. TK. Jump long ways.

Can stop for a while. Boundaries turned on before. Why not again? Third stage. Talismans. Kept in safe.

Change shape, walk through walls, talk to molecules. Goal: get to safe. Need little powers on to get into Great Hall. Wired.'

Quentin puffed, 'Why me first? No staff. Need wand.'

I shook my head. I was out of breath to explain my plan. I looked at Victor. He was trotting along, his feet moving up and down in the snow like pistons, his expression calm, smooth, unafraid. To him I said,

'Anything? Remember?'

He said, 'Not yet. If I understand the table of opposition, of who stops whom, you should have given the injection to Quentin, not to me. Quentin is trumped by Fell, who used materialistic science to banish his alchemy. I was trumped by Daw, who uses the fourth dimension to neutralize three-dimensional science, right?'

It was actually the relativistic and quantum-statistical worldview overcoming the limitations of the absolutist Newtonian atomistic-mechanistic model, but I was too out of breath to say.

Maybe he was right. One more bad decision from Leader Amelia. Dear God in Heaven, but I hated the job of leader.

10.

Tattered clouds like ghost ships were being blown along the starry sky, and a pale moon, now here, now hidden, shone on the bright and silent hillocks of snow. The barrows were in a hilly place, far from anything, and bits of broken wall, or standing stones erected by ancient peo-pies, stood here and there among the widely spaced mounds.

We had stopped jogging. Everyone looked at me.

I said to Quentin, 'What did you do last time?'

He said, 'If I could remember, I would not need to do it. But I had my walking stick. Apsu. Where is he?

I miss him.'

I said, 'He was a gift from Mrs. Wren…'

When I spoke, a rustle of cold wind started from the north, and blew across us. I tucked my cold hands into my armpits and turned my back to it. Vanity was tugging at her muffler; Colin and Quentin squinted and hunched their shoulders. Only Victor, who stood without scarf or hat or gloves, seemed unaffected, and his gaze traveled left to right, as if he were watching some unseen thing move quickly past us.

The wind gust died down. I heard the sound of snow slithering and hissing, windblown, moving away to the south, and diminish.

To Victor, I said, 'What is it?'

He said, 'Magnetic anomaly. Interesting.'

Quentin said, 'What about the staff V

I continued, 'The staff. When you used it against her, it shattered in your hand.'

Quentin looked stricken.

I said, 'What's wrong?'

'You are thinking of these things as super-powers, aren't you?' he said, a trace of bitterness in his voice.

'Like a mechanism you turn on and turn off. I do not think it works that way. I think it is like being a Roman Catholic priest. If you get married and break your vow of chastity, I don't think you can just get divorced and become a priest again. If my staff was broken, my power is broken. It's over. Let's go on to another