Fugitives of Chaos

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.'