Fugitives of Chaos

Quentin did not stop. The wand drew closer.

I shouted, 'Victor, do something!'

Victor, across the room, did not look up. 'Check your premises.'

Quentin touched Colin on the knuckle with the wand. Quentin's lips did not move, but we heard a voice, a thin version of Quentin's voice, begin to mutter and chant: ' Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres!

Arma virumque cano! Res ipsa loquitur.…'

Colin's nerve broke. He dropped my hand and jumped back as far as his chair would allow. 'Keep off!

Keep off! Damn! He's gone mad with power!'

Quentin smiled and put his stick aside. 'Yeah. Be careful, or I'll tell you the name of the Father of Salmons.'

'Hey! I've got this ring! I am supposed to be immune to magic powers now!'

'Yes, Colin, but I have said before I do not do magic. I only seem to. It's a trick done with mirrors. Your ring cannot stop me from pulling a rabbit out of my hat.'

'You… tricked me!'

'Ah, grasshopper! You have learned everything there is to know about magic! Now you shall be the master! Go, and rule the world in my name!'

'Don't single me out for your magic curses. I am not the only one! Amelia made some sort of promise to me, she's not saying. What about that promise?'

'I can tell her the name of the Father of Salmons, too. It's Gwion. Now listen to what she has to say.'

' 'Music'… ?' Colin looked at me.

'The Lamia said it. Remember, Quentin?'

Quentin said, 'I would say, there are some things you just don't forget, but I think I forgot that scene twice.' He shivered and looked unhappy. 'I remember.'

'In the story you told us? The Lamia was complaining that right under everyone's noses, Boggin had been teaching us the paradigms we needed to control our powers. They taught me Einstein, and Newton to Victor, Aristotle to you, and to Colin…'

Quentin muttered, ''He taught music to the wild prince of Night and Dreams…''

Colin said, 'That doesn't make sense. Not only do I hate music, but Miss Daw is the music teacher, and she's the one who uses Amelia's paradigm. Daw is a four-dimensional squid with wings, right?'

'Actually, she looks like wheels within wheels with eyes on every rim,' I said. 'But, you are wrong about one thing. She used her music to stop me. That's not part of my paradigm. That's against my paradigm.'

I turned to Quentin. 'Could she be something, I don't know, sort of halfway between my position and Colin's?'

Colin said, 'Glum did not use music.'

Quentin said, 'But he did use a bearskin to turn into a bear. That was his beast-shape-cloak, his bear-sark. He was doing a shamanistic thing. It also sounds like he had a fetish.'

I rolled my eyes. 'I'll say!'

'No, I mean a real fetish.'

'It was a real fetish,' I said.

Quentin gave up on me and turned to Colin. 'It sounds like Grendel used some shaman props to work his art That would put Grendel halfway between you and me, sharing some of the properties of both.'

Colin said, 'Who else fits where? And why does everything have to be so complicated?'

I said, 'If things were simple, everything would have been solved long ago.'

Quentin said, 'At a guess… ? And this is just a blind guess, I'd say the Hecatonchire are a cross between Victor's people and Amelia's. And who knows? I can't think of anything that could possibly fit between me and Victor. He and I have nothing in common, really. No overlap.'

I said, 'Maybe the Cyclopes. I've been assuming Dr. Fell is just like Victor, but maybe he actually does semi- magical stuff like potions and alchemy as well as molecular engineering. Some of the enemy called his stuff 'potions.' We don't have any evidence either way.'

I leaned back in the divan, wondering if, all this time, Vanity had gotten the best catch out of the three.

Victor was unapproachable; Colin was crude. But Quentin…

I said, 'When did you become the Answer Man, Quentin? Why do you know all these things all of a sudden?'

He picked up his gold-and-silver grimoire, and pointed to it. 'Warn et Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est.

Colin's Dad told me. He wrote this book. You know, this might have been the talisman meant for Colin, except… Happy birthday, Colin! More powers for you.'

He took out the little brown envelope, on which was written in Boggin's crisp, wide-looped penmanship, Remember Next Time Not to Look,

'My talisman! You and Victor got instruction books on how to use your powers. I guess my instruction booklet can be written on the three-by-five card.' Colin opened the envelope and took out something about the size of a