Fugitives of Chaos

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