Vanity wants to be a movie actress. Colin wants to get into my pants.'
Colin actually looked embarrassed. 'Hey!' he said. Then, to cover up his embarrassment, he tried to make a joke of it. 'That was supposed to be a secret.'
I was actually so puzzled by his reaction that I stared at him, looking into his inner nature, guessing what the lines of moral energy between us were supposed to mean, watching the little flickering ripples of usefulness travel on the sound waves he made with his voice, wondering what use those words were to him.
At a guess... ? He thought he had a chance with me. Before, it was all rude jokes because I was out of reach. Now I was coming within his reach, and it was serious. No more jokes.
Quentin said, 'I want to solve the mystery of creation. Why did Saturn make the material universe? Why trap all the free and perfect spirits inside gross material bodies?' Quentin looked at Victor. 'What about you, Victor?'
Victor gave the smallest of smiles. 'I have an ongoing operational preference, rather than an end goal. I was raised in a prison, as a war hostage. War is illogical, wasteful. Wars become less frequent the more incentives rational beings have to cooperate rather than to compete. A free and peaceful commonwealth embracing all rational entities of this and every other universe, Cosmic and Chaotic, mortal and immortal, will deter wars.
'The primary requirement, however, is freedom: universal freedom. If there are other people out there, raised in imprisonment as I was, I have a duty to liberate them, for the same reason why I would have welcomed any outside liberator who would have attempted to free me. We were in the most pleasant prison imaginable. It was still unacceptable. The present condition of the universe is unacceptable. Anything I can do, large or small, along these lines, I will do. Other problems are secondary, and may resolve themselves once this primary problem is solved.'
If Victor had said this in any other tone of voice besides his normal cold and methodical tone, I would have shrugged it off as a daydream. It would have been pompous.
But he said it so reasonably. Anything I can do, large or small, along these lines, I will do. Vanity was staring at Victor with sort of an awestruck hero-worship-type look in her eyes.
'Wow,' said Vanity. 'Pretty cool. You think it will work? Conquering all the universes?'
Victor put his hands in his pockets, shrugging a bit, and seemed relaxed and faintly amused in that nonchalant way he had about him now, which he never had had before. He did not look like a young god who had just declared war on the universe.
Victor said, 'That depends on what you mean by 'work.' Miss Daw, for example, is as much a prisoner as we ever were. I know Colin hates her, but if I could, I would free her. I doubt the chance will present itself. Reality is complex. The most we can hope for in life is partial solutions.
And even such partial solutions as that are temporary, and may require irritating compromises.
That is why I defined my actions in terms of an operational process, not in terms of an end goal.
There is no end. Nothing ever ends. We do what we can when we can. Factors beyond our control-' He made a gesture at the horizon and the sky, a gesture that seemed to encompass the material world, humanity, the stars, the fates, the actions and opinions of other people, all of external reality. '-factors beyond our control... we disregard.'
He turned and looked at me.
I have not said what color his eyes are. They are hazel, a penetrating golden brown, like eyes that could look at anything, large or small, and would never be afraid: eyes that could see through all the lies and fears of everyone around him, and penetrate to the cold and certain truth; eyes that would never blink and look away, never hold shame, never be uncertain. Victor had beautiful eyes.
He turned and looked at me and said something, but I was not sure what he said, because I was looking at his eyes.
The words penetrated: 'But for now, our goal is to escape from the Olympians, who are apparently still so confident about their ability to recapture us that they are letting us wander among the human beings, whom they rule and control. We must prove that confidence to be false, and defeat Olympos. What do we do, Leader?' So it was back to that.
Well, just because I had been railroaded into being leader didn't mean I had to do all the thinking for myself. I said, 'The floor is open to suggestions. We have already heard from Quentin. Go to a deserted island. Colin... ?'
He was standing with his arms folded, frowning toward the city. He looked up, startled. Perhaps he had not been listening. 'What? What is it?'
'We are looking for suggestions.'
Colin pointed at the city and said, 'Is that Hollywood?'
I said, 'What? The city? That's San Francisco. Don't you ever look at maps?'
Quentin said softly, 'You know he never looks at maps.'
Vanity smiled broadly, and gave a little clap of her hands together, and said, 'Hollywood is somewhere in this area, isn't it? This is California.' She rolled her enormous green eyes at Colin.
'He is thinking about his girlfriends. Those starlets he wrote letters to.'
