Titans of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  The forces of Mavors fell astern and were lost.

  I spread my hands and said, "Ta-da!"

  Colin got down on one knee. "Please tell me. This is torture."

  I said, "Maybe I want to torture you, little boy! The Catwoman brooks no defiance from her henchmen! The torture will continue until you learn how to hench when it is henching time!"

  He clasped his hands in prayer: "Okay, okay. I'll be good, up until the moment you are no longer leader. Then I am going to find some excuse, I swear to God, to do a Boggin on you. An opportunity will come. I know it. You'll create one. But I am sorry I disobeyed, I won't do it again; I will be good! May I never see you half-naked again if I am forsworn of this oath! Please tell me what the hell just happened?"

  I paused a moment, glaring down at him.

  Well, he had chucked an Atlantis guy overboard for me, after making him praise me. That was worth something.

  Besides, I wasn't sure what "do a Boggin" meant, but it did not sound decent, so I was inclined to avoid the matter.

  "Fine," I said, "the Dark Mistress is appeased. For now. What happened is this. Grendel's mom really was about to kill me at one point. The curse of Mavors went off. Instead of sending one vulture, he sent his whole fleet. Since they had Atlantis people with them, the same paradigm Vanity has, they arrived in a few minutes. But Lamia was not here. False alarm. Mavors is the guy who told Boggin to let us escape, so he could follow us and trap Lamia when she came to kill us.

  Remember? Mavors had to let us go; we still are the only bait he can use to lure out Lamia, and whoever sent her."

  Colin got to his feet and brushed off his knees. "Great. So we are all still about to be killed. That makes me feel so much better."

  Vanity pointed and yodeled, "Yoo hoo! Land! Land ho!"

  Vanity pointed, and we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, rising, shining and splendid, from out of the waters of the San Francisco Bay. In the cherry light of the newly risen sun, tall buildings of steel and glass rose up behind it, a textured green at their feet. Climbing up the slopes beyond them rose, rank on rank like rectilinear cloud banks, a crumbled mosaic of white and pale gray squares, as red-tiled houses and buildings of stucco caught the glancing dawn-light. The hills rose up brown and tawny, like sleeping lions with bunched muscles.

  I murmured, "I've never seen so many houses."

  Colin said, "I guess that's why they call it a 'city.' Um- aren't we on the wrong side of the world?

  How did we get to the Pacific? That's not New York."

  Vanity, her green eyes wide and innocent, said, "Sure it is-that's the Brooklyn Bridge right there..."

  Victor turned his head toward me. "What are your orders, Leader?"

  I said, a hint of surprise in my voice, "But we made it. This is it. We can go off and do whatever we like. Get jobs, raise kids, fund a private space-venture to Mars---Right? We won. Game over.

  Right?"

  Within Sight of the Land of freedom

  All three boys exchanged glances, a look of mingled superiority and worry on their faces. A look that said, Oh, come on. How come she doesn't get it? I guess she is more tired than we thought...

  Vanity said, "Why don't you sit down, Amelia... ? You look a bit overwrought."

  I sat down on the little bench of silver cushions in the stern of the ship.

  Colin said, "If you want to appoint a second and third in command, Dark Mistress, you can take a break if you want..."

  I said, "No, no. I feel okay. I guess the game isn't nearly over. Lamia is still looking to kill us, and Boggin still has some method of finding me, I guess at any time he wants, and Mavors can find us any time our lives are imperiled. We have not escaped yet. The Olympians have let us out on a leash. It's a long leash, but it is still a leash, and we are not free until we get the collar off."

  Victor said, "We also know from your experience with Sam the Drayman that the Olympians routinely erase memories and falsify evidence to hide their presence from the human beings, whom they regard as cattle. I suppose we can expect to see headlines in the news about the accidental sinking of the Queen Elizabeth II some time within the next few days. I am sorry about that. We already speculated that there may be a spell or 'fate' in place to prevent the humans from seeing evidence of people like us. If so, any use of our powers in front of human witnesses may trigger an alarm, just in the same way Mavors gets an alarm when we are threatened with death."

  Quentin said, "This ship, the Argent Nautilus, also can be detected when she moves, or when Vanity calls for her."

  Colin said, "Yep, but apparently-correct me if I am wrong on this, guys-apparently only Mestor or some At-lantans have a whatchamacallit-"

  "Magic lodestone," provided Vanity.

  "-magic lodestone to find the ship in motion. If Lamia had one, she'd have come to get us all by now, right? Mestor hasn't come for us, because Mavors told him to let us run around till Lamia showed up to kill us."

  Quentin said to me, "Leader, our experience on the ocean liner shows that we endanger any human beings we are around. I suggest we just turn around and find some deserted island somewhere."

  I looked at the beautiful, tall buildings, towers made by human hands, human minds, works of fine engineering. Built by free people, who explored and conquered the new world not so very long ago. People in a land where women owned property, carried guns, ran businesses, worked in laboratories, became astronauts. People like what I wanted to be like.

  "Live like Robinson Crusoe? For how long?"

  Quentin spread his hands. "Tell me what our long-term goals are."

  I said, "Well, gosh, I assume we all have different goals. I want to be the first woman on Mars.

  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."

  Colin said, "Boggin intercepted the replies. Who knows what they might have said? Anything from get lost to let's do it in the road. You can't blame a guy for wondering."

  I said, "At the moment, we're wondering about what to do next. In effect, the question is, Where do we want to go to wait for Lamia to attack us?"

  Colin said, "That's easy. We go home to Chaos. My dad, Morpheus, can protect us from Lamia, and from Boggin and Mavors, too."

  Quentin looked both sad and stern. I could see he did not want to bring up his idea he had shared with Vanity, that none of us could go home. In fact, he looked so pained that I decided to spare him.

  Vanity saw the same look and had the same thought, because she blurted out, "That will start the war between Cosmos and Chaos, and the material universe will get destroyed!"

  Colin said, "So? What's so great about the material universe?"

  I said under my breath, "It is where that nice stuff called 'matter' is, for one thing."

  Colin did not hear. He continued, "How's this for a plan: We go home, I get my parents back, war starts, universe ends, good guys win and bad guys die, and we all live happily ever after. Roll credits."

  Victor said, "This will sound unpopular, but I am afraid we cannot necessarily trust that our parents are on the right side. We have no evidence either way as to what they are like. We do not know who is in the right or wrong between Cosmos and Chaos. We ought not give loyalty or aid to any group until we know what they stand for."

  I raised my hand in a commanding gesture. "The Dark Mistress hereby orders that we table this conversation for later. Mavors would not have let us go if he did not have a mechanism in place to prevent us from leaving the universe and going home. He let us go to act as bait for Lamia; he would not take the risk of triggering Ragnarok. So there must be something watching us, something that will swoop down and stop us if we get close to the gates at the edge of the world, or wherever you have to go to get out of the universe. Find out what the mechanism is and how to disarm it, or find out where the Gates at the End of Creation are, and who or what is guarding them, and then we'll talk about going home. Until then, let's talk about getting free and staying alive."

  Victor said, "I would raise the same objection to talk of approaching one faction or another among the Olympians. Mulciber might help us escape Mavors, for example, and protect us from Lamia, but only if we promised to support his bid for the throne of Heaven. He also might simply imprison us and erase our memories. Or he might be the one who sent Lamia. The same is true of anyone else." To Vanity, he added, "Even the Phaeacians might start a war, or turn us back over to the Olympians, if we approached them. And we do not know who sent Lamia."

  Quentin said, "But we are not perfectly ignorant. What about the three Olympians who were allied with Chaos? They are almost sure to be our friends: Dionysus, Athena, and Hermes. Or, to use the names they are using these days, Lord Anacreon, Lady Tritogenia, and Lord Trismegistus. They are all gods of wisdom and magic, mysticism. They have nothing to gain from the status quo. We could take precautions, make a careful approach."

  Victor said, "My suggestion is to approach nobody, nobody, until we discover more information."

  I said, "One suggestion for deserted island, one for back to Chaos and destroy the universe, one for find out more. Vanity? You are the only one who hasn't said anything yet."

  Vanity said meekly, "Is going to Hollywood and becoming famous an allowed suggestion?"

  I shrugged. "Why not? It is not any more unreasonable than the 'destroy the universe' suggestion.

  But it is going to be hard to stay hidden if you are posing for Sudsy-Fun Soap and for Shine-Rite Tooth Grease, appearing in rock videos and on billboards or something. And Quentin has a good point. I mean, let's suppose you are there eating brunch at the Brown Derby with Elizabeth Taylor and Cindy Crawford and Cecil B. DeMille, and a blood-drinking vampiress with no eyes comes in to kill you. See the problem?"

  Vanity surprised me. She is smarter than she sometimes acts. Her response was, "This is not a problem of how to get free or stay safe. This is a problem of how to find out how they are finding us. Mavors expects Lamia to find us. How? Mavors expects to find out she has found us, and further expects to find out who is sending her. How? You said Grendel's mother followed some sort of trail or signal left by the wedding dress. Did Lamia put anything on Quentin or in his bloodstream that would enable her to track him down? Let's find out how they are finding us."

  I smiled. "A capital suggestion! But you cannot sense Mavors being aware of us, can you?"

  She said, "Boggin is aware of where you are. Right now. He knows."

  It wasn't news to me; I had been expecting it. On the other hand, it did not make me happy, either.

  Vanity said, "I felt the moment in time when Mavors became aware of you. It was when you were alone with Grendel's mother."

  I said, "When I was threatened with death. The object his curse is meant to protect us against."

  Quentin said softly, "Call it a decree. A declaration. The word 'curse' implies malice; the Olympians can decree any number of things."

  Colin made a gargling sort of sigh, something like the sound of a man preparing
to spit. "Come on! The Olympians have to have a weak spot! There has got to be some limit to their power, something beyond their range."

  I turned to him. "Like what?"

  He said, "I don't know. But why didn't Mavors just 'decree' that the guy sending Lamia would write out a confession and then have a heart attack and die?"

  Victor said, "The person who sent Lamia could also be an Olympian. They must be immune to each other's powers or, at least, able to resist."

  Colin said, "Quentin detected that Mavors could manipulate fate, and make it so that his ships could outmaneuver us. Okay, fine. That's fine. He's the god of war; I guess one of his perks is to be able to dictate the outcome of sea combats. But apparently Boggin can't just decree that we'd all be good students and never give him any problems. Or else he would have done so. Maybe he's decreed we will always be caught each time we try to escape, but why not just decree that we won't even try in the first place? You see? You see what I mean? Is there a price they have to pay?

  A limit? Do they only get three tries?"

  I said to Quentin, "Are there any myths or legends about people who escape from the fates the gods set for them?"

  Quentin smiled and said, "No. No poet would dare write such a tale, would they?"

  Vanity said, "Yes there is. Wagner's Ring Cycle. Die Walkure and those other operas. Siegfried and Tod, or whatever the names were. Remember? The fates decree that Ragnarok will destroy the universe and everyone in it, but Wotan finds that if he can create a man brave and free enough not to be bound by any destiny, Siegfried, that Siegfried can break the magic spear of Wotan with his magic sword Nothung, and he frees the girls from the magic circle of fire, but drinks a magic potion by mistake..."

  Colin said, "Isn't that the opera where everyone is stabbed and poisoned at the end, except the girl, who sings, jumps on a funeral pyre, has the roof fall on her, and the Rhine floods and sweeps the ashes away? Not exactly a happy ending."