Titans of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  Whatever they were, when I passed through the first cloud, I saw it light up with usefulness to someone or something.

  There was a glint of shimmering music-energy ahead of me. I saw two of them advancing toward me through the gloom, wheel within wheel and circle within circle, with eyes of fire on the rim of every wheel. They were made of a substance higher and finer than matter, and extended into upper and lower dimensions. The wheels orbiting them, if they passed through the "plane" of three-space, would be per-ceived not as a single perfect whole, but as a succession of mathematically distinct notes and tones, distributed across time from beginning to end. Music, in other words. These were creatures of living song, with strands of destiny-force extending futureward and past-ward from their blazing, beautiful eyes.

  Sirens. These were the race of Miss Daw. The sirens were coming for me, glittering and shining, wheels within wheels of slow, grand, solemn force, awful as the motions of the starry spheres---

  Without a word, they attacked.

  Sirens

  Harmoniously the sirens sang out loudly, one voice clear and high, the other dulcet and soft and low. I saw it as a wave of advancing energy, and concussion of force rippling through the medium of hyperspace, flattening everything in its path into three dimensions, then two, then one, then zero. It was a force of utter annihilation.

  The force expanded in spheres and hyperspheres, filling the area. It was broad and wide and high, and also filled the spaces to the blue and red directions of me.

  There was no direction to turn. Except...

  I was still carrying the talisman of Chaos. With a wingtip, I opened my hypersphere and folded it into its fifth-dimensional form. My sphere lit up with a potent energy-echo, sending a shock wave into each direction, including two new directions at right angles to all others, showing me the dark, grainy beingness of the fifth dimension. You will never be without light again...

  I could see that new, strange direction: I moved there.

  The substance of five-space was so thick as to make the cores of neutron stars seem like vacuum by contrast. I could press, or seep, my now five-dimensional body into the gray solid wall and push it out of shape: a quarter inch, maybe, maybe an eighth of an inch in the direction I now called

  "strangeward."

  But a three-dimensional cube one eighth of an inch above a flat plane where an angry square sends out a flat knife of all-destructive energy is safe. The knife misses. The target is in another dimension, infinitely out of reach.

  And this was all-destructive energy. This was not something meant to stun or trap me. I could hear the interior reality of the four-dimensional expanding hypersphere of deadly music as it passed by an eighth of an inch "beneath" me. ("Beneath" a better word than "antistrangeward") My five-dimensional senses opened up. Once more, I had adapted to this new, intensely pressurized, endlessly black dimension. Once more, I could hear three new conditions or sensations: being, relation, and extension.

  The neutronium medium of five-space rang like a dull bell. I heard messages made of relational

  "sets" or "frames" being passed back and forth through this area of over-reality: Your wife, Parthenope, speaks: Lord Husband, I detect the interior nature of the shadow of the target, Phaethusa. She is nearby, at right angles to our present theme.

  Your wife, Leucosia, speaks: There is another force in this area. We detect the chaoticists: Titan shadows, larger than universes, fall across all the themes of the overworld. They are far away, but still we hear the echo of their dread music.

  Parthenope speaks: My Lord Husband, send aid quickly, or the prey is escaped!

  A much louder gong-note, rasping as if to shatter all the lower dimensions, vibrated through the area. At first I thought it was an answer, perhaps from the Lord Husband these two sirens sang to-but no. The character of its existence was different. The sirens were real, and my fifth-level senses told me they partook of reality. The voice came from somewhere beyond reality, neither below nor above it, but somehow, simply, starkly other-Phaethusa, daughter of Neaera, it is I, Thrinax, your half brother, son of Rhode, consort of bright Helios. I am sent from Myriagon, from the golden towers of infinity, because I once entered Saturn's submicroscopic world, when I overthrew the Telchine, our helpless enemies, and broke their power

  A weapon of light is mine. Insubstantial, its stroke cannot be parried. A breastplate of seven virtues encircles me. Impalpable, it cannot be pierced. I am the warlord of our realm of endless crystalline peace. The time-restrictions of the Saturnine singularity do not permit you to draw memories of me from the aeon-filaments where I dwell into that tiny coffin of a universe now restricting you.

  I waited aeons, but have bent the years so that, to me, it was but an hour; and the name of the Hour, your father's servant girl, when we should meet, was told to me. All, all has been done so that you may answer.

  Was it talking to me? I tried to form words in this strange relational-set language. I had an organ for producing a frame: "Help me! They are going to kill me!"

  Helios is cognizant, on several levels, of the threat. You are too small, at present, for us to reach.

  The entire sidereal universe of Saturn is no more than a black spot on a slide in the library of Helios. However, the infinite can save the finite in a way you cannot understand.

  "What can you do?"

  We stand ready to avenge you.

  "What?"

  The puzzlement of a world of perfect immortality, perfect evil, confounds our mathematicians.

  Hence, the final solution is prepared, an absolute crime. I summon Phlegon! He progresses through eighteen millions of collapsed relational sets!

  A solemn gong-note rang through the neutronium, and a wailing clamor of horns and drumbeats-or something my brain interpreted as horns and drums. It was an astonishing noise, something louder than the whole universe.

  A second voice emerged from that clamor and spoke in existential sets that threatened to crack the neutron substance around me: we have tolerated the affront OF SATURN FOR NINE

  UNCOUNTABLE INFINITIES of time. advance the thousand-dimensional object! at phaethusa's word, we initiate the retaliatory annihilation!

  Trinax called out to me, and now his signal sounded dim and remote: Daughter of Helios and Neaera! Speak if you wish us to slay and murder all of time and space, and all things great and small within it. The Green Energy Smiths are alert-the Thousand-Dimensional Object is in a state of readiness.

  The gong-note sounded again, and all the lesser dimensions shook.

  The siren Parthenope signaled to her sister, using an energy-weft that smote my ears as a normal voice: "Leucosia, our prey is now being observed by the horrors of the Namelessness, the creatures of Myriagon. Now, at last, we can kill her when and where they can witness the crime, and see our songs stained red with her virgin blood. At last! This weary playacting, pretending that she could escape us, chasing her until she called them, at last is ended."

  The two sirens unfolded themselves into the fifth dimension from the fourth, growing into solidity around me. I could not tell the distance, but my sense-impressions heard echoes from their existential patterns very nearby. They had not been unable to reach me.

  Parthenope said wearily, "Slay her with a diminished fifth, my sister, and be done with it, that the world may die, and we be at rest."

  But Leucosia answered, "Sister, something is amiss. My lance is pointed at her heart, but I dare not strike. Observe the colors of the moral warp. What is wrong?"

  Parthenope whispered in awe: "Madness! She has gone insane! She will not strike back, even if we kill her for it."

  "Tell her we will despoil her naked corpse in public after the murder and will vaunt and caper, merely to taunt her weeping mother."

  "Phaethusa! Can you not heat our words?"

  I gritted my teeth and said nothing. For one thing, to deflect the neutron medium of five-space even one-eighth inch out of its normal rest-state required immense energy.
I am sure my three-dimensional girl-body would have been sweating and shaking by now.

  For another, I damn well was not going to die to please them.

  And, bloody hell, I was the heroine here, wasn't I? The human race, all those planets, the sun and moon and stars, time and space-all the beautiful things Archer talked about-it was not going to be wiped out because of me. Not while I was leader. Not on my watch. No sir. No.

  Thrinax: Phaethusa's silence passes verdict on the world of Saturn. Arrest the Thousand-Dimensional Object! I see countless strands of ethical and entropic energy stream from my garments into the blank spot of Saturn's dead world, but one returns bright as silver, untarnished. Phaethusa would forgive her slayers. She was raised as human, thinks as a human, and yet she reached the conclusion Helios foresaw, even in a world where moral facts cannot be seen, only imagined. The universe is proved. Spare it.

  A new voice spoke, a feminine voice, but not human-sounding, as if a harp of fine crystal were playing: Lampetia, save for Phaethusa, youngest daughter of the Bright One, addresses my brothers. In my glass I see the universe of Saturn is now within our debt, and by the foolish rules that Cosmos uses, this means Captain Thrinax wins another victory, to us instantaneous, even if, to her, many weary aeons of suffering must pass.

  Indeed, the weapon of light, stronger than any weapons of the material world: a weapon not in his hand, but in a girl's heart. The mercy of bright Phaethusa is mightier than the Scythe of Time, more far-reaching than the Thunderbolt of Jove.

  I admit I was wondering what good this would do me, when a second woman's voice, this one sounding much more lively, and more human, spoke. Sister, I am Circe, Enchantress, daughter of Helios the Bright and lovely Neaera the Dark of the Moon. I alone of our folk have dwelt for a time within Saturn's realm, and studied its lore. The tiniest part of the debt the Cosmos now owes you I use to transform you to a new shape.

  All transformations are by knowledge: Knowledge changes you into something other than you are. For this purpose you were incarnated. Receive now the secret of how to escape the Olympian power of destiny control...

  At that same moment, a hurried group of messages passed back and forth between Leucosia and Parthenope. They screamed.

  One was a shriek of fear. "She must be slain before she drinks this knowledge!"

  But the other was a victory scream. 'Too late! They are too late! Phaethusa dies this moment! The maenads are here!"

  "Leucosia-the other wives have arrived, dangerous to us. Abandon this paradigm. Change, now, dancing sister, our notes to flatter shape, and call this strangeness of high space down into the beauty of the world-a beauty which will not perish with Phaethusa's death, as our Lord Husband planned."

  An answer came: "Parthenope, let other hands now slay the maiden of Chaos: Let another lance, less reluctant than my own, pierce her soft, white breast and rend asunder all her loveliness. I do not kill for pleasure, but to work the old world's fall, that I may one day rejoice with golden voice in the new world, phoenixlike, our Master promises shall rise! We must away."

  Before Circe could utter another word, before the secret was spoken, the world collapsed. It was like what Mr. Glum had done to me. Reality snapped, and I was in another scene.

  There was no transition, no logic to it. I had been there; now I was here.

  I was a girl. Sunlight was falling on me. I lay on the grass. Around me rose tall trees, bright with greenery and dappled light. A breeze made the leafy masses shimmer with a rustling noise.

  Another noise came from the near distance. Women, many women, shrieked and screamed and sang: "Ite Bacchai! Ite Bacchai! Ite Bacchai!"

  I saw a pine tree tremble from root to crown, and sway, and topple grandly.

  A woman stood there. She wore a tattered toga, and the torn strips fluttered like strange wings around her. Around her waist was wound a zone of ivy; her breasts were scratched and exposed, as if she had been nursing wild beasts. A wreath of ivy rode aslant her wild and disordered hair, and curlicues of green vine twined through her straggling curls. In one hand she held a slender wand, wound with grapevine, topped with a pinecone.

  With her other hand, a hand as slim and delicate as my own, she plucked a second pine tree up by the roots with an easy gesture, and tossed it lightly aside. The tree was a hundred yards high. She let fly several tons of lumber, as if the weight were nothing to her.

  Her mad eyes, dancing with odd dreams, lit upon me. She tilted her head to one side, almost shyly, and smiled a smile of happiness. She pointed the wand at me. "Yoo-hoo! Sisters! Here she is, here she is, here she is! Alone, alone, all on her own!"

  A second maiden, a girl perhaps fifteen years old or less, stepped into view behind her. Her dress was as torn as the first girl's had been, and her anadem was made of rose thorns and belladonna.

  She also held a wand tipped with a pinecone, but in her other hand she held a little baby, upside down by the foot. I did not see the baby moving; I thought it might be dead.

  This second girl sang out: "Fall upon her, wild maenads! Tear and bite and rip and slay! The daughter of the Daystar-Htan shall be our raw pork!"

  I saw blood was coming out of her mouth. I wondered if she had bitten her tongue.

  I have heard a crowd scream before, at a rugby match Headmaster Boggin took us all to once, a treat for doing particularly well that semester. The crowd there was men and boys, and their voices were deep, and their roar, when they roared, was like an ocean noise. There were women in the audience that day, but I doubt if they had screamed with such bloodlust and abandon as the men.

  Now I heard a noise not unlike the roar that rang when the final winning score was made, and the crowd of men had screamed in joy. Except this noise was an octave or two higher. I had never heard so many high-pitched voices scream at once.

  In horror movies, girls scream only when they are terrified, not to terrify. Of course, in horror movies, the buxom blondes are usually not breaking rocks in two with their feet, knocking trees aside with their hands.

  A throng of girls, all of them young and shapely, some in torn dresses, some in panther or leopard skins, some nude, some running upright, some running (hips impossibly high) on all fours like beasts, some bounding from tree to tree like frogs, now came through the forest like an avalanche. The noise of timber falling was like the noise of the end of the world.

  Did I mention that I was running away at this point?

  Maenads

  By pure lucky mishap, I had not had time to don the evening gown I had entered the store to buy.

  Instead I was in my lightest pair of sneakers, the running shoes Vanity had bought me in Paris. I would have hated to try to run, leaping bushes and rocks, dodging around trees, wearing heels.

  Also, I was wearing blue jeans like a proper American girl. Thank God for blue jeans.

  Ululating, shrieking, screaming, the maenads tumbled and thundered and flew through the trees after me.

  There was no one giving orders. Had they merely sent two teams of runners to my right and left, they could have surrounded me. But no: The mob just all came in the straight line toward what they saw, trampling each other.

  But they were so strong and so fleet of foot, they really did not need a plan. Every moment as I ran, they cut the distance between us in half.

  A one-hundred-yard length of pine tree came crashing like a battering ram through the air behind me, flung like a javelin. I ducked and swerved in time, and saw the wall of bark, yard upon yard of it, sailing by, a few feet from my face, wrinkled black texture of the bark whistling and whispering.

  Some drunken girl had thrown a tree. At me. Thrown a tree. You would think, once I found out I lived in a world ruled by pagan gods, that not much would surprise me. I staggered and gawped at the sight of a mast-tall tower of living wood, dirt clods still clinging to its many roots, slipping past my face.

  The stagger saved my life. A boulder the size of a car hissed past me to the other side, flung like a baseba
ll, and shattered against the ground with a sound like a bomb igniting, sending rock chips flying. Pow. If I had not stopped to stare, I would have been right about there right about now.

  A shrill yell like a flock of falcons screeching rent the air. They thought it was cute to throw rocks and trees. Now they all wanted to do it.

  I stopped short and turned, and saw, like a herd of whales jumping all at once, arching, fifty huge and ponderous cylinders of wood toppling grandly, hugely, unstop-pably, crashing down through the air toward me.

  Two of the airborne trees had shrieking maenads clinging to them: One was yodeling like a cowgirl, happy to the last; the other was covered in blood and tried to leap clear of the branches as the tree toppled. Apparently these women did not pause to find out who or what was in the things they threw, or who or what was in the way.

  I sprinted toward the area that seemed most clear of landing lumberyards, the part of the forest with the most trees and other obstructions to slow the immense rain. Only one or two rocks were rocketed my way-there simply were not that many boulders for the shrieking women to pull up.

  The trees all fell, uprooting other trees, quaking and crashing, and the earth cried out in pain and shook. I ran toward the thickest part of the dust cloud, which now expanded, gale-winged, out from the toppling wreckage of the broken forest.

  I was blind for a moment and ran with my best sprinter's speed. These maenads were all stronger than me, and faster, too, but they could not hit what they could not see.

  When I came clear of the dust cloud, the trees were thicker than before. Only a handful of the maenads had me in direct sight, and one of them was sitting down to cry, because there was dust in her eyes.

  Into the thicket. Breath short. Lungs burning from dust. Left, right, left again. Double back. Leap a fallen trunk. Graceful leap, good form. Still too close behind me. Heard trunk behind me snap in half. Less graceful form. Dodge right. Broken half of fallen trunk smashes trees and bushes to my left.

  Suddenly, ravine. Two sharp cliffs, with a trickle of water at the bottom. Thornbushes and trees on the far side, no place to land. Trees on far side splintered and broken, fallout from maenad-fury earlier?