Titans of Chaos

"I was told that finally, a psychic event of a type and kind unknown must take place at the finalstep to make it permanent. Unknown to my people! My sister Circe has a blind spot, because ofher paradigm: She didn't know what Colin's role was supposed to be." I swallowed. "Ivolun-teered, you know. It was to get that message through that I came into this world, andsuffered all this, and met you."

Vanity cut in impatiently, "Do we need that last part? Do we care if it is permanent or not, at thispoint? If we just temporarily made it possible to outrun Trismegistus, then we could outrun him,right?"

I said to Victor, "There was one thing more: Time-space must be arranged to permit the laws ofnature under which these four events may take place. That sounds like a Vanity thing to me."

Victor said to me, "How close is he to overtaking us?"

I looked back. I saw the fourth-dimensional shape of Trismegistus, but he was not behind us, notanymore. He was ahead of us.

I saw an explosion in the fourth dimension, another clash caused by the violent intersection of twomutually contradictory laws of nature. Trismegistus had seized the segment of dream-spacethrough which our elevator shaft was running, and shoved it into the middle of downtown LosAngeles, back on the material plane, Earth. All our running: We had run in a circle, like somewounded game creature.

A flux of crooked morality strands, charged and infused with magic, was issuing contradictoryorders to the matter and energy in the area. Nothing knew what the laws of nature were anylonger; it was another dream-storm, exploding like a bomb beneath our feet.

At the same time, the line of energy I was using to probe him stiffened with a force of someunknown purport. One of his serpents reared up from his wand, opened its fanged mouth. Musicaltension, similar to a siren song, flickered from the snake-mouth, flashed backwards along thestrand, and struck me in the face. Musical snake venom in my eyes.

There was a sensation of fire in my eyes, pain. My eyes were filled with tears, but I could still see.

Dimly.

It was getting dimmer. I was going blind.

I screamed, "Vanity, get us out of here! He's ahead of us!"

Victor said, "Belay that, Vanity. Create the laws of nature needed to dispel a destiny. There is nopoint in running."