Titans of Chaos

"So I proclaim, Tachys Hermes Trismegistus Chrysor-rapis, Diactoros, and Klepsiphron,Polytropos, and Argeiphontes! Swift messenger thrice-greatest of the golden wand I am,messenger of death, guide of souls to hell, thief-prince and many-turning: at whose behest eventhe wisest, all-seeing, perish! To bring the message of inescapable fate is in my jurisdiction: For Iam Mechaniotes the contriver; this I contrive. I am the soul-thief Psychopompos: These steal I."

Even though Trismegistus was outside the ship, what he did next involved a huge section oftime-space, and I saw it. Even with my eyesight growing dim, I saw it.

It was the same thing I had seen Mavors do on Mars. Forces flowed into the future andestablished something there, a cold shape like ice, freezing the energies of time into one rigidity.

It was the destiny of our deaths.

He said, "A life for a life, I demand, by the death of Laverna, of Lamia, of Eurymedusa: yourblood to wash her blood from your hand."

A web of moral obligations, many-stranded, complex, dazzling, now wound around the iceberg ofenergy.

"To deviate from my decree, I do not allow: Time has no will, for Saturn is in Tartarus."

I saw the azure dazzle of cryptognostic particles stream from his eyepatch-but into time, not intospace-and negate the free will he had just created. The iceberg of time-energy became as cold andimplacable as inanimate matter: a law of nature, from which there was no appeal, no mercy.

Then he threw back his head (I saw it through the walls of the ship) and chanted:Muse, sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia,

Lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks,

The luck-bringing messenger of the immortals whom Maia bare,

The rich-tressed nymph, when she was joined in love with Zeus!

Born with the dawning, at midday he played on the lyre,

And in the evening he stole the cattle of far-darting Apollo....

As swiftly are all his many-turning contrivances accomplished!

My sight was failing. Perhaps this was due to blindness; perhaps it was the side effect of Colin'sparadigm. Whatever Trismegistus did to set the destiny in place, I could not look at it.

Victor paid not the least attention to the voice. He said to me, "Amelia, can you look through timewith some new sense of yours and find this destiny waiting in our future? Can you locate thedestiny-influencing thing?"

I tried to describe what I had just seen. My words meant nothing to him. In his paradigm, time isnot a continuum, but an absolute.