Titans of Chaos

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 issomewhere 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? Anythingfrom 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, Wheredo 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 sharedwith Vanity, that none of us could go home. In fact, he looked so pained that I decided to sparehim.

Vanity saw the same look and had the same thought, because she blurted out, "That will start thewar 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, warstarts, universe ends, good guys win and bad guys die, and we all live happily ever after. Rollcredits."

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