Titans of Chaos

I did not have a book to read in my dreams, or a new body to build. But I could see how quickly Icould switch my body sidewise into the fourth dimension, or rotate another aspect of my complexorigami-folded body here and there into the environment, or find how far the curvature of localspace would let me reach a limb. (From beneath the waterline, I could pluck a coconut from atree ashore.)

And so I dove.

Not only was the water relaxing to swim in, but I could float on my back under a sky wider andbluer than any sky of England, and practice coordinating my internal energy signals: turning mysenses on and off in different combinations, getting information bundles to take bypaths throughhyperspace, or bouncing photons off the interiors of closed boxes, trying to pick up the usefulnessand interior nature of distant islands, things like that. I had at least seven extra senses, not tomention internal kinesthetics. I looked at things.

The reef was colored more brightly than anything in the whole British Isles. I come from a grayplace, after all, all drabs and duns. Here was something as strange as I had ever dreamed in youthof seeing; this was indeed the island beyond the horizon. Tropical fish as colorful as flowers woulddart by, shining in the green sunlight, or all the red-gold worms of the reef would poke their headsat once back in their bone-crusted homes, so that the whole coral breathed white and pink.

Segmented armored invertebrates would scuttle in the slow-motion underwater murk, stiff asknights, or insect-things with delicate eyes would peer from gem-hued rocks or cast-off shells,furtively imitating the beauty around them, camouflaged, in the midst of weird beauties of theundersea, moving from war to war. Jellies as lacy as a lady's parasol drifted by, in the same lazywarmth where I was drifting. It was the sum of all delight.

Or not quite all. You see, we'd reached a place where someone had been before. We were not atthe edge of the map, not yet. Amelia Earhart would not have been content. Neil Armstrong wouldhave won no fame for discovering Vanity Island.

I wanted to plant the Union Jack on some spot no Englishwoman had ever stepped before.

I wanted Mars.