Titans of Chaos

So there she was, kneeling with her hands up in her hair, elbows up and back arched, not exactlythe pose of the Venus de Milo, and here was Quentin, wearing little more than shorts and asmock, all covered with clay, scraping with a sharpened wooden spoon at the five-foot-tall massof white clay he had heaped up before him. To one side was a bucket of water in which a rolled-upshirt was soaking, an impromptu sponge.

There were other figurines sitting in the shade of a tarp along a section of broken wall, about adozen, and all were small: a seagull, a mouse, a fish, a snake, all perfectly realistic and glazedwhite. The face and shoulders only just now emerging from the clay mass did look remarkably likeVanity. Professional-level work. It was a skill I never would have suspected in Quentin.

She saw me, and must have seen the dubious look on my face, for she stood and, with moredignity than I have seen her use before, excused Quentin. That's right; she told him to go and hejust nodded his head, like a little bow, and went away without a word.

Now she wrapped herself in a white towel, and with her pinkish-red complexion, under the tropicdaylight, even in the striped shade of the palms, she looked flushed and hot and too freckled. Isuppose the equatorial clime did not agree with her. Certainly her look was disagreeable.

"Well, Miss Windrose?" she said, just as if she were a headmistress or something, not a girlyounger and shorter than me wrapped in a towel.

"I was just doing as ordered, Leader."

"Breaking orders, you mean! Do you want to get us captured? Do you want to get us killed? Noone goes off alone. That's the rule. All of you chaoticists have a weakness, a power you cannotstop. Suppose Echidn- I mean, suppose the fishmonger had just glanced up at you, just a glance,while you were flying off at Mach twenty-four! You would have just fallen to Earth and died! Youweren't even wearing a parachute! Then your family, your kingdom, your creatures, whatever theheck they are, the fourth-dimensional people, attack the universe and destroy everything! Is thatwhat you want?"

"Leader, don't be silly," I said sharply. "We don't even have a parachute. Besides, at that speed,the reentry heat would have killed me much quicker... Say, did I actually achieve Machtwenty-four?" That was below escape velocity, but it was above orbital velocity, at least for somealtitudes.

"Victor measured it and yes it was fast and don't change the subject. What's your excuse?"