Quentin was seated at her feet, drawing circles on the deck in chalk around the bored-looking eagle.
Quentin was looking fretful.
The eagle was looking (you guessed it) bored.
3.
The first thing I wanted to know was how much money was left. It looked to me as if Vanity and the others had bought several department stores' worth of material. The boys had bought Aqua-Lungs and fish-spears, camping equipment, food, chemicals. Victor had bought half a dozen textbooks on advanced neurological psychology, which he (before injecting himself) had memorized, flipping pages as quickly as he could, and then thrown aside. Quentin had bought a knapsack full of crystals and rune-stones and candles and other litter from a fortune-teller's shop. Quentin commented that he now knew not to be a fool when he shopped: none of the things he bought did what the fortune-teller said, and they were made of impure substances. None of it worked; none of it was real magic.
Apparently the amount of money ap Cymru had given us was enormous, or maybe the exchange rate between the pound sterling and franc was good for England at the moment, or something.
4.
The next thing we did was have a birthday party. It was a very strange birthday party, because I was the only one opening presents.
Vanity insisted on showing me everything she had gotten for me in the Paris shops, and as we opened dress-boxes and hat-boxes and shoe-boxes, the sea wind caught the crepe paper some of the goods were wrapped in, and blew it off the stern. Like confetti.
Everything was beautiful and wonderful. Things I had only seen in magazines, or only heard described, were there, and Vanity has exquisite taste. Or maybe her taste is bad, but at least it matches mine.
I realize that to people who have things, mere material possessions seem tawdry and unimportant. But to a girl who has only ever worn the uniforms assigned to her, the ability to pick whether to put on a pale blue blouse or a black dress with pearls was the doorstep of paradise. It is what freedom is for, being able to pick, in little matters as well as in great ones.
Vanity also knows me. Guess what else she got for me! Running shoes. The things were as light as feathers, made of god-knows-what space-age materials. They were gorgeous.
After spending an endless time selecting an outfit and accessories, shoes and stockings, I suddenly looked up and looked around.
I said, "There is no cabin on this boat. There is no place to change."
It was true. There was a little deck in the stern, and there were lines of rowing benches (I have no idea what for, on a ship without oars) and a tiny gangway that ran from the bow to the stern.
Quentin said, "Vanity is very proud of her ship. But, because she is so swift, Argent Nautilus was not designed to be at sea for more than a few hours, or a day at most. So, no cabin, no galley. There is a sail, apparently for times when you go into nonliving waters."
Vanity said, "I think there is a rain tent in the storage locker we can set up on deck. You could change in there. Or the boys could just close their eyes."
I started putting stuff back in boxes. "No. Let me keep on this filthy stuff, at least until we are out of danger. There might be a fight if we are overtaken, and I won't care if Grendel's ratty stuff gets ripped."
That comment ended the party atmosphere. We started exchanging histories.
I was still wearing the baggy dungarees and flannel shirts of Grendel. But I did put on the running shoes, and, because the wind was still slightly chill here, I put on the new coat Vanity had bought for me: a long black affair of silky fur, with gold buttons to match my hair.
I sat sideways on the stern bench while Vanity brushed out my tangles with her new silver brush, and we talked.
5.
Vanity had shrieked and commiserated while I told her of Grendel's various depredations. She is simply a wonderful person to tell stories to, because she hangs on every word, her eyes glowing with sympathy for the heroine, her lips pouting with boos and catcalls for the villain.
And Victor patted me on the hand, and told me he was proud of me for how bravely I had endured the ordeal. I thought that was a funny thing to say, because the worst part of my adventures had been that I had not been anywhere as brave as I would have liked.
I told them about what Grendel had said about Echidna and Beowulf, and his several dead brothers. I described the ripping of the mermaid's cap, choking, being healed by Grendel and then waking up all tied up in his bearskin rug. I glossed over the parts where he was threatening me with conflagration and strangulation, and I described the fight in gory enough detail that it made Vanity queasy and she begged me to stop.
I told them about the mysterious town I saw, resting where Abertwyi is in our world A different time? A different time line? We wasted some time discussing theories.
Quentin recalled that the enemy had mentioned multiple worlds during the meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors.
I even gave them a brief precis of my conversation with Sam the dray-driver. My encounter with Corns I repeated word for word.
Vanity was enormously upset about Sam the dray-driver, for reasons I did not quite understand. She shook her hair with anger, so that red strands the color of fire stood up from her furry hood and whipped in the wind. "I've been thinking of nothing else for two days except how I was going to tell the newspapers! Maybe get a book deal out of it! You know, 'I was a teenage love slave of a pagan god.'
Good title, eh? And now your Sam—the entire Sam you met, as far as I'm concerned, is dead, or as good as. What's the point?! What's the point of knowing the secret truth about the world if you cannot tell anybody!"
Quentin did not really understand her anger either. He said, half to himself, in a voice as if he were quoting a poem: "An eighteenth I know, which to none I will tell, not to maiden nor another man's wife—what is known to oneself and oneself alone is warded best. Only to my sister, would I say it, or the wife I hold in my arms…"
Victor summed up their adventures in a few terse lines, to which Vanity added comments, examples, descriptions, and digressions. Vanity had called her Swift Silver Ship; they had sailed to Paris. Their passports and visas did not seem to be needed; they changed some of the pound notes to francs, and bought gear. At sea again, Quentin slept on the boat, and read the first three chapters of his book, the Arcanum Oneirocritica. Victor took his drug. Vanity fretted. After, they circled spots Quentin divined I might be. Victor dove.
Victor was now about three inches taller than when I had last seen him. He explained: "I've been modifying myself. I rearranged some clumsy joint structures and muscle tissue connections. My muscle pressure has increased, and I have increased the rate of nerve firings per second, to give myself finer motor control.
"The extra height? I created spare abdominal spaces, and I compressed other organs, to make room for certain amplifiers and storage cells I am in the process of growing; also focusing elements and sensory adaptations. The blueprints were coded into my memory by the ampoule.
"I have made additional ganglia connections between various sections of my cortex and lower brain functions, to give myself more direct access to involuntary activity.
"The library has a wide listing of coded commands to impose into other people's nervous systems to trigger their reaction cycles. The system is called cryptognosis.
"Certain of the molecular chains take much longer to put together than others, and I have to build step-by-step certain molecular-construction tools and processes which the library-compiler evidently thought would be already installed in me, or automatic.
"However, the work proceeds very slowly. Whoever put together the coded molecules of memory-stuff that was in the syringe seemed to have no understanding of biology, or terrestrial conditions. I have instructions and reflexes set up in my nervous system now, which, if I set into motion, would turn me into something that could not exist on Earth. There were also no safety features in this library, no warnings for what nerve cells are needed for other functions or not.
"Quentin keeps telling me it is dangerous for a scientist to experiment on his own brain, but I tell him that a magician's credo is to know, to dare, to will, and to be silent. Obviously, to know all, the magician must dare all, and be silent about the risks."
Victor smiled one of his rare smiles. I listened with surprise. Was Victor actually telling a joke?
Quentin, despite that he was fussing over the bird, had a much more relaxed and confident poise to him than I had seen before. There was a glint in his eye, and he talked back to Victor in a way which, when he was younger, he never would have done: "And I keep telling him that the principle of empirical experiment requires the experimenter to remain objective, a scientist who monkeys with his own mental hardware compromises his ability to observe.
"Victor!" Quentin spoke firmly. "I've warned you that my science, the true science, cannot fix you once you render the humors in your brain impure; your disbelief in magic casts a negative ward around you.
You are a soul who has convinced himself he has no soul; damage your brain, and that silly belief may turn out to have a self-fulfilling character, my friend."
Victor, still smiling his small smile, said to me confidentially, "Quentin now is convinced he knows everything, because he has read the first three chapters of his book. I tell him the book is just gibberish, and he is only reading it in his dreams, and he agrees with me. Perhaps I have not drawn out the implications of my comment with sufficient clarity."