"Were I you, I would use your symbol codes to condition certain selected bundles of entities to react to a separate and simpler set of symbols, a set specific to your personal nerve structure, rather than taken from general mythological themes. This will make your commands simpler and more flexible, and prevent interference from other practitioners of your art."
Quentin looked considerably impressed. He turned to me. "And his advice? Was it good or bad?"
I spread my hands. "I can't tell. You'd have to try it and see."
"No, I do not have to try it. He just revealed, in his own quaint metaphor, of course, what it is each practitioner does when he becomes a master of the One True Art. All knowing is reflected in all other knowing. He just told me to find and construct my own mythology, my own special runes and tools, which expresses my personal relationship to the infinite, and to have a cadre of cacodemons and eudemons swear personal fealty to me."
I looked skeptical. "Victor, is that what you said?"
Victor looked up. His answer surprised me. "Yes. Of course, I said it in precise terms, and Quentin is speaking in the sloppy metaphors he uses to express himself , but his symbols were fact-to-fact associations."
Victor looked down again, but continued talking. "Also, Quentin, the other thing you should do is discover the programming language for the electromagnetic entities. Since they react to a word-and-gesture code, they must each have a listing of their codes embedded in each entity."
Quentin looked very impressed. "You refer to the Enochian language in which the Creator's Word spoke the universe into being?"
I snapped my fingers in front of Quentin's face. "Hey! Hello! You were going through this big long digression to tell me why Colin should not listen to me, when I told him how his powers work."
Quentin smiled. "Because you have no idea how his powers work, you told him all the wrong things, and, what's more, you will never understand how his powers work any more than Colin will understand mine, or I will understand Victor's. Our paradigms each have a blind spot. It influences our psychology."
I pointed at Colin. "So you tell me. How does Colin's power work? What can he do and can he not do?"
"He is a shaman, what Victor would call a psychic. He comes from an earlier tradition than mine, before the boundaries between man and angel were established."
I said to Colin, "Can you translate that from Quentin-speak into the common tongue of Westron?"
Quentin answered me. "Colin is psychic. Telekinesis, telepathy, mind-over-matter, metamorphosis."
Colin said, "I can't make things fly through the air like Victor can. I've tried."
"But you can metamorphosize objects at a distance. Turn a knot into something no one can untie, for example. Grendel could turn cold iron into a lightweight metal."
"And I can't read minds."
"Not when they are awake. You are Phobetor, Prince of Nightmares. I suspect those starlets in Hollywood went to sleep before they were influenced to write back to you."
Colin: "Okay. How's it work?"
Quentin: "Not by desire. Not by willpower."
Colin said, "But it is so by willpower! It worked! When I was falling from the sky, boy oh boy, did I desire to fly. And Amelia was—well, you are too young and innocent to know what she agreed to let me do to her. It turned me back into a man, though."
"Colin, I room with you. No one stays young and innocent who talks to you every night after lights out.
But you don't know what you are talking about. It's not desire. Or, I should say, it is not just desire."
I said, "Okay. So what is it?"
"It's inspiration."
I looked at Colin. "Translate. Inspiration is a type of desire, right? It's a driving passion from your subconscious mind."
Colin looked like an idea was forming in his head. He said, "I think Big Q is using the word literally.
Inspiration. Spirits come in."
Quentin nodded at Colin. "The reason why Amelia misidentified what she saw is that there is no category for this in her paradigm. To her, a genius is a man who is particularly brilliant. To me, a genius is a spirit who inspires a man to brilliance.
"Look at the cases we saw," Quentin continued. "Just now, Vanity and Amelia tried to inspire, ahem, manly feelings in you. I suspect what they actually did was summon a cupid into the room. Invisible lust energy, if you will. The energy passed through your soul, and it wanted you to turn into a man.
"Your soul acts like a conduit between the physical and the spiritual realm. Normally spirits cannot affect matter, not directly. But any spirit that passes into and through your soul, can, and does.
"Second case: falling. I remind you that you were riding the back of the master of the gods of the winds, with other wind gods coming to save him. Every spirit in the area was thinking about flying."
I said, "What about the time I tricked Grendel? When his desire to have me remember being kidnapped by him outweighed his desire to erase my memory, his attempt failed. Only Dr. Fell's medicine had any effect, and it did not affect me very much."
Quentin said, "I suspect it was your pity for Grendel, and not the lust you tried to instill in him, which drove away the spirits which otherwise would have given him power over you."
I said, "You are trying to interpret it in terms of good and bad. Pity is a finer emotion than lust, so it wins, is that your idea? But that is not the way psychological reactions work. The mind is a self-referencing infinitely regressive set of meanings; there are any number of possible relations within that set."
Colin said, "And what about my getting better? Amelia said Grendel kicked my ass, but here I am fit as a fiddle!" He raised his arms and tensed his muscles, our own private Charles Atlas.
Quentin said, "Good point. Third case: rapid healing. You tried to heal the splinters that struck you when Amelia blew up the safe. Nothing happened. Not ten minutes later, you are riding Boreas down to destruction, like Ahab clinging to Moby Dick. Actually, you were doing a little better than Ahab, but not by much.
"You had broken the wing of Boreas. Maybe there was some healing power in the area, being thrown on him by his friends to fix his wings. When you changed into a bird, your wings seemed to be healed first. I am thinking
Boreas' allies released essential potentates of Aesculapius into the area, what you would call healing energy."
I said, "No. That was something else. The rapid healing."
"What was it?" asked Quentin.
"I, um, I did that. I really, really did not want Colin to die when he was a bird, and I asked him to get better."
Quentin squinted at me. "That, by itself, would not do it. Just asking."
"I kind of, um, promised him that I would do something for him, if he got better. Would that summon a spirit? Build up this energy you say passes through his body?"
Quentin said, "I do not think he has a body. He is made of aery substance, not matter. That's why he can bridge the veil. What did you promise him?"
"I'd do him a favor…"
"What kind of favor?"
Colin was looking on with great interest. "You were not wearing that little white number during this promise-making, were you?"
I blenched. Actually, I had been wearing that dress, hadn't I? Or had Grendel stripped it off me by then?
"I think I was naked under a bearskin rug."
"Oh, this gets better." Colin smiled. "And your promise was, what, again, exactly… ?"
"Oh. I, um, don't feel like talking about this now. I need to go stick my finger down my throat or something right now." I jumped to my feet.
Colin said, "While you're up—is there anything to drink in this stateroom?"
I said, "There's an automatic bar thingie. I think it charges room service when you open the little door."
"Well, I'd ask you to get me some liquor—but…" He grinned at me wickedly. "I don't want it to count as this 'favor' you still owe me. We are talking about sexual favors, aren't we? Was Vanity telling the truth about you in there? You know…"