Remember? Mavors had to let us go; we still are the only bait he can use to lure out Lamia, and whoever sent her."
Colin got to his feet and brushed off his knees. "Great. So we are all still about to be killed. That makes me feel so much better."
Vanity pointed and yodeled, "Yoo hoo! Land! Land ho!"
Vanity pointed, and we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, rising, shining and splendid, from out of the waters of the San Francisco Bay. In the cherry light of the newly risen sun, tall buildings of steel and glass rose up behind it, a textured green at their feet. Climbing up the slopes beyond them rose, rank on rank like rectilinear cloud banks, a crumbled mosaic of white and pale gray squares, as red-tiled houses and buildings of stucco caught the glancing dawn-light. The hills rose up brown and tawny, like sleeping lions with bunched muscles.
I murmured, "I've never seen so many houses."
Colin said, "I guess that's why they call it a 'city.' Um- aren't we on the wrong side of the world?
How did we get to the Pacific? That's not New York."
Vanity, her green eyes wide and innocent, said, "Sure it is-that's the Brooklyn Bridge right there..."
Victor turned his head toward me. "What are your orders, Leader?"
I said, a hint of surprise in my voice, "But we made it. This is it. We can go off and do whatever we like. Get jobs, raise kids, fund a private space-venture to Mars---Right? We won. Game over.
Right?"
Within Sight of the Land of freedom
All three boys exchanged glances, a look of mingled superiority and worry on their faces. A look that said, Oh, come on. How come she doesn't get it? I guess she is more tired than we thought...
Vanity said, "Why don't you sit down, Amelia... ? You look a bit overwrought."
I sat down on the little bench of silver cushions in the stern of the ship.
Colin said, "If you want to appoint a second and third in command, Dark Mistress, you can take a break if you want..."
I said, "No, no. I feel okay. I guess the game isn't nearly over. Lamia is still looking to kill us, and Boggin still has some method of finding me, I guess at any time he wants, and Mavors can find us any time our lives are imperiled. We have not escaped yet. The Olympians have let us out on a leash. It's a long leash, but it is still a leash, and we are not free until we get the collar off."
Victor said, "We also know from your experience with Sam the Drayman that the Olympians routinely erase memories and falsify evidence to hide their presence from the human beings, whom they regard as cattle. I suppose we can expect to see headlines in the news about the accidental sinking of the Queen Elizabeth II some time within the next few days. I am sorry about that. We already speculated that there may be a spell or 'fate' in place to prevent the humans from seeing evidence of people like us. If so, any use of our powers in front of human witnesses may trigger an alarm, just in the same way Mavors gets an alarm when we are threatened with death."
Quentin said, "This ship, the Argent Nautilus, also can be detected when she moves, or when Vanity calls for her."
Colin said, "Yep, but apparently-correct me if I am wrong on this, guys-apparently only Mestor or some At-lantans have a whatchamacallit-"
"Magic lodestone," provided Vanity.
"-magic lodestone to find the ship in motion. If Lamia had one, she'd have come to get us all by now, right? Mestor hasn't come for us, because Mavors told him to let us run around till Lamia showed up to kill us."
Quentin said to me, "Leader, our experience on the ocean liner shows that we endanger any human beings we are around. I suggest we just turn around and find some deserted island somewhere."
I looked at the beautiful, tall buildings, towers made by human hands, human minds, works of fine engineering. Built by free people, who explored and conquered the new world not so very long ago. People in a land where women owned property, carried guns, ran businesses, worked in laboratories, became astronauts. People like what I wanted to be like.
"Live like Robinson Crusoe? For how long?"
Quentin spread his hands. "Tell me what our long-term goals are."
I said, "Well, gosh, I assume we all have different goals. I want to be the first woman on Mars.
Vanity wants to be a movie actress. Colin wants to get into my pants."
Colin actually looked embarrassed. "Hey!" he said. Then, to cover up his embarrassment, he tried to make a joke of it. "That was supposed to be a secret."
I was actually so puzzled by his reaction that I stared at him, looking into his inner nature, guessing what the lines of moral energy between us were supposed to mean, watching the little flickering ripples of usefulness travel on the sound waves he made with his voice, wondering what use those words were to him.
At a guess... ? He thought he had a chance with me. Before, it was all rude jokes because I was out of reach. Now I was coming within his reach, and it was serious. No more jokes.
Quentin said, "I want to solve the mystery of creation. Why did Saturn make the material universe? Why trap all the free and perfect spirits inside gross material bodies?" Quentin looked at Victor. "What about you, Victor?"
Victor gave the smallest of smiles. "I have an ongoing operational preference, rather than an end goal. I was raised in a prison, as a war hostage. War is illogical, wasteful. Wars become less frequent the more incentives rational beings have to cooperate rather than to compete. A free and peaceful commonwealth embracing all rational entities of this and every other universe, Cosmic and Chaotic, mortal and immortal, will deter wars.
"The primary requirement, however, is freedom: universal freedom. If there are other people out there, raised in imprisonment as I was, I have a duty to liberate them, for the same reason why I would have welcomed any outside liberator who would have attempted to free me. We were in the most pleasant prison imaginable. It was still unacceptable. The present condition of the universe is unacceptable. Anything I can do, large or small, along these lines, I will do. Other problems are secondary, and may resolve themselves once this primary problem is solved."
If Victor had said this in any other tone of voice besides his normal cold and methodical tone, I would have shrugged it off as a daydream. It would have been pompous.