Now she wrapped herself in a white towel, and with her pinkish-red complexion, under the tropic daylight, even in the striped shade of the palms, she looked flushed and hot and too freckled. I suppose 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 girl younger 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? No one goes off alone. That's the rule. All of you chaoticists have a weakness, a power you cannot stop. 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! You weren't even wearing a parachute! Then your family, your kingdom, your creatures, whatever the heck they are, the fourth-dimensional people, attack the universe and destroy everything! Is that what 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 Mach twenty-four?" That was below escape velocity, but it was above orbital velocity, at least for some altitudes.
"Victor measured it and yes it was fast and don't change the subject. What's your excuse?"
"Do I need an excuse, Vanity?" I said back. Well, maybe I raised my voice a little. It was hot here, and I wasn't wearing a nice cool towel, but a heavy leather jacket, jodhpurs, gloves, scarf, and leather cap. "Do I need an excuse? You've been pushing me to try out my powers, to experiment, and now you're barking mad because I did what you said! You're snapping at me because I might have attracted spies, but did you say anything to Victor when he blew a hole in an undersea mountain with a death ray? You give one order and then directly contradict it, and you make these stupid work schedules, except Quentin never seems to have work to do: When is the last time he chopped down a tree?"
"Mr. Nemo," she said in a voice so icy that it hardly sounded like Vanity, "has successfully discovered how to emerge from his body and assume an insubstantial form. This could prove to be quite useful to our little company. Last night, he entered the body of the fish he made from clay, and animated it, and he swam quite naturally and freely in the sea. He has discovered the secret of how his people, the Fallen, make new shapes for themselves. In the meanwhile, you have discovered how to moon around after Victor and take leisurely swims in your bathing suit."
"At least I wear a bathing suit," I said with a snort. Okay, maybe I rolled my eyes a bit.
"That comment was quite a bit out of line, Miss Windrose, and you will apologize for it immediately." I swear she sounded just like Boggin when she said that. No emotion at all. Not
"you shall apologize," like a demand, but "you will," like a predicted certainty.
No, not like Boggin. Like Nausicaa, a princess from a Bronze Age Greek culture of supernatural beings.
If I had been leader, and she'd caught me nude, I would have tried to make a joke out of it. I would have handled it better. I would have...
But I was not leader. Right or wrong, I had to support the group. So I apologized. "Sorry, Leader.
Please forgive me, Leader."
"Apology accepted," she said curtly. "Let us say no more about it."
"How did you get to be leader, anyhow?" I burst out. That kind of surprised me. If you had asked, I would not have said I felt any resentment. But no eyeball can see its own interior; no mind can know its own buried thoughts.
"You were there. I cooked breakfast."
"That's so... so... chauvinist! It is such a stereotype! The girl cooking breakfast. Victor's a better cook than you! Victor's better at everything."
She crinkled her little freckled nose. "Is that what this is about? You think I am upstaging Victor?
Listen, Amelia. The boys were all disorganized after our first campsite floated away. They needed something reassuring, domestic, orderly. I had to bring order to the chaos. I got things going, had firewood brought, found a clean pan. I notice when people are paying attention, what they are looking at. I notice details. I knew which foods each boy liked because I remembered what he had picked out in the stops during our supply run. Victor's a better cook, but he didn't think of feeding the depressed and disorganized troops.
"Once I did that, I had to organize the schedule for training. I had to decide," she said gravely.
"There was no one to ask. On the one hand, there is a chance that any use of our powers can be detected by means we can only guess. Oracular owls or orbital spy-rays or periscopes from dimensions even you don't have a number for. On the other hand, we have to get stronger. We have to get smarter. We have to figure out what it is we can do that makes them so afraid of us.
That means everyone works on schedule, including tree chopping to break up the monotony of experiments. Tell me: Did you enjoy getting back to them, after all that mindless work? Yes? So that's how I got to be leader. That is what leaders do.
"Speaking of what leaders do, I have good news and bad news. Bad news: I still have to assign you some sort of punishment detail, to keep order in the ranks. The good news is that we can throw you a birthday party after."
"What? No one knows when my birthday is."
"No one knows when baby Jesus was born, but there is a date all picked out for Christmas, isn't there? As leader, I can assign a date. Your birthday is the day after next. Then, the next bit of good news: the final exam!"
"Leader, what is going to be on the final? I mean, the reason why I got in trouble flying off... Well, you should tell us what we should be preparing for, right?"
"For the final, we are going to be sneaking back into civilization. Colin needs a piano or something. He should be practicing music. Quentin needs all sorts of supplies, everything from tarot cards to real clay. We need to replace missing mess gear."
"That doesn't seem that hard." I remember a distinct feeling of disappointment.
Now she smiled, and her eyes twinkled, and she knelt down again beside me to speak in a low voice. It is the kind of voice you use when you are telling a secret, whether there is anyone around or not. "We are going to see if we can help your old friend Sam. The drayman who gave you a lift."