Titans of Chaos

"Mortimer Finklestein," I read off the top sheet. "List of the stuff they are doping him with. Whathe eats, when he cra-uh, goes potty. Hunh. Here is the diagnosis and history. He was out huntingin Teesdale. Wandered off by himself. When his friends found him, he had the mind of afive-year-old."

Colin said, "I thought hunting was illegal now. No more toffs trampling through other people'sgardens, you know, killing innocent foxes."

I checked the date. "This was years ago, back when Englishmen still had rights. He was in theestuary below Middlesbrough, hunting small game birds, which were every one as guilty as sin,I'm sure. Anyway, the diagnosis here is of a trauma to the diencephalic-mesencephalic core-anyone know what that means?"

"It's part of an auto," Colin offered.

"It's part of his head," Quentin said. "Cephalic is from the Latin for 'head.'"

"The chart mentions severe cognitive impairment. And something happened to his Ommaya andGennarelli. No, wait, that's the name of the scale he was tested against." I breathed a sigh.

"Leader, I'm sorry. I've studied grammar, logic, rhetoric, as well as astronomy, music, arithmetic,and geometry, but I cannot read a medical chart. This is written in another language onlyremotely related to the Queen's English. At a guess? Mortimer here went into the marsh and cameout stupid. They think he fell and hit his head."

We had discussed the plans for this exhaustively during the boat fide. Vanity stepped down towardthe road, found a manhole cover, which, at Victor's gesture, flew open silently. She descended aladder to where, not by coincidence, she "found" a large underground river. She called her boat.

Then she scampered back up the ladder.

She said, "We have our escape route, and our getaway boat coming. Amelia, is it obvious?"

I had to say, "Sort of. To me it looks like this big tube filled with river water just dipped out of theparallel plane where the dreamlands are and intersected the Earth continuum. I dunno. There areother fourth-dimensional topography features here, stuff from the cathedral and old Roman ruins,other old roads through hyperspace, hidden groves of trees at right angles to normal space. Druidstuff, I guess. Someone like you was really active here, years ago. Your river might pass unnoticedif a siren walks by, but it's not exactly hidden, either."

Vanity frowned. "In that case, let me keep the secret-passage-making to a minimum. We go in thefront way. Victor, your turn."