Suchevane stood in the canoe. She was obviously fatigued to the point of collapse, and in a misery of mixed emotion, but she remained such a stunningly beautiful figure of a woman that the rest hardly mattered. “I must needs fly home,” she said. “I may not, I think, associate with ye folk longer.”
“I understand, vampire maiden,” Mach replied, looking up from his place at the rear of the canoe. “I thank you for your great service, and hope that we may at least remain friends.”
“Mayhap,” Suchevane agreed. “I did it mostly for thee, Fleta, and glad I am that thy life be safe and thy love secure. Would I had such love myself.” She gazed for a moment at the fading brightness around them. “Would that any man evoke such splash for me!”
The woman in Mach’s arms lifted her head, gazing at her friend through tear-blurred eyes. “Wouldst thou had such love thyself,” Fleta agreed. “Fare thee well, dearest friend!”
Then Suchevane lifted her arms like wings, and with effortless elegance even in her fatigue became a lovely bat, and flew into the haze. Exhaustion made her flight ragged, but she would get where she was going.
The watery bubble floating beside the canoe bobbed gently. “I be not partial to vamps,” the face of the Translucent Adept said within it. “But that one might almost tempt an Adept.” The bubble spun, so that the face reoriented on the canoe. “I will, an thou wishest, provide thy craft a tow to my Demesnes.”
“Accepted, Adept,” Mach replied. Then he lowered his face again to Fleta’s face, and lost himself in her.
The watery bubble moved, and from it stretched a watery line that touched the prow of the canoe. Bubble and canoe floated through the air, gaining speed, traveling through the closing night.
Mach and Fleta, victims of forbidden love, were on their way into the power of the Adverse Adepts.
Mach woke to the sound of lapping water. He looked, and sure enough, their canoe was on the surface of a large lake or small sea. “How strange!” he exclaimed.
Fleta woke. “Art well, my love?” she asked, concerned.
“We’re on water,” he explained.
She laughed. “It be strange to see a boat on water? Mayhap in thy frame, rovot, but not in mine!”
He smiled ruefully. “I enchanted this canoe to float in air, that’s all. I was surprised.”
The watery bubble ahead of them rotated so that the face in it faced back. “Willst be yet more surprised, youngster, in a moment.”
Fleta stretched, arms bent, her breasts moving against him. “Must needs I call on nature,” she said. “Let me change.” She drew away from him.
“Don’t leave me!” he protested, abruptly wary. “The last time you did that, I almost lost you forever!”
She abruptly sobered. “I thought only to spare thee evil, then,” she said. “Fear not, I shall return to thee very shortly.” Then she leaned into him and kissed him with such passion that his burgeoning doubt was sublimated into joy.
While he sat half-stunned by the delight of her, she stood much as Suchevane had, and abruptly became the hummingbird. The bird was glossy black, with golden little legs and beak; it darted forward to muss his hair with its wings, then shot away.
Mach shook his head, half in rue; he was a bit jealous of her instant shape-changing ability, and wished he could simply change and fly like that.
That gave him pause for thought. He was a novice Adept, wasn’t “he? He had managed to perform magic on occasion. What were his limits? The real Adepts could do amazing things; could he do likewise, if he only mastered the magic?
The more he considered, the better he liked the notion. He had conjured this air-floating canoe that had given him such good service; that was by any reckoning competent magic. He had nullified the suicide spell on Fleta by the force of his declaration of love: the triple Thee. While that was not an ordinary type of magic, neither had the spell on her been ordinary. She had asked the Red Adept to give her an amulet that would cause her to lose her ability to change forms, so that when she dived off the mountain she would be unable to save herself by changing to hummingbird form and flying away. The Red Adept, reluctantly, had granted her this. Mach had reversed Adept magic! Surely shapechanging himself would be a comparatively minor enchantment. All he had to do was work out the appropriate spells.
Fleta returned, humming up to perch on the canoe’s front seat, then shifting to giriform. She had evidently completed her business. That was another advantage of shape-changing: the nectar of just a few flowers could feed her, and she remained fed when she shifted to a far more massive form. Similarly, one bird dropping could clean out her system, for the human form as well. Magic took little note of scale.
“Going down,” the Translucent Adept’s voice came from ahead. Then his bubble dipped under the surface-and the canoe followed. In a moment they were sinking through the greenish water, but breathing normally; the water seemed like air.
Fleta moved back to take his hand. “Adept magic spooks me,” she confided. “I wish-“
He silenced her with a kiss. He knew what she wished: that they could be together without the intercession of the Adept. But it seemed that this could not be, for their union was opposed by her kind and his, so they were constrained to accept Translucent’s hospitality.
They continued down. Fish swam by, gazing with moderate curiosity at the canoe; apparently they had seen things like this before. Then the bottom came into view, and it seemed again as if they were floating through air, with the rocks and seaweed and sea moss like the terrain of some jungle land.
Now that land turned strange. Orange and blue-green sponges spread across it, and corals reached up like skeletons, and peculiar flowerlike, tentacled things waved on yellow stalks. At first these were small, but as the canoe progressed they grew larger.
Mach looked down below the canoe as they passed a long log. No, it was a pipe, with a spiral band wrapping it, getting larger in diameter as they traveled along it. Then they came to its end-and there was a big round eye gazing up at him. The thing was a living creature!
“A giant nautiloid,” the Translucent Adept exclaimed from ahead. “Creature o’ the Ordovician period o’ Earth. I have a certain interest in the paleontology o’ the seas.”
Beyond the eye were about eight tentacles, which reached for the canoe but stopped short of touching it. Mach was just as glad. “It looks like an octopus in a long shell,” he remarked.
“That might be one description,” Translucent agreed. “It is related, in the sense that the nautiloid is an order o’ molluscs, as are modern octopi and squids. But these are far more more ancient examples; the Ordovician was approximately four hundred million years ago.”
“You sound like a scientist!” Mach remarked. “Yet you are an Adept.”
“No incongruity there! The separation o’ magic and science on this planet occurred only a few centuries ago;
prior to that, our history is common. The magic is employed in restoring ancient creatures who exist no longer on Earth or elsewhere. All Adepts be scientists in their fashion; it be merely that we specialize in the science o’ magic, and turn it to our purposes exactly as do our counterparts in the frame o’ Proton.”
A creature vaguely like a monstrous roach swam across the canoe, startling Fleta. “A trilobite,” Translucent said, evidently proud of the creatures of his domain. “And see, here comes a sea scorpion.”
Indeed, the thing resembled a monstrous scorpion, almost a meter long. Fleta shrank back from its reaching pincers. “At ease,” Translucent rapped, and the scorpion flipped its tail and swam quickly away. It was evident who was master here.
They came to a hill rising from the ocean floor, and the canoe bumped to a halt. “Here is thy honeymoon isle,” Translucent announced. “Secure from all intrusion, guarded by the trilobites and scorpions and nautiloids.”
“Does that mean we be prisoners?” Fleta asked nervously.
“By no means, mare,” the Adept replied. “I promised ye both a haven for love, and freedom to do as ye pleased. Ye be free to depart at any time-but naught can I promise an ye depart mine Demesnes, for my power be limited beyond.”
Mach’s powers of doubt came into play. “What is it you hope to gain from this?”
“There be only one known contact between the frames, now,” Translucent said. “That be through thy two selves, in the two frames. An thou use thy power o’ communication on our behalf, we shall establish liaison with our opposite numbers, the Contrary Citizens o’ Proton, and gain advantage. An we use this lever to unify the frames for full exploitation, our wealth and power will be magnified enormously. It be straight selfinterest.”
“But I can contact only Bane, who is the son and heir of Stile, the Blue Adept of this frame,” Mach protested. “He opposes you, I’m sure, as my father Blue of Proton opposes the Contrary Citizens. If I work for you, as I think I must do in return for your hospitality, that is no guarantee that Bane will cooperate.”
“Aye, none at all,” Translucent agreed. “Yet it be halfway there, and mayhap for the sake o’ his love there he will elect to join with us as thou has done. We prate not o’ the nebulous good o’ future generations that may or may not come to pass; we proffer honest self-interest, ours and thine, and believe that this be the truest route to success in any endeavor.”
“I question this,” Mach said. “But for the sake of what you offer, which is the fulfillment of my love for Fleta, I will make my best effort to contact Bane and relay those messages you wish. I regard this as a deal made between us, not any signification of unity of interest beyond the deal.”
“Fairiy spoken, rovot man,” Translucent said. “We require not thy conversion, in language or in mind, only that thou dost betray us not.”
“I will deliver your messages without distortion; my word on that is given. But I may not have complete control. If I should exchange again with Bane-“
“Then thine other self will be in my power, here,” Translucent said. “But I will not hold him; he hath no deal with me. He will be free to rejoin his own, and thy filly too. But thy loyalty in this lone respect will be mine. My messages, when it becomes possible to pass them through.”
“Agreed,” Mach said shortly. He was not completely pleased, but then he looked at Fleta and knew he had no choice. Their union would never be sanctioned by Stile or Neysa or any of those associated with them; only here with the Adverse Adepts could their love be honored.
The love between a robot and a unicorn.
The island-for so it seemed, though it was entirely under water-was a marvelous place. It was defined by a transparent dome similar to that of the cities of Proton, in which the air was good and the land dry. The dome held out the sea, and the creatures of the sea stayed clear because they were unable to swim or breathe here. Indeed, Mach and Fleta learned to make frequent circuits just inside the barrier, to spot sea snails, starfish, small trilobites and sea scorpions that had fallen through and were dying in the dryness. Mach fashioned a heavy pair of gloves so that he could handle such creatures safely; he simply picked them up and tossed them back through, for the barrier was pervious to matter other than air and water.
Once a fair-sized nautiloid blundered through, its two-meter-long shell lying dry, its eye and tentacles barely remaining in the water. Mach picked up the front section, and Fleta took the rear point, and they heaved it back into the sea. The nautiloid sank slowly through the water, as if not quite believing its luck, then jetted away, shell-first, its tentacles trailing. It was heavy enough in air, but a bubble of gas filled much of its shell, making it buoyant in water.
“Funny that there are no fish,” Fleta remarked.
Mach checked through the files of his memory. He had been educated in paleontology along with all the rest, but it had been a survey course, scant on details. “I think true fish did not develop until the late Silurian, perhaps 330 million years ago,” he said. “So this is about 70 million years too soon for them.”
“Latecomers,” she agreed wryly. “And how late be we,then?”
“Well, in the Mesozoic 200 million years ago the reptiles evolved, culminating in the dinosaurs of about 75 million years ago. Only after they passed did the mammals really come to the fore, though they had been around for 100 million or more years before. Man dates from only the last 10 million years or so.”
“We be very late!” she concluded.
“Very late,” he agreed. “And of course man’s expansion into space occurred within the past half-millennium, and his discovery of magic in the frame of Phaze-“
“Yet surely magic existed always,” she said. “Only we knew naught o’ its reality until we found the frames.”
“Perhaps so,” he agreed. “There have been legends of magic and magical creatures abounding on Earth for many thousands of years. We believe that the development of the vampires and werewolves-“
“And unicorns,” she said, shifting to her natural form. She was a pretty black creature, with golden socks on her hind legs and a long spiraled horn.
“And unicorns,” he said, jumping onto her back and catching hold of her glossy mane.
She played an affirmative double note on her horn. Each unicorn’s horn was musical, resembling a different instrument, and hers resembled the panpipes. This enabled her to play two notes at once, or even a duet with herself. All unicorns were natural musicians, but her music was special even for the species. She had had competitive aspirations, before her association with Mach caused the Herd to shun her.
“I wish I could change the way you do,” Mach said, reaching forward to tickle one of her ears.
She flicked her tail, stinging his back, and walked toward a grove standing in the interior of the island. There she abruptly lay down.
“Hey!” Mach exclaimed, tumbling off, still hanging on to her black mane.
But she changed back to girlform, so that he had a hold on her hair, and was not crushed by her mass. “No hay in this state,” she said, rolling into him.
He used his hold to bring her face in to his. He kissed her. “How glad I am that I rescued you!” he exclaimed.
“And glad I be that thou didst rescue me,” she responded. Then she tickled him on a rib.
They rolled and laughed and made explosively tender love, then sought a fruit tree for food. This island, however magically crafted and maintained, was a paradise, with many bearing trees. It was always moderately bright by day, with the sunlight coming down as if diffused by beneficial clouds, and moderately cool by night, for comfortable sleeping. There was a house on it, but they hardly used this, because Fleta had no need of it and Mach had no desire for what she did not share.
But as time passed, their satisfaction waned. “No offense to you,” Mach said cautiously, “but I find myself increasingly restive. Maybe it is because I am not accustomed to being alive.”
“Dost miss those naked girls o’ thy frame?” she inquired teasingly. She was naked herself, having no use for clothing, here. She could appear in girlform clothed or unclothed, as she chose. Her equine coat translated into a black cape, her socks to stockings, and her hooves to shoes. What happened to these items when she appeared naked, Mach had never ascertained; and she, teasingly, had never explained.
“No, that means nothing in Proton, only that they are serfs. But with you-“
“Have I not done my best to please thee, thy way?” she asked. “To have sex with thee when I be not in heat?” For she, being a unicorn mare, normally sought such interaction only when the breeding cycle demanded, and then with such intensity as to wear out any man. Her shape might be completely human, for this, but her underlying nature remained equine. The unicorns owed more to animal lineage than to human.
“Indeed you have!” he agreed. “But I want more.”
She frowned. “Mayhap another filly? Be thou eager to start a herd?”
He laughed. “No, of course not! You are all I want, and all I love! But-“
“Thou dost want me in other shape? I thought-“
“No, Fleta!” he exclaimed. “I want to marry you!”
She considered. “As the humans marry? Mating restricted one to the other, for all o’ their lives?”
“Yes.”
“But this be not the animal way, Mach. We have no need o’ such a covenant.”
“I think I do. I think of you as human.”
“I be not human,” she said firmly. “That be why thy folk-Bane’s folk-oppose our association o’ this manner. And my dam, Neysa-ne’er will she accept our union.”
He sighed. “I know it. And I think we cannot have a valid marriage without the approval of your kind or mine. So we are forced to cooperate with the Adverse Adepts, whose policies I think I should oppose.”
“I tried to free thee from this choice,” she reminded him.
“By suiciding!” he exclaimed. “You almost freed me from the need to exist!”
“Aye, I know that now,” she said contritely.
“So here we are in paradise, with no future.”
“Mayhap we could have a future, o’ a kind, if-“
He glanced sharply at her. “You know a way to persuade our relatives?”
“Mayhap. If we could but breed.”
“Breed? You mean, have offspring? That’s impossible.”
“Be it so?” she asked wistfully. “Not for aught would I dismay thee, Mach, but how nice it would be to have a foal o’ our own. Then might the relatives have to accept our union.”
“But human stock and animal stock-you may assume human form, but as you said, that doesn’t make you human. The genes know! They deal with the reality.”
“Yet must it have happened before. Surely the harpies derive from bird and human, and the vampires from bats and human, and the facility with which we unicorns learn the human semblance and speech suggests we share ancestry.”
“And the werewolves,” he agreed, intrigued. “If it happened before, perhaps it is possible again.”
“I really want thy foal,” she said.
“There must be magic that can make it feasible,” he said, the idea growing on him. “Perhaps Bane would be able to-“
“Not Bane!” she protested. “I want thine!”
“Uh, yes, of course. But I am no Adept. I’m a fledgling at magic. I don’t know whether-“
“Thou didst make the floating boat,” she pointed out. “Thou didst null the spell the Red Adept put on me. That be no minor magic.”
“In extremes, I may have done some good magic,” he admitted. “But I was lucky. For offspring I would need competence as well as luck.”
“Then make thyself a full Adept, as Bane is growing to be,” she urged. “Enchant thyself and me, that we may be fertile together. Success in that would make up for all else we lack.”
“You’re right!” he said with sudden conviction. “I must become Adept in my own right!” But almost immediately his doubt returned. “If only I knew how!”
“My Robot Adept,” she said fondly. “Canst thou not practice?”
“Surely I can. But there are problems. No spell works more than once, so I cannot perfect any particular technique of magic without eliminating it for future use. That makes practice chancy; if I found the perfect spell, it might be too late to use it.”
“Yet if thou didst seek advice-“
“From the Adverse Adepts? I think I would not be comfortable doing that; it would give them too intimate a hold on me. I mean to do their bidding in communications between the frames, but I prefer to keep my personal life out of it.” Yet he was conscious as he spoke of the manner his personal life was responsible for their association with those Adepts; he was probably deluding himself about his ability to separate that aspect.
“Aye,” she agreed faintly. “Methinks that be best. Yet if thou couldst obtain the advice o’ a friendly Adept-“
“Who opposes our union?” he asked sharply.
“I be not sure that all oppose it.”
“Whom are you thinking of?”
“Red.”
“The troll? He’s not even human!”
“Neither be I,” she reminded him.
“Um, you may be right. He did help you try to suicide.” Mach had mixed feelings about that, too, though he knew the Red Adept had no ill will in the matter.
“He urged me not, but acceded to my will. If thou shouldst beseech him likewise-“
“It’s worth a try, certainly. But would it be safe to go there? Once we leave the protection of the Translucent Demesnes, we might have trouble returning. Our own side might prevent us.”
“I think not so, Mach. It be thy covenant they desire-thy agreement to communicate with thine other self. Thou wouldst no more do it for one side as for the other, an the agreements be wrong.”
He nodded. “Let’s think about it for a few days, then go if we find no reason not to.”
“Aye.” She kissed him, enjoying this human foible. Unicorns normally used lips mainly for gathering in food. The notion that human folk found the seeming eating of each other pleasurable made her bubble with mirth. Sometimes she burst out laughing in mid-kiss. But she kissed remarkably well, and he enjoyed holding a laughing girlform.
Before they decided, they had a visitor. It was a wolf, ef a female, trotting through the water to the island and passing through the barrier. Mach viewed her with caution, but Fleta was delighted.
“Furramenin!” Fleta exclaimed.
Then the wolf became a buxom young woman, and Mach recognized her also. The werebitch had guided him from the Pack to the Flock, where the lovely vampiress Suchevane had taken over. The truth was that all Fleta’s animal friends were lovely, in human form and in personality; had he encountered any of them as early and intimately as he had Fleta, he might have come to love them as he did her. He accepted this objectively, but not emotionally; Fleta was his only love.
“I come with evil tidings,” the bitch said. This appellation was no affront, any more than “woman” was for a human female. Indeed, the term “woman” might be used as an insult to a bitch. “The Adept let me pass, under truce.”
They settled under a spreading nut tree. “Some mischief to my Herd?” Fleta inquired worriedly. She was tolerated by the Herd, but no longer welcome; still, she cared for the others, and they cared for her.
The bitch smiled briefly. “Nay, not that! It relates to thy golem man.”
Fleta glanced at Mach. “The rovot be not true to me?” she asked with fleeting mischief.
“He be from Proton-frame. The Adept Stile says it makes an-an imbalance, that grows worse the more time passes, till the frames-” She seemed unable to handle the concept involved.
“Till the frames destroy themselves?” Mach asked, experiencing an ugly chill.
“Aye,” Furramenin whispered. “Be that possible?”
“I very much fear it is,” Mach said. “In the days of our parents, many folk crossed the curtain between frames, and Protonite was mined and not Phazite, generating an imbalance. They finally had to transfer enough Phazite to restore the balance, and separate the frames permanently so that this could not happen again. That depleted the power of magic here, and reduced the wealth of Proton there, but had to be done. Too great an imbalance does have destructive potential. But I would not have thought that the mere exchange of two selves would constitute such a threat.”
The bitch looked at the mare. “Be he making sense?” Furramenin asked.
“I take it on faith that he be,” Fleta replied. “If Stile says it, he surely knows,” Mach said. “I realize that the two of you are not technically minded, but I have had enough background in such matters to appreciate the rationale. They must be able to detect a growing imbalance, and I must be the cause.” “But what does that mean for thee?” Fleta asked. “It means that every hour I remain in Phaze, and that Bane remains in Proton, is bad for the frames, and could lead to the destruction of both frames. We must exchange back.”
“No!” Fleta cried. “I love thee; thou hast no right to rescue me from suicide only to relegate me to misery without thee! Didst thou speak me the triple Thee for
this?”
“The triple Thee?” the werebitch asked, awed. That was the convention of Phaze; when spoken by one to another and echoed by the splash of absolute conviction, it was an utterly binding commitment.
“No right at all!” Mach agreed, feeling a pang. “Yet if remaining with you means destruction for us both, and the frames themselves, what can I do? We lose each other either way.”
“Nay, there be proffered compromise,” Furramenin said. “That be the completion o’ my message: an thou agree to exchange back for equal periods, that the frames may recover somewhat, truce will be extended for that.”
“The families accept our union?” Fleta asked eagerly.
“Nay. They merely recognize an impasse, and seek to prevent further damage while some solution be negotiated.”
“If I return to Proton for a time, they will accede to equal time here with Fleta?” Mach asked. “A month there, a month here, with no interference?”
“Aye, that be the offer,” the bitch said.
“That seems to be a good offer,” Mach said to Fleta.
She gazed stonily into the ground, resisting the notion of any separation at all. Unicorns were known to be stubborn, and though Fleta was normally the brightest and sweetest of creatures, now this aspect was showing. Her dam, Neysa, was reputed to be more so.
Mach looked helplessly at Furramenin. The werebitch responded with a shrug that rippled the deep cleavage of her bodice. “Mayhap thou couldst offer her something to make up for thy separation,” she murmured.
Mach snapped his fingers. “Offspring!” he exclaimed.
Fleta looked up, interested.
“Grant me this temporary separation from you,” he said, “and on my return I shall make my most serious effort to find a way to enable us to have a baby, and shall pursue it until successful.”
They waited. Slowly Fleta thawed, though she did not speak.
Mach addressed the bitch again. “What of the Adverse Adepts? Do they accede to such a truce?”
The watery bubble appeared, floating at head height. “Aye,” the Translucent Adept said. “Our observation in this respect marches that o’ the other side. The frames are being eroded. We profit not, an the mechanism o’ our contact destroy our realm. But the two o’ ye can communicate regardless o’ the frames occupied. Hold to thy agreement with us, and we care not which frame thou dost occupy.”
“I cannot implement that agreement unless my other self concurs,” Mach reminded him.
“And the other side cannot profit from the connection unless thou dost concur,” Translucent agreed. “The impasse remains-but an Bane appear here, mayhap we can negotiate with him.”
“I suppose that is the way it must be,” Mach said. “I must seek my other self and offer to exchange with him. I hope I can devise a spell to locate him.”
“I must return to my Pack,” Furramenin said. She became the wolf, and exited at a dogtrot.
Mach pondered. To do magic, he had to devise a bit of rhyme and deliver it in singsong. That would implement it, but the important part was his conception and will. If he wished for a “croc” verbally, he could conjure an item of pottery or a container of human refuse or a large toothed reptile, depending on his thought. He had very little experience with magic, and was apt to make awkward errors, but he was learning.
What he wanted was an unerring way to locate his other self. He did not want to risk any modification of his own perceptions, because if that went wrong, he could discover himself blind or deaf or worse. But if he had an object like a compass that always pointed to Bane’s location on Proton, he could follow it, and if he made some error in Grafting it, he could correct it when the error became apparent. Was there any type of compass that rhymed with “self”?
He quested through the archives of his Proton education, but came up with nothing. How much easier it would be if that word “croc” fit! Rock, mock, smock, lock, flock-
Then it came to him: delf. Delf was colored, glazed earthenware made for table use in the middle ages of Earth. A kind of crockery, not special, except that it proffered the rhyme he needed. If he could adapt pottery to his purpose …
He worked it out in his mind, then tried a spell: “Give me delf to find myself,” he singsonged, concentrating on a glazed cup.
The cup appeared in his hand. The glaze was bright: brighter on one side than the other. Mach turned the cup, but the highlight remained on the east side.
“I think I have it,” he said, relieved. He had been afraid he would have to try several times before he got it right. Apparently the effort he had made to work out both rhyme and visualization ahead of time had paid off. He could do magic adequately if he just took proper pains with it.
“All I have to do is follow the bright side, and I should intersect Bane.” For Bane’s location in the frame of Proton would match the spot indicated in the frame of Phaze; the geography of the two worlds was identical, except for changes wrought by man. The separation of the two was of another nature than physical; the two overlapped, and were the same in alternate aspects, just as many of the folk were the same on each. Otherwise it would not have been possible for Mach and Bane to exchange identities, with Mach’s machine mind taking over Bane’s living body in Phaze, and Bane’s mind taking over Mach’s robot body in Proton.
Fleta did not respond. She was evidently still pensive because of the prospect of even a temporary separation. But he believed she could accept it in due course. Even unicorn stubbornness yielded on occasion to necessity.
Or did it? The following day did not ameliorate her reservation. Fleta did not want to go. She agreed that the compromise was valid and the- measured separation necessary, but she made no effort to mask her dislike of it. “How can I be sure thou willst return, once thou art gone?” she grumbled.
“Of course I will return!” he protested. “I love you!”
“I mean that the Citizens or Adepts will not let thee back. They interfered before; hast thou forgotten?”
“It was the Adverse Adepts and the Contrary Citizens who interfered,” he reminded her. “Now they support us.”
“Until they find some other way to achieve their purpose,” she muttered. “Mach, I like this not! I fear for thee, and for me. I fear deception and ill will. I want only to be with thee fore’er. E’en if we must constantly kiss.”
“So do I,” he said. “But I am willing to make some sacrifice now, in the hope that things will improve. Perhaps our families will agree to our union, in the course of this truce, so that you will be able to return to your Herd without being shunned.”
A glimmer of hope showed. “Aye, perhaps,” she agreed.
“Now I must follow the highlight on the delf. I hope you will come with me, so that our separation can be held to the very minimum.”
She tried to resist, but could not. She converted to her black unicorn form, proffering a ride for him.
Mach mounted her, and for a moment reached down around her neck to hug her. “Thank you, Fleta.”
She twitched an ear at him in an expression of annoyance, but it lacked force.
They left the island, passing through the water as the bitch had. The Ordovician flora and fauna ignored them, having gotten to know them. Mach knew that it would have been otherwise, had the Translucent Adept not invited them; these creatures might be several hundred million years old, geologically, but this was their realm, and they were competent within it. So Fleta’s hooves avoided trampling the sponges and fernlike graptolites, and the squidlike nautiloids watched without reaction. Translucent had promised a place where Mach and Fleta could dwell safely together; this was certainly that!
They emerged to the normal land, and the past was gone; it existed only in Translucent’s Demesnes, and these were in water. Now Fleta could gallop freely, knowing the general if not the specific terrain. They traveled for a day, avoiding contact with other creatures, and camped for the night by a small stream. Fleta changed to girlform so that they could mate love, having thawed to that extent, then returned to mareform to graze while Mach slept alone.
She was avoiding him, he realized. Not overtly, but significantly, by spending most of her time with him in her natural form. She denied the implication by assuming girlform for his passion, but he knew that this was tokenism; she felt no sexual need when not in heat, and did it only to please him. So he was left with no complaint to make, yet the awareness of their subtle estrangement.
She didn’t want him to return to Proton. She had agreed to it, knowing the necessity, but not with her heart. Perhaps she felt he had compromised in this respect too readily. She lacked the type of training he had had in Proton, that made it easy for him to accept the rationale of frames imbalance. She was a creature of the field and forest, while he was a creature of city and machine. Perhaps the root of his love for her lay in that. Her world represented life, for him, and that was immeasurably precious.
She thought he sought some pretext to leave her, after having won her love. How wrong she was in that suspicion! He sought a way to make their liaison permanent, recognizing the barriers that existed.
He gazed out into the night, where she grazed in pained aloofness. How could he satisfy her that her hurt was groundless? He realized that the differences between them were more than machine and animal, or technology and magic; they were male and female. He had assumed that rationality governed; she assumed that emotion governed.
And didn’t it? Had he acted rationally, he would never have fallen into love with her!
“Thee, thee, thee,” he whispered.
A ripple of light spread out from him, causing the very night to wave and the stars overhead to glimmer in unison. It was the splash, again, faint because this was not its first invocation, but definite.
Suddenly Fleta was there, in girlform, in his embrace.
She had received it, and must have flown, literally, to rejoin him. She said no word, but her tears were coursing. There was no separation of any type between them now.
On the third day they caught up to Bane. He was evidently in Hardom, the Proton city-dome that was at the edge of the great southern Purple Mountain range. In Phaze it was the region that harpies clustered. Thus the Proton name, reflecting the parallelism: HARpy DOMe, Hardom. But there were no harpies in Proton, of course, other than figuratively.
They paused to pay a call on the harpy they had befriended during their flight from the Adverse Adepts and their minions the goblins. That had been before the Translucent Adept’s intercession and their change of sides. This was Phoebe, who had by virtue of Mach’s fouled-up magic gained a horrendous hairdo that she liked screechingly well. It had enabled her to assume leadership among her kind, having before been outcast because of an illness. Fleta had cured that illness, which was the real basis of the unusual friendship; harpies generally had no interest in human or in unicorn acquaintance.
Phoebe was perched in her bower. Her head remained the absolute fright-wig that Mach had crafted, with radiating spikes of hair that made her reminiscent of a gross sea urchin. “Aye!” she screeched. “The rovot and the ‘corn. I blush to ‘fess it, but glad I be to see ye again!”
“We were passing, and thought we would pay our respects,” Mach explained. “I must return to my own frame for a time.”
“So? Methought thou didst have a thing for the ‘corn.”
“I do. I will return to her. But there is business I must attend to meanwhile.”
“Be there any aid I can render?” Phoebe asked. “Ye be mine only friends among thy kinds.”
“You have done more than enough for us. We merely wished to greet you again, and be on our way.”
“As thou dost wish,” the harpy said, shrugging. “But let me give thee another feather to summon me, in case thou shouldst have need o’ me.” She plucked it from her tail with a claw and extended it to him.
“Thank you,” Mach said, touched. Harpies were in a general way abominable creatures, but this one they had befriended seemed quite human. Probably the others would be too, if the animosity between species could be overcome. He tucked the feather into a pocket.
“Yet it be late,” Phoebe continued. “The night be cool, and my nest be warm. If ye two would stay the eve-“
Mach exchanged a glance with Fleta. This nest had fond memories for them. They decided to stay.
In the morning they continued to the spot where Bane was, on the edge of the plain just north of the Purple Mountains. The glow on the delf cup became so bright it was as if the sunlight were reflecting from it, but the sky was overcast. When the glow spread to circle the cup, Mach knew that this was where he could overlap his opposite self.
He turned to Fleta, who now changed to girlform, wearing her cape and shoes. Her mane became her lustrous black hair, a trifle wild and wholly beautiful. He embraced her and kissed her. “You must explain to Bane, if he doesn’t already know,” he said.
Mutely, she nodded. They disengaged.
It was time. But though he had to leave her, he sought some way to make the parting less absolute. He wanted to say something, or to give her something. But he could think of nothing to say, and had nothing to give.
His hand went to his pocket, reflexively. His fingers found the feather.
“Fleta-this may be foolish-but I want to give you something in token of what I will try to give you in the future. I have nothing, but …” “There be no need, Mach,” she said bravely.
“This.” He brought out the feather.
She looked at it. Suddenly her laughter bubbled up past her bosom in the way it had, and burst out of her mouth. “A dirty harpy pinion!” she exclaimed.
“Well, technically it’s a tail feather. A pinion is from the wing.”
“Only a rovot would be thus at a time like this!” she exclaimed. She flung her arms around him and kissed him fiercely. Then she withdrew, and gravely accepted the feather. “But it be a good thought, Phoebe’s and thine. Mayhap I will have need o’ her. Certainly Bane will not.” She tucked it into a pocket in her cape.
It was foolishness of a sort that he would not have indulged in, as a robot. Therefore he valued it now. “Farewell-for now. My love.”
He stood where the cup indicated, and concentrated. Yes-he felt the presence of his other self. Now all he needed was to will the magic for the exchange, assuming that Bane joined him in the effort. “Let me gain the body of Bane,” he singsonged, knowing that the doggerel was only a token, hardly necessary for this act.
He felt the magic of the exchange taking hold. Bane was cooperating. In a moment they would-
Fleta flung herself back at him, clasping him tightly. “Thee, thee, thee!” she cried, her bravery abolished.
There was a ripple around them. Then the exchange happened. There was something strange about it; this was no ordinary event. But it was too late to reverse it; whatever was to happen, was happening.
2
Proton
They took their places on either side of the console. Bane’s screen showed a grid with sixteen boxes. Across the top was written 1. PHYSICAL 2. MENTAL 3. CHANCE 4. ARTS, and down the left side was written A. NAKED B. TOOL C. MACHINE D. ANIMAL. The numbered words were highlighted, which meant that he was supposed to choose from among them.
But his mind drifted, conjuring different interpretations for the terms.
Physical: He looked across at Agape, who was naked in the serf mode of Proton, as was he. She was beautiful, with curling yellow tresses, wide-spaced eyes with yellow irises, and erect breasts. It was hard to believe that she wasn’t human.
She met his gaze. Her hair lengthened and turned golden, then orange. Her eyes nudged closer together, as did her breasts, and her nipples brightened to match the new hair and eye color. She smiled.
Mental: “Thou hast no need to change for me,” he murmured, smiling back. “I be smitten with thee regardless.” But now it was easier to believe that she was alien. Agape, accented on the first of the three syllables, meaning “love.”
Her hair continued to grow, becoming red, and it curled down across and around her breasts, which were gaining mass. “Make your move, Bane,” she said.
He looked again at his grid, pondering. His mood was lightening, as perhaps she intended, but it was not easy to set aside the gravity of their situation.
Chance: Bane was with the creature he loved, but he had little joy of it, because she would soon be leaving the planet and his life. Citizen Blue had made it plain:
as long as Mach and Bane represented the only contact between the frames of Proton and Phaze, and the Contrary Citizens and Adverse Adepts desired such contact, the boys were probably safe. But their girlfriends were at risk, because they could be kidnaped and used to put pressure on the boys. Therefore the relationships had to be sundered, lest much worse occur. It was risky for them to maintain their association.
Agape had agreed to return to her home planet, Moeba. But the Contrary Citizens were watching, and would surely try to intercept her at the port and take her captive. So for the nonce she remained with the experimental group, and Bane had the benefit of her company. Every day might be the last together, so they did their best to make it count.
Arts: Today they were playing the Game. They had had a bad experience with it on the estate of Citizen Purple, but now they had the chance to play it as it should be played, unrigged, for fun instead of for life. It was fairly new to each of them, because Bane was from another frame and Agape was from another world. Neither was what either appeared to be; each was fashioned artistically to be on the appealing side of ordinary.
Her breasts caught his eye again, just above the level of the console. Now they were huge and purple.
He laughed. “Thou be trying to distract me!” he accused her. “So I may make a bad choice!”
“Curses, foiled again,” she muttered. She had studied hard to learn human idiom as well as custom, and seemed to enjoy showing off her increasing mastery of both.
“I want to make love to thee,” he said, experiencing a reaction.
“You did that this morning,” she reminded him. “Have you forgotten already?”
“Nay, I remember! That be why I want it again.”
“Well, defeat me in the game, and you can do with me what you will.”
“But what if I lose?” he asked.
“Then I will do with you what I will.”
He reflected on that, and his erection doubled its growth. A passing couple noticed. “I’d like to know what game they’re getting!” the man said.
Too late, Bane remembered that he was now able to control such reactions. He thought the correct thought, and his member subsided. But his desire remained, for he could not control his mind as readily as his body.
He touched the number 1. PHYSICAL. He wanted to get physical with her, in or out of the game.
She had already made her selection. It was B. TOOL. Was she teasing him with another idiom, because of the reaction he had just quelled?
He grimaced. The way his thoughts were going, he would have preferred A. NAKED. Of course that wasn’t literal; it simply meant that the players were relegated to their bare hands. All serfs of Proton were unclothed; that had no significance here. It had taken him some time to get used to this, but now he accepted it.
A new set of boxes appeared on his screen. This was the Secondary Grid, and its numbers across the top were labeled 5. SEPARATE 6. INTERACTIVE 7. COMBAT 8. COOPERATIVE. Down the side were E. EARTH F. FIRE G. GAS H. H^O. The letters were highlighted for him this time.
He looked at her again. She had reverted to a more normal figure and color, except for her nipples and eyes, which were now electric green. What would she choose? 8. COOPERATIVE? Maybe he could still get close to her. “Earth” meant a flat surface, as opposed to the variable or discontinuous surfaces of the following options, or the liquid surface of H20. Cooperation on a flat surface–that might be good.
He touched the E panel. Again, her choice was ready.
She had chosen 5. SEPARATE. So much for that. Was she teasing him again? No, she was merely playing the game, unaware of his thoughts. They would do what they would with each other after the game; they had no need to do it in the game. He was being foolish.
They were in 1B5E: the category of tool-assisted physical games, individually performed on a flat surface. That did not sound very appetizing to Bane.
This time the grid was only nine squares, with the numbers 9, 10 and 11 across the top and the letters J, K, and L down the left side. There were no words there, but there were a number of choices listed to the right. These consisted of ball games, wheeled games, and assorted odds and ends games that had perhaps been lumped into this category because it was the least irrelevant place for them.
Bane hesitated, not sure where to go from here. “Now we place games,” Agape explained. “May I have the first turn?”
Bane shrugged. “Thou mayst.”
She put her finger to her screen and evidently touched KNITTING, for that word brightened on his screen. Then she must have touched the center square of the grid, for abruptly the word was there.
“Knitting?” he asked. “What kind o’ game be that?”
“A woman’s game,” she said smugly. “I am not good at it, because we do not have it in my society, but I had to learn its basics in order to come here; I suspect that you, being arrogantly male, have never had experience with it.”
Bane opened his mouth, and shut it again. She had him dead to rights.
“Now you place one,” she said.
“Ah.” If knitting was a tool-assisted physical game of the female persuasion, there were many others of the male persuasion. He put his finger on BALL:
Throwing. She would have trouble throwing a ball as far as he could! He touched the upper left square, and the expression appeared there. She put SEWING beside it in the top row. He scowled. If she got three lined vertically, then got to choose the numbers, she would be guaranteed one of her choices! But no, he remembered now that the turns alternated; the last person to place a game, which on this odd-numbered grid would be her, had to yield the choice of sides to the other. So he could choose the vertical and avoid that. All the same, he played it safe. He put ICE SKATING in the middle of the bottom row. She put BAKING in the left center, or 9K square. He quickly filled in the other end of the K row with BICYCLE RACING so that she would not have a horizontal line. He was beginning to enjoy this; he had thought they would not play the game until the grids decided what it would be, but realized that they were already in it. This was the aspect of strategy, where the game could be virtually won or lost, depending on the player’s cleverness in choosing and placing. Agape put COOKING in the lower right corner. Bane put SHOT PUT in the lower left. She put SOAP BUBBLES in the upper right square, the final one. The grid was complete.
He chose the numbers, though there did not seem to be much difference. Then he wrestled with the decision over which column to choose. If he took the first, he had two chances to win one of his sports: Ball-throwing or Shot-putting. But she would anticipate that, so take the middle row, winning her choice of Baking. So he should take one of the other columns . . . where the odds were two to one against him. Except that if she figured him to take the first column, so she chose the middle row, he obviously should take the third column, putting them in Bicycle Racing. So the odds weren’t really against him. Unless she realized this, so took one of the other rows, so as to win. So he should-
He shook his head. He was getting confused! There was no way to be sure of victory; it was an endless maze of suppositions.
He decided to go with the odds. He touched Column 9.
This time she had not chosen before him, for the chosen box did not illuminate. His row highlighted; that was all.
At last she chose. The 9K square lighted, then expanded to fill the full screen. She had won it after all: they would play the game of Baking.
“Do you concede?” she asked.
It was only part of the ritual, but he was tempted. What did he know of baking? His mother, the Lady Blue, had always handled that. But he didn’t like quitting, even when it was only a game. Even when it really didn’t matter who won or lost. “Nay.”
“Will you accept a draw?”
That was a generous offer! He knew he should take it, but he decided to take his loss like a man. “Nay.”
She sighed. “I thought to bluff you,” she admitted. “I know nothing of baking.”
“Then methinks we both should learn,” he said. “The loser must eat the winner’s effort.”
“But you don’t even need to eat,” she reminded him.
“Aye, but I can. Mayhap I will not have to.”
She looked at her screen. “Oh, there is a list of baking choices. What do we want?”
“Something simple,” he pleaded. “Something we ne’er can mess up too much.”
“I agree.” She addressed the console. “What is simple, and tastes all right if poorly made?”
BROWNIES, the screen replied.
Agape looked at Bane. “Do you know what brownies are?”
“Nay, if they be not a species o’ the elves.”
“Neither do I. So we’re even. Let’s do it.”
“Aye.”
There was a message on the screen: ADJOURN TO KITCHEN ANNEX, BOOTH 15.
They had committed themselves. They made their way to the kitchen annex.
The booth was ready for them. Two chairs were at consoles, their screens lighted.
Agape took one seat. Bane the other. Both consoles faced the wall. Bane’s screen said: TOUCH WHEN READY TO PROCEED.
He reached out and touched Agape on the shoulder.
“It means the screen!” she exclaimed. But she leaned over and kissed him.
He had known that. Satisfied, he touched the screen. Nothing happened. “Thou hast to touch thine too,” he reminded her.
“There’s someone watching us,” she murmured. “You can see him in the reflection of the wall.”
He looked. It was a middle-aged serf, apparently one of the caretakers or troubleshooters of this section. He ran it through his brain’s storage bank, and culled a positive reference. The serf was legitimate. “He be an employee, likely assigned to watch lest some minion o’ a Citizen molest us,” he murmured back. “Blue be not one to let us be taken hostage again.”
“Oh, of course,” she said, relaxing. She touched her screen.
Now the game was on. A menu appeared on his screen:
1B5E 9K BAKING BROWNIES MACH (R) VS AGAPE (A)
1. GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
2. OPTIONS
3. RECIPE
4. LIST OF INGREDIENTS
5. TERMINATE
“What be ‘R’ and ‘A’?” Bane inquired.
“Robot and android,” she replied.
“But-“
“This is a standard unit. It cannot distinguish between a robot and a human being inhabiting the body of a robot. See, you are also listed as ‘Mach.’ Similarly, it cannot distinguish between an android and an alien; it knows only the distinction between Human, Robot, Android and Cyborg. So I count as an android.”
He smiled. “Yet we be two other people.”
“Two aliens,” she agreed. “From Phaze and Moeba. That is what brought us together.”
“I would not change it.”
“Nor would I.” She returned his smile. They were doing a lot of that, now. “But let’s get cooking.”
“Aye.” He returned his gaze to the screen.
He did not understand much of it, so he decided to start at the beginning: GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS. He touched the number 1.
The original menu contracted and retreated to the upper right corner of the screen, evidently remaining functional. New words took over the left and center:
MOST COOKING AND BAKING IS DONE BY REMOTE INSTRUCTION. ALL DIRECTIVES INDICATED ON THE SCREEN WILL BE IMPLEMENTED IN THE ACTIVITY CHAMBER IMMEDIATELY BEYOND THE CONSOLE. IF YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH YOUR OPTIONS AND RECIPE, PROCEED DIRECTLY TO THE LIST OF INGREDIENTS AND MAKE YOUR SELECTIONS. IF NOT, PROCEED TO 2. OPTIONS.
Well, that was clear enough. Bane touched 2. OPTIONS in the corner. He wondered how Agape was doing. She had come to Proton only a day before he had, but had been better prepared for it.
OPTIONS: YOU MAY GO DIRECTLY TO THE LIST OF INGREDIENTS IF THE RECIPE IS ALREADY FAMILIAR.
YOU MAY SPECIFY THE SYSTEM OF MEASUREMENTS EMPLOYED IN THE RECIPE AND LIST OF INGREDIENTS.
YOU MAY SPECIFY A MULTIPLE OF THE STANDARD RECIPE. WARNING: THIS MAY AFFECT THE BAKING TIME AND THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT.
YOU MAY SPECIFY VARIANTS OF THE STANDARD INGREDIENTS. WARNING: THIS IS NOT ADVISED FOR NOVICE PRACTITIONERS, AS IT MAY AFFECT THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT.
YOU MAY SPECIFY VARIANTS OF OVEN TEMPERATURE AND DURATION. WARNING: THIS MAY AFFECT THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT.
The list of options continued, but Bane had seen enough. He decided to stick with the standard recipe and ingredients. He touched 3. RECIPE.
There it was: the listing of the materials that were to go into the production, with brief instructions on integration and processing.
Oops! He was in trouble already! He was not conversant with the metric system used in Proton; he thought in terms of ounces and pounds and cups and quarts.
But he had the solution. He touched OPTIONS again, and when its listing reappeared, he touched SPECIFY SYSTEM OF MEASUREMENTS. A sublisting of measurements options appeared: the various systems used by the other planets and peoples and creatures of the galaxy. That wasn’t much help either!
However, there was at the bottom a place for OTHER. He touched that, and when it asked him to PLEASE SPECIFY, he said, “The system used in the Frame o’ Phaze.”
The screen blinked. For a moment he was afraid that this was not a viable choice, but then it replied OLD ENGLISH SYSTEM OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES INVOKED.
Well! This was just about like doing magic in Phaze. He returned to the RECIPE. Now it listed:
2 OUNCES UNSWEETENED CHOCOLATE 1/4 CUP BUTTER
1 CUP SUGAR
2 MEDIUM EGGS
1/8 TEASPOON SALT
1/2 CUP WHEAT FLOUR
1/2 CUP WALNUT FRAGMENTS
1 TEASPOON VANILLA FLAVORING
This he was able to make some sense of. He glanced across at Agape, and saw that her activity chamber was in operation: things were happening in a lighted box in her section of the wall.
He read the assembly instructions. He was supposed to melt the chocolate and butter together, then stir in the other ingredients. He should be able to manage.
He touched 4. LIST OF INGREDIENTS. This turned out to be the master list of everything available. There were dozens of types of chocolates, and similar variety for the others.
He returned to INSTRUCTIONS and read beyond the point he had before. Sure enough, it mentioned that there were several types of options, including automatic selection of standard variants. He went to OPTIONS, found the place, and touched STANDARD VARIANTS. Then he returned to INGREDIENTS.
Now the listing was much contracted. There was only one type of chocolate. He touched that, and the screen inquired QUANTITY? followed by a graduated scale of measurements. He touched the scale at the twoounce point.
Now his activity chamber came to life. Two ounces of chocolate landed in its floor.
Um. Perhaps he had overlooked another instruction. He reviewed, and found it: he needed a container. He specified one of suitable capacity, then specified in a SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS option that the available chocolate be placed in the container. The chamber turned dark, then lighted again: the chocolate was in the pan. The mess on the chamber floor had been removed.
He added the butter, then instructed the chamber to heat it to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Almost immediately the mixture started boiling violently. Goo splatted on the window of the chamber. Oops!
He turned off the heat and reviewed his general instructions and his recipe. He discovered that at this stage he was only supposed to heat enough to melt the chocolate and butter, not to bake it. He decided to start over.
ERROR the screen blazoned. It seemed that he had to make do with what he had; no second starts. He should have known; no one would ever let any mistakes stand if restarts were permitted. He could have gotten in trouble with his first loss of chocolate; evidently the system tolerated that amount of spillage.
Meanwhile, Agape’s project was well along. She might be an alien creature, but she had a much better notion of cooking than he did!
His start was a mess, but a good deal of the chocolate/ butter solution had been saved. He marked 100∞ F heat, and got the degree of melt he needed. Then, following instructions, he stirred in the remaining ingredients. The sugar was no problem, but the eggs were in translucent packages, and he had to do spot research to discover how to open these by remote control. He managed to bungle it, getting half an egg splattered across the outside of the pan.
When he had everything stirred in, he had a rather thick brown mass in the pan. Now he set the heat for 400∞ F and let it bake for a nominal half-hour. Actually it didn’t take that long; the game computer used microwave energy to do the equivalent in just a few minutes, because otherwise the booth would be tied up too long for each game and would not be able to accommodate all the game players.
The two finished products were brought out, and for the first time Bane and Agape could smell and touch their brownies.
His was burned, so dry and hard that it would be a real effort to consume it. Hers was underdone, resembling a pudding; she had evidently set the heat too low, and perhaps included some fluid by mistake.
“Who wins?” he asked.
“We can get the machine to judge,” she said unhappily.
“Nay, no need,” he decided. “Thy concoction resembles thee: amoebic. I like it best.”
“But yours resembles you,” she countered. “All leather and metal. I like it best.”
“We’ll eat each other’s,” he said. “We both have won.”
“We both have won,” she echoed, smiling.
They leaned into each other and kissed again. Then they had the machine pack their wares in plastic bags, so that they could leave the booth for the next players. As they departed, both their activity chambers were in chaos; the game computer was trying to get them clean, and on this occasion that was a considerable challenge.
They retired to the private chamber they now shared, and opened the bags. Bane took a bite of pudding, but found it tasteless. This was not because it lacked taste, but because his body, having no need for food, had no taste sensors. What he chewed and swallowed went to a stomach receptacle that he could evacuate subsequently, either by vomiting or by opening a panel and removing the soiled unit. Eating was a superfluous function for a robot, but the ability had been incorporated in order to enable him to seem completely human. He was glad of it; he wanted to reassure her by eating what she had baked. Digestibility was irrelevant.
Her mode of eating differed. She set the brownie lump on the table, leaned over it, and let her top part melt. Her features blurred and became puddingy, indeed resembling the consistency of what she had baked. She drooped onto the food, her flesh spreading over and around it. Her digestive acids infiltrated it, breaking it down, and gradually the mound subsided. When all of it had been reduced to liquid and absorbed into her substance, she lifted her flesh from the table. Her head formed, and her shoulders and arms and breasts. Her eyes developed, and her ears and nose and mouth, assuming their appropriate configurations and colors. She had a human aspect again.
“I hope it doesn’t poison thee,” Bane said, not entirely humorously.
“It was solid and burned, but not inedible,” she reassured him. “You made it; that is all I need to know.”
He took her in his arms. “I have never before known a creature like thee.”
“I should hope not,” she said. “I am the only Moebite on this planet.”
“I wish I could love thee in thy natural form.”
“I have no natural form,” she reminded him. “I am merely protoplasm. I assume whatever shape pleases you.”
“And I am pleased by them all. I never loved an alien amoeba before.”
“And I never loved a terrestrial vertebrate before. But-“
“Say it not!” he protested. “I know we must part, but fain would I delude myself that this moment be forever.”
“If we continue speaking of this, I will melt,” she warned him.
“And thou leave me, I may melt,” he said.
“Perhaps, when I am safe among my own kind, you could visit?” she asked hesitantly.
“Let me go with thee now!”
“No, you must remain, and communicate with your apposite self, and return to your own frame. Our association is only an interlude.”
“Only an interlude,” he repeated sadly.
“But we can make it count. Tell me what to do, and I shall do it for you.”
She was not being facetious. She had come to Proton to learn human ways, including especially the human mode of sexual interplay, because the Moebites wanted to work toward bisexual reproduction. They understood the theory of it, but not the practice. They believed that their species development was lagging because they lacked the stimulus of two-sex replication, and they wanted to master it.
But in the pursuit of this quest, Agape had run afoul of another aspect of such reproduction: she had fallen in love. Now she had much of the information, but lacked the desire to return to her home world and demonstrate it to others of her kind. She wanted only to remain with Bane.
Now that it was feasible to do, Bane found that he had lost the desire for sexual activity. Part of it might have been her sheer accommodation; no challenge remained, when she was completely willing and malleable. But most of it was his foolish gut feeling that once Agape had learned all that he might teach her in this regard, there would be no need for her to remain with him. Thus he wanted to conserve the experience rather than expending it, to keep her with him longer. He knew this was nonsensical, but it unmanned him for the moment.
“Let’s play another game,” he said.
She gazed at him in surprise. “Another game? But I thought-“
“Thou didst think rightly! But I-I find I be not ready. I want to experience more things with thee, a greater variety, while I may. I want to build up a store o’ precious memories. Or something. I know not exactly what I want, only that I want it to be with thee.”
“I see I have much to learn yet about the human condition,” she said, perplexed.
“Nay, it be not thee, but me,” he reassured her. “Only accept that I love thee, and let the rest be confused.”
She spread her hands in a careful human gesture. “As you wish, Bane.”
They went out to play another game, and another, and another, the victories and the losses immaterial, only the experience being important. So it continued for several days, with physical, mental and chance games of every type. They raced each other in sailcraft, they played Chinese checkers, they bluffed each other with poker, they battled with punnish riddles. Sometimes they cheated, indulging in one game while nominally playing another, as when they made love while theoretically wrestling in gelatin. Whatever else they did, they lived their joint life to the fullest extent they could manage, trying to cram decades into days.
They found themselves in machine-assisted art: playing parts in a randomly selected play whose other parts were played by programmed robots. Each of them was cued continuously on lines and action, so that there was no problem of memorization or practice. It was their challenge to interpret their parts well, with the Game Computer ready to rate their performance at the end. They had specified a play involving male-female relations, of a romantic nature, with difficulties, and the computer had made a selection from among the many thousands in its repertoire.
Thus they were acting in one by George Bernard Shaw titled You Never Can Tell, dating from the nineteenth century of Earth. Bane was VALENTINE and Agape was GLORIA CLANDON. They were well into the scene.
“Oh, Miss Clandon, Miss Clandon: how could you?” he demanded.
“What have I done?” she asked, startled.
“Thrown this enchantment on me …” And as he spoke the scripted lines, he realized that it was true: she had enchanted him, though she had not intended to.
“I hope you are not going to be so foolish-so vulgar-as to say love,” she responded with uncertain feeling. According to the play, she had no special feeling for him, but in reality she did; this was getting difficult for her.
“No, no, no, no, no. Not love; we know better than that,” he said earnestly. “Let’s call it chemistry …” And wasn’t this also true? What was love, really? But as he spoke, he became aware of something that should have been irrelevant. They had an audience.
“Nonsense!” she exclaimed with more certainty.
They had not had an audience when they started. Several serfs had entered the chamber and taken seats. Why? This was a private game, of little interest to anyone else. “. . . you’re a prig: a feminine prig: that’s what you are,” he said, enjoying the line. “Now I suppose you’ve done with me forever.”
“… I have many faults,” she said primly. “Very serious faults-of character and temper; but if there is one thing that I am not, it is what you call a prig.” She gazed challengingly at him.
“Oh, yes, you are. My reason tells me so: my experience tells me so.” And his reason and experience told him that something was wrong: there should be no audience.
“… your knowledge and your experience are not infallible,” she was saying, handling her lines with increasing verve. “At least I hope not.”
“I must believe them,” he said, wishing he could warn her about the audience without interfering with the set lines. “Unless you wish me to believe my eyes, my heart, my instincts, my imagination, which are all telling me the most monstrous lies about you.”
“Lies!”
Yet more serfs were entering the audience chamber. Were they players waiting for their turn? “Yes, lies.” He sat down beside her, as the script dictated, but wasn’t sure he did it convincingly. “Do you expect me to believe that you are the most beautiful woman in the world?”
Now she was evidently feeling the relevance! “That is ridiculous, and rather personal.”
“Of course it’s ridiculous …” His developing paranoia about the audience was, too! He wished they could just quit the play here, and get away; he didn’t trust this at all. But as they exchanged their lines, his apprehension increased. Suppose the Contrary Citizens had managed to divert Blue’s minions, so that there was no protection for the moment?
“And I’m a feminine prig,” she was saying.
“No, no: I can’t face that: I must have one illusion left: the illusion about you. I love you.”
She rose, as the cue dictated, and turned. Then she spied the audience. She almost lost her place. “I am sorry. I-” Now she did lose it, and barely recovered. “What can I say?”
What, indeed? Now it seemed sure: the Citizens were about to make their move. But how could he get away from here with Agape, without setting off the trap? They needed a natural exit, to get offstage, out of sight.
“… I can’t tell you-” he was saying.
“Oh, stop telling me how you feel: I can’t bear it.”
And he saw that the scene was coming to a close. Here was their chance! “Ah, it’s come at last: my moment of courage.” He seized her hands, according to the script, and she looked at him in simulated terror, also scripted. But their emotions were becoming real, for a different reason. “Our moment of courage!” He drew her in to him and kissed her. “Now you’ve done it, Agape. It’s all over: we’re in love with one another.”
Oops-he had used her real name, not her play name! But he couldn’t change it now. It was time for his exit.
“Goodbye. Forgive me,” he said, and kissed her hands, and retreated.
But now the men of the audience were advancing on the stage. Bane ran back, grabbed her arm, and hauled her along with him offstage.
“It is happening!” she exclaimed as they ran for a rear exit.
“I think so. We must get back to the main complex, where Citizen Blue is watching.” For this particular chamber was outside the region of the Experimental Project of humans, robots, androids, cyborgs and aliens living in harmony. Most facilities were set within it, but when particular ones were crowded, the Game Computer assigned players to the nearest outside ones. Thus it seemed that Bane and Agape had inadvertently strayed beyond the scope of Citizen Blue’s protection, and the Contrary Citizens had seized the moment.
There were serfs in the hall outside. They spotted Bane and Agape and moved purposefully toward them.
They retreated back into the play complex. But they could hear the serfs in pursuit here too, coming through the stage region.
“The service apertures,” Agape said. “Go there!”
Bane obeyed. Maybe there would be an escape route there.
There was not. The service door led only into a chamber in which an assortment of maintenance machines were parked.
“We be lost!” Bane exclaimed.
“Maybe not!” She hurried to a communications panel, activated it, and tapped against it with a measured cadence.
“Approach the cyborg brusher,” the speaker said. The lid lifted on the top of a huge cleaning machine.
“Come, Bane!” she said, running toward the device,
“What-?”
“The self-willed machines are helping us! Trust them!”
Bemused, he followed her. “Remove the brain unit,” the speaker said.
There was a pounding on the door. Evidently it had locked behind them, barring access by the serfs. That could not last long, for all doors had manual overrides.
Bane saw that there was a complicated apparatus just below the lid, with wiring and tubing and plasticencased substance that looked alive. He took hold of the handles at either side and lifted. He had to exert his robotic strength, for the unit was heavy, but it came up and out.
“Set it here,” the speaker said. A panel slid aside, revealing a chamber set in the wall.
He carried the brain unit across and shoved it into the chamber. The panel slid shut. Evidently this was a servicing facility for the living cyborg brain.
“Stand for dismantling,” the speaker said. Another machine rolled toward him.
Bane hesitated. Then he heard an ominous silence at the door. They were setting up for the override! He stood for dismantling.
Quickly, efficiently, and painlessly the machine removed his arms, legs and head. It carried these to the big cyborg husk and installed them in the bowels of it. Then it stashed his torso in a refuse chamber in its base. Finally it separated his head into several parts, and his perceptions became scattered. The chamber seemed to wave crazily as one of his eyes was carried across and set into a perceptor extension. He had no idea how it was possible for him to see while his eyes were disconnected from his head, or to remain conscious while his head was apart from his body, but evidently it was. The machines of Proton had strong magic! Meanwhile, Agape was doing something; he heard fragments of the instructions to her. It seemed she was required to melt into a new brain-container that was being set into the machine.
All this occurred extremely rapidly. In less than a minute the two of them had been installed into the cyborg. His accurate robot time sense told him it was so, despite the subjective human impression.
The entrance to the chamber opened. Bane saw this with his two widely separated eyes, and heard it with his buried ears. Six serfs charged in.
“Search this room!” one directed the others. “They have to be in here!”
They spread out and searched, but could not find the fugitives. They did find a panel that concealed a service tunnel leading to another drama complex. “Check that complex!” the leader snapped. “They must have crawled through.”
Four men hurried out. But the leader was too canny to dismiss this chamber yet. “Check these machines, too,” he snapped. “Some of them are big enough to hold a body.”
They checked, opening each machine and poking inside. They checked the cyborg, and found only its brain unit and operative attachments. At length, frustrated, they departed.
DO NOT REACT. Bane saw these words appear briefly on a wall panel, and realized they were for him. The hunt remained on; this could be a trap.
After a few minutes the speaker said: “Cleaners ten, twelve and nineteen to the adjacent drama chamber for cleanup.”
“We are nineteen,” Agape’s voice came faintly to him. “I will direct you; you must operate the extremities.”
So they were now a true cyborg: a living brain and a mechanical body! Bane discovered that when he tried to walk, his legs were wheels. He started a little jerkily, but soon got the hang of it, and propelled them after the other contraptions toward the door.
Outside the serfs were waiting. Obviously they expected Bane and Agape to walk out, thinking that they were safe.
He took them around and into the drama suite the two of them had vacated. “Brush the floor,” Agape said.
Bane tried to reach with an arm-and extruded an appendage whose terminus was a roller brush. He lowered this to the floor and twitched his fingers. The brush spun. He started brushing the floor.
DO NOT REACT, a panel flashed.
Then a serf wearing the emblem of Citizen Blue entered. “Good thing I got here in time!” he exclaimed. “They had us blocked off. Come on; we’re going home.”
Bane continued brushing.
“Hey, you’re safe now!” the man said. “At least, you will be when we get you to the Citizen’s territory. Come on!”
Bane ignored him, playing the dumb machine.
Disgruntled, the serf departed.
They continued brushing the floor. In due course the job was done. The two other machines had cleaned off the chairs and dusted the walls. “Return to storage,” the speaker said. They returned to the storage chamber. There they parked and waited for another hour. What was going on? Obviously the self-willed machines were protecting them, but could the chase still be on? Where was Citizen Blue?
The panel flashed. REACT.
Then Citizen Blue walked in, followed by Sheen, his wife. “Is this chamber secure?” Blue asked.
“Yes, Citizen,” the speaker replied.
“I owe you.”
“No. Your activities benefit our kind.”
Blue faced the cyborg brusher. “Are you in good condition?”
Now at last Bane felt free to answer; Blue was evidently legitimate. “Yes,” he said through his mouthspeaker, which was now set near the top of the apparatus.
“This is a respite, not the end. You will assume our likenesses. Keep alert.”
Then the dismantling unit approached, and reversed the prior procedure. It extracted Bane’s arms, legs, torso and head and assembled them, so that soon he was back to his original condition. Agape was removed from the brain chamber, as a mound of jellylike flesh, and she stretched out and up and became herself in human form.
“You will assume our forms,” Blue said. “We shall not be challenged in the halls, but you would be.”
Agape began to change again, orienting on Sheen.
“No,” Blue said. “Emulate me. The sensors can distinguish between flesh and machine.”
“But I am alien,” she protested. “They will know I am not human. I can emulate only an android, if they test.”
“They distinguish human from android by fingerprints,” Blue said. “The self-willed machines will give you my prints.”
She nodded. She shifted until she looked so much like him that Bane was startled. Then she went to a unit in the wall where a unit overlaid her blank fingertips with pseudoflesh molded in the likeness of Blue’s prints. Blue got out of his Citizen’s robe and set it on her. The emulation was complete.
Meanwhile Sheen was attending to Bane. She simply had the dismantling unit remove her brain unit and exchange it with his. Abruptly Mach was in her body, and she was in his. This one would certainly pass inspection!
“Go to my private residence and remain there until we return,” Blue said. He was applying pseudoflesh the self-willed machines provided, remolding his face and body to resemble Agape’s. He had done this before, when he had rescued Bane from the captivity of Citizen Purple; he was good at emulations himself.
“But thou-when they find thee and take thee for Agape-” Bane protested.
“They will discover they are in error,” Blue said. “Sheen and I will serve as diversion until the two of you are safe. This is a necessary precaution; they want you very much.”
“Do not be concerned for us,” Sheen said from his body. “We are immune to molestation.”
Bane hoped that was the case. He faced the door.
“And let her do the talking,” Blue said from Agape’s apparent body.
Bane had to smile. It would not do to have the seeming Sheen speaking the dialect of Phaze!
They left. There were serfs, but those stood respectfully aside, eyes downcast. The two of them walked down the hall to the nearest transport station. Agape, as Blue, lifted her right hand to the panel. The prints registered. In a moment the panel slid to the side to reveal a blue chamber: Citizen Blue’s personal conveyance. They stepped in.
The chamber moved, first rising, then traveling horizontally. There was no challenge, no delay; they were being transported to the Citizen’s residence.
Bane wanted to take Agape in his arms and kiss her- but even had this been in character in their present guises, he would have found it awkward when she looked like Citizen Blue, who almost exactly resembled his own father Stile.
She looked at him and made a wicked smile. Then she took him in her arms and kissed him. Any watcher would have sworn that it was male kissing female, rather than vice versa.
The transport delivered them directly to Citizen Blue’s suite. There were no servants there, so no awkwardness about identities.
Should they maintain their emulations? They realized that they had to, because Bane had Sheen’s body. It was strange, seeing himself in the mirror, looking so like his other self’s mother! So they settled down and watched news features on the screen, and waited.
An hour passed. Then the entrance chime sounded. The entry vid showed Bane and Agape.
“They’re back!” Agape exclaimed, hurrying to the entrance. She touched the admit button as Bane came up behind her.
Suddenly Bane froze. His body had gone nonresponsive; it was as if it had been disconnected. He couldn’t even speak.
Agape stepped forward-and the two figures jumped up to take her by the arms. Astonished, she tried to draw back, but they put a bag over her head.
Bane realized that these were not Citizen Blue and his robot wife, Sheen. They were impostors, similar to the serf with Blue’s emblem-but he could not act.
“When you are ready to cooperate, send word,” the Citizen figure said to Bane. “Then you may see her again.”
Appalled, he watched them haul Agape back to a waiting vehicle. They had used a ruse to capture her after all!
Then a new figure showed up-and this one also looked like Citizen Blue. “Now there are two ways we can do this,” he said.
The Sheen-figure whirled and leaped at him.
A net shot from the wall and wrapped about her, lifting her up and suspending her in the air.
“That was the second way,” the Blue figure said.
The first Blue figure tried to run, but another net trapped him similarly.
Bane recovered use of his body. “Agape!” he cried, running to her.
Serfs appeared. They hauled away the two netted figures. “I wanted to catch them in the act,” Citizen Blue explained. “Now I have proof.”
Agape had dissolved into jelly, but when she felt Bane’s touch she recovered and reformed, this time assuming her normal female shape.
Sheen appeared. They returned to the suite, and a machine servitor approached to transfer computer- brains. Bane had his own-or rather Mach’s-body back.
“We have been watching, but until they made their move, it was pointless to act,” Blue explained. “They were watching all the planetary ports, and indeed, all the exits from Hardom; there was no chance to get Agape out. But they gained nothing by keeping her bottled up here; they had to gain direct possession of her. So we tempted them by arranging a game beyond the protected region, and they finally took the bait.”
“The bait!” Bane exclaimed, horrified.
“The seemingly vulnerable pair,” Blue said. “Unfortunately, they were more determined than we expected; they arranged to send false signals of normalcy, so that we believed they had not struck. It was a good thing you thought to seek the help of the self-willed machines.”
“They helped us,” Bane agreed, feeling somewhat dazed as he remembered. “I knew not that this body came so readily apart!”
“Now that they have made their move, they will be trying more openly,” Bane continued. “They have shown a certain cleverness in their efforts. We shall have to hide Agape until we can get her offplanet.”
“Then hide me with her!” Bane exclaimed.
“Yes. But you may not enjoy the manner of concealment.”
“I enjoy not the need for separation,” Bane said. “Needs must I be with her while I can.”
“I believe we have worked out a situation in which you can be together without suspicion,” Blue said. “But you will have to be careful and alert, because it is risky.”
“It be risky just acting in a play!” Bane exclaimed, and they laughed.
“We shall set the two of you up as a menial robot and an android girl,” Blue explained. “You will be substituted for the ones assigned to go to a common location. The self-willed machines control placements; they will arrange it. Such assignments occur constantly; there should be no suspicion.”
“But won’t they be watching us?” Agape asked.
“They will. They will continue to see you here.”
“Oh.” It had been demonstrated how facile such emulations could be.
So it was that the two of them were smuggled out, while another robot and android took their places as guests of Citizen Blue. They found themselves assigned to a young Citizen who was opening a new office in the city and required a humanoid robot and humanoid android to maintain it during his absences. It promised to be a routine and rather dull matter. But at least they would be constantly together, and in the off hours no one would care what kind of relationship they had. It was possible that they would never even see the Citizen himself.
The employer turned out to be Citizen Tan. Bane felt a shock when he learned of their assignment. Perhaps the self-willed machines considered this citizen to be a harmless nonentity, as Citizens went. But Bane suspected that he would be parallel to the Tan Adept in Phaze, and that meant he was in the Adverse or Contrary orbit.
If Citizen Tan caught on to their true identities, they would be already in the power of the enemy.
And Citizen Tan very well might, for if he was the other self of the Tan Adept of Phaze, he had the potential for a most devastating ability: the Evil Eye.
But they had no choice, now; they had to go. And it seemed they were lucky, for Citizen Tan made no appearance. They ran his office, with Agape receiving messages and smiling at vid callers-naturally her features had changed, so that she did not resemble the girl he had known-while he handled mechanical chores. He, too, no longer resembled the original Mach; his brain unit had been set into another body.
At night, when no business was to be done, they lay together and made love. They knew that permanent separation could occur at any time; that made love constantly fresh.
Then, in the early morning, Mach contacted Bane. Mach had amazing news.
Stile, Bane’s father, had ascertained that their exchange was generating an imbalance that was damaging the frames. They had to exchange back-but the Adverse Adepts had welcomed Mach and Fleta to their Demesnes. So now Mach represented them, as far as communications between the frames were concerned. When they exchanged, Bane would not be pursued by the Adepts; he could go where he wished. But they wanted to talk to him, to try to persuade him to their side. He could trust the Translucent Adept.
All this was transferred on one gob of thought and impression; it would take -him hours to digest the ramifications. Meanwhile, he was sending his own information back: how he and Agape had agreed to separate, though they loved each other, and the Contrary Citizens were trying to abduct her to use as a lever on him. How they were now hiding in a place the Citizens should not suspect, until Agape could be smuggled offplanet.
“Don’t leave me!” Agape cried, realizing what was happening. She clapped her arms around him and clung close, almost melting into him. “I love you. Bane!”
Then the exchange occurred.
3
Agape
Agape realized that she had lost consciousness for a moment, for she found herself sagging in Bane’s embrace. She lifted her head, and saw an open grassy plain. It was chill early morning outdoors, with no pollution in the air.
She blinked, and tried to shape her eyeballs more carefully, as they were evidently malfunctioning. It didn’t work; her flesh remained fixed as it was.
Bane put his hands on her shoulders and set her gently on her feet. “We have exchanged, Fleta,” he said. “I be not Mach.”
There was a little pop in the air behind him, and a bit of vapor seemed to center on him for a moment. Then it dissipated.
Agape stared at him. Then she took one of his hands and squeezed it. The hand was flesh, not plastic!
“You are alive,” she breathed.
“Aye, filly!” he agreed. “Now canst thou tell me more o’ the truce Mach made with Translucent? Fain would I have stayed with my love in the other frame, but not at the price of destruction for all.”
“Destruction for all?” she echoed blankly.
“In our contact, he told me that our exchange made an imbalance that needs must be abated. So he sought me, though he loved thee and wished ne’er to be apart from thee.”
She looked again at the plain. Could it be?
“Where are we?” she asked.
He laughed. “Where thou hast always been, mare! In Phaze, of course.”
“In Phaze?” she repeated.
“Aye. Surely thou dost not mistake this for Protonframe!”
Suddenly she realized that this could be yet another trick of the Contrary Citizens. Citizen White had attempted to fool Bane into thinking he was back in Phaze, by putting him-and Agape-into a setting resembling Phaze, and emulating the magical effects. But he had caught on, because his magic did not operate quite as usual, and the vampire-actors had not correctly identified one of the vampires he named. Then Citizen Purple had hunted them in a setting resembling the Purple Mountains of Phaze, but stocked with robots in the forms of dragons and such. The Citizens were very good at emulations, as their narrow escape from the pseudo-Citizen Blue and Sheen had shown.
“Are you sure this is Phaze?” she asked. “Not another trick?”
He smiled. “I know my living body from Mach’s robot body, without doubt,” he said. “There be no question in my mind.” Then he glanced sharply at her. “But thee, my lovely animal friend-why dost thou ask this?”
He was living flesh, certainly. But was he Bane?
“Please-do some magic,” she said. “Just to be sure.”
“Gladly, Fleta!” He made an expansive gesture, then sang: “Bring me fare, for the unicorn mare!”
A basket of oats appeared: feed for a horse-or a unicorn. Certainly it was magic-or a clever illusion.
“I am not the unicorn,” she said abruptly.
He smiled. “Thou canst hardly fool me, Fleta! I have known thee long, and sometimes intimately. Who art thou, if not my friend?”
“I am Agape.”
He stared at her. “Be thou joking, mare?”
“I am your lover in Phaze. We are hiding from the Contrary Citizens until I can get offplanet and return safely to my home world, Moeba. I don’t want to go, but the Citizens want to use me as a hostage against you, so I must flee.”
He considered for a moment. Then he asked: “Exactly where were we hiding?”
She started to answer, then stopped. If this was another pretend-Phaze, then he was not Bane, and he was asking not to verify her identity, but to find out where the two of them were. If she told, the Citizens would immediately pounce and take them both captive, and this time they might be unable to win free. “Ask some other question,” she said.
“Thou dost doubt me?” he asked, surprised.
“You are doubting me.”
He smiled. “Aye. Then tell me aught that Mach could not have told Fleta.”
She launched into a detailed description of their recent history before the final hiding: the brownie-baking game, the sex in the gelatin, the rendition of You Never Can Tell and their pursuit by the minions of the Contrary Citizens.
“Enough!” he exclaimed. “I be satisfied! Thou art my love! But how came thee here?”
“I am Agape,” she agreed. “But how do I know I am in Phaze, or whether you are Bane?”
“But I am flesh, here, in my natural body!”
“Many human folk are flesh, in Proton as well as in Phaze.”
“But I conjured feed for thee!” Then he looked embarrassed. “Which thou canst not eat. Unless thou canst change as Fleta can?”
That might be a valid test! Agape concentrated, trying to change form. She could not; her flesh remained firmly human. “I cannot. But that’s not the point. Conjurations can be arranged, and other special effects. How do I know that any of this is genuine, or that you are not some Proton actor?”
He nodded gravely. “I could tell thee what we have done in our most intimate moments, and where we were hiding a moment ago, but I think these things could be known to the Contrary Citizens and used to deceive thee. I know I be in Phaze, but thy presence here be strange, and I think I have no way to convince thee of its validity. I understand not its mechanism myself. But I can show thee my world, here, and then mayhap thou willst believe.”
“I want no guided tour calculated to persuade me!” she flared. “I love Bane, but I am not at all certain you are he. If you are not he, then you are trying to get information from me that will hurt him or enable his enemies to deceive him in some way.” And she turned, ready to walk away.
“Nay, wait, my love!” he cried. “Phaze be dangerous to the uninitiate! Fleta can take care o’ herself, but thou couldst get hurt or killed in short order. I cannot let thee go alone!”
“I cannot stay with you, until I’m sure,” she said. “And I am not sure.”
“I see thy problem,” he said. “But I love thee, and cannot send thee into danger. I can protect thee, but I must be with thee.”
Uncertainty buffeted her. He did seem exactly like Bane! But so would a clever actor, and if she fell into a trap fashioned by the Contrary Citizens, she could do the real Bane terrible damage. Her only proper course was to resist any blandishments he might make, until and if she was sure of him. The real Bane would understand; a fake one didn’t matter. “I must go my own way.”
He sighed. “I see the justice in thy position. Agape. But an thou shouldst die-” He shook his head. “I know thou canst not afford to accept new information from me, but I beg thee to listen while I remind thee of what thou dost already know. In that way I may help thee to survive the rigors o’ this frame, and if thou be
not here, it matters not.”
“There is justice in that,” she agreed, wishing she could simply hug him and believe him.
“Thou dost now occupy the body of Fleta the Unicorn, whom mine other self Mach loves. She has three forms: human, hummingbird and her natural equine one. She has many friends among the ‘corns, weres and vamps. Such as Suchevane.” He said the name with special emphasis. “An thou dost go to that person, mayhap thou canst satisfy thyself.”
Agape nodded. Suchevane, he had told her before, was the most beautiful of female vampires. The setting of Citizen White had foundered when Suchevane had been identified as a male. Bane was giving her a chance to meet the vampire girl now; he had carefully refrained from identifying her sex.
But the minions of Citizen White could have listened to Bane’s prior comment, and learned their mistake. They could be using it now to convince her of the lie.
“No.”
“Aye,” he said sadly. “Then must I leave thee to thine own devices, that thou mayst satisfy thyself of the validity o’ this frame, and therefore of mine own validity too. But one thing I needs must aok, that thou accept a spell o’ protection, so that thou goest not naked into danger.”
“But anything like that would mask the reality of it,” she protested. “Exactly as would be required to conceal an artificial setting.”
“I know it. But on this must I insist, else must I remain with thee myself. I love thee, and shall not allow thee injury or risk that might be avoided. The spell be this: an invocation thou mayst utter that will make thee fade from the perception of those near thee. When danger threatens, say thy name three times, and it be done. But use it not capriciously, for a given spell be effective only once, and it will protect thee not a second time. An thou try it again, I will perceive the effort and come to thee, and woe betide who chastises thee.” Then he sang an invocation of his own, and there was a faint glimmer in the air; that was all.
“Thank you,” Agape said, feeling guilty for her intransigence. Yet if this were all an exceedingly artful device, she would be foolish to let it move her.
Bane walked away. Then, at a brief distance, he vanished. He had evidently invoked some other spell, and conjured himself to other parts. Or so it was meant for her to believe.
She was alone with the basket of oats. She was sorry to waste them, but they were in their hulls; it would be a difficult chore to consume them.
Difficult? Perhaps impossible! She seemed to be unable to melt or change her form. She tried it again, with no success.
Wasn’t that an indication that she was in a different realm, and a different body? No, not necessarily so; the Citizens could have given her medication to fix her in her present format, as part of the illusion.
Exactly what was her present form? Bane had called her Fleta the Unicorn, but she seemed to be thoroughly human. A mirror would have helped, but even without it she could tell that this was not her normal human semblance. Indeed, it seemed to have fixed flesh, with bones and digestion differing from her own. She wore a black cloak and orange slippers, and had a bony knob set in her forehead. That last detail suggested the unicorn form; it certainly seemed genuine. But surgery could have implanted it.
And, in one pocket, she found a somewhat grimy feather. Why would the unicorn have saved this?
The unicorn? Already she was accepting the appearance as valid! But if this was a Citizen setup, why would they have given her a dirty feather?
Well, she could throw it away. But if she did so, and this really was Phaze, she would be discarding something of evident value to Fleta. That did not appeal. So she repocketed the feather and reconsidered her situation.
She stood not far from the great Purple Mountain range. It really was purple, rising in the southwest. In Proton they were barren peaks; here they were clothed in verdure. She had had some experience in the Purple Adept’s mock-up of a section of these mountains, so they seemed familiar. If this were a larger mock-up, perhaps she could discover it by exploring that region of the range.
She started walking. She soon felt hot; the air was warm, and the sun was shining, and the grass was so thick she had to forge through it, so that she was expending energy and heating herself internally. She was tempted to take off the voluminous black cloak so as to let the brief breezes cool her body. Actually, she would feel better without it, because all of her time on Planet Proton had been spent without clothing; she was, here, a serf.
But on Phaze serfs wore clothing. Bane had been clothed. She had been so distracted she had hardly noticed! So nakedness might be an error here. If this really were Phaze.
She didn’t know, so after brief consideration, she removed her cloak. She had nothing on beneath it, other than the orange socks; her body was lithe and well formed, and seemed designed to be free of constraint. She walked on, feeling better.
But after a time she felt the heat on her shoulders, and realized that the sunlight was damaging them. Nakedness was a privilege available only to those in protected environments, such as the domes! With regret, she unfolded the cloak and donned it again; it was better to sweat than to burn.
Sweat? She didn’t sweat! Moebites dissipated heat by extending thin sheets of flesh to radiate excess calories, and by reducing activity. Only true human beings exuded moisture from their skins for the purpose of cooling. And horses. And androids.
Was she a true human being now? If so, she had to be in Phaze. No-she could be an android in Proton, so that was not definitive.
Yet how could her mind have been transferred to another living body? She was not a robot or cyborg;
her mind was a part of her entire physical being, inseparable from the flesh. If she had accompanied Bane to Phaze, it would be an aspect of the exchange; Fleta the Unicorn would now be in Proton with Mach the Robot. But that might be just what the Citizens wanted her to think. Perhaps they did have a technique for transferring consciousness of an android body, perhaps maintaining an electronic link to her natural one. How could she tell the difference? Or they could simply have drugged her and given her hypnotic suggestion, to cause her to dream a programmed dream and believe that her body as she now found it was real. In that case, there would be no real danger to her-but the Citizens might go to extremes to make her think there was danger.
As if on cue, a great hulking shape appeared in the air: some monstrous flying creature. It looked very like a dragon.
Should she try to hide from it, or should she ignore it? If this were a setup, it wouldn’t matter. But if this were real, she could be in serious trouble.
She decided to play it safe. She ducked, trying to hide in the high grass.
But the dragon, evidently questing for prey, had already spotted her. It flew directly toward her. It came close, circled her once, then made a strafing run. Fire shot from its mouth, coming straight at her.
She threw herself aside. The fire ignited the grass. behind her, and scorched her backside. Indeed, her cloak was burning, and she felt the flame as if it were roasting her own flesh. She threw herself down flat, to roll, to crush the blaze out, but it continued stubbornly.
Meanwhile the dragon was looping about, readying itself for a second run. This time she knew it would not miss.
Then she remembered the spell that Bane had given her. Maybe it was all part of the fakery, but she would have to use it! “Agape, Agape, Agape!” she cried.
The dragon, orienting on her, hesitated. It peered down, perplexed. It flew over her without firing, then looped back and searched again. It sniffed the air. Then, frustrated, it flew away, trailing a small, angry plume of smoke.
The spell had worked-or had seemed to. The dragon had not been able to see, hear or smell her. But she was perfectly perceivable to herself, and she still cast a shadow. So if the spell was genuine, it operated only on the perceptions of the predator. If it was fake, then the dragon, or dragon mock-up, had simply been feigning.
That fire was real, though! There was a smoldering patch of grass, and her cloak had a hole in it near the pocket. Indeed, the feather had been scorched.
“Who calls? Who calls?” someone screeched.
Agape looked up, startled. It was another flying creature. This one was much smaller, being a gross womanheaded bird. She smelled awful, and had a fright-wig head of hair or feathers. She was a harpy, one of the creatures in the human pantheon.
Was Agape still unperceivable? How long did the ‘spell last?
“I smelled thy signal, but I see thee not!” the harpy screeched. “Where dost thou be?”
Smelled her signal?
The harpy circled. “Damn!” she muttered. “Mayhap the dragon got him, ere the smell of my burned feather reached me!”
Burned feather? That was the signal? If Fleta had kept that feather, knowing it would summon the harpy when burned, that harpy must be a friend.
“Here I am,” Agape called, almost before she realized she was doing it.
The harpy whirled in air and peered down at her. “Ah, now I see thee, mare! Glad am I thou wast not hurt! Yet why didst thou summon me, an thou escaped the dragon?”
“The dragon’s fire burned the feather,” Agape explained.
The harpy screeched so violently with laughter that she practically fell out of the air. “Aye, don’t that beat all! An accident! But how earnest thou to run afoul o’ a dragon? Why not change form to thy natural state and pipe it off?”
This harpy, however gross of humor and person, seemed friendly, so Agape decided to speak frankly. “I am not Fleta. I can’t change the way she could.”
“Not Fleta?” the harpy screeched, amazed. “How can that be? Thou hast her body, and the feather!”
If this was Phaze, the truth should not hurt. If Proton, it was known already, such as it was. “I am Agape. I exchanged with Fleta. I have her body, but do not know how to use it.”
The harpy peered cannily down at her. “It be true thou dost speak not like her. But Mach! Where be Mach?”
“He exchanged too. Now Bane is here.”
“Then how came a dragon near? Mach be a burgeoning Adept! He prettified my hair! Next to that, banishing a dragon be mere chick’s play, and Bane be more than Mach.”
“I sent him away.”
The harpy flapped heavily in place, considering that. “Nay, I can make sense not o’ that! Why send him off, an thou helpless ‘gainst a dragon?”
“So I could learn where I am, by myself.”
“Surely thou knowest where thou art! Canst not see the mountains? This be the fringe o’ the Harpy Demesnes, ^and I be queen o’ the dirty birds, for now, so long’s my hairdo sustain itself. I be Phoebe, befriended by the mare not long agone. There be no mystery here!”
“If you did not know whether you were in a strange land, or had had a spell cast on you to make you think you were there, what would you do?” Agape asked.
“Why, I’d go out and look!” the harpy screeched. “I’d know soon enough-” Then she paused. “Belike thou hast a point. But thou must chance not Fleta’s body to dragons! She will need it when she returns.”
“If I had any portion of her abilities, I would use them,” Agape said. “But I am not a unicorn; I cannot change forms in her manner.”
The harpy came down for a bumpy landing in the grass. “Thou hast her body; thou must needs be able to change.”
“I don’t know how. On Proton I can change form, but the mechanism differs.”
“Mayhap thou dost just need encouragement. Here, take my claw, and when I fly, do thou likewise.” She extended a filthy foot.
“But I don’t know how to begin!” Agape protested.
“Nonsense, alien lass. Knowing be no part of it. Just do it!” She shook her foot invitingly.
Bemused, Agape took hold of the foot. Then Phoebe spread her greasy wings and launched into the air, her dugs bouncing. Agape willed herself to do likewise.
Suddenly she was flapping her own wings. But she was out of control; she went into a tailspin and plunged back to the ground.
“Thou didst it!” Phoebe exclaimed, hovering. “Thou hast her hummingbird form! But why beest thou not flying?”
Agape tried to answer, but all that emerged was a peep.
“Well, change back to girlform and tell me,” the harpy said, coming down for another crash landing.
Agape tried, but nothing happened.
“Mayhap I shouldn’t’ve messed. I fear thou art stuck in birdform, and know not how to fly!”
Agape nodded her tiny head affirmatively. Magic was definitely not for novices!
The harpy considered. “It be my fault; I told thee to try. Needs must I take thee to a shapechanger. The werewolves be not too far, and methinks Fleta has friends among them. Come, bird-let me carry thee there, and we shall see.” She reached for Agape.
Agape shied away, suddenly terrified. The claw was huge, larger than her whole present body! Phoebe paused. “Aye, I see thou be afraid o’ me now, and ’tis true my kind preys on thine, or at least on true birds. But I mean thee no harm; remember, I be friend to Fleta.”
Agape realized that she had to trust the harpy. She hopped toward her.
Phoebe reached out again, slowly, and closed her claws about Agape’s body. That foot could have crushed the life from her, but it did not; it merely tightened to firmness. Then the harpy lurched back into the air.
She flew east, carrying Agape. The air rushed past, though the harpy did not seem like a particularly effective flyer. Probably the flight was boosted by magic. Well, it was one way to travel!
As they moved across the plain, Agape wondered how it was that she had been able to change form from a woman to a hummingbird, instantly. There was a question of mass: the woman had hundreds of times the mass of the bird. Where had it gone? When Agape changed form, in her own body, she never changed mass. Had she sacrificed any significant portion of her mass, she would have lost her identity.
She realized that magic was the only explanation. Magic took no note of the laws of science; it had its own laws. Apparently mass was not a factor. But it was still a strange business!
“Uh-oh,” Phoebe screeched under her breath.
Agape twisted her neck, which was marvelously supple, and saw lumbering shapes closing in. More harpies!
“List well, alien,” Phoebe said urgently. “My filthy sisters think I’ve got prey I mean to hide away, so they mean to raid it from me. I can escape them not; must needs I hide thee till they leave off.” She swooped low. “Come to none ere I call to thee, for they will snatch thee and chew thy bones in an instant! Now hide, hide!” And she let go.
Agape fell into the grass. It was less than a meter, and she was so small and light that no damage was done. She half napped, half scrambled on down through the tangle, getting out of sight.
But another harpy had seen her. “Haa!” she screeched, and dived, claws outstretched.
Agape scooted to the side, and the harpy missed. But the ugly bird had not given up; she looped just above the grass and came back, more agile than she looked. “Come here, thou luscious morsel!” she screeched.
Agape tried to scoot away, out of reach, but the harpy loomed over her, about to pounce.
“Mine!” Phoebe screeched, zooming in and colliding with the other, knocking her out of the way. Just in time!
Agape found a mousehole and scrambled down it. She did not like going into darkness under the ground, but it definitely was not safe above!
Then she heard the sound of scratching, or of excavation. A harpy was trying to dig her out!
Fortunately the mouse tunnel had been constructed with exactly such tactics in mind. It branched and curved and extended forever onward. She scooted along it, hoping she didn’t encounter the proprietor, leaving the harpy behind. Then she settled down to wait.
When silence returned, she crept back the way she had come. She was not constructed for crawling, but was so small that she could pretty well run two-legged along the tunnel. That was one advantage to tiny size!
“Agape! Agape!” a harpy screeched. “They be gone now. Come to me!”
It was Phoebe! No other harpy would know her true name. Agape made her way out of the tunnel, and gave a peep.
Phoebe spied her. “Ah, ’tis a relief!” she screeched.
“I thought sure I’d lost thee! Come, we must to the weres ‘fore else amiss occurs!” She took Agape in her claw again, and lunged into the air.
They reached the Were Demesnes without further event. Three husky wolves veered toward Phoebe the moment they spied her, evidently meaning business. The harpy was tired from her long flight, and could not achieve sufficient elevation to avoid them. Their teeth gleamed.
But her voice was enough. “Halt, weres!” she screeched. “Slay me not, for I bring a friend of thine for help!” She lifted her foot, showing Agape.
One of the wolves became a buxom young woman in a furry halter. “That be Fleta in birdform!” she cried. “What dost filth like thee do with her?”
Phoebe flopped tiredly to the ground. “Bitch, I be friend to Fleta; she cured my tail-itch, and her friend Mach gave me this spectacular hairdo. But this be not the ‘corn; she be her other self from Proton-frame, who knows not how to change form. So I brought her to thee, ’cause thou knowest the art o’ shape-changing and mayhap can help her.”
The young woman reached down to pick Agape up. “Be this true? Thou be not Fleta?”
Agape nodded her beak affirmatively.
“Then mayhap we owe thee, harpy,” the woman said. “Choose a tree and roost, and we shall let thee be in peace.”
“I thank thee, bitch,” Phoebe said. “Do thou help her if thou canst; Fleta will need her body, an she return. This be Agape, an alien creature, but not inimical.” Agape realized that the harpy was not being insulting to the werewolf girl; the female of the species was called a bitch.
The girl held Agape up at face level. “I be Furramenin. I talked with thee at the Translucent Demesnes not long ago.”
Agape shook her little head no.
Furramenin laughed. “Ah, yes, that be right! It was Fleta I talked to, not thee! Thou art Agape! Come, let me instruct thee in form-changing. Let me shift to bitchform, and then do thou take my paw and shift to girlform with me. Understand?”
Agape nodded yes. The girl set her down.
The wolf reappeared. Agape hopped across to touch a front paw. Then the girl manifested-but Agape remained a bird.
They tried it again, and again, but with no success. “Must needs it be with a flying creature,” the woman concluded regretfully.
“Aye, bitch,” Phoebe called from the branch she had chosen. “I got her to birdform, but could get her not back.”
“Then will I take thee to Fleta’s friend Suchevane,” Furramenin decided. “In the morning.”
Suchevane! Agape knew that name! That was the one the Citizens had not known, whom Bane had recommended.
Then she felt faint, and fell the tiny distance to the ground.
“What be the matter?” Furramenin exclaimed. “Be thou sick?”
“I know, I think,” Phoebe screeched from her branch. “She be locked in hummingbird form, and the bird has high metabolism. She has eaten not in hours. She be starving!”
“Of course!” the werebitch agreed. “We must feed her! But what do such birds eat?”
“Nectar, methinks,” the harpy replied.
They ranged out and gathered fresh flowers and brought them back. Furramenin held the flowers up for Agape, but she did not know how to eat. Her long bill poked through the delicate petals, getting little nectar.
“This be trouble,” Furramenin muttered. “An we could get her to girlform, we could feed her, but she may starve before we succeed!”
They consulted with the Pack leader, who it seemed was a wolf named Kurrelgyre, who told them to take her to the vampires and the Red Adept. “Start now, tonight,” he said.
So it was that Agape found herself tied to the back of a running wolf, moving rapidly through the night. She was too weak to react, but was conscious, except when she slept. The motion continued interminably, across what she took to be plains, and through what seemed to be forest, and past some dark river. Furramenin seemed indefatigable in her bitchform, but Agape could tell by the lather that leaked from the corner of her mouth that she was straining.
She faded out, and in, and it was morning. Then out, and in again, and it was deep into day, and they were arriving at the caves of the vampires.
There must have been dialogue and explanations, but Agape was too far gone to assimilate them. She was in the process of dying; she knew it. Her foolish attempt to go out on her own had led her inevitably to harm. It was hard to disbelieve that she was in Phaze, now, but it was too late; her belief no longer mattered.
She woke briefly to find herself in the air again, carried by a larger creature. Phoebe? No, the smell was not the same. Then she faded out again.
4
Fleta
The world shimmered, and she felt an ineffable change. Then things steadied, and she found herself still in Mach’s embrace.
But it was different. She looked up at him-and his face had changed. It was similar to its normal configuration, but somehow less flexible. His arms, also, were somehow less yielding.
She glanced to the side, and discovered that they were in a chamber. What had happened to the field?
“The exchange has been accomplished,” he said. “We had better disengage.”
He still sounded like Mach! But this was definitely not the same body. Now she noticed that their clothes were gone, too, “Where be we?” she asked.
“In an office maintained by a Citizen, he informed me. Citizen Tan, I think.” Then he drew away from her, surprised. “But you already know that. Agape.”
She was startled. “I be Fleta!”
His startlement mirrored her own. Then he laughed. “Don’t tease me like that, Agape! I love her.”
“Tease thee? I tease thee not! What magic hast thou wrought, Bane, to conjure us so swiftly here?”
He gazed at her, evidently sorting things out. Then he spoke slowly and carefully. “This is the frame of Proton. I am Mach, a self-willed humanoid robot. Are you telling me you are not Agape, but Fleta of Phaze?”
“Aye, I be Fleta of Phaze,” she repeated. “If this truly be Proton-frame, and thou truly be Mach, then must I ha’ traveled here with thee. Be that possible?”
Again he considered. Then he touched his bare chest, and a door opened in it, showing odd wires and objects. “I am the robot, as you can see; this is my own body, not Bane’s.” He closed the door, and his chest looked normal again. “Let me question you briefly. Who was the last person we met, on the way to the exchange?”
“Phoebe,” she said promptly. “The harpy whose hair thou didst ruin, and she takes it as elegance. But she be decent, especially for her kind. I have her feather in my pocket-” But her hand found no pocket, for she had lost her cloak.
“And then we made love,” he said.
“Nay, we followed the delf till the glow was brightest, and only kissed, and then-“
“Then, as I sang the spell of exchange-“
“I spake thee the triple Thee, as thou didst do when-“
He stepped into her and crushed her in his embrace. “You are my love!” he said. “I tested you, but no other person could have known-“
“This really be thy rovot form?” she asked uncertainly.
“It really is. But let me prove myself to you, so that you know you can trust me. I came for you in a canoe I fashioned to float in air, with Suchevane, the most dazzling of vampires, and saved you from your suicide. Then the Translucent Adept appeared, and offered us sanctuary, and the splash of truth supported him, so I agreed-“
She put a finger against his lips. “It be enough, Mach;
I know thee now. Methinks in my desire to stay with thee, I worked a bit of magic of mine own, and came with thee to thy frame.”
“A double exchange!” he said, awed. “You are in Agape’s body.”
She looked down at herself. “Aye, this nor looks nor feels like mine! Let me see whe’er I can revert to natural state.” She tried to shift to her unicorn form, but nothing happened. “It happens not.”
“You cannot change that way, here,” Mach said. “Magic doesn’t work in Proton. The laws of science are enforced; mass must remain constant. When Agape changes, she does so slowly, melting from one shape to another.”
“Melting?” Fleta asked, repelled.
He smiled. “I suspect Agape finds your method of changing form awkward, too!” Then he made a soundless whistle. “And she must be there, with Bane! Experiencing magic for the first time!”
“In my body?” Fleta asked, disturbed.
“I’m sure she’ll try to treat it as well as you treat hers,” he said with a smile.
She relaxed. “Mayhap ’tis fair. But this body-I want to be locked not in human form fore’er! How does it work?”
“I can’t tell you directly, because I have had no experience in it, or in any living body other than Bane’s. She just melted and reformed. Here, maybe we can do it small-scale first, so you can discover the technique.” He took her left hand. “Concentrate on this, and try to turn it into a hoof.”
She tried. Her instant change did not exist, but gradually the outlines of her fingers softened. Then they sagged into each other, and melted together. Then they assumed the form of a hoof, and the nails expanded and fused to make it hard.
She looked at the rest of her. “I be girlform-w’ one hoof!” she said, amazed.
“So you can do it,” he said warmly. “But for now, I think it is best to maintain your human form. I gather from what Bane thought to me that we are two serfs serving in this office, and the Citizen does not know our identities. We had best keep it that way, for if Citizen Tan is the same as the Tan Adept, we could be in serious trouble!”
“The Tan Adept,” she repeated, chagrined. “He o’ the Evil Eye.”
“The evil eye? That’s his magic?”
“Aye.”
“Exactly how does that work?”
“We know not, save that it makes others do his will.”
“I think we are lucky that magic is inoperative here;
the Tan Adept cannot affect us that way. Still, we should take no avoidable risks. I had better drill you in office procedures-which I fear will make little sense to you, at first.”
“They make no sense to me already,” she admitted.
“The first thing to do is conceal your Phaze mode of speech. That would give you away in the first few seconds. Can you speak as I do, if you try?”
She giggled. “I can try. But thou dost-you do speak so funny, mayhap-I may burst out laughing.”
“It isn’t funny for Proton. Look, Fleta, this may be a matter of life and death.” He paused, reconsidering. . “I had better call you Agape, too, so I don’t give you away.”
“At times you are idiotic,” she said carefully.
“What?”
“Are we not in hiding? Call me Agape, and Tan will know instantly I be his prey.”
He knocked his head with the heel of his hand. “There must be a gear loose in my circuitry! You’re right! We surely have artificial names!”
“Yes,” she said, in her measured way, resisting the urge to say “Aye.” “Can we find out those names?”
“Have to.” He went out to the desk in an adjacent chamber. “There have to be records.” He activated the desk screen and spoke to it: “List authorized office personnel.”
Words came on:
PROPRIETOR: CITIZEN TAN
EMPLOYEES: TANIA-SUPERVISOR-HUMAN
AGEE-DESK GIRL-ANDROID
MAC-MENIAL-HUMANOID
ROBOT
“There it is,” he said. “You are Agee, and I am Mac. Evidently they set us up with names as close to our own as feasible, so we would identify more readily.” He smiled. “Your name means ‘One who flees’; that seems appropriate in the circumstance.”
But she was staring at the screen. “I am glad Bane taught me to read your language,” she said, with the same measured care. “This magic slate is fascinating. But-“
“It’s called a screen,” he said. “You simply tell it what you want, and read its answers. It is simple enough for an idiot to operate, because most androids are idiots. When you encounter something you don’t understand, you should just smile and look blank, and it will be dismissed as android incompetence.”
“That, too,” she agreed. “But-Mac-what of Tania?”
“If she comes to the office, you just do whatever she tells you to do. Androids must always obey humans, outside of the experimental community. Evidently she doesn’t bother to come in much; this office must still be on standby status. We’re just caretakers.”
“Tania,” she said carefully, “is the Tan Adept’s daughter. Stile was minded to marry Bane to her, but feared she would dominate him with her evil eye.”
Mach stared at her. “And this is parallel!” he exclaimed. “Of course she has access to this office! If she comes in, we’re in trouble!”
“That were my thought,” she said.
He addressed the screen again. “Status of Tania.”
The screen answered: TANIA-SISTER OF CURRENT CITIZEN TAN, DAUGHTER OF FORMER CITIZEN TAN, RETIRED. EMPLOYED BY HER BROTHER AS RANKING SERF. DESIGNATED AS HEIR TO TAN CITIZENSHIP.
“That’s her, all right,” he said. “Her brother inherited the Citizenship, so she is the next in line, should he retire or die. That was evidently fixed by their father. She will be very like a Citizen, in all but legality.” He glanced up. “Bane was going to marry her?”
“They want an heir to the Blue Demesnes,” she said. “Tan wanted a suitable match, too. She is about four years older, but is pretty if you like that type.”
Mach glanced at the picture of Tania the screen showed. The average man would like that type.
“And if they married, the Blue Demesnes would have its heir, and the Adverse Adepts would have a permanent hold on Stile,” Mach said. “I can see why Bane balked!”
She smiled. “He never saw her. He refused to get close to her, because of the evil eye.”
“Smart person, my other self. Let’s just hope she doesn’t show up here.”
Mach drilled her on office etiquette. He evidently hoped that there would be no calls to this office soon, but at least she was minimally prepared.
She saw him looking at her. His body and features were different, as were her own, but she knew that look. “Dost thou wish to make love, thy way?” she asked quietly.
He sighed. “I do. But it occurs to me that though it may be known that Bane and I have exchanged back, it may not be known that you and Agape exchanged also. Therefore it would seem that I am with the wrong female, and if I wish to be consistent, I will not make love to her.”
“But who will know?” she asked. “That’s the irony: perhaps no one. But just as you must adopt the speech of this frame to conceal your identity, I think I must adopt a loyalty to an inapplicable principle, to further conceal your identity. We shall have enough trouble hiding from the Contrary Citizens, without adding to it this way.”
“But be they not the analogues o’ the Adverse Adepts, whom we have joined?” she asked.
“Yes. But we are now standing in for Bane and Agape, who have not joined them. The truce is a compromise that leaves us in the Adepts’ hands, and Bane and Agape in Citizen Blue’s hands. I’m trusting Bane not to interfere with that situation in Phaze, and I shall not interfere with it in Proton. I think that is the equitable course.”
“It all be too complicated for me,” she said. Then, reverting to the local dialect: “I need some rest.”
“Rest,” he agreed. “I don’t need it, in this body.”
“For my mind, not my body,” she clarified. “I deal not-I don’t deal in alien frames every morning.”
“I will see what else I can learn of our situation.”
“What will you do?”
“I will activate a circuit within myself to ensure that no electronic device can spy on me without alerting me, and another to give me access to a secret connection via the phone.”
“This must I-” She broke off and tried again. “I must see this.”
Soon he had it. “This is Mach,” he said to the screen, and gave a code sequence that identified him. “What is my status?”
“Citizens are canvassing the city,” a self-willed machine replied. “They seek the alien woman, not you. They have narrowed it down to this sector, and will close in on you within three days.”
“What is the contingency plan?”
“We have a chute with meshed valves, for liquid wastes; the alien must melt and flow down that, and we shall convey her to the Tourney, which commences in six days.”
“The Tourney? She is not qualified for that!”
“She must enter and lose. She will then be required to depart the planet, without interference.”
“Now I understand,” he said. “The Contrary Citizens cannot hire a Tourney loser, and cannot prevent that loser from departing the planet unless there is a question of a crime to settle. Any such charge against Agape would put her under the authority of the courts, which also would protect her from them. This is a practically foolproof way to get her safely offplanet and back to Planet Moeba, where the Citizens have no power. All that is necessary is to keep you hidden until the Tourney begins, and qualify you for it; thereafter you will be safe. Obviously Citizen Blue, my father, has taken a hand and acted effectively to save Agape and his own position.”
“What is the Tourney?” Fleta asked, confused. “An annual tournament whose first prize is Citizenship. It is run by the Game Computer, by the rules of the Game. It is very popular with serfs, though all losers are deported.”
“Like the Unilympics?” she asked.
“The what?”
“A big contest for status. Each species has its own: the Werelympics, the Vamplympics, the Elflympics-“
“Maybe so.” He frowned. “But the Citizens are liable to locate you in two days. That leaves a gap of three. Also, you are unqualified for the Tourney. Theoretically you would have those three days to qualify; if you fail, or if the Citizens capture you in that period, all will be lost.”
She realized that Agape, with her lively intellect and special powers of adaptation, might have found a way to qualify. Fleta, in Agape’s body, would hardly have a chance. This unexpected exchange of the two females could prove to be extremely costly!
Still, now they knew the challenge: get her through to the Tourney, and get her qualified. If they accomplished that, she would be shipped to the completely alien Planet Moeba.
And what would she do there? She had only vague knowledge of Proton, and none of Moeba. Even success was disaster!
Mach pondered, and told her that he would have to modify the plan in one detail. He would have to get Fleta exchanged back to Phaze before she was exiled to Moeba. That meant he had to locate Bane, and intercept him, and catch him in the company of Agape, and bring Fleta in for another exchange. He was sure, the girls could not exchange unless the effort was made in the company of the boys. It seemed an almost impossible act of juggling, considering the pursuit by the Contrary Citizens and the demands of the Tourney, but somehow he had to manage it. Because however he might be constrained to act personally, Fleta was the creature he loved, and he could not allow her to suffer exile to a completely alien world, with no prospect of return to her homeland.
“Aye,” she whispered, loving his determination though she hated the threat that hung over her.
“I have accepted sanctuary with the Adverse Adepts, in Phaze, for the sake of our love. If I had no other way, I would seek similar sanctuary with the Contrary Citizens. But integrity requires that I make every other effort first, before giving the Citizens the complete victory they seek.”
“Aye,” she agreed again. Now at last she could relax.
Except for another problem: food. Thi& was morning, and her body was hungry. Fleta had no idea how to operate the food dispenser, and no idea how to make Agape’s body eat. Mach could operate the food machine, but when she took food into her mouth, she discovered that she had no mechanism for swallowing; indeed, she had no throat. The body possessed a bellows mechanism for the inhalation and exhalation of air, for which the amoebic body had a need similar to that of the human body. Thus her chest rose and fell naturally, and she could speak normally. But that was all; she had no internal digestive system.
“She dissolves herself and covers the food,” Mach explained somewhat lamely. “When she’s done, she reforms her head and face.”
“Yuck,” Fleta said.
“Maybe you could dissolve the inside of your mouth, so you could digest a bite of food there, and then reform tongue and teeth afterward.”
“If I can’t see it, I doubt I can get it right,” she said. “I had better stick to what I have.”
“Maybe your feet, then. Dissolve them over the food, where no one else can see, and take your time.”
She tried that. He. brought a bowl of mush, and she sat at the desk and put her feet on the mush. Soon they melted into shapelessness, and spread over the mush. Her flesh seemed to know what to do; she felt the effort of digestion and assimilation, and then the vigor of new energy traveling through her body. It was working!
When the mush was gone, she concentrated on reforming her feet, shaping them back into humanoid extremities. She had a fair idea how to do this, because of her practice in learning the human form as a unicorn. In due course her feet had been restored, and it was even possible to walk on them again. It seemed that Agape’s body had a design for bones and flesh, or the equivalent, and this was what she was drawing on.
That problem had been solved. Now she should be able to function. She sat at the desk and began her day’s work.
They were fortunate: no one came to the office that day, and there were no calls. Mach was able to brief her on many further details, so that she was beginning to feel halfway competent. It was true: an idiot-or a unicorn-could fill this position. She also developed better facility in eating, and learned how to eliminate by forming a ball of wastes inside, then softening her flesh to let it pass outside at the appropriate time and location.
But the effort had wearied her. By day’s end, she was eager to sleep.
She lay down to sleep. But as soon as she relaxed, she started to melt. Alarmed, she reformed herself and approached Mach. “I’m melting! I can’t sleep-1 might dissolve away!”
He smiled reassuringly. “That’s why there is no camera coverage in that chamber; the machines saw to it that Bane and Agape were sent to an office that did not yet have full equipment. Agape is an amoeba; her natural form is a blob of protoplasm. Only when she is awake can she maintain humanoid form. Do not be concerned; you can reform when you wake.”
“But I be not sure I can find this exact shape again!” she wailed.
“I think the body has memory devices that enable it to return to prior forms, just as you have them for your unicorn forms. I will inform you of any deviance.”
“But what if I melt into the bed?”
“I don’t believe that will happen. Your surface retains its skin, which contains the fluids. Also, I suspect that the amoeboid form does not relinquish consciousness completely; it probably shores up its surface at need, to prevent seepage. Human beings perform similarly in sleep, not falling off beds and not releasing urine during sleep. Maintenance circuitry.”
Moderately reassured, she returned to the bed and let herself dissolve. Sure enough, she neither flowed off the bed nor released fluids into it as she slept. She woke after a few hours, refreshed.
Next day the worst happened: Tania stopped by the office. She was a buxom woman of about twenty-one, her somewhat plain face enhanced by an artful framing of luxurious hair. She was technically a serf, so was naked, but she carried herself as if clothed.
Mach stood absolutely still, a machine out of action, in an alcove in the wall. Fleta was at the desk, where she belonged; it was her duty to handle whatever tasks were required, such as providing information about the location of her employer, Citizen Tan. Fleta was of course aware of Tania’s identity; the woman had given it for admission to the office, and she matched her picture.
Tania eyed Fleta. Her eyes possessed a peculiar intensity; obviously in Phaze that would manifest as the evil eye. “Any news?” she asked curtly.
“No, Tania,” Fleta said, as Mach had told her.
The woman eyed her. Her eyes were the color of her hair and nails: tan. “Android, you will address me as Tan.”
“Yes, Tan,” Fleta said obediently. Mach had warned her that this woman might be imperious, and that though she could not, be addressed as “sir” she probably wished she could be. She knew from her own knowledge of Adepts in Phaze that the utmost caution was in order.
“Stand, android,” Tania snapped. “Come in front of the desk where I can see you.”
Fleta stood and went around to the front. Serfs were not supposed to answer Citizens unless an answer was called for, and Tania was to be treated like a Citizen.
“Turn around.”
Fleta turned, while the woman’s eyes probed her body. “You aren’t very intelligent,” Tania remarked.
Fleta was tempted to reply that most animals weren’t, but stifled it. Mach had explained that she was passing for an android, and that few androids approached the human level of mental performance.
“What is the nature of ultimate reality?” Tania asked.
Fleta stared at her, needing no effort to feign confusion. She smiled and looked blank in the approved manner. “Should I ask the screen, Tan?” she asked at last.
“Don’t bother, android.” Tania glanced around the office. “Robot, come forth,” she commanded.
Mach stepped out from his alcove, silently. She eyed him as she had Fleta.
“Have you kept this office clean?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Did you hear me tell the android to call me Tan?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Mach didn’t answer. Fleta had to suppress a giggle; he was playing dumb. Tania had not asked a comprehensible question, so he hadn’t answered.
“Address me as Tan,” she said coldly. “Is that a functional penis?”
