It was probably well that he had done so, for his muted reaction would have been noted. A Hectare saw everything in its vicinity; that was the ability of the eyes. Each facet was individually lensed and controlled, an entire separate eye, and any several could focus on a particular object and perceive it with complete acuity. He had reacted normally, and so had not given himself away. For it was as important that the local Hectare not know his nature and mission as that the natives not know. That way, nothing could give him away.
The man stepped forward. He wore a headdress that looked like nothing so much as a squirming mass of little tentacles. “Serfs, meet your master,” he said. “This is the representative of the Hectare, whose private identity is irrelevant for you. You will henceforth obey any creature of this type as you would a Citizen, implicitly. However, the Hectare will normally work through intermediaries such as myself, identified by Hectare caps, whom you will also obey without question. Early examples will be made of any who cause difficulty.”
He frowned. “Indeed, the two of you, together with an errant unicorn, did cause minor mischief. The male is desired by one of our collaborators, and the female aided him in an attempted break. Examples shall therefore be made of you—but not unpleasant ones, for you. Each of you shall become the love slave of a collaborator. Do you find that appealing?”
There was no answer. Tan made a signal, and rays lanced down to sting both Lysander’s and Jod’e’s bare feet. Both jumped back with exclamations of pain.
“When questioned, you will answer,” Tan said.
“I find that appalling,” Lysander said quickly. His mind was racing. If Tan had the same power of the Evil Eye that Tania had, that meant he could look into the face of a person and compel that person to do anything he wished. Lysander was probably proof against such suasion, because he had been well prepared as a counter resistance agent, but if he showed that, Tan would know his nature, and his secret would be compromised. He had to avoid Tan’s effort.
“So do I,” Jod’e said.
Tan looked at her, his eyes narrowing appreciatively. “You have the vamp aspect, and you are extremely comely. You could have an excellent situation, if you cared to serve the Hectare.”
“I am loyal to the old order,” she said.
“And you, Lysander,” Tan said. “You are an expert games-man, and you have training in computer feedback circuitry. You too could have an excellent situation.”
“I prefer not,” Lysander said.
“The two of you are lovers?”
“Yes,” Lysander answered. They had not actually made love, but they would have soon enough, and wanted to. The cell’s spy lens would have recorded their start in that direction, before Alyc interrupted it.
“Let me make something plain to you both. The Hectare power is absolute. It will remain here indefinitely, until the planet has been exploited to the point that it is no longer worthwhile. You can not change that. But you can affect your own lives. If you join the Hectare, and give loyal service, you will be rewarded with an excellent life. If you do not, you will serve the Hectare anyway, but your position will be less advantageous for yourselves. You may make your choice now.”
Both shook their heads no.
“You are lovers,” Tan said. “Agree to serve, and you may remain so. You will work together, and your free time will be your own. You will work in your specialties, and not be asked to do anything against your consciences. This is a good offer.”
Lysander looked at Jod’e. “I think you should accept. I believe it is as he says.”
She turned to him. “Are you going to accept?”
“No.”
“Then I could not be your lover, because they would not grant you your wish.”
“This is true,” Tan said. “The reward for the cooperation of the two of you is yourselves. If one does not join, you will have lovers, but not each other.”
“I did not intend to accept anyway,” Jod’e said. “The most I could agree to is not to work against the bug-eyes if I am released. But I would never collaborate with them against the true culture of this world.”
“There will be a penalty for the pejorative term,” Tan said.
“Then I might as well make it clear that they will always be bug-eyed monsters to me. BEMs, exactly as in the old stories.”
The Hectare made no reaction.
“This has gone far enough,” Tan said. “Your penalty for failing to cooperate is to be compelled to be the love slave of a collaborator, as I mentioned before. Your penalty for the crass remark is to become my personal love slave. Does this appeal to you?”
“The prospect revolts me,” she said.
Tan’s aspect changed subtly. Lysander realized that the man had shifted to his Phaze identity. “Do thou look at me, vamp.”
She turned her face away from him.
A stun beam came down from the ceiling, evidently set at partial intensity. Jod’e slumped but did not fall.
Tan reached out and turned her head toward him. She was unable to resist. He stared into her eyes. “Thou dost be mine,” he murmured.
The beam shut off. Jod’e recovered. “Aye,” she said.
“Thou mayst kiss me.”
Lysander had expected either extreme reluctance, or a carefully faked effort. He was dismayed at what actually happened.
Jod’e flung her arms around Tan and kissed him passionately. “O thank thee, beloved!” she breathed.
Tan did not respond in kind. “Now kiss Lysander,” he said.
Jod’e froze. Then her head turned toward Lysander. “Needs must I?”
“I wish to demonstrate that thy orientation be completely changed. Kiss him.”
She grimaced. “An I must, I must,” she said with resignation. “I hate him not, but it be thee, sir, I long for.” She stepped up to Lysander and kissed him fleetingly on the cheek.
“That be not sufficient,” Tan said sternly. “Yield to him.” He looked directly at Lysander, and his eyes seemed huge. “And thou, Lysan—I compel thee not, yet. But take her in thine arms and do with her as thou wouldst. Make her respond to thee.”
It was a challenge Lysander was glad to accept. He enfolded Jod’e and held her close for the kiss.
Her body was stiff, and her lips mushy. Either she was a consummate actress, or she had no interest in his attention. She gave him no private signal. She merely tolerated his touch. As soon as he released her, she stepped back toward Tan, her stiffness fading.
“She be thine no longer,” Tan said to Lysander. “I can use my power but once on a gi’en person, but it be permanent. I would spare myself the effort on thee. Thou hast lost thy love, but canst still achieve a worthwhile position an thou accept allegiance now.”
Lysander was impressed. He didn’t think Jod’e was pretending. But his mission prevented him from collaborating with the puppet government the Hectare was setting up. “No.”
“Then needs must I prepare thee for Alyc, as she asked,” Tan said. “Face me.”
Lysander had delayed as long as he could. He had to act. He turned his face slowly toward Tan—then leaped for the Hectare.
He passed right through the creature—as he had expected. It was a holo image, not a physical presence. The Hectare were careful about personal exposure; only when they were quite sure of their company did they risk it.
But beyond the image was a decorative vase he had spied before. He swept it up, turned, and hurled it with precise aim at the lens complex in the ceiling. The vase smashed—and so did the lens. Now he could not be stunned from above.
He leaped back and grabbed Jod’e. He put a nerve hold on her shoulder. She stiffened, realizing that she was helpless; any effort to break free would be prohibitively painful. “Do not move,” he ordered Tan.
The man was not directly facing him, and remained in that orientation. “Thou canst hurt her, but thou canst compel me not,” Tan said. “In a moment will I turn and compel thee with mine Eye. I suggest thou dost desist bef
ore thou bringst upon thyself a type of punishment thou willst find really distasteful.”
But Lysander was already backing toward the exit panel. He kept his head behind Jod’e’s so that the Adept could not get a bead on him.
Tan stalked him. Whatever else might be said against the man, he was neither coward nor fool; he was yielding nothing. He was moving slowly but purposefully, closing the distance between them.
“You wouldn’t have bonded this woman to you if you didn’t desire her,” Lysander said as his back touched the panel. “You wouldn’t want her hurt.”
“I want thee hurt not either,” Tan said evenly. “In a moment thou willst be as loyal to the new order as she.”
Lysander squeezed the nerve in Jod’e’s shoulder. She screamed. Tan stopped advancing.
But Lysander wasn’t merely stalling for time; that was pointless. With his free hand he was tapping on the panel. He knew a way to make it open, if the Hectare had been true to form. Hectare, experienced at planetary subjugation, never left things entirely in the hands of the natives; they made sure at the outset that ultimate control was in the tentacles of the nearest Hectare. That meant rekeying the locks—all locks—to be responsive to Hectare hidden codes. One of the standard codes was auditory; a pattern of taps that few others could duplicate if any knew of their existence. Because Lysander’s brain was Hectare, he knew and could perform the cadences.
With one bare heel he tapped with one changing pattern. With his knuckle he tapped with another. As the two converged, interrelating, the Hectare code overrode the ordinary mechanism, and the panel slid open.
Lysander stepped back, hauling Jod’e with him. He saw Tan’s mouth open with amazement. The man had not known of this device, of course; he was merely a quisling, used without being trusted. Then the panel slid back, separating them.
Now he was out—but where was he to go? They were among serfs who were hurrying on their errands. The pursuit would commence in seconds. What was he to do with Jod’e?
That turned out to be easy. “Now you’re free,” he told her “Follow me; he’ll be out in a moment.” He let her go, and started down the hall.
“He’s here!” Jod’e cried, not trying to run. “He’s getting away!”
Lysander came to an intersecting hall and ducked into it. He could not try to conceal himself as another serf; all the serfs here would be checked. He couldn’t run far; the halls would be closed off any moment. The chances of any ordinary serf escaping capture were approximately nil.
But he was not an ordinary serf. He jumped to a private door panel and did a quick double tapping. It opened and he stepped in—just as the rumble of the larger hall-sealer panels commenced. All the serfs in that section of the hall were trapped, and would not be freed until their identities were verified.
He was in another Citizen residence, but it was empty. Its owner would have been interned. He ran through to the kitchen, where the food-delivery apparatus was, and the waste-disposal mechanism. He did not need to use the code tapping here; the conduits were not locked. He climbed onto a garbage cart and touched Us Go button.
In a moment he was zooming through the nether pipes of the city, heading for one of the central processing stations. When the cart slowed, approaching the first sorting stop, he jumped off, surprising the robot. “An error in classification,” he told it. “I will correct it.” The machine would not question a human voice of authority.
He got on the machine trundleway and walked to the human section. From there he exited to the main network of halls. He had escaped, for now; since the bit of beacon tape was gone from his back, they would have to do a citywide search to run him down.
They would do that, of course. No dictatorial government could tolerate dissent. But it would be awkward for them, because they would not want to disrupt the ongoing flow of business, and would not want to admit that any serf could give either a Citizen or a Hectare the slip. The Hectare whose image he had seen would not tell Tan about the code; it would keep that secret, realizing that Lysander was something unusual. Tan would just have to assume there was a defect in the door panel that had released Lysander by chance.
As for Jod’e: he had tested her, and verified what he feared. Tan’s Evil Eye had been effective, and she was now his creature. Had she been faking it, she would have run with Lysander; instead she had sounded the alarm the moment she was able. That had made no practical difference, but had shown him that it was pointless to be further concerned about her.
Perhaps it was for the best. Jod’e would probably be well treated. Had she fled with him, and had they made good their escape from the city this time, she would have lived the life of a fugitive. Eventually he would have betrayed her to the Hectare, along with the people of the resistance movement. It was kinder to have her taken now. He would let others know that it had not been voluntary, and they would respect her.
But it surely would have been nice to be with her for the interval of his penetration of the resistance movement. He had adapted so well to his human body that its delights had become his delights. Loving her—and being loved by her—how he wished that could have been true, for a time. As it was, he had lost his second woman.
But now he had not only to escape the city, but to make contact with the resistance. That meant he needed help to escape: the help of someone who had the appropriate contacts. He had no idea who that might be. This was the trickiest part of his effort. If one of them did not contact him, before the net closed on him, his mission would be cut short prematurely. No, the Hectare would not let him go; they had no tolerance for ineffective agents. His best fate if captured would be a return to Tan for the Evil Eye, and then assignment to Alyc as her love slave. If the Eye wasn’t effective, or if Alyc no longer desired him, they would simply melt him down for protoplasm.
He walked along the passage, back toward the concourse. He had to expose himself to as many serfs as he could, hoping that one of them would know how he had tried to escape, and would be looking for him. Any decent resistance network would have ways of keeping abreast of the news, and would know of the business with Tan. They would know that speed was of the essence.
Someone caught his arm. Lysander jumped, in a purely human reaction; he had been lost in his thoughts, which was another human trait. It was a woman, with feathery brown hair and black eyes. “ ‘Sander!” she said. “Remember me?”
In a moment he made the connection. “The harpy!” He had met her briefly, when little Flach had become a winged unicorn and flown him to the Purple Mountains. Actually, the cyborg, in her Proton form.
“You seemed interested in my legs, as I recall,” she said.
He had been trying to verify the nature of her form changing, by holding on to her as she shifted. “They were good legs.”
Despite their being metal and plastic, crafted to emulate living legs. On this planet, it was practically impossible to tell emulation from living flesh.
“I hear you’re in trouble.”
“You understate the case.”
“Will you trust me?”
“That depends whom you serve.”
“Citizen Powell.”
Not the Hectare. She must be his contact! “Yes.”
“This way.” She turned and led him through the thronging serfs.
Chapter 7
BOMB
Nepe, in the form of a serf boy, was running an errand for one of the quislings. She had planted this identity long ago, and had used it before, just keeping her hand in; no computer check would cast doubt on it.
She was sad that Grandpa Blue had had to report for internment, but understood how it was. The spy Alyc had tagged him and all his family and associates; any who tried to skip out would have been pursued. Of course Blue could have avoided capture, but to what point? They would only have chased him until they got him, and meanwhile started imprisoning, torturing, and murdering his associates to encourage him to cooperate. He preferred to avoid that.
So Blu
e had reported in, and so had Red and Brown, and the former Adverse Adepts: Yellow with her power over animals, Orange with his plants, Translucent with his water magic, and White with her glyphs. Purple and Tan had been freed, and had immediately joined the other side. But five had not: Clef (Tania no longer counted, since Tan had taken back the title of Adept), Black with his lines, Green with his fire. Robot (Flach’s father), and Flach himself, the Unicorn Adept. So of fourteen now-recognized Adepts, seven were captive, two collaborated, and five were hiding.
Nepe knew why the Robot Adept hid: he had taken the Book of Magic, and if he had not been the strongest Adept before—no one was certain whether that honor belonged to the Red Adept—he surely was now. The Book of Magic was the ultimate compendium of enchantments, and could make anyone Adept in short order. It had to be kept out of the hands of the likes of Purple and Tan, if Phaze was to have any chance at all to throw off the Hectare yoke. So the Robot would hide the Book, and if it ever came to the point where the enemy was going to get it, he would destroy it instead.
Nepe also knew why she hid: she was the most elusive creature on the planet, and served as the messenger for the resistance to the invader. She and Flach had had a lot of experience in hiding, and so were natural for the role.
Clef was hiding in order to protect the other single most valuable thing of Phaze: the Platinum Flute. It had been crafted by the Platinum Elves, and yielded by them only for the most serious reason: to save Phaze. When Clef had played it the first time, the frames of Proton and Phaze had been drawn together and temporarily overlapped and then hurled apart, enabling Blue to take over in Proton and Stile in Phaze. When he had played it the second time, the frames had been permanently merged, a year ago, again enabling the good forces to overcome the evil forces, when all seemed lost.