“So as not to rouse the demons below.”
Mach peered down into a crack. Demons down there? After the monsters he had already seen, he didn’t want any more.
They proceeded to a region where the cracks were so extensive that they covered more area than the ground did. Mach found this nervous business; one slip could plunge him into the darkness below. But Fleta evidently knew where she was going.
They came to a dead end. Ahead and to either side the crevices closed them in; only behind was there a jagged path.
Fleta gestured. Mach saw that the path resumed beyond a narrow part of the crack. They would have to jump.
Fleta showed the way. She took a running start, then leaped, landing neatly on the other side. She moved back out of the way, giving him room.
Mach followed suit. He had trained for jumping in the Game, and this body was the same as his own, apart from the fact that it was alive. It was healthy and responsive. He could handle this readily, even when tired.
They went on, winding through the maze. Mach wondered how such a configuration of terrain had come about. Was there an equivalent feature in Proton? He had never really explored the exterior world there; now he wished he had.
They came to another jump. Mach realized that Fleta knew exactly where the gaps were narrowest; otherwise they would soon have been lost amidst impassable cracks.
But just as she was about to leap, a grotesque head popped up from the chasm. “Hhaarr!” it growled.
“The demons!” Fleta exclaimed with dismay. “Methought we would not rouse them!”
Other heads appeared from the cracks to the sides and rear. The two of them were surrounded!
“Seems more like a trap to me,” Mach muttered. “We weren’t making a lot of noise.”
Now the demons were scrambling to the surface. Each had a body as misshapen as its head. Short legs, huge long arms, bulbous chest-barrel, horns and tail. And gaping mouths bulging with yellow teeth.
“There be no reasoning with demons,” Fleta said. “They eat our kind.”
Mach did not see much hope, but he was ready to fight. “Stand back to back with me,” he said, drawing his axe. “I’ll club any that come close.”
“That will not stop them; they feel not much pain. O, Mach, I fear the time has come to let the secret be known.”
“Your secret?” he asked, watching warily as the circle of demons closed in about them. “I think it had better wait until we have fought off this crowd.” But he had severe misgivings about that; each demon was approximately his own size, and there were many of them. Unless he could figure out an effective spell. What rhymed with “demon”?
“I be the unicorn,” Fleta said. “Thou must ride me to safety. Now!”
“You—what?” But as he looked at her, she vanished. In her place was the black unicorn who had saved him twice before.
The closest demon lunged. Mach swung his axe, catching the creature in the face. The blade cut right through, splitting the head in two-but there was no blood, and the demon kept coming. Now he understood Fleta’s reluctance to fight these things; they were truly inhuman.
He dodged the demon, then leaped to the back of the unicorn and grabbed a handful of black mane. “Take off!”
She started moving. A demon grabbed for her, but the long horn whipped about and speared the thing, shoving it back and over into the chasm behind it. Then the unicorn started trotting back along the path, where there were fewer demons; progress forward was impossible, because there was a phalanx of the creatures.
The demons pursued, but they could not match the velocity of the unicorn. In a moment the two of them were clear.
But more demons were climbing from the cracks back along the path. There seemed to be an endless number of them. Another phalanx of them formed up before the other jump, grinning.
But now the unicorn had velocity and inertia. She charged straight into them, bowling them over. At the brink she leaped, carrying Mach and a clutching demon with her. Mach twisted about and clubbed the demon on the head; when that had no effect, he chopped at the arm it had clutching the mane, and severed it. Then the demon dropped away, leaving the hand and part of the arm still locked on.
Now the crevices became too small to hide demons, and that threat abated. The unicorn charged on, her hooves striking the firm places with precision. She knew what she was doing; she must have traveled this route many times before!
In an amazingly brief time they were back at the fork in the path, alone. The unicorn stopped, and Mach dismounted.
Without any intermediate stage, the animal vanished and Fleta reappeared. She looked at him sadly. “Now thou dost know,” she said.
Suddenly it all made sense. He had called in the swamp, and the unicorn had heard, thinking him to be Bane, and had charged to the rescue of her long-time friend. She had taken him to the safety of the crater. Then, when he acted strangely, she had left him, only to return later in human guise. She had learned that he distrusted the unicorn, and that he was not the friend she had known, so she had concealed her nature from him.
When the harpies had attacked, she had had to change to the equine form again, to rescue him. Then back to the form of the woman, to be his companion. And now, unable to save him any other way, she had revealed her secret at last.
Now he remembered stray remarks. “Wouldst rather have me neigh?” and “Wait till I tell the fillies of the herd!” And the warning of the harpy that he was with Ban animal. And her reference to her “dam.” So many little hints, none of which had he understood.
And her attitude about their acquaintance. She liked him—but could not afford to love him. Because she was an animal, and he a man. She had played games with Bane, who knew her nature, as children would; if the games became more intimate than those of normal children with normal pets, it was only because a unicorn was no normal pet. Fleta had human intelligence and feelings.
So much she had done for him, knowing it to be futile as far as any enduring relationship went. Knowing that he would be leaving her, returning to his frame, helping him to do that. Knowing too that even if he remained here in Phaze, his attitude toward her would abruptly change the moment he learned her identity.
Except that he was not precisely what she evidently thought he was. She believed he would reject her for being an animal. How would she react to learning that he was a machine?
“Let me tell you about me,” he said.
“I know about thee,” she said. “Thou’rt the son of the one who was the Blue Adept before Stile, his other self.”
“I am more truly the son of Sheen,” he said.
“Who?”
That was what he had suspected. The story of Blue’s marriage in Proton had not spread about the frame of Phaze. “Sheen is a machine,” he said. “A humanoid robot. Do you know what that means?”
“Why dost thou talk about such confusion, when I have at last revealed myself to thee and await with fear thy reaction?”
“Because I think I have a secret that will affect your attitude as much as your secret affects me.”
“Thou’rt an animal of Proton? I know thou’rt not!”
“I am a machine, the son of a machine. A creature of metal and plastic and other inanimate substances.”
“Thou’rt flesh and blood!” she protested. “I have seen thee bleed!”
“This body is flesh and blood. I am not the one to whom it belongs. In Proton I am a robot.”
“A rovot,” she agreed. “What type of person be that?”
“A creature who resembles a man, but is not alive.”
“A golem!” she exclaimed.
Mach considered, then agreed. “Close enough. A creature who has been made rather than birthed. Who does not have to eat, or breathe, or sleep. Who cannot feel pain. Who can walk indefinitely without tiring. Who can imitate the ways of a man, but is not a man.”
“A golem,” she repeated, staring at him.
“In Proton, in my own body, I am that,”
he agreed. “I could cut off my finger, or my arm, or my head, and still function.” He smiled briefly. “Of course I would have some trouble seeing or hearing or speaking without my head. But I wouldn’t die, because I am not alive.”
“A golem,” she said again. “A thing without feeling.”
“Well, I can feel; I have tactile sensors. And I can feel mentally, too, because I am programmed for it. For consciousness. But it’s not the same as living.”
She seemed stunned. She approached him, looking him up and down. Her lower lip trembled. “O, what a fool I be, baring myself to thee, who canst not care.”
Not care?
Mach enfolded her and kissed her. Suddenly all that had been revealed in the past hour ceased to have meaning. He was a machine and she was an animal, and they had known each other only a night and a day, and during most of that they had misunderstood each other… and they were close to being in love.
Chapter 7
Citizen
The flyer carried them northeast across the wasteland at high velocity: the direction opposite to the one they wanted. The prospect of rendezvous became increasingly remote.
Bane shook his head. “If only we had wrecked the vehicle not!” he muttered.
“My fault,” Agape said. “I asked you to show me—”
He put his fingers against her lips, silencing her. “It was something I wanted to do. Still want to do.” He put his arms around her, and she rested her head against his shoulder. She was out of the suit now, naked in the serf manner.
“Perhaps if we explain to your family, they will help you,” she said. “Are they not good people?”
“Surely they be so,” he said. “They must be very similar to mine own parents. Probably I should have done that first.”
“Then you would have been back in your own frame by now, and I would not have met you, Bane.”
“And I would not have met thee,” he agreed, and hugged her closer. She was what she called an amoeba, a completely flexible creature, yet this did not differ much in his view from the way of any of the werefolk. She could be quite at home in Phaze. Of course he would probably not have been attracted to her, had he encountered her in Phaze. Fleta was as pretty in her human form as any true human woman, and as nice a person, but he had never been romantically interested in her. In Phaze, human beings could be friends with animals, and could play some rather intimate games with them, but they did not love them or marry them. His father’s friendship with Neysa, Fleta’s dam, had raised eyebrows in the old days, Bane understood. But Stile had married the Lady Blue, of course, and Neysa had returned to her Herd to be bred by the Herd Stallion. Thus Bane himself had come to be, and Fleta, and their lifelong association and friendship.
He faulted none of this—but he would have perceived Agape as a form of animal, and that would have made a critical difference. She was not, of course; she was an intelligent and talented creature from another world. Because he had been introduced to her as that, or as a human being at first, his fundamental perception of her had differed. Then, when she had helped him so loyally, when he needed help most—but he couldn’t say all this. Not now, with the serfs of the flying machine listening. He just held her close and wished that she could join him in Phaze. For the truth was that though he had always understood he was to marry a human girl, he had found none he liked well enough for that. The village girls tended to be wary of Adepts, with reason, and avoided him whenever they could do so without giving offense. He had needed a relationship with a girl of some other Adept family—and the only ones of his age were in the families of the Adverse Adepts. Thus certain of the animal folk had been better company for him, though he had known this to be a dead-end association.
In due course the craft landed. They passed from its lock directly into a dome, where serfs guided them to cleaning stalls and then to a residential suite. “Eat, sleep,” the foreman serf said. “Tomorrow Citizen White will have an audience.”
“Citizen White?” Bane asked. “I thought we were being taken to Citizen Blue.”
The serf shrugged. “Perhaps the Citizen will explain. Meanwhile, rest.”
That seemed to be it. Bane understood that in Proton, Citizens governed, and no serf could question the actions or motives of a Citizen. He chafed against the delay in his search for his other self, but knew he could do nothing. They might as well have been prisoners.
But he remained with Agape, and that was a considerable compensation. Now, without further guilt or distraction, he could complete his understanding with her.
They went to the food dispenser in the suite, and Agape got a nutro-bev. Bane found that he wasn’t hungry, not because of any tension or fatigue, but because his robot body did not require food. So he simply watched her eat. That turned out to be a remarkable experience in itself.
Then they adjourned to the bedroom. “I can show thee now,” he said, though somewhat shaken by the recent spectacle of her meal. Still, she had warned him. “There be room enough here.”
“Oh, Bane, I do want to know,” she said. “But I have been up and active for so long—it is past midnight now—I do not think I can hold my form much longer. I fear I would melt in the middle of it.”
That could be awkward, Bane had to agree. “Rest, then; we can do it in the morning.” He was privately relieved. He was, as he had told her, used to observing shape-changing in others, but this had been not exactly that.
“You might not like to see me sleep,” she said. “I return to my natural state.”
“Thy natural state should not bother me,” he said, hoping he spoke accurately. “But what will I do, while thou dost sleep? This body be not tired at all.”
“Use the computer access to gain entertainment or education,” she suggested. “Here, I will show you how.”
Soon Bane was seated before a screen, watching three-dimensional moving pictures within it. He found this fascinating, so very much like magic that it seemed pointless not to call it that. He could cause the pictures to change merely by telling them to.
He directed the screen to fill him in on the history of Proton. He wanted to know what had happened here after the frames had separated. He knew from what his father had said that once there was fairly free travel between the frames; each permanent resident of one frame seemed to have an other self in their other frame, who resembled him exactly. But only when one self died could the other cross what was called the curtain to the other frame. Stile had crossed when the Blue Adept died, and Stile had taken Blue’s place in the Blue Demesnes. But Blue had not been quite wholly dead; he had taken Stile’s body in Proton and taken up residence there. Stile himself had animated a golem body, which performed just like the original one. Such magnificent magic had been possible in those days. Then the fundamental stuff of magic, the rock Phazite, had been diminished; half of it had been transferred to Proton for the sake of some complex but apparently necessary balancing of the frames, and magic had forever lost much of its potency. The frames had been fully separated, so that no one could cross over anymore.
All this Bane had known all along. What he didn’t know was how Proton had fared in the interim. Since he had to remain here a while longer anyway, this did indeed seem to be the ideal occasion to learn about this. He knew that his father would be most interested in the information.
But acquiring the information turned out to be more complicated than he had supposed. There was so much of it! When he asked for the “History of Proton,” the screen went back to the planet’s discovery more than four hundred years before by an explorer-ship from the Empire of Earth: a beautiful world much resembling Phaze today. But there were creatures already on it, Earthlike creatures, including a few human beings. This indicated that there had been contact before. Since there had been a number of private expeditions to space, and not all of these made proper reports, it was concluded that one of these had colonized the planet, and the descendants of the colony had then forgotten its origin. This could have happened hu
ndreds of years before.
Then it seemed that the planet was somehow double. There was reference to magic, which was of course impossible—
“Impossible!” Bane snorted. “You idiot!”
The narration froze in place. “New directive?” the screen inquired.
“Just skip it up to the past twenty years,” Bane said, deciding not to wrestle with this aspect.
Even so, it was more than he could grasp. History turned out to be not a single and straightforward process, but a complex tapestry of events. Citizens lost their positions, and new ones came into being; the mining of Protonite, the key resource of the planet, suffered a severe readjustment as cutbacks ordered by Citizen Blue took effect.
Citizen Blue! “Follow him!” Bane exclaimed.
So Mach’s father appeared. It seemed that he had more money or power than any other Citizen, so could make his will felt most effectively. He married Sheen, the humanoid robot female; this caused a furor. He required that the self-willed humanoid robots be granted serf status. Later he did the same for the most advanced humanoid androids, and for the humanoid cyborgs. Each such step was fought resolutely by the Contrary Citizens. Most recently he had done it for the aliens: those sapient creatures who could assume human form and mix with human beings on an equal intellectual and social basis.
“Agape,” he murmured, understanding her position in this at last.
The screen heard him. “Agape,” it said, showing a picture. “Sapient creature of Planet Moeba, first representative of this species participating in the Experimental Culture Project.”
“I didn’t mean to show her; I was just commenting,” Bane said. The screen returned to its prior business, describing the things that Citizen Blue had initiated in the past twenty years in Proton. It was an impressive listing; more changes had occurred in this period than in the prior two hundred years. The Experimental Culture Project was intended to enable the diverse types of sapient creatures to integrate their society without adverse pressures. Ordinary serfs were required to become the employees of individual Citizens at maturity, and were thereafter subject to the arbitrary will of those employers. The Experimentals had no such requirement; they were considered to be the employees of Proton itself, with no requirements. They were free to do what they wished, within their own section. When they went beyond it, they had to observe the normal forms, deferring in all things to Citizens, and not interfering with the activities of ordinary serfs.