“Not if I throw the finger into the water, and then bash out that weak section so the roof falls down, trapping it inside.”
“No!” she cried. “The collapse will be behind the wall; I felt the nature of the stresses. You will be trapped too!”
The plane was coming in again. “I’ll take that chance!”
“No, I’ll take it!” she said, grasping the finger. “I can get out through the river channel; you can’t.” She hurried into the cave.
He let her go. It was too late to stop her without getting caught by the plane—and he realized that she was right. She could melt and climb in a way that he could not. He scrambled for cover outside the cave.
The plane came down, aiming for the cave. It slowed as its sensors showed the nature of the terrain. But its sensors also told it that the target was in the cave, and could not be reached from outside it, so it followed.
Bane watched as the small craft corrected course and flew inside. He realized that the Citizen was guiding it, and had to be very careful here, lest he crash it before reaching his target. But the plane could not travel too slowly, lest it drop to the ground. It had to get in there and score; then it wouldn’t matter what happened to it, because the game would be over.
Had Agape had enough time to reach the water and throw the finger in? Would their trap work if she sprang it? Now his doubts loomed grotesquely large. How could he have let her take that risk in his place? She was such a good, caring, self-sacrificing creature! Probably if he had occupied his natural body, whose emotions were not under control the way those of the machine were, he would not have let her do it. He hadn’t even shown her what he had promised—and if she got caught in the collapse of the cave-roof, he would never have the chance, because she would be not merely Game-dead, but all-the-way dead.
There was a rumble. The ground shook, and dust swirled out from the mouth of the cave.
She had done it. But at what cost?
Bane went to the cave, but it was so full of dust that he could not see anything. He just had to hope that the plane had been trapped, and that Agape survived, and was making her way out. There was nothing he could do but wait.
He returned to the minor fort where they had spent the night. He recovered his staff and sword and bow. The game was not over until either he was “dead” or time ran out.
A huge shape loomed in the sky. Bane peered up at it from cover. It was a dragon! It was circling the peak of the mountain, looking down.
Bane considered. That had to be a robot, because there were no magical creatures in Proton. That meant it was the Citizen in another guise. That in turn meant that the airplane had been destroyed rather than trapped, so their plan had failed in that respect. Now the Citizen was free and Agape was not: the opposite of what they had tried for.
But why was the dragon circling the mountain, instead of searching for Bane himself? That didn’t seem to make sense.
Then he reasoned it out. The Citizen was still orienting on the finger! It had been dark in the cave, and when the roof collapsed the finger had not been touched, being deeper in. It would not have been obvious that the finger was unattached; after all, it had been moving purposefully until that point.
The Citizen thought Bane was trapped inside the cave! The dragon was trying to figure out how to reach him in that impenetrable fastness. Or perhaps making sure he didn’t escape, so that he would starve in there. Death by starvation was still death; that would represent victory for the Citizen.
But what of Agape? Had she survived, or was she truly dead? The Citizen might not care, but Bane did! He had to assume that she was all right, and was making her way slowly up through the channel used by the stream. That could be quite tortuous; he should be patient.
Patient? He should be half mad with anxiety! These robot feelings lacked the punch of the natural ones, because he could control them; if he decided not to care about the fate of his companion, then he didn’t care. That might be convenient for a machine, but he preferred the natural way, inconvenience and all. In his own body, he’d be—
He analyzed it, as he could do with this body. He concluded that his first thought was correct: he would be quite smitten with Agape. Oh, it was true that she was an alien creature who dissolved into a puddle of jelly when she slept. It was true that she hardly knew the meaning of human sexual involvement. In fact, she hardly understood the distinction between male and female. But she was working hard to learn, and was succeeding well. When she assumed her human female form, she was lovely indeed. More important, her loyalty and effort and personality were all nice. A human woman like her would be an admirable companion—and Agape could be exactly like a human woman.
Bane had had his eye on the females of Phaze throughout. He knew that in due course he would have to marry and settle into the business of being the Blue Adept. Whenever he had encountered a female, he had judged her as a prospective companion or wife. Many were excellent companions; none had seemed suitable to marry. Some very fetching ones were nonhuman, like Fleta or Suchevane, the mind-maddening vampire. But only the fully human ones were suitable for marriage—and they had other counts against them. Some were not really attractive, physically; he knew that was narrow of him, but he did not want an ordinary woman. Some were beauties—but were the offspring of Adverse Adepts. Sheer mischief, there! Probably their appearance was substantially enhanced by magic, and the reality would be a disappointment. So he had not found any woman to love, in Phaze. Only playthings. He had been over this before, in his own mind, seeking some solution, and had come to none.
Here in Proton there were the frivolous types too, such as Doris the cyborg, that one who had dumped Mach. But here too was Agape, and there was nothing frivolous about her. She concealed none of her nature from him, and supported him in whatever way she could, asking in return only a type of instruction that it would be laughable for him to charge anything for. Now she had willingly, almost eagerly risked her life, her real life, to save him from a pseudo-death in the Game. So that he would not have to tell the Citizen how to contact his other self in Phaze. She could hardly understand his rationale for wishing to keep the matter private; he hardly understood it himself. He just didn’t like being forced into doing something, and he regarded the Citizen as a member of a class of opponents who should not be accommodated in anything important. None of this was any concern to an alien creature. So her support was mostly altruism—and her kind of honor.
Honor. She had it, obviously. There, emerging at last from the complexities of their relationship, was the essence. She was a creature who was capable of understanding and practicing an honorable existence. That was the kind of female he wanted for a long-term companion.
But she was of the frame of Proton, and he was of Phaze. He could not become the Blue Adept and have her with him. So the relationship could not be permanent. The best he could do was give her instructions in the human mechanism of sexual expression, and leave her.
It made sense; his robot brain saw it clearly. But his human consciousness damned it. This was not the relationship he wanted with her.
But his robot logic would not stop. Agape was a creature from the planet of Moeba, and was here on a mission. She saw him as a feasible way to implement that mission; she had always been open about that. Once that was done, her use for him should abate. She had never spoken to him of love or permanence; she had always tried to help him to return to his own frame. So he was probably fooling himself if he thought she had any genuine feeling for him; it was possible that her species did not possess such feelings. He had been humanizing her in his perception of emotion, just as he had been with her body. She looked human, but was not; she acted human, but was not. Therefore it was foolish of him even to consider any permanent relation with her, regardless of its feasibility.
Well, if she had survived the cave, and returned to him intact, he would forthwith honor his bargain and show her everything he knew about human sexuality. Then she would be free to go her
way, and he free to return to Phaze. That was the proper course. Not the ideal course, just the proper one.
The day crawled past, while the dragon circled, then flew away for several hours, then returned to circle again. The Citizen had taken a lunch break, but was still watching. Bane ate also, and snoozed in his robot fashion, ready to spring alert if the dragon came his way.
Dusk came, and darkness, and Agape had not shown up. Bane kept reminding himself that the river channel could be long and difficult, and her progress in the amoebic form could be very slow; he had no reason to assume she was dead. Yet he had little reason to assume otherwise, either.
Then, near the middle of the night, there was a nearby stir. He snapped alert, grasping the sword.
“Bane?” It was her voice!
“Agape!” he cried. “Are you all right?”
“I had to wait till the dragon went. Then I threw the finger into the river outside.”
“But that’s nowhere close!”
“I assumed the form of the deer, for better speed. But for you, here—”
He dropped the sword, strode to her and enfolded her in his arms. He kissed her, and kissed her again, and whirled her around. They fell laughing on the ground and rolled about, heedless of the dirt and leaves. They made love, joyously, explosively. Then they talked, catching up on events and recent fears and the details of their survival.
Then she said: “Perhaps tomorrow you can show me how your kind does the act of reproduction.”
“We just did it!” he exclaimed.
She was startled. “When?”
“When we—were on the ground.”
“Oh, you should have told me! I would have paid better attention.”
Disgruntled, Bane changed the subject. Agape, tired after her long effort, collapsed into a pool and slept.
He let her be, when morning came, fashioning some branches for shade so that the light of the artificial sun would not burn her substance. He watched for the dragon, and noted how it was now flying in the distance, over the river. How long would it be before the Citizen realized that Bane was not swimming in that water?
It was some time. When the Citizen finally did catch on, he deliberately crashed his dragon into the mountain, destroying it. Then he came after them on the ground, in a vehicle Agape described as a tank, that crashed through the brush and fired jets of fire. But without the signal from the finger, the Citizen had no easy way to locate them, and it turned out that he had no natural skill in tracking. For the remainder of the Game they avoided the clumsy machine, eating from the land and covering the matter of Agape’s instruction in considerable and pleasant detail. When the time expired, they were alive, therefore the victors.
Game exits manifested: cubicles rising from the forest floor. They entered one and were borne down to the formal complex.
Foreman was waiting. “The Citizen wishes to convey his congratulations to you on your victory,” he said to Bane. “You are free to return to your Experimental Project.”
“We be ready,” Bane said, eager to get away from this region.
“Not two; one,” Foreman said. “The alien will remain here.”
“But the bet was for both!” Bane protested.
Foreman touched a button on an instrument he carried. The Citizen’s voice sounded from it: “I win, I get your secret; you win, you go free.” Then Bane’s reply: “Aye.”
Foreman looked at him. “That was the agreement?”
“Aye,” Bane repeated. “We two go free.”
“No. Only you the speaker go free, no other.”
“But I meant both! ‘You’ be plural!”
“Not necessarily, in the dialect of Proton. Ask your associate.”
Bane looked at Agape. She nodded. “The word is both plural and singular,” she said. “ ‘You’ can mean several people or one person.”
“And the Citizen was addressing one person: you,” Foreman said. “You won the game, you go free. She remains.”
“I go not without her!” Bane exclaimed.
“Suit yourself. The hospitality of the Citizen is open to you.”
“But I want it not! I want Agape free!”
“That would require a separate agreement.”
“Bane, go without me,” Agape said urgently. “I don’t matter.”
“Thou dost matter more than everything else!” Bane exclaimed. “Thou didst almost sacrifice thyself in the cave, for me; I will not have it again!”
“Have no concern for her comfort here,” Foreman said. “She will be granted residence in a suitable container.” He gestured, and a wall dissolved. In the adjacent chamber was a monstrous black pot suspended over leaping flames.
Agape looked, and fainted. Her body dissolved, its substance sinking to the floor.
Bane swallowed, knowing he was beaten. The Citizen was threatening to torture or kill Agape if Bane didn’t cooperate, and he knew it was no bluff. The enemy Adepts always made good on their most dire threats, if not on their promises.
“Free her,” he whispered.
“You understand the necessary agreement?”
“Aye.” Bane was enraged by the duplicity of the Citizen, but terrified by his cruelty. He had no choice.
Chapter 10
Adept
The castle of the Brown Demesnes was impressive, being fashioned of brownstone rather than the wood he had thought, with a brown forest and the river turning muddy brown. Even the grass was brown. There could be no doubt of the identity of its owner. Two great brown wooden golems guarded the heavy brown wooden door. But Fleta approached it without trepidation. “Bane came often here,” she said. “And I too, carrying him, when we were young and he used not his magic to travel. Brown was I think about ten years old when I was foaled and now she be close to thirty, but she it was who versed me in the human tongue and in the ways of thy kind. She did baby-sit Bane, too. She be the best of Adepts.” That seemed to be a sufficient recommendation. They stepped up to the golems. Mach had nullified the invisibility spell, realizing that however convenient it had been to travel without being seen, they couldn’t approach a friendly Adept in that condition. “Tell thy mistress that Fleta and a friend come calling,” Fleta said to them.
One golem turned ponderously and stomped inside, while the other maintained watch. Soon the first returned. “Come!” it boomed. Mach wondered how a creature that did not breathe could boom, but realized that magic could account for it.
They followed it inside. The paneling inside was brown, but in varying shades, so that it was not oppressive. They came to the central hall, where a handsome brown-haired woman stood. She wore a brown gown and brown gloves and slippers, and her hair was tied back by a brown ribbon. This was of course the Brown Adept. Mach had rather expected her to be brown-skinned; she was well tanned, but that was the extent of it. Maybe the first person to hold this office had been literally brown.
“Fleta, it has been many months!” the woman said. “And Bane—”
“He be not Bane, Brown,” Fleta said. “He be Bane’s other self, from Proton-frame.”
Brown’s brown eyes studied Mach. “Aye, now I perceive the difference! But I thought there was no communication between the frames anymore.”
“Only in our case, sir,” Mach said.
“Dost call me ‘sir’?” she said, amused.
Mach was abashed. “In my frame, only Citizens wear clothes. I—”
She laughed. “I remember the Citizens! Stile and Blue fought them, and in the end I helped. Call me Brown; if thou art not the son of Stile, thou’rt the son of Blue.”
“The son of Blue,” Mach agreed. “I am called Mach, and I am a robot.”
“A rovot be very like a golem,” Fleta put in quickly.
“Only now I’m in Bane’s body, and he’s in mine. We need to switch back, but don’t know how. So we were going to go to the Blue Demesnes, but demons and goblins prevented us, so we looped around and came here.”
“So that be why the m
onsters stir!” Brown exclaimed. “They be in pursuit of thee!”
“That’s the story,” Mach agreed. “We don’t know why. We’re hoping you will help us.”
“Of course I will help,” Brown agreed. “I will send a golem bird to the Blue Demesnes, and thy problem shall be resolved. Meanwhile, the two of you be welcome here; the golems will protect you from the goblins.”
“O, thank thee!” Fleta said, going and hugging Brown. The Brown Adept snapped her fingers, and a brown bird flew in to perch on her wrist. It looked authentic, but evidently it was a golem; this was an impressive evidence of the woman’s skill. “Go tell the Blue Adept to contact Brown,” the Adept told it. “The matter be important.”
The bird flew away. “It can speak?” Mach asked. “Nay,” Brown said, smiling. “It understands only where to go, but Blue will know I sent it not frivolously. We should hear from him in two hours.”
They had an excellent meal, and Brown provided better clothing for Mach; his homemade apparel was quite ragged. Brown was an easy woman to know; it was evident that she had a high regard for Stile and Stile’s son, and she was quite interested in what Mach had to tell of Proton.
“But now that I have met Fleta,” Mach said in passing, “I am not as certain I really want to return to Proton. If she can’t go with me—”
Fleta tried to caution him, but Brown was on it immediately. “So thy relationship with the mare be more than convenience?”
“Nay,” Fleta said.
“Yes,” Mach said. “I think I love her.”
“But that cannot be, in Phaze,” Fleta said. “Thy kind and mine do not love.”
“And thee,” Brown said, fixing her gaze on Fleta. “Thou dost not love him?”
Fleta’s lip trembled in the way it had. “I know it be forbidden.”
“But thou dost love him.”
“Aye,” Fleta whispered.
“Then why dost thou help him to return to his frame?”