Soon Neysa joined her, separating from the Herd. Neysa’s equine head was turning gray now, and her white socks hung lower on her rear feet than they had in youth, but she remained a handsome small mare. She had returned to the Herd when her breeding years passed; she had had to remain apart when her brother assumed the leadership, but now there was no problem. She still spent much of her time elsewhere, however, because she had friendships with many of the venerable wolves of the werewolf pack, and of course with Stile and the Lady too.
They changed to human form and sat under a shade tree. “And didst thou get bred?” Neysa asked.
“Nay. I—found other occupation.”
“Thou didst not come into heat?”
“I did, but…”
Of course her dam had to have the whole story. Fleta told it. “And now Bane be safe, and Mach be back in Proton,” she concluded. “And I love Mach.”
Neysa understood about hopeless love, of course. “When thy season comes again, thou must be at the other Herd,” she said. “Naught e’er can come of thy interest in a man.”
“Yet, if he returned, as he said he might, for a visit—”
“Get bred, get a foal, and be friends with the man,” Neysa advised. “That be the way it must be. That be the way thou thyself didst come into existence.”
“But if he stayed—”
“Fleta, he be a man, son of an Adept!” Neysa reminded her. “Thou canst ne’er forget that!”
“But why must we be apart? An he love me too—”
But Neysa changed to mare form and dismissed the notion with a harmonica chord from her horn. She had never been one to entertain dreams of the impossible.
Fleta realized that there was no more acceptance here for her wild dream than there had been at the Blue Demesnes. Yet she was young and impetuous, and still could not give it up. For without Mach, her life had no meaning.
She sighed. Then she changed to mare form, played a chord of parting to Neysa, and set off across the plain toward the Werewolf Demesnes.
That journey took some time. She paused for the evening, grazing while she slept on her feet, and resumed it in the morning.
She reached the Pack later in the day. The hackles of the wolves rose as they spied her, but then they recognized her as the filly of Neysa, and escorted her in to meet the leader, Kurrelgyre.
Kurrelgyre shifted to man form, and Fleta to girl form. He was grizzled, a veteran of many combats, and perhaps approaching the time when one of his offspring would kill him and take his place as leader. But he was friend to Neysa, and therefore to Fleta. “What brings thee here, filly?” he inquired.
“I would talk with Furramenin,” Fleta said.
“And welcome,” he said. Furramenin was his whelp by his favorite bitch, a lovely creature of Fleta’s generation.
Soon they were talking, apart from the Pack. “Didst thou get bred?” Furramenin inquired eagerly, now in girl form. Soon enough she would have to leave the Pack for similar reason, traveling to one not led by her sire.
“Not exactly,” Fleta said. As before, she had to explain, covering the story in fair detail.
“Oooo, with a man!” the innocent bitch exclaimed. “But of course it couldn’t take!”
“It was only to prevent me from going on to a Herd,” Fleta reminded her.
“Swish thy tail when thou sayest that!” the wolf exclaimed. “It was the man thou didst desire!”
“It was the man,” Fleta agreed. “And after my season passed, he wanted it more, and his way, and—” She shrugged.
“And now thou art in perpetual heat for him.”
“Aye, in a way. Ne’er before did I seek it for itself, for love of the one it was with.”
“And who wouldn’t? The whelp of an Adept!”
“Nay, he be from the other frame.”
“So that be why he knew not it was impossible.”
“Aye.” Fleta looked at her pleadingly. “I have no life without him. But I know not whether he will return, and e’en if he does—”
“It still be impossible,” Furramenin concluded. “A dream for a week, then back to reality.”
“Yet if he does return, and wants me—”
“Adepts have concubines,” the bitch reminded her. “Some they like better than their wives, if truth be known.”
“But I want him all to myself!”
Furramenin shook her head. “Impossible,” she concluded.
“Thou dost believe that?”
“Aye. This be Phaze; hadst thou not noticed?”
They talked about other things, and it was pleasant enough, but Fleta had learned what she had come to learn. The werewolves did not understand her desire either.
Next day she galloped on to the cave of the vampires. Here she talked with Suchevane, the loveliest of the vampires. In girl form, Suchevane had chestnut tresses that swirled luxuriantly to her pert bottom, and a figure that virtually drained the blood of males before she even touched them. She was notorious already for her liaisons with any males capable of assuming man form—vampires, werewolves, unicorns, genuine men (including Bane)—and some that only came close. Naturally she had the broadest of perspectives in such matters.
“But Fleta, it can’t be serious!” Suchevane protested.
“I am serious,” Fleta insisted with unicorn stubbornness.
“I mean, not from the human man’s view. Any human man likes to play, but ne’er to marry other than his own kind. Think not I would remain single, an it were otherwise.”
Grim news! If the lovely vampiress could not snag a human man, how could any ordinary animal expect to do so?
“Actually, the other species be none too keen on it either,” Suchevane continued. “I had a really interesting fling with a werewolf, and he petitioned to his Pack to bring me into it, but they negated it.”
“But they could not stop him from marrying thee, an he truly wanted to!” Fleta said.
Suchevane shook her head, and her hair swirled in a way Fleta had to envy. “Aye, they could stop him.”
“But he could run away with thee—”
“Not after they tore him to bits.”
Fleta stared at her. The vampiress was serious.
Suchevane shrugged. “Do what I do, ‘corn. Be a private concubine, and seek no more. Accept thy place and live in peace. Haifa pint o’ blood be better than none.”
It was good advice, Fleta knew. But it gave her no comfort. She didn’t want to love Mach in shame.
So she repaired south to the castle of the Red Adept. This was on a conical mountain, with a path spiraling up to it. But the Adept did not live in the castle, which he had inherited from his predecessor; he lived below it, inside the mountain. For he was Trool the Troll, elevated to Adept status by the action of Stile—and the Book of Magic. All other trolls were truculent and to be feared, but not this one. Not by the friends of Stile.
She blew a chord of query, seeking admittance. In a moment a hole opened in the base of the mountain, big enough for a unicorn. She trotted in.
There was eerie fungus light inside. She moved on down the tunnel and into the central chamber. There was the troll, as ugly as any of his kind, carving a figurine out of stone with his bare hands. For this was the talent of trolls, to manipulate stone as if it were clay, and to carve either tunnels or objects from it. Usually the objects were weapons, but sometimes they were artistic. Lovely statues and amulets filled the chamber, each individual and fascinating in its own right. Though any troll could, only Trool did; that artistry had distinguished him from the others of his kind. That, and his constancy of character.
“I fear I cannot help thee, Fleta,” Trool said before she had even presented her case. “I cannot change the ways of entire species, and would not if I could. And my power extends not to the frame of science.”
Somehow she had known Trool would be aware of her. The Book of Magic gave him extraordinary power, even for an Adept. “I think thou canst,” she communicated. She used
the horn-language of her kind, speaking in notes and harmonies. Few others understood it, but the Red Adept had no trouble.
“But I would not,” he said.
“What better be there for me?” she demanded with sharp notes.
“Let me fashion thee a shape in his likeness, that the Brown Adept can animate as a golem.”
“Nay!” Fortissimo.
“Stile be such an animation,” he reminded her. For Stile’s body had returned to Proton, animated by the Blue Adept, who had lost his own body. A golem body had been carved by the troll, and animated by the Brow Adept, and Stile’s soul had infused it. In all things it mimicked his natural body perfectly, except two: it lack the bad knees of the original, and it could not reproduce Stile’s son Bane had been sired before the change of bodies.
“But it be Stile’s real soul,” she played. “What thou dost offer me be merely Mach’s appearance—and that exists already, in Bane. It be only Mach I want, none other.”
“An the golem of Proton come again to Phaze, neither his kind nor thine would permit what thou dost desire,” he said.
“Aye. So it be hopeless. Therefore must thou give me what I come for.”
“How shall I face thy dam, an I do this?”
“Thou hast no need to tell her.”
The Adept gazed at her sadly. “Since I can help thee not my way, must needs I help thee thy way. But I like it not. Choose thy form.”
Fleta changed to girl form. “This be the form in which I came to love him,” she said, speaking the human tongue for the first time.
“I fear I will do penance for this,” Trool said. He handed her an amulet. “Invoke this, when thou art ready.”
She took the amulet. “I invoke thee,” she said immediately.
Nothing happened, physically. But she felt the magic of the amulet fasten about her, and knew it had done its work. She was now unable to change form.
“I thank thee, Adept,” she said.
“I curse the need,” he said.
She stepped forward and kissed him on his ugly cheek. “How be it a creature as nice as thou hast no companion?”
“I be alienated from mine own kind,” he said gruffly.
Because he supported Stile’s program of greate: equality for the nonhuman creatures of Phaze, and a restraint in magic. The other trolls supported the Adverse Adepts. Of course he had the magic to capture and tame any female of any species, including troll or human, but he declined to use it that way. Thus his tragedy was like hers, in its fashion.
“Do thou ensure that none interfere,” she said.
“Aye,” he agreed glumly. “None save an Adept could, and none would.”
Fleta turned and walked from the mountain. The ground opened to let her out, then closed again behind her. Now she was on her own.
She walked all day northwest, toward the center of the great White Mountain range. Her human legs grew tired, for she was not hardened to such travel in this form, but it was the only way, now. However long it took, she could afford.
No creatures bothered her along the way. She knew that Trool had seen to that. He had not helped her to travel there, because he did not like her purpose, but he had agreed to protect her from interference during the interim.
It took several days. At last she reached the mountains, and climbed the foothills, and then the main slopes. As evening closed, she made her way to a grassy ledge overlooking a deep chasm.
It was the ledge where her dam, Neysa, had stood, twenty years before, when ready to leap off rather than suffer Stile to conquer her. Neysa had not intended suicide; she would have changed in midair to her firefly form, and flown away, leaving Stile to fall to his death below. But he, not realizing that, had freed her instead—and in that act had captured her after all. Thereafter she had given him everything. Later he had made to her that Oath of friendship that had subtly changed the relationship of men, unicorns and werewolves, and whose power still was felt, twenty years later. But that Oath had its root at this site, where he had taken that first step.
Fleta stood at the brink. Neysa had not contemplated suicide—but Fleta did. Had she come here ordinarily, she could have leaped—but would have changed to bird form involuntarily, rather than die. So she had had herself enchanted. Now, when she jumped, she would not be able to change her mind.
This act would solve the problem. She would be beyond caring, and Mach, if he ever learned of it, would know that there was no longer anything to distract him from his other business. She was freeing him—from her. From the temptation and distraction of the impossible.
“Mach!” she cried, letting her love for him overflow at last, letting the mountains hear it. Indeed they heard, for they echoed it back. At the snowy heights the snow-demons emerged from their ice caves, marveling at that echoing word. A ripple passed through the air: the splash of conviction.
Now she had uttered it. Now she was committed.
Then she made a swan-dive off the ledge.
Chapter 15
Blue
Bane found himself back in a Proton cell, this time clamped to a wall so that he could not move. Evidently Mach had not been able to free himself. But had he been successful in freeing Agape? That was what really counted.
He tuned himself out, knowing that there was nothing he could do at the moment, and that there was nothing the Contrary Citizens could do to him, since without him they would have no avenue to Phaze. Since this machine body had no so-called natural functions, his immobility did not generate discomfort. Obviously something had happened, to make the Citizen wary of his prisoner’s freedom. What had Mach done?
A screen came on before him. It was set in the wall opposite, and his head was locked into place facing it; he could tune it out in his mind, but could not look at anything else. It seemed his captor wanted him to watch it.
The picture was of the interior of a house or suite.
The furnishings were in shades of blue. “Pay attention, robot,” Citizen Purple’s voice came. “You thought you were pretty clever, springing the amoeba, but watch how we get her back.”
So the Citizen didn’t know that Bane had returned to Proton. He thought he was addressing Mach. Thus he was inadvertently providing the very information Bane most desired: the news that Agape had escaped. Mach had done his job!
But if she had escaped, she should have gone to Citizen Blue. The picture showed blue, suggesting that this was his residence. Was she here?
Indeed she was; in a moment she entered, in the company of a lovely older serf woman. They sat on the couch, unaware that they were being observed.
“We have to free Mach,” the older woman said earnestly. “They can no longer put pressure on him by threatening you, which is one reason he arranged to free you first. He could have used my friends to free himself, but he didn’t want to leave you in their power.”
“Your friends?” Agape asked.
“The self-willed machines. I am one, of course; our form matters less than our brain.”
“Your whorish robot mother must have taught you those tricks,” Purple muttered. Evidently his commentary was separate, directed to Bane alone.
“But why didn’t they save him too?” Agape was asking.
“They could have—but that would have alerted your captor to your own escape, and he might have intercepted you before you got clear. So Mach used himself as a diversion, distracting the Citizen’s attention from you, giving you the time you needed.”
“The bitch machine is right,” Purple said. “We were watching you. But that trick won’t work again. I have eliminated all the self-willed machines from my employ, and acted to prevent you from using any more cute little parts of yourself to do mischief.”
So that was what Mach had done! Bane would never have thought of that. He kept silent; he was doing well enough this way.
“But Mach—what of him, now?” Agape asked. “I never meant to leave him prisoner!”
“My husband will rescue him,” the wo
man said. “But we must make absolutely sure they do not get hold of you again because you represent their best lever against him. So I think we must send you back to your home planet, at least until my son is safe.”
“Yes, of course,” Agape agreed. “I have caused you too much trouble already.”
“Your participation in the problem was coincidental,” the woman, who Bane realized was Sheen, Mach’s mother, said gently. “Your support to him has been invaluable. We feel that no blame attaches to you. But now that you have become a key figure, we must keep you out of their hands. We are arranging to take you directly to the ship leaving today for Moeba.”
Was this to keep her safe—or to eliminate her as a factor in Mach or Bane’s life? Bane wasn’t sure. Yet perhaps it was best; he would rather have her on another planet than at risk of torture here.
“Guess what’s going to happen,” Purple said.
Suddenly Bane realized: they were watching a private dialogue! The enemy Citizen had used one of his pseudomagic devices to spy on Citizen Blue, and knew what was being planned. “No!” he cried.
“You thought all you needed was to spring her loose, boy? The game isn’t over till the blubber-lady sings.”
They were going to recapture Agape—and what would Bane do then? He couldn’t let her suffer!
Maybe it was a bluff. A charade, with actors in a setting resembling the home of Citizen Blue. After all, how could such a spying eye be placed without Blue knowing? Certainly Bane’s father, Stile, in Phaze, could not be spied on in such manner!
Yet Agape looked so genuine! He was sure it was her!
“We’ll bring her in to see you,” Purple said. “Little reunion; you’ll like that, won’t you! So take it easy, machine; you’ll be sure enough it’s her when she arrives.”
Bane was all too certain that was true.
The screen dimmed out, and he tuned out. But later he was roused by the screen again. This time it showed an atmospheric flyer, similar to the one that had picked up Bane and Agape. It was cruising across the foggy desert. Beside it was another, and a third; a small fleet of them.