Meanwhile they had a challenge in this vine. It was good that it was tough; he needed strength. But how could he get a suitable length of it for his purpose?
Aha! He brought over his axe head stone. He held the vine firm with one hand, and sawed with the sharp edge of the stone. In a moment the vine parted. He had his cord.
He used the stone to split the end of the stick, then wedged the stone into that cleft, so that the sharp edge was at the side. He wound the vine around and around this joining, drawing it tight. He pulled the tag-end into the crevice below the stone, so that it was caught firmly. Fleta surveyed the result dubiously. “That be an axe?”
“A crude one. It will have to do.”
“It will take more than that to stop a dragon.”
“Then I will use it to make more than that.” Mach took his axe and chopped at a sapling. The head started to work out of its cleft, and the cord tried to unravel; he had to rework both more carefully. But he managed to fashion a pole about two and a half meters long. “A staff,” he announced.
“A dragon would chomp it off,” Fleta said. But she seemed halfway impressed.
Mach checked the ground again, picking up a number of smaller stones. “And what be these for?” Fleta inquired.
“For distance operations. I’ll throw them to keep monster away.”
“Canst throw well?”
“In my own body I have perfect aim; it comes from long experience in the Game,” he said.
There was a swirl in the air, and vapor formed. But in a moment it dissipated. “What was that?” Fleta asked alarmed.
“It resembled the effects when I tried to do magic,” he said. “But I wasn’t—”
“Thou didst speak in rhyme!” she exclaimed.
“…aim, …Game,” he agreed, remembering. “But I had no magic in mind; it was an accident.”
“If thou canst do magic by accident, why canst thou not do it on purpose?”
“But I tried to do it on purpose, and got nowhere.”
She tilted her head thoughtfully. “There be things we know not about thy magic. Many a time I heard Bane conjure, but when I copied him, it worked not. Methinks it be a matter of person and of form, and if thou beest not he, yet dost thou possess the talent. Thou didst not even sing that time, yet the magic tried to come.”
Mach sighed. “I’ll try it again.” He held up his hand. “I thirst; I think—I want a drink,” he singsonged, visualizing a nutra-beverage.
The fog swirled, and the tall cup appeared in his hand. “It worked!” he exclaimed.
“It doth look more like mudwater,” Fleta commented.
“Nutra is opaque.” He brought it to his mouth and sipped.
He spat it out. “That is mudwater!”
Fleta laughed. “I told thee!”
“So I bungled it again. But I did conjure it!”
“Methinks there be much learning to thine art, she said.
“Surely so! Maybe I should practice.” He set down I the cup, held his hand up again, and repeated his incantation.
This time the fog swirled, but all that came to his hand was a splat of mud.
Fleta laughed again. “What a clumsy Adept thou beest!” Mach flipped the mud at her. He did not intend to have it hit her, but his aim was better than intended; the mud scored on her neck just above her robe, and I slid down her front.
“Thou monster!” she exclaimed, scooping up a handful of moist dirt where the mudwater had spilled. “Now wait! I didn’t mean to—” Her heave caught him on the forehead. “Now we be even,” she said with satisfaction.
Mach decided to let it go at that. “But how do we get clean?”
“We wash in the stream,” she said. She showed the way down through the forest to a tiny stream. There was a pool just big enough to dip a hand into.
Fleta hesitated, then shrugged and pulled off her cloak. “Methinks I was foolish to react as I did, when I learned thou wast not the man I knew. I have no need for modesty before thee.” The mud had soiled the skin between her breasts. She cupped her hands and scooped up water, splashing it against her torso. Mach had found her more alluring when she had donned the cloak, because in Proton covering was the mark of power and privacy; now he reacted even more to her renewed nakedness. There was something about the water and the way she washed herself off.
Fleta, clean, shook herself. Her breasts seemed to move independently of her torso. Then she paused, looking at him. “And what be that?” she asked, smiling impishly.
Mach abruptly felt himself flushing. He turned away.
“I said not it was wrong!” Fleta exclaimed. “Methought I moved thee not, Bane, since we achieved maturity.”
“I am not Bane,” he said tightly. How could this have happened to him? As a robot he reacted sexually only when he chose to, never by accident.
“Aye, that thou art not,” she agreed softly. “I thought to tease thee as we did each other, when we were young. We—Bane and I—played games we ne’er told the adults.”
“And we of Proton,” he agreed. “But I did not mean to—I did not realize this would happen.”
“Nor I, Mach. But would I offend thee if I confess I be not grieved it did?”
His flush, by the feel of it, seemed to be fading, but not the rest. “Fleta, I really don’t know. Exactly what was the relationship between you and Bane?”
“Friends,” she said. “Good friends, as good as can be though we ne’er made oath on it. Secrets we had, only with each other. But then we grew apart.”
“Friends—so close you even—?”
She came and set her cool hand on his shoulder. “Mach, there be naught that human man and woman can do together that we did not do, or try. But we were too young; it meant naught. Today it would be another matter, for we are grown.”
“So I should not—react this way—to you,” he said with difficulty.
She sighed. “Thou shouldst not,” she agreed. “We be too old for such games now, methinks. But Mach, fear not; ne’er will I tell.”
“We—you and Bane—are related?” he asked.
She burst into laughter. “Related!” She reached around him from behind and hugged him. This did not help his condition, for her breasts pressed hard against his back. “Thou dost not know, really?”
“Of course I don’t know!” he said, trying to be angry, but wishing he could turn and embrace her. How could he be so far out of control?
“Then shall I tell thee not,” she said, releasing him.
“You said you would not tease me!”
“This be other than teasing,” she said. “I fear thou wouldst like not the truth.”
“I always like the truth!”
“Then accept this, Mach: now I understand somewhat better the case with thee, and I be flattered, not annoyed, and would preserve it a little longer. Come, face me as thou art; I have seen thee thus before, and will speak of it not further, an that please thee.”
He seemed to have no choice. He turned, and she neither laughed nor frowned, though she did look. He knelt by the pool and dipped out water to wash off his face.
“We be not related,” Fleta said after a moment. “But naught more than games between us was e’er possible.”
“I wish you would tell me why!”
“When I tell thee, thou willst be angry with me, and that I seek not.”
“I promise I won’t be angry! I just want to know.”
But she shook her head, knowing better than he. “Methinks thou wouldst be more comfortable in clothing,” she said in a moment. “It be the custom here.”
He realized that she was correct. To go naked in a culture where clothing was the norm was not sensible. He would have to suppress his natural aversion to misrepresenting his status, and become a normal person of this frame, at least until he learned how to return to his robot body. Likewise, he could not afford to presume too much on the fact that she had seen Bane in a state of sexual excitement when young; obviously Fleta was no such
playmate now.
Suddenly he realized why he was having trouble controlling his reactions: he was in a living body! He breathed, he had a heartbeat, he had to eat and drink and eliminate—of course he reacted sexually too! This was not, he now understood, entirely voluntary; when a stimulation came to him, his body reacted even when he did not wish it to. He had assumed that he would have no special interest in sex until he chose to, as was the case in Proton, but the sight of Fleta’s wet and moving anatomy had bypassed his intellect and made his body react. Thus his surprised embarrassment. The circuits of living creatures were to an extent self-motivating.
No wonder the folk here wore clothing! Not only did it prevent unwanted stimulation, it concealed unwanted reaction.
“I’ll wear clothing,” he agreed. But still he wondered: if Fleta was, as she said, flattered rather than embarrassed by the evidence of his reaction, why did she say that there should be no such action between them? If they had done it as children, and they were not related (and why had she found that notion so hilarious?), why was it wrong now? Were they promised to other partners? Yet she had not said that; she acted as if there were some more fundamental reason why nothing serious between them was possible. And she feared he would be angry when he learned.
He cast about, looking for something that could be fashioned into clothing. All that he could see that had any such prospect at all was the large leaves of some trees. Well, they would have to do.
Fleta helped him gather some good leaves. Then they used his axe to make slits in a vine, and passed the stems of the leaves through, with long-stemmed leaves overlapping short-stemmed ones, forming a kind of skirt. They wrapped the vine about his waist, and the leaves hung down to cover him to an extent.
But already there was another problem. His shoulders were turning red. “Sunburn!” Fleta said. “I forgot—thy kind suffers from that; it be another reason you wear clothing.”
His kind? Wasn’t her kind the same?
“I suppose we could make a collar to suspend a shirt of leaves,” he said, not enthusiastically. As it was, the leaves brushed constantly against him, stirring awareness of a region he preferred to tune out.
“Mayhap thou couldst conjure some cloth.”
He tried: “I’ll be wroth, without some cloth,” he sang, visualizing an enormous bolt of cloth.
He got a fragment of cloth about the size of a Citizen’s handkerchief.
He grimaced. “And if I try it again, I’ll get a thread or two,” he muttered. “It never works the second time.”
“Mach! That be it!” Fleta exclaimed. “Ne’er did I hear Bane use the same spell twice!”
“Good for only one shot,” he said, gratified by the revelation.
“Canst try the same, with other words?”
“Why not?” He pondered a moment, then sang: “Cloth: I implore, bring me some more.” He visualized an even larger bolt.
And the fog swirled, and deposited twice as much of the same type of cloth as it had before.
Now they understood the system. Mach invented a number of rhymes, garnering needle and thread and more cloth so he could sew a shirt. Fleta seemed to have no knowledge of sewing. He found that variation of melody also facilitated the conjurations, and that he got more of what he visualized if he built up to it by humming a few bars first. He was learning to be a magician!
It was close to midday by the time they were ready to travel. Mach had considered trying a spell to move them directly to the Blue Demesnes, but decided not to; he would probably drop them in the swamp instead. If the magic was going to foul up, let it foul up on details that didn’t affect their living processes!
He now wore crudely fashioned sandals, and a ragged broad-brimmed hat, to protect his feet from abrasion and his head and neck from the sun, and in between was as strange an assemblage of clothing as he could have imagined. Swatches of cloth, leaves, vines and even a patch of leather, all fastened together haphazardly. But it covered him, protecting him from both the burning of the sun and the embarrassment of possible involuntary reactions. He would get out of the costume the moment he returned to Proton, of course; rather, Bane would, for Bane would be back in his own body, and surely would recover his normal clothes. In fact, Mach himself would recover those clothes when he got back to the glade he had started from.
Mach spied a huge shape in the sky to the south, where the horizon was a ragged purple range of mountains. Those mountains existed also in Proton, of course; the natural geography of the two frames was supposed to be identical. “What’s that?”
“A dragon,” Fleta said. “Hide if it come near.”
“They are in the air as well as the water?”
“Aye, everywhere, and always hungry. Few other than an Adept fear not their like.”
Mach could appreciate why. He kept a wary eye on the sky thereafter.
The path reached the swamp. Now Mach hefted his crude weapons nervously, remembering the dragon that had been here. Maybe it would be asleep.
They had no such fortune. Fleta knew the path, and led him along it without misstep despite the murkiness of the water, but when they were too far along to turn readily back, the monster reared up.
Gazing at it, Mach abruptly wished he were elsewhere. His axe and staff seemed woefully inadequate. The dragon was so huge!
“I can help, if—” Fleta said.
“My job. You get on to safety while I hold it off.” That sounded a good deal bolder than he felt. Still, his Game experience had acquainted him with different modes of combat, mock-dragons included. This was more nervous business than that, as it was real, but the same principles should hold. The dragon should be vulnerable in a number of places, and a bold enough challenge should dissuade it. The thing was, after all, an animal.
First he tried his stones. He fired the first at the dragon’s left eye. His aim was good; he knew his capacity here. But the monster blinked as the stone flew in, and it bounced off the leathery eyelid. So much for that.
Mach threw the second stone at the dragon’s teeth.
This one scored, but the tooth it struck was too large and strong; a tiny chip of enamel flew off, but the damage only aggravated the creature without hurting it.
The third stone he aimed at the flaring nostrils. It disappeared inside—and the dragon sneezed. The target was too big and spongy, and the stone too small, to do sufficient damage. But it did verify what Mach wanted to know: that the tissue there was soft, not hard. Few animals liked getting their tender tissues tagged.
Vapor swirled as the dragon warmed up. Mach hoped his clothing would shield him from the worst of the heat if he got blasted by steam; meanwhile, he would do his best to prevent the dragon from scoring with it.
Mach lifted his long staff. As the dragon’s head loomed close, he poked it with the end of the pole. Surprised, the dragon snapped at the pole, but Mach swung it free. He was accomplishing his intent: he had the dragon trying to attack the weapon instead of the man.
When the dragon’s teeth snapped on air, Mach reversed the pole and smashed it into the nostrils. The dragon reared back; that blow smarted!
Then the dragon heaved out steam. But the range was too great, and the aim was bad; no steam touched Mach. He aimed the pole at an eye and rammed; again the dragon blinked, but the pole scored, and pushed in the eye before rebounding. This time the eye was hurt; some blood showed as the dragon jerked back and the pole fell away.
“Thou’rt beating it!” Fleta exclaimed, amazed.
“I intended to,” Mach puffed, discovering that this effort was tiring him. He had forgotten, again: this living body lacked the endurance of the machine.
The dragon, hurt, vented a horrendous cloud of steam, then charged back into the fray. So sudden was the thrust that Mach didn’t have time to swing the cumbersome pole back into position. The dragon bit at it sidewise and chomped it in two.
Mach drew his axe. Suddenly he was worried; he hadn’t wanted to resort to this, because of the clos
e contact required. But apparently the dragon had forgotten to use the steam, and just charged in with jaws gaping.
Mach stepped aside, and bashed his axe violently down on the dragon’s nose as the jaws closed on the spot he had occupied. The stone blade sank into the right nostril, hacking through the flesh. Blood welled out.
But Mach was now on uncertain footing, and his step and blow had put him off balance. He took another step—and found no path. He splashed headlong into the water.
The dragon was thrashing, really hurt by the blow to its nose, but it remained alert enough to spot the sudden opportunity. It whipped its snout about to pluck Mach out of the water. Fleta screamed.
Without purchase on the path, Mach could not strike another blow, or even escape. He was helpless before those descending teeth.
“Without aplomb, bring me a bomb!” he sang with sudden inspiration.
Fog swirled. The bomb appeared in his hand. He heaved it into the opening mouth. In a moment it detonated.
The dragon paused, closing its mouth. Vapor seeped out between its teeth. Mach realized that he had again failed to conjure what he really wanted; the bomb had been a dud, or at least too small and weak to do the job. The one he had imagined would have blown the monster’s head apart.
The dragon lifted its head. Thick vapor jetted from its uninjured nostril. Its near eye bulged. The bomb had not really hurt it, but evidently the vapor bothered it. Mach remained in the water, watching.
Then he caught a whiff of the vapor. It was insect destructant! He knew the smell from the times he had visited one of the garden domes in Proton, where they had occasional insect infestations, and flooded the domes with this vapor. It was supposed to be harmless to larger creatures, but human beings tried to avoid breathing it.
Instead of a real bomb, he had gotten a bug-bomb. Now it was spewing its noxious vapor into the dragon’s mouth—and the dragon didn’t have the wit to spit it out!
In a moment the dragon plunged under the water, but a trail of evil-smelling bubbles showed that the monster still hadn’t let go of the bomb. Mach smiled as he clambered back to the path. His bomb had done the job after all!