12 - Weva

Flach held the seed. “Methinks I be best off in a bat form, with Alien,” he said. “Canst carry the seed, Sirel?”

The bitch lifted her nose, and took the seed gently from his hand. Then Flach became a bat. “We go together!” he called in the bat language to Alien. “Cling to Sirel, and let her go in. An we spy danger, we can guide her clear.”

They lit on the wolf’s back. Then Sirel stepped into the hole. She dropped only a short distance before landing firmly at the tunnel floor.

Now Flach’s ears confirmed what Alien’s had perceived. This was a curving passage, spiraling down below the Pole. Above, in the lighted hole, motes of dust hung motionless. They were living much faster now. He should have realized that it would not be identical to the situation at the North Pole. What point, slowing down, when they had so little time to forge the weapon against the invader?

Reassured by their contact, Sirel walked on down the tunnel.

Several loops down it broadened into a chamber, where there was light: at first dim glows from fungi, then brighter glows from lamps. As Sire! stood at the edge, there was a growl, coming from darkness beyond the chamber.

“Who dost thou be?” the growl demanded. Flach could understand it because of his years with the wolves.

But Sirel couldn’t answer, because she was holding the seed in her mouth. So Flach changed forms and assumed his wolf form, Barelmosi. “We be three, coming as directed to the West Pole,” he growled.

“Who dost thou be?” the growl repeated.

“I be Barelmosi, also known as the Unicorn Adept. With me are Sirelmoba, who be my Promised bitch, and Alien, o’ the vampire bats. Now, in fairness, tell us who thou dost be, and what thou dost demand o’ us.”

The other came in view. It was an animal head: a man with the head of a wolf. “I be but a servant o’ our cause: to save Phaze from being ravished. Hast brought the seed?”

“Aye.”

“Give it here, and follow.”

Flach, assuming human form, reached to take the seed from Sirel’s mouth, and carried it to the wolfman. The wolfman took it and turned to walk into the gloom at the far end of the chamber. They followed, Alien assuming human form. Sire! retaining bitch form. Flach wasn’t certain what was coming, and knew the other two were as nervous as he.

Soon they arrived at a deeper, brighter chamber, where a group of animal heads stood. Prominent among them was an elephant head. “Eli!” Flach exclaimed. Then he had a second thought. “Or be it thee? Thou dost look older.”

“We be all older,” Eli said. He used the language of the animal heads, which was a mixture of those sounds common to most of them; Flach understood it because he had learned a number of animal languages when he mastered the animal forms. Eli had helped his father Mach train in table tennis, before Flach’s birth, for an important game with his other self; the elephant head held the paddle with his trunk, and played marvelously well. Flach had come to know him in the past year, and liked him. “We be ten years in this den, preparing for thee.”

“But I saw thee nigh three months ago!” Flach protested. “With my sire, the Rovot Adept. Dost not remember?”

“I remember. But much o’ a month ago in thy time, we descended to this realm and fashioned o’ it the Pole Demesnes, that we might train thee and make the decoys. That be ten years, our time, and aye, we be older.”

“But thou must get out, then, before thou dost age too far!” Flach exclaimed, horrified. “Thou and thy companions!”

“Nay, Adept, not so! Our lives be as long as e’er, in our terms; we feel not the loss. We have been constructively busy, and now the region be nice for thee and thy companions. For thou must remain with us a time.”

“But came I here only to deliver the Hec seed! Needs must I do one more errand before I rest, so save the planet.”

“Aye. But this be part o’ thine errand. Thou must be trained here, three years.”

“Three years!” Flach exclaimed. “But the Magic Bomb will ravage the planet within six weeks! Five weeks.” For a week had passed since he had stood at the North Pole with wonderful Icy. Ah, the demoness-Don ‘i get distracted! Nepe snapped.

“Three years our time,” Eli clarified. “One week, outside. We be at gross velocity: an hundred and forty-four times norm. Well we know the outside limit!”

Flach looked at his companions, appalled. But as he did so he realized that their presence here was part of the plan, whose nature he did not understand. Certainly he had no reason to distrust EH.

“I must trust thine information,” he said. “We be at thy service.”

“First must we take thy companions to the laboratory,” the elephant head said.

“The laboratory?” Flach asked, upset again. “That be a science notion!”

“Aye, lad! We have rovots and computers here and the rest o’ science, but the wolf and bat must needs be fresh for our purpose.”

“What purpose?” Flach demanded. “I can suffer no ill to my friends!”

“Nor shall there be ill to any,” EH reassured him. “We but need tokens from their bodies, that we may craft what be needful.”

“Tokens?”

“We may not tell thee more now,” EH said. “For thou must go out again amidst the enemy, and the secret be not secure there. But thou shallst see they be not harmed. Now do the two o’ you come w’ me, while Flach takes his leisure at thine apartment. The wolf will show thee there, Adept.”

Sirel assumed girl form. “It be all right, my Promised,” she said to Flach. “We knew we came not here for naught. We will see thee presently.”

Flach watched them go with dismay. This was not at all what he had expected.

The wolf head guided him down another tunnel to a chamber that turned out to be very much like a Proton room. There was a video screen and a bed and a machine for dialing food. “I thank thee,” he said shortly to the wolf head, dismissing the creature. He felt like a prisoner.

Alone, he turned on the screen. It did not have any input from outside, unsurprisingly; the time barrier stopped that. It did have an assortment of canned entertainments and educational programs.

He turned it off, lay on the bed, and pondered. The North Pole must have been a similar warren, that he had never before his trip there known of or suspected; the elders were good at keeping secrets when they wanted to. That had been slow time, so if the Green and Black Adepts had gone there at the same time the animal heads came here, it would have seemed like only a few minutes, perhaps, though a month passed outside. Meanwhile, here, it had been ten years! Plenty of time to get it in shape for company.

But what were they going to do with fresh “tokens” from Sirel and Alien, and the Hectare seed? He had hoped to have the answer to prior riddles once he got here, but instead he was encountering only greater mysteries.

Disgruntled, he lay there for a time, and then he slept.

He woke as Sirel and Alien returned, both in human form. “See, we be fine!” she exclaimed. “It were but a bit o’ tissue from each, and we be done.” She changed to wolf form, and back, so that he could see she hadn’t changed.

“But we be captive here, for three years,” he reminded her.

“Whate’er it takes to free our realm,” she said brightly. She looked around. “This be like Proton!” She became Troubot, in straight machine form. “Exactly like Proton,” the robot said from a speaker grille.

Alien became his Proton self, ‘Corn, fully human. “Yes, it is true.” He returned to his Phaze self. “But methinks I prefer to sleep hanging from a rafter.” He reached up, took hold of a convenient plank, and became the bat. He flipped neatly over and caught the wood with his feet.

“And thee?” Flach asked Sirelmoba. “Dost thou be similarly satisfied?

“Aye,” she said. “Because I be with thee.”

His bad mood eased. It could indeed have been worse.

She joined him in the bed for the night, evidently feeling naughty, because in neither her machine nor wolf aspects did she use a bed. She tickled him, and the rest of his bad mood dissipated. She wasn’t exactly Icy, but she was his Promised, and in due course that would be far more significant than anything he had done with the demoness.

The three of them were kept so busy they hardly had time to be bored. They were subjected to a full program of education in all the things of Proton and Phaze, but especially in music. This amazed Flach again. He liked music, for in his unicorn form he was a natural musician, with the sound of the recorder. But why were they all being trained to be expert in different instruments?

“There must be reason,” Alien said philosophically, and Sirel agreed. Indeed, the two, who had not associated with each other much before, were turning out to be surprisingly compatible. Flach was the odd one out.

So, increasingly, for the classes, he turned the body over to Nepe, who was more patient about such things. That had another advantage: it attracted Alien’s attention, for he had always been sweet on Nepe. Thus Nepe was the center of attention, because Sirel’s other self Troubot liked her too.

One of the things they learned in detail was the scientific nature of Proton. For this all three of them assumed their Proton identities, because it was mind-bendingly complex in some aspects.

Proton seemed like a planet orbiting a star, but it was not. Not exactly, anyway. It was a black hole companion to the star, far smaller and denser than it seemed. The light from the star touched its shell and whipped around it to depart at right angles, leading to strange optical effects. The globe rotated on an axis pointed to the star, so that the South Pole should have been unbearably hot and the North Pole unbearably cold. They were hot and cold, respectively, but not to the degree they might have been, because of the bending of the light; the south got less and the north more than otherwise. The hemispheres of day and night were east and west, clearly demarked at the North and South Poles, where the line of their contrast actually crossed. That was what Flach had seen as a shadow over half the North Pole. That shadow slowly turned counterclockwise, with the clockwise rotation of the globe. At the South Pole the shadow would seem to turn clockwise. There was a complex explanation for just how the light of the sun appeared to be coming from above the equator when actually it was whipping around the tiny black hole inside the planetary shell, but they didn’t pay much attention to this. After all, magic made all kinds of illusions seem real. So at night they looked at the stars, not caring what devious route their glitters took. There was a chamber whose ceiling was one-way invisible, so that they could see the day and night skies, though no creature on the surface could see down into the Pole Demesnes. That was enough.

But a greater anomaly was the orientation of the two sides of it. Most planets, being round, had lands and seas extending all the way around, continuously. Thus they had no west or east poles. Proton had such poles—because they were the limits of the original curtain between its aspects. Beyond those Poles was Phaze, the other side of the planet. But this other side had not been apparent, because it was in the realm of magic. Proton and Phaze were similar geographically, and in their fundamental natures, but the laws by which things operated differed. Yet they remained connected, with the happenings and creatures of one tending to form alignment with the happenings and creatures of the other, as interpreted by their natural laws. Between the two had been the curtain, which few folk could cross. That curtain had wandered in seemingly curvaceous fashion across the planet, from East Pole to West Pole. But when a person crossed it, he crossed to the equivalent nexus on the other half of the planet. This had been the only effective connection between the universes of science and magic, for three hundred years.

When the Adept Clef merged the frames, he had in effect caused the magic hemisphere to slide around the planet to overlap the science hemisphere. Because they were fundamentally similar, they had been compatible, and the sets of selves had become individual folk with alternate natures. But this had changed the face of the planet. With its two sides merged, it lacked anything on the far hemisphere. Now there was nothing there.

That was why there was no reference to the far side of the planet. No one could go there, for anyone who stepped over the edge would fall into the black hole and never return. A short distance beyond the four Poles, the world ended. The old fear of Earthly navigators that they might sail off the edge of the flat world and be lost was valid here. Only on the doubled shell that was the residential continent with its peripheral waters was life possible.

The plan to save the planet (half-planet shell) was simple in essence, if not in detail. It was to slide the doubled shell around to the far side of the black hole, which was in the fantasy universe. Actually this wasn’t exactly a physical thing, because the shell already rotated around the black hole, making day and night feasible in their fashion. It was in relation to the aspects of the hole, which transcended normal physics. When the sides had been separate, the curtain had served as the crossing point from science to magic. Now there was no such avenue; a bit of the magic frame was caught within the science frame, so was accessible by other creatures of the science universe. That was the problem with the Hectare. But if the shell could be slid around to the fantasy frame, then it would be accessible by the creatures of the fantasy universe—and not by those of the science one. There might be horrendous magical menaces out there, but in the three hundred years the two sides of the planet had been parallel, the only exterior contact had been from the science side, so the magic universe seemed like a better bet.

But the playing of the Platinum Flute that had merged the shells would not be enough to slide them both around. It was a general rule of magic that a particular spell worked only once for a particular person; only creatures who had evolved with alternate forms could change them repeatedly. The merger spell had been used, and would not work again, even if that were the one needed. What was needed was a slide spell, of such power as to move half a world—and the device to summon such magic and control it did not exist. Neither did any person or creature with the ability to play it.

However, it had been ascertained that such a device could be crafted, in time, and that was being done. And a creature could be generated to play it—and that was being done. So the years necessary for each were being spent under the Poles. Only the proper elements were needed, at the right time—and this was what Nepe and Flach were coordinating.

“But why are we being trained to play music?” Nepe demanded.

“Two reasons,” the bear head in charge of the class growled. The three children had learned to understand all the animals well enough, as time passed. “First, there is a need for decoys, in case the Hectare catch on; they must not know which person or creature is the one who will play. Similar iridium flutes are being crafted, only one of which is magic, so that if any are destroyed, they will be decoys. Second, you may be needed to accompany the player, for it will be a complex tune. Your flutes may not be magic, but if they help support and guide the true flute, they are essential. You must play well enough to enable the true one to play perfectly, for the fate of the frames depends on this.”

Now they understood, and continued their practice with greater enthusiasm. The three, playing lovely iridium flutes together, generated quite pretty and intricate melodies. Nepe and Flach knew that they were not as good as Grandpa Stile or Blue, and certainly not close to the Adept Clef, but they could make the animal heads pause in whatever they were doing, to listen until the melody ended.

So the time passed, and they did not find it dull. The animal head children joined them in the classes, eager to learn about the outside realm they had never known. For a self-sustaining community had come here, complete families, giving up their lives on the surface. All to accomplish the plan to free Phaze from alien exploitation. It was apparent, if there had ever been doubt, that there was an enormous and dedicated complement involved, with Flach and Nepe only one little part. But if they failed, the entire effort would come to nothing.

Suddenly, it seemed, they were older. Sirel came into her first season. Flach would have been satisfied to wait indefinitely for it, so as to remain her Promised, but it was not to be. “I need you, Barel,” she said, and though he remained young—about eleven in human terms—he knew it was true. Indeed, her readiness was acting on him, making him mature, at least when in wolf form, rapidly.

They went into a private section of the “park”—a region of honeycombed tunnels where edible plants grew magically in twilight—and there as wolves accomplished in a moment what endless prior experimentation had not approached. Suddenly they were Wolf and Bitch, adults by the standard of that society, and their Promise was fulfilled. Never again would there be this between them; like brother and sister, they had only familial interest in each other, and their shared experience.

They assumed their human forms again, and found themselves still children. But now they knew that their innocence of childhood was over, and that stage by stage, inevitably, they would discard their fancies of youth and assume increasingly those of the adult state.

“Yet still we be friends,” Sirel reminded him wistfully.

“Aye,” he agreed. “Forever friends.” And he discovered that the thing he had feared was not actually a loss, but a portal; behind were the things of childhood, and ahead were the things of the adult state. If, for example, he were to travel again with the lovely demoness Icy, and she teased him with her luscious body again, wrapping her legs around him as she pretended to instruct him on the delights of his far future, he would have a potent response! But perhaps more likely, and more important, he could now orient on adult relationships, seeking that one who would share his future in the way his dam shared his sire’s. It was a dawning but exciting prospect.

Sirel evidently was having a similar realization. Their friendship had not suffered, it had merely changed its nature. They now understood each other and themselves and their culture in a more significant way.

Suddenly, it seemed, their tenure here was done. Three years had passed, and it was time to return to the normal realm, Flach had grown so accustomed to this society that he almost regretted it; there had been comfort in living with the animal heads, and he had made friends with the animal head children. But he had not forgotten his mission.

“Remember,” Eli warned him. “Outside it be but a week past. Thou willst have to hear thy third message, and do what it directs, whate’er it be; we know not.”

“But Sirel and Alien—what o’ them?” he asked.

“The main part o’ their missions were accomplished at the outset,” Eli said. “But an thy message tell thee to keep them with thee, then that must they do. An it be other, then they be free for their own devices—until thou dost need them at the end.”

“We would participate further in thy mission,” Sirel said, “an we can. But too would we remain with each other.” For after Sirel had achieved her maturity and abated the Promise, her interest in Alien had changed. The two had been friends; slowly they became more than friends. They could not relate intimately in their animal forms, but could in the human form, and it looked very like a rare wolf-bat romance. That could bring trouble with their subcultures, but after the robot-unicorn liaison that had generated Flach, acceptance might be easier.

“An I have a choice, will I keep ye two with me,” Flach said.

“And gi’en that choice, will we remain with thee,” Alien said.

So it was agreed. The three embraced, and made their preparations for departure. They bid farewell to the animal head children they had known so well for three years, and packed supplies, and of course their three iridium flutes.

They left by the same spiral passage they had arrived by; it was the only avenue to the regular realm. The Hectare stood guard as it had three years before, standing off the Pole. Eli had assured them that it was the same one; the animals had kept watch. That meant that the deal should hold. Indeed, as the three emerged and walked past, the creature took no seeming notice. But after they cleared the Pole and shut its lid, it moved across and stood over it again. That was signal enough.

They walked back to where the unicorns and semi-human companions had waited. They were there; the firefly was first to spy the approaching party and alert the others.

“But these are older!” Echo exclaimed.

“Three years older,” Flach agreed. “Time be changed, under the West Pole, as it be under the North Pole, only it accelerates. We have lived and grown.”

“It must be,” Lysander said, from his invisibility. “No one else has come, and the BEM has kept faith. In fact, it showed us the flag of truce and challenged us to a game; it had figured out where you came from. We declined, but we did talk to it, under that truce; we told it the stories of Phaze, and it told us the stories of the galaxy.”

“It be an honorable creature,” Flach agreed. “This guard duty must be boring for it, so once it lost the game, it took advantage of the situation to do something interesting.”

“Must needs we kill them, when we win?” Alien asked. “Methinks we could get along, an they be not in a position to despoil our world.”

“If you win, they will capitulate gracefully,” Lysander said. “But unless you have something exceedingly special, that I can not stop, you will Jose.”

“The more I learn o’ the Adepts’ plan, the more certain I become that there be something special,” Flach said. “But exactly what it be, I know not.”

“Maybe it is time for your third message,” Echo said.

“Aye. I hope I insult none here an I take that message alone; I know not whe’er it be secret from some or all but me.”

“Go by thyself,” Alien said. “Tell us what thou dost deem proper.”

Flach walked toward the ocean, sat in a hollow, and brought out the message capsule. It said, TAKE WEST POLE’S PRODUCT TO SOUTH POLE, WHEN.

He pondered that. He had gone to the North Pole, it turned out, to bring the Green and Black Adepts out at the proper moment; otherwise, in that slow time, they would not have emerged when they were supposed to. and the Magic Bomb would have been set wrong. So though the message had seemed inadequate, it had turned out to be all he had needed to know. The second message had told him to take the Hectare seed to the West Pole, and to go with those with him and four the wolves sent. Those with him—actually with Nepe—had been Lysander and Echo; the wolves had sent Sirel, Alien, and the two unicorns. Evidently the word had been spread before, for them to be ready for the call. It had all been set up, somehow, so that Flach and Nepe fell naturally into the pattern. Even the use of the enemy agent, Lysander, had turned out perfectly, suggesting that the prophecy had known very well what was to happen.

But they had just left the West Pole, and the only product they had was the decoy flutes. That didn’t seem to be enough. Those flutes could have been delivered by other means; they were useful only as decoys. Take decoys to the South Pole? That suggested that the action would be somewhere else. Yet it seemed most likely that the action would be with Flach, the only loose Adept, and Lysander, the person of the prophecy. How could they be elsewhere?

And it said WHEN. What did that mean? Not now? If so. how would he know when? He was baffled.

It’s a riddle, Nepe thought. How would that distressingly gorgeous ice maiden unriddle it?

Icy? She would instantly fathom the manner some seemingly unrelated factor factored in, and suddenly everything would make sense. She would point out the obvious, that Grandpa Stile/Blue had said it would take seventeen years to forge the counterweapon, and that time was accelerated under the West Pole so that one week outside was three years inside, so mat seventeen years inside would fit within six weeks outside, and—but of course that wouldn’t match, because in only another four weeks the Magic Bomb would emerge from slow time and destroy the planet.

To which objection she would say-That if the Pole was slow, and another fast, who could say what might be under the other two? Maybe slower—or faster. In which case those seventeen years could be accommodated!

But if one was faster, why wasn’t the whole thing done there? It didn’t seem to make much sense to set up at the wrong Pole! Because different things have to be done at different rates, Nepe thought, speaking for the imagined demoness. Like a recipe: it only works when the slow and the fast ingredients are mixed at the right moment.

It did seem to be making sense. But why hadn’t they been allowed to remain under the West Pole until the device was ready?

Because we’re part of the recipe, Nepe thought. We’re the icing, that has to wait far the cake to bake.

Well, maybe. So what were they to do meanwhile, since they didn’t know when the rest of it would be ready?

Wait for a signal. And that seemed to be it. They would know in the Pole community when their product was ready; they could send someone out to let Flach know.

Flach returned to the others. “I think I needs must wait here until I receive notice from those under the Pole that things be ready. Then will I have to make a very difficult trip. The rest of you may prefer to go home now.

“Forget it, Flach,” Echo said. “We didn’t wait here for you to come out just to desert you when you did. We’ll go with you until it seems we’re not supposed to.”

He looked at each of the others, including the spot where Lysander stood. The Hec agent would want to remain, certainly! All were certain; they had probably discussed this among themselves.

“Then I thank all of you,” he said. “We must wait here for word from under the Pole, if the Hectare guard allows.”

“The deal with the BEM had no time limit,” Lysander said. “Had you lost, you would have been permanently captive. You won, so you have permanent access. You three, not the rest of us. But you may entertain the guard while you wait, if you wish.”

So they entertained the guard, and themselves, by playing assorted games that were not for stakes. They played cards, and the monster learned quickly and well; it was able to remember every card played, and quickly calculate the changing ratios and odds, so that its advantage increased. Nepe played it several games of jacks, after they made the pieces out of local materials, and its eyes were so sure and its tentacles so dexterous that it quickly became unbeatable. They played guessing games, but its lack of local cultural knowledge handicapped it, just as Flach’s, lack of knowledge about Hectare conventions made some supposedly simple riddles impervious to his comprehension. But overall, they were all having fun, and the time passed quickly. In fact, Flach was getting to like the BEM, despite everything.

In this manner three weeks passed. Flach was getting worried; there was barely one week remaining of the grace period before the Magic Bomb erupted. Had he misjudged the situation? Was he supposed to go back inside the caves after all? Yet Eli had not told him that.

Then a creature emerged from the Pole cavern. It was a bat—which was odd, because there were no straight bats in that refuge. There was a bat-headed man, but if that man sired a child it would be another animal head, not a full animal.

Alien assumed bat form and flew to meet the other. They had an inaudible dialogue. Then they came together to join the gaming group.

Alien resumed boy form. Beside him, the other bat became a rather pretty red-haired girl of their own age. “This be Weva,” Alien said-“She comes to tell Flach to come inside for a day.”

Astonished, Flach stared at her. “Thou wast hiding in there, and we saw thee not?” But as he said it, he knew it could not be; she could have been only three years old when they left the cave. If she had hidden, it would have been arranged by her parents. Was she a throwback, one who had turned out a vampire bat instead of a bat head, her two forms separate instead of properly merged in the animal head way? That might account for it; now they used her as a messenger.

“I was kept apart,” Weva said. “By the time I was of age to school, thou was gone. But now I be thine age, and glad to meet thee at last- Willst come with me?”

“For a day? Dost mean here, or there?”

“A day here,” she said. “Four and a half months there.”

“What o’ my friends?”

“Only thou must come,” she said firmly. “Can they wait not one day for thee?”

“Aye, we can,” Sirel said, tugging at Alien’s arm to draw his attention away from Weva. She was frankly jealous, evidently realizing that his interest in her had been in the absence of a girl of his own species. Now one had shown up.

“This summons needs must be answered,” Flach said. “I will go with thee, and return in a day. outside time.” The Hectare was with the group, listening, but unconcerned; their truce covered everything, and only when they departed the pole permanently would it end. Then, of course, the BEM would report, and the chase would be on. But they had been careful not to mention the next mission to it.

Weva resumed bat form, and Flach followed her to the Pole. She flew down into it, and he jumped in after her.

Inside, he stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. Then he started walking down the spiral tunnel.

In a moment there was a growl of a wolf. Flach looked, his eyes adjusting. It was a full wolf, a nearly grown bitch, but not Sirel, who remained outside. He used his magic to assume wolf form, because he had learned that the splash of magic did not extend outside the caves; the time differential seemed to damp it out so that the Purple Adept would not be able to pick it up. “Who dost thou be?” he growled, for he had known of no werewolf here either.

“Thou dost know me not?” she inquired archly.

“I have seen thee ne’er before,” he replied, irritated. “Me-thought none but animal heads came to these caves.”

“Thou thought correctly,” she growled, amused.

She was teasing him, but not in a way he could quite fathom. He walked on down the spiral with her, not deigning to comment further. Eli would surely explain why these creatures had been hidden from him and Alien and Sirel, who would have been as interested as he in their presence.

“I must leave thee now, but the rovot will guide thee,” Weva said.

“Rovot?” he asked, surprised again. But she was gone.

Well, there were robots here; they took care of most of the menial chores and new construction. He turned the body over to Nepe, who hardened it into the aspect of a humanoid robot.

They came to the first nether chamber. There stood the other robot, and it was not a maintenance machine, but a humanoid specimen, of masculine gender. This was another surprise, because there had been no such machine in evidence in the three years they had lived here, and they thought they had come to know every member of the community. Obviously they had missed a lot.

“Who are you?” Nepe asked.

“I have a name,” the robot said. “But that is an approximation for convenience, and need not be employed.”

Which was a typical robot answer. “Are you self-willed?”

“I am.”

“Why didn’t I see you before?”

“That answer will be known in due course.”

Another robotoid response! Nepe walked on with it, toward the chamber where Eli normally stayed.

“I must separate from you now,” the robot said. “But a man will await you.”

The robot departed down a side tunnel. Nepe walked on, taking the opportunity to shift to her straight human form—and soon encountered a boy.

She stopped and stared. This was a full, complete, man-headed human being! Which was absolutely unlikely, here.

“Who are you?” she asked gamely.

“I am called Beman, but that tells only part of my story,” the young man said.

Nepe studied him frankly. He was a handsome youth, about her own age, with curly reddish hair and eyes that seemed almost to echo that color. She would have liked him better if less perplexed about his appearance here, though.

“How did you come here?” she asked.

“I was made here,” he replied.

“Oh—you’re an android!”

“Not exactly.” Like the others, he seemed amused.

“How many of you are there in this game?” she demanded suspiciously.

“As many as there are in yours.”

She walked with him, not satisfied with this answer. Something odd was going on, and evidently Eli and the animal heads were in on it. But what was the point, when they knew she had a mission to save the planet?

“I must leave you now,” Beman said. “But there will be one to make everything clear.”

“Thanks just oodles,” she said sarcastically.

Beman walked away, taking a side passage. Nepe pondered, then returned the body to Flach, who could change forms more readily than she could.

Flach, in his normal boy form, walked on to Eli’s cave. He would have the answer soon, or else!

But as he entered the elephant head’s cave, he came to a shocked stop. Within it stood not Eli, but a BEM—a complete Hectare!

How could the enemy be here, deep in the time-protected caves under the North Pole? Had the BEM they had gamed with betrayed them after all? No, that couldn’t be; Flach had come to know one and a half BEMs, in the guard and Lysander, and he believed in their sense of honor. Besides, this was something he had never seen before: a small BEM, only about two-thirds the apparent mass of the grown ones. A grown one would not have fit in the entrance hole.

How had a young BEM come here, when only adults had invested the planet? How could the animal heads have tolerated it? And how could it have happened recently, since Flach and his companions had been watching the entrance for a sign?

Then it came clear. “The Hec seed!” he exclaimed.

The monster slid a tentacle across a screenlike surface. Where it touched, a line appeared. It wrote an answer in script: YOU BROUGHT ME, FLACH.

“But why do we need a BEM?”

I DO NOT KNOW.

“They raised thee here from seed, somehow, though Hectare cannot grow away from their native planet?” But obviously it was so. “Thou dost be what I were supposed to—thou dost be the West Pole’s product?”

SO IT SEEMS.

“But the vamp girl, Weva, said I had to be inside for a day— which be four months here. That be not what—“

Flach broke off. Something so truly amazing was breaking across his mind that his mouth fell open.

Nepe filled it in for him, as flabbergasted as he. The werewolf, the vampire—WErewolf, VAmpire—WEVA. They are the same! And Beman must be BEM and ANdroid. They are all the same!

“Just as we are,” Flach agreed, awed. “Male, female, robot, animal—where we’re unicorn, they’re—“

I THINK NOW YOU KNOW ME, the Hectare wrote.

“Change with me,” Flach said. He became a wolf.

The Hectare became a wolf.

“But you’re a bitch!” Flach growled.

“Aye,” she growled, and assumed the girl form.

Flach became a bat. The other became a female bat. “An thou desirest a male, needs must I turn straight human,” she said in bat talk.

Flach became Nepe. The other became Beman.

“And one of your forms is a BEM!” Nepe breathed. “Who could have believed it!”

“It was done in the laboratory,” Beman said. “As I understand you were, before you merged with Flach. Can we be friends?”

“We’d better be!” Nepe exclaimed. “We don’t want to be enemies!”

“Especially since you must teach me magic,” Beman said.

Nepe turned over to Flach. “Magic!” he exclaimed.

Weva appeared. “Please?”

“That’s what the four months is for?”

“Aye, Flach. Eli says it needs must be, but only thou be Adept. He says I can learn, but there be none but thee to teach me.”

That was surely true! Anyone could learn magic, but most folk had only slight talent for it, while those who became Adept had great talent. It wasn’t safe for ordinary folk to try too much, because the Adepts quickly cut down anything that seemed like potential competition in their specialties. But a person with aptitude, tutored by an Adept, could learn relatively rapidly. Flach himself had been close to Adept level by age four, but that had been his secret, and Grandpa Stile’s. If she had the ability to learn, he could teach her a lot in four months.

“But thou dost be part BEM!” he protested.

“Aye, Flach. But three parts human, as be thou.”

Through her werewolf, vampire, and android components, he realized; each of those was one part human, one part other. His own human heritage stemmed from his unicorn dam and his two human grandparents. Because he had more human shares than any other, he regarded himself as human, despite his title of Unicorn Adept, but he could assume any of the aspects of his lineage. The same would be true for Weva. “Aye,” he agreed.

“I thank thee for thine understanding,” she said, and kissed him.

It was a supposedly innocuous gesture, but it electrified him. The revelation of her nature was still amazing him, on a lower level of his consciousness: she was an aspect of a creature like himself, with his own potential. But superficially she was a pretty girl, much like Sirel. It had been a year since Sirel had come to her maturity, and brought him to his, in their wolf forms, but the knowledge of the change in their status still thrilled and appalled him. He was ready to relate to a girl—to a woman on the adult level, but there had been none to relate to. Now, suddenly, there was, and she was much more than he had dreamed possible. Perhaps her kiss was innocent for her, but it was not for him.

“Aye,” he repeated.

He taught her magic. She was quick to learn. They found that what Weva could do, Beman could not, though he was her male aspect. Weva derived from cells taken from Sirel—which accounted for her similarity to Sirel, making her a person he could like, without having to give her up the moment it got serious— and Alien. These were creatures of Phaze, the magic realm, and magic was in them. But Beman derived from human, robot, and Hectare elements, which were scientific, and they related well to the things of science and not to the things of magic. The animal heads had evidently taken care to educate Beman in Proton speech, to clarify the distinction.

Nepe was curious about the way Beman could assume a full robot form instantly; her robot forms were all emulations, without her flesh actually becoming metal, but his seemed to be genuine metal. But he could assume only the humanoid robot form, while she could adopt any form she chose. The two compared notes, and discussed things of science, while Flach and Weva tuned out, bored. It seemed that Flach and Weva were the naturally sexed forms, while Nepe and Beman were emulations from neuter stock. The rule of no true male-female composite was being maintained.

But mostly it was Flach because of the need to cover the magic. Weva learned to conjure, and to fashion animate clouds, and to assume forms that were not in her ancestry. Thus she could become a machine that was not a humanoid robot, though her other self could not. She had to use a different spell each time, but she built up a collection of spells for such purpose, just as Flach had done in the past. Her new forms were not as realistic or functional as his, but in time they would become so. She was, after all, only twelve years old, and new to this.

Betweentimes, they talked, their dialogues becoming more intimate as their knowledge of each other progressed. “I be glad indeed that thou hast come on the scene,” Flach said. “But what I fathom not is why thou didst have to have a BEM component. The BEMs be our enemies.”

“I be part BEM,” she agreed. “But I be not thy enemy, Flach, and ne’er can be. I serve this planet and this culture, and if it be not freed, then will I perish with it and thee.”

“That I know. Yet what can a BEM do that we o’erwise could not? I think this be not part o’ the prophecy.”

“Nay, it be part o’ thy sire’s plan, and thy grandsire’s plan,” she said. “And that we shall fathom not till thou dost convey me to the South Pole.”

“Aye. Would I could show thee Proton on the way there, but I dare not. Needs must we go direct, when we go.”

They also played the flutes. She had been trained in music, as had the three of them, and had her own iridium flute. She was good with it, too—better, in fact, than he. “Well, I had more time, she said. “From age three on, did I train with it, though not by choice. But I think it be more than that.”

“More than training?” he asked. This business of the flutes still perplexed him. Why should they all have to play them, when not one of them could touch the expertise of the Adept Clef? “Be thine the magic flute?”

“Nay, I can play thine as well as mine.” She exchanged flutes with him, and they verified that they were the same.

“Then what?” he asked, covertly annoyed at being out-skilled.

“It be my BEM component,” she explained. “The BEMs be apt in coordination, because o’ their many tentacles and eyes. Beman’s BEM aspect can play best o’ all.”

“That would I like to hear,” Flach said, intrigued.

The BEM appeared. The sight no longer startled Flach; he had become familiar with it, and his interaction with the guard outside had prepared him. Beman was no monster to him, in any form.

The BEM lifted the flute and fastened an air hose to it, so that the stream of air passed across the mouthpiece and caused a sustained note. Then it applied tentacles to the holes and keys, and played.

The sound was phenomenal. Flach had heard his Grandfather Stile play, and knew that on all the planet only one was better. That was the Adept Clef, whose sound was magical, figuratively and literally. In unicorn form, with his recorder horn, Flach could play very well, because it was natural to that form. The recorder was a form of the flute, with a mellower sound, and this gave him an advantage when, in human form, he played the flute. He played it very well. Thus it had been a surprise when Weva had turned out to be better, since she had no unicorn component. But now he understood that her BEM component was indeed the source of that talent. The BEM might be doing a mathematical translation, and not have any particular feeling for the spirit of the music, but its technical expertise was superlative. Weva, with animal and human components, supplied the feeling the BEM might lack, and so even her relatively clumsy human fingers had marvelous skill.

Flach took his own flute and joined in, after a few bars, playing extemporaneous counterpoint. The music was beautiful, but he had to stop soon, because the magic was gathering. The BEM had no magical power, and its music was merely sound, but Flach could summon magic when he played, and it was dangerous to do that without turning it to some particular task.

Weva reappeared in mid note- “Teach me that!” she exclaimed.

He had assumed she realized how he used music. He realized that there was more to cover. They got to work on it.

In all too brief a span, their “day” was done, and it was time to go back out into the ordinary realm and make the journey to the South Pole. There, they hoped, the mystery of their mission would be clarified at last.

13 - South

Lysander remained uncertain whether he was doing the right thing. So far he seemed to be forwarding the cause of the enemy more than that of the Hectare. Yet what else was he to do? The members of the planetary resistance knew his mission, and allowed him along only so long as he was useful to them. If he balked, they would drop him. If he turned them in, the secret plan they were implementing would never be discovered, for they themselves did not know it.

So he went along, knowing that the cunning child Nepe/Flach was using him. But he had one saving hope: that the prophecy they believed in was valid, and that only he could in the end give the natives their victory. That meant that their effort would fail without his participation and cooperation, which they could not in the end buy. Their magic had been effective in causing him to love Echo, but that love would not make him abandon his mission. So he retained the trump card, and eventually they would have to give him the chance to play it.

Unless this whole business of the prophecy was a lie, to make him cooperate. Yet that seemed unlikely, because their entire framework was marvelously consistent; everything they had told him had turned out to be true. Even the matter of the spell of invisibility: why make your enemy invisible, giving him enhanced power to snoop on you, unless you really need him? Why make one of your own partisans love him, unless you expect him to join your side?

Actually, the invisibility was wearing off now. He could see himself, translucent. So he now wore clothes, and smeared dirt on his extremities, making himself completely visible; it was better than the halfway state. It remained impressive enough, as magic: a single quick spell lasting for two weeks before beginning to weaken. He had no doubt that Flach could have changed him into a toad with similar longevity.

He stroked Echo as she lay beside him, sleeping. Her body was a machine powered by a pellet of Protonite, but her brain was living human, and it did need sleep. When it slept, the rest of her system shut down, and she was responsive only to significant physical shocks. His touch meant nothing to her now. In addition, his love for her was artificial, brought about by magic. But it was authentic. The magic had somehow reached into whatever senses his android body had, and his Hectare brain, and made those connections that natural love would have, and done them more securely than nature would have. A person who was killed by artificial means was just as dead as one who died of natural causes; similarly, his love was just as thorough.

It was interesting, though, that the love spell was not wearing off the way the invisibility spell was. Perhaps they were different kinds of spells. But it was possible that the spell was wearing off—only to be replaced at the same rate by natural love. He might be able to work his way out of love if he tried, by magnifying any doubts that seeped in. But he didn’t care to try; there was no reason, when he enjoyed the emotion so much.

Would he have to give her up, when the time to implement his mission came? He was very much afraid he would. He felt grief for the action he knew he would take, betraying her along with the rest. But his discipline as a Hectare required it, and in this respect their effort of making him love a native woman had been wasted. It would not make a traitor of him. He did love her, but he loved honor more, for that was inherent in his Hectare nature. Never in all the history of the Hectare species had one of them betrayed its agreement on even the slightest matter. The protocols of honor were refined to a degree virtually incomprehensible to other species. Thus the Hectare guard, having made a deal with the enemy, honored it in letter and spirit, absolutely. True, it was betraying its species in the process—but had it won the wager, it would have helped its side similarly significantly. The protocols allowed for this; as long as the wager was fair, and the stakes equivalent, it was legitimate.

Lysander’s mind reflected on the name, Hectare. This was actually a translation of a concept obscure to aliens. There was a human geographic measure termed the “meter,” which was about one man’s pace. In two dimensions, this became a square meter. One hundred square meters were an “are,” and a hundred ares constituted a “hektare” or “hect-are,” or ten thousand square meters. One BEM eye facet could track approximately one square meter at a distance, and the full eye complex could track, individually, approximately ten thousand such units. The massive brain could integrate that information and coordinate response, limited only by physical factors. Since there were not ten thousand tentacles capable of firing ten thousand laser beams simultaneously, this was a limit; with computer assistance, such coordination was feasible, and a BEM in a spaceship could indeed fire at ten thousand enemies and score on each. So the name seemed appropriate as an indication of the capacity of the species. The natives of this planet had seen only a fraction of the BEM potential. That was why the guard had no concern about the visitors to the West Pole; it was aware that they might lack the protocols of honor, but it could laser all of them well before any one of them could pull the trigger on a hand weapon. Lysander had spoken truly, as he had to, when he advised them that gaming was the only way past this guard.

There was a stir, and the bat and wolf appeared. They preferred to forage at night, and perhaps more; it was obvious that the two were quite taken with each other in their human forms. They were each twelve now, having aged three years under the Pole, and had evidently come to know each other well there. Flach, once interested in Sirel, seemed to be so no longer, though she was blossoming into an attractive young woman. They no longer spoke of their Promise.

Meanwhile, the two old unicorn mares grazed nearby, taking turns napping as they did. He had apologized to Belle for his part in her branding; had she not tried to help him escape, the first time, she would not have suffered that. But Flach had made minor magic and smoothed out that brand, and Lysander suspected that the Robot Adept had managed to eliminate the record of the brand number from the planetary listing, before sacrificing himself to help Lysander again. The Hectare was formidable, but so was the enemy, in its devious way. Which, once again, was vindication of the importance of Lysander’s own mission: to discover just how formidable the enemy was. The Hectare, long experienced in alien relations (i.e., conquest), knew better than to assume that a quick capitulation was final.

These were all enemy creatures, here by the Pole, yet he found them compatible. It would be a pleasure to be a part of their magical society. Perhaps this, too, was an aspect of their plan: to instill in him a sense of their values and pleasures, so that he would identify with them and choose to join them. But as with the love, it was only partly effective: it gave him desire, but would not subvert his loyalty to his mission.

It was a shame that all this would have to be destroyed, in the interests of the larger initiatives of the galaxy. But it was not his business to consider shame, only his mission.

Lysander relaxed and slept.

Abruptly the lid lifted and two bats flew out. They came to land beside the little group playing a game of poker with the Hectare. The BEM had a pile of pebbles: its winnings for the session. It was an infallible player, understanding all the odds and values; only an adverse fall of the cards could reverse it on occasion. Sirel, playing as Troubot, could remember and figure as accurately as the BEM did, but lacked the finesse to bluff well. The Hectare was matchless at this type of game, as Lysander had tried to warn them. But of course they were not playing for genuine stakes, just the sheer challenge of it. In this the wolf and bat and harpy were one with the BEM: they were enamored of challenge. It was a satisfactory foursome.

Flach and the girl Weva replaced the bats. They looked slightly older than before, because they had aged more than four months in that one day.

“Needs must we travel,” Flach said. “Canst complete the game soon?”

“Aye,” Alien said. “We know the outcome already. Methinks Bern could hold the deck’s weakest hand, and bluff to victory anyway.”

Flach faced the Hectare. “Our sojourn here be done,” he said. “We thank thee for honoring our deal, and on the morrow thou mayst report us an thou choosest.”

The monster extended a tentacle, turning the tip down. It would not report them. Lysander knew that some might assume that was because such a report would bring difficulties to the Hectare, because obviously it should have reported them at the outset. But when a Hectare made a deal, it honored the deal, to the last degree. As far as this one was concerned, they had never been here. Meanwhile, it had turned a dull guarding stint into great entertainment. Its situation was akin to Lysander’s own: in the performance of his mission he had had a month of the delights of love.

“Were we not enemies, Bern, we could be friends,” Sirel said, laying down her cards.

The tentacle extended, tip up. Sirel extended her little finger and touched the tip. For a moment finger and tentacle curled together, linking. Then she turned and walked away.

That seemed to cover it. They walked to their campsite and cleaned it up. They had kept it largely clear, in case Purple or some other Hectare showed up, forcing them to hide in a hurry.

The two unicorns trotted in. Lysander and Echo mounted. Flach assumed unicorn form himself, and had Sirel mount him, while Weva resumed bat form. Alien also took bat form. It was now a party of three unicorns, three human beings, and two bats, as far as an observer was concerned.

What had happened in Flach’s second stint under the Pole, and why was the bat girl Weva now joining their party? Where were they going? Lysander hoped to find out soon. Time was getting short, as he understood it; the enemy plan had to manifest soon, if it was going to.

They rode east, and forged across the water to the mainland, the two bats scouting the way. This time the unicorns swam, following Flach’s lead, leaving their riders in place. They reached the shore and resumed trotting, not pausing to shake themselves dry.

Flach sounded his horn, speaking to the others in horn talk. Abruptly they veered to the south. So it was not to be a return to the city. But where were they going?

The unicorns picked up speed, running with that same endurance as before. There must have been more magic to enhance them.

Then, in a forest glade, the Unicorn Adept drew to a halt. Sirel dismounted, and Flach appeared in human form. “It be far where we go,” he said. “We can make it not in time afoot. Thus will I conjure us—and bring upon us the awareness o’ Purple. O’ this party, four will be decoys, conjured away in due course for Purple to pursue. I tell none where we go, so that they can tell not our plans when they be captured. Any who be captured must cooperate fully with the captors, so they be not tortured. Methinks the BEMs have no interest in cruelty, merely in securing the planet, and Purple has desire for power, not pain. So make no heroics.”

He paused, then nodded to Weva, who assumed her girl form. She produced a shining metal flute and began to play it. She was good; in fact she was excellent. Her tune was eerie, but strikingly beautiful. Lysander marveled at this; how had she carried the instrument while in bat form? The thing surely outweighed the bat body, as it was fashioned of silver—no, platinum, or iridium, to match the flutes Alien and Sirel had obtained under the Pole. The famed Platinum Flute had merged the frames—but what was the purpose of these iridium flutes? The metal was hardly plentiful, even in the elfin mines; it must have taken great effort to mine it and refine it and fashion it into these instruments. Certainly those flutes were a key to the major ploy of the resistance.

The air around them seemed to intensify. Lysander was reminded of the ripple he had seen when he had realized his love for Echo, the magical splash of Phaze. He understood that some Adepts used music to somehow summon magic. But how could a vampire bat girl not yet thirteen years old do this? She was no Adept!

There was also the mystery of Weva s appearance. Alien and Sirel had said little about their stay under the Pole, but he had gathered that there was a community of animal-headed human beings there, who had taught things like flute playing. There must be some other creatures too. such as vampire bats. Had Flach brought this party all the way here to pick up one bat girl? If so. then she had to be vital to the Adepts’ plan. But so far he was unable to make sense of it.

Flach gestured. The ambience caught them and wrenched them as a group, as if a huge invisible hand was sweeping up people and unicorns together. The surroundings changed.

Lysander blinked. This was not the first time Flach had conjured him from place to place, but the power of the present case seemed to be of a different order. He looked around, and saw a huge range of mountains rising nearby, their slopes purple.

The Purple Mountains! The boy had transported them halfway across the continent!

Flach resumed unicorn form, and Weva returned to bat form. The two led the way on toward the mountains, and the others followed without question. This time they were not trotting, they were galloping, racing as if desperate.

Theoretically, the Purple Adept would spy the massive conjuration, and zero in on them, summoning whatever help he needed to make them captive. Maybe he would alert the Hectare, who would orient a spy beam from an orbiting ship, and stun them from afar. It hardly mattered where on the planet they were; the Hectare could reach them, once their location and nature were known. But would the focus be on the place they had left, or the place they arrived? If the former, there would be no threat, for they could have gone anywhere. They seemed actually to have proceeded southeast. What was there here near the Purple Adept’s home that was important?

A light flashed behind. Lysander looked back. He had his answer: that was a satellite beam, probing the spot where they had landed after the conjuration. Purple was alert, and was able to locate the point of arrival, and was notifying the Hectare. It had taken only about five minutes for them to zero in on the L spot.

But in that five minutes the unicorns had covered a fair stretch of ground, moving as no horse could. They were perhaps three kilometers from their landing, and in this forested terrain that was enough. The beam would not be able to spot them.

But the beam was only the start. Now there was the sound of an aircraft, that must have taken off from the closest airport the moment the notice was received. The thing appeared in the sky, flying from east to west, passing on out of sight in a moment They were broadening the search, trying to canvas the region around the point identified by the beam. They would be taking pictures, checking for any sign of the fugitives. The pictures would be checked by computer, and in minutes their verdict would be in.

“Flach, they’ll spot us,” Lysander called. “Maybe you don’t know what technology can do, but—“

The unicorn pulled up. Sirel slid off, and Flach reappeared. “Off, you two,” he said.

Lysander and Echo dismounted with alacrity as Weva resumed girl form and began playing her flute. The music was transcendentally beautiful. Maybe this was her purpose here: she was highly trained on the instrument, and could use it to summon the powerful magic Flach required for his heavy-duty conjurations.

“Farewell, Belle,” Flach said sadly. “Farewell, Grandam Neysa. May we meet again in better fettle.”

The two unicorns sounded their horns, bells, and harmonica together, acknowledging. Then Flach gestured, and with a clap of shimmering force the two were gone.

Weva ceased playing, and the magic ambience faded.

“An I may ask, where be they now?” Sirel asked, evidently as impressed as Lysander was.

“Nigh the Red Demesnes, running toward the East Pole,” Flach replied. “They be first decoys, to lead the pursuit astray. Thou and Alien be second decoys.”

“Then let me bid thee bye now,” Sire! said. She approached Flach, and embraced him. “Thou wast my Promised, and ne’er will I forget thee though I see thy taste for bats be similar to mine.” She kissed him.

Similar to his. Lysander realized that she meant that she was finding love with one of the vampires, and that Flach was too. It seemed an accurate observation. But it was impossible to tell for sure where the young man’s heart was; Weva could be merely a business associate.

“Ne’er ano’er like thee, for me,” Flach said. “I would have left thee not, an the choice had been mine.”

“Aye,” she agreed. “But all must grow and change. We be not four years old fore’er.”

“Alas, we be not,” he agreed. They separated, and Lysander saw tears on both their faces. Whatever these two had been to each other, it had been important. Their separation seemed amicable, and with a certain mutual regret, though both did have other prospects.

“Now needs must we cross the mountains,” Flach said. “I will carry Lysander; others may use natural forms.”

“I can climb by myself,” Lysander said.

“We be in a hurry,” Flach told him, and became the unicorn.

Lysander mounted, knowing better than to argue the case further. Sirel turned wolf, and the two bats reappeared. Echo became Oche the harpy.

The unicorn leaped forward, so that Lysander had to hang on. The two bats flew ahead, the harpy following more clumsily but still moving well enough. The wolf disappeared into the brush. In a moment this looked like a party of two: man and steed.

They reached the base of the mountain range. Flach galloped up the slope, dodging around trees and thick brush. The pace was amazing; Lysander realized that the boy must have enhanced his strength magically, because no natural unicorn should be able to move at this velocity with a rider. Indeed they were in a hurry!

A bat flashed ahead, evidently returning from some exploration. The unicorn turned to follow it into a depression cut by a mountain rill; the bed was dry now, and easier to traverse than the thickly wooded main slope. They plowed on through the saplings and slushy spots.

Lysander noticed that steam rose from the wet spots when the unicorn’s hooves touched them. Occasionally a spark was struck from a rock as a hoof hit it. Those hooves were burning hot! That must mean that the unicorn was dissipating excess heat through the hooves, rather than by sweating, for the hide was dry. Certainly there was plenty of heat being generated, because of the breakneck pace of this climb. Indeed, now he saw a thin flicker at the animal’s nostrils, that resembled the jet of a blowtorch. This creature could breathe fire, when exercised!

They climbed to a narrow pass and started down the south side. It looked as though there were a path to the side, but Flach didn’t seek it; he followed the guidance of the bats, finding natural openings instead. Lysander realized that the path might be watched, so it had to be cross country.

Through the foliage of the trees he saw down the mountainside, south. It opened into a dull, bare, slightly rolling plain which looked as hot as the unicorn’s hooves and breath. Could that be where they were going? What could be there?

It was odd that there were no great stirrings of wild creatures here, as they charged through. No harpies, no tusked boars, no aggressive serpents. Lysander had understood that there could be real danger for someone who came carelessly through the wilderness. But he realized that this was not just anyone; this was the Unicorn Adept, and he had magic that could probably pulverize any creature. Also, all of Phaze might know the nature if not the detail of his mission, and give him clearance to pursue it. For Lysander alone this trip would be dangerous, but it wasn’t that way in this company.

Another Hectare aircraft zoomed by. The search of this vicinity was resuming. That meant that they had caught the unicorns and discovered the ruse, and were now picking up where the prior search had left off. The two mares had bought them perhaps two hours, and the party had made excellent use of the time. Lysander would not have believed the progress they had made, if he had not participated in it.

They continued on down, evidently trying to get beyond the mountains. Indeed this seemed wise, because now the range began to rumble and shake. The Purple Mountains were, after all, the Purple Adept’s home range, and he had greater power here than elsewhere. No wonder Flach wanted to get past this region quickly! Lysander had thought this trip safe; he had forgotten about the pursuit.

Geysers of steam issued from the opening cracks. Rocks rolled down slopes. The mountains were coming alive, geologically, and soon they would be deadly. The moment the Purple Adept figured out the exact position of the intruders, things would get difficult indeed.

Flach sounded a single short note. Immediately the others came in close. The unicorn stopped, and Lysander slid to the ground. It was a relief; the bareback ride was chafing and fatiguing.

Flach reappeared. “Decoys,” he said.

Weva turned girl again, with her flute, and played her eerie, lovely melody. The other bat and the wolf became human and stood there, holding hands. The magic gathered.

Flach gestured, and the two were gone. “Where—?” the harpy screeched.

“To the Brown Demesnes,” Flach replied. “But this be not enough; the ships will watch here also. Thou must come with me, Oche; Lysander goes with Weva.”

Lysander realized that Weva had not stopped playing her flute when the conjuration was complete, this time. The magic was still being summoned, and fairly crackled in the air around them. He walked over to stand beside the bat girl. They must be getting close to their destination.

Suddenly the scene changed. Lysander discovered himself standing on the plain he had seen before, with the red-haired girl standing beside him.

“He conjured us here?” he asked, though the answer was obvious. “Why? Where are we going?”

“To the South Pole,” she said. “Get a move on thee, man; it be far.” She started walking south.

“Far? It must be thousands of miles! We can’t walk there!”

“Mayhap we can ride a dragon, then,” she said. “Yon creature winds us now.”

Lysander looked. She was right: a dragon was sniffing in their direction. This hot region was the dragon’s natural breeding ground, it seemed. There wasn’t usually much prey here, but it was comfortable for the creatures as a resting area, and they could readily fly over the mountains for their hunting. However, they surely would snap up any creatures foolish enough to enter dragon country.

Suddenly it occurred to him that his usefulness to the planetary resistance effort might be over, and that he had been sent out here to die. The bat girl was hardly in danger; she could change form and fly away after verifying his death. Yet why should Flach have gone to such trouble to bring him this far, if that was the case? It would have been easier to dump him elsewhere.

“There be one!” Weva said. “Hurry!”

“What?” But she was already hurrying to the side.

He ran after her. She stopped at a small knob in the sand. “Pull it up. Quick!”

Lysander took hold of the knob and hauled on it. It was heavy, but it did come up, and with it a section of the ground. It was another trapdoor entrance to a tunnel or a cave!

“But it may be changed time!” he protested.

“Wouldst face the dragon instead?” she demanded as she scrambled down.

The dragon seemed quite ready to try the case; it was half running, half flying toward them, jets of smoke issuing from its snoot.

Lysander jumped down into the hole. His feet landed on a sloping surface, and he sat down. The surface leveled out quickly, and he was able to reach out and haul the lid closed before the dragon arrived.

There was light farther down. He crawled through to it, and found Weva there, in a chamber similar to the one he had shared with Echo, opening a chest. “We be in luck,” she said. “They left food.”

“Who left food? I thought there was nothing but dragons here!”

“Goblins, belike, or mayhap trolls. When they travel, they like rest stops, so they space them through. Methinks they will mind not our borrowing it.”

He could hear the dragon snuffling above, looking for the vanished prey. It was apt to be a while before it was safe to emerge. They might as well eat.

She handed him a chunk of dark bread, and bit into a similar chunk herself. “I would know thee better, Lysan,” she said.

She abbreviated his name the same way Flach/Nepe did. Suddenly he had a suspicion. Nepe could assume any form; was she up to something? Had he been deceived about whom he traveled with? Yet what would be the point? It seemed best to play it straight.

“I am curious about you, too, Weva,” he said. “I shall be happy to trade information while we wait and eat.”

“Aye, fair,” she agreed. “I be more than I may seem to thee. But before I reveal that, I would play with thee.”

“Play with me? A game? I know a number, as I am a games-man.”

She laughed. “Nay, ‘Sander! I mean as Echo does.” She shrugged out of her simple robe, showing a figure that was slender but aesthetically appealing. She was young, but woman rather than child. “Only go slowly, and explain, for I have done this not before.”

She had caught him entirely by surprise. “Then I have to say that such play is not so direct,” he said. “I have a commitment to Echo, and I love her, and have neither desire nor intent to have any similar relationship with any other woman. I’m sure that in due course you will be able to find a suitable vampire bat boy, after this crisis is over, if the planet survives.”

“I be not exactly a bat girl,” she said. Suddenly there was a wolf bitch in her place.

Not Nepe—but Flach, magically changing to his other forms! But to what point? “I don’t understand.”

“I be a creature o’ the West Pole,” Weva said, reappearing. “All my life, nigh thirteen years, I be ‘mongst the animal heads. They be good folk, but none can assume full man form. So I would try it with a full man.”

“I’m not a man!” Lysander protested. “I’m an android, with an alien brain.” If this was a variant of Flach/Nepe, this was no news; if it really was a girl of the Pole, the news would not hurt at this stage.

“Aye,” Flach said. “But thou dost be more human than I.”

“I think not. My brain is Hectare.”

“Then see this.” Suddenly there was a Hectare in her place.

Lysander gaped. The thing was genuine! He knew the details of the species and this was true in every particular.

“Illusion!” he exclaimed. “You are fooling me with illusion!”

The Hectare extended a tentacle. Lysander touched it, expecting to feel a human finger instead. But it was real, unless the illusion extended also to touch.

This was a challenge. He remembered how he had tried to verify Jod’e, in the early game. How could he verify this?

By the codes. The patterns were inherent; Hectare used them to communicate in the planted stage, before they developed sonics. A tentacle could tap the ground, communicating with other rooted individuals, exchanging information.

He tapped the floor with a knuckle and a heel, in the GREETING, STRANGER pattern.

Two tentacles tapped in response: ACKNOWLEDGMENT, STRANGER.

It was a valid response!

The tentacle tapped again. YES, I AM GENUINE. I AM THE SEED YOU BROUGHT FROM THE CITY.

Suddenly it fell into place. They had grown a Hectare hybrid! They had merged it with bat, wolf, and human stock, all of which had been brought to the Pole.

“I believe you,” he said, awed. “But what is the point?”

Weva the girl reappeared. “I have told thee much about me. Dost not feel thou shouldst respond in the manner I asked?”

“I will tell you all you wish to know about me. But as I said, my love is elsewhere.”

“That can I change.” She brought out her flute, played it briefly, and gestured. “Now that love be gone.”

“Of course it isn’t!” he exclaimed. “You can’t just—“

But he had to stop, for he realized it was true. He no longer cared particularly for Echo.

“You have a potion?” he asked. “A null-love potion?”

“Nay, merely mine Adept magic skill- Wouldst prefer I make thee love me?” She lifted her flute.

“No! Please!” He realized that he was in the presence of a creature who could twist him any way it chose, and it frightened him. “I see you have power, but I ask you not to use it on me further. Just tell me what you want of me.”

She nodded. “I see we understand each other. I would convert thee to our cause—the cause o’ Phaze—for I be a creature o’ Phaze. But Flach tells me the prophecy would be invalidated then, so this may not be. I ask thee only this: e’en as I spare thee humiliation and loss o’ forced love, though I could do these without stopping the prophecy, so must thou consider carefully whe’er thy side be the correct one.”

“I am a Hectare agent. I must fulfill my mission.”

“Yet there may be ways and ways to see thy mission. Canst keep thy mind open to that extent?”

“I can try. But—“

“Then let us go from here; it be time.” She pulled her robe back up and crawled toward the entrance.

He crawled after her, his mind whirling. This creature—part bat, part wolf, part human, part Hectare—was indeed something special! Thirteen years in the making, but only a little over a month in his time. He had helped Nepe get the Hectare seed, never dreaming how it would be used! Now Weva combined the Hectare intellectual power with the human imagination and the Adept magic. She was surely the tool the Adepts intended to use against the Hectare investment. But how could she change anything? And how was Lysander needed to complete it?

Thirteen—and she had tempted him sexually, just to demonstrate her power, it seemed. She had convinced him; there was no way he could oppose her directly. He had demurred mainly on instinct, in effect capitulating and begging for mercy. Now in his mind’s eye he saw her slender body nested in the open robe, her nascent but well-formed breasts. It would have been easy to, as she put it, play with her, despite his relation with Echo.

Echo! Weva had deprived him of his love for Echo—and now there was a void. He was out of love!

Weva pushed up the lid. There was a roar, as the watching dragon spied the motion and charged.

“Begone, beast,” Weva said crossly.

The noise cut off. Weva drew herself out of the hole. Amazed, Lysander followed.

The dragon was lumbering away, having lost interest in them. Weva had changed its mind with a mere two words and no music! But if she could do that, why hadn’t she done it before?

Because she had wanted to make her little demonstration to him. The supposed need to hide from the dragon had been a pretext. Now that he knew exactly where he stood, she could get about her business of going where she was going.

What would she have done, if he had agreed to play with her? Probably she would have done it, being genuinely curious and perhaps without scruple. Though that was odd, because of her Hectare component.

“But it is still a long way to the South Pole!” he said. “We’ll need transport.”

“Aye. It be nigh.”

Coming toward them was a huge manlike figure. Its heavy tread shook the ground. It seemed to be made of tree trunks and cables.

“That’s a wooden golem!” Lysander protested. “The Brown Adept now serves the Hectare!”

“Aye. But she has spot control not. She sends them out on their missions, and knows not what they do till they return.”

“But they do her will! That thing will haul us right back to the Brown Demesnes! And you can’t interfere with Adept magic without signaling our location.”

“Aye. I dare not use my power. But illusion be lesser magic, making no splash, as be emotion control.”

As the monster golem came close, Weva signaled it by waving her arms. It bore down on them.

“What by thy name, golem?” she asked as it loomed close and halted.

“Franken,” it said, though it did not breathe.

“Well, Franken, what thou seekst be at the South Pole,” Weva said to it. “Carry us swiftly there.”

“Aye, Brown,” it said.

What?

The golem reached down with a giant wood hand and closed it gently around Weva. It lifted her up over its shoulder and set her in a storage box mounted on its back. Then it reached for Lysander and did the same for him.

They rode standing in the box, whose sides came a bit above waist level on Lysander. There were handholds. Evidently this was a standard setup for transporting human beings. Their heads could see over the wood bole that was the golem’s head. The thing was now striding south at a horrendous rate; it was almost like flying.

“But you neither look nor sound anything like Brown!” he whispered.

“To it I do, and that be what counts. Thou needst whisper not; it hears only when addressed.”

“But you’ve never even met Brown! You can’t—“

“Dost love me still, Lysander?” she asked.

Startled by the change in her voice, he looked at her. She was Echo! The sound and look were identical. Had he not known that there was no way it could be true, he would have been sure it was her.

“Point made,” he said. “And you probably don’t resemble Echo to the golem, just to me.”

“Aye.”

“You miss on only one thing: Echo is Protonite. She speaks as I do.”

“Oops!” she exclaimed, chagrined. Then: “Do you still love me, Lysander?” This time the emulation was perfect. Weva was a very quick study!

“No I don’t, as you know, Weva,” he said. “You took that from me. Are you going to give it back?”

“And play my game with you, to wile the time as we travel?” she inquired. She still resembled Echo exactly, her brown fluffy hair blown back by the breeze of their swift travel, her breasts shaking under the robe with the rocking of each big golem tread.

That made him pause. Maybe he should leave well enough alone, lest this provocative woman/child entertain herself at the cost of his future with Echo.

But that thought opened others. There would be no future at all, if his mission succeeded. The Magic Bomb would destroy the planet. So what was the point of being true to Echo? She would be better off if he were untrue to her—and to his mission. And he—he was objective now, no longer blinded by a potion-inspired love. Did he really want that love back? He could function better without it.

If he did not take back that love, he could do as he wished with Weva. She was young, but the way of this planet made physical age of little account; a robot was adult from the moment of its creation, unless otherwise programmed, and the creatures of Phaze let nature be their guide. If a female was mature enough to desire sex, she could indulge as she chose, requiring only an amenable male. That was probably seldom a problem. So Weva’s notion of playing with him was valid on her terms. She could do it in the semblance of Echo, or Jod’e, or Alyc, or in her own; she would have control of the situation regardless. If the planet was soon to be destroyed anyway, why not enjoy the time remaining?

Yet Echo had shared the love potion, and her love had not been nullified. She was a good creature; he could appreciate her qualities with clear vision now. He would never of his own choice have taken up with a woman who could turn harpy, and whose body even in her human state was fashioned of metal and plastic, but his experience had shown him better. He had been in love with a good woman, who had returned his love; it had been an excellent state. She had the mind of a harpy in the body of a robot; he had the mind of an alien creature in the body of an android. They were a good match, and he would be satisfied to let it stand.

“Give me back my love, but do not play games with me,” he said.

Weva’s natural likeness reappeared. “Thou canst gain from that only if thy mission fails,” she pointed out.

“And if it fails, I will be a criminal in the new order,” he agreed. “I have no future here, either way. But until then, I choose to live honorably.”

“I fathom that not!”

“You have a Hectare component. Surely you understand honor.”

“Nay, that were not in my syllabus.”

That was interesting. Apparently this Hectare protocol did not manifest full-blown. Perhaps it had to be evoked by contact with other Hectare as the individual developed. He did not remember how his own honor had developed; it seemed always to have been part of him. He was learning something about his own nature, by seeing the effect of an alien upbringing on her. “I’m not surprised. Your whole life must have been taken with learning to play the flute and becoming Adept and integrating your several components and preparing for whatever it is you will do to try to save your planet. There would have been no time for such subtleties as the concept of honor.”

“Aye. Teach me of honor.”

She had taken him by surprise again. “You want to take time with a subtle concept that can only inhibit your immediate benefit as it inhibits mine?”

“Aye, Lysan. My thirst be to know what I know not. An thou dost prefer not to play with me, teach me instead.”

“All right. Give me back my love for Echo.”

“I can not.”

“What?”

“Magic works but once in Phaze, an it be not inherent. I nulled the potion, but it be a far cry greater to null the null, and I fear it would be not the same.”

“But what will I do, when I am with Echo again?”

“I know not, and care not. Teach me honor.”

It was, he saw, a thing she needed to learn! She had carelessly changed his life in a way she could not reverse. An honorable person would not have done that.

He was Hectare. She was Hectare, in a sense. It was proper to provide what her alien tutoring had lacked. That might even have an effect on his mission, if he could make her appreciate her Hectare heritage.

“Then listen, child,” he said grimly. He started in.

The golem marched tirelessly south, through the day and night. Lysander talked, and slept, and talked again, with hardly a murmur from Weva, but she was listening and learning. He was surprised by the amount he knew of the subject, but realized that he had been thinking about it because of the awkwardness of his own position as an enemy of Phaze that a prophecy claimed could help save the planet. It was not that the definition was complicated, but that the nuances were. Weva wanted example after example, of what was honorable in a theoretical situation, and what was not, and why. She seemed fascinated by the subject, and he realized that he was abating a lack she had not before been aware of. She was Hectare, in this respect, and becoming more so as she absorbed the lesson.

“But how canst thou call it integrity, an thou dost prevaricate?” she asked.

“My loyalty is to my mission, in a hostile camp,” he explained. “I must complete it, and if telling the truth to an enemy would endanger it, then I must lie. However, in all things not related to my mission, I tell the truth. And when I make a deal, I honor it, even with the enemy.”

“Mayhap I fathom that,” she said.

Meanwhile it grew hotter as they neared the Pole. The dragons had long since been left behind; perhaps they could handle-the heat, but it was too far from their hunting range. There was just a sea of baking sand. Weva took off her cloak and fashioned’ it into a canopy to shade them from the sun; that, and the air rushing by, cooled them almost enough. But they needed water, so she risked a small conjuration to fetch a jug of it for him, and assumed the form of a humanoid robot herself, so that she didn’t need to drink. Throughout, she continued to listen to his discourse on honor, and to question it. Evidently the Hectare component intended to get this quite straight, and to live by it, in future.

There was something odd on the horizon. Weva, as the robot, saw it before he did, and inquired. “Be there a storm, here? Flach said naught o’ that.”

Lysander considered, fearing that it was a sandstorm, then realized what it was. “We are approaching the South Pole. There is an anomaly that would show up here, and perhaps also at the North Pole if a snowstorm doesn’t obscure it. That is the night.”

“But it be near noon!” she protested.

“Time for a small planetary physics lesson. The light comes to this planet from its sun, as is the case elsewhere, but it makes a right-angle turn, and—“

“Because o’ the black hole,” she said. “Phaze be but a shell round the hole, and the light be bent. Now I fathom it!”

“Black hole?” he asked blankly.

“Thou didst not know?”

He realized that she probably did know what she was talking about. “You mean what we take as a planet is something else? You say a shell—?”

“Aye. Half shell, now that the frames be merged. Canst not see it from space?”

“It looks just like a planet, from space.”

“Aye, a planet with only one side! Saw thou not the missing half?”

He tried to visualize what he had seen during his approach to the planet, but his normally clear memory let him down. He had no picture of the far side of Proton/Phaze. Probably he had seen only the near side, and not questioned it. That might be the case with all travelers; the effect that turned the light at right angles might also deceive the eye about what else was seen or not seen. This place was stranger than it seemed, and that was saying much.

Weva guided the golem to the edge of the night, sparing them the further ravage of the sun. They walked in shadow, and it was a relief. They had no trouble seeing ahead, because of the sunlight just to the side.

Lysander glanced up, cautiously. The sun was glaringly bright in its sphere, but stars twinkled in the adjacent sphere. There was no hint of the mechanism by which the light was bent; it was either full day or full night.

They came to the South Pole. It was a simple marking on the ground, across which the shadow fell: the shadow of night. That would rotate counterclockwise, always covering half the Pole as it did half the planet—or half the shell.

They dismounted. “Thank thee, Franken,” Weva said, donning her robe again. “What thou seekst be beneath the Pole, but it be protected by magic, so thou must wait for it to emerge.”

The golem stepped into the light and became immobile. It would wait until the end of the world, quite likely. Weva brushed off the Pole, and there was a small spiral stake. It had evidently been taller once, but broken off. She pulled, and it came up, revealing another chamber below.

“Is it safe to go in there?” Lysander asked. “If time is changed—“

“Aye, time be much changed, but needs must we go in.” She paused. “I apologize to thee, ‘Sander, for taking thy love, and will make amend an I be able. I acted before I fathomed honor, but after learning from thee, I know it be in my nature. Thou didst give me as much as I took from thee.”

“Echo will be here?” That would put him on the spot.

“Aye, they took another route. We went apart so that they could decoy pursuit from me. Mayhap Flach can help thee.”

“No. Say nothing. I’ll play it through as seems best.”

“There will be time, for it be magnified greatly here. To others it may seem but one day before the end, but we shall have nigh five years.”

“Five years! One day is five years?”

“Aye, almost. So hurry not.”

He nodded. Then he followed her down into the hole.

He was not aware of any time change, but did not question that it was happening, because he had seen how Flach and Sirel and Alien had aged in one week under the West Pole, and how Flach had aged again in a mere day. Weva had come into existence and become a dominant young woman in a bit over a month. Now she told him that time was much further accelerated here at the South Pole, and he had to believe her. The Adepts had needed something like this, to give them time to forge their weapon.

“Hello, Weva!” a voice called. It was Flach, looking another notch taller and older. “Methought to worry lest thou be lost.”

“Nay, Flach, merely distracted,” she said. “How long hast thou been here?”

“Six months.”

“So thou didst come two and a half hours before me,” she said. “Thou couldst have waited.”

“Nay, I wanted to meet the elves.” Flach glared at Lysander. “Didst enjoy thy session with her?”

“Yes, actually,” Lysander said.

“I drew from him all I desired,” Weva said. “Now do I know all about honor.”

Lysander had the satisfaction of seeing Flach startled. “Honor?”

“Aye. What didst think I meant?”

“Me feared for him,” Flach admitted. “When I spent time with Icy the demoness, she—but that be long ago. Be he ready work with us?”

Weva shrugged. “Ask him.”

“No,” Lysander answered. “You know I represent the other side.”

“Then needs we must tell thee the whole o’ our plan,” Flach said, seemingly unperturbed. “I will bring thee to Chief Ores-mite o’ the Iridium Elves.”

Iridium Elves! That explained the flutes. But what were they doing under the South Pole? The elves normally mined under the mountain ranges. “There is iridium here?”

“Nay,” Flach said as he led the way. “But their expertise were needed, so they came with the Adepts Clef and Tania.”

“The Adept Clef!” Lysander exclaimed. “So this is where he came!”

“Aye. But he be with us no longer.”

“What happened to him?” Lysander was concerned. He had liked the Adept, with his beautiful and evocative music, and he had liked Tania, who was merely beautiful.

“They died o’ age. It were a hundred and fifty years ago they came here.”

“A hundred and fifty years!” But he realized it was true. The two must have come here before the Hectare came, anticipating the investment. The accelerated time scale—he did a quick calculation, and realized from the hints they had dropped that the ratio was about 1,728 to one, or 12 cubed, just as it was 144 to one under the West Pole. The East Pole was probably a mere 12 to one, and the North was the opposite, slowed by one of those factors. There was indeed a pattern to the Poles!

“Their descendants be here now,” Flach said. “They have ne’er seen the outside.”

Lysander thought of the couple he had met so recently. They had not died in untimely fashion, so he did not need to mourn them, yet they were gone. Did it matter that they had lived their full lives, perhaps quite satisfactory ones, and had done what they did voluntarily, to save their planet from alien occupation? They were still suddenly dead, and there was a hurting in his mind where they had been.

They came to a pleasant chamber wherein sat an old elf whose beard was the color of iridium. Behind him was a bank of indicators whose nature he recognized: this was a large computer. Yet the other walls of the chamber were rounded stone. Obviously high technology existed here, but the elves did not care about appearances. Or perhaps to them rounded stone was the proper appearance.

“Sir, this be Weva, mine analogue,” Flach said respectfully, and Weva made a little bow. “And Lysander, o’ the prophecy.” Lysander nodded.

Flach turned to the two of them. “This be Chief Oresmite o’ the Iridium Elves, who governs here. I leave thee here with him, Lysander, while I take Weva to introduce to the local community. Any deal thou dost make with him be binding on us all.”

Flach took Weva’s hand and led her from the chamber. She went without protest, like a docile maiden. Lysander was privately amused; she was anything but that!

Oresmite wasted no time. “Have a chair, Lysander. I know thy nature, so I will tell thee mine. I be the last surviving elf in these Demesnes to have known the Adepts Clef and Tania personally; today their great-great-great-great-grandchildren be with us, those o’ the sixth generation of descent, though in thy frame little more than a month has passed. Our life here be not ill, merely accelerated. Hast questions before we proceed to business?”

“Yes,” Lysander said, still relating with difficulty to the time change. He had no reason to doubt it, but also had had no evidence of its reality, here. “How could they have descendants, if there were no others of their kind?”

The old elf smiled. He was in every sense a man, but only about half Lysander’s height. “Others came with them, several families, to establish the community. They be closely inbred, and eager to gain fresh blood; I must warn thee that thou willst be a target for their damsels.”

“But my body is android! I can not reproduce.”

“Aye. But the urge for fresh blood takes little note o’ that. Since thou be already committed—“

“There’s a problem there. May I speak in confidence?”

“Aye. We be here to come to an understanding.”

“Is Echo the cyborg here?”

“Aye. She has waited impatiently for thee, despite being pursued by the local males.”

“Weva is a creature of extraordinary skills. She nulled my love for Echo, and now I fear my meeting with Echo. If there are other women pursuing me, for whatever reason, I fear for our relationship.”

Oresmite stroked his beard. “So Weva truly be Adept?”

“I believe so. Certainly her incidental magic was potent.”

“And she made a play for thee?”

“Yes. I talked her out of it.”

“Why?”

“It would not have been fair to Echo.”

“But an thou hadst no further love for Echo—“

“It was, as I explained to Weva, a matter of honor.”

The elf gazed at him for a moment, evidently pondering. “Tell me aught o’ honor.”

“That would take all day! It did take a day, and a night, to explain it to Weva. It’s no simple concept.”

“I be not a nascent girl. Give me one sentence.”

“Honor is integrity with a moral dimension.”

“And so it were not proper for thee to dally with another, when one who loves thee waited on thy return,” Oresmite said. “E’en in the absence o’ love and presence o’ one who could compel thee. E’en with the planet ending in a day.”

“Yes.”

“How canst thou feel thus, and thou an agent for the enemy?”

“My brain is Hectare, and Hectare are honorable. I have an assigned mission, which I shall complete to the best of my ability. My relationship with Echo is incidental to that, despite the intent of the Adepts, so my honor applies separately to her.”

“Then surely can we deal. But first I offer thee this notion: wouldst thou find it fair an Echo be also nulled o’ her love for thee?”

Lysander snapped his fingers. “Yes! I never thought of that! It would make us even.”

“Then let me do this now.” The elf turned to the bank of equipment behind him. “Mischief, contact Weva, and suggest that she offer to do for Echo what she did for Lysander.”

“Aye, Chief,” the computer replied through a grille.

“Mischief?” Lysander inquired.

“It be a machine with an elfin humor.”

“Thank you, Chief. When I talk with Echo, and have her leave to separate, I will not have a problem with the local maidens.”

“Now come we nigh our business,” the elf said. “Thou knowest the prophecy?”

“It suggests that only the cooperation of an enemy agent can enable the planet to free itself from the Hectare investment. It does not specify who the individual might be, but there is a strong likelihood that I am the one.”

“Aye. An thou be not the one, we be lost, for there be none other here. But we need to guess not, for we can have the answer.” He turned again to the computer. “Mischief, be he the one?”

“Aye, Chief.”

“Now wait!” Lysander protested. “How can that machine know such a thing?”

“Answer, Mischief,” the Chief said.

“I be what thou didst know as the Game Computer,” the grille said. “ ‘Cept that I ne’er met thee, Lysander; I were gone ere thou didst come to the planet. Before I left, I was in touch with the Oracle, who knew the prophecy, and it gave me information that enabled me to know thee when I encountered thee. I verified it with the Book o’ Magic, which be my current reference.”

“The Game Computer!” Lysander exclaimed. “The one that stopped functioning when the frames merged!”

“Aye, Bern brain. We knew o’ trouble coming when the mergence occurred, and set about dealing with it then. The formerly deserted Pole caverns were occupied and stable communities established barely before the invader came. A lesser machine was put in my place, unable to handle the complete complexity o’ the games, but assisted at need by the Oracle, and I came here to fathom the technical aspect o’ the effort.”

That explained a lot! A concerted planetary effort had been made from the outset of the planet’s vulnerability, so that the investment could be nullified before the planet was reduced to trash. It was impressive, but probably futile; the power of the Hectare was overwhelming.

“What identifies me as the one of the prophecy?”

“Thine honor.”

“Then you know that I will not help your side, regardless of any inducements you may proffer.”

“Nay, not so,” Oresmite said. “The prophecy shows thou mayst do it, an thou choose.”

“Honor dictates my choice.”

“Aye. So must we deal.”

“We can not deal.”

The Chief leaned forward persuasively. “We need thy help now. An we wait longer, all be lost regardless. Willst not yield the accuracy o’ the prophecy so far?”

“So far,” Lysander said grudgingly. “But not only do I have no intention of helping you in the key moment, I have no certainty that I can. I assure you that if I went back to my people now and asked them to depart the planet, they would not heed. I have no authority; I am only a special agent of a type routinely employed.”

“But an thou couldst help us, and thou decided to at the last moment, would it be not ironic an thou hadst let the moment pass and could not? What be best for thou is to keep thine options open, so that an thou dost change thy mind, it will count until the end.”

“Keep my options open,” Lysander agreed. “Is that possible?”

“Aye. Mischief needs thine input now, for calculations that be beyond it o’erwise. An thou help it now, thou canst prevent them from being used on our behalf until thou dost decide.”

“How can I be sure they would not be used without my choice?”

“The honor o’ Mischief.”

“A machine with honor? Or do you mean it is programmed for it?”

“Aye. Dost think we lack this?”

“You serve the interest of your planet, and this is integral to it. I can trust you only to do what you must to save it.”

“But an thou hadst access to the programming o’ the machine? Thou canst verify that we have touched it not, lacking in such expertise.”

“If you let me modify the programming, then I can be sure of the security of the data.”

“We will let thee do what thou choosest, and thou willst be welcome in these Demesnes meanwhile.”

Lysander nodded. “Then I can tackle the problem.”

“Give us an hour to access the sealed panels—“

“No need. I can verify the status and programming from a keyboard.”

“A keyboard?”

“You really have no experience with computers!” Lysander exclaimed. “All your dealings have been verbal!”

“Aye. We be Phaze folk.”

“You know I could completely ruin your system?”

“An thou choose to help us not, there be no difference; all will be destroyed.”

True enough. “Where is the keyboard?”

“Mischief, tell him.”

A light flashed. A panel slid open. There was a standard work station access, with keyboard and screen and accessories.

Lysander sat down before it and began typing. In a moment he was lost in the intricacies of the very type of work for which he had been trained.

“Lysander?”

He looked up from the screen, blinking. It was Echo.

For a moment he was at a loss. “I—I should have sought you,” he said. “To explain—“

“Weva explained. I accepted her offer.”

“That seems best. But I want you to know I did not seek—“

“I know. But we both know that love potion was a contrivance, intended to influence you. That failed, and there was no further purpose. Now we are both free of what was perhaps an imperfect association.”

“Perhaps.” He looked at her. He still found her beautiful. “But I found no fault with it. I never loved before, and was happier in that state than now. If it was imperfect, it remained good enough for me.”

“For me also,” she said. “It was a nice time. But now it is over, and—“

“Does it have to be over?”

She shrugged. “What is the point, without love?”

“What was pleasurable in love, may be so also without it. We do not need to break off our association—“

“Oh. Sex without obligation. Forget it.”

“I didn’t mean—“

But she was already sweeping out of the chamber. She had misunderstood him, but perhaps not completely. He had been thinking of sex—but also of the association. It would have been nice to discover whether their compatibility had been wholly the product of the love potion, or had a natural underpinning. Perhaps, if they had given it a chance...

Well, she wasn’t interested, and that might be answer enough. He had loved her, and through her the culture of the planet. But she was, in her Phaze aspect, a harpy, and they were not known for sweetness. If the potion had reversed that portion of her nature, and the nullification had restored it, it was pointless to speculate further.

Too bad Jod’e had been taken by the Tan Adept! There had been no love magic there, and she was a most intriguing woman. In fact too bad that Alyc had been an enemy agent. Though he was also one, he no longer respected her, but if even she could have been here...

He put such thoughts from his mind. The intrigue of the challenge that had defeated the computer was here for him, and he intended to lose himself in it.

It wasn’t long before he ascertained the nature of the problem: they hoped to slide the merged frames as a unit around the black hole to the fantasy side. For the distortion in the vicinity of the black hole was not just physical, so that light bent at a right angle; it represented a tangential connection between the science and the magic frames themselves. When the shell had been a perfect sphere, the curtain had transported some people from the science hemisphere to the magic hemisphere and back; now the two were melded and could not be separated without destroying the whole. But they might be moved together, like a tectonic plate, if there was a sufficient shove.

That shove was to be provided by the explosion of the Magic Bomb. If conditions were right, it would move the frames into the magic realm, and there would be nothing remaining in the science realm except an apparent black hole, unapproachable by any ordinary means. If the conditions were wrong, it would simply break up the shell, and the fragments would fall into the hole. In either case, the apparent planet would be gone from the science universe. But in only one case would it move intact to the magic universe.

If it moved intact, science and magic would work here. But away from this shell, only magic would work. Perhaps there would be exploitive creatures who came to take advantage of the unique qualities of science, or to steal the Phazite that powered the magic locally. But there had been no sign of such intrusion in the three preceding centuries. All the colonization, both animal and plant, had been from the science realm, crossing over. So it seemed likely that the inhabitants would be left alone. That was what they wanted.

If it slid around intact, the Hectare would be brought with it. But they would be cut off from their home planet and their section of the galaxy. They might be able to retain control, but that would be pointless, because they had not taken over the planet for themselves, but as part of the reorganization of this sector of the galaxy. They would do the practical thing, and yield power to the local authorities, trusting them to act in a practical way. To find ways to use the special abilities of the Hectare. It could be a richer society than it had been, because of that infusion of new talent.

It was a good plan. It should work. If the shell could be rotated intact.

The problem was that there was a virtually infinite number of connections to be made, to channel the stresses of the push correctly. A path had to be charted for every atom individually. Any that were not charted would go astray, and not make it to the magic realm. Any that were inaccurately charted would interfere with their neighbors that were on course. There would be overlapping and friction. In effect, there would be sand in the gears, and the whole thing would be brought to a halt. That would be disaster. There was only one chance, when the Magic Bomb took effect; it had to be done exactly right, or all was lost.

The Game Computer was a fine machine, but it simply wasn’t up to this calculation. It had been working on it for a hundred and fifty years, and was less than halfway through. It had a scant five years to go, by local time, and it wasn’t nearly enough. The paths had to be at least ninety-nine per cent charted and correct, or there would be destruction. The Book of Magic could not assist in this, because this was basically a science problem.

There was a way to speed it up, he saw. What was required was an algorithm: a set of rules for solving each case in a finite number of steps. A way to reduce the parameters so that the Game Computer—Mischief—could handle the simplified problem in the time allowed. A good algorithm could enhance effective calculation velocity a thousandfold. Even an indifferent one could speed things up thirtyfold, which was what was required.

Mischief was not advanced enough to devise such an algorithm. But Lysander, with his Hectare brain and training, could. Oh, it would be a challenge, and it might take him months to complete it, but he had that time. He could, indeed, save the frames.

And he could secure Mischief against any other intrusion. It hardly mattered; the untrained elves could barely comprehend the mathematics even if he gave a course in it. It was his decision.

His mind was already coming to grips with the problem, for this was the nature of the Hectare brain. He had to solve it, for his own satisfaction, even if that solution were never used. Since he could do so without risking his mission, he would indulge himself.

There was however one detail he had to find out about. The calculations could be made, and the courses set—but a connection had to be made between the two. There had to be a mechanism to tell the atoms where to go, in effect. The elves surely had something in mind, but it wasn’t evident in the computer.

He got up. His shoulders were aching; he had concentrated so hard he had been hunching over. “Where is the Chief?” he asked Mischief.

“On the way, Lysan.”

Indeed, in a moment Chief Oresmite appeared. “Thou has need o’ me?”

“I can solve your problem. But I need to know the mode of communication between the—“

“The flutes.”

“The indium flutes? But mere sound will not—“

“They use music to marshal magic.”

“Oh. Yes. But only two folk play them, and it would take a hundred to—“

“Nay, two suffice. The harmonics and the beats, guided by the Hectare aspect, will bear the signals.”

“Chief, it isn’t physically possible for just two to—“

“They will play the flutes only for practice. The true melody will be in their minds, guided by Mischief—an thou allow it. The iridium flutes be mere decoys; the ultimate flute be in Weva’s fancy.”

Lysander nodded. “Now I understand. I will key the pattern of solutions in to music, so that it will work—if I allow it.”

“An thou wish to talk to any, in the interim, any will talk to thee. If not, not. We trust in thee, and in the prophecy.”

“You have a lot of trust, Chief,” he said wryly.

14 - Duet

The time passed seemingly swiftly, though this bore no relation to the ratio beyond the Pole. Lysander worked hard on the algorithm, using Mischief to make supplementary calculations. It was an irony, he thought, that he finally had complete access to this computer, as he had wanted at the outset, but wasn’t bothering with either games or machine consciousness. Instead he was working out a program that would defeat his purpose in being on this planet (shell). But what a glorious challenge it was!

He could not work all the time; even his Hectare brain could handle only so much at one sitting, and then he had to take time off. The community was eager to entertain him. There were indeed a number of human men and women, and to his eye there was a certain resemblance between some of the women and Tania, their long-gone ancestor. He dated them, and they were barely restrained in their eagerness to get him into a breeding mode, though he told them plainly that he was infertile. “Aye, but mayhap with magic...” one suggested as she seduced him.

He thought about that. Magic did phenomenal things, here. It was responsible for Flach/Nepe and Weva/Beman. (He had grown quite interested in Weva, until she teasingly showed him her other aspect: she too was a male/female composite. That turned him off, as perhaps she intended.) Surely it could make a full man of an android, if properly applied.

“Aye, ‘Sander, it could,” Nepe replied when he asked her. She had grown into a charming young woman, her charms no accident, because of course her amoebic flesh could be shaped to any form she chose. She showed a certain physical interest in him, but he thought of Flach, present as her alternate self, and did not reciprocate. It was obvious that however much those two composites played around, it was each other they were destined for. Whether it would be Flach-Weva or Beman-Nepe wasn’t certain; so far both male versions seemed more interested in relating to the eager young females of the colony than to their opposite numbers, while the females were more reserved. It was an interesting situation.

“If Phaze survives?” he asked.

She smiled teasingly. “Aye.”

And of course there would be little point, if it did not, for he could sire no offspring, fertile or not. This made him think about his position, as perhaps Nepe had intended. The choices were simple. Either he held to his mission, and torpedoed the plan by refusing to release the computed figures, and the worlds of Proton and Phaze perished, along with the Hectare who were here. It was already too late to warn them; in less than a day they would not be able to evacuate. So they were doomed. Or he could cooperate with the enemy, and save the frames, and render the Hectare into subservient status. He would incidentally save himself, too.

But his mission was clear. It was not his place to judge its merit. It was his place to fulfill it without question. His judgment was confined to questions of compromise necessary in order to facilitate his mission, as when he helped Nepe fetch the Hectare seed. That had indeed enabled him to discover the Adepts’ plan, so carefully implemented here by Clef and Tania and Mischief and the elves. Now he had simply to act to complete his mission—and he could do that by inaction.

So he set the matter aside and sought his date for the evening. She was as eagerly obliging as always. But the truth was, with the number of eligibles limited to about six, the matter was becoming a bit dull. He was also tired of walking in the subterranean park, where stalagmites formed a forest of trunks in many colors, and in watching re-reruns of the community’s store of video shows. Life was healthy here, as all things physically necessary to survival were provided, but emotionally stultifying. Many of the natives spent a great deal of time sleeping or gaming, but sleep was not for him, beyond the minimum required for survival, and gaming was now his vocation instead of his avocation.

It was no better for the elves, who on the surface had mined iridium and fashioned it into assorted artifacts. Deprived of their natural way of existence, they reacted in much the fashion of the human beings, sleeping, gaming, socializing, and fighting. Chief Oresmite was at times hard put to it to keep the peace.

There were some human-elf liaisons, not because of any natural affinity, but because of sheer boredom with the limits of their own populations. Lysander had not understood this well at first, but in time the relative unfamiliarity of the elf maidens became appealing, and he found himself dating them too. Such liaisons were officially discouraged, but privately tolerated; they were better than violence.

The whole community existed to support Mischief and the effort to save Phaze. But most of its work had been done before the four newcomers had arrived. Only if there was a cave-in in a tunnel or some other emergency was there actual need for human or elfin action. It was apparent that those who had settled here had made a considerable sacrifice. All longed for the time when they would be freed to live again on the surface—or die.

“The truth be,” an elf lass confided to him once, as she showed him what elves knew about fundamental interaction that human beings did not, “that I care not o’ermuch which it be, just so long as the dullness be done.” That seemed to be a general sentiment. They knew his position, but were not pushing him to save Phaze.

He avoided Echo, and she avoided him. But after a year desperation brought them together. “I told you I wasn’t interested in sex without obligation,” she said. “I have changed my mind.”

“It was better when we were in love,” he said. “If there were another potion, I would take it with you.”

“So would I. But there isn’t. Such potions work only once for a given couple. We would have to do it the hard way.”

“The hard way?”

“By falling in love naturally.”

“You mean that’s possible? I thought—“

“So did I. But others say that though it is harder, after a potion and nulling, it can be accomplished. It has to be worked at. I know you wouldn’t be interested in that.”

“I thought you wouldn’t be interested!” he said.

She gazed at him. “I wasn’t interested in being your mistress. Then. Now it doesn’t matter. Anything’s better than this bore dom.”

“Are the two incompatible?”

“Love and sex? They weren’t before.”

“Let’s consider it a challenge.”

“A challenge,” she agreed.

It turned out to be worth it. They could handle the sex readily enough, for they had had a lot of practice in their original month in love, but the love was slower. After a month there was only a flicker of emotion. After six there was some. After two years; it was significant. After three it was assuming the aspect of a shadow of their former feeling.

“I think we are right for each other after all,” he said. “I” have not been bored since we undertook this challenge.”

“Nor I,” she agreed. “Now I am glad we lost the unnatural love, because we are proving what is real.”

They kissed, quite satisfied. It seemed that love was most valuable when it was a struggle to achieve.

Four years after his arrival, Lysander was able to announce that the algorithmic computations were complete. “The figures, if invoked, will do the job,” he said.

Oresmite’s delight was restrained. “Then we must deal.”

“My position is unchanged.”

“But thou hast had opportunity to consider. Be it a victory for the Hectare an all be destroyed?”

“They would not consider it so.”

“But it be a victory for us, an it be saved.”

“Agreed.”

“So one side can win, and the other can only lose.”

“Yes. But this is logic. My mission is not subject to that.”

“Suppose it were possible at least to save most Hectare and some natives, by warning them now?”

“It isn’t. It would take several days to organize for a disciplined withdrawal, and only one day remained when I came here. Had I known the nature of the ploy sooner, I would have warned the Hectare.”

“Aye. We told thee little, until thou wast here. Yet there be a way.”

“Something you didn’t tell me?”

“Aye. I be thine enemy, remember.”

Lysander laughed. “I had almost forgotten! What is this secret?”

“We can, by special magic, transport some o’ the acceleration to the surface o’ the shell. It would deplete the effect at the Poles, but provide perhaps a week at the cities.”

“They could get away!” Lysander exclaimed.

“Aye.”

“But there’s a catch.”

“Perceptive o’ thee to fathom that.”

“You won’t let it happen.”

“Aye. Why facilitate the benefit o’ mine enemy?”

“And I, lacking your expertise in magic, can not do it without your cooperation.”

“Aye, no more than I can gain thy figures from Mischief.”

“Then what is the point? It changes nothing. I will not save your frames, and you will not save the BEMs. Our positions are consistent.”

“The point be that we have chips to bargain. An the Hectare had a choice, would they not choose to exit Proton?”

“Yes, of course! But you aren’t going to give them that choice.”

“Here be my challenge: play me a game. An thou dost win, I will provide magic to save the Hectare and those they choose to take with them, and thou and Echo. That be a half victory, but better than naught. An I win, thou dost release those figures.”

“But the stakes aren’t even!” Lysander protested, guiltily intrigued. “You aren’t offering victory against victory, but half against whole.”

“True. But our victory be not complete loss for the Hectare or thee. We will treat them fairly, and put thee in charge o’ integrating them into the society. We can use their skills. And we will make a spell to make thou fertile—“

“I’m with Echo. She can’t conceive.”

“An we do the magic, she can. Remember Nepe; she be child o’ machine.”

Lysander considered. It was true: the full victory for the natives would be only half a loss for the Hectare, while the full loss of the natives would be half a Hectare win. The stakes were fair. But did he have the authority to make such a deal?

“Be the Hectare not gamesmen?” Oresmite inquired. “Would they not let the game decide, an the stakes be even?”

“Yes, they would. But I can’t—“

“An the leader be incapacitated, who has authority?”

“The next in command. But—“

“An the leader be away or distracted, and the next in command learns aught that must needs be decided instantly, what then?”

“The next in command must act.”

“Does the authority for this matter then not devolve on thee, the only Hectare to know its nature in time to act?”

“Well, there is Weva—“

“Wouldst have her make the decision?”

“No! She’s on your side!”

“Then methinks it must be thee, unless my logic be in error.”

Lysander realized that the cunning old elf had him. He had been maneuvered into a position where the authority was his; a Hectare court would agree. He might lack the authority simply to decide the fate of the frames, but as a player in a game of decision—a case could be made.

“Agreed. But it must be a fair game.”

“Aye. We shall decide together. Or wouldst prefer to have Mischief decide?”

“No!” Then Lysander had to laugh. “No, we shall come to our own agreement. Only when both are satisfied will it be set.”

“Aye.” Oresmite smiled. “We have time.”

* * *

There followed several days of negotiations. Oresmite, being old and small, would not commit to any brute physical contests. Lysander, wary of the elf’s lifetime experience, rejected those that were culturally oriented. Intellectual games like chess or go were tempting, but Lysander wasn’t sure how much the elf might have played these to wile away the time, and Oresmite was nervous about Lysander’s analytic Hectare brain.

“Methinks we require a new game, ne’er before played,” the Chief remarked at last.

“Yes. So that neither experience nor special aptitude is likely to count.”

They brought the others in on it. The challenge: create a new, fair, playable but unplayed game whose outcome could not be certain.

The boredom evaporated as elves and human beings got to work. Proposals were made, analyzed, and rejected.

The key, as it turned out, came from an elf child. He had been listening to the stories of the history of magic before Phaze, when it had existed back on Earth. “Why not Merlin and the Witch?” he asked.

This was an episode recorded by T. H. White in a book titled Sword in the Stone but later excluded from a larger compendium, perhaps because it revealed too much about magic. Merlin had fought the witch by form changing, each trying to assume the form of a creature that could demolish the other. Merlin, sorely pressed, had won by becoming a germ that infected and killed the witch’s monster.

“But I can’t change forms!” Lysander protested.

“Nor can I, neither any elf,” Oresmite replied. “But we can in illusion.”

The illusion chamber was normally used to generate lovely vistas similar to those of the outside world, so as to lessen the claustrophobic restrictions of the caves. But it could be turned to any fancy. A person had only to take his place at one of the focal points and imagine something, and it was animated in the chamber. There were regular puppet shows, the puppets illusory but realistic, because complete living detail wasn’t expected in such creatures. Few could imagine sufficient detail to make an image seem truly realistic.

But if animals could be represented crudely, puppet-fashion, as pieces in a game, then it might be feasible. He could imagine a tiger, chasing the elf’s antelope. Only the elf would then imagine a dragon, and turn on the tiger. Then—

“But we’d just both wind up with the biggest, most ferocious monsters, and it would be a stalemate,” Lysander said. “Or as germs, trying to infect the other. I don’t think it would work as well as it did centuries ago on Earth.”

“Aye,” the Chief agreed. “It were a nice notion, but impractical.”

“Not necessarily,” Beman said. “Appropriately restrictive rules could make a fair game of it.”

“Agreed,” Nepe said. “Scientific rules applied to the magic. To prevent stalemates.”

“Then work it out,” Lysander said, intrigued by the notion of being able to change forms, if only in imagination. It was as close to magic as he could get, on his own. “If we like it, we’ll play it.”

They retired with a committee of elves to work it out. Next day they returned with the proposal for “Animals.” Oresmite and Lysander reviewed it and liked it. They had their game.

The Chief took the key position at one end of the chamber, and Lysander the one at the other end. At the sides sat elves and human beings holding pictures of assorted animals ranging from ladybugs to fire-breathing dragons. The animals were paired, with one of each kind at each side of the chamber. One side represented Lysander’s animals, the other the Chief’s, and they were even.

Each player had an iridium coin. They flipped them together. Lysander’s bounced, flipped, and settled down with the picture of an equine tail showing. The Chief’s coin spun and rolled, finally falling with a donkey’s head in view. The two did not match, which meant the result was odd rather than even, and that meant by prior agreement that Oresmite chose the first animal.

The Chief glanced at his pictures. One glowed, and its figure jumped off the paper to take its place in the chamber beside the pictures. It was a donkey, appropriately.

Lysander looked at his pictures. He focused on the unicorn, and it left its paper and hit the chamber floor running. It charged the donkey, its horn lowering to point forward.

The onus was on him, as predator, to dispatch the prey within one minute, or forfeit the game.

The donkey took off, running fleetly. The illusion expanded to fill in the surrounding terrain: a grassy plain, bordered by mountain ranges to north and south. It was a miniature of the frame of Phaze, with the seas at east and west and the dread Lattice at the center: the network of deep crevices in which demons lived. The animals were bounded by these natural features, and could not go beyond them. But there was plenty of room to maneuver.

The unicorn was faster than the donkey, and its horn was capable of making a lethal thrust. In thirty seconds Lysander had almost closed the gap. The donkey dodged, but so did the unicorn; the imagination that made the creatures go was limited by their natural abilities. The Chief had to act.

He did. The donkey became a tiger, whose paws skidded as it turned to face the unicorn.

Lysander veered aside. The tiger was trouble. True, the unicorn could spear the feline with the horn—but the tiger knew how to avoid horns, and if the first thrust didn’t score, the tiger would pounce and bite. The prey had become the predator.

Now the tiger had one minute to bring down the unicorn, or forfeit. The onus had shifted.

Lysander elected to remain with the unicorn, because there was an advantage in avoiding change. An animal could be used only once; then its sign was taken down, and it was retired. If one side used up all its animals, and the other saved a number, that other side would have a significant advantage in the end game. That player would be able to use a fleet animal to catch the other, then shift to a killer animal for the finale.

The unicorn took off. The tiger leaped after, but already the unicorn was at speed. The tiger put forth its best effort, and gained, but it was evident that it would be unable to close the gap within a minute, if at all. Tigers were good for the short run, but not for the long, while unicorns could run all day if they had to. The Chief had to change forms again, or lose by default. That onus was a deadly thing!

The tiger became a flying dragon. The onus was still on the Chief, because it belonged to the last form change, but the minute started fresh from the moment of that change. Lysander had gained a long-range advantage, because he was on his first animal while the Chief was on his third, but that dragon could finish the game in the short range.

Indeed, in a moment the dragon was looming overhead and orienting its snoot for a fiery blast. He had to change!

He changed to a salamander, and stared up at the dragon. The dragon did a doubletake and popped into a blind eel. The eel fell to the ground and wriggled desperately away. The Chief had been caught by surprise and made an error; he should have continued his attack, because though a magic salamander was immune to fire, it wasn’t immune to teeth. The Chief had confused it with a basilisk, whose stare could kill; the Chief had taken the handiest way to stop the meeting of the eyes by adopting an eyeless form.

Lysander scrambled after the eel, who wasn’t well suited to motion on land. The eel heard the noise and hastily became a hawk, who flew away without looking back.

Lysander had definitely come out ahead in this encounter. The Chief had used two more forms to his one, and still had the onus. And—Lysander had done it on a bluff, for this was neither basilisk nor magic salamander, but an ordinary one, harmless to anything larger than a fly.

As the Chief was about to realize. The hawk was coming back, and it would make short work of the salamander. One snap of its beak—

Lysander burrowed down into the grass, trying to hide. If he could remain clear for another thirty seconds—

The hawk came to the ground, and changed. Lysander couldn’t see the change, but he knew it had occurred, because a bird on land did not make that slithering sound. That was either a lizard, or—

The head of a snake loomed over him. It struck down—as Lysander became a mongoose.

He spun about to face the snake. It was a simple black racer, not venomous to man but deadly enough to a salamander. But the mongoose was able to kill even the most deadly snakes. Lysander had the onus now. He dived in—

The snake became a wolf. The wolf’s jaws snapped at the mongoose—

Lysander became a giant serpent. The serpent’s jaws opened to take in the wolf.

The wolf became a bear. A bear was a lot tougher animal than many supposed; it could handle just about any other animal its size, and anything smaller. It swiped at the serpent’s head.

Lysander became a rhinoceros. He swung his nose-horn viciously at the bear—who became a monstrous roc, a bird capable of catching up a rhino in its talons and carrying it away. Indeed, those talons closed on the rhino’s body, and the great wings spread. In a moment he would be lifted up. He could be carried high and dropped; any fall over five or six feet might kill him.

But he didn’t change. He let the bird haul him into the air. The roc carried him over a nearby rocky region, and let him go.

But as he fell, he became a sparrow. Of course he had nothing to fear from being dropped! Not as long as he could change to another flying form. Now the Chief had used up his largest and second largest flying forms—the roc and the dragon—and would not be able to use them again. Lysander had both those forms in reserve. He was still gaining.

But it would be foolish to let any opportunity pass. He needed to try for the quick victory, lest the Chief catch him first. He remembered seeing chess games where one player had pieces all over the board, but the other had the victory because of the position. Pieces were only part of it.

The sparrow looped and flew in at the roc. The roc’s beak snapped down, but the sparrow was swifter at close quarters, and got by. It came up against the roc’s fur-feathered leg—and became a cobra. By the definition of the game, a poisonous bite affected any other creature, even another of its kind, if it scored well. Lysander opened his mouth and struck at the flesh of the leg.

The roc became a gnat and zipped away; the cobra’s jaws snapped on nothing. And now he was in trouble, for he was in the air and falling.

He became a hawk. The Chief’s hawk had been used before, and it could not return, and there were few other birds that could catch a hawk. But the onus was on Lysander; he had to do the catching, and this was no form for gnat-hunting!

He pondered. The Chief would surely outwait him if he didn’t find a quick way to catch that gnat. A toad could do it—but the gnat would be flying high up, out of reach of a landbound creature. This was a problem!

Then he had it. He became not a dragon, but a dragonfly. Dragonflies hunted smaller insects on the wing, and were strong flyers and efficient predators. He looped around and spied the gnat, who hadn’t gone far. Indeed, a gnat couldn’t get far in a few seconds, compared to a dragonfly.

He revved up his four wings and zoomed in for the kill. But the gnat became a toad in midair, its mouth opening. Lysander realized that though the toad would fall to the ground, it would get the dragonfly first, and win; the fall didn’t matter.

Caught by surprise, he found his mind blank. The toad’s sticky tongue came out, rooted at the front, catapulting toward him. He would be caught before he—

In desperation he became another toad; he couldn’t think of anything else.

The two loads collided in the air, and fell together.

Lysander still had the onus. He had only seconds: should he assume a form to crunch the other toad, or wait for the Chief to change, so the Chief would be committed, and Lysander could immediately counter the form? The latter seemed better.

But the Chief seemed to have the same idea. They continued to fall. What would happen if they both splatted into the ground? They were playing a game of chicken!

Probably if they both persisted, it would be declared a draw, and they would have to play another game. Lysander was ahead in this game; he didn’t want to start another.

That decided him. So what if he went splat immediately after; he should grasp the victory first.

He became a weasel, which was more than enough to dispose of even the illest-tasting toad. He twisted around in the air and snapped at—

The Chief became a hippopotamous—and he was just above the weasel! He would land and squash the weasel flat! He would die himself—but after the weasel. This was the strategy of suicide.

Lysander became a horsefly and zoomed away. Such a change would not have been safe while the toad remained, but no hippo could nab a fly in the air.

And the Chief became a dragonfly, borrowing from Lysander’s prior strategy, and winged swiftly after him. The onus was on the Chief, but he was playing with greater savvy now. Lysander was on the run—or in flight, in this case.

He didn’t want to waste a good predatory form that would be immediately countered; he wanted to force the Chief to use up more of his forms, until he was starved for variety at the end and subject to a power play. He saw water below, and had a notion. He plunged toward it, the dragonfly gaining but not yet in range.

He plunged in, becoming a fish.

The Chief plunged after, becoming a pelican.

Trouble! Lysander became an alligator just as the pelican’s beak closed on the fish. The beak closed instead on the hide of the alligator.

Lysander whipped his toothy snout around to snap up the bird, and the bird became a giant sea serpent whose much larger toothy snout whipped around to snap up the alligator. Lysander was having trouble matching change for change, and couldn’t think of a good rejoinder on the spot, so became an elephant.

The sea serpent stared. An elephant?

But the water was not deep, and the elephant was only halfway submerged. It wrapped its trunk around the head of the serpent, tying its jaws closed, and pushed the head under the water. Drowning was as good as being bitten to death. Lysander had found a good predator form after all.

The serpent became a fish and slid away. Lysander waited, knowing that no fish could hurt him here; the water was too shallow for any really big one. Nothing much could hurt an elephant. But the Chief had the onus, and would have to try.

Then he spied something sliding through the water. It wasn’t a fish, but more like an eel.

Oops—an electric eel! Again by definition, the shock would stun any other creature. Lysander became a frog and leaped out of the water.

So it went, change and counterchange, and the assortment of animals was depleted on both sides. But Lysander’s strategy of forcing the Chief to change more often was pacing off, and it came to the point where Lysander had several top predators left and the Chief was reduced to his next to last form: a sheep. Lysander became a roc and pounced on the sheep, forcing the Chief to take his last form: a mouse.

Lysander became a dragon, and inhaled. He would send a blast of fire that burned out the entire region, the mouse with it.

But the mouse, astonishingly, did not flee. Instead it jumped onto the dragon’s nose and clung there.

Lysander shook his head, trying either to toss the mouse into his mouth, or fling it to the ground where it could be scorched before it fled. Another creature it could hide from, but the fire of the dragon would seek it out regardless. But the mouse refused to be dislodged; it dug its tiny claws into the snout and hung on.

This was a problem Lysander had never anticipated. His forelegs were too short to reach his snout. He tried to whip his tail about to wipe the mouse off, but it only stung his nostrils sharply. He tried to roll and squish the mouse against the ground, but it was in the declivity between eyes and nostrils. He could not dislodge that mouse!

He blew out fire. But his snout was insulated so that its own flesh would not be destroyed by the heat, and that protected the mouse too.

If he changed form again, the mouse would get away; he had no specific mouse-catching forms left, having labored to save the largest predators instead. If he hadn’t used up his weasel—

Maybe he could bounce fire back on his nose. It would hurt his own flesh, but it would fry the mouse, and that was what counted.

He put his nostrils against a rock and blew out fire. It bounced, but to the side. He tried again, and missed again. He needed a rock with a hollow, that would cup and reflect the fire-Suddenly a gong sounded. The minute was up, and he had not destroyed the mouse. Since the onus was his, he lost by default.

The game was over, and Chief Oresmite had won. Lysander had tried his hardest to win, and thought he had the win assured, until that last astonishing ploy. He had been fairly beaten, and now was obliged to give the figures to the enemy. Yet, somehow, he was relieved.

Only later did it occur to him that he had blundered crucially. He had been a roc when the Chief was a sheep; the Chief had become a mouse. Lysander’s blunder had been in changing to the dragon. All he had had to do was maintain roc form and fly away, and the Chief, stuck with the onus, would have lost in one minute.

Flach and Weva stood before Mischief, and lifted their flutes. They played, and Lysander remembered the magic, figurative and literal, of Clef’s music. Flach was good, because of his unicorn heritage, but Weva was better, because of her Hectare heritage. That, of course, was why she had been brought into existence. Only a Hectare mind, trained also in magic, could handle the figures Lysander’s algorithm had produced.

The magic came, much stronger than before, almost tangible. The two set aside their flutes, but the music continued, generated by their minds.

Mischief began to run the figures on a screen. It was a massive array: thousands of numbers jammed together. But Weva’s eyes were on them, and they were being fed through to her mind, and changing the music. No human mind could have done it, but hers could, with the support of her companion.

The world began to change, as the paths for each atom of matter were defined, and the push from the Magic Bomb began. The merged frames would slide around the black hole, nothing changing within them, but everything changing beyond them. Like a cover on a piece of equipment, turning without altering its shape or nature; it was the nature of the universe that was changing instead.

There was a shudder. Dust sifted down. Elves and human beings glanced around alike in alarm. This had the feel of an incipient earthquake, and they were underground.

The shuddering intensified. Cracks appeared in the stone.

“It’s going wrong!” someone cried.

The computer screen went blank. Then the single word ERROR flashed, blinking.

“We kept faith with thee!” an elf cried at Lysander. “Thou didst promise true figures!”

“My figures are true!” Lysander replied. “The error must be somewhere else!”

“Cease playing!” Oresmite rapped, and the music halted. “There be error somewhere, but Lysander has honor; he would not cheat on this.”

“Then he made a mistake!” Flach said.

“I made no mistake,” Lysander said. “Every figure checked. It must be in the translation.”

“Nay, none there,” Weva said. “We play true!”

“If we resume not soon, the detonation of the Magic Bomb will destroy us regardless,” Flach pointed out. “Now be the time; the paths must be set.”

“The time factor!” Echo said. “We’re accelerated, but how does it relate to the rest of the frames?”

“We allow for that,” Weva said. “Our music relates.”

“The Poles!” Lysander said. “Their times are different. Do you allow for that?”

“Yes, o’ course,” she said. “Twelvefold for the East Pole, a hundred and forty-four for the West Pole. I were made there; I would forget my home region not.”

“And the North Pole? The one that’s slower than normal time?”

Weva looked stricken. “Slower! I adjusted for faster!”

“Can you correct for that?”

“Aye. Now.” She lifted her flute again, and Flach quickly joined her.

“Rerun the figures, Mischief!” Lysander said. “The error is being corrected.”

The figures reappeared on the screen.

They resumed playing, and in a moment set aside the flutes and continued. This time there was no shuddering; the magic intensified, and there was a feeling of something colossal shifting, but it was smooth. It was working.

Yet there was in the background an almost imperceptible disharmony, a keening as of something not quite right. The error had caused them to start over, slightly delayed; did that make a difference? If so, it could be cumulative, and...

Lysander did not care to finish that thought. He had been an agent for the other side, but he had made a deal, and now was bound to see it through. He would not care for the irony of having his original side win through default. Not after he had resigned himself to the prospect of living, and of love with Echo.

The eerie trace of wrongness did not fade; it got worse. Lysander knew what was happening: the delay occasioned by the failure to zero in the North Pole correctly had thrown the timing off slightly, and that imbalance was recycling and building. If it expanded logarithmically, as such things could, they could still get dumped, and all would have been for nothing.

Echo was near him. He caught her hand and squeezed it to let her know that whatever happened, he was glad for their association. Then an elf girl caught his free hand, and someone else caught Echo’s free hand. The impulse spread, and soon everyone in the chamber was linked, including Flach and Weva and Chief Oresmite. The music went on, through all their heads and all the frames, translating the figures to reality, carrying them all on the wave of force that was the detonation of the Magic Bomb.

That Bomb had been confined by the slowed time at the North Pole. That had been a bad Pole on which to err!

The linked hands provided comfort, but the wrongness worsened. Lysander felt as if his guts were being removed and convoluted topologically and strung through the electrical conduits of his brain. He didn’t dare vomit, because he didn’t want the contents of his stomach suffusing his brain. He suspected that the others were experiencing similar distortions. If the frames didn’t complete their journey soon—

The music stopped. They were there!

There was a silence. Then the Chief looked around. “We remain alive,” he said. “That means it is successful. But per haps not entirely. We must proceed cautiously.”

“The timing,” Weva said. “I couldn’t quite compensate. I think things are all right, but some detail may have changed.”

The group let go of hands. Lysander brought Echo into him. “Just so long as you are not changed!” he said.

Her eyes were round. “I fear I be. I—“

“Check your body,” he suggested. All around them others were similarly concerned. No one seemed quite certain what had happened, but knew that something fundamental was not the same.

“Well, it be metal and plastic, o’ course, as always. I’ll show thee.” She opened her robe and touched the place where her left breast was latched. “Uh-oh.”

“You look fine!” he said. “I don’t care if your latch is broken.”

“There be no latch.”

“Well, whatever. I have accepted the local way, and you are part of it.”

She closed her robe. “E’en an I be not exactly the creature thou hast known?”

He experienced an unpleasant chill. “Are you trying to say that your emotion has changed? That now the crisis is past, you don’t—“

She put her finger across his lips. “Nay, Lysan! I love thee yet! I would spend my life with thee! But an I be other—“

He swept her in and kissed her. “My emotion didn’t change either. I love you too, and no potion is responsible. But I think we have work to do outside.”

“Aye,” she breathed, seeming relieved.

The others had come to a similar conclusion. They were forging toward an exit.

But when the hatch was opened, a stormy swirl of air rushed in, blowing back the elves.

“Must be a dust storm,” Lysander said.

“But it’s wet!” an elf protested.

So it was. “Then it’s safe to go out there,” Lysander said. “I’ll do it.”

The elves gave way for him, and he scrambled through the tunnel and thrust his body up through a hole. There was a storm raging- all right; warm rain plastered his robe to his body in a moment.

Echo emerged after him. “This be not the heat o’ the South Pole!” she said.

“But it’s warm enough. Drop your robe and come on; we can handle this.”

She did. He took her hand, and forged on, trying to gain a point of perspective.

Then a rift opened in the clouds. The sun shone down, directly south of the Pole.

Lysander froze. South?

Beside him, Echo was similarly amazed. “Be the magic gone?” she asked. “The sunlight bends not?”

Flach and Weva came up behind them. “Now I see what happened,” Weva said. “That imbalance—the shell got twisted! The South Pole is now the West Pole!”

“That’s why the storm,” Flach agreed. “The temperature patterns changed; it has to get resettled.”

“A quarter turn!” Lysander said. “We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“It was worse,” Weva said. “We have changed similarly.”

Lysander looked at her. “No you haven’t.”

She smiled. “You are an idiot, ‘Sander.”

“Is there something I’ve overlooked?”

Echo touched his shoulder. “Aye, because thou be not affected, mayhap, having an alternate self not. Watch me change forms.”

Then she assumed her Phaze-harpy form, and flew a short distance into the air.

Her body was shining metal, and her feathers plastic. “Now do you understand?” she called.

“You’re a robot harpy—a cyborg!” he exclaimed.

“I am Echo.” She descended to the ground, and resumed to human form. “And I be Oche. Now dost recant thy pledge to love me?”

Suddenly the change in language penetrated. Echo had been talking in the Phaze dialect! The cyborg harpy talked in Proton dialect. They had changed!

“But you said you still loved me!” he said, stunned.

“Aye, Lysan. I be Echo’s living aspect, and I love thee as she does. It were always I who loved thee, but I said naught, lest revolt thee. Now I would be with thee, but I will leave thee an thou ask.”

“But if the harpy body is now inanimate—“

“This human form be alive,” she said. “I offer it thee, with my love, an thou desire either.”

Nepe appeared. “Methinks thou be wisest to accept, Lysan,” she said.

He turned his head to look at her. “You are Flach,” he said.

“Aye. But I were always both, as be Weva and Beman. It b( a big adjustment, but we shall do it, as we did mergence be fore.” She—he—smiled impishly. “Methinks those in the cities have big adjustments to make too!”

Weva became Beman. “Yes, I be Weva,” he—she—said “Needs must we all adjust. But it be especially important for thee, Lysan, because thou wills! have to coordinate the integration o’ the Hectare into the new order. The faster we can al come to terms with ourselves, the better off we shall be.”

Lysander turned to Oche. “I always knew you were both,” he said. “I knew the harpy watched everything. I knew she way the brain in your machine, just as you knew a living Hectare was the brain in my laboratory-generated body. What ha? changed is only a detail. I love the whole of you. If you love me—“

“Aye,” she said. Then she stepped into him, and they embraced. “But I think thy body be human now too, Lysan.”

“All the way human? But that would mean—“

“That we can have a family,” she finished.

He realized that his future was likely to be even more busy than his past. But there was no time now to ponder the implications; they had to organize for the reorganization of the frames.

Epilog

They gathered beside the wooden castle of the Brown Demesnes. Tsetse looked out a window and spied them. “Brown—there’s an army outside! But a moment ago it was just open fields!”

“Mayhap it be Franken returning,” Brown said. “His step can shake the ground. He were on errand, returning the Book o’ Magic to the Red Adept.”

“No, I mean there really are people out there,” Tsetse insisted. “And animals, and everything.”

“Methought I felt a conjuration,” Brown said. Because her selves were the same, and Tsetse had only one self, the two of them had not been affected by the exchange of identities. It had taken a while to get used to the quarter turn the compass had taken, making the sun now rise and set at the North and South Poles instead of the East and West ones, but the climate of her region had changed only slightly. She considered herself well off in most respects, now that the alien conquest had been reversed.

But whatever could have caused this sudden gathering? She gazed out, and spied wolves, unicorns, elves, demons, animal heads, BEMs, and of course human folk. It seemed to be some kind of celebration, for the folk were brightly garbed and there appeared to be picnic sheets spread out.

“Needs must we go out and see,” Brown decided, speaking positively though she was perplexed and a bit nervous.

“Maybe I should stay in,” Tsetse said.

Brown came to a decision. “Nay, friend. I love thee and will deny thee not. An thou lovest me, come face the world with me.”

“If you’re sure—“

“I know only that I will live a lie no longer, come what may.” She took the woman by the hand, kissed her, and led her to the front portal.

Outside, the gathering was organized almost like an army, with contingents spread in a large semicircle, and a small group centered, facing the castle entrance. As Brown walked out, the visitors came to attention, silently.

At the head of the assembly was Purple, whether Citizen or Adept she would not know until he spoke—and then she would remain in doubt, because of the reversals. This was another surprise; she had thought him imprisoned again. Just behind him stood the woman Alyc, the one who had dated Lysander but then worked for the enemy. Evidently she had found another companion. Brown stopped before Purple, Tsetse beside her.

Purple spoke. “Thou knowest my life be forfeit, for that I twice betrayed my culture. Thou must believe I bespeak thee truth now. I yield naught to none, except to thee, for that thou didst treat me kindly. Know, Adept, that the specter I held o’er thee were but a phantom; others differ but judge thee not for it, as thou dost not judge them. An thou accept it not from thy friends, accept it from thine enemy: it be no barrier for thee.”

She stared at him. There was only one subject he could be addressing. Had he come to shame her openly, before them all?

Purple stepped forward. He caught Tsetse’s timid hand. “My purpose in sending thee to the Brown Demesnes were malevolent,” he told her. “I sought to blackmail her, that she would serve the Hectare. But it were a lie. None begrudge Brown her way or thee thine. I now renounce any power I had o’er thee, Tsetse, and wish thee well.” He turned to Brown. “Deep do I regret repaying thy kindness with malice, and using a lie to savage thee. Thou didst deserve it not.”

He turned in place and walked away. Alyc followed.

“Wait!” Brown cried. “What did they promise thee, to make thee speak so?”

He paused. “That need concern thee not. Be assured I bespoke thee the truth.”

“It does concern me!” she insisted. “I know thou dost do naught for naught. What—?”

“A clean and painless death,” he said, and resumed his walk-

“Nay!” she cried, hurrying after him. “I wished this not on thee! We made a deal, and I agreed nor to seek harm to thee neither to be silent an I learned o’ harm coming.”

“This be not o’ thy making,” he said gruffly, still walking. “In any event, the deal be off; it were in power only while the Hectare governed. Concern thyself not farther on this matter.”

But she could not let it go. “An they brought thee here for a public execution, I tolerate it not! I forgive thee aught thou intended, and thank thee for bringing me a companion. Thou must not die!”

“I ask this not o’ thee,” Purple said, pausing again. “I came only to spare myself a life confined, under geis. An the truth purchase me that, I be satisfied.”

Brown looked to the side. There was the Blue Adept and the Lady Blue. “Stile! I beg thee, an our friendship mean aught, let not this horror be!”

Stile lifted his hands. “Thou be pardoned, Purple, at Brown’s behest. An thou do no further evil, we spare thee death and confinement, and thy paramour too. Get thee gone from our sight.” He was evidently somewhat disgusted—but only somewhat. He had never been a vengeful man, when there were reasonable alternatives. He turned to the Hectare standing behind him. “Do thou input it to thy net: he to be watched but not molested.”

The BEM extended one small tentacle, its tip tilted up.

Slowly Purple turned. “Lady, thou be more generous to me than I were to thee. I thank thee for what I expected not.” Then he turned again and walked away, and no one challenged him.

No one except Alyc, who tackled him and embraced him. He put an arm around her. He had always had an eye for young women, and she was reputed lo be a most passionate one.

Now Brown saw the Tan Adept, with the vampire Jod’e beside him. Tan had used his power to fascinate the lovely bat woman, who was blameless. Brown opened her mouth.

“And Tan, pardoned,” Blue said before Brown could speak.

The BEM made another note.

“I thank thee, O my lady!” Jod’e exclaimed.

Tan walked away, with Jod’e. Brown had to admit that they did make a decent couple. With a bat wife, Tan would not again betray the interests of Phaze.

Another couple came forward. It was Lysander, who had turned out to be another enemy spy, but who had in the end chosen to help save Phaze, and his companion Echo or Oche. “When you took Tsetse to Hardom to help Purple play his game with the Hectare, I was the one you took, in the guise of Tsetse. I apologize for deceiving you in this manner.”

Brown was amazed. “Thou? A man?” But she realized that it was possible. She had known that the person was larger than Tsetse, and of course she hadn’t verified for gender.

“Yes. The prophecy indicated that my cooperation was required if the planet shell was to be saved. Thus I was integral to Phaze Doubt, and Nepe brought me to help her fetch the key element of the counterploy.”

Phaze Doubt. She realized that that would have been their name for the project to save Phaze. “The key element?”

An attractive young woman of about seventeen stepped up. “I was the one he fetched, in the form of a BEM seed,” she said. “I am known currently as Weva, though with the reversal this is approximate. I want to thank you, Adept, for enabling me to come into existence, and to help save Phaze.”

So this was the new BEM Adept, whose music had indeed saved Phaze! Without her, all would have been lost. “I be glad, now, it happened,” Brown said.

“My companion Flach sends his regrets, and those of the Robot Adept; they are occupied at the moment in conjuring the last snow demons to the western reaches, where it is now suitably cold. I offered to help, but Flach preferred to handle it himself.”

Brown looked at her. “Thou dost disagree?”

Weva smiled wryly. “Not really. I think he has to bid farewell to a certain snow demoness before he can get serious about me.”

Brown laughed. “Methinks I heard about Icy! Believe me, he had his future not with her!”

“True. But I think I will remind him of it several times before I let him settle down to his future with me. Meanwhile, I am glad to meet you, who were instrumental in my genesis. I had no parents, really, but I always thought that someone like you—“ She shrugged. “A foolish notion, of course.”

“A mother figure?” Brown asked, amazed.

“I should not have mentioned it,” Weva said quickly, flushing. “Now I realize that I had no right to cast you as—“

“Nay, girl, I be not affronted!” Brown exclaimed. “Gladly would I have had a child like thee, an it been possible without—“

A tear showed at the girl’s eye. “Then—?”

“May I hug thee, Weva?”

“Oh, yes!” Weva opened her arms and embraced her.

“Thou must visit me,” Brown said. “Thou and thy young—“ She hesitated. “Flach and Nepe be similarly reversed?”

“Yes. We are working it out. For now, we agree that he is male and I female. In time I’m sure the ambiguity will be resolved.”

“Surely it will,” Brown agreed. It occurred to her that there could be another reason that Weva chose to identify with her, Brown. That sexual ambiguity...

Now a unicorn stepped forward. It was Neysa. She assumed ‘her woman form, actually that of Nessie the Moebite emulating hers. “I be last,” she said, “ ‘cause my burden be most onerous.”

“Thou?” Brown asked, astonished. “Thou hast been always my best friend, Neysa!”

“Aye. That be why my pain be most, that I betrayed thee in thine hour o’ need.”

“What? Thou didst ne’er—“

“Nay, I did! When thou didst tell me what I somehow hall ne’er fathomed before, and sought my support.”

“Thou gavest it, Neysa. Thou didst—“

“I said thy shame would not be known. I, who loved outside my species, and had not the courage to confess it, and who condemned my filly when she did have the courage—how could’ I have condemned thee for loving in other manner! I were hypocrite when I hurt thee, Brown, and deep be my thereof.” There had been one tear at Weva’s eye; there was t stream at Neysa’s eyes. “It were not thy shame, O truest friend it were mine.”

Brown opened her mouth to protest, but was frozen. For from the mare radiated the splash of truth. It caused the air to shimmer, and the ground to ripple, and the sky to shift color. crossed the assembled folk, and from them radiated echoing splashes, their ripples crisscrossing. That backwash intersected the spot where Brown and Tsetse stood, and suddenly Brown felt the great current of support from all the gathering. The knew—and they accepted her way, as she accepted theirs.

Brown embraced Neysa. “There be no shame,” she said. Now it was true. The last doubt of Phaze had been resolved.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is the second Author’s Note in this series of no-note novels. Don’t froth at the mouth; you read this novel for better or worse.

One of the criticisms of my Author’s Notes has been that a novel should stand on its own and not need to be explained separately. I suspect that such critics read neither the novels nor the notes with much comprehension, because normally my notes discuss not the novels, but my life and times during the writing of the novels, or they may give credits to particular readers who suggested notions used in the novels. Well, muster your ire, because this time I shall discuss the novel.

Two names were borrowed from those of readers who wrote to me, though the characters surely bear little resemblance to the originals: Alyc and Jod’e. Another went the other way: Icy turned up in real life as a reviewer in an amateur magazine, Fosfax.

I was accused of doing a poor presentation of a lesbian, in the second Adept novel, Blue Adept. It must have been poor, because I had no lesbian character there, or in any of my novels. Apparently some readers assumed that a woman who hated men had to be a lesbian; I don’t see it that way. But in this novel I do have a lesbian, and any of that persuasion may now chastise me for doing it wrong. Certainly homosexuality is not one of my stronger subjects, but I felt that it wasn’t fair to exclude a sizable segment of the human population—about ten per cent—from representation in my fiction. Do I think that such folk are misguided, and that appropriate therapy will show them the error of their ways? No. No more than therapy would turn me gay. I would resent anyone, however well intentioned, trying to reverse my sexual orientation, so I follow the Golden Rule and leave the gay community alone. No, I don’t exclude them from friendship, and yes, I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one. Fair enough?

There were several problems in the course of the writing of this novel. For example, in the interest of developing new games for the game sections, I subscribed to World Game Review—and then didn’t use it. The novel led me in other directions than I expected. This sort of thing happens to writers. Sometimes characters take over their roles, too, and enlarge their parts, as Icy the demon chief’s daughter did. She was supposed to be a bit part, but she played me for a sucker with that sweater. You know, the one with the mountain contours.

I had intended to present the Master Game Grid layout here, so that interested readers could see exactly how every game was derived from the assorted grids and subgrids. But when I checked, I discovered no Master Grid. Oops! Two things, actually three, had happened. Years back I had worked out the full grid, and spent three hours one morning perfecting its details—then made an error on the computer that wiped out everything. I was never able to re-create it as I had had it. I can get very upset by such things, and I labor to see that they happen only once. Then I changed from CP/M to MS-DOS, and got everything set up—and a hard disk crash took it out. Later I changed computers, and my old one glitched. In sum, I couldn’t get anything that might have been salvaged. I was dependent on prior printouts. But I had also moved to a new house, and my back papers were buried somewhere in the refuse, where we are slowly cleaning up a decade’s worth of neglect. Eventually we’ll find those printouts, under a pile of other manuscripts. But I had a novel to do now. Which meant I had to do it without the Master Grid. Aarrgh!

Ah, now you understand. I faked it. This will be no news for reviewers, who have been privy to the fact that I faked any ability as a writer from the outset of my career. But I am sorry that I was unable to provide the Master Grid; it was my pride.

I try to benefit from anything that happens. Sometimes it’s a struggle. I received a letter from a reader, Ben Mays, who said that his play group would be putting on a show in my county at such and such a date. I hate to take time off from writing to sleep, let alone for anything else, but I do have an interest in drama. I acted in college, and while I’m sure I was not a great actor, it benefited me by helping me to abolish stage fright and teaching me how to make myself heard by an audience when there was no mike. I support the arts, and acting is one of them. So I made myself to go the play.

It was a disaster. Oh, the play was all right, I’m sure; it was Red Fox/Second Hanging, and was of the kind where stage and costuming are minimal. In fact there were only three actors, all male, covering perhaps a dozen parts. They changed parts almost in midsentence, going from scene to scene without pause. It started as a dialogue with the audience and worked seemingly by accident into the content of the play, but was actually highly integrated. It was a story of backwoods Kentucky, corruption and law enforcement and odd histories. The whole thing was the kind that you don’t see on mass market television, and yes, I think it’s great that small groups maintain the tradition and bring this sort of art to communities like ours. Attendance was free, even.

So what’s my gripe? Well, I was dead center in the audience, and the acoustics were such that the sound came at me from left and right, overlapped and garbled, and I could barely make out one word in ten. It was like watching TV with the sound turned down, or with interference that made the sound unintelligible: you can’t get much of the sense of it, but do have a glimpse of what you are missing. I suffered about two hours of that, thinking how I could have been home working on this novel instead. What a waste! Others heard it, and there was a standing ovation at the conclusion, which I didn’t join, because it would have been hypocrisy; I don’t do something just to conform. If only I hadn’t been stuck in that dead spot.

After the play I located Ben Mays and explained why I couldn’t say anything about the play. He said that that is a problem in some theaters, and wondered why I hadn’t moved to a better spot. Well, I should have, but I hadn’t realized how big a difference location can make; I might have made a scene by moving, only to be in a worse spot. He also said that they had it on video cassette. Oh, okay. He sent me the catalog, and I ordered that and some records and audio tapes while I was at it. As I said, I support the enterprise, and one good way to support it is to buy their productions.

At this writing I haven’t listened to any of it, because I have to assemble my new record and cassette tape players and I was determined to finish this novel before taking a break for anything else. But the material has had an effect on me, because one of the records, Heartdance, put out by a group called Song of the Wood, has a beautiful wraparound cover painting showing monstrous stone musical instruments cracking and being overgrown at a shoreline, as if some giant left them there millennia ago, and a girl dancing at the top of the fifty-foot-high hammered dulcimer. Beyond is a bucolic countryside, a village hamlet, and a distant castle on a hill. That picture fascinates me. In fact it set my fevered brain working, and I may use that as the setting for a future novel. Girl tunes in to the music of the ancient gods and dances to it, there at their ruins, and life stirs in the great old instruments that none alive can play, and—

But I don’t mean to bore you. My point is that via this devious channel I did gain something of value to me: a compelling picture and an idea. However, I did try to use the experience of attending the play in this novel. When Purple played the game of the Cretan mystery with the BEM, that was really an unstructured play. Of course it didn’t resemble the play I had seen, because I hadn’t heard it, but it was what came out after the experience slopped around in my cranium for a while. So if you liked that scene, then you can say I benefited, and if you didn’t like it, you can say I didn’t.

When I got into that scene, I had a real headache working out the devious ploys and counterploys. I set it in ancient Crete because that is one of the aspects of ancient history that fascinate me. You may have noticed that I sneak bits of history into my novels, because my love is for the far future and far past; only the present bores me. Fine; I completed the scene and moved on. Then when I came through on my editing sweep, I got into trouble again.

You see, there are two pillars at the main gate to the great Palace at Knossos. One is round in cross section, the other square. I called the round one a cylinder, but what’s a square one? It took me forty-five minutes to run that down (an ornery writer just doesn’t know when to quit), and then I couldn’t use the word. It’s a right parallelepipedon (or you can leave off the last two letters). Technically, a polyhedron with right-angled parallelograms as faces. That is, a figure with four rectangular sides and two square ends. If all six sides were squares, it would be called a cube. Why couldn’t they have had a simple four-letter word for a stretched-out cube? I decided on “block-shaped” and I do feel like a blockhead for wasting so much time on it. I mean, what idiot would spend three quarters of an hour editing a single word? Sigh; the worst of it is that I know that next time such a thing occurs, I’ll do it again.

Yet in the course of that spot research I ascertained that the fabled land of Atlantis was in fact Crete (I looked in the book that showed the square columns, you see), destroyed by the eruption of Thera about 3,500 years ago. Those of you who have spent your lives searching for Atlantis may now relax; my forty-five minutes has serendipitously solved your problem. No, don’t thank me; I do this sort of thing routinely for my readers.

Thus the troubled course of this novel, which is typical for me. Those who believe that great works of literature spring full-formed from the head of the author and that lesser ilk requires even less effort will want nothing to do with me, because I struggle and sweat over even indifferent material, as in this case. Most real writers do. But how I love that struggle!

This is the conclusion of the seven-novel Adept trilogy. To forestall the screams of outrage by fans of the series who never want it to end, and the sighs of relief by critics who never wanted it to start, let me explain that I regard some series as open, meaning they can continue as long as the market tolerates them, and some as closed, meaning that when their tales are told they are allowed to retire. This series is the latter type. This does not mean that I am abandoning fantasy, just that I am making way for a new series, Virtual Mode, whose framework is such that the whole of the Proton/Phaze frames can be considered a subset of it. That means in turn that should I some day suffer an irresistible urge to write another Adept novel, I could do so in the Mode context. That’s neither a promise, fans, nor a threat, critics; merely a clarification I hope allows each of you to relax. This series has been phased out. Of course I have been wrong before, when I thought it was complete as a three-novel set; like a tropical tree, a series can sometimes regenerate from the roots. But I think it’s done.