Out of Phaze aa-4

by Piers Anthony

  "The last one followed you and didn't recognize me," she said. "Maybe the Citizen tunes in on the substances of your body. Living flesh may not work for that."

  "This be more of a challenge than I like. How can I sleep, and the Citizen tune in on me?"

  "We've got to find a way to nullify the threat without destroying it," she said. "Then it won't matter if it knows where you are."

  Bane cast about for stones. "Next bowman comes, I want a distance weapon."

  "Why not use the bow?"

  Bane knocked his head with the heel of his hand. "The bow: Spoils!"

  Bane picked up the bow, and checked the remaining arrows. Most were ordinary, but one was incendiary and another was glowing: a marker.

  He tested the bow, shooting an arrow at a distant target. It scored; this was an excellent instrument. Probably the man-robot had been designed for perfect marksmanship, too. Well, Bane could score well enough with this, being both trained and having a robot body.

  "Each attack seems to be worse than the preceding one," Agape said. "I think we'd better prepare for something bad."

  "Aye. But thou dost not wish to kill it."

  "Not if we can nullify it without destroying it. Then the Citizen won't be able to bring a new threat."

  "If we just knew what to expect!" he fretted.

  "Since we can't seem to hide from it, maybe if we made a good defensive position-"

  "Or a trap!" he exclaimed.

  They discussed it briefly, then worked to set up a covered pit. Bane had to use the sword to excavate the earth and chop through roots, and they couldn't take time to make it too deep, because they did not know when the next attack would come. The best they could hope for was that the creature would fall in, and be distracted long enough for Bane to get in some crippling but not killing blow. Having slowed it, they could then outrun it, and the Citizen would not be able to bring in anything new.

  They put branches and ferns across the hole, bringing them in from a distance, and covered them with some of the dirt. The extra dirt they used to fashion a kind of fort nearby. They spread dry leaves over everything. Then they settled into the fort and waited.

  Nothing happened. After two hours, the sun was going down, and they were getting hungry. "The Citizen must be taking a break," Agape said. "He knows that we don't dare rest, so he can afford to. He has plenty of time."

  That seemed to make sense. "Let's eat, then," Bane said.

  They searched for food. Some of the trees had fruit, but it wasn't enough. They also needed water to drink.

  "If this be a copy of the mountain I know," Bane said, "there be a cave and the snow from the peak melts into a stream that runs through it. Mushrooms grow in that cave. But some be poison."

  "I can tell good from bad," Agape said.

  They went to where the cave should be-and it was there. "The stream joins it inside; its channel be too convoluted and narrow for a person, but for a way it be nice," he said, remembering.

  It was nice. It was dark inside, but Bane used the glow-arrow for light, and it was enough. The mushrooms grew thickly by the bank of the subterranean river. Agape melted a hand and touched sample mushrooms, locating a large patch of good ones. They had food, for now. He ate a token amount, just to keep her company.

  Agape checked farther in the cave. She stroked the stones of it. "Bane, this is not safe!" she exclaimed, alarmed. "I feel the stress here; one hard knock, and the ceiling will fall!"

  "Aye, I always used a spell to shore it up, just in case. But if we don't knock it-"

  "Let's get back to the surface," she said nervously.

  They returned to the forest. It was dark now, and the sounds of the night life were there. The Citizen had done an excellent job of renovating this region!

  "Funny thing," Bane murmured. "The Citizen we fight corresponds to the Purple Adept of Phaze. But the one who captured us was the White Adept."

  "I think the Citizens are collaborating," Agape said.

  "If the correspondence be accurate, White and Purple both be enemies of Blue."

  "It seems accurate." They returned to the earthen fortress and settled down for the night.

  "The Citizen can attack any time," Bane said. "We'll have to keep careful watch."

  "I'll watch while you sleep," she said. "Then you can watch while-"

  Bane smiled. "Thou dost forget my present body. It does not need to sleep. I'll keep watch."

  She laughed. "I did forget! You seem so human to me."

  "I am human. It be just my body that is machine."

  "Then I will sleep. But wake me, if-"

  "How do I wake thee? When I tried before-"

  "Tap this code on my surface," she said. She took his hand and tapped it in an intricate pattern. "That is the alert-code for my species; I will respond immediately."

  He rehearsed the code, making sure of it. Then she formed a basin in the ground and lay down.

  "Dost thou not get dirty?" he asked as she began to melt.

  Her face was dissolving, but the mouth remained. It spoke. "No, my skin rejects it, just as it does the dust." Then the mouth disappeared into the coalescing central mass. She became a dark pool in the basin.

  Bane kept watch. He discovered that though he did not require sleep, his consciousness did require some down-time to assimilate and properly organize the events of the day. Otherwise his awareness would become chaos.

  So, while he watched, he also dreamed, in his fashion. It was pleasant enough.

  In the morning he tapped Agape's surface in the code pattern, and she stirred. The protoplasm rippled and humped and shaped itself into the human mannequin; then the features clarified and the hair grew out. Bane watched, interested, then startled; then he smiled.

  "Good morning, Bane," she said.

  "Thy hair be blue," he said.

  She lifted a strand between her fingers, bringing it around so that she could see it. "Oops!" Her hair dissolved back into her head, then regrew with its normal reddish color.

  "But methinks I liked the blue better," Bane said.

  She stared at him a moment, then laughed. "When you are serious about that, tell me. I can be any appearance you want."

  They found some more fruit, and an edible root. It wasn't much of a breakfast, but it served. "Actually, I can assimilate cellulose," Agape said. "It takes a little longer, but there is no need for me to take food you could consume. In fact, I might be able to predigest some for you, so that-"

  "Nay, this body needs food not," he reminded her.

  She laughed ruefully. "I keep forgetting! You seem so-so alive!"

  "I be alive," Bane said. But he knew what she meant. Were he in living flesh, he would be required to eat. The notion of consuming her predigested food bothered him, but he realized that there was no sense in being repelled by the notion; what was honey, but pollen that had been predigested by insects? "We should be seeing the Citizen soon."

  "As he finishes his breakfast and gets ready for his day's entertainment," she agreed.

  They had called it correctly. The Citizen manifested-in the form of a small flying machine.

  "A toy airplane!" Agape exclaimed.

  "I mistrust the Citizen's toys," Bane said.

  The airplane looped in the sky, then oriented unerringly on Bane and dived down.

  Bane saw it coming and scooted around behind a tree. A dart thunked into the trunk; the plane had fired at him.

  "Like a man with a bow-only this time it flies," Agape said.

  Bane ran for the cover of a different tree as the plane sailed up in the sky and looped around again. He picked up a pair of stones.

  The plane was not in sight, but they could hear it as it circled. Then it came down, flying directly at Bane's present hiding place, on the side that he stood. "Circle the tree!" Agape screamed.

  He did so with alacrity. Another dart struck, and the plane climbed back into the sky.

  "How does he know where I be?" Bane asked. "I couldn't see
it, so it couldn't see me-yet came it right at me."

  "There must be a sensing device on you," she said, running after him as he went for another tree.

  "Like a spell of location?"

  "I think so. Maybe if you take off the sword-"

  Bane threw down the sword and ran for another tree. The plane came down and planted another dart in that trunk as Bane dived clear.

  Then it came to him. "The finger!" he cried.

  "The what?"

  "The Citizen fixed my chewed finger! That be where it be!"

  "Of course!" she agreed. "But in that case-"

  Bane lifted his finger to his mouth and bit it off. The pseudoflesh and pseudobone resisted his efforts, but he kept chewing until it was free. He hurled it away from him.

  The plane came down and fired a dart into the ground near the fallen finger. "That confirms it!" Agape cried. "Get away from that finger, and he'll never find us!"

  But Bane had another notion. "That flyer can cast about and mayhap spot us anytime; I want to trap it, alive."

  "Bane, you can't-"

  "Follow me!" He ran across and swooped up the finger. "I'm going to the cave. Tell me when the plane be coming at me."

  "The cave! But the plane is small enough to fly in there too!"

  "Aye."

  "Bane, this is crazy! It will follow you and trap you in there!"

  He kept running, and she had to follow. They zigzagged down the slope toward the cave.

  "It's orienting!" Agape cried.

  Bane dodged to the side without stopping. In a moment a dart struck the ground near his prior course. The plane passed on by and ascended. Apparently it was only able to fire once on a pass, and it was doing so from too far away to compensate for his last-moment maneuvers.

  They reached the entrance to the cave. "Bane, you can't!" Agape cried. "You can't take the finger deep enough to lead the plane in, and still get out yourself-and the plane will come out the moment it discovers that it's only the finger, anyway!"

  "Not if I throw the finger into the water, and then bash out that weak section so the roof falls down, trapping it inside."

  "No!" she cried. "The collapse will be behind the wall; I felt the nature of the stresses. You will be trapped too!"

  The plane was coming in again. "I'll take that chance!"

  "No, I'll take it!" she said, grasping the finger. "I can get out through the river channel; you can't." She hurried into the cave.

  He let her go. It was too late to stop her without getting caught by the plane-and he realized that she was right. She could melt and climb in a way that he could not. He scrambled for cover outside the cave.

  The plane came down, aiming for the cave. It slowed as its sensors showed the nature of the terrain. But its sensors also told it that the target was in the cave, and could not be reached from outside it, so it followed.

  Bane watched as the small craft corrected course and flew inside. He realized that the Citizen was guiding it, and had to be very careful here, lest he crash it before reaching his target. But the plane could not travel too slowly, lest it drop to the ground. It had to get in there and score; then it wouldn't matter what happened to it, because the game would be over.

  Had Agape had enough time to reach the water and throw the finger in? Would their trap work if she sprang it? Now his doubts loomed grotesquely large. How could he have let her take that risk in his place? She was such a good, caring, self-sacrificing creature! Probably if he had occupied his natural body, whose emotions were not under control the way those of the machine were, he would not have let her do it. He hadn't even shown her what he had promised-and if she got caught in the collapse of the cave-roof, he would never have the chance, because she would be not merely Game-dead, but all-the-way dead.

  There was a rumble. The ground shook, and dust swirled out from the mouth of the cave.

  She had done it. But at what cost?

  Bane went to the cave, but it was so full of dust that he could not see anything. He just had to hope that the plane had been trapped, and that Agape survived, and was making her way out. There was nothing he could do but wait.

  He returned to the minor fort where they had spent the night. He recovered his staff and sword and bow. The game was not over until either he was "dead" or time ran out.

  A huge shape loomed in the sky. Bane peered up at it from cover. It was a dragon! It was circling the peak of the mountain, looking down.

  Bane considered. That had to be a robot, because there were no magical creatures in Proton. That meant it was the Citizen in another guise. That in turn meant that the airplane had been destroyed rather than trapped, so their plan had failed in that respect. Now the Citizen was free and Agape was not: the opposite of what they had tried for.

  But why was the dragon circling the mountain, instead of searching for Bane himself? That didn't seem to make sense.

  Then he reasoned it out. The Citizen was still orienting on the finger! It had been dark in the cave, and when the roof collapsed the finger had not been touched, being deeper in. It would not have been obvious that the finger was unattached; after all, it had been moving purposefully until that point.

  The Citizen thought Bane was trapped inside the cave! The dragon was trying to figure out how to reach him in that impenetrable fastness. Or perhaps making sure he didn't escape, so that he would starve in there. Death by starvation was still death; that would represent victory for the Citizen.

  But what of Agape? Had she survived, or was she truly dead? The Citizen might not care, but Bane did! He had to assume that she was all right, and was making her way slowly up through the channel used by the stream. That could be quite tortuous; he should be patient.

  Patient? He should be half mad with anxiety! These robot feelings lacked the punch of the natural ones, because he could control them; if he decided not to care about the fate of his companion, then he didn't care. That might be convenient for a machine, but he preferred the natural way, inconvenience and all. In his own body, he'd be-

  He analyzed it, as he could do with this body. He concluded that his first thought was correct: he would be quite smitten with Agape. Oh, it was true that she was an alien creature who dissolved into a puddle of jelly when she slept. It was true that she hardly knew the meaning of human sexual involvement. In fact, she hardly understood the distinction between male and female. But she was working hard to learn, and was succeeding well. When she assumed her human female form, she was lovely indeed. More important, her loyalty and effort and personality were all nice. A human woman like her would be an admirable companion-and Agape could be exactly like a human woman.

  Bane had had his eye on the females of Phaze throughout. He knew that in due course he would have to marry and settle into the business of being the Blue Adept. Whenever he had encountered a female, he had judged her as a prospective companion or wife. Many were excellent companions; none had seemed suitable to marry. Some very fetching ones were nonhuman, like Fleta or Suchevane, the mind-maddening vampire. But only the fully human ones were suitable for marriage-and they had other counts against them. Some were not really attractive, physically; he knew that was narrow of him, but he did not want an ordinary woman. Some were beauties-but were the offspring of Adverse Adepts. Sheer mischief, there! Probably their appearance was substantially enhanced by magic, and the reality would be a disappointment. So he had not found any woman to love, in Phaze. Only playthings. He had been over this before, in his own mind, seeking some solution, and had come to none.

  Here in Proton there were the frivolous types too, such as Doris the cyborg, that one who had dumped Mach. But here too was Agape, and there was nothing frivolous about her. She concealed none of her nature from him, and supported him in whatever way she could, asking in return only a type of instruction that it would be laughable for him to charge anything for. Now she had willingly, almost eagerly risked her life, her real life, to save him from a pseudo-death in the Game. So that he would not have to
tell the Citizen how to contact his other self in Phaze. She could hardly understand his rationale for wishing to keep the matter private; he hardly understood it himself. He just didn't like being forced into doing something, and he regarded the Citizen as a member of a class of opponents who should not be accommodated in anything important. None of this was any concern to an alien creature. So her support was mostly altruism-and her kind of honor.

  Honor. She had it, obviously. There, emerging at last from the complexities of their relationship, was the essence. She was a creature who was capable of understanding and practicing an honorable existence. That was the kind of female he wanted for a long-term companion.

  But she was of the frame of Proton, and he was of Phaze. He could not become the Blue Adept and have her with him. So the relationship could not be permanent. The best he could do was give her her instruction in the human mechanism of sexual expression, and leave her.

  It made sense; his robot brain saw it clearly. But his human consciousness damned it. This was not the relationship he wanted with her.

  But his robot logic would not stop. Agape was a creature from the planet of Moeba, and was here on a mission. She saw him as a feasible way to implement that mission; she had always been open about that. Once that was done, her use for him should abate. She had never spoken to him of love or permanence; she had always tried to help him to return to his own frame. So he was probably fooling himself if he thought she had any genuine feeling for him; it was possible that her species did not possess such feelings. He had been humanizing her in his perception of emotion, just as he had been with her body. She looked human, but was not; she acted human, but was not. Therefore it was foolish of him even to consider any permanent relation with her, regardless of its feasibility.

  Well, if she had survived the cave, and returned to him intact, he would forthwith honor his bargain and show her everything he knew about human sexuality. Then she would be free to go her way, and he free to return to Phaze. That was the proper course. Not the ideal course, just the proper one.

  The day crawled past, while the dragon circled, then flew away for several hours, then returned to circle again. The Citizen had taken a lunch break, but was still watching. Bane ate also, and snoozed in his robot fashion, ready to spring alert if the dragon came his way.