Juxtaposition

by Piers Anthony

  He tried to open the lock, but could not; the controls were keyed to particular identities or particular code sequences, and he was not the right person and didn’t know the code. No help for it; he would have to try the disrupter, hoping to find canned air to use with his suit.

  Then a voice came: “Identify yourself.”

  There was someone in there! Or at least a sapient robot. “I am—” He paused. Should he give his true identity? Caution prevailed. “A person in need of air. I beg assistance.”

  “You shall have it. Be advised that a robot weapon is trained on you.”

  “So advised.” Stile leaned against the wall, growing dizzy as the last of his scuba oxygen faded. He could not blame a solitary maintenance guard for being careful.

  The portal hummed, then opened. Air puffed out. A figure emerged, clothed in the protective gear of a maintenance worker, using a nostril mask and protective goggles.

  “Stile! It’s you!” the figure cried. “God, what a relief!” The man put his arm around Stile’s shoulders to help him into the chamber.

  It was Clef, the musician Stile had encountered in the Tourney, and to whom he had given the Platinum Flute. The Foreordained. “I thought you were in Phaze,” Stile gasped as the air lock sealed and pressure came up.

  “I was, Stile. Or should I say sir? I understand you obtained your Citizenship.”

  “I got it. Don’t bother with the ‘sir.’ Just give me air and food and a place to rest. What are you doing here?”

  The inner aperture opened, and Clef guided him into a comfortable chamber. “I’m here to meet you, Stile, on behalf of the Oracle. You and I must work together to fulfill the prophecy and save the frames from destruction.” He pressed a cup of nutri-soup into Stile’s unsteady hands and set him in an easy chair. “I was so afraid you would not make it. The Oracle said there was danger, that no one could help you, and that it could not foresee your arrival. Its prophecies are unreliable when they relate to its own destiny. I had no notion when and if you would arrive, except that it had to be within a three-day time span. I fear I was asleep when the moment came. Then I could not be certain it was you, for there are enemies—”

  Stile ceased his gulping of the soup to interrupt Clef. “Enemies? To save the frames? I understood I was to destroy Phaze, and I don’t know whether that makes me friend or enemy to whom.”

  Clef smiled. “That depends on how you see it, Stile. The present order will be overturned or greatly weakened in both Proton and Phaze. That’s why Citizens and Adepts oppose the move. Most of the rest—the serfs and creatures—will benefit by the new order. You are no enemy to them!”

  “Viewpoint,” Stile said, catching on. “To an Adept, the loss of power of Adepts would be disaster, the end of Phaze as he knows it. To a unicorn, it might be salvation.”

  “And to a werewolf,” Clef agreed. “Big changes are coming. It is our job to make the transition safe. If we don’t, things could get extremely ugly.”

  Stile was recovering as he breathed the good air and ingested the nourishment of the soup. He started to strip off the wetsuit, all that had protected him from the chill of the cave passages. This chamber was like a slice of Heaven, coming so suddenly after his arduous trek. “Tell me everything.”

  “It’s simple enough. Three hundred years ago, when they discovered that this planet was one of the occasional places in the universe where the frames of science and of fantasy intersected—would you believe Planet Earth was another such place in medieval times?—they realized that there were certain dangers in colonizing the fantasy frame. So they set up some powerful instruments for the purpose of securing an optimistic new order. A sophisticated self-willed computer and a definitive book of magic.”

  “A book of magic? I never heard of this.”

  “Well, you weren’t supposed to. It contains the most potent spells in all modes, so that it would take years for a single person to invoke them all—not that anyone would want to. Spells of creation and destruction, of summoning and sending, of healing and harming. Any person with access to that book in Phaze would become an instant Adept, more powerful than any other, one who could virtually change the face of the frame in minutes. The computer contains all the data for science, finance, economics, and politics known at the time. Despite the passage of three hundred years, this knowledge is enough to assure the operator enormous power in Proton—perhaps enough to dominate the government.”

  “And someone is destined to get hold of these tools and turn them to wrong use? That could indeed be trouble!”

  “No, great care was taken to safeguard against this danger. The two tools had to be preserved for the time when they were needed, and kept out of the hands of those who might squander or abuse them. They had to be ready for the great crisis of separation.”

  “Separation?”

  “It seems the intersection of frames is a sometime thing. The elves who instructed me are not sure about that. As you know, they consider me to be the one they call the Foreordained, which simply means my particular talent will be useful in negotiating the crisis; there is nothing religious or supernatural about it. So they have been preparing me in a cram-course, while you have diverted the Adepts who might otherwise have interfered.”

  “So that’s what I was doing. I was a decoy!”

  “That’s only part of your task. Anyway, they think the frames are going to separate, so there will be no more crossings, no further interactions. This is simply part of the natural order; it happened on Earth as the medieval period ended. After it, no one in Proton need believe in magic, and no one in Phaze need believe in science, and the episode of the interaction of the systems will seem like fake history. Since on this planet the fantasy frame was colonized from the science frame—though a number of Phaze creatures are evidently native to the fantasy realm, and perhaps the Little Folk too—er, where was I?”

  “The frames are separating,” Stile said.

  “Ah, yes. When they do, the human alternative selves will be carried away, becoming complete in themselves, clones of their counterparts, and parallelism will no longer exist.”

  “Now that’s another thing,” Stile said. “I can see how the presence of people in one frame could generate similar people in the other frame, split by the curtain. With science overlapping magic, that sort of thing can happen. But after the initial ripple, why should it continue? I did not exist three hundred years ago; why should there have been two of me?”

  “Again, the Little Folk aren’t certain. It seems that when the experts made the computer and book of magic—two aspects of the same thing—they were able to juxtapose the frames. Science and magic operated in each, for the two were the same. Then the frames separated slightly, and each person and creature separated too. This was an unexpected occurrence; before that, there had been only one of each. It was as if the fantasy frame, vacant of human life, picked up a duplicate copy of each person in the science frame. It did not work the other way, for no dragons or unicorns appeared in Proton, perhaps because it lacked a compatible environment. Already the mining of Protonite was commencing, with attendant use of heavy machinery, construction of processing plants, and pollution of the environment. The Citizen class put things on what they termed a businesslike footing at the outset, permitting no pollution controls. There is evidence that magical creatures are extremely sensitive to environmental degradation; only a few, like the trolls, can endure it for any length of time. The Citizens of Proton simply put up force-field domes and continued their course unabated, ignoring the outside planet. In this manner Proton lost whatever it might have had in nature, sacrificed by the illiterate pursuit of wealth. But despite this gross difference between the frames, parallelism persisted; people tended to align. In fact, parallelism is the major factor in the present crisis.”

  “That’s what I really want to understand,” Stile said. “The frames may separate, but I don’t see why that should destroy them unless, like Siamese twins, they can’t exist apar
t.”

  “They can exist apart. To make the problem clear, I have to clarify parallelism. It’s not just people; the entire landscape is similar. A change made in one frame and not in the other creates an imbalance and puts a strain on the entire framework. Dig a hole in the ground in Proton, and the stress won’t be alleviated until a similar hole is made in Phaze. Unfortunately there is no natural way to do that, so the stress continues to build. Eventually something will snap—and we are now very close to the snapping point.”

  “Ah, I see. Like damming a stream—the water builds up behind and falls away on the other side, until it either spills over or breaks the dam. And we don’t want the dam to burst.”

  “Indeed we don’t. So we have to find a way to alleviate the pressure. We don’t know what will happen if the frames equalize in their own fashion, but it would probably wipe out most of the inhabitants of both frames.”

  “So we need to fill holes and drain waters,” Stile said. “Seems simple enough.”

  “Not so. Not so at all. You reckon without the human dynamics. You see, the major imbalance, the largest hole in the ground, literally, is from the mining of Protonite. This is displacing huge quantities of material, creating a substantial physical imbalance, and worse yet—”

  “Protonite,” Stile said. “In the other frame it’s Phazite—the source of the energy for magic.”

  “Exactly. That makes the problem critical, and the solution almost prohibitively difficult. The Citizens are not about to stop mining Protonite voluntarily. Not until every last dreg of it is gone, like the original atmosphere. Protonite is the basis of their wealth and power. If it were only sand, we could arrange to transfer a few thousand tons from one frame to the other, relieving the imbalance. But as it is—”

  “But if that much Protonite, ah, Phazite were transferred out, to restore the balance, what would happen to the magic?”

  “It would be reduced to about half its present potency. The Oracle has calculated this carefully. The power of the Adepts, who are the main users, would diminish accordingly. They would not be able to dominate Phaze as they do now.”

  “That might not be a bad thing,” Stile said. “And the Proton Citizens—”

  “Their mining would have to be severely curtailed, perhaps cease entirely. They would have no renewal of their present resources. The galaxy would have to discover new sources of energy.”

  “But the galaxy depends on Protonite! Nothing matches it! There would be phenomenal repercussions!”

  “Yes, that is why taking action is difficult. Civilization as we know it will have to change, and that will not occur easily. Yet the alternative, the Oracle says, may be the complete destruction of this planet—which would also cut off the galaxy’s supply of Protonite.”

  “I begin to comprehend the forces operating,” Stile said. “The end of Phaze and Proton is approaching, and we have to do something. But both Citizens and Adepts would oppose the cutoff of Protonite mining and the transfer of Phazite, because without free use of this mineral their status suffers greatly. That’s why the Adepts are after me now, and think that my elimination will alleviate their problem; they fear I can do something that will deplete them all—”

  “You can.”

  “And that’s why the self-willed machines knew I would have to become the wealthiest of Citizens. Wealth is power in Proton, and I need to be able to withstand the formidable opposition of the Citizens when this thing breaks.”

  “Exactly. You need enough of a voting bloc to tip the balance in your favor.”

  So many things were falling into place! “But why, then, did the computer try to destroy me? I don’t want to see either Proton or Phaze come to harm and I should certainly work to achieve the best compromise. Why did the Oracle sic the Red Adept on me?”

  “Because only you—and I—can do the job that must be done. A man who can cross the curtain freely, who is powerful in each frame, and who has the ability and conscience to carry through. A man who is essentially incorruptible without being stupid. The Blue Adept, your other self, was too limited; he could not cross the curtain, so he had no base in Proton, no experience with that society. He had lived all his life with magic; he depended on it. He would have been largely helpless in Proton during the crisis.”

  “So the Oracle killed him?” Stile demanded incredulously. “Just because he wasn’t perfect? Why didn’t the Oracle select someone else for the job?”

  “The Oracle selected you, Stile. You had his excellent qualities, and you had lived a more challenging life; you were better equipped. But you could not enter Phaze. So the Blue Adept had to be eliminated—I do not speak of this with approval—in order to free you to cross the curtain. Had the decision gone the other way, you would have been the one killed, to free him to cross into Proton.”

  “But the attempt was made on me too!” Stile protested, shaken by this cold calculation.

  “It was blocked in Proton,” Clef said. “I knew nothing of this when I encountered you in the Tourney; believe me, I was appalled. But you were protected. The Oracle sent a second message—”

  “The message!” Stile exclaimed. “I was trying to trace it! The Oracle—” But this, too, was coming clear now. One message to start the murder process, the other to intercept and nullify part of it. Diabolically efficient!

  “Now you have been prepared,” Clef continued. “The computer expects you to organize the juxtaposition and transfer.”

  “I’m not at all sure I want to cooperate with this emotionless machine. It has entirely disrupted my life, not stopping even at murder. What it put the Lady Blue through, and my friend Hulk—” Stile shook his head. “This is not the sort of thing I care to tolerate.”

  “I agree. But it seems the alternative is to let both frames crash.”

  “Or so the cynical Oracle says,” Stile said. “That machine has shown itself to be completely unscrupulous in the manipulation of people and events. Why should I believe it now?”

  “The Little Folk believe it,” Clef said. “They despise it and want to be rid of it, but they believe it. It is a machine, programmed for truth, not for conscience. So its methods are ruthless, but never has it lied. Its sole purpose is to negotiate the crisis with minimum havoc, and it seems that the grief inflicted on you was merely part of the most rational strategy. It has no human will to power and, once it returns to Proton, it will serve its master absolutely.”

  “And who will its master be?”

  “You, I think. I am called the Foreordained, but I believe the term is most applicable to you. Perhaps it was applied to me as a decoy, to prevent your premature destruction.” He smiled, appreciating the irony. “The Oracle prophesies that Blue will govern Proton in the difficult period following separation of the frames. As you may have gathered, there is no limit on information when it deals with me. The computer will help you govern Proton, and the book of magic will assist the one who takes power from the Adepts in Phaze.”

  “And who is that?”

  “I can’t get a clear answer there. It seems to be you—but of course you can’t be in both frames after they separate. I suspect the computer suffered a prophetic short circuit here. I can only conjecture that whichever frame you choose to remain in will be yours to govern.”

  “I want only to remain in Phaze with the Lady Blue and Neysa and Kurrelgyre and my other friends. Yet I have already been treated to the prophecy that Phaze will not be safe until Blue departs it.”

  Clef shook his head. “I wish I could give you a clear answer on this, Stile, but I can not. Your future is indistinct, perhaps undecided. It may be because you are the key figure, the one who will decide it. The uncertainty principle—” He shrugged.

  Unwillingly, Stile had to concede the probable truth of this complex of difficult notions. Machines acted the way they were designed and programmed to act—and why would the experts of three hundred years ago have designed a machine to lie during a crisis? Surely they would not have. The very rut
hlessness that Stile hated was an argument in favor of the Oracle’s legitimacy.

  “Where is this book of magic?” Stile asked at last. It was his grudging, oblique concession that he would have to go along with the Oracle and perform his part in this adjustment of frames.

  “In Proton, under the control of the Game Computer.”

  “What’s it doing in Proton? No one can use it there.”

  “That is why it is in Proton. To protect the two tools of power from premature exploitation and dissipation, the powers-that-were placed them in the wrong frames. The book of magic is impotent in the science frame, and the computer is greatly reduced in power in the fantasy frame. In order to resolve the crisis, both must be restored to their proper frames.”

  “So my job is to fetch the book and pass the computer back through?”

  “These tasks are not simple ones,” Clef cautioned him. Stile, of course, had already gathered that. “The book should be no problem in the acquisition, for the Game Computer will turn it over to anyone possessing the code-request. But the Citizens will do their utmost to stop it from being transported across the curtain. The computer—that relates to my job. It will cross only as the moving curtain intersects this location.”

  “Your job? Exactly what will you do as the Foreordained?”

  “I will juxtapose the frames. That is the precondition for re-establishing parallelism.”

  Stile shook his head. “Just when I thought I had it straight, I am confused again. It is my limited present understanding that the frames are about to separate, but can’t because of the imbalance of Protonite. I suppose their separation would tear that associated Phazite free and rupture our whole reality, like a knot pulled through a needlehole. But we have only to form a ball of Phazite and roll it across the curtain, where it will become the necessary Protonite. What’s this business about juxtaposition?”

  “Nice notion, that ball. But you don’t just roll Phazite across the curtain. Phazite is magic; the curtain is really an effect of that magic, like a magnetic field associated with electric current or the splay of colors made by a prism in sunlight. Such a ball might rend the curtain, causing explosive mergence of the frames—”