Virtual Mode

by Piers Anthony

  Then he remembered another part of the explanation the Cyng of Pwer had given, whose significance had bypassed him at the time. The Virtual Mode was like a plane cutting through the Modes at an angle, but it was not infinite. It was really a plane segment bounded by the five anchors. Like a pentagon, or roughly circular in outline. He could be walking around the edge of it. When he got halfway around, there would be Colene.

  The image helped reassure him, but it did not do the whole job. This Virtual Mode was really not a simple thing, and some of its incidental aspects, such as the business of drinking the water of foreign Modes along the way, were tricky. His image might be all wrong.

  At any rate, he slept.

  IN the morning Darius resumed his travel. He traveled around the lake. At one point he encountered a family of otterlike animals who spooked at his appearance and swam rapidly away. At another he came across a small dragon or large lizard, similarly shy. But he became wary, because where there were small dragons there could also be large ones.

  Beyond the lake was a settled region. At first it was just a planted field, but as he passed by it, successive Modes brought it to more intense cultivation and a road appeared. This looked human, but his wariness increased. Human beings would not necessarily be friendly. In fact, he felt far more at ease among the animals of the wilderness, for very few of them represented any danger to him, and those few could be fairly readily avoided. But human beings were potentially worse than the dragons. Certainly he would not walk into the center of a village and announce himself!

  He walked clear of the fields and found a forested section. The trees were unlike those he knew, being yellow of trunk and blue of leaf, but a tree of any color remained reassuring and protective. This was no jungle, and there was little undergrowth, but it did provide some privacy for his passage.

  Then he spied a woman. She was standing in the center of a glade as if expecting him. She wore a small hat with two very long projections like the antennae of insects, a gray woolen sweater, an ankle-length brown knit dress, and high black boots laced up the front. She had what was evidently a traveling bag beside her. She was old, perhaps sixty. What was on her mind?

  He approached her cautiously, following the sideways channel of this Mode. He could have stepped into the next Mode and avoided the contact, but she had seen him and he preferred to be polite as long as it was safe to be so. "A greeting," he said, speaking in his own language.

  She said something indecipherable. Her language was not only different, it was weirdly different; he could not tell whether she had uttered a greeting, a curse, or gibberish. She picked up her bag. It had straps, and he realized that it was actually a kind of backpack, which she now donned. She was certainly prepared!

  He tried again in Colene's language. "Hi."

  She smiled and put her hand on his arm. She stepped forward, drawing him along with her.

  She was evidently harmless, and of course she could not go any distance with him. Having tried to communicate, and failed, he decided simply to walk along with her, and step through to the next Mode when he reached the boundary. He would fade from her sight and touch, and she would think she had had a supernatural experience. An unkind trick to play on her, perhaps, but kinder than rejecting her gesture outright. It was evident that she expected to go somewhere with him.

  They walked back to the point where he had been when he had first seen her, then turned to resume his original route. They stepped through the invisible boundary together. Darius did a doubletake. She was still there! Still walking beside him, her hand on his arm.

  But Prima had been able to cross Modes with him, as long as she touched him. He had understood that this was because she was of his Mode, or very close to it, despite not being an anchor person. This woman was not close at all. Had his notion been wrong? Could a person of another Mode cross simply by maintaining contact with an anchor person on the

  Virtual Mode? So it seemed to be.

  But that would mean that she would be stranded in a Mode that was foreign to her. It would be wrong to leave her like that.

  He turned and stepped back into the woman's Mode, bringing her along with him. "I must go where you can not," he told her firmly, withdrawing his arm from her hand. "I am sorry. I am unable to explain, but I must leave you here." He stepped across, alone.

  He looked back. The woman was gone, of course; she did not exist in this Mode. The glade remained, and there was a small creature in a tree that he thought had not been there in the other glade. It must have watched him appear, disappear, and reappear, with an understandable perplexity.

  Then the woman reappeared. She had stepped through after him.

  Darius just stared. She had done it on her own! No physical contact! But that was impossible, unless—

  Then he realized what the answer had to be. She was an anchor person! There were five of them, and he did not know the identity of three. It had not occurred to him that he would meet any of them, but if he truly was walking around the edge of a figurative plate, he would indeed encounter other anchor folk.

  Somehow he had not expected an old woman, despite expecting nothing. What was he to do with her? He couldn't take her with him!

  She took his arm again and urged him forward. She did want to go with him, and seemed to know the situation. It was hard for him to say no, because he couldn't speak her language and couldn't stop her from following him. That did not make the situation any less awkward.

  He sighed inwardly and resumed walking. What was to be, was to be.

  "Yes," she said.

  He was startled again. He stopped in place. "You speak my language?"

  "No."

  "But you are speaking it now! You—"

  She uttered a mellifluous stream of unintelligibility. Evidently she knew only a few of his words.

  "How did you learn 'yes' and 'no'?"

  "Yes, future," she said. "No, past."

  Now he understood the words, but could not fathom the meaning. She might not mean the same thing by those words that he did. But in case she did, it could mean that she expected to travel with him from now on, and had not done so in the past.

  They resumed walking. The forest disappeared, but the cultivated fields were gone; they had gone beyond the group of Modes in which these folk operated.

  "Provos," she said.

  He glanced at her. She removed her hand from his arm and tapped herself above her slight bosom.

  Oh. He tapped himself. "Darius," he said.

  They stepped into another Mode. Abruptly her hand tightened on his arm. "No!" she said, trying to hold him back.

  He stopped. "What's the matter?"

  She merely shook her head, unable to clarify the matter.

  He looked around. There was nothing threatening in view. "I have somewhere to go," he said. He started to step forward again.

  "No!" She hauled him back again.

  Could there be something in the next Mode that she knew about and he could not see? He brought out his mirror tube and extended it forward. But as he started to take a cautious step, she stopped him a third time.

  He almost lost his balance. The end of the tube dipped to touch the ground.

  A pointed stake shot up from the ground, right beside the end of the tube. The end of the stake was discolored.

  "A poison trap!" Darius exclaimed. "If I had stepped there, it would have stabbed my leg!" Or worse.

  He put away the tube, found a stick, and poked beside the stake. In a moment another stake shot up, and then another. There was a row of them slanting across this Mode segment.

  "I think you just saved my health or life," he told Provos, shaken. "How did you know?"

  But she now seemed to be ignoring the situation, as if it were of no further concern.

  He walked to the side, beyond the stakes, and poked some more. There was no further reaction from the ground, and Provos did not balk him. The danger seemed to be limited to that one segment.

  All the
same, he used the tube to check the next Mode carefully before crossing. This escape had been quite too narrow!

  Nothing was in view. They crossed cautiously. He fetched a stick in this Mode and poked ahead. There was nothing. The stakes seemed to be an artifact of a single Mode, in much the way the net of the dragons had been.

  They continued until the afternoon grew late. Darius didn't know how to ask Provos about camping arrangements, so he simply went ahead and trusted her to protest if she chose.

  And protest she did, after he located a suitable tree to use for the night. At first he thought it was because she was prudish about climbing or sharing warmth, but it seemed that she was becoming increasingly nervous about this whole region. He saw no reason for it, but after the experience with the stakes he took it seriously.

  He offered to make the same camp in the Mode they had just crossed. To that she agreed. She opened her bag and produced what seemed to be homemade bread and a sweet spread, which she shared with him. He wasn't sure whether he could eat it, because of the problem retaining foreign food when crossing Modes, but realized that if it had traveled with her through all the prior Modes, it was safely on the Virtual Mode and should remain with them. The substance of her Mode was as real for him as the substance of his own or of Colene's. That was the thing about the anchors; they really were firm.

  "Thank you," he said. She did not acknowledge.

  They performed their separate natural functions in different nooks of the Mode, then mounted the tree and shared his blanket. Provos seemed to be entirely at ease with the closeness, which surprised him. He was considerably more at ease than he would have been before the experience with Prima.

  Prima. Provos. There was a certain similarity of names. Did it mean anything? He decided that it didn't. It was a minor coincidence until proven otherwise.

  IN the morning they got down and unkinked their bodies. Provos was old but spry; she must have had camping experience. Indeed she produced a set of stones which struck a spark that started a fire, and they were able to have a hot meal of some kind of tasty tubers she brought from her bag. She was certainly doing her part.

  Then they doused the fire, got organized, and stepped back across the boundary.

  Darius stared. There were footprints where there had been none before; something had come here in the night. Huge claws had dug into the ground, as if a giant bird had landed here. The bark of the tree they would have slept in was torn away in patches.

  "Something came here and smelted our traces," he said, awed. "It scratched the ground where we stood, and scratched at the tree where I had started to set up for the night. By the marks, it was huge and predatory: a dragon or carnivorous bird. I think we would have been dead."

  But Provos seemed unconcerned, hardly noticing the marks. She was just interested in going on.

  He refused to settle for that. "What is it with you?" he demanded. "Twice you may have saved my life, yet you act as if it is nothing." He pointed to the marks, making her look. "How did you know?"

  "Yes, future," she said. "No, past."

  "You said that before, but I don't know what it means!"

  She tried to explain. "I yes future. You yes past. I no past. You no future."

  He tried to make sense of this, in the context of what he had seen. She was yes future and no past. He was no future and yes past. He had no future and she did? He couldn't accept that! And that couldn't be it, because the corollary would be that she had no past while he did. The only thing that made remote sense was that he could not foresee the future, while she—

  She could see the future? She had precognition? That did seem to be the case! And the barrier of language prevented her from telling him exactly what it was that she saw, so she was able to warn him only by crude gestures. But that could not be the whole of it. What did she mean about no past?

  She could not see the past?

  He walked on with her, his mind laboring. How was it possible for her not to know the past? She would have no memory! She would be completely unconcerned with yesterday.

  Which was exactly the attitude she showed. Concern for the future, none for the past. It seemed unbelievable, but she was from an alien Mode, and its ordinariness in the physical aspect might mask a truly amazing difference in the mental aspect.

  He reviewed specifics as they went. She had balked at one place, and there had been a deadly trap there. She had surely not been there before; she was as new to the Virtual Mode as he, and had been waiting for someone to come along it, so she would not have to go alone. She had probably been waiting for days, and acted the moment she saw him. Why had she not been afraid of the stranger? Because she had foreseen his arrival! She might not be concerned about what was past, but she knew she would be traveling with him, so she had made sure to be there at the right time.

  Yet she had not seemed to foresee the poisoned stakes, exactly. She had just been very nervous. It was the same with the monster of the night. She had not been concerned about that immediately; only after camping preparations were well along had she insisted on leaving the area. It didn't seem to be straight anticipation of future events.

  She had likened her situation to his. "I yes future, you yes past." He did not foresee the past, he remembered it, and the farther in the past it was, the foggier his memory tended to become, unless it was something important. Could she remember the future? "I no past, you no future." She could not remember the past, though she might have a notion of it by judging from the present. If she was here with him, and remembered what they would be doing in the future, she could safely assume that they had met in the past and had some kind of understanding. Just as he could assume that he would be traveling with her for a while.

  But that monster of the night—that was not a threat to be forgotten quickly! Why had it taken her a while to catch onto it?

  Because it happened in a foreign Mode! He could not remember the past of Modes he had not been in; she could not remember the future of Modes she would not be in. But if he stayed in a Mode for a while, and got some experience in it, he could remember that much of it. She must have become acclimatized to it, gradually, and then realized that something terrible was about to happen there. So she had warned him.

  When they moved into the adjacent Mode, that feeling did not come on her, so she relaxed.

  It did seem to make sense. But if so, there would always be some problems. How could they relate, if she remembered only what they would be doing, and he remembered only what they had been doing?

  He saw Provos nodding as if she had just come to understand something. Yet there was nothing unusual about the landscape of the Modes they were passing through, and they had not spoken.

  But maybe they were about to speak, and she was remembering that! He was concerned with the problem of relating to a woman who could not remember their dialogue after it happened—but could remember it coming.

  So maybe there was a way. "Provos," he said—and realized that she had started turning to him before he spoke. Yes, she was remembering that he was about to say something to her! "Night, monster," he said, making clawing motions with a hand.

  She looked concerned. "Monster," she repeated.

  "You saved me," he said. He took her hand, put it on his own arm, and acted as if he were being pulled back. "Escaped monster."

  "Monster no?" she asked.

  "Monster yes," he said. He repeated the gesture. "Then monster no. You warned me."

  "Day monster no," she said.

  Which should mean that no monster was in their immediate future. Except that her perception might be limited to the Mode they were now in. So there could be a monster in the next one. If something threatened in the next step, she might pick it up, as she had with the stakes; but if it threatened in several hours, she might take a while to attune to it.

  Did that make sense? Suppose something awful had happened several hours ago in one Mode; would he forget about it in the last half hour before they left that Mode?
He didn't think so. Also, if she remembered something bad that was about to happen, and told him, and he changed it, then it wouldn't happen. So how could she remember it? It seemed like paradox.

  But maybe not. If something she remembered didn't happen, her memory should change to what would happen. But it might be foggy, because of the change. So it could be a while before it clarified for her. The future was not a simple reversal of the past; it was mutable, so her memories could be changed or confused at times. The more distant something was, the longer it might take her to orient on it. Thus a danger in the next step she could catch immediately, but one several hours away would not clarify until she had more experience with the Mode in which it was to occur. Not just because it took her time to attune, but because the more time passed, the more chances there were for it to be changed, fogging her memory. She had to get closer to the event to be sure of it.

  At any rate, he hoped he had a workable system. He had just informed her of what had recently happened, and she had informed him of what was about to happen. She had remembered what he was going to tell her, so knew something of the prior adventures despite not being able to remember them directly. She had remembered his telling her. Tomorrow he would tell her again, so she could always have a notion of what had been going on. Meanwhile she had told him that nothing bad was about to happen, and he would remember that. When she told him that there would be danger, he would be suitably warned by his memory of her words. It seemed like a feasible way to relate. If he had it straight. His mind tended to stretch out of shape as he reviewed the matter.

  But if he were correct about the way the new Modes cut off her awareness of the future, she would not do him much good while they were actually traveling. Only when they camped for a time. But that was when they most needed warning of danger, so they could sleep.

  His thoughts mostly settled, he resumed his awareness of the terrain. They were out of the forest and were climbing a gentle slope overgrown with waist-high plants whose leaves were pale blue. They made a faint jingling noise as the progress of the two human beings pushed them aside. At irregular intervals there were outcroppings of the underlying rock, which was red. It was a pretty enough scene.