Xone of Contention

by Anthony, Piers

  Then Edsel returned. She bid the males farewell with a last smile and jiggle, and stepped back. They departed the archway and were no more.

  She turned to Edsel. “What’s the story?”

  “There’s another set four arches down. Christopher and Clone.”

  “The mean centaur,” she agreed. “I had the shy one. I almost made him blush, once.”

  “So there are two different centaurs, and two of the same men.”

  “We have established a minimum.” she said. “Could there be more?”

  “I think there could be. But how can they be the same?”

  Something was nagging at the edge of her mind. Suddenly it connected. “Clone!”

  “Clones!” he repeated, catching on. “One centaur, one man, but they can send clones out to intercept any doorway. They might be illusions, looking and sounding just like the originals.”

  “But they certainly seemed solid,” Pia said. “We could walk right through illusions, but I wouldn’t want to try it with solid folk.”

  “For sure,” he agreed with a third of a smile. “I’ll bet the clones cover every portal instantly, then the solid originals come to replace them as we talk. That way, just two can block a hundred entrances.”

  “So when we see both together, and talk with them, they become the originals?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Then how were we able to talk to both, in two different places, simultaneously?”

  He looked at her. “Sometimes I think you’re not a complete idiot.” That was his way of saying that she had caught him in an error.

  “And sometimes I think you’re not completely ugly,” she said, returning tit for tat. “But how do we rise to the challenge?”

  “There has to be a way,” he said. “I think that if we could fix the two originals in one place, we could walk right through the two clones elsewhere. Because they can’t really be in two places at one time. Only the illusion clones can zip instantly to new doors.”

  “Except that we both talked to them both,” she reminded him. “Or can an illusion clone talk?”

  “Without a solid mouth or lungs? I doubt it, though with magic anything’s possible. Maybe one of each pair was the original, and the other was a clone.”

  “I wonder,” she said, getting into the problem. She was exercising her intellect, and Edsel wasn’t disparaging it. She liked that. She had never been known or valued for her mind, limited as it was. “You know those old cartoons, where only the person who is speaking or doing something is animated, and the others are just still pictures? Could they be like that? So we can tell who’s the clone?”

  “Pia, I’d kiss you, except that you wouldn’t like it by daylight.”

  He meant when she wasn’t honoring their deal, giving him everything at night in return for his complete support by day. Part of what turned her off was his clear superiority of brain. But now they were thinking together. “I’d like it now.” she said.

  He was wary. “What’s different now?”

  “You’re treating me like an equal.”

  He laughed—then quickly sobered, realizing that it wasn’t a joke. “Have I been a fool all this time?”

  “Tit for tat. You wanted the one without giving the other.”

  “For sure,” he agreed, without any trace of a smile.

  She waited, and after a moment he embraced her and kissed her. He didn’t try to grab a feel. She gave back, making him melt.

  He released her. “Oh, Pia—”

  She liked him a lot better this way. Her emotion was stirring, after being in remission for some time. She had always known that her body was her main appeal, but she didn’t like being considered only a body. However, this was not the time to get into this. “We have a challenge to surmount.”

  “More than one,” he said. He reoriented. “One original, one clone, for each door. Which one were you talking to?”

  She focused on the memory of her recent dialogue. Now she realized something she hadn’t noticed at the time. “The man, Christopher. He reacted, he talked. The centaur just stood there. I thought he was reacting, but now I realize he was just there.”

  “You adjusted your shoe?” He was of course well familiar with the move, and loved it. Sometimes she thought he would rather sneak a peek under her skirt than see her all the way naked.

  “Yes. I think my panty showed at one point, but they didn’t freak out.”

  “They must be immune, for the purpose of this challenge. The Good Magician must have had lovely girls try that dodge before, to get past male defenders.”

  “But I did hold their attention. The man’s attention, anyway; Cy Clone just kept looking as before. I thought because he didn’t look away, that I was fascinating him, but he was really a cartoon still figure.”

  “I talked to Cy Centaur. He’s smart, and interested in mundane tech nology. The man was there, but I don’t think he ever spoke. So I think he was the clone image. We each talked to one real person.”

  “And we could have walked through the clone,” she agreed. “Except that the real one would have stopped us.” But something bothered her. “We figure chances are that the first one we see in a doorway is a clone, and that as we talk, the original comes to take his place?”

  “That’s my theory. The clones can go instantly, spotting us. Then the real ones come to stop us. Probably pretty soon, so we couldn’t just walk through the clones.”

  “But they are responsive from the start. Doesn’t that mean that the clones can be animated?”

  Edsel paused. “May I kiss you again?”

  “Kisses for sex appeal I can handle. Kisses for respect I like.”

  “Then you’ll like this one.” He kissed her again, and there was indeed a special kind of passion in it.

  Then he worked it out. “It must be that they can focus on their clones, seeing what the clones see, and making them move and talk. But I’ll bet they can do a meaningful dialogue only through one clone at a time. They must do it while they are closing in on that one, to take its place.”

  “And we don’t dare gamble that we’re talking with clones.” Pia said. “Lest we get smashed.”

  “I suspect they wouldn’t smash us, but we’d fail the challenge, and never get in to see the Good Magician. So we don’t want to gamble. Now if we could just attract the originals, then hold them in place while we went through a different door.”

  “The moment we moved over, so would they,” she said. “But I wonder—could they be anchored through their clones?”

  “Anchored?”

  “Pretend you’re one of them,” she said. “When I say ‘go,’ you turn around, walk in a circle, or something.”

  “That’s no problem. But I don’t see—”

  “Go.” She drew up her blouse, showing her bra.

  Edsel stared, as he always did. After a moment, he started to turn. She leaned forward. He froze. After another moment he tried to turn again.

  She lifted a leg. He froze again. When he started to recover, she lifted her leg farther. His eyeballs began to glaze.

  She resumed her normal posture. His expression cleared. “Point made,” he said. “Here in Xanth, you have power.”

  “Maybe I can’t freak them out, but I might anchor them in place for a while,” she said. “So they couldn’t walk across to join the clones.”

  “Good notion. But maybe you would catch only one, and the other would avert his gaze when he saw the other freeze, and move in.”

  “Then you can take out the other. Let me do the man, and you do the centaur.”

  “But nobody would freeze if I did a striptease.”

  “With your mind,” she clarified. “Say things so fascinating that the centaur is entirely distracted.”

  “Body and mind,” he agreed, smiling. “Let’s try it. First we’d better get them both to one door. Then when we figure they’re there in the flesh, we can go to a random one and go into our act. I think you have figu
red out the key.”

  “Agreed.” She kissed him. If he had always been like this, working with her instead of treating her like an object, their marriage might never have been in trouble.

  They walked to the nearest archway. Cy Centaur appeared. They walked on to the next. Christopher appeared. They went on to the next. Both man and centaur appeared.

  “Now,” Pia breathed. “Anchor site.”

  “How are you doing?” Edsel inquired of the centaur.

  “You shall not pass.” It was Cy Clone, speaking without moving.

  “Now is that nice of you?” Pia asked the man.

  “It’s our assignment.” Christopher said, taking in her trim figure. But otherwise he did not show animation. These were clones, being operated by remote control.

  “We believe we have figured out the key to this challenge,” Edsel said.

  “I doubt it,” Clone said gruffly, flicking his tail in a disdainful manner. Now he was real.

  “Oh, but we do,” Pia said, smiling at the man. “It has been such a pleasure to meet you, however.”

  “That’s nice,” Christopher said, leaning forward to take in more of the smile. He was real too. So now it was clear where the originals were.

  They stepped to the left, beyond the archway. The two figures therein faded.

  Then they ran back around the archway and on to the right, trying to fake out the guardians about the direction they were taking. They ran by several arches, then paused close to one. The man appeared, a still image.

  They ran on. About four more arches later they found a set: Christopher and Cy Centaur. “Go,” Pia said. She was a trifle breathless, but that would be no liability for this.

  They stepped close to the still figures. “Hello, Chris,” Pia said, opening her blouse. She saw that she had his immediate attention.

  “Cy, I want to tell you about quantum theory,” Edsel said, earnestly meeting the centaur’s fixed gaze. “It has some fascinating properties. I had thought the theory of relativity was challenging, with its insistence that nothing could exceed the speed of light in a vacuum, and its permutations of time in gravity, but quantum physics is truly weird. Almost like magic.”

  The gazes of both man and centaur remained fixed. They were still clones.

  Pia stepped forward, slowly removing her blouse. She saw that Edsel didn’t look, because the moment he did, he would lose his thread of dialogue. She liked that too. Peripheral vision was more than enough. Meanwhile, he continued talking, doing his part.

  “You see, Cy, according to quantum theory, you can’t know both the position and the velocity of a given particle. The mere act of looking changes things. So if you take a snapshot, as it were, and fix its position, it is impossible to know its velocity. Sort of like a clone not moving if you know where it is. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Absolutely fascinating,” Cy said, unmoving.

  Meanwhile Pia was nudging forward, in a kind of dance step that made the upper contour of her bosom jiggle. There was a certain art to the effect. Christopher remained fixed.

  “Another quantum effect,” Edsel continued, “is that two particles separating from a common source are linked. If something happens to one, it also happens to the other, though there is no seeming connection between them. Does this make sense to you?”

  “Amazing,” Cy said, without animation.

  Pia, having used up about as much of her top as she cared to, hiked up her skirt, showing increasing amounts of leg. The man’s eyes remained riveted, though nothing else moved. He was still the clone, seeing what the clone saw, but not there physically.

  “It makes sense if you figure that when you measure a property of one particle, you are actually choosing between realities. Selecting the universe wherein both particles are the same. New universes are thus constantly fissioning off. It’s a mind-bending concept. They are now making quantum machines that can do calculations much faster than anything else,” Edsel continued. “They are very good at probabilities. But the boundary between the realm of quantum effects and that of the ordinary world we know remains elusive. Still, study continues. Relativity relates to gravity, while quantum theory relates to the other three fundamental forces of the universe. Some day it may be possible to combine them into one great Theory of Everything. Perhaps the Superstring theory will accomplish that.”

  “Did you say four forces, total?” Cy asked.

  Pia was now passing Chris. She was up to her panty line, but as they had conjectured, he was not freaked out. She did however have his whole attention. She wiggled her bottom.

  “Yes, of course,” Edsel agreed. “Gravity, the weak atomic force, the strong nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force.”

  “But what about the fifth force?”

  “What fifth force?”

  “Magic.”

  She was past Chris. Edsel was now largely past the centaur. “Oh. I meant the forces of Mundania. They don’t know about magic there.”

  “That would seem to explain it. Xanth could not endure without magic.”

  “I agree. It’s what distinguishes it from the dreary realm beyond.” It was time to wrap this up. “Psst,” Pia whispered. “We’re through.”

  “Through?” Edsel asked, dismayed. “I thought we were getting along so well together.”

  “Will you stop it? Through the challenge.”

  The two clones faded. Pia and Edsel were indeed inside the castle. “I thought—”

  So he had been genuinely confused, rather than making one of his sharp remarks. She liked that as well. She stepped into him and kissed him. “You did well.”

  “So did you. I didn’t dare look. I would have freaked out.” Exactly. “Let’s go ask the Question.”

  9

  XONE

  Chlorine rode behind Nimby on the Lemon cycle, enjoying it. He was quite competent now, and obeyed all the obscure signs and signals of the road. Dug and Kim drove their car behind, there to come to the rescue if there were any problem. Exactly as Justin and Breanna would be traveling with the real Edsel and Pia through Xanth, keeping wary eyes out for mischief. Indeed there was mischief to avoid, because the drivers of other cars all seemed to believe that the whole road belonged only to them, and that all others were illicit intruders. They honked their horns and nudged in too close at high speed and made hand signals that Chlorine discovered related to stork signaling in a negative manner. But Nimby, forewarned, ignored them and stayed out of their way. That seemed to satisfy them; they roared on by. Kim had said there was something called a speed limit, but Chlorine must have misunderstood, because no vehicle on the road was honoring any possible limit.

  They were traveling north to the Apple-aching Mountains, where they could see the sights and camp for the night. Dug and Kim had camping equipment in their car. But the first night they would stay at a motel, so as to be able to find the best place in the mountains the next morning.

  After several hours, Chlorine’s thighs were getting tired of the unfamiliar bouncing. She knew how to ride a dragon, but this cycle had a different feel, and there was less leeway to fidget. She was glad when the mountains loomed, knowing the trip was nearing its end.

  They pulled into the Mundane Motel, and saw about getting a set of rooms, which turned out to be nice enough. They would go out to a fleet fare place for a meal. But first Kim set up her notebook computer so Chlorine could check in. She had done so in the morning, but that had been early, and there might be a response now.

  She navigated the Grid and Mesh, but then had a problem: she couldn’t get into the O-Xone. She got an Error Message.

  NOT AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.

  “Let me see that,” Kim said. She tried it, and got the same message. “Must be a problem in the Mesh. These things happen. We can try again after eating.”

  They went to the eatery. It was shaped like a vehicle called a bus, but was larger. Signs all around proclaimed the wares. They got really weird long sandwiches called submersibles, stuffed
with every kind of oddity. But they tasted good enough.

  Back at the motel, they tried the Mesh again. They still could not get past the error message. Kim tried to query the Mesh Server, but couldn’t get a coherent response. “They don’t believe in magic,” she said, grimacing.

  Nimby looked unsettled. Chlorine knew what was on his mind. He didn’t like having his contact with Xanth cut off. He wasn’t sure it was coincidence.

  “These things happen all the time,” Dug said. “Sometimes a server gets overloaded and is down for hours or days. There’s no malice in it, just inadequacy for the demand. Or there can be a hardware or software hitch. Nobody likes it, but soon enough service is restored, and the Mesh proceeds as usual.”

  Nimby made a trace shake of his head. That was enough for Chlorine. “Nimby has very little magic here in Mundania, but he’s very smart, and he can tune in on much that is going on around him. That’s why he can avoid bad drivers. He believes that this is not coincidental mischief.”

  Dug frowned. “We need to get this straight. Kim and I can handle routine Mundane problems, but if there’s something else, we’ll have to be more careful. Just how sure is Nimby about this?”

  “And just how much of what kind of magic does he have in Mundania?” Kim added.

  Chlorine had ascertained this soon after they arrived in Mundania, but hadn’t thought it relevant. “He has no direct power of magic here, but can do just a little thought projection, enough to let me know what he wants when he touches me, and can extend his awareness some distance out. He can judge whether a thing is natural or contrived. The interruption of the O-Xone interface is beyond his range of certainty, but is suspicious.”

  “What makes it suspicious?” Dug asked.

  “Each Demon is fiercely jealous of his territory, when it is part of a bet, and guards it rigorously, even if he doesn’t care about the welfare of the creatures within it. If the Demon E(A/R)TH realizes that Nimby is here now, he will surely try to embarrass him in some way. The O-Xone interruption could be the first step in such an embarrassment.”

  “Embarrassment?” Kim asked. “Like saying ‘Ha-ha, I caught you!’?”