Piers Anthony - Robot Adept

The Adept lived in a tiny shack in the center of an overgrown vale in a jungle forest. Bane fluttered closer to the shack, but it showed no sign of life. The Adept was either asleep or absent. In either event, Bane was not accomplishing much. It had not occurred to him that spying would be this dull!

Then a bird swooped down. Oops! Bane plunged for the tangled ground, avoiding the predator. But the bird swerved to follow, with marvelous accuracy. It had far more speed and power than Bane did, and was evidently determined to snap up this morsel.

Bane could not do other magic in this form. As the bird took his body, he invoked the conversion spell in butterfly language, and became a man.

The bird, startled, winged immediately for distant parts. Bane was safe—except that he now stood in his normal form in the heart of the Orange Demesnes. That was dangerous!

He took a step—and encountered ferocious brambles the butterfly hadn’t noticed. Indeed, they were coiling about his legs, nudging their thorns into position for best effect. No easy way out of this!

There was no help for it: he would have to conjure himself out, and hope that the Adept was absent, because magic of this magnitude would surely alert him otherwise. That could make him, and therefore all the Adverse Adepts, aware that they were being spied on by someone, and it would not take them long to guess whom.

He conjured himself to the center of the Purple Mountain range. He hoped that if Orange were aware of the conjuration, and traced it, he would assume that another Adept had stopped by. This might not be the best of ploys, but it was all he could think of in the pressure of the moment.

He was tempted to check on Agape and the harpy, if they remained together, but resisted the impulse. If an Adept were tracing his course, he hardly wanted to lead that hostile man to Agape!

He conjured himself to the White Mountain range, and finally home. He had expended a number of valuable spells, but it seemed a necessary precaution, doubly hiding his true destination.

“I think he was asleep,” Stile said. “My magic indicates he is at home; he seldom leaves it. I don’t think you alerted him. What happened?”

“A bird,” Bane said, disgruntled.

“Next time make it a poisonous species.”

“Aye.” Bane grimaced. “I be not much good at spying, methinks.”

“Who among us is? Evidently there was not much to be learned there.”

Bane resolved to do better next time. That afternoon he transformed into a brightly colored, highly toxic species of butterfly, whose blue and yellow wings advertised its nature; no sensible bird would touch it. Stile conjured him to the Tan Demesnes.

He fluttered near a monstrous banyan tree, whose branches spread so far horizontally that they could not support their weight and dropped new trunks to the ground as buttresses. Thus this single tree seemed rather like a forest, with lesser plants growing in the shadows and arches of it. Bane studied it with his butterfly senses, but could not fathom its extent; it was a labyrinth!

Odd that the Adept whose magic related to plants lived in a wilderness hovel, while the one whose magic related to people lived in the most elaborate vegetative structure. The Adepts as a whole seemed to honor no sensible pattern.

He fluttered into the shadows of the tree, seeking flowers, but there were few here; the light was too dim. He flew up to see whether there was more above the lower branches, for he needed flowers as a cover for his presence.

There was a pavilion above, built into the upper sections of the tree. A woman was reclining there, sunning herself in the nude, or perhaps merely enjoying the breeze. Her eye fell on him.

“A blue-striped zinger!” she exclaimed. “I need a pair of those!” She jumped up and fetched a net from a hook on a trunk-post.

It was Tania, the Adept’s daughter—and it seemed she was a butterfly hunter! This was a bad break.

He fluttered down and away, but the woman pursued, the net poised competently. He barely managed to get out of its range beyond the pavilion; Tania could not follow, because she was ten feet above the ground.

“Damn! I’ll have to use magic,” she muttered.

She gazed intently at him, and the evil eye struck. Bane was abruptly paralyzed. He fell to the ground, unable to fly. Because he was an insect, not a man, he landed lightly, unhurt. Because he was a nascent Adept, the effect did not last; Adepts could seldom hurt each other seriously by their magic, being naturally immune. Had he been in manform, she would have had to work much harder to achieve the same effect. He could fly away before she descended a ladder to the ground.

But if he did, she would know he was more than an ordinary butterfly. He did not want to arouse suspicion. It was better to play the role, and let her capture him, and escape when he could do so in the natural butterfly manner. If no opportunity came, then he would have to do it in an unnatural manner.

Tania arrived. She slid a bit of paper under him and picked him up, carefully. “Come on, you pretty little prize,” she said. “I have just the place for you.”

That did not sound good. Should he have bolted?

She carried him to a garden set within the far fringe of branches that was entirely surrounded by fine netting. Within it were scores of butterflies. She opened a small section and set him inside. “You will recover in a moment, zinger,” she said. “Just find yourself a perch; I’ll find a mate for you as soon as I can.” She withdrew.

He waited a suitable period, then righted himself and flapped his wings. He flew to a spot on a thick bush and perched there, as directed.

Tania returned to the pavilion and resumed her sunning. But she faced the caged garden, and she was watching him; it was probably because she was pleased to have come this providently on a rare acquisition, but it meant he could not do anything contrary to butterfly nature. He was still captive.

He just did not seem to be very good at spying!

Since he had nothing else to do, he watched her. He had known her occasionally as a child; she had been about ten when he was six, and the Tan Adept had brought her when he came to the Blue Demesnes to confer on this or that. Stile had not gotten along well with the Adverse Adepts, but they were Adepts and had to be accorded the respect due that status. Tania had seemed insufferably snotty from the vantage of his youth, but he learned that it was in Tan’s mind that he, Bane, might make a suitable match for her, when he became adult. He had rejected that notion out of hand; he would have no truck with any of the Adverse Adepts or their ilk.

But in Proton, and now in Phaze, he saw from the vantage of his sexual maturity that Tania was an attractive young woman. Her body was tanned all over, and her matching hair and eyes had their own peculiar appeal. Physically, she was now a creature he could have been attracted to.

Then a wren appeared, a tiny bird flitting along a lateral branch, checking it for edible insects. Tania’s eyes moved to follow it, as it reached the edge of the pavilion. She concentrated—and the bird gave an anguished peep and flopped onto its back, its legs kicking frantically.

“Suffer, creep, before I kill thee,” Tania said, watching it with satisfied malice. “Didst think to prey on my butterflies?”

But the bird had not been after the butterflies, Bane thought. It had been looking for crawling bugs in the bark of the huge tree and could not have gotten into the garden cage anyway. She was torturing it without proper reason, evidently enjoying the process. Indeed, she licked her lips as she watched the wren, and her face seemed to glow.

After a time the wren showed signs of recovering from the effect of the evil eye. Its kicking and fluttering slowed and stopped, and it started to right itself.