Piers Anthony: Robot Adept

Fleta did not respond. She was evidently still pensive because of the prospect of even a temporary separation. But he believed she could accept it in due course. Even unicorn stubbornness yielded on occasion to necessity.

Or did it? The following day did not ameliorate her reservation. Fleta did not want to go. She agreed that the compromise was valid and the measured separation necessary, but she made no effort to mask her dislike of it. “How can I be sure thou willst return, once thou art gone?” she grumbled.

“Of course I will return!” he protested. “I love you!”

“I mean that the Citizens or Adepts will not let thee back. They interfered before; hast thou forgotten?”

“It was the Adverse Adepts and the Contrary Citizens who interfered,” he reminded her. “Now they support us.”

“Until they find some other way to achieve their purpose,” she muttered. “Mach, I like this not! I fear for thee, and for me. I fear deception and ill will. I want only to be with thee fore’er. E’en if we must constantly kiss.”

“So do I,” he said. “But I am willing to make some sacrifice now, in the hope that things will improve. Perhaps our families will agree to our union, in the course of this truce, so that you will be able to return to your Herd without being shunned.”

A glimmer of hope showed. “Aye, perhaps,” she agreed.

“Now I must follow the highlight on the delf. I hope you will come with me, so that our separation can be held to the very minimum.”

She tried to resist, but could not. She converted to her black unicorn form, proffering a ride for him.

Mach mounted her, and for a moment reached down around her neck to hug her. “Thank you, Fleta.”

She twitched an ear at him in an expression of annoyance, but it lacked force.

They left the island, passing through the water as the bitch had. The Ordovician flora and fauna ignored them, having gotten to know them. Mach knew that it would have been otherwise, had the Translucent Adept not invited them; these creatures might be several hundred million years old, geologically, but this was their realm, and they were competent within it. So Fleta’s hooves avoided trampling the sponges and fernlike graptolites, and the squidlike nautiloids watched without reaction. Translucent had promised a place where Mach and Fleta could dwell safely together; this was certainly that!

They emerged to the normal land, and the past was gone; it existed only in Translucent’s Demesnes, and these were in water. Now Fleta could gallop freely, knowing the general if not the specific terrain. They traveled for a day, avoiding contact with other creatures, and camped for the night by a small stream. Fleta changed to girlform so that they could make love, having thawed to that extent, then returned to mareform to graze while Mach slept alone.

She was avoiding him, he realized. Not overtly, but significantly, by spending most of her time with him in her natural form. She denied the implication by assuming girlform for his passion, but he knew that this was tokenism; she felt no sexual need when not in heat, and did it only to please him. So he was left with no complaint to make, yet the awareness of their subtle estrangement.

She didn’t want him to return to Proton. She had agreed to it, knowing the necessity, but not with her heart. Perhaps she felt he had compromised in this respect too readily. She lacked the type of training he had had in Proton, that made it easy for him to accept the rationale of frames imbalance. She was a creature of the field and forest, while he was a creature of city and machine. Perhaps the root of his love for her lay in that. Her world represented life, for him, and that was immeasurably precious.

She thought he sought some pretext to leave her, after having won her love. How wrong she was in that suspicion! He sought a way to make their liaison permanent, recognizing the barriers that existed.

He gazed out into the night, where she grazed in pained aloofness. How could he satisfy her that her hurt was groundless? He realized that the differences between them were more than machine and animal, or technology and magic; they were male and female. He had assumed that rationality governed; she assumed that emotion governed.

And didn’t it? Had he acted rationally, he would never have fallen into love with her!

“Thee, thee, thee,” he whispered.

A ripple of light spread out from him, causing the very night to wave and the stars overhead to glimmer in unison. It was the splash, again, faint because this was not its first invocation, but definite.

Suddenly Fleta was there, in girlform, in his embrace.

She had received it, and must have flown, literally, to rejoin him. She said no word, but her tears were coursing. There was no separation of any type between them now.

On the third day they caught up to Bane. He was evidently in Hardom, the Proton city-dome that was at the edge of the great southern Purple Mountain range. In Phaze it was the region that harpies clustered. Thus the Proton name, reflecting the parallelism: HARpy DOMe, Hardom. But there were no harpies in Proton, of course, other than figuratively.

They paused to pay a call on the harpy they had befriended during their flight from the Adverse Adepts and their minions the goblins. That had been before the Translucent Adept’s intercession and their change of sides. This was Phoebe, who had by virtue of Mach’s fouled-up magic gained a horrendous hairdo that she liked screechingly well. It had enabled her to assume leadership among her kind, having before been outcast because of an illness. Fleta had cured that illness, which was the real basis of the unusual friendship; harpies generally had no interest in human or in unicorn acquaintance.

Phoebe was perched in her bower. Her head remained the absolute fright-wig that Mach had crafted, with radiating spikes of hair that made her reminiscent of a gross sea urchin. “Aye!” she screeched. “The rovot and the ‘corn. I blush to ‘fess it, but glad I be to see ye again!”

“We were passing, and thought we would pay our respects,” Mach explained. “I must return to my own frame for a time.”

“So? Methought thou didst have a thing for the ‘corn.”

“I do. I will return to her. But there is business I must attend to meanwhile.”

“Be there any aid I can render?” Phoebe asked. “Ye be mine only friends among thy kinds.”

“You have done more than enough for us. We merely wished to greet you again, and be on our way.”

“As thou dost wish,” the harpy said, shrugging. “But let me give thee another feather to summon me, in case thou shouldst have need o’ me.” She plucked it from her tail with a claw and extended it to him.

“Thank you,” Mach said, touched. Harpies were in a general way abominable creatures, but this one they had befriended seemed quite human. Probably the others would be too, if the animosity between species could be overcome. He tucked the feather into a pocket.

“Yet it be late,” Phoebe continued. “The night be cool, and my nest be warm. If ye two would stay the eve—”

Mach exchanged a glance with Fleta. This nest had fond memories for them. They decided to stay.

In the morning they continued to the spot where Bane was, on the edge of the plain just north of the Purple Mountains. The glow on the delf cup became so bright it was as if the sunlight were reflecting from it, but the sky was overcast. When the glow spread to circle the cup, Mach knew that this was where he could overlap his opposite self.

He turned to Fleta, who now changed to girlform, wearing her cape and shoes. Her mane became her lustrous black hair, a trifle wild and wholly beautiful. He embraced her and kissed her. “You must explain to Bane, if he doesn’t already know,” he said.