Piers Anthony - Phaze Doubt

“The West Pole!” Sirel said, assuming her girl form, which was much like Nepe’s human form except that her hair was always dark. Nepe’s hair was whatever color she chose when she assumed the form; she had recently worn it neutral brown, and just long enough to cover her ears, so that she did not have to bother to form ears. “But there be naught there!”

“Maybe there will be something by the time we get there,” Nepe said, hoping that was the case.

“Well, there is still a portion of the day left,” Echo said. “Why don’t you folk start walking, and I will spy out the terrain ahead.”

“Thank you,” Nepe said.

“I’ll go with you,” Lysander’s voice came.

“I think not, handsome man!” Oche the harpy screeched, flapping up into the sky.

“Point made,” he agreed ruefully.

“I will range out the same on land,” Sirel said. “Not all can be seen from above.” She slid into the bush, disappearing in a moment.

Nepe started walking, trying not to limp; her temporary muscle structure was becoming uncomfortable.

“But Nepe, why can’t you assume some form that will enable you to travel more readily?” Lysander asked her.

“All my forms are unnatural,” she replied. “I would get tired in any, and waste time and energy changing between them.”

“But as Flach—“

“The others can change forms without trouble, as many times as they wish,” she explained, “because those forms are inherent in their natures. The werewolves are descendants of men and wolves, and the harpies have vulture and human ancestry. There is no significant magic splash when they change. But when Flach changes forms, other than his natural ones of unicorn and boy and maybe wolf, he has to use a new spell each time, and the splash is detectable throughout Phaze. Purple is watching for it, and would be here in a moment. So Flach has to be very limited in his magic. That, along with the problem of carrying the Hec seed—“

“I understand. You have amazing abilities in either aspect, but you have limits too. You are surprisingly candid about them.’

“If Purp closes in on us, you’ll have to help me get away, or you won’t learn what we’re up to.”

“Yet if you are the only one who knows how to implement the resistance ploy, then if you are stopped, it may be stopped too.”

“Unless I am the only one I know of who can implement it,” she said. “If there are others I don’t know about, you will never have a chance to stop them, unless you help me get together with them according to the plan.”

“True.” He believed that she was the only one, but it could have been set up to give him that impression so that he would stop looking. Even the story of the prophecy could have been concocted to deceive him. It wasn’t safe to stop yet. “So I must continue to support the enemy, until the full nature of the resistance is known.”

“Meanwhile, you can love Echo,” she said. “And maybe by the time you know the whole thing, you won’t want to mess it up.”

“Maybe by then she will understand that I have to do what I have to do, and will join me in it.”

“And maybe even if she does, when the Hec ravage the planet the magic will go, and Oche will die, and then Echo will be nothing but a machine with a dead brain.”

It sounded as if someone had struck him in the gut. He stopped moving, and evidently leaned against a tree.

“I’m sorry, ‘Sander,” she said. “That was a mean thing to say.”

“You scored, Nepe.” He sounded out of breath. “I think I didn’t really believe the power of that potion! I do love her, and I couldn’t let that happen to her.”

“Maybe they’ll let you save a bit of Phazite for her, so she can be all right. It’s a chip of Protonite that runs her robot body, and that’s the same stuff. If you keep enough of that—“

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, managing to resume his walking. “It’s not in your interest to do so.”

“Grandpa Blue taught me you can’t win a chess game by cheating. You can hide your strategy, but you have to tell your opponent when you put his king in check, and his queen too, if you want to be sure. We gave you a queen, and she’s in check.”

“That you did, and that she is,” he agreed.

“But it’s our whole world in check.”

“I appreciate your position.”

“If you had it to do over, would you go with Echo and take the potion?”

“I didn’t know about the potion until I was locked in with it.”

“But you didn’t really believe in it, so you didn’t try to escape. But now you know it works—if you could go back and avoid it—“

He walked for a while, pondering. “Alyc was just a diversion; she and I both knew that. Jod’e could have been real; I’m still sorry about the way Tan got her. I would change that if I could! Echo was nobody special. I just went with her because she had a way out, never expecting to love her. But now I have had the experience of loving her, and that is something I would not change. Before I had only my mission; now I have my mission and love, and that has made a dimension in my life that was not there before. So if I had known the whole of it, I would have proceeded exactly as I did. Love is too valuable to bypass.”

“I wasn’t teasing you,” Nepe said. “I just wanted to know. I like a lot of people, and I love my folks, especially Grandpa Blue, but I’ve never had romantic love. I figure if it’s not worth it, now is when you’ll know.”

“It’s worth it,” he said. “But I still have my mission. If you fell in love, you would still have yours.”

They walked on. Nepe thought about her relation with Troubot, and Flach’s with Troubot’s other self, Sirelmoba, and knew that these were friendships, not romantic love. She flirted with Alien or ‘Corn, but again, she knew this was a far cry from the kind of commitment she had seen in adults. The fact was that there was no person or creature of her generation that was like her: part alien, part human, and on Flach’s side, part unicorn and part machine. Or maybe he had the human lineage and she the machine; it was a matter of definition, since their fathers had used each other’s bodies. She was also a male/female mergence, which was fine for association with Sirelmoba/Troubot, but not with anyone else. Thus she was a complex creature, and in her fashion unique to the planet; no one else had her variety of affinities or abilities. If she could meet another like her, only different—

But how could she? It would require strenuous effort to make another like her, which was impossible in the face of the Hec conquest, and even then the result would be at least ten years younger than she. So she was alone in her special fashion.

“Why do I have the feeling that despite all your talents,” Lysander asked, “you have an emptiness like that of mine before love?”

“Because you know I’m one of a kind!” she snapped. “IT never have true love!”

“You don’t need another like you for love,” he protested “All you need is a suitable companion, and a love potion. I happen to know.”

She laughed, feeling better. Maybe he was right.

The harpy returned. She flapped clumsily down until close to the ground, then manifested as Echo. “Which side do the goblins serve now?”

“Ours,” Nepe said. “All the creatures are with us, because they’ll all die if Phaze is despoiled. But if they don’t know the importance of my mission, they may figure it’s business as usual.”

“Then we had better steer around the goblin camp to our west,” Echo said.

They steered around, cutting north. But as they followed a path beside a streamlet, they heard a commotion ahead. There was a crash and a yipe, as of an animal getting snared.