Piers Anthony - Phaze Doubt

The bitch lifted her nose, and took the seed gently from his hand. Then Flach became a bat. “We go together!” he called in the bat language to Alien. “Cling to Sirel, and let her go in. An we spy danger, we can guide her clear.”

They lit on the wolf’s back. Then Sirel stepped into the hole. She dropped only a short distance before landing firmly at the tunnel floor.

Now Flach’s ears confirmed what Alien’s had perceived. This was a curving passage, spiraling down below the Pole. Above, in the lighted hole, motes of dust hung motionless. They were living much faster now. He should have realized that it would not be identical to the situation at the North Pole. What point, slowing down, when they had so little time to forge the weapon against the invader?

Reassured by their contact, Sirel walked on down the tunnel.

Several loops down it broadened into a chamber, where there was light: at first dim glows from fungi, then brighter glows from lamps. As Sire! stood at the edge, there was a growl, coming from darkness beyond the chamber.

“Who dost thou be?” the growl demanded. Flach could understand it because of his years with the wolves.

But Sirel couldn’t answer, because she was holding the seed in her mouth. So Flach changed forms and assumed his wolf form, Barelmosi. “We be three, coming as directed to the West Pole,” he growled.

“Who dost thou be?” the growl repeated.

“I be Barelmosi, also known as the Unicorn Adept. With me are Sirelmoba, who be my Promised bitch, and Alien, o’ the vampire bats. Now, in fairness, tell us who thou dost be, and what thou dost demand o’ us.”

The other came in view. It was an animal head: a man with the head of a wolf. “I be but a servant o’ our cause: to save Phaze from being ravished. Hast brought the seed?”

“Aye.”

“Give it here, and follow.”

Flach, assuming human form, reached to take the seed from Sirel’s mouth, and carried it to the wolfman. The wolfman took it and turned to walk into the gloom at the far end of the chamber. They followed, Alien assuming human form. Sire! retaining bitch form. Flach wasn’t certain what was coming, and knew the other two were as nervous as he.

Soon they arrived at a deeper, brighter chamber, where a group of animal heads stood. Prominent among them was an elephant head. “Eli!” Flach exclaimed. Then he had a second thought. “Or be it thee? Thou dost look older.”

“We be all older,” Eli said. He used the language of the animal heads, which was a mixture of those sounds common to most of them; Flach understood it because he had learned a number of animal languages when he mastered the animal forms. Eli had helped his father Mach train in table tennis, before Flach’s birth, for an important game with his other self; the elephant head held the paddle with his trunk, and played marvelously well. Flach had come to know him in the past year, and liked him. “We be ten years in this den, preparing for thee.”

“But I saw thee nigh three months ago!” Flach protested. “With my sire, the Rovot Adept. Dost not remember?”

“I remember. But much o’ a month ago in thy time, we descended to this realm and fashioned o’ it the Pole Demesnes, that we might train thee and make the decoys. That be ten years, our time, and aye, we be older.”

“But thou must get out, then, before thou dost age too far!” Flach exclaimed, horrified. “Thou and thy companions!”

“Nay, Adept, not so! Our lives be as long as e’er, in our terms; we feel not the loss. We have been constructively busy, and now the region be nice for thee and thy companions. For thou must remain with us a time.”

“But came I here only to deliver the Hec seed! Needs must I do one more errand before I rest, so save the planet.”

“Aye. But this be part o’ thine errand. Thou must be trained here, three years.”

“Three years!” Flach exclaimed. “But the Magic Bomb will ravage the planet within six weeks! Five weeks.” For a week had passed since he had stood at the North Pole with wonderful Icy. Ah, the demoness-Don ‘i get distracted! Nepe snapped.

“Three years our time,” Eli clarified. “One week, outside. We be at gross velocity: an hundred and forty-four times norm. Well we know the outside limit!”

Flach looked at his companions, appalled. But as he did so he realized that their presence here was part of the plan, whose nature he did not understand. Certainly he had no reason to distrust EH.

“I must trust thine information,” he said. “We be at thy service.”

“First must we take thy companions to the laboratory,” the elephant head said.

“The laboratory?” Flach asked, upset again. “That be a science notion!”

“Aye, lad! We have rovots and computers here and the rest o’ science, but the wolf and bat must needs be fresh for our purpose.”

“What purpose?” Flach demanded. “I can suffer no ill to my friends!”

“Nor shall there be ill to any,” EH reassured him. “We but need tokens from their bodies, that we may craft what be needful.”

“Tokens?”

“We may not tell thee more now,” EH said. “For thou must go out again amidst the enemy, and the secret be not secure there. But thou shallst see they be not harmed. Now do the two o’ you come w’ me, while Flach takes his leisure at thine apartment. The wolf will show thee there, Adept.”

Sirel assumed girl form. “It be all right, my Promised,” she said to Flach. “We knew we came not here for naught. We will see thee presently.”

Flach watched them go with dismay. This was not at all what he had expected.

The wolf head guided him down another tunnel to a chamber that turned out to be very much like a Proton room. There was a video screen and a bed and a machine for dialing food. “I thank thee,” he said shortly to the wolf head, dismissing the creature. He felt like a prisoner.

Alone, he turned on the screen. It did not have any input from outside, unsurprisingly; the time barrier stopped that. It did have an assortment of canned entertainments and educational programs.

He turned it off, lay on the bed, and pondered. The North Pole must have been a similar warren, that he had never before his trip there known of or suspected; the elders were good at keeping secrets when they wanted to. That had been slow time, so if the Green and Black Adepts had gone there at the same time the animal heads came here, it would have seemed like only a few minutes, perhaps, though a month passed outside. Meanwhile, here, it had been ten years! Plenty of time to get it in shape for company.

But what were they going to do with fresh “tokens” from Sirel and Alien, and the Hectare seed? He had hoped to have the answer to prior riddles once he got here, but instead he was encountering only greater mysteries.

Disgruntled, he lay there for a time, and then he slept.

He woke as Sirel and Alien returned, both in human form. “See, we be fine!” she exclaimed. “It were but a bit o’ tissue from each, and we be done.” She changed to wolf form, and back, so that he could see she hadn’t changed.

“But we be captive here, for three years,” he reminded her.

“Whate’er it takes to free our realm,” she said brightly. She looked around. “This be like Proton!” She became Troubot, in straight machine form. “Exactly like Proton,” the robot said from a speaker grille.

Alien became his Proton self, ‘Corn, fully human. “Yes, it is true.” He returned to his Phaze self. “But methinks I prefer to sleep hanging from a rafter.” He reached up, took hold of a convenient plank, and became the bat. He flipped neatly over and caught the wood with his feet.

“And thee?” Flach asked Sirelmoba. “Dost thou be similarly satisfied?