Piers Anthony - Phaze Doubt

Now they understood, and continued their practice with greater enthusiasm. The three, playing lovely iridium flutes together, generated quite pretty and intricate melodies. Nepe and Flach knew that they were not as good as Grandpa Stile or Blue, and certainly not close to the Adept Clef, but they could make the animal heads pause in whatever they were doing, to listen until the melody ended.

So the time passed, and they did not find it dull. The animal head children joined them in the classes, eager to learn about the outside realm they had never known. For a self-sustaining community had come here, complete families, giving up their lives on the surface. All to accomplish the plan to free Phaze from alien exploitation. It was apparent, if there had ever been doubt, that there was an enormous and dedicated complement involved, with Flach and Nepe only one little part. But if they failed, the entire effort would come to nothing.

Suddenly, it seemed, they were older. Sirel came into her first season. Flach would have been satisfied to wait indefinitely for it, so as to remain her Promised, but it was not to be. “I need you, Barel,” she said, and though he remained young—about eleven in human terms—he knew it was true. Indeed, her readiness was acting on him, making him mature, at least when in wolf form, rapidly.

They went into a private section of the “park”—a region of honeycombed tunnels where edible plants grew magically in twilight—and there as wolves accomplished in a moment what endless prior experimentation had not approached. Suddenly they were Wolf and Bitch, adults by the standard of that society, and their Promise was fulfilled. Never again would there be this between them; like brother and sister, they had only familial interest in each other, and their shared experience.

They assumed their human forms again, and found themselves still children. But now they knew that their innocence of childhood was over, and that stage by stage, inevitably, they would discard their fancies of youth and assume increasingly those of the adult state.

“Yet still we be friends,” Sirel reminded him wistfully.

“Aye,” he agreed. “Forever friends.” And he discovered that the thing he had feared was not actually a loss, but a portal; behind were the things of childhood, and ahead were the things of the adult state. If, for example, he were to travel again with the lovely demoness Icy, and she teased him with her luscious body again, wrapping her legs around him as she pretended to instruct him on the delights of his far future, he would have a potent response! But perhaps more likely, and more important, he could now orient on adult relationships, seeking that one who would share his future in the way his dam shared his sire’s. It was a dawning but exciting prospect.

Sirel evidently was having a similar realization. Their friendship had not suffered, it had merely changed its nature. They now understood each other and themselves and their culture in a more significant way.

Suddenly, it seemed, their tenure here was done. Three years had passed, and it was time to return to the normal realm, Flach had grown so accustomed to this society that he almost regretted it; there had been comfort in living with the animal heads, and he had made friends with the animal head children. But he had not forgotten his mission.

“Remember,” Eli warned him. “Outside it be but a week past. Thou willst have to hear thy third message, and do what it directs, whate’er it be; we know not.”

“But Sirel and Alien—what o’ them?” he asked.

“The main part o’ their missions were accomplished at the outset,” Eli said. “But an thy message tell thee to keep them with thee, then that must they do. An it be other, then they be free for their own devices—until thou dost need them at the end.”

“We would participate further in thy mission,” Sirel said, “an we can. But too would we remain with each other.” For after Sirel had achieved her maturity and abated the Promise, her interest in Alien had changed. The two had been friends; slowly they became more than friends. They could not relate intimately in their animal forms, but could in the human form, and it looked very like a rare wolf-bat romance. That could bring trouble with their subcultures, but after the robot-unicorn liaison that had generated Flach, acceptance might be easier.

“An I have a choice, will I keep ye two with me,” Flach said.

“And gi’en that choice, will we remain with thee,” Alien said.

So it was agreed. The three embraced, and made their preparations for departure. They bid farewell to the animal head children they had known so well for three years, and packed supplies, and of course their three iridium flutes.

They left by the same spiral passage they had arrived by; it was the only avenue to the regular realm. The Hectare stood guard as it had three years before, standing off the Pole. Eli had assured them that it was the same one; the animals had kept watch. That meant that the deal should hold. Indeed, as the three emerged and walked past, the creature took no seeming notice. But after they cleared the Pole and shut its lid, it moved across and stood over it again. That was signal enough.

They walked back to where the unicorns and semi-human companions had waited. They were there; the firefly was first to spy the approaching party and alert the others.

“But these are older!” Echo exclaimed.

“Three years older,” Flach agreed. “Time be changed, under the West Pole, as it be under the North Pole, only it accelerates. We have lived and grown.”

“It must be,” Lysander said, from his invisibility. “No one else has come, and the BEM has kept faith. In fact, it showed us the flag of truce and challenged us to a game; it had figured out where you came from. We declined, but we did talk to it, under that truce; we told it the stories of Phaze, and it told us the stories of the galaxy.”

“It be an honorable creature,” Flach agreed. “This guard duty must be boring for it, so once it lost the game, it took advantage of the situation to do something interesting.”

“Must needs we kill them, when we win?” Alien asked. “Methinks we could get along, an they be not in a position to despoil our world.”

“If you win, they will capitulate gracefully,” Lysander said. “But unless you have something exceedingly special, that I can not stop, you will Jose.”

“The more I learn o’ the Adepts’ plan, the more certain I become that there be something special,” Flach said. “But exactly what it be, I know not.”

“Maybe it is time for your third message,” Echo said.

“Aye. I hope I insult none here an I take that message alone; I know not whe’er it be secret from some or all but me.”

“Go by thyself,” Alien said. “Tell us what thou dost deem proper.”

Flach walked toward the ocean, sat in a hollow, and brought out the message capsule. It said, TAKE WEST POLE’S PRODUCT TO SOUTH POLE, WHEN.

He pondered that. He had gone to the North Pole, it turned out, to bring the Green and Black Adepts out at the proper moment; otherwise, in that slow time, they would not have emerged when they were supposed to. and the Magic Bomb would have been set wrong. So though the message had seemed inadequate, it had turned out to be all he had needed to know. The second message had told him to take the Hectare seed to the West Pole, and to go with those with him and four the wolves sent. Those with him—actually with Nepe—had been Lysander and Echo; the wolves had sent Sirel, Alien, and the two unicorns. Evidently the word had been spread before, for them to be ready for the call. It had all been set up, somehow, so that Flach and Nepe fell naturally into the pattern. Even the use of the enemy agent, Lysander, had turned out perfectly, suggesting that the prophecy had known very well what was to happen.