Piers Anthony - Phaze Doubt

They came to the first nether chamber. There stood the other robot, and it was not a maintenance machine, but a humanoid specimen, of masculine gender. This was another surprise, because there had been no such machine in evidence in the three years they had lived here, and they thought they had come to know every member of the community. Obviously they had missed a lot.

“Who are you?” Nepe asked.

“I have a name,” the robot said. “But that is an approximation for convenience, and need not be employed.”

Which was a typical robot answer. “Are you self-willed?”

“I am.”

“Why didn’t I see you before?”

“That answer will be known in due course.”

Another robotoid response! Nepe walked on with it, toward the chamber where Eli normally stayed.

“I must separate from you now,” the robot said. “But a man will await you.”

The robot departed down a side tunnel. Nepe walked on, taking the opportunity to shift to her straight human form—and soon encountered a boy.

She stopped and stared. This was a full, complete, man-headed human being! Which was absolutely unlikely, here.

“Who are you?” she asked gamely.

“I am called Beman, but that tells only part of my story,” the young man said.

Nepe studied him frankly. He was a handsome youth, about her own age, with curly reddish hair and eyes that seemed almost to echo that color. She would have liked him better if less perplexed about his appearance here, though.

“How did you come here?” she asked.

“I was made here,” he replied.

“Oh—you’re an android!”

“Not exactly.” Like the others, he seemed amused.

“How many of you are there in this game?” she demanded suspiciously.

“As many as there are in yours.”

She walked with him, not satisfied with this answer. Something odd was going on, and evidently Eli and the animal heads were in on it. But what was the point, when they knew she had a mission to save the planet?

“I must leave you now,” Beman said. “But there will be one to make everything clear.”

“Thanks just oodles,” she said sarcastically.

Beman walked away, taking a side passage. Nepe pondered, then returned the body to Flach, who could change forms more readily than she could.

Flach, in his normal boy form, walked on to Eli’s cave. He would have the answer soon, or else!

But as he entered the elephant head’s cave, he came to a shocked stop. Within it stood not Eli, but a BEM—a complete Hectare!

How could the enemy be here, deep in the time-protected caves under the North Pole? Had the BEM they had gamed with betrayed them after all? No, that couldn’t be; Flach had come to know one and a half BEMs, in the guard and Lysander, and he believed in their sense of honor. Besides, this was something he had never seen before: a small BEM, only about two-thirds the apparent mass of the grown ones. A grown one would not have fit in the entrance hole.

How had a young BEM come here, when only adults had invested the planet? How could the animal heads have tolerated it? And how could it have happened recently, since Flach and his companions had been watching the entrance for a sign?

Then it came clear. “The Hec seed!” he exclaimed.

The monster slid a tentacle across a screenlike surface. Where it touched, a line appeared. It wrote an answer in script: YOU BROUGHT ME, FLACH.

“But why do we need a BEM?”

I DO NOT KNOW.

“They raised thee here from seed, somehow, though Hectare cannot grow away from their native planet?” But obviously it was so. “Thou dost be what I were supposed to—thou dost be the West Pole’s product?”

SO IT SEEMS.

“But the vamp girl, Weva, said I had to be inside for a day— which be four months here. That be not what—“

Flach broke off. Something so truly amazing was breaking across his mind that his mouth fell open.

Nepe filled it in for him, as flabbergasted as he. The werewolf, the vampire—WErewolf, VAmpire—WEVA. They are the same! And Beman must be BEM and ANdroid. They are all the same!

“Just as we are,” Flach agreed, awed. “Male, female, robot, animal—where we’re unicorn, they’re—“

I THINK NOW YOU KNOW ME, the Hectare wrote.

“Change with me,” Flach said. He became a wolf.

The Hectare became a wolf.

“But you’re a bitch!” Flach growled.

“Aye,” she growled, and assumed the girl form.

Flach became a bat. The other became a female bat. “An thou desirest a male, needs must I turn straight human,” she said in bat talk.

Flach became Nepe. The other became Beman.

“And one of your forms is a BEM!” Nepe breathed. “Who could have believed it!”

“It was done in the laboratory,” Beman said. “As I understand you were, before you merged with Flach. Can we be friends?”

“We’d better be!” Nepe exclaimed. “We don’t want to be enemies!”

“Especially since you must teach me magic,” Beman said.

Nepe turned over to Flach. “Magic!” he exclaimed.

Weva appeared. “Please?”

“That’s what the four months is for?”

“Aye, Flach. Eli says it needs must be, but only thou be Adept. He says I can learn, but there be none but thee to teach me.”

That was surely true! Anyone could learn magic, but most folk had only slight talent for it, while those who became Adept had great talent. It wasn’t safe for ordinary folk to try too much, because the Adepts quickly cut down anything that seemed like potential competition in their specialties. But a person with aptitude, tutored by an Adept, could learn relatively rapidly. Flach himself had been close to Adept level by age four, but that had been his secret, and Grandpa Stile’s. If she had the ability to learn, he could teach her a lot in four months.

“But thou dost be part BEM!” he protested.

“Aye, Flach. But three parts human, as be thou.”

Through her werewolf, vampire, and android components, he realized; each of those was one part human, one part other. His own human heritage stemmed from his unicorn dam and his two human grandparents. Because he had more human shares than any other, he regarded himself as human, despite his title of Unicorn Adept, but he could assume any of the aspects of his lineage. The same would be true for Weva. “Aye,” he agreed.

“I thank thee for thine understanding,” she said, and kissed him.

It was a supposedly innocuous gesture, but it electrified him. The revelation of her nature was still amazing him, on a lower level of his consciousness: she was an aspect of a creature like himself, with his own potential. But superficially she was a pretty girl, much like Sirel. It had been a year since Sirel had come to her maturity, and brought him to his, in their wolf forms, but the knowledge of the change in their status still thrilled and appalled him. He was ready to relate to a girl—to a woman on the adult level, but there had been none to relate to. Now, suddenly, there was, and she was much more than he had dreamed possible. Perhaps her kiss was innocent for her, but it was not for him.

“Aye,” he repeated.

He taught her magic. She was quick to learn. They found that what Weva could do, Beman could not, though he was her male aspect. Weva derived from cells taken from Sirel—which accounted for her similarity to Sirel, making her a person he could like, without having to give her up the moment it got serious— and Alien. These were creatures of Phaze, the magic realm, and magic was in them. But Beman derived from human, robot, and Hectare elements, which were scientific, and they related well to the things of science and not to the things of magic. The animal heads had evidently taken care to educate Beman in Proton speech, to clarify the distinction.