Piers Anthony - Out of Phaze

Suddenly he realized why he was having trouble controlling his reactions: he was in a living body! He breathed, he had a heartbeat, he had to eat and drink and eliminate—of course he reacted sexually too! This was not, he now understood, entirely voluntary; when a stimulation came to him, his body reacted even when he did not wish it to. He had assumed that he would have no special interest in sex until he chose to, as was the case in Proton, but the sight of Fleta’s wet and moving anatomy had bypassed his intellect and made his body react. Thus his surprised embarrassment. The circuits of living creatures were to an extent self-motivating.

No wonder the folk here wore clothing! Not only did it prevent unwanted stimulation, it concealed unwanted reaction.

“I’ll wear clothing,” he agreed. But still he wondered: if Fleta was, as she said, flattered rather than embarrassed by the evidence of his reaction, why did she say that j there should be no such action between them? If they had done it as children, and they were not related (and why had she found that notion so hilarious?), why was it wrong now? Were they promised to other partners? Yet she had not said that; she acted as if there were some more fundamental reason why nothing serious between them was possible. And she feared he would be j angry when he learned.

He cast about, looking for something that could be fashioned into clothing. All that he could see that had any such prospect at all was the large leaves of some trees. Well, they would have to do.

Fleta helped him gather some good leaves. Then they used his axe to make slits in a vine, and passed the stems of the leaves through, with long-stemmed leaves overlapping short-stemmed ones, forming a kind of skirt. They wrapped the vine about his waist, and the leaves hung down to cover him to an extent.

But already there was another problem. His shoulders were turning red. “Sunburn!” Fleta said. “I forgot—thy kind suffers from that; it be another reason you wear clothing.”

His kind? Wasn’t her kind the same?

“I suppose we could make a collar to suspend a shirt of leaves,” he said, not enthusiastically. As it was, the leaves brushed constantly against him, stirring awareness of a region he preferred to tune out.

“Mayhap thou couldst conjure some cloth.”

He tried: “I’ll be wroth, without some cloth,” he sang, visualizing an enormous bolt of cloth.

He got a fragment of cloth about the size of a Citizen’s handkerchief.

He grimaced. “And if I try it again, I’ll get a thread or two,” he muttered. “It never works the second time.”

“Mach! That be it!” Fleta exclaimed. “Ne’er did I hear Bane use the same spell twice!”

“Good for only one shot,” he said, gratified by the revelation.

“Canst try the same, with other words?”

“Why not?” He pondered a moment, then sang: “Cloth: I implore, bring me some more.” He visualized an even larger bolt.

And the fog swirled, and deposited twice as much of the same type of cloth as it had before.

Now they understood the system. Mach invented a number of rhymes, garnering needle and thread and more cloth so he could sew a shirt. Fleta seemed to have no knowledge of sewing. He found that variation of melody also facilitated the conjurations, and that he got more of what he visualized if he built up to it by humming a few bars first. He was learning to be a magician!

It was close to midday by the time they were ready to travel. Mach had considered trying a spell to move them directly to the Blue Demesnes, but decided not to; he would probably drop them in the swamp instead. If the magic was going to foul up, let it foul up on details that didn’t affect their living processes!

He now wore crudely fashioned sandals, and a ragged broad-brimmed hat, to protect his feet from abrasion and his head and neck from the sun, and in between was as strange an assemblage of clothing as he could have imagined. Swatches of cloth, leaves, vines and even a patch of leather, all fastened together haphazardly. But it covered him, protecting him from both the burning of the sun and the embarrassment of possible involuntary reactions. He would get out of the costume the moment he returned to Proton, of course; rather, Bane would, for Bane would be back in his own body, and surely would recover his normal clothes. In fact, Mach himself would recover those clothes when he got back to the glade he had started from.

Mach spied a huge shape in the sky to the south, where the horizon was a ragged purple range of mountains. Those mountains existed also in Proton, of course; the natural geography of the two frames was supposed to be identical. “What’s that?”

“A dragon,” Fleta said. “Hide if it come near.”

“They are in the air as well as the water?”

“Aye, everywhere, and always hungry. Few other than an Adept fear not their like.”

Mach could appreciate why. He kept a wary eye on the sky thereafter.

The path reached the swamp. Now Mach hefted his crude weapons nervously, remembering the dragon that had been here. Maybe it would be asleep.

They had no such fortune. Fleta knew the path, and led him along it without misstep despite the murkiness of the water, but when they were too far along to turn readily back, the monster reared up.

Gazing at it, Mach abruptly wished he were elsewhere. His axe and staff seemed woefully inadequate. The dragon was so huge!

“I can help, if—“ Fleta said.

“My job. You get on to safety while I hold it off.” That sounded a good deal bolder than he felt. Still, his Game experience had acquainted him with different modes of combat, mock-dragons included. This was more nervous business than that, as it was real, but the same principles should hold. The dragon should be vulnerable in a number of places, and a bold enough challenge should dissuade it. The thing was, after all, an animal.

First he tried his stones. He fired the first at the dragon’s left eye. His aim was good; he knew his capacity here. But the monster blinked as the stone flew in, and it bounced off the leathery eyelid. So much for that.

Mach threw the second stone at the dragon’s teeth.

This one scored, but the tooth it struck was too large and strong; a tiny chip of enamel flew off, but the damage only aggravated the creature without hurting it.

The third stone he aimed at the flaring nostrils. It disappeared inside—and the dragon sneezed. The target was too big and spongy, and the stone too small, to do sufficient damage. But it did verify what Mach wanted to know: that the tissue there was soft, not hard. Few animals liked getting their tender tissues tagged.

Vapor swirled as the dragon warmed up. Mach hoped his clothing would shield him from the worst of the heat if he got blasted by steam; meanwhile, he would do his best to prevent the dragon from scoring with it.

Mach lifted his long staff. As the dragon’s head loomed close, he poked it with the end of the pole. Surprised, the dragon snapped at the pole, but Mach swung it free. He was accomplishing his intent: he had the dragon trying to attack the weapon instead of the man.

When the dragon’s teeth snapped on air, Mach reversed the pole and smashed it into the nostrils. The dragon reared back; that blow smarted!

Then the dragon heaved out steam. But the range was too great, and the aim was bad; no steam touched Mach. He aimed the pole at an eye and rammed; again the dragon blinked, but the pole scored, and pushed in the eye before rebounding. This time the eye was hurt; some blood showed as the dragon jerked back and the pole fell away.

“Thou’rt beating it!” Fleta exclaimed, amazed.

“I intended to,” Mach puffed, discovering that this effort was tiring him. He had forgotten, again: this living body lacked the endurance of the machine.