Piers Anthony - Out of Phaze

Then she said: “Perhaps tomorrow you can show me how your kind does the act of reproduction.”

“We just did it!” he exclaimed.

She was startled. “When?”

“When we—were on the ground.”

“Oh, you should have told me! I would have paid better attention.”

Disgruntled, Bane changed the subject. Agape, tired after her long effort, collapsed into a pool and slept.

He let her be, when morning came, fashioning some branches for shade so that the light of the artificial sun would not burn her substance. He watched for the dragon, and noted how it was now flying in the distance, over the river. How long would it be before the Citizen realized that Bane was not swimming in that water?

It was some time. When the Citizen finally did catch on, he deliberately crashed his dragon into the mountain, destroying it. Then he came after them on the ground, in a vehicle Agape described as a tank, that crashed through the brush and fired jets of fire. But without the signal from the finger, the Citizen had no easy way to locate them, and it turned out that he had no natural skill in tracking. For the remainder of the Game they avoided the clumsy machine, eating from the land and covering the matter of Agape’s instruction in considerable and pleasant detail. When the time expired, they were alive, therefore the victors.

Game exits manifested: cubicles rising from the forest floor. They entered one and were borne down to the formal complex.

Foreman was waiting. “The Citizen wishes to convey his congratulations to you on your victory,” he said to Bane. “You are free to return to your Experimental Project.”

“We be ready,” Bane said, eager to get away from this region.

“Not two; one,” Foreman said. ‘The alien will remain here.”

“But the bet was for both!” Bane protested.

Foreman touched a button on an instrument he carried. The Citizen’s voice sounded from it: “I win, I get your secret; you win, you go free.” Then Bane’s reply: “Aye.”

Foreman looked at him. “That was the agreement?”

“Aye,” Bane repeated. “We two go free.”

“No. Only you the speaker go free, no other.”

“But I meant both!

“‘You* be plural!”

“Not necessarily, in the dialect of Proton. Ask your associate.”

Bane looked at Agape. She nodded. ‘The word is both plural and singular,” she said. “ ‘You’ can mean several people or one person.”

“And the Citizen was addressing one person: you,” Foreman said. “You won the game, you go free. She remains.”

“I go not without her!” Bane exclaimed.

“Suit yourself. The hospitality of the Citizen is open to you.”

“But I want it not! I want Agape free!”

“That would require a separate agreement.”

“Bane, go without me,” Agape said urgently. “I don’t matter.”

“Thou dost matter more than everything else!” Bane exclaimed. ‘Thou didst almost sacrifice thyself in the cave, for me; I will not have it again!”

“Have no concern for her comfort here,” Foreman said. “She will be granted residence in a suitable container.” He gestured, and a wall dissolved. In the adjacent chamber was a monstrous black pot suspended over leaping flames.

Agape looked, and fainted. Her body dissolved, its substance sinking to the floor.

Bane swallowed, knowing he was beaten. The Citizen was threatening to torture or kill Agape if Bane didn’t cooperate, and he knew it was no bluff. The enemy Adepts always made good on their most dire threats, if not on their promises.

“Free her,” he whispered.

“You understand the necessary agreement?”

“Aye.” Bane was enraged by the duplicity of the Citizen, but terrified by his cruelty. He had no choice.

10 - Adept

The castle of the Brown Demesnes was impressive, being fashioned of brownstone rather than the wood he had thought, with a brown forest and the river turning muddy brown. Even the grass was brown. There could be no doubt of the identity of its owner. Two great brown wooden golems guarded the heavy brown wooden door. But Fleta approached it without trepidation. “Bane came often here,” she said. “And I too, carrying him, when we were young and he used not his magic to travel. Brown was I think about ten years old when I was foaled and now she be close to thirty, but she it was who versed me in the human tongue and in the ways of thy kind. She did babysit Bane, too. She be the best of Adepts.” That seemed to be a sufficient recommendation. They stepped up to the golems. Mach had nullified the invisibility spell, realizing that however convenient it had been to travel without being seen, they couldn’t approach a friendly Adept in that condition. “Tell thy mistress that Fleta and a friend come calling,” Fleta said to them.

One golem turned ponderously and stomped inside, while the other maintained watch. Soon the first returned. “Come!” it boomed. Mach wondered how a creature that did not breathe could boom, but realized that magic could account for it.

They followed it inside. The paneling inside was brown, but in varying shades, so that it was not oppressive. They came to the central hall, where a handsome brown-haired woman stood. She wore a brown gown and brown gloves and slippers, and her hair was tied back by a brown ribbon. This was of course the Brown Adept. Mach had rather expected her to be brown-skinned; she was well tanned, but that was the extent of it. Maybe the first person to hold this office had been literally brown.

“Fleta, it has been many months!” the woman said. “And Bane—“

“He be not Bane, Brown,” Fleta said. “He be Bane’s other self, from Proton-frame.”

Brown’s brown eyes studied Mach. “Aye, now I perceive the difference! But I thought there was no communication between the frames anymore.”

“Only in our case, sir,” Mach said.

“Dost call me ‘sir’?” she said, amused.

Mach was abashed. “In my frame, only Citizens wear clothes. I—“

She laughed. “I remember the Citizens! Stile and Blue fought them, and in the end I helped. Call me Brown; if thou art not the son of Stile, thou’rt the son of Blue.”

‘The son of Blue,” Mach agreed. “I am called Mach, and I am a robot.”

“A rovot be very like a golem,” Fleta put in quickly.

“Only now I’m in Bane’s body, and he’s in mine. We need to switch back, but don’t know how. So we were going to go to the Blue Demesnes, but demons and goblins prevented us, so we looped around and came here.”

“So that be why the monsters stir!” Brown exclaimed. ‘They be in pursuit of thee!”

‘That’s the story,” Mach agreed. “We don’t know why. We’re hoping you will help us.”

“Of course I will help,” Brown agreed. “I will send a golem bird to the Blue Demesnes, and thy problem shall be resolved. Meanwhile, the two of you be welcome here; the golems will protect you from the goblins.”

“O, thank thee!” Fleta said, going and hugging Brown. The Brown Adept snapped her fingers, and a brown bird flew in to perch on her wrist. It looked authentic, but evidently it was a golem; this was an impressive evidence of the woman’s skill. “Go tell the Blue Adept to contact Brown,” the Adept told it. ‘The matter be important.”

The bird flew away. “It can speak?” Mach asked.

“Nay,” Brown said, smiling. “It understands only where to go, but Blue will know I sent it not frivolously. We should hear from him in two hours.”

They had an excellent meal, and Brown provided better clothing for Mach; his homemade apparel was quite ragged. Brown was an easy woman to know; it was evident that she had a high regard for Stile and Stile’s son, and she was quite interested in what Mach had to tell of Proton.