Piers Anthony - Juxtaposition

“I can’t cross the curtain to reach the Oracle’s palace.”

“You’re across it now.”

Her eyes widened. He kept being surprised by the detail of her human reactions. “So I am! But I couldn’t before.”

“The curtain isn’t moving, it’s widening. Now it comes in halves, with a steadily broadening region of overlap of frames between the fringes. This is the halfway region, the area of Juxtaposition. You may not be able to cross the whole curtain at once, but you can cross it by halves now. I’ll move the Phazite across it the same way.”

“That must explain the strange thing I saw,” she said.

“What thing?” In a situation where lasers and spells mixed, what could be strange?

“As I was casting about for a suitable place to set up this haven, I saw two men, a Citizen and an Adept. The Black Adept, by your description—made from a line. The Citizen had a line too, a financial line vital to his being. The two people came together as if drawn unwillingly—and suddenly they merged. One man stood where two had been. It must have been the two selves of the two frames reuniting in the common zone.”

“So it must,” Stile agreed, awed by the concept. “Juxtaposition is more literal than I thought! The divided people become whole people—for a while. They will surely separate again when the frames do. I wonder how the two Blacks feel about each other right now!”

She smiled. “There must be a number of very confused people! Not only two bodies together, but two half-souls too.” Then she sobered, remembering that she had no soul at all.

“Speaking of confused people—I left a remarkable situation in Xanadu. I don’t know whether Merle and the Rifleman—“

“I will check on it,” Sheen said. She touched a button, and a holo-image formed, showing the Xanadu cavern. The scene was horrendous. Merle and the Rifleman were confined in a cage whose bars were formed of ice, slowly melting in the heat of the chamber. Four hungry griffins paced just outside the cage, eager to get at the morsels within. In minutes the prisoners would be doomed. “The Adepts want to be sure I’m dead,” Stile said. “If I’m alive and aware, they know I will act to save my friends. If the ice melts and the monsters feast, the enemy Adepts will know I’m helpless.”

“I did conjure a dead fish to replace you in the sunless sea,” Sheen said. “I thought it would be enough. This dome is resistive to perception; they do not know we are here.”

“Where are we?”

“In the heart of the ogre demesnes.”

“Should be safe enough,” he agreed. “But my enemies are right. I can’t let the only two Citizens who helped me—I just can’t leave them to this fate. I must act.”

“Maybe I can do it in a way that won’t betray you.” She looked in the index of the book of magic again. “What type of spell should I search for?”

“Something that seems coincidental, natural. Some regular enemy to griffins that happens to wander by. Dragons, maybe.”

“Here it is,” she said brightly. “A spell to attract flying dragons. It’s a visual display that only dragons can see, suggestive of griffins raiding the dragon nests to steal diamonds. It enrages them, and they launch toward battle.”

“Excellent. Just see that they don’t attack my friends.” She got on it, uttering what sounded like gibberish and stamping both feet. “That does it. I modified it to make the dragons protective toward people caged in ice. The nest syndrome, again. They’ll melt the bars without hurting the prisoners. The enemy Adepts will be too busy containing the dragons to worry about the prisoners, who will surely disappear rapidly into the labyrinth of Proton. Do you want to watch?”

Stile glanced again through the holo at the prisoners. The Rifleman was holding Merle, shielding her from the cold of the ice and the reaching claws and beaks of the griffins. They made a rather fetching couple. Perhaps this incident would give the two respect for each other and lead to a passing romance.

“No, let’s get on with our business,” Stile said, more gruffly than necessary. The problem of Sheen and his relationship to her weighed upon him more heavily as she became more and more human. He felt guilty for not loving her sufficiently. “You conjure yourself to the Oracle’s palace and see about reanimating Trool the Troll. Fetch the Brown Adept there too; it will have to be a joint effort. While you’re at it, find out whether the curtain’s expansion has intersected the Oracle yet. Once it crosses, I’ll have to see about integrating it with the Proton computers, so its enormous expertise can aid our effort from the Proton side. Once you’re through there, meet me at the Platinum Demesnes; I’ll be organizing the shipment of Phazite. If we act swiftly and well, we can accomplish it before the resistance gets properly organized, especially since it may be thought that I am dead.”

“But that’s all kinds of magic you want me to do alone!” she protested. “I’m only a machine; I can’t handle that sort of thing!”

A machine with an insecurity complex. “You’ve done pretty well so far.”

“I had to! I knew your life was at stake.”

“It still is,” he said coldly. “All the Citizens and Adepts will be gunning for me harder than before, once they realize I have survived again. This is their last chance to stop the transfer of Phazite and preserve the frames as they know them. Do whatever you did before to handle magic so well.”

“I just looked in the index for the spells I needed. The book is marvelously cross-referenced; it is easy to see that a computer organized it. Protection, construction, summoning, conversion—anything, instantly. I just followed instructions; I don’t understand magic at all. It is complete nonsense. Who ever imagined a scientific robot doing enchantments?”

“Who, indeed!” he agreed. “This is a wrinkle I never anticipated. Yet it seems that you are well qualified to use the book of magic. Perhaps that is by design of the originators; the great equalizer for the self-willed machines. They can be the leading magicians of the age, entirely bypassing the established hierarchy.”

“No. We don’t want to do that. We want only our fair share of the system.”

Stile smiled. “You, too, are incorruptible. You shall have your fair share. But at the moment it is the occasion for heroic efforts. Very well; I’ll put it on a more practical basis. You read through that entire book and assimilate all that is in it—“

“Wait, Stile! I can’t! I can read at machine rate—but this book is a hundred times as big as it seems. When you address any section, the entire book becomes that section; there are more spells in any single subdivision than I can assimilate in a year. It’s like a computer with unlimited access, keying in to the networks of other planets on demand.”

“A magic computer. That figures. Very well—run a survey course. Discover what types of spells it has, in broad categories—you’ve already done that, I think—then narrow those down until you have exactly what you need. Commit particular spells to memory, so that you can draw on them at need. Remember, you can use each spell only once, so you’ll need backups. I want to know the parameters of this thing; maybe there are entire aspects of magic we never thought of. You run that survey as quickly as you can, then restore Trool and report to me. That will allow me to get moving on the Phazite without delay, while also mastering the potential of the book—through you.”

“Yes, sir,” she said uncertainly.

Stile brought out his harmonica and played a bar of music. Again there was something strange, but this time he continued playing, determined not to be balked by any mystery.