Piers Anthony - Juxtaposition

The spirit of his other self came out, expanding as if stretching, then dosed on Stile, coalescing. “Oh, no!” he cried. “Juxtaposition! I forgot!”

“You freed your other self’s soul to merge,” Sheen said.

“I saw it.”

Now Stile was two people, yet one. All the memories and experience and feelings of the Blue Adept of Phaze were now part of his own awareness, superimposed on his own lifelong Proton experience. All that he had learned of his other self, which the Lady Blue had told him, was now part of his direct memory. He had become, in truth, the Blue Adept. He felt confused, uplifted, and gloriously whole. “I am—both,” he said, awed.

“Is it—will you be all right?” she inquired anxiously. “Things are changing so rapidly! Does it hurt?”

He looked at her with the awareness of his other self. She was absolutely lovely in her concern. She had, with typical feminine vanity and concession to the culture of Phaze, conjured herself a simple but fetching dress, and her hair was just a trifle wild. Her eyes were strongly green, as if enhanced by the verdure of the overlapping frames. “I know what thou art,” he said. “I could love thee, Lady Golem-Machine, for thou art lovely in more than form.”

Sheen stepped back. “That must be Blue! Stile, are you in control? If you have become prisoner in your body—“

“I am in control,” Stile said. “I merely have double awareness. I have two full lives to integrate. My other self has no direct experience with your kind; he’s quite intrigued.”

“I would like to hear more from Blue,” she said, then blushed.

“Sorry. He has to come with me; we’re one now.” Stile resumed his melody on the harmonica, then sang: “Let me be found at the Platinum Mound.”

And he was there. Pyreforge the Dark Elf looked up. “We expected thee. Blue Adept. But I perceive thou art changed.”

“I am both my selves,” Stile said. “I am whole. My souls are one.”

“Ah, the juxtaposition,” Pyreforge agreed. “We be in the throes. But thy merger can be maintained only within the curtain, for you are now two.”

“I mean to make another body for him,” Stile said, an inspiration falling into place. “My friend Sheen has the book of magic; we can accomplish it now, after we restore my friend the troll to life. But first—the Phazite.”

“We have it for thee,” the elf agreed. “But how canst thou move it? It weighs many tons, and its magic ambience prevents conjuration.”

“I think that is why the Oracle bade me organize the creatures of Phaze,” Stile said. “First they rescued me from enchantment; now they will enable me to move the Phazite. I want to shape it into a great, perfect ball and roll it across the curtain by brute, physical force.”

“Aye, Adept, that may be best. But others will bar thy progress if they can.”

“This may be like a big earthball game,” Stile said, remembering the final key word of his Tourney poem. Earth. “I will try to balk the magic of the enemy Adepts, with the help of Sheen and the book of magic, while my friends help push the ball across the near side of the curtain, through the breadth of the zone of juxtaposition, and across the other side into Proton. That is how it works, isn’t it?”

“Aye. Cross from one frame on one side, to the other on the other. That can be done from both sides, but always the full juxtaposition must be traversed, for it be but the interior of the divided curtain.”

“So where the curtain divides, the people reunite!” Stile exclaimed, feeling his wholeness again.

“For the moment it be so. But when the deed be done, all will be separate forever.”

“I know,” Stile said sadly. “I will be forever confined to mine own frame, this lovely world of magic but a memory. And mine other self, the true Blue Adept, will know no more of modern science.” He felt the surge of interest and regret in his other self. To Blue, the things of science were as novel as the things of magic were to Stile. “We do what we must do,” Pyreforge said. “We some times like them not.”

“Can the elves get the Phazite to the surface here?” Stile asked. “I can conjure in whole troops of creatures to push it across the juxtaposition.”

“Nay, the other Adepts have closed the conjuration avenue, perceiving thy likely intent if thou dost survive. Thine allies must march here.”

“But I came by conjuration!”

“Thou must have come from some place hidden from Adept perception, then.”

“I did,” Stile agreed. “I should have notified my allies before I came here. Perhaps I can make a sign for them in the sky—“

“And attract every enemy instantly,” Pyreforge said. “Best to start it quickly.”

Stile sighed. There always seemed to be so many constraints on his application of magic! His other self shared the sentiment; it had always been thus. Magic was not the easy answer to every problem.

He went outside and surveyed the landscape, looking down into the great plain to the north. He could see where the curtain had expanded, straightening as it went. The zone of juxtaposition now reached well into the plain. The domes of the civilization of Proton were coming into view, with their teeming Citizens, serfs, and machines. He had an idea. He returned to Pyreforge, inside the Mound.

“Have thy minions push the ball out of the northern slope of the Purple Mountains, while I fetch special help. I can use Proton equipment to shove it onward.”

“Do not Citizens control the machines?” the old elf asked.

“Aye, they do,” Stile agreed regretfully. “All but the self willed machines. They will be using the heavy equipment against us. Let’s hope my Phaze friends are alert, and will assemble here without specific summoning.” A little fore sight would have facilitated things greatly, but he had been distracted by things like being transformed into a fish. So much had happened so rapidly so recently! Pyreforge showed the way to the Phazite. It was some distance east, for many of the tribes of elves had labored to assemble it centrally. Apparently they had been at work on this project far longer than Stile had been in Phaze, knowing the crisis was coming. The Little Folk had known much they had not advertised, and thus avoided early sabotage by the enemy.

As he walked. Stile felt an odd wrenching within him, followed by a kind of desolation. There was the sound of a fading flute, a single note that was somehow beyond the compass of ear or mind, yet encompassed something fundamental in the cosmos. In a moment he realized what had happened; he had crossed beyond the juxtaposition into Phaze proper, and the two souls could not integrate in a single frame. Blue had departed, and must now be back in the harmonica. How empty this body felt! At length they arrived in a large cavern, not unlike the one of Xanadu, but whose walls were dark rock. There were evidences of extensive tunnelings and laborings and many tracks of carts indented in the ground, as well as spillage of ore and oil.

There in the center was a perfect sphere of Phazite. This could not have been shaped in the past few minutes; it had to have been done this way long before Stile had arrived. The ball was about six feet in diameter, the size of an earthball.

An earthball. Again Stile remembered the Game, in which such a ball was pushed by teams across one goal line or the other. The Game Computer had given him the term “Earth,” the last of the supposedly random terms; now the relevance was dear.

“Solid Phazite?” he asked, awed by the reality. In Pro ton this would be worth so much that his mind balked at attempting the calculation.

“An isotope of the dense mineral formed in rare, peculiar processes of creation,” the old elf agreed. “In the science frame this would be described as the semi collapsed matter formed in the fringe of a certain variety of black hole in a certain critical stage of evolution. This explains why it is so rare; very little of it escapes the site of its origin. It is fifty times the density of water, unstable in certain conditions, sublimating into pure energy that is more than the sum of its present mass because of the unique stresses of its creation. Thus it may be used for the economical propulsion of spaceships—or the more versatile applications of magic in a frame where magic is normally much less intense.”