Piers Anthony: Blue Adept

“Yes. We had better force entry from here.” They set about it. Sheen had several construction bombs, and used them to blast away the sand and rip open a man-sized aperture in the wall of the bunker. Then she entered first.

“No automatic weapon,” she reported. “Still, I think you’d better stay clear.”

“The hell with that,” Stile said, walking down the sand embankment. “I can’t have the ladies doing everything for me.”

“But we can’t be sure this was the extent of the trap! It’s too simple; even I could have worked out something more sophisticated, and I have no creative imagination. At least let me search the premises—“

“You do that. I’ll tie up Red.” Because Stile found he could not kill her, this way. Now when she was unconscious. Funny how she had allowed herself to be gassed, when she must have heard the laser-drill. He leaned over the body, not squatting, because of his knees. Sheen commenced her inspection of the bunker. Something nagged him, but he couldn’t place it at the moment. “I won’t touch that amulet, certainly!” Abruptly, Red moved. Her head turned to cover him, and her pistol whipped up. She was not unconscious after all!

Stile hurled himself to the side as the gun went off. Had he been squatting, as a normal man would have done, he could have been fatally caught; the gun was aimed for the heart of a squatting man. As it was, the bullet slammed into his left thigh.

It was a bad hit. Now Stile exerted his trance-control. He let himself fall backward while clapping both hands to the wound. The pain was terrible, but he was bringing it under control, while he slowed the pulsing eruption of blood. He could not afford to lose consciousness; he could bleed to death rapidly. The major artery had been nicked or severed; he would need a surgeon’s prompt attention. Meanwhile Sheen launched herself at Red. Pistol and amulet flew wide and Red was hurled against the wall. But then Red righted herself and hurled Sheen away, with inhuman strength. “This is a robot!” Sheen cried. “A machine, like me!”

“True,” the Red-figure said. “I bear this message for Stile: make haste away, midget, for at this moment the Red Adept is launching an explosive drone vehicle tuned to the bullet in you. How much damage the drone does depends on your location when it catches you.” They heard the noise of machinery moving, some distance away. Something was rising from another bunker.

“Run, Blue!” the robot continued, “Suffer the joys of the chase, rabbit. Message ends.” And the robot went dead.

“Sheen!” Stile cried. “Carry me to the curtain. They can help me there, and the drone can’t cross—“

“The amulet!” Sheen cried. “It is the bullet!”

“The bullet!” Stile echoed. Now the full nature of this terrible trap was apparent—and he had almost fallen into it despite the warning the Lady Blue had brought. If he crossed with the bullet in him, it would animate into the basilisk, and he would be dead before he could utter a spell. But if he did not cross—

Now they heard the released drone, cruising across the sand toward them. There could be enough explosive in that to blow up a mountain.

Sheen stooped to pick him up. She carried him to their unicycle and set him in the seat and flung the safety harness around him while Stile clung to consciousness and to his leaking thigh. Then she jumped in herself and started the motor.

The drone-car was rounding the bunker, picking up speed. Sheen accelerated away at right angles to its path. In moments they were traveling seventy kilometers an hour, leaving the drone behind. This was not a particularly fast velocity for travel on a surfaced road, but across the desert landscape it seemed horrendous. “We’ll have to get the bullet out before we take you to a doctor!”

“How can we get it out without a doctor, especially if we can’t stop?” Stile gritted. He was not in the most reason-able of moods at the moment, as he fought to keep blood and body consciousness together. The rough riding did not help.

“I’ll summon one of my friends to intercept us.”

“Summon one to blow up the drone!”

“They won’t do that. It would attract attention to their nature. But one will help you and depart. Then the drone won’t matter.”

“Not to rush you,” Stile said. “But I can only hold on here a short while. I’m in partial trance, suppressing the circulation to my leg, but the wound is bad and I’m slowly losing control. My last reserves are depleting.”

“I know the experience,” she said. “We’ll stay right be-side the curtain, so you can cross the moment we get the bullet out. Then you’ll be able to use magic to—“

“I can’t heal myself with magic.”

“The Lady Blue will find some other Adept to help you, I’m sure. Perhaps the Lady Yellow—“

“Yellow is no lady! She is an old crone.” But he was being querulous in his adversity. Yellow probably could help. He remembered how the Lady Blue had won her favor by starting the applause at the Adept pavilion. The Lady Blue was good at that sort of thing. Sheen guided the unicycle to the curtain. Stile perceived it now with remarkable clarity. Had it intensified, or was his current state of pain-blocking trance responsible? It hardly mattered; he could see across as though it were an open window.

The unicycle was handily outdistancing the drone at the moment—but in Phaze Neysa was having trouble keeping up. The terrain was more varied there, with trees and streams and bushes obstructing her route. “Slow it. Sheen. Neysa is wearing herself out—and I’ll need her there the moment I cross.”

Sheen slowed—but then the drone gained, cutting into their lead. This was worrisome; that lead was their margin of safety. In addition the landscape was getting rougher. They were heading generally west, curving north with the curtain, back toward the major cluster of domes. On the prior trips they had maneuvered comfortably around the obstructions of boulder, dune, crevasse and ridges. But the curtain crossed these heedlessly, and this made the drive difficult. Sheen had to skid along awkward slopes, bounce through gullies, and plow through the mounds of sand. The drone suffered also—but it was squat and sturdy with broad wheel-treads, and it kept on going. The hazards of this chase would shake apart the unicycle before they stopped the three-wheeled pursuer.

Neysa, meanwhile, was encountering problems in Phaze. Stile watched her helplessly, as Sheen guided the unicycle along the curtain, now one side of it, now the other, causing his view to shift about considerably. The unicorn could handle the irregularities of the terrain, but there were also creatures in the way. She had to charge through a colony of demons, and in a moment they were in pursuit like so many drones, eager for unicorn flesh. Neysa could have escaped them easily if she had not been staying close to the 306 Blue Adept Blue Adept 307 curtain, and if she had not had to worry about the security of the Lady Blue. Or she could have turned to fight them, putting them to flight with a few well-placed skewers—had she not had to keep up with Stile’s vehicle. Now the demons were popping up everywhere from crevices in the rock, cutting her off. They were grinning; they knew they had her.

Neysa blew a desperate summons on her horn. Stile could hear the sound, faintly, across the curtain, even as he rode in the same channel Neysa ran in, overlapping her without any tangible evidence of it. He could only actually see her when the curtain was between them so that he could look through it, and that happened only in snatches. The curtain was a funny thing, something he would have to explore more thoroughly some day and come to under-stand. Like the Oracle, it was a phenomenon that seemed to have no origin and no reasonable explanation; it merely existed, and was vital to communication between frames. Again Neysa sounded. The call resounded across the wilderness. The demons growled in laughter; sound could not hurt them. Stile wished he could cross over and help out with a spell—but that notion was folly. Then a ranging werewolf, summoned by the horn, spied them. He bayed. His oath-friend was being molested. This was why they were patrolling the curtain; they had been warned of this danger. Their numbers were thinly spread, because the convoluting curtain traversed a tremendous amount of territory, but their keen perceptions made up the difference.