He swam, holding the straps to his last two acquisitions in his teeth. The flippers enabled him to move rapidly through the water. He didn't need light; he could tell where the walls were by the lapping of the waves his swimming made.
The chasm narrowed, until he was swimming between vertical walls only a couple of meters apart. Still no way up or out. He didn't like this; his special equipment was sealed in watertight packages, but he needed to get on dry land to use it safely.
Well, he could dive. He had a hunch there was a way out of here and a way from here to the computer-Oracle, because the goblins needed access to guard it. Of course this was the other frame — but with the normal parallelism, chances were good there were Proton passages too. All he had to do was find them.
He dived. He did not fear any monsters in this murky lake; they could not survive in this pollution. But he was careful about sharp jags of rock that might tear his suit.
The cleft was wider below, giving him more room to grope along. He should have conjured a light; he hadn't thought of it. On any venture, something important was always forgotten! But one of his instalments had an operating light that he could use for general vision — once he put it into use.
The walls closed in above. Good — he did have a passage here, for there was a slight current. Soon he groped upward and discovered a new cavern — and this one had sloping sides that he could scramble up on, getting free of the water.
Perched awkwardly on the rock, for his bad knees prevented him from squatting, he opened one of his doslems.
This one was the weapon: Disrupter-Optical-Space-Light-Modulator. D О S L M. He set it on low and activated it. There was a faint, humming beam, and a section of the cave wall glowed and sagged, melting without heat. Its particles had been disrupted, losing their cohesion; solid had turned to liquid. Good enough. The doslem was governed by light-beam computer, in which beams of light functioned in lieu of solid circuitry and semiconductor diodes and information chips. It was much more compact than the solid state and could generate potent effects, as the melted patch of wall showed.
Now Stile turned to the other doslem, the gem. In this case the D stood for Detector. It was an even more marvelous instrument. A miniature panel controlled its assorted functions of timing, direction, and detection. In his hands it emitted just enough light to clarify the cave-region in which he hunched, and it gave readouts mapping the extent of air-filled and water-filled recesses. There were other caves here, and some were within the range of the disrupter; he could melt a hole through the thinnest section of wall. Some passages were squared off — obviously artificial. His hunch had proved correct!
Stile checked for refined metals, orienting on copper, aluminum, iron, and gold. Soon he located a considerable cache of these, southeast of his present location. He checked for magnetism and found it in the same region. This certainly seemed to be the computer, or whatever portion of it existed in the frame of Proton.
Stile scouted about, then selected the thinnest wall to disrupt. He gave the melt time to settle, then stepped through to the adjacent cave. He was on his way.
It took time, and on occasion he rested and ate from his supply of nuts and fruit. He located reasonably fresh water by tuning in on it with the detector. He had a sense of location; he was in the cave network whose upper exits he and the Lady Blue had noticed on their honeymoon, after departing the snow-demon demesnes. He marched, cut through to a new passage, and marched again, slept, and marched again. He hoped the two unicorns had flown up and out of the cavern system, knowing that he, Stile, could take care of himself on the other side of the curtain. There was no way to communicate with them now, since he was no longer near the curtain. They simply had to have faith.
At times, as he tramped onward, he thought about the nature of the curtain and the parallel frames. How was it that he could so readily conjure scientific equipment that was inoperative in Phaze, yet was operative when taken back across the curtain? If it was that solid and real, why couldn't it function in Phaze? If it was not, why did it work here? The curtain could be a very thin line indeed, when magic so readily facilitated science. Was there no conservation of energy with regard to each frame? Anything taken across the curtain was lost to its frame of origination, wasn't it? Also, how could objects of Proton-frame design be brought to Phaze? Did his magic generate them from nothing, or were they actually stolen from warehouses and factories and hauled through the curtain? He doubted he could visualize the inner workings of a doslem well enough to build one directly, so doubted he could do it by magic, either — but the alternative implied a closer connection between frames and greater permeability of the curtain than conventional wisdom supposed. Magic would have to reach beyond the curtain, right into the domain of science. There was so much yet to learn about the relationship of frames!
And this computer he was searching out — had it really murdered Stile's alternate self, the original Blue Adept, by means of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Why? How did all this tie in with the approach of the end of Phaze and Stile's own involvement in that? Was the computer-Oracle due to perish in that termination of the frame, and Stile himself-
He paused to review what had been more or less idle speculation. If Stile was going to help destroy Phaze, and the computer was in Phaze, it might indeed be destroyed too. So maybe it sought to prevent him from participating in this business. Maybe it was really on the same side as the other Adepts. So it had generated mischief to eliminate him in both frames, being foiled only by that other message, the one that had brought Sheen to protect him. Yet it had been prophesied that he would help the computer return to Proton, where it would act to destroy Phaze; that
put him on its side and set it against the Adepts. Maybe the destruction of Phaze was inevitable, and the computer needed to cross to Proton in order to escape the holocaust. But then why should it have tried to kill him twice? That made no sense at all.
Maybe he should have taken the time to trace down the source of that mysterious, other message, the one that had saved him, before he rescued Clip-
No. Clip came first. The Adepts had hurt the unicorn to gain leverage against Stile, and Stile had had to act.
Should he resume tracing that message now, instead of going to confront the Oracle? He might have a powerful ally — and with most of the other Adepts against him, he needed one.
But that would mean backtracking to the curtain and fighting his way through the barrage of hostile magic directed against him. He could not be sure he would survive that, and certainly he could not thereafter approach the Oracle with any element of surprise. Only by staying with the Proton-frame route, where magic and prophecy did not exist, could he hope to sneak up on it. He was set on his present course; he would have to continue.
He plodded on, and the hours passed. Was it day or night above, now? Normally he had a good time sense, but he did need some minimal feedback to keep it aligned. Stile also had good endurance, having run marathons in his day, but now he was traveling mainly in the dark, with occasional sips of oxygen from his scuba gear, conserving that life-sustaining gas as much as possible. He was out of food and tired. Only the constant approach to the site indicated by his equipment gave him confidence to keep on. Maybe he should have gotten himself a device to signal Sheen, who could have come to pick him up, making things so much easier. How obvious this was, now that he had ample time to think of it!
Yet that would have alerted others to his activity. Since other Adepts had connections in Proton — indeed, some were Citizens — that could be just as dangerous for him as activity in Phaze. So maybe this way was best; they might think him dead or impotent, since he did not reappear.
Sometimes accidents and mistakes were the best course; they were at least random.
The detector signaled him; he was at last drawing close to the metal and magnetism. He hoped this was what he believed it was; and if it weren't, he would have to struggle to the surface and hope he could make it to a dome. His oxy
gen was very low; he knew he was nowhere near the curtain; he was also deadly tired. The shortage of oxygen had sapped his strength. He doubted he could survive if this site were not what he sought. He had in fact gambled his life on it.
The passage did not go to the site. Stile had to use the disrupter again. The wall melted and he stepped through.
He had entered a dusty chamber. Machinery was in it. The detector indicated that electric current flowed here. He turned up his light and examined the machinery. Immediately he suffered the pangs of disappointment. This was no computer; this was an old construction robot, equipped to bore and polish a tunnel through rock. The magnetic field was from a preservation current, to warm key lines and maintain the valuable robot brain in operative condition despite long disuse. There were other construction machines here, similarly parked and preserved. It was cheaper to mothball equipment for centuries than to rebuild it at need. Obviously the computer had been brought here, then passed through the curtain to Phaze long ago.
Something nagged at Stile's mind. There was a discontinuity. What was it? He felt worn in brain as well as in body, but as he concentrated he was able to force it to the surface of consciousness. His ability to do this was one of the things that had brought him to his present position as Citizen and Adept. When he needed to be aware of something, he could grasp it in time for it to be of use. Usually.
It was this: the curtain was not here. It was at least a full weary day and night's march northwest of here. There was no way the computer could have been set across here. The curtain was fairly stable; if it moved, it did so very slowly. Centimeters per century, perhaps, like the drifting of continents.
Still, that offered a possible explanation. Maybe the curtain had moved, perhaps in random jumps that were now forgotten, and several centuries ago it had been here. So the computer had been put across, and stranded by the retreat of the curtain.
How, then, could he be fated to put the computer back across the curtain? The computer was surely far too massive for him to move, even if the other Adepts permitted it — which they would not. Stile was not at all sure he cared to make the effort. If the computer-Oracle was his enemy, why should he help it move to Proton to wreak its vengeance on Phaze? So much remained to be clarified before Stile could decide what side of what situation he was on.
First, however, he had to figure out how to survive. There should be some small emergency supplies of food and oxygen here, for maintenance workers who might get stranded. There might be a storeroom. Maybe even a communication line to civilization, since there was a live power line.
He checked around, his mind growing dull as his scant remaining oxygen thinned. He had rationed it to reach here; now it was gone. He stumbled from machine to machine. No oxygen, no supplies.
The cave narrowed. There was a door at the end. It was an air-lock type of portal — a likely storeroom or pressurized office complex. He needed to get in, but it was sealed. Should he use the disrupter? Two problems there: first, the chamber might be lined with disrupt-resistant material, making it impervious to the attack of this small weapon; second, if he did break in, and there was air pressure, that pressure would decompress explosively. Not only could this be dangerous to him physically, the process would eliminate the very thing he had to preserve — normal, oxygenated air pressure.
He tried to open the lock, but could not; the controls were keyed to particular identities or particular code sequences, and he was not the right person and didn't know the code. No help for it; he would have to try the disrupter, hoping to find canned air to use with his suit
Then a voice came: "Identify yourself."
There was someone in there! Or at least a sapient robot. "I am-" He paused. Should he give his true identity? Caution prevailed. "A person in need of air. I beg assistance."
"You shall have it. Be advised that a robot weapon is trained on you."
"So advised." Stile leaned against the wall, growing dizzy as the last of his scuba oxygen faded. He could not blame a solitary maintenance guard for being careful.
The portal hummed, then opened. Air puffed out. A figure emerged, clothed in the protective gear of a maintenance worker, using a nostril mask and protective goggles.
"Stile! It's you!" the figure cried. "God, what a relief!" The man put his arm around Stile's shoulders to help him into the chamber.
It was Clef, the musician Stile had encountered in the Tourney, and to whom he had given the Platinum Flute. The Foreordained. "I thought you were in Phaze," Stile gasped as the air lock sealed and pressure came up.
"I was, Stile. Or should I say sir? I understand you obtained your Citizenship."
"I got it. Don't bother with the 'sir.' Just give me air and food and a place to rest. What are you doing here?"
The inner aperture opened, and Clef guided him into a comfortable chamber. "I'm here to meet you, Stile, on behalf of the Oracle. You and I must work together to fulfill the prophecy and save the frames from destruction." He pressed a cup of nutri-soup into Stile's unsteady hands and set him in an easy chair. "I was so afraid you would not make it. The Oracle said there was danger, that no one could help you, and that it could not foresee your arrival. Its prophecies are unreliable when they relate to its own destiny. I had no notion when and if you would arrive, except that it had to be within a three-day time span. I fear I was asleep when the moment came. Then I could not be certain it was you, for there are enemies-"
Stile ceased his gulping of the soup to interrupt Clef. "Enemies? To save the frames? I understood I was to destroy Phaze, and I don't know whether that makes me friend or enemy to whom."
Clef smiled. "That depends on how you see it, Stile. The present order will be overturned or greatly weakened in both Proton and Phaze. That's why Citizens and Adepts oppose the move. Most of the rest-the serfs and creatures — will benefit by the new order. You are no enemy to them!"
"Viewpoint," Stile said, catching on. "To an Adept, the loss of power of Adepts would be disaster, the end of Phaze as he knows it. To a unicorn, it might be salvation."
"And to a werewolf," Clef agreed. "Big changes are coming. It is our job to make the transition safe. If we don't, things could get extremely ugly."
Stile was recovering as he breathed the good air and ingested the nourishment of the soup. He started to strip off the wetsuit, all that had protected him from the chill of the cave passages. This chamber was like a slice of Heaven, coming so suddenly after his arduous trek. "Tell me everything."
"It's simple enough. Three hundred years ago, when they discovered that this planet was one of the occasional places in the universe where the frames of science and of fantasy intersected-would you believe Planet Earth was another such place in medieval times? — they realized that there were certain dangers in colonizing the fantasy frame. So they set up some powerful instruments for the purpose of securing an optimistic new order. A sophisticated self-willed computer and a definitive book of magic."
"A book of magic? I never heard of this."
"Well, you weren't supposed to. It contains the most potent spells in all modes, so that it would take years for a single person to invoke them all-not that anyone would want to. Spells of creation and destruction, of summoning and sending, of healing and harming. Any person with access to that book in Phaze would become an instant Adept, more powerful than any other, one who could virtually change the face of the frame in minutes. The computer contains all the data for science, finance, economics, and politics known at the time. Despite the passage of three hundred years, this knowledge is enough to assure the operator enormous power in Proton-perhaps enough to dominate the government."
"And someone is destined to get hold of these tools and turn them to wrong use? That could indeed be trouble!"
"No, great care was taken to safeguard against this danger. The two tools had to be preserved for the time when they were needed, and kept out of the hands of those who might squander or abuse them. They had to be ready for the great crisi
s of separation."
"Separation?"
"It seems the intersection of frames is a sometime thing. The elves who instructed me are not sure about that. As you know, they consider me to be the one they call the Foreordained, which simply means my particular talent will be useful in negotiating the crisis; there is nothing religious or supernatural about it. So they have been preparing me in a cram-course, while you have diverted the Adepts who might otherwise have interfered."
"So that's what I was doing. I was a decoy!"
"That's only part of your task. Anyway, they think the frames are going to separate, so there will be no more crossings, no further interactions. This is simply part of the natural order; it happened on Earth as the medieval period ended. After it, no one in Proton need believe in magic, and no one in Phaze need believe in science, and the episode of the interaction of the systems will seem like fake history. Since on this planet the fantasy frame was colonized from the science frame — though a number of Phaze creatures are evidently native to the fantasy realm, and perhaps the Little Folk too — er, where was I?"
"The frames are separating," Stile said.
"Ah, yes. When they do, the human alternative selves will be carried away, becoming complete in themselves, clones of their counterparts, and parallelism will no longer exist."
"Now that's another thing," Stile said. "I can see how the presence of people in one frame could generate similar people in the other frame, split by the curtain. With science overlapping magic, that sort of thing can happen. But after the initial ripple, why should it continue? I did not exist three hundred years ago; why should there have been two of me?"
"Again, the Little Folk aren't certain. It seems that when the experts made the computer and book of magic — two aspects of the same thing — they were able to juxtapose the frames. Science and magic operated in each, for the two were the same. Then the frames separated slightly, and each person and creature separated too. This was an unexpected occurrence; before that, there had been only one of each. It was as if the fantasy frame, vacant of human life, picked up a duplicate copy of each person in the science feme. It did not work the other way, for no dragons or unicorns appeared in Proton, perhaps because it lacked a compatible environment. Already the mining of Protonite was commencing, with attendant use of heavy machinery, construction of processing plants, and pollution of the environment. The Citizen class put things on what they termed a businesslike footing at the outset, permitting no pollution controls. There is evidence that magical creatures are extremely sensitive to environmental degradation; only a few, like the trolls, can endure it for any length of time. The Citizens of Proton simply put up force-field domes and continued their course unabated, ignoring the outside planet. In this manner Proton lost whatever it might have had in nature, sacrificed by the illiterate pursuit of wealth. But despite this gross difference between the frames, parallelism persisted; people tended to align. In fact, parallelism is the major factor in the present crisis."
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