Juxtaposition aa-3

by Piers Anthony

  Sheen smiled knowingly. This was a concept a robot was in a position to understand.

  "Surely the enemy will seek to destroy thee," the wolf said.

  "The enemy Adepts have been trying! I hope to jump around swiftly in a random pattern, avoiding them until I return to Proton."

  "I fear for thee, friend. I have a few wolves left who can guard thee-"

  "Nay, I'd best travel light. Just be ready with thy Pack when I need thee!"

  "Aye, I shall, and the other wolf packs too." They shook hands.

  Stile spelled himself and Sheen to the next stop: the ogres. These ones certainly were ready for action. Each huge creature was armed with a monstrous club and seemed capable of smashing boulders with single blows.

  This was a truly impressive army. There were perhaps four hundred fighting creatures in view.

  As quickly as possible, Stile explained to the ogre leader that the moment for action was just about at band. "But we don't know exactly where trouble will begin," he said. "Only that it will be terrible, horrible, violent, and bloody."

  Slow smiles cracked the ogres' brute faces. They were eager for this sort of fun. Stile knew he had struck the right note.

  "Just remember," he cautioned them. "All the organized creatures of Phaze will be on thy side, except the Goblins. So don't attack elves or giants or werewolves-"

  "Awww," the leader grumbled. But he had it straight. No unauthorized bloodshed.

  Stile spelled on to the vampires, where he consulted with his friend Vodlevile, who was no chief but whom Stile trusted. The flock promised to be alert.

  So it went, touching bases with the animalheads, snow-demons, giants, trolls, and Little Folk. He did not go to the Platinum Elves, fearing an Adept trap there; instead he met with the gnomes of the Purple Mountains. These Little Folk were akin to the goblins of the White Mountains, but had elected to join the compatible elves. It was as if the more pleasant climate made them nicer creatures.

  The gnome males were ugly, but the females, the gnomides, were quite pretty little misses, each holding a fine bright diamond. These were, indeed, the workers of precious stones, and their wares were even more valuable than those of the Platinum Mound Folk. They quickly agreed to pass the word among the elven tribes. "There will be thousands of little warriors awaiting thy call to action, Adept. Only save Phaze, and all is even!"

  Stile hoped he could! "Dost thou know of any Adept presence in the Elven Demesnes?" Stile asked as he got ready to leave. "I fear an ambush and marvel that none has occurred."

  "We know of none, and our prophecy book has no mention of harm to thee here, Adept," the gnome chief answered. "But Adepts are devious — no offense proffered."

  "Devious indeed!" Stile agreed.

  "Surely it is the Lady Blue they will stake out," Sheen murmured.

  "Aye. Yet must I see her and advise the Herd Stallion."

  "Send me first, to spring the trap," she offered.

  Stile demurred, but she insisted. Conscious of the danger and of his vanishing time, he had to agree. He spelled her to the unicorn herd for two minutes, then brought her back to the gnome demesnes.

  "No sign of trouble there," she reported, seeming exhilarated by the excursion. "Belle, the pretty unicorn mare, is there, asking to join the herd. They have not admitted her, but are considering it. Thy friend Clip is quite worked up."

  "He would be. He's smitten by her. No Adepts?"

  "The Herd Stallion is sure there are no Adepts there, and no Adept magic in the vicinity."

  "Good enough." Stile spelled the two of them to the herd.

  It was as Sheen had said. All was peaceful. The unicorns were grazing in a loose circle on an open hillside, with Neysa remaining in the center. Stile and Sheen landed beside the circle, for magic was repulsed within it.

  "May I go in and meet Neysa this time?" Sheen inquired wistfully.

  Stile knew she identified with the unicorn, for Sheen and Neysa had been his two closest companions before he encountered the Lady Blue. "I'll ask the Herd Stallion," he said.

  He asked, and the Stallion acquiesced with suitable grace. Sheen left them to enter the circle, while Stile briefed the Stallion. "That's all I know," he concluded. "I conjecture that the Adepts will move in force when I try to transport the Phazite, perhaps sending dragons to interfere. Someone will need to intercept those monsters."

  "We shall be there," the Stallion agreed grimly.

  The Lady Blue had remained back until Stile finished with the Stallion. Then she came up to kiss Stile. "So nice to meet the Lady Sheen again," she murmured. "She will make thee an excellent wife in Proton."

  No use to remind her that all he wanted was one wife, anywhere! She knew it.

  Sheen and Neysa approached. "We'd like to interview Belle," Sheen said. "We want to know if she was involved in the luring of Clip, or whether only her image was used without her knowledge. She may be innocent."

  Stile was curious about that himself. A few minutes remained. He glanced askance at the Herd Stallion, who blew a short chord of assent, permitting Neysa to depart the circle of the herd briefly for that purpose, since there was no immediate danger.

  "I can question her with a spell," Stile said. "Time is short, but this concerns me too." For that luring had been part of the trap for him; it had made Clip hostage and brought Stile to the goblin demesnes. If Belle were actually an agent of the Adepts-

  Clip joined them. He was the most concerned of all. Belle could never be his, of course; if she joined this herd, she would be serviced by this Herd Stallion. Still, Stile was sure Clip would rather know her to be innocent and have her near and safe.

  The five — Stile, two women, two unicorns — approached Belle. Stile worked out a suitable truth-spell in his mind. It would take only a moment to ascertain Belle's guilt or innocence, and her prospective admittance to this herd probably depended on his finding.

  Belle stopped grazing and raised her head as the party drew near. She was indeed the prettiest unicorn Stile had seen. Her coat was a deep purple, and in the bright sunlight her mane, tail, hooves, and horn glittered iridescently. Stile remembered how she had changed forms to a large cat and a blue heron during the Unolympics dance. She blew a lovely bells-ringing note of inquiry.

  "I am the Blue Adept," Stile said. "I have come to-" Belle abruptly shook herself, as an animal would to dry off after a soaking. Droplets flew out all over. Clip and Neysa leaped between Stile and Belle, intercepting the spray. Sheen and the Lady Blue flung their arms around Stile, embracing him from either side, their dresses flaring out to wrap about him.

  "Hey, I'm not afraid of a little water!" he exclaimed, struggling free. Both his unicorn companions were wet, and the dresses of both ladies were dripping.

  The Lady Blue contemplated him wide-eyed. "Who art thou?" she asked. "Do I know thee?"

  Sheen laughed. "Dost thou forget thy husband, Lady? I doubt it!"

  But the Lady Blue's confusion seemed genuine. "I know him not. I know thee not. What am I doing amidst these animals?"

  Stile now observed that Clip and Neysa seemed similarly bemused. They were backing off from Belle and each other as if encountering strangers.

  "I think it's amnesia," Sheen said. "I don't think they're fooling."

  "Lethe!" Stile exclaimed. "Water of Lethe — Belle was doused with it!"

  "I thought it was poison," Sheen said. 'It can't affect me, of course-but I think your friends have just given up their memories for you. For thee."

  "They shall have them back!" Stile cried, his knees feeling weak at the narrowness of his escape. Everyone had caught on except him! He cudgeled his brain to evoke the proper counterspell. Lethe was one of the streams of Hades, mythologically; what was the opposite one, the stream of memory? Every magic had its countermagic.

  Mnemosyne, that was it! Had he been doused by Lethe, he never would have been able to remember that bit of mythology! In fact, this had been a devastatingly neat trap. Water was harmless, so wou
ld not alert the unicorns; the water of Lethe was natural to Phaze, so did not reek of Adept enchantment. Stile, struck by it, would not suffer physically and would experience no mental anguish in his forgetfulness. Therefore the trap had not been obvious to the Oracle, who would have been alert for more dramatic mischief. Only the instant reaction of his companions had saved Stile. For they could not have restored his memory, had he been caught; they were not Adepts. He was the one person who had to be protected.

  But the trap had missed him, and therefore would come to nothing. Stile played his harmonica, then sang: "Lethe made my friends forget; Mnemosyne shall this offset."

  A cloud formed, instantly raining on the group. The water of memory doused them all.

  The Lady Blue put her hand to her soaking hair. "Oh, I remember!" she exclaimed, horrified. "My Lord Blue, I forgot thee!"

  "Because thou didst take the water meant for me," Stile said. "And Clip and Neysa too; all acted on my behalf."

  But he was running out of time. Quickly he set a truth-spell on Belle — and established that she was innocent of any complicity in the plot or in the temptation of Clip. The Adepts had used her without her consent, and the Lethe had eliminated her memory. They had put her under a geis to shake herself dry at the moment the Blue Adept came near, without knowing the significance of her act. So she was clean, despite being the essence of the trap.

  "Yet can we not tolerate her like in our midst," the Herd Stallion decided grimly. "Shame has she brought on me and my herd; I thought to protect thee here, Adept."

  Against that Stile could not argue. The Stallion's pride had been infringed, and he was the proudest of animals. Unicorns were the most stubborn of creatures, once set on a course. There would be no relenting.

  Sadly, Stile and his friends watched Belle depart, rejected again. She changed to heron-form and winged into the forest, lovely and lonesome. Stile knew Clip was hurting most of all.

  Stile took Sheen's hand again and spelled them to a new crossing point. They negotiated the curtain and ran a short distance to a dome. Sheen, not suffering from the lack of oxygen, said, "I wish I could have forgotten too." She meant she wished she could be alive.

  They set up in a Citizen's transport capsule programmed with a random address near to Xanadu, the site of the Citizens' business meeting. This was the safest place to be in Proton. Citizens were fiercely jealous of their privacy, so capsules were as secure as modem technology could make them.

  "Dare we pick up Mellon?" Stile asked.

  Sheen checked, using the obscure coding only her machine friends could decipher. "No, he is under observation, as is your home dome," she reported. "They are letting him work with your fortune, even facilitating his success, perhaps promoting him as another lure for yon. Another ambush."

  "My enemies do seem to work that way. How much has he parlayed my net worth into now?"

  "Between ninety and ninety-five kilograms of Protonite," she said after a pause. "It is growing at the rate of several kilos per hour. It is a remarkable display of financial expertise. You will have close to a hundred kilos by the time of the Citizens' meeting."

  "But that's not enough!" Stile exclaimed, chagrined. "I have bets that will double and redouble it at the meeting — but that means I must have a base of at least five hundred kilos if I am to make my target fortune — and I have the feeling I'd better make it."

  "Mellon is aware of that, but there are limits to what he can do in a short time. He has tripled the stake you provided, but suggests that more of your peculiar expertise may be required."

  "Rare praise from him!" But Stile frowned. "I have about fifteen minutes until that meeting. How can I quintuple my fortune in that time without exposing myself to assassination?"

  "I do not know," she said. "You can no longer make wagers with individual Citizens; few have the resources to operate in that league, and none of these will bet with you. Your record is too impressive, and they know they can eliminate you merely by preventing you from further increasing your fortune, so they have established a moratorium on all wagers with you."

  "So, by their rules, they will win. If they don't manage to kill me, they will simply vote me out."

  "Yes. I am sorry, Stile."

  "Let me think." Stile concentrated. He had been in a bad situation before, deep in the goblin demesnes, and had escaped by using the curtain. The curtain would not help him now; he would use up most of his time just getting to it and would then miss his mandatory appearance at the Citizens' meeting in Xanadu — in thirteen minutes. Yet there was something-

  For once his brain balked, refusing to yield its notion.

  "Sheen, I need your analytical faculty," he said. "How can the curtain get me out of this one?"

  "There is a way?"

  "There must be. The assorted prophecies indicate I can somehow prevail, and my intuition says so — but I can't draw it forth. Maybe it is far-fetched. Most likely I need to open a new dimension of insight. How can the curtain provide me with another four hundred kilograms of Protonite?"

  "A borrowing against the Phazite to be transferred?"

  "Would the Citizens accept such credit as wagering currency?"

  She checked with Mellon. "By no means. It is hardly to their interest to assist you by any liberalization of their policies. You can use only your personal fortune and any direct proxies you may possess."

  "Proxies! Who would give me proxies?" Twelve minutes. "Guide us toward Xanadu; I'm going to be there regardless."

  "Friends who could not attend personally might issue-"

  "I have few Citizen friends, some of whom are prone to betray me — and they can certainly attend the meeting if they want to, so wouldn't need to issue proxies. I suspect many Citizens will skip it, just as shareholders have historically ignored their vested interests, but I can't get the proxies of disinterested strangers."

  "Unless they are interested, but on business elsewhere. Maybe off-planet, or across the curtain."

  "I can't see any friends of mine crossing right now. Most of my friends are on the other side, in Phaze, and can't cross, because-" Then it burst upon him. "Their other selves! How many of my Phaze friends have Proton-selves who are Citizens?"

  "That would be difficult to survey in ten minutes."

  "The Brown Adept! She could be one, who may not even know of her alternate existence. Get her on the holo — and have your friends check her possible identity in Proton. We'll have to see if Kurrelgyre the werewolf knows of any prospects. And the vampires-can your friends coordinate to-" He stopped. "No, of course such a survey would take many days. Only a computer-"

  "The Oracle!" Sheen exclaimed. "It would know!"

  "Get on it!"

  The Brown Adept appeared, looking perplexed. "Thou canst not cross the curtain?" Stile asked her. Seeing her nod, he continued: "Is thine other self by any chance a Citizen, as the selves of Adepts tend to be?" Again she nodded. "Then see if thou canst convince her to give me her proxy for her wealth."

  "But I can not meet mine other self!" she protested. "No one can-"

  A second image appeared, as Sheen's friends contacted Brown's other self. Both girls stared at each other, startled. Stile's special East Pole communications setup had made possible what had never been possible before. Selves were meeting.

  There was a confused interchange, but in a moment the Brown Adept had convinced her Citizen self, whose nature was very similar to her own, not only to provide her proxy but to contact all her Citizen friends and beg them to do likewise. The two children smiled at each other, liking each other, enjoying this shared adventure.

  Now Clef appeared, replacing the girls. "Great notion, Stile! The Oracle knew you would think of that at the proper time and is now feeding the information to the Game Computer of Proton, who will have Sheen's friends contact all likely prospects. There turn out to be several hundred scattered through the tribes and domes, many of whom do not know of their other selves or even of the other frame. We shall have resul
ts for you in minutes."

  Minutes were all they had. Because of the assassins they knew would be watching for Stile, Sheen quickly made herself up as a cleaning menial, smudged and ugly, hauling an enormous trash bin. There were always fragments of refuse that the automatic cleaners could not get, which had to be removed by hand. Her friends the self-willed machines scheduled her to police the central court of Xanadu, where the Citizens' business meeting was to be held. She trundled her bin along the service halls to the proper dome.

  Sheen entered it by a service tunnel, passing the computer checkpoint without difficulty, since of course her friends covertly facilitated this. Questing efficiently for refuse, in a dome that was spotless, she passed through a series of chambers containing dioramas — alcoves with deep, realistically painted walls, inset with lifelike statues and appurtenances. She paused briefly at each, on occasion actually spying some bit of paper that she speared on her pointed stick and deposited in the half-full bin.

  Stile, concealed within the bin, peeked out through a smudged window normally intended for the inspection of refuse from outside. Only a careful inspection would have betrayed him, and no one even glanced at this unit.

  As they entered each chamber, it illuminated and a recording played, providing its bit of mythology. Stile, distracted by his need to retain his Citizenship, was nevertheless fascinated. Citizens never spared expense to achieve their background effects, but this was impressive even among Citizen artifacts.

  The first chamber was a primitive room, eighteenth-or nineteenth-century British, in which a man slumped over a wooden table. He had an antique feather quill in hand and was writing something on parchment or crude paper. "One day in 1797," the announcer said, "the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, feeling indisposed, obtained a prescription that caused him to fall asleep while reading a travel book relating to the Mongol Dynasty of China. Some suggest it was actually opium he took that put him into a temporary trance. He continued in this state for three hours, during which time he had a phenomenal vision. On awakening, he took pen, ink, and paper and began recording the experience in the form of a poem, titled Kubla Khan." The recording ended, leaving the poet amidst his labor.