Juxtaposition aa-3

by Piers Anthony

  Was there a valid parallel here? His soul was complete only when the geography was complete. Could the land be said to have a soul, perhaps in the form of the special mineral that the Citizens of Proton had depleted? It was odd, in one sense, that the Citizens resisted the transfer of Phazite, since it would dramatically enrich their world. But of course they would prefer to keep the frames partially overlapped, linked by the curtain so that in due course the Citizens could mine in Phaze as well as in Proton. They would equalize the frames by depleting both. The fact that such mining would do to the environment of Phaze what it had done to that of Proton, and also eliminate the remaining magic of Phaze, seemed not to concern the Citizens. There were, after all, other worlds in the universe to exploit, once this one was squeezed dry. Since Stile's transfer of power-mineral would enable the frames to balance, freeing them to separate, that would forever deny the Citizens the opportunity of exploitation. They seemed willfully ignorant of the substantial risk that both frames would be destroyed long before such exploitation could be completed. Stile wondered whether the citizens of ancient Harappa, in the Indian subcontinent of Earth, had had a similar attitude. Had they denuded the land of its necessary resources until it could support their population no longer, so that they weakened and fell to Nordic barbarians in the sixteenth century B.C.? Wealth and power at the expense of nature were an inevitably lethal cancer. But there seemed to be no gentle way to convince cancer to practice moderation.

  Well, he, Stile, was fated to have considerable power, it seemed, in the frame of Proton after the separation, and his other self would have it in Phaze, assuming that prophecy had priority over the Blue-be-banished prophecy. The resources of the Oracle-computer, which were obviously considerable, would be at his disposal, and the self-willed machines would cooperate. Those machines would have legal-person status, of course. He would be able to enforce a more sensible restraint on that errant society.

  Stile sighed. Somehow the prospect of all that power and responsibility did not appeal to him. All he really wanted was to be in Phaze with his creature friends and the Lady Blue. That was what he could not have.

  Would it be so bad with Sheen? Of course not. She was the best possible woman, her origin aside. Meanwhile, in

  Phaze, the Lady Blue would have her real husband back. She, at least, would not suffer.

  Somehow he was not convincing himself.

  Soon they were in sight of the unicorn herd, with a good route for the ball worked out. Stile suffered a pang, realizing that this was probably the last time he would see the Lady Blue. He would have to tell her and bid her farewell — and conceal if he could the way he actually felt about this coming separation. The break was inevitable; it was best that it be clean, without hysterics.

  The Herd Stallion met him.

  "Lord Blue, I will tell our plan, an thou dost prefer," Brown volunteered. "Do thou go to Neysa and the Lady."

  Stile thanked her, she was a most helpful child at times, though somehow he was not eager to do what he had to do. He nerved himself and went directly to the protected inner circle, where Neysa and the Lady Blue awaited him.

  He tried to tell himself he was happy to see them, but instead he found himself overcome by misgiving. He tried to smile, but they realized at once that something was wrong, and both came to him solicitously. "What is the matter, my Lord?" the Lady asked. "Does the campaign go ill?"

  "It goes well enough," Stile said. He had learned so much so recently and shared so little with her! They had just been on their honeymoon, and now it seemed years past.

  "Then what we feared is true," the Lady said, one hand on Neysa's black mane. "I have my child of thee, and thou art leaving us."

  Was this the extent of her reaction? He knew she was capable of fierce displays of anger, sorrow, and love. How could she treat this as if it were commonplace?

  "The prophecy of thy second husband no longer protects me," he said gravely. "Thou hast conceived, and I am no longer essential. There is another prophecy, that Phaze will not be safe until the Blue Adept departs it. I am now the Blue Adept; I would not put this frame in danger willingly." And he realized as he spoke that the prophecies could indeed make sense; the present Blue Adept had to leave so that the defunct Blue Adept could return. Thus

  Blue would both leave and remain, both prophecies honored. "The frames will separate — and I must return to mine own."

  The Lady nodded. "Somehow I knew it would be thus. Prophecies care naught for human happiness, only the letter of their fulfillment."

  True; fate did not care. "But thou wilt not be alone," Stile said quickly. "The soul of thy first husband, mine other self, survives. He shall have a human body again."

  Her composure faltered. "He lives?"

  "Not exactly. He lost his body. But I believe I can restore it to him, and he will be the same as he was, as far as anyone can tell."

  Her brow furrowed. "But I love thee now!"

  "And I love thee. But when thy husband lives, my place will be elsewhere. I thought him dead, else I would not have married thee. He gave up his body that Phaze might be saved, and now he must have it back. This is what is right."

  "Aye, it is right," she agreed. "It is clear where my duty lies."

  She was taking it well — and that, too, was painful. He knew she loved him but would be loyal to her first husband, as Stile would be loyal to Sheen. This was the way it had to be. Yet somehow he had hoped that the Lady Blue would not take it quite this well. Was it so easy to give him up on such short notice?

  Suddenly she flung her arms about him. "Thee, thee, thee!" she cried, and her hot tears made her cheek slippery as she kissed him.

  That was more like it! She was meltingly warm and sweet and wholly desirable. "Thee, thee, thee," he echoed, in the Phaze signal of abandonment to love, and held her crushingly close.

  Then, by mutual resignation, they drew apart. She brought a cloth to his face and cleaned him up, and he realized that half the tears were his own. Through the blur he saw the shimmer of the landscape about them, the reaction of the environment to an expression of deep truth. The unicorns perceived it too, and were turning to look at the couple.

  But now they both had control again. They uttered no further words, letting their statement of love be the last.

  Stile turned to Neysa to bid her farewell: But she stood facing away from him, standing with her tail toward him — the classic expression of disapproval. The woman might forgive him his departure; the unicorn did not.

  He could not blame her. His body, so recently so warm, now felt chilled, as if his heart had been frozen. Had he expected Neysa, his closest friend in Phaze, to welcome his announcement with forward-perking ears? There was no good way to conclude this painful scene. Stile walked silently away.

  Clip stood near, watching his sister Neysa. His mane was half flared in anger, and his breath had the tinge of fire, but he was silent. Stile knew Clip was furious with Neysa, but had no authority to interfere. There was justice in it; Neysa expressed the attitude the Lady Blue did not, in her fashion freeing the Lady to be forgiving. The complete emotion could not be expressed by one person, so had been portioned between two.

  The Brown Adept was waiting for him at the edge of the unicorn circle. "I told the Stallion," she said. "He'll help." She looked toward Neysa and the Lady Blue. "I guess it didn't work out so well, huh?"

  "I fear I'm not much for diplomacy," Stile said. don't want to go, they don't want me to go — there's no positive side."

  "Why dost thou not just stay here when the frames part?" she asked naïvely.

  "I am a usurper here in Phaze. This good life is not mine to keep — not at the expense of mine other self. I was brought here to do a job, and when the job is done I must leave. So it has been prophesied."

  "I guess when I'm grown up, maybe I'll understand that kind of nonsense."

  "Maybe," Stile agreed wryly.

  Stile mounted Clip and they returned the way they had come, setti
ng small markers to show the prospective route for the ball. There was no interference from the other Adepts; they were of course biding their time, since they were unable to strike at him magically at the moment.

  They would have their minions here in force to stop the ball, though! The unicorns would have an ugly task, protecting this decoy route. The irony was that this was an excellent path; if there were no opposition, the ball could travel rapidly here.

  When they recrossed into the zone of juxtaposition, his other self rejoined him. The personality of Blue assimilated the new experience and shrank away.

  "Thou dost look peaked," the Brown Adept said. "Is aught wrong?"

  "It is mine other self," Stile said. "I fear he likes not what I have done."

  "The true Blue? Speak to me, other Adept."

  "Aye, Brown," the other self said. "But surely thou dost not wish to be burdened with the problems of adults."

  "Oh, sure," she said eagerly. " 'Specially if it's about a woman. Some day I'll grow up and break hearts too."

  "That thou surely wilt," Blue agreed. "My concern is this: for many years did I love the Lady Blue, though she loved me not. When finally I did win her heart as well as her hand, I learned that she was destined to love another after me, more than me. This was one reason I yielded up my life. Now I know it is mine other self she loves. Am I to return to that situation, at his expense?"

  "Oh, that is a bad one!" Brown agreed. "But maybe she will learn to love thee again. Thou dost have charm, thou knowest; the Lady Machine's nerve circuits do run hot and cold when thou dost address her."

  "The Lady Machine is programmed to love mine image," Blue said. "I admit she is a fascinating creature, like none I have encountered before. But the Lady Blue is not that type. She will act in all ways proper, as she did before, and be the finest wife any man could have, but her deepest heart will never revert. Her love never backtracks."

  "Then what good is it, coming back to life?" Brown asked, with the innocent directness of her age.

  "There are other things in life besides love," Blue said. "The Lady will need protection, and creatures will need attention. There will be much work for me to do — just as there will be for mine other self in the fabulous science frame. He will be no happier than I."

  Stile had no argument with that. His other self was the same person as himself, in a superficially different but fundamentally similar situation, facing life with a woman who was not precisely right. The days of great adventure and expectation were almost past. To lose the present engagement would be to die, knowing the frames would in time perish also as the unrelieved stress developed to the breaking point. To win would be to return to a somewhat commonplace existence — for both his selves. The choice was between disaster and mediocrity.

  "I'm not sure I want to grow up, if that's what it's like," Brown said.

  They reached the ball of Phazite. Sheen had returned to it also. "Is the other route ready?" Stile asked.

  "Not quite. We must delay another hour. But it will be worth the wait."

  "Then I have time to make a golem body for Blue," Brown exclaimed. Evidently she had resigned herself quickly to the situation and was determined to do her part even if Stile and Blue were not destined for happiness. "I hope I can do it right. I haven't had much practice with lifelike figures, especially male ones. My golems are mostly neuter."

  Stile could appreciate the problem. "Maybe Trool can help. He's quite a sculptor."

  Trool appeared. "I model in stone, not wood."

  "We'll convert stone to flesh," Sheen said. "All we need is the form."

  So while the golems rolled the great ball along its soon-to-be-diverted course, Trool the troll sculpted in stone. He excavated a rock from the ground in short order, his huge gaunt hands scraping the earth and sand away with a velocity no normal person could approach, and freed a stone of suitable size by scraping out the rock beneath it with his stiffened fingers. Apparently the stone became soft under his touch, like warming butter. Stile picked up a half-melted chip and found it to be cold, hard stone. No wonder trolls could tunnel so readily, the hardest rock was very much like putty in their hands. No wonder, also, they were so much feared by ordinary folk. Who could stand against hands that could gouge solid stone? Trool had stood with the Lady Blue against the ogres, Stile remembered, and the ogres had been cautious, not exchanging blows with him. They had been able to overpower him, of course, by using their own mode of combat.

  When Trool had his man-sized fragment, he glanced at Stile and began to mold the image. Rapidly, magically, the form took shape — head, arms, legs. The troll was indeed a talented sculptor; the statue was perfect. Soon it was standing braced against a tree — a naked man, complete in every part, just like Stile.

  Sheen and Brown were watching, amazed. "Gee, you sure are better at carving than I am," Brown said. "My prede-pred-the former Brown Adept could make figures just like people, but I can't, yet."

  "I can't make them live," Trool said shortly.

  Then Sheen made magic from the book, and the statue turned to flesh. But it remained cold, inanimate. The Brown Adept laid her hands on it, and it animated — a golem made of flesh. The new body was ready.

  "Say — it worked!" Brown exclaimed, pleased.

  Stile wondered how this carved and animated figure could have living guts and bones and brain. Presumably these had been taken care of by Sheen's spell. Magic was funny stuff!

  But the soul could not yet enter this body. Two selves could not exist separately in the zone of juxtaposition. The second body would only become truly alive when the frames separated.

  "Will it be all right until needed?" Stile asked. "It won't spoil?"

  "My golems don't spoil!" Brown said indignantly. "It will keep until the soul enters it. Then it'll be alive and will have to eat and sleep and you-know."

  "Then park it in a safe place," he said. "And let the harmonica remain with it, so that his soul can find it in case there is a problem." For despite all his planning, Stile was not at all sure he would succeed in his mission, or necessarily survive the next few hours. Little had been heard from the enemy Adepts recently; they had surely not been idle.

  Sheen conjured body and harmonica to the Blue Demesnes, which were in no part of the current action. Stile felt another pang of separation as he lost the harmonica; it had been such an important part of his life in Phaze.

  The necessary time had passed. They had the golems start the ball on its new course to the south. "But make a spell of illusion," Stile directed. "I want it to seem that the ball is proceeding on the course Brown and I just charted."

  "I can generate a ball of similar size, made of ordinary rock," Sheen said.

  "And I'll have some of my golems push it," Brown said. "It won't be nearly as heavy, so I'll tell them not to push as hard."

  Soon the mock ball diverged from the real one, and a contingent of golems started it on its way. Stile wasn't sure how long this would fool the Adepts, but it was worth a try.

  Meanwhile, under cover of a fog that Sheen generated, the main part of the golem force levered the Phazite ball back toward the Purple Mountains. A door opened in the hillside, and they saw the tunnel the trolls had made — a smooth, round tube of just the right size, slanting very gently down. They rolled the boulder to it, and it began to travel down its channel on its own.

  "From here on, it's easy," Sheen said. "This tube will carry the Phazite kilometers along in a short time. At the far end, the tunnel spirals up to the top of a substantial foothill; from there it can roll north with such momentum the enemy will not be able to stop it before it crosses into Proton proper."

  "Good strategy," Stile agreed. "But can the golems get it up that spiral?"

  "My friends in Proton have installed a power winch."

  Stile laughed. "I keep forgetting we can draw on science, too, now! This begins to seem easy!"

  They followed the ball as it moved, Stile and Clip fitting comfortably in the tunnel, B
rown's golem steed hunching over, and Sheen riding a motorized unicycle she had conjured. She was enjoying her role as enchantress.

  The ball accelerated, forcing them to hurry to keep it in sight. Even so, it drew ahead, rounding a bend and disappearing.

  They hastened on, but the ball was already around the next bend, still out of sight. When they passed that bend, they looked along an extended straightaway — and the ball was not there.

  Stile wasn't sure whether he or his other self first realized the truth. "Hostile magic!" he cried.

  "Can't be," Sheen protested. "I had it counterspelled."

  "Use a new spell to locate the ball."

  She used a simple locator-spell. "It's off to the side," she said, surprised.

  "That last curve-they made a detour!" Stile said. "Had a crew in to tunnel — no Adept magic — goblins, maybe, or some borers from Proton — they can draw on the same resources we can — the ball went down that, while we followed the proper channel."

  They charged back to the curve. There it was. An offshoot tunnel masked by an illusion-spell that had to have been instituted before Sheen's arrival. The enemy Adepts had anticipated this tunnel ploy and quietly prepared for it.

  No — they couldn't have placed the spell before Sheen got there, because Sheen had supervised the construction of the tunnel and had her magic in force throughout. Something else — ah. The offshoot tunnel was in fact an old Proton mine shaft. A small amount of work had tied it in to the new troll tunnel, and a tiny generator had sealed off the entrance with an opaque force field. No magic, and minimal effort. Someone had been very clever.