There was a detonation of something. Light blazed and metallic fragments whistled by. Someone had fired an explosive amulet or something similar at them. This was blind shooting, hoping to catch the dragon by a random shot; the assailants did not have a perfect fix on Stile’s party. Now he was certain that if he used defensive magic, he would give away his location. Better to lie quiet, like a submarine on a water planet, and hope the depth-charges missed.
The dragon tried again to rise, but could not. Stile felt the body heating with the effort. This could not continue long.
There was a pop behind them. The Stallion-dragon turned his head to send back a jet of flame—and the light showed a griffin, an eagle-headed lion, the next enemy Adept sending. “Uh-oh,” Stile murmured. “Can’t hide from that.”
But the Stallion was burning hot from his exertions. He looped about, aimed his snout at the pursuing griffin, and exhaled a searing shaft of fire.
The griffin squawked as it was enveloped in flame. The blaze of its burning wings lit up the entire cavern. It tumbled down to the water, smoking feathers drifting after it.
But the next sending was another dragon, a big one. Its chest pumped like a bellows, building up pressure for a devastating blast that would incinerate Stile and the Stallion. The enemy was now fighting fire with fire.
The hawk winged at it, too small and fast for the dragon to catch or avoid. The dragon ignored the bird, knowing nothing that size could dent its armored hide. The enormous metal-foil wings beat swiftly, launching the dragon forward.
The hawk dived, zeroing in on the dragon’s head. Stile could only watch with dismay, knowing Clip was throwing away his life in a useless gesture, a diversionary effort that was not working. He could not even think of a preventive spell on this too-brief notice.
The dragon opened its monstrous mouth to take in the tiny missile—and Clip changed abruptly to unicorn-form. He struck horn-first, piercing the dragon’s head, his horn passing from inside the throat right on between the eyes and out, penetrating the little brain on the way.
The strike was so unexpected and powerful that the monster simply folded its wings and expired. It plummeted to the water, while Clip changed back to hawk-form and flew clear. “Well done!” Stile cried, amazed and gratified.
Now for a time there were no more sendings. But Stile knew worse attacks were in the offing. His party had to get out of the chasm—and could not. Already they were close to the nether water. He had to relieve the Herd Stallion of his weight—yet was sure that the one enchantment the enemy Adepts would have blocked would be a personal transport-spell. They were trying to force Stile to use it—and launch himself into oblivion.
The Stallion sent forth more fire, just enough to light the way. The dark water below reflected with slight iridescence, as if oily. Stile mistrusted that. He didn’t want the Stallion to fall into that liquid. He would have to risk magic. Not transport, of course; something unexpected.
The hawk had been circling. Now he came back, squawking news. Over and over he cried it, until Stile was able to discern the word. “Curtain!” Stile cried. “The curtain is ahead?”
That was it. Now Stile had a better alternative. “Fly low, Stallion, and I’ll pass through the curtain. Then thou and Clip can fly up and escape in the night. They want thee not, only me, and soon thou canst return to thy herd. I’ll climb up on the Proton side, where magic can’t reach me.” Of course there would be other problems across the curtain, but he would handle them in due course.
The Stallion was in no position to argue. He glided low—and there in the dark was the scintillation of the curtain, crossing the chasm. “If there’s any sort of ledge—I don’t want to drop too far.”
There was no ledge. It would have to be the water. They intersected the curtain, and Stile spelled himself across.
CHAPTER 10
Force
He fell a few feet—or rather a meter or so—knowing he was through the curtain only because he no longer had dragon support. He splashed into the water, feeling the instant shock of cold. He was, of course, an excellent swimmer; no top Gamesman neglected such a sport. But the water was polluted, stinking, and perhaps contained harmful acids; the Citizens of Proton cared nothing for the planetary environment outside the domes. He didn’t want to stay here long!
The air, too, was foul. But here in the depths, it was thicker than above and seemed to contain more oxygen. He did not enjoy it, but he could survive longer on it than anticipated. Still, he had another resource.
He swam back to the curtain, which passed right down through the water. He organized himself, then willed himself through and said: “Bring nuts and dried fruit, scuba and wetsuit.” And the spell, shaped by his imagination, clothed him in a warm, flexible body swimming suit complete with flippers, breathing apparatus, and a bag of mixed nuts and bits of dehydrated fruit.
Something formed in the water near him. It was huge and toothed, and it threshed its way toward him with powerful flukes. Stile hastily spelled himself back across the curtain. He had done the unexpected and escaped the enemy Adepts without using a transport-spell, but they remained alert for him.
His new equipment went with him. This was one way in which magic and science juxtaposed; he could create or fetch scientific devices by magic in Phaze and take them across for use in Proton. Now he was comfortable in the water and had concentrated food to sustain him. He could get where he was going.
Only—where was he going? He wanted to locate that computer—but where was it?
Again, no problem. He prepared himself and passed through the curtain. “Weapon and gem, doslem doslem,” he sang, grabbed the two objects that formed, and dodged back to Proton before the massive crunch of a hostile spell could catch him. The enemy would never have expected him to conjure these particular items! He saw the Adept attack through the curtain—a blaze of light silhouetting massive jawless teeth, closing and disappearing as they intersected the demarcation of the curtain. A demon from the deeps, indeed! Technically an indirect attack, a sending, but surely fatal to whatever it caught. They were not playing innocent games, these enemy Adepts!
Now he had what he needed. He could stop playing peekaboo through the curtain, especially since one more trip across it would probably get him crunched. The enemy had targeted him too closely; his scant leeway had been used up. Now he could get where he was going—on the Proton side of the curtain.
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 instruments 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-O
ptical-Space-Light-Modulator. D O 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 oxygen 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, per
haps, 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.
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