Key to Chroma

by Piers Anthony

  "It was a realistic hope,” Symbol said. “I have had experience with men of many Chroma, and the only difference color makes is to intrigue them further. Most have bedded only home Chroma women, and the alien lure of otherChroma is almost irresistible. So that is an asset, not a liability. All they require is firm flesh, novelty, and amenability. I can negotiate for us both, if you wish."

  "You negotiate with friendly men. I will negotiate with unfriendly men.” Lucent drew a short sword part way from its sheath. She was a warrior woman, and Symbol had no doubt of her combat prowess; a woman did not get to be an Amazon without demonstrating it to the satisfaction of the Amazon Guild.

  "A fair division of labor,” Symbol agreed. “Each to her own expertise."

  The Amazon nodded. “Then let's get started. This may turn out better than we first thought."

  They set out, walking to the ferry, then out of the suburb, along a trail between Brown and Green Chroma zones. Symbol could see the phenomenal foliage deeper within the Green; plants were its specialty. The brown looked ordinary, in its shades of brown.

  The road divided, either side leading to staging points just within the Chroma zones. “Which one?” Lucent asked.

  "Do you prefer being swung along by huge green tentacles, or carried by giant golems?"

  "Which color of man seeks translucent or invisible women?"

  "I suspect Green, because Brown has golems in any form desired, including the most luscious of women."

  "Less competition. Green it is, then."

  They turned right and entered the green zone. A green man appeared. “Greeting, ladies."

  "Acknowledgment, handsome man,” Symbol replied.

  "Introduction: I am Gourd."

  "I am Symbol of Air, and this is Lucent of Water. We are two damsels loath to walk around your Chroma if there is a chance of riding across it. We can be rather friendly, singly or in tandem, for a swift ride.” She opened her jacket to reveal her sweatered bosom, which was a fine one. “Our flesh may not be fully visible, but it is as represented."

  The green man looked, licking his lips. “I have two friends. Will you consider three?"

  "And a bite to eat,” Symbol said. “No fault."

  "Done. This way.” He led them to a large green tree from which hung a great pod. At his touch, the vines lowered the pod to the ground and laid it flat. The man lifted a flap, revealing a padded interior. “Make yourselves comfortable. My friends will be here in a moment."

  They got into the pod. “Set your weapons aside,” Symbol said. “Do not disrobe. They will handle that themselves."

  Soon the men arrived. They were all green and looked much alike to Symbol, but that was the thing about Chroma: it took time to tune in to the distinguishing details. They carried a basket of green fruits and breads.

  "I will take a volunteer while my friend eats,” Symbol said as the men settled in and the pod moved upward, carried by vines. “Then she will take one while I eat. In an hour we should be able to accommodate three men and three sessions of eating. Agreed?"

  They were too eager to argue about details. Gourd approached Symbol while the other two watched, and Lucent delved into the basket. Of course voyeurism was part of it, and Symbol could handle it. For one thing, when she stripped they wouldn't actually see anything.

  In fact, that might be a problem. “Would you prefer me mostly clothed?"

  "Not if I can feel you,” Gourd said.

  Symbol quickly removed her clothing, and became essentially invisible in the gloom of the pod. By full daylight she showed shadows where her brains and lungs were, because she had been long out of her Chroma and was becoming polluted by the nonChroma environment. But she had an Air gem to preserve her, so the process had been slow.

  Gourd quickly stripped, and indeed, his swollen member resembled a gourd. He felt somewhat clumsily for her, so she grasped his hands and put them on key parts of her body, helping him orient. He hardly had time to find the place before he jetted into her.

  That freed her to start her own meal. She took a green sandwich and chewed while the second man had eagerly at Lucent. As Symbol had predicted, he found her translucent torso fascinating rather than repulsive, and felt it thoroughly as he entered it. He could see the faint green tinge of his member inside her, through Lucent's flesh, and that turned him on even more forcefully.

  There was a faint flicker before Symbol. She recognized the spirit trace of the succubus liaison, and silently put out her hand. A scene after my own heart, Swale thought, noting the sex in progress.

  "We are buying food and transport,” Symbol said subvocally, careful not to change her expression. Her mission and contact with the succubus were none of the Green men's business.

  I grieve, having just missed your own session.

  "I will have another in a moment."

  Oh, may I stay for it? Let me into you.

  Symbol let her in. The spirit siphoned into her wet vagina and took temporary residence in her womb. I don't get enough sex these days.

  "How much is enough for you?"

  Once an hour will do, as idling, between serious bouts.

  Symbol almost choked laughing. “How are the others doing?"

  Havoc has a plump Gray Chroma woman who means to seduce him. Gale is traveling no fault with a husky ugly Cartographer. Throe is riding a millipede between Chroma. You seem to be in good order so far.

  "I am. As long as there are lusty men traveling our way."

  You are modest. You could make a eunuch go with you no fault.

  "I have done so,” Symbol said with a reminiscent smile.

  The second green man finished with Lucent; it had not taken long. Symbol gulped down the last of her green sandwich and girded for renewed action as the third man approached.

  Here comes one. Please, let me have him.

  Take him, Symbol agreed silently.

  The succubus did. Symbol was thoroughly experienced in sex, but now her body performed in a new way. It leaped up to intercept the green man, the legs circling his hips as the vulva neatly trapped his member and squeezed it into the channel. He jetted violently before ever having a chance to thrust, and was done before he knew it. His expression was a mixture of rapture and astonishment.

  Ahh, that felt good! Too bad I no longer take souls.

  "You could have sex once a minute, that way,” Symbol said, amazed.

  I can savor it slow, but I was hungry. If you ever have need to take on ten men in near simultaneity, call me.

  "You do have the touch.” An understatement, for the succubus had not been joking about the ten.

  I must go about my rounds. Parting.

  "Parting,” Symbol echoed as Swale siphoned out. She had not experienced succubus sex before, and was impressed. There had to be magic, to make a man perform that emphatically, that suddenly, when he couldn't even see the woman and had not yet touched her. Probably it was to prevent a victim from changing his mind and thus saving his soul before the succubus harvested it.

  The three men had all been serviced, but the basket of food had not yet been emptied. “Now for the second round, when you are ready,” Symbol said, donning her sweater so that they would know where she was. She knew full well that it would take them a while to recover their virility, and meanwhile the two women would have a good meal. “We'll take the ones we didn't get before."

  The men did work their way up to sex again, in due course, but meanwhile were fascinated by another aspect of Air: Symbol's digestive process showed when she removed the sweater. She could have masked it by illusion, but realized that she would get more food if they could watch what she did with it. It was exactly what anyone did with it, but on her it showed. It was chewed in the head, swallowed to the stomach, wrestled around there until it flowed on into the small intestine. By the time it reached the large intestine, it had disappeared, having been integrated into her system. They encouraged her to keep eating, and she did, and so did Lucent, whose internal processes we
re less visible, but could be vaguely seen.

  "You handled that third one so fast I didn't think he had even gotten into you,” Lucent murmured as they ate.

  "I was hungry,” Symbol said. “I'll make my next one last as long as both of yours.” And she did. She felt a bit guilty for the super speed the succubus had wrought; the men deserved some by-play along with their climaxes.

  When the pod touched down at the far side of the Green zone, all five of them were satisfied in different fashions. The green men had had all the exotic other-Chroma sex they could handle in an hour, and a lesson in digestion, and the two women had bellies full of green food. “That was almost fun,” Lucent murmured as they walked from the Green Chroma zone staging point. “You had them completely distracted. They never even realized that we ate all their food."

  "We gave good value,” Symbol said. “Each of them had sex with two foreign-Chroma women of good shape, and got to see things they can't see at home."

  "Who would have thought they would be more interested in intestines than in genitalia!"

  "Men are easy to manage, when you know how.” But Symbol realized now that she was distinctly inferior to the succubus when it came to management. It was humbling.

  The next Chroma was Purple, an overlapping of Red and Blue, with many small vents whose substances mixed. This was a region of demonic animals that they wanted no part of. Fortunately they were able to make another deal for transport, this time with a single Purple man who did not want sex so much as to be seen with a lovely woman on each arm. Lucent was less than beautiful, but her translucent face was obscure, so Symbol reworked her clothing to make her more glamorous, and enhanced her with spot illusion. Thus they were drawn rapidly across the zone in an open wagon, one on each side of the man, consciously pretty and smiling at any and all who happened to be looking. He took turns kissing them and publicly fondling them, but had no interest privately. They were both satisfied to have it that way, after their large green meal. They had a good deal of digesting to do before returning to strenuous physical activity.

  "It hasn't been dull so far,” Lucent said. “You have a way with men that makes all the difference."

  "It is my business,” Symbol said, once more remembering what Swale had demonstrated. Maybe Symbol could learn that from the succubus, after this mission was done. She had thought Gale naive or crazy to tame such a creature instead of killing it, but Gale had proved to be correct. “I was mistress to a prominent man, and I had to know how to handle men.” She kept the information about exactly what man hidden in her private mind, so that all the mind reader could glean was what was spoken. She had loved King Deal in her fashion, and now loved King Havoc utterly, for all that he would never be hers, and not just because he loved Gale. Foolishness, thy name is woman. Whoever made the changelings should have made them immune to each other's appeal. “But he died, and now I love another.” She also concealed the matter of the changelings: closer than blood siblings, so they could not marry each other. What an irony, that the fittest and most attractive people could never fully commit to their own kind. Or was that deliberate, to prevent them from breeding their own superior species and becoming independent of whoever or whatever made them now?

  The next Chroma zone was Yellow, the whole region seeming to be on fire, though it did not burn them. This time no men were interested, but two Yellow women were: could Symbol explain to them how to be beautiful and manipulate men? They floated across the zone while Symbol explained how effective just a little bit of illusion could be, to mask flaws of appearance and enhance assets. She used Lucent as a model, starting her as quite plain, then prettifying her stage by stage. Those of the Fire Chroma could do illusion, of course; just not as well as the specialists of the Air Chroma. “Much of it is just attitude,” Symbol said. “Listen raptly when a man speaks, always, and he will find you more interesting."

  "But that's so obvious,” one protested. “Won't he see right through it?"

  "When a man's vanity is stoked, he is blind to the obvious.” She demonstrated again, having the women speak to her alternately. One she brushed off with seeming inattention, while she focused on the other with wide-eyed awe. The first was annoyed, the second pleased. Then she reversed it, making the point. “If you were two men, how would you feel about me? Think how much more effective it would be if I also showed just a bit of cleavage. Attitude and appearance operating together.” It was elementary, but the women were satisfied.

  At last they ran out of Chroma: there was a broad nonChroma band separating Lucent's home zone that had to be crossed without magic. They called it the Dead Zone. “But the neighboring Chroma cooperated to facilitate travel,” Lucent said. “We built a railway."

  "A what?"

  "A track formed by parallel rails, similar to what the White Chroma folk use. You'll see."

  They walked along the trail. Then Swale came again. Symbol let her in, so as not to be obvious about reaching out to touch her spirit substance. “Another routine check?"

  No. There is danger ahead for you.

  "Of what nature?"

  I do not know. I can't fathom it. But it is as deadly as I was, in a different way. You must not expose yourself to it.

  The succubus had been in the business of tempting boys into sex, and sucking out their souls at the moment of climax. There were incubi who did similar to impressionable girls. This was as bad? That chilled her.

  Nevertheless, she had a job to do. “I need to get to the site, and I can't wait around on something unspecified."

  I know. I wish I could tell you more, but it is something outside my experience. I caught only a psychic whiff of it as I passed. Be extremely wary.

  "Is it something that can be avoided or fought?"

  I don't know. But my guess is that it can be, otherwise it would not be hiding. Maybe you can stop it, if you know how. If you are on guard.

  "Thank you,” Symbol said grimly as Swale departed.

  She looked around, but saw only ordinary nonChroma landscape. “This does not look dead to me."

  "Dead to magic,” Lucent explained. “It is a large patch of ordinary terrain, with the Translucent Chroma zone in the center, like an island or oasis. Thus we are surrounded by no magic, with no other Chroma zones visible from our fringe. It is as though this territory was reserved for a volcano, but ours turned out to be too small to fill it. We are a small zone, but it is very nice within it. Because brigands sometimes infest the Dead Zone, we have a fair number of warriors and Amazons. Normally travelers are guarded; that is how I came to be out of my zone."

  "I have a premonition of danger, but I don't think from brigands. Are there other threats here?"

  "There may be. On rare occasion, lone travelers have disappeared without explanation. Once one was found, months later: a woman, reduced to bones. It was never determined what killed her; the ants and grubs had cleaned away all her flesh."

  This remained sinister. “Was she in ill health?"

  "No. She was an Amazon."

  "So she would not have died of natural cause."

  "Unlikely. Nor was she likely to have killed herself. Though there was an oddity: she was in a secluded cave, and her weapons were untouched. She must have gone there herself, perhaps to sleep, and died in her sleep. Yet there seemed to be no reason for her to deviate from the railway, or to sleep in daytime. It was as though she suddenly changed her mind about where she was going, and went to hide, and died."

  "Brigands! Could they have attacked and wounded her, and she went to recover?"

  "It is possible,” Lucent said dubiously. “But there were no reports of any brigand band in the area at that time."

  "A lone brigand, then, just passing through."

  "Against an Amazon?"

  Symbol did not pursue it further, lest she risk affronting her companion. Lucent did have a case: brigands tended to be ordinary riffraff, not highly trained, and their careers tended to be brief, because posses hunted down any that became t
oo annoying. Amazons, in contrast, were highly trained warriors, almost impossible to catch by surprise. They could be as lusty as men, and did sometimes set aside their weapons when indulging in sex, but any man who supposed that made such a woman helpless was a fool. An Amazon, as a matter of general policy, did not have sex with a man she wasn't fairly sure she could kill or disable if she had to. If she had sex with a warrior man, she might keep a weapon on her, and he would accept that, understanding her need to be sure she would never be helpless. Rape of an Amazon was virtually unknown. Lucent could have dispatched any or all of the three Green men; Symbol knew that, and in fact had depended on it, just in case they turned abusive. They had been innocent in that sense, merely interested in having a good time, perhaps never suspecting that the woman who yielded so willingly to their ardor could have been merciless if angered. So something other than a brigand must have dispatched the lost Amazon.

  Was that what lurked for them now? Symbol did not like this at all. She knew Swale would not have warned her jokingly; the succubus was as dedicated to King Havoc's welfare as any other of their close number, and knew the importance of this mission.

  They came to the railroad station. This was a set of metal rails, as described, less than an armspan apart, supported by wooden ties set at right angles. They went straight into the Dead Zone, soon disappearing over a rise. At their near end they divided into two sets, with three metal wheeled carts set on one set.

  "We take a cart, push it to the main track, and ride it,” Lucent said. “On the level one can push, the other ride, taking turns resting; I am prepared to do all the pushing. On the rises no one rides; on the descents we both ride. Overall it is three times as fast as walking, and less fatiguing. Even so, it will take us two days to reach the Chroma zone, unless we travel during the night. There are rest stops spaced across, so there is no need to struggle."