Then another serf lurched toward him. Lysander got one look at the man’s face—before it vanished. The man had turned invisible!
“Duck down, crawl away,” a voice beside him said. “Nepe’s waiting next intersection. I’ll distract them.”
Lysander didn’t question it. He ducked down just as the first serf of the closing ring made contact. The man might have fell his touch, but immediately contacted the other invisible man and grabbed on to him. “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” he yelled—before his breath whooshed out from what must have been a blow to the solar plexus.
Lysander slid around and between legs, and got clear as the mêlée proceeded. Who was the other man? He had never seen him before. Yet obviously the man had not only seen Lysander, he had recognized him—and known his mission with Nepe.
He hurried down to the next intersection, getting well clear of the action behind. He skirted a standing guidebot, but felt a thread extending from it. He paused, then touched it with a finger.
It was warm and alive. It was Nepe in disguise.
Now the machine moved, evidently called for duty somewhere else. Lysander followed. They entered the side hall and got out of sight of the pedestrians. Then they ducked into an empty food alcove.
Nepe was already flattening. Lysander heaved her up and draped her thinning body over his shoulders. He stood nervously while she spread out across his body, making it visible; the process was not instantaneous, and if someone came right now—
No one came. Nepe completed the transformation. He did not need to look in any mirror; he saw the breasts and hips. He was a visible woman again.
Guided by her, he walked onto the concourse. There was Brown, looking about. They approached her. There was pressure at his lips. “I’m sorry,” he said in Tsetse’s voice. “I didn’t know your game was through.”
“It’s all right, Tsetse,” Brown said. “We have passes to leave. My golems will carry us back to the castle.”
She showed the way to a public exit, where they stood and waited for half an hour. Then a horse appeared, running toward the city. It was a wooden horse—a golem—with a wooden carriage behind.
They boarded the carriage, and the horse set off for home. “Citizen Purple won his game,” Brown said. “I was able to assist him, and I think he was pleased. I must say he has treated me better than I expected.”
“I’m glad,” Lysander said. He did not feel free to say anything else; Purple might have this carriage under observation, as a routine precaution.
They drew up to the Brown Demesnes. “I thank thee for thy company, Tsetse,” Brown said, reverting to her Phaze self. “I will need thee not again this day; do as thou willst.”
“Thank you, Brown,” Lysander said carefully. She knew that her companion was not the real Tsetse, but did she know who it really was?
They entered the castle. Brown went to her room, probably to lie down; she had had a wearing session, he was sure. Nepe guided him to the golem storage room.
There she drew away from him, and formed her natural self, the naked girl. “We can talk now, Lysander,” she said. “This castle is secure, when Purp’s not here. I just wanted you to get rehearsed for your role, before. You did well.”
“Thank you. But what happened to the Hectare seed? You didn’t lose it, after all that?”
She patted her abdomen. “No, I have it in here. I never thought I’d be pregnant at age nine!”
She was a Moebite, of course, able to assume any form; she could as readily carry an object inside her in human form as when she was in ball form or machine form. This allowed her to function normally while maintaining a suitable environment for the seed, so as not to let it die. Still, her remark surprised him. He had absorbed enough of human culture to know that human children did not procreate any more than immature Hectare did. “Glad I could be of help, getting you pregnant,” he said dryly.
“You aren’t finished. We have to take the Hec seed to the West Pole.”
“That’s where your center of operations is?”
“You don’t think I’ll tell you,” she accused him mischievously. “But I will. The answer is, I don’t know where our setup is, and neither does anybody else. All I know is that I have to get a Hec seed to the West Pole, and then I’ll see what else I have to do.”
“So if I want to find out, I’ll have to keep helping you.”
“Right. We’re making you fulfill the prophecy, even if you don’t like it. But you’ll get a choice somewhere, I think, if you stay with it.”
“You play a nervy game!”
“I’ve had experience. I can’t save the planet alone, so I’m recruiting whatever I need. You helped a lot, especially with the Hec code to null the alarm. Now we can relax, until Tsetse comes back. Then a long walk, so you better rest.”
“Why not change to Flach and conjure us there?”
“Two reasons. First, he couldn’t carry the seed like this, so it has to be me. Second, Purp’s got magic warners out, to spy on any Adept-level magic in Phaze. So the small stuff, like invisibility, is about all that’ll pass. So I have to hoof it, and I can’t make it by myself in time, so I need you and Echo to help.”
“Echo’s coming with us?” he asked, his human heart coming alive. The pressure and oddity of events had distracted him, but now he missed her intensely.
“You bet. We make it nice for you, so you’ll think about joining our side. Same way as Purp makes it nice for Brown. So he’s got her working for him, and I’ve got you working for me.”
“But Brown is still helping you against the Hectare, and I’m still working for the Hectare.”
“Yep. You can’t get full use out of an enemy. But you do what you can.”
“Who was that man who took my place, so I could get away from the serfs? He turned invisible?”
“That was Bane. My father, aka the Robot Adept.”
“Oh! He distracted them, then conjured himself clear!”
“No. After Flach conjured you and Echo out, Purp got wise and set up a magic barricade against conjuration and transformation in the dome. That’s why Flach couldn’t just conjure himself in to steal the Hec seed; I had to do it. He could’ve overridden Purp’s magic, but it would have made a splash, and alerted the Hecs. Tan’s got splash-watch, I think. He’s been having a lot of fun with Jod’e, but he watches the warners all the time. So we had to do it the hard way. Good thing it worked.”
Jod’e—that still hurt, though now he had other love. “You mean your father let himself be captured—to help me escape?” Lysander asked, astonished. “Knowing that I’m an enemy agent?”
“He did that. Just as Green and Black gave themselves up to spring Flach. We need you, ‘Sander.”
“You have more faith in your prophecy than I do!”
“We know magic better than you do. Now eat something, if you need it; there’s some food in a chest in the corner. And sleep; you can dream of Echo. One good night is all we have before it gets rough.”
At this point, he believed it.
Chapter 11
West
Nepe knew it was silly, but she rather liked Lysander. He was an android with a Hectare brain, a spy for the other side, but that was balanced out by the fact that the prophecy made him necessary to the final victory of their planet. She had watched him for alien ways, but he seemed just as human as anyone else, and more so than she herself. When he had first come to the planet he had had affectations, but these had promptly faded; he was a quick study of local custom. Now that the Yellow Adept’s love potion had made him love Echo, he was more to be trusted than before. He might think he remained independent, but he had not had occasion to test it. The moment his mission conflicted with his love, he would discover the love’s power!
Meanwhile, she had to compose herself. She wished Bane had not given himself up. Now Flach was the only Adept left free, except for Clef and Tania, who had disappeared. Only Mach had known where they went, and he had erased the memo
ry before letting himself be captured. She had depended on her father to support her when she faltered, and now she knew she was on her own. That made her nervous.
What was at the West Pole? Flach had been surprised by the North Pole, with its slowed-down time and the two Adepts there. It would have been worse if the snow demon’s daughter hadn’t distracted him. Nepe had learned a lot from Icy; when she came to adult status and modeled her flesh, she was going to make it just like that, only warm, and fling it about similarly. The only problem was that there was really no prospective man for her. Oh, she liked ‘Corn well enough, but he wasn’t a mixed-breed like herself, and so probably wouldn’t do for the long haul.
Well, it would all come to nothing if they didn’t manage to throw off the yoke of the Hectare. For now, she just had to go one step at a time, and get the three messages taken care off. Flach had gone to the North Pole; now she was taking the Hec seed to the West Pole. Both of these missions had proved to be more complicated than they seemed. She hoped the third one would not prove to be more of a challenge than she could handle. She knew that the fate of the planet hung on her success, and she was nervous about that.
She settled into a puddle and slept.
Next morning the golem party and Tsetse arrived with the wood. Nepe hustled Lysander out; he remained invisible, but of course she could tell where he was, because Flach had made the spell. They slipped out to join the party and take Echo away; Tsetse would enter the castle alone, where she and Brown would sort things out in their own fashion.
Now they were three: Nepe, Lysander, and Echo. While the other two embraced ardently (though it looked as if the woman were pantomiming, because of the man’s invisibility), Nepe changed slowly to wolf form. An observer would have found it a strange scene: a child becoming an animal, and a cyborg woman embracing air. But Nepe wanted no observer, because Purple was alert, and must not catch on to this secret mission. She wished there had been some way to recover Lysander’s clothes from Purple’s plane, to eliminate any trace of what was going on. But it just wasn’t possible to catch every detail.
She carried the Hectare seed inside her. She had joked about it, to Lysander, but privately it revolted her; she liked nothing about the Hectare, physically or mentally. They were true bug-eyed monsters, and they were out to despoil the planet and leave it deprived of its resources, especially its magic. All so they could use the Protonite to power their machines, and the wood for their construction, and the flesh of the animals for their larders, and the magic for whatever devices they could work out. They were still consolidating their conquest, but soon the serious ravaging would proceed, and then nothing would stop it. They had left a trail of lemon-squeezed planets behind; they were very efficient at what they called investment and reduction.
Yet Grandpa Blue had explained to her at the outset that the Hectare were only part of the problem. There were dozens of conquerer species out there, forming their galactic alliance, and any of them could have conquered Proton. The Hectare just happened to be the species the lot had fallen on. If they failed, another species would be allowed to try, because the alliance wanted the resources of this exceptional planet put to good use by its definition. Proton had been a low priority acquisition, before the mergence, because the magic was out of reach. But when it became apparent that magic was present and genuine, the priorities abruptly shifted. So if Proton, and especially Phaze, were to be saved, they had to forge a defense that would be effective against all invasions. That was a mighty tall order.
The truth was that Proton’s presence in the alien sector of the galaxy made little difference, overall. The human sector was just as bad, for human beings were the greatest exploiters of all. The humans were taking over alien planets in their sector for similar reduction. Once they had squeezed them dry, they would start on the lesser alien planets—just as the aliens would start on the lesser alien planets once the easy pickings were done. The Hectare themselves might in due course be reduced to servant status by some more powerful alien species. It was the predatory chain, unceasing in its hunger for power.
“And so,” Grandpa Blue had told her, “we must be either the eaters or the eaten. We can no longer drift in our isolation. If we do not set out to rule the galaxy, we must suffer the exploitation of those who do. Since we lack either the power or the desire to become galactic, our fate is sealed. Unless we find that perfect defense.”
“Then we must find it,” she had said.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. At least, there is no mechanism to make it feasible. Conquest seems unavoidable.”
“But we can’t just give up!”
“Hardly that, Nepe! Fortunately there is a prophecy that guides us and suggests that we can craft our mechanism, in time.”
“How much time, Grandpa?”
“About seventeen years,” he said.
She stared at him. “But it only takes the Hectare two years to denude a planet! If we don’t get rid of them within two months, we’ll suffer awful harm!”
“True. But the prophecy indicates that we shall need the help of the enemy to succeed. So we shall have to let them get started, and then see what we can do.”
“Grandpa, I think there’s something you’re not telling me!”
“Whatever gave you that notion, cutie?”
Then she was sure. “But when the time comes—”
“Then you will know as much as you need.”
Now, remembering, Nepe still did not know the plan. It seemed impossible to forge a seventeen-year weapon in two months. But she believed in Grandpa Blue, who was also the Adept Stile, and in the others who supported him. More recently she had seen how even the Green and Black Adepts, former enemies, supported him too, even to the extent of giving up their freedom to help Flach get away. They could have saved themselves, but hadn’t even tried, preferring instead to distract the enemy. Then Bane himself had done the same to protect the spy Lysander, just so he would be able to fulfill the prophecy—if he chose. So she was protecting Lysander too, and also doing this other awful thing, carrying the Hectare seed to the West Pole. They had discovered how the North Pole related, because of the Magic Bomb—but how could the West Pole relate? Well, soon she would find out, she hoped.
Now she was in wolf form, and Lysander and Echo had finished their first passionate reunion, after a separation of a whole day. Nepe was jealous; she hoped some day to love like that. Of course it was because of the Yellow Adept’s potion, but it was genuine; the potion merely enhanced what nature would have done in time. Their love was true, whatever else was artificial.
“We must travel,” Nepe told them. “But we need more. You two hide while I go summon the others.”
Echo stared. Then she understood. “You aren’t really a wolf, so you can make your wolf-mouth talk human speech.”
“Yes. Don’t let Purp or the golems catch you.” Then Nepe loped away. She knew that the two would find something to do while they waited, and would hardly miss her. It didn’t matter that Lysander was invisible; Echo could feel him, and he could feel her. She would merely close her eyes.
Kurrelgyre’s wolf village was not far away. Nepe was familiar with the region, because Flach’s mind was with her. Flach had been content to tune out the past two days, lost in the bliss of foolish fond imaginings relating to snow demonesses. But that was wearing off now, as reality seeped in; Icy was not for him, for about three excellent reasons: age, species, and mission. The last was the most important; if he did not help save Phaze, none of the snow demons would survive.
Right, he agreed, her thought clarifying his sentiment. Bear left.
She bore left. He knew every bypath here, while she knew only the approximate routes. It would have been easier to give him the body, but both the Hectare seed she carried and the danger of Purple’s snooping on their magic ruled that out. Maybe when they got farther into the hinterland, on the way to the West Pole, it would be safe to transform. So she jogged on, though her emulation of a
wolf was not nearly as good as his. She was an amoeba assuming the form, whereas he could change into a real wolf, capable of all the lupine things, including (in due course) reproduction.
Maybe Sirel’s approaching her time! he thought.
But Sirelmoba, his Promised, was only nine years old, the same as he was. It should be two years yet before her first season. Still, it was better for him to be thinking of her than of Icy, for Sirel would be coming with them to the Pole.
Yes, he agreed, brightening.
They reached the werewolf village. Well before Nepe entered it, the guard wolves were pacing her. But they knew her, and knew why she was here. In a moment Sirelmoba appeared, formally sniffing noses and tails, and politely concealing her distaste for the alien odor. No mock-wolf could deceive a true one!
“And three more,” Nepe said using human speech because she could not use the wolves’ growl-talk effectively.
Old Kurrelgyre assumed human form. “Runners are going for them. They will join thee on the way.”
“But we shall be hiding!” she protested.
“No one hides from wolf or bat at night. He will find thee, and will alert the mares when they draw nigh.”
He will, Flach assured her.
“If you will cover our trail—”
“Done,” Kurrelgyre said. “And good fortune to thee, little bitch.”
“Thank you.” She appreciated the sentiment; it was a compliment to be called a bitch by a true werewolf.
She turned to go, the young werebitch beside her. The others of the Pack faded to the sides. They would cross and recross the trail, obliterating it, so that no one would be able to trace the route of the two by sight or odor. They would also serve as an early guard, so that nothing would get through to attack the small party while it remained in the local Wolf Demesnes. They would be unobtrusive about it, so that there was no commotion. They did not know the details of her mission any more than she did, but were well aware of its importance.
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