Phaze Doubt

by Piers Anthony

  But if one was faster, why wasn’t the whole thing done there? It didn’t seem to make much sense to set up at the wrong Pole! Because different things have to be done at different rates, Nepe thought, speaking for the imagined demoness. Like a recipe: it only works when the slow and the fast ingredients are mixed at the right moment.

  It did seem to be making sense. But why hadn’t they been allowed to remain under the West Pole until the device was ready?

  Because we’re part of the recipe, Nepe thought. We’re the icing, that has to wait far the cake to bake.

  Well, maybe. So what were they to do meanwhile, since they didn’t know when the rest of it would be ready?

  Wait for a signal. And that seemed to be it. They would know in the Pole community when their product was ready; they could send someone out to let Flach know.

  Flach returned to the others. “I think I needs must wait here until I receive notice from those under the Pole that things be ready. Then will I have to make a very difficult trip. The rest of you may prefer to go home now.

  “Forget it, Flach,” Echo said. “We didn’t wait here for you to come out just to desert you when you did. We’ll go with you until it seems we’re not supposed to.”

  He looked at each of the others, including the spot where Lysander stood. The Hec agent would want to remain, certainly! All were certain; they had probably discussed this among themselves.

  “Then I thank all of you,” he said. “We must wait here for word from under the Pole, if the Hectare guard allows.”

  “The deal with the BEM had no time limit,” Lysander said. “Had you lost, you would have been permanently captive. You won, so you have permanent access. You three, not the rest of us. But you may entertain the guard while you wait, if you wish.”

  So they entertained the guard, and themselves, by playing assorted games that were not for stakes. They played cards, and the monster learned quickly and well; it was able to remember every card played, and quickly calculate the changing ratios and odds, so that its advantage increased. Nepe played it several games of jacks, after they made the pieces out of local materials, and its eyes were so sure and its tentacles so dexterous that it quickly became unbeatable. They played guessing games, but its lack of local cultural knowledge handicapped it, just as Flach’s lack of knowledge about Hectare conventions made some supposedly simple riddles impervious to his comprehension. But overall, they were all having fun, and the time passed quickly. In fact, Flach was getting to like the BEM, despite everything.

  In this manner three weeks passed. Flach was getting worried; there was barely one week remaining of the grace period before the Magic Bomb erupted. Had he misjudged the situation? Was he supposed to go back inside the caves after all? Yet Eli had not told him that.

  Then a creature emerged from the Pole cavern. It was a bat—which was odd, because there were no straight bats in that refuge. There was a bat-headed man, but if that man sired a child it would be another animal head, not a full animal.

  Alien assumed bat form and flew to meet the other. They had an inaudible dialogue. Then they came together to join the gaming group.

  Alien resumed boy form. Beside him, the other bat became a rather pretty red-haired girl of their own age. “This be Weva,” Alien said—“She comes to tell Flach to come inside for a day.”

  Astonished, Flach stared at her. “Thou wast hiding in there, and we saw thee not?” But as he said it, he knew it could not be; she could have been only three years old when they left the cave. If she had hidden, it would have been arranged by her parents. Was she a throwback, one who had turned out a vampire bat instead of a bat head, her two forms separate instead of properly merged in the animal head way? That might account for it; now they used her as a messenger.

  “I was kept apart,” Weva said. “By the time I was of age to school, thou was gone. But now I be thine age, and glad to meet thee at last. Willst come with me?”

  “For a day? Dost mean here, or there?”

  “A day here,” she said. “Four and a half months there.”

  “What o’ my friends?”

  “Only thou must come,” she said firmly. “Can they wait not one day for thee?”

  “Aye, we can,” Sirel said, tugging at Alien’s arm to draw his attention away from Weva. She was frankly jealous, evidently realizing that his interest in her had been in the absence of a girl of his own species. Now one had shown up.

  “This summons needs must be answered,” Flach said. “I will go with thee, and return in a day, outside time.” The Hectare was with the group, listening, but unconcerned; their truce covered everything, and only when they departed the pole permanently would it end. Then, of course, the BEM would report, and the chase would be on. But they had been careful not to mention the next mission to it.

  Weva resumed bat form, and Flach followed her to the Pole. She flew down into it, and he jumped in after her.

  Inside, he stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. Then he started walking down the spiral tunnel.

  In a moment there was a growl of a wolf. Flach looked, his eyes adjusting. It was a full wolf, a nearly grown bitch, but not Sirel, who remained outside. He used his magic to assume wolf form, because he had learned that the splash of magic did not extend outside the caves; the time differential seemed to damp it out so that the Purple Adept would not be able to pick it up. “Who dost thou be?” he growled, for he had known of no werewolf here either.

  “Thou dost know me not?” she inquired archly.

  “I have seen thee ne’er before,” he replied, irritated. “Methought none but animal heads came to these caves.”

  “Thou thought correctly,” she growled, amused.

  She was teasing him, but not in a way he could quite fathom. He walked on down the spiral with her, not deigning to comment further. Eli would surely explain why these creatures had been hidden from him and Alien and Sirel, who would have been as interested as he in their presence.

  “I must leave thee now, but the rovot will guide thee,” Weva said.

  “Rovot?” he asked, surprised again. But she was gone.

  Well, there were robots here; they took care of most of the menial chores and new construction. He turned the body over to Nepe, who hardened it into the aspect of a humanoid robot.

  They came to the first nether chamber. There stood the other robot, and it was not a maintenance machine, but a humanoid specimen, of masculine gender. This was another surprise, because there had been no such machine in evidence in the three years they had lived here, and they thought they had come to know every member of the community. Obviously they had missed a lot.

  “Who are you?” Nepe asked.

  “I have a name,” the robot said. “But that is an approximation for convenience, and need not be employed.”

  Which was a typical robot answer. “Are you self-willed?”

  “I am.”

  “Why didn’t I see you before?”

  “That answer will be known in due course.”

  Another robotoid response! Nepe walked on with it, toward the chamber where Eli normally stayed.

  “I must separate from you now,” the robot said. “But a man will await you.”

  The robot departed down a side tunnel. Nepe walked on, taking the opportunity to shift to her straight human form—and soon encountered a boy.

  She stopped and stared. This was a full, complete, man-headed human being! Which was absolutely unlikely, here.

  “Who are you?” she asked gamely.

  “I am called Beman, but that tells only part of my story,” the young man said.

  Nepe studied him frankly. He was a handsome youth, about her own age, with curly reddish hair and eyes that seemed almost to echo that color. She would have liked him better if less perplexed about his appearance here, though.

  “How did you come here?” she asked.

  “I was made here,” he replied.

  “Oh—you’re an android!”

  “No
t exactly.” Like the others, he seemed amused.

  “How many of you are there in this game?” she demanded suspiciously.

  “As many as there are in yours.”

  She walked with him, not satisfied with this answer. Something odd was going on, and evidently Eli and the animal heads were in on it. But what was the point, when they knew she had a mission to save the planet?

  “I must leave you now,” Beman said. “But there will be one to make everything clear.”

  “Thanks just oodles,” she said sarcastically.

  Beman walked away, taking a side passage. Nepe pondered, then returned the body to Flach, who could change forms more readily than she could.

  Flach, in his normal boy form, walked on to Eli’s cave. He would have the answer soon, or else!

  But as he entered the elephant head’s cave, he came to a shocked stop. Within it stood not Eli, but a BEM—a complete Hectare!

  How could the enemy be here, deep in the time-protected caves under the North Pole? Had the BEM they had gamed with betrayed them after all? No, that couldn’t be; Flach had come to know one and a half BEMs, in the guard and Lysander, and he believed in their sense of honor. Besides, this was something he had never seen before: a small BEM, only about two-thirds the apparent mass of the grown ones. A grown one would not have fit in the entrance hole.

  How had a young BEM come here, when only adults had invested the planet? How could the animal heads have tolerated it? And how could it have happened recently, since Flach and his companions had been watching the entrance for a sign?

  Then it came clear. “The Hec seed!” he exclaimed.

  The monster slid a tentacle across a screenlike surface. Where it touched, a line appeared. It wrote an answer in script: YOU BROUGHT ME, FLACH.

  “But why do we need a BEM?”

  I DO NOT KNOW.

  “They raised thee here from seed, somehow, though Hectare cannot grow away from their native planet?” But obviously it was so. “Thou dost be what I were supposed to—thou dost be the West Pole’s product?”

  SO IT SEEMS.

  “But the vamp girl, Weva, said I had to be inside for a day—which be four months here. That be not what—”

  Flach broke off. Something so truly amazing was breaking across his mind that his mouth fell open.

  Nepe filled it in for him, as flabbergasted as he. The werewolf, the vampire—WErewolf, VAmpire—WEVA. They are the same! And Beman must be BEM and ANdroid. They are all the same!

  “Just as we are,” Flach agreed, awed. “Male, female, robot, animal—where we’re unicorn, they’re—”

  I THINK NOW YOU KNOW ME, the Hectare wrote.

  “Change with me,” Flach said. He became a wolf.

  The Hectare became a wolf.

  “But you’re a bitch!” Flach growled.

  “Aye,” she growled, and assumed the girl form.

  Flach became a bat. The other became a female bat. “An thou desirest a male, needs must I turn straight human,” she said in bat talk.

  Flach became Nepe. The other became Beman.

  “And one of your forms is a BEM!” Nepe breathed. “Who could have believed it!”

  “It was done in the laboratory,” Beman said. “As I understand you were, before you merged with Flach. Can we be friends?”

  “We’d better be!” Nepe exclaimed. “We don’t want to be enemies!”

  “Especially since you must teach me magic,” Beman said.

  Nepe turned over to Flach. “Magic!” he exclaimed.

  Weva appeared. “Please?”

  “That’s what the four months is for?”

  “Aye, Flach. Eli says it needs must be, but only thou be Adept. He says I can learn, but there be none but thee to teach me.”

  That was surely true! Anyone could learn magic, but most folk had only slight talent for it, while those who became Adept had great talent. It wasn’t safe for ordinary folk to try too much, because the Adepts quickly cut down anything that seemed like potential competition in their specialties. But a person with aptitude, tutored by an Adept, could learn relatively rapidly. Flach himself had been close to Adept level by age four, but that had been his secret, and Grandpa Stile’s. If she had the ability to learn, he could teach her a lot in four months.

  “But thou dost be part BEM!” he protested.

  “Aye, Flach. But three parts human, as be thou.”

  Through her werewolf, vampire, and android components, he realized; each of those was one part human, one part other. His own human heritage stemmed from his unicorn dam and his two human grandparents. Because he had more human shares than any other, he regarded himself as human, despite his title of Unicorn Adept, but he could assume any of the aspects of his lineage. The same would be true for Weva. “Aye,” he agreed.

  “I thank thee for thine understanding,” she said, and kissed him.

  It was a supposedly innocuous gesture, but it electrified him. The revelation of her nature was still amazing him, on a lower level of his consciousness: she was an aspect of a creature like himself, with his own potential. But superficially she was a pretty girl, much like Sirel. It had been a year since Sirel had come to her maturity, and brought him to his, in their wolf forms, but the knowledge of the change in their status still thrilled and appalled him. He was ready to relate to a girl—to a woman on the adult level, but there had been none to relate to. Now, suddenly, there was, and she was much more than he had dreamed possible. Perhaps her kiss was innocent for her, but it was not for him.

  “Aye,” he repeated.

  He taught her magic. She was quick to learn. They found that what Weva could do, Beman could not, though he was her male aspect. Weva derived from cells taken from Sirel—which accounted for her similarity to Sirel, making her a person he could like, without having to give her up the moment it got serious—and Alien. These were creatures of Phaze, the magic realm, and magic was in them. But Beman derived from human, robot, and Hectare elements, which were scientific, and they related well to the things of science and not to the things of magic. The animal heads had evidently taken care to educate Beman in Proton speech, to clarify the distinction.

  Nepe was curious about the way Beman could assume a full robot form instantly; her robot forms were all emulations, without her flesh actually becoming metal, but his seemed to be genuine metal. But he could assume only the humanoid robot form, while she could adopt any form she chose. The two compared notes, and discussed things of science, while Flach and Weva tuned out, bored. It seemed that Flach and Weva were the naturally sexed forms, while Nepe and Beman were emulations from neuter stock. The rule of no true male-female composite was being maintained.

  But mostly it was Flach because of the need to cover the magic. Weva learned to conjure, and to fashion animate clouds, and to assume forms that were not in her ancestry. Thus she could become a machine that was not a humanoid robot, though her other self could not. She had to use a different spell each time, but she built up a collection of spells for such purpose, just as Flach had done in the past. Her new forms were not as realistic or functional as his, but in time they would become so. She was, after all, only twelve years old, and new to this.

  Betweentimes, they talked, their dialogues becoming more intimate as their knowledge of each other progressed. “I be glad indeed that thou hast come on the scene,” Flach said. “But what I fathom not is why thou didst have to have a BEM component. The BEMs be our enemies.”

  “I be part BEM,” she agreed. “But I be not thy enemy, Flach, and ne’er can be. I serve this planet and this culture, and if it be not freed, then will I perish with it and thee.”

  “That I know. Yet what can a BEM do that we o’erwise could not? I think this be not part o’ the prophecy.”

  “Nay, it be part o’ thy sire’s plan, and thy grandsire’s plan,” she said. “And that we shall fathom not till thou dost convey me to the South Pole.”

  “Aye. Would I could show thee Proton on the way there, but
I dare not. Needs must we go direct, when we go.”

  They also played the flutes. She had been trained in music, as had the three of them, and had her own iridium flute. She was good with it, too—better, in fact, than he. “Well, I had more time,” she said. “From age three on, did I train with it, though not by choice. But I think it be more than that.”

  “More than training?” he asked. This business of the flutes still perplexed him. Why should they all have to play them, when not one of them could touch the expertise of the Adept Clef? “Be thine the magic flute?”

  “Nay, I can play thine as well as mine.” She exchanged flutes with him, and they verified that they were the same.

  “Then what?” he asked, covertly annoyed at being out-skilled.

  “It be my BEM component,” she explained. “The BEMs be apt in coordination, because o’ their many tentacles and eyes. Beman’s BEM aspect can play best o’ all.”

  “That would I like to hear,” Flach said, intrigued.

  The BEM appeared. The sight no longer startled Flach; he had become familiar with it, and his interaction with the guard outside had prepared him. Beman was no monster to him, in any form.

  The BEM lifted the flute and fastened an air hose to it, so that the stream of air passed across the mouthpiece and caused a sustained note. Then it applied tentacles to the holes and keys, and played.

  The sound was phenomenal. Flach had heard his Grandfather Stile play, and knew that on all the planet only one was better. That was the Adept Clef, whose sound was magical, figuratively and literally. In unicorn form, with his recorder horn, Flach could play very well, because it was natural to that form. The recorder was a form of the flute, with a mellower sound, and this gave him an advantage when, in human form, he played the flute. He played it very well. Thus it had been a surprise when Weva had turned out to be better, since she had no unicorn component. But now he understood that her BEM component was indeed the source of that talent. The BEM might be doing a mathematical translation, and not have any particular feeling for the spirit of the music, but its technical expertise was superlative. Weva, with animal and human components, supplied the feeling the BEM might lack, and so even her relatively clumsy human fingers had marvelous skill.