Phaze Doubt

by Piers Anthony

  Then he spied something sliding through the water. It wasn’t a fish, but more like an eel.

  Oops—an electric eel! Again by definition, the shock would stun any other creature. Lysander became a frog and leaped out of the water.

  So it went, change and counterchange, and the assortment of animals was depleted on both sides. But Lysander’s strategy of forcing the Chief to change more often was paying off, and it came to the point where Lysander had several top predators left and the Chief was reduced to his next to last form: a sheep. Lysander became a roc and pounced on the sheep, forcing the Chief to take his last form: a mouse.

  Lysander became a dragon, and inhaled. He would send a blast of fire that burned out the entire region, the mouse with it.

  But the mouse, astonishingly, did not flee. Instead it jumped onto the dragon’s nose and clung there.

  Lysander shook his head, trying either to toss the mouse into his mouth, or fling it to the ground where it could be scorched before it fled. Another creature it could hide from, but the fire of the dragon would seek it out regardless. But the mouse refused to be dislodged; it dug its tiny claws into the snout and hung on.

  This was a problem Lysander had never anticipated. His forelegs were too short to reach his snout. He tried to whip his tail about to wipe the mouse off, but it only stung his nostrils sharply. He tried to roll and squish the mouse against the ground, but it was in the declivity between eyes and nostrils. He could not dislodge that mouse!

  He blew out fire. But his snout was insulated so that its own flesh would not be destroyed by the heat, and that protected the mouse too.

  If he changed form again, the mouse would get away; he had no specific mouse-catching forms left, having labored to save the largest predators instead. If he hadn’t used up his weasel—

  Maybe he could bounce fire back on his nose. It would hurt his own flesh, but it would fry the mouse, and that was what counted.

  He put his nostrils against a rock and blew out fire. It bounced, but to the side. He tried again, and missed again. He needed a rock with a hollow, that would cup and reflect the fire—Suddenly a gong sounded. The minute was up, and he had not destroyed the mouse. Since the onus was his, he lost by default.

  The game was over, and Chief Oresmite had won. Lysander had tried his hardest to win, and thought he had the win assured, until that last astonishing ploy. He had been fairly beaten, and now was obliged to give the figures to the enemy. Yet, somehow, he was relieved.

  Only later did it occur to him that he had blundered crucially. He had been a roc when the Chief was a sheep; the Chief had become a mouse. Lysander’s blunder had been in changing to the dragon. All he had had to do was maintain roc form and fly away, and the Chief, stuck with the onus, would have lost in one minute.

  Flach and Weva stood before Mischief, and lifted their flutes. They played, and Lysander remembered the magic, figurative and literal, of Clef’s music. Flach was good, because of his unicorn heritage, but Weva was better, because of her Hectare heritage. That, of course, was why she had been brought into existence. Only a Hectare mind, trained also in magic, could handle the figures Lysander’s algorithm had produced.

  The magic came, much stronger than before, almost tangible. The two set aside their flutes, but the music continued, generated by their minds.

  Mischief began to run the figures on a screen. It was a massive array: thousands of numbers jammed together. But Weva’s eyes were on them, and they were being fed through to her mind, and changing the music. No human mind could have done it, but hers could, with the support of her companion.

  The world began to change, as the paths for each atom of matter were defined, and the push from the Magic Bomb began. The merged frames would slide around the black hole, nothing changing within them, but everything changing beyond them. Like a cover on a piece of equipment, turning without altering its shape or nature; it was the nature of the universe that was changing instead.

  There was a shudder. Dust sifted down. Elves and human beings glanced around alike in alarm. This had the feel of an incipient earthquake, and they were underground.

  The shuddering intensified. Cracks appeared in the stone.

  “It’s going wrong!” someone cried.

  The computer screen went blank. Then the single word ERROR flashed, blinking.

  “We kept faith with thee!” an elf cried at Lysander. “Thou didst promise true figures!”

  “My figures are true!” Lysander replied. “The error must be somewhere else!”

  “Cease playing!” Oresmite rapped, and the music halted. “There be error somewhere, but Lysander has honor; he would not cheat on this.”

  “Then he made a mistake!” Flach said.

  “I made no mistake,” Lysander said. “Every figure checked. It must be in the translation.”

  “Nay, none there,” Weva said. “We play true!”

  “If we resume not soon, the detonation of the Magic Bomb will destroy us regardless,” Flach pointed out. “Now be the time; the paths must be set.”

  “The time factor!” Echo said. “We’re accelerated, but how does it relate to the rest of the frames?”

  “We allow for that,” Weva said. “Our music relates.”

  “The Poles!” Lysander said. “Their times are different. Do you allow for that?”

  “Yes, o’ course,” she said. “Twelvefold for the East Pole, a hundred and forty-four for the West Pole. I were made there; I would forget my home region not.”

  “And the North Pole? The one that’s slower than normal time?”

  Weva looked stricken. “Slower! I adjusted for faster!”

  “Can you correct for that?”

  “Aye. Now.” She lifted her flute again, and Flach quickly joined her.

  “Rerun the figures, Mischief!” Lysander said. “The error is being corrected.”

  The figures reappeared on the screen.

  They resumed playing, and in a moment set aside the flutes and continued. This time there was no shuddering; the magic intensified, and there was a feeling of something colossal shifting, but it was smooth. It was working.

  Yet there was in the background an almost imperceptible disharmony, a keening as of something not quite right. The error had caused them to start over, slightly delayed; did that make a difference? If so, it could be cumulative, and…

  Lysander did not care to finish that thought. He had been an agent for the other side, but he had made a deal, and now was bound to see it through. He would not care for the irony of having his original side win through default. Not after he had resigned himself to the prospect of living, and of love with Echo.

  The eerie trace of wrongness did not fade; it got worse. Lysander knew what was happening: the delay occasioned by the failure to zero in the North Pole correctly had thrown the timing off slightly, and that imbalance was recycling and building. If it expanded logarithmically, as such things could, they could still get dumped, and all would have been for nothing.

  Echo was near him. He caught her hand and squeezed it to let her know that whatever happened, he was glad for their association. Then an elf girl caught his free hand, and someone else caught Echo’s free hand. The impulse spread, and soon everyone in the chamber was linked, including Flach and Weva and Chief Oresmite. The music went on, through all their heads and all the frames, translating the figures to reality, carrying them all on the wave of force that was the detonation of the Magic Bomb.

  That Bomb had been confined by the slowed time at the North Pole. That had been a bad Pole on which to err!

  The linked hands provided comfort, but the wrongness worsened. Lysander felt as if his guts were being removed and convoluted topologically and strung through the electrical conduits of his brain. He didn’t dare vomit, because he didn’t want the contents of his stomach suffusing his brain. He suspected that the others were experiencing similar distortions. If the frames didn’t complete their journey soon—

  The music stopped. T
hey were there!

  There was a silence. Then the Chief looked around. “We remain alive,” he said. “That means it is successful. But perhaps not entirely. We must proceed cautiously.”

  “The timing,” Weva said. “I couldn’t quite compensate. I think things are all right, but some detail may have changed.”

  The group let go of hands. Lysander brought Echo into him. “Just so long as you are not changed!” he said.

  Her eyes were round. “I fear I be. I—”

  “Check your body,” he suggested. All around them others were similarly concerned. No one seemed quite certain what had happened, but knew that something fundamental was not the same.

  “Well, it be metal and plastic, o’ course, as always. I’ll show thee.” She opened her robe and touched the place where her left breast was latched. “Uh-oh.”

  “You look fine!” he said. “I don’t care if your latch is broken.”

  “There be no latch.”

  “Well, whatever. I have accepted the local way, and you are part of it.”

  She closed her robe. “E’en an I be not exactly the creature thou hast known?”

  He experienced an unpleasant chill. “Are you trying to say that your emotion has changed? That now the crisis is past, you don’t—”

  She put her finger across his lips. “Nay, Lysan! I love thee yet! I would spend my life with thee! But an I be other—”

  He swept her in and kissed her. “My emotion didn’t change either. I love you too, and no potion is responsible. But I think we have work to do outside.”

  “Aye,” she breathed, seeming relieved.

  The others had come to a similar conclusion. They were forging toward an exit.

  But when the hatch was opened, a stormy swirl of air rushed in, blowing back the elves.

  “Must be a dust storm,” Lysander said.

  “But it’s wet!” an elf protested.

  So it was. “Then it’s safe to go out there,” Lysander said. “I’ll do it.”

  The elves gave way for him, and he scrambled through the tunnel and thrust his body up through a hole. There was a storm raging all right; warm rain plastered his robe to his body in a moment.

  Echo emerged after him. “This be not the heat o’ the South Pole!” she said.

  “But it’s warm enough. Drop your robe and come on; we can handle this.”

  She did. He took her hand, and forged on, trying to gain a point of perspective.

  Then a rift opened in the clouds. The sun shone down, directly south of the Pole.

  Lysander froze. South?

  Beside him, Echo was similarly amazed. “Be the magic gone?” she asked. “The sunlight bends not?”

  Flach and Weva came up behind them. “Now I see what happened,” Weva said. “That imbalance—the shell got twisted! The South Pole is now the West Pole!”

  “That’s why the storm,” Flach agreed. “The temperature patterns changed; it has to get resettled.”

  “A quarter turn!” Lysander said. “We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  “It was worse,” Weva said. “We have changed similarly.”

  Lysander looked at her. “No you haven’t.”

  She smiled. “You are an idiot, ‘Sander.”

  “Is there something I’ve overlooked?”

  Echo touched his shoulder. “Aye, because thou be not affected, mayhap, having an alternate self not. Watch me change forms.”

  Then she assumed her Phaze-harpy form, and flew a short distance into the air.

  Her body was shining metal, and her feathers plastic. “Now do you understand?” she called.

  “You’re a robot harpy-a cyborg!” he exclaimed.

  “I am Echo.” She descended to the ground, and resumed to human form. “And I be Oche. Now dost recant thy pledge to love me?”

  Suddenly the change in language penetrated. Echo had been talking in the Phaze dialect! The cyborg harpy talked in Proton dialect. They had changed!

  “But you said you still loved me!” he said, stunned.

  “Aye, Lysan. I be Echo’s living aspect, and I love thee as she does. It were always I who loved thee, but I said naught, lest revolt thee. Now I would be with thee, but I will leave thee an thou ask.”

  “But if the harpy body is now inanimate—”

  “This human form be alive,” she said. “I offer it thee, with my love, an thou desire either.”

  Nepe appeared. “Methinks thou be wisest to accept, Lysan,” she said.

  He turned his head to look at her. “You are Flach,” he said.

  “Aye. But I were always both, as be Weva and Beman. It be a big adjustment, but we shall do it, as we did mergence before.” She—he—smiled impishly. “Methinks those in the cities have big adjustments to make too!”

  Weva became Beman. “Yes, I be Weva,” he—she—said “Needs must we all adjust. But it be especially important for thee, Lysan, because thou willst have to coordinate the integration o’ the Hectare into the new order. The faster we can all come to terms with ourselves, the better off we shall be.”

  Lysander turned to Oche. “I always knew you were both,” he said. “I knew the harpy watched everything. I knew she was the brain in your machine, just as you knew a living Hectare was the brain in my laboratory-generated body. What has changed is only a detail. I love the whole of you. If you love me—”

  “Aye,” she said. Then she stepped into him, and they embraced. “But I think thy body be human now too, Lysan.”

  “All the way human? But that would mean—”

  “That we can have a family,” she finished.

  He realized that his future was likely to be even more busy than his past. But there was no time now to ponder the implications; they had to organize for the reorganization of the frames.

  They gathered beside the wooden castle of the Brown Demesnes. Tsetse looked out a window and spied them. “Brown—there’s an army outside! But a moment ago it was just open fields!”

  “Mayhap it be Franken returning,” Brown said. “His step can shake the ground. He were on errand, returning the Book o’ Magic to the Red Adept.”

  “No, I mean there really are people out there,” Tsetse insisted. “And animals, and everything.”

  “Methought I felt a conjuration,” Brown said. Because her selves were the same, and Tsetse had only one self, the two of them had not been affected by the exchange of identities. It had taken a while to get used to the quarter turn the compass had taken, making the sun now rise and set at the North and South Poles instead of the East and West ones, but the climate of her region had changed only slightly. She considered herself well off in most respects, now that the alien conquest had been reversed.

  But whatever could have caused this sudden gathering? She gazed out, and spied wolves, unicorns, elves, demons, animal heads, BEMs, and of course human folk. It seemed to be some kind of celebration, for the folk were brightly garbed and there appeared to be picnic sheets spread out.

  “Needs must we go out and see,” Brown decided, speaking positively though she was perplexed and a bit nervous.

  “Maybe I should stay in,” Tsetse said.

  Brown came to a decision. “Nay, friend. I love thee and will deny thee not. An thou lovest me, come face the world with me.”

  “If you’re sure—”

  “I know only that I will live a lie no longer, come what may.” She took the woman by the hand, kissed her, and led her to the front portal.

  Outside, the gathering was organized almost like an army, with contingents spread in a large semicircle, and a small group centered, facing the castle entrance. As Brown walked out, the visitors came to attention, silently.

  At the head of the assembly was Purple, whether Citizen or Adept she would not know until he spoke—and then she would remain in doubt, because of the reversals. This was another surprise; she had thought him imprisoned again. Just behind him stood the woman Alyc, the one who had dated Lysander but then worked for the enemy. Evidently
she had found another companion. Brown stopped before Purple, Tsetse beside her.

  Purple spoke. “Thou knowest my life be forfeit, for that I twice betrayed my culture. Thou must believe I bespeak thee truth now. I yield naught to none, except to thee, for that thou didst treat me kindly. Know, Adept, that the specter I held o’er thee were but a phantom; others differ but judge thee not for it, as thou dost not judge them. An thou accept it not from thy friends, accept it from thine enemy: it be no barrier for thee.”

  She stared at him. There was only one subject he could be addressing. Had he come to shame her openly, before them all?

  Purple stepped forward. He caught Tsetse’s timid hand. “My purpose in sending thee to the Brown Demesnes were malevolent,” he told her. “I sought to blackmail her, that she would serve the Hectare. But it were a lie. None begrudge Brown her way or thee thine. I now renounce any power I had o’er thee, Tsetse, and wish thee well.” He turned to Brown. “Deep do I regret repaying thy kindness with malice, and using a lie to savage thee. Thou didst deserve it not.”

  He turned in place and walked away. Alyc followed.

  “Wait!” Brown cried. “What did they promise thee, to make thee speak so?”

  He paused. “That need concern thee not. Be assured I bespoke thee the truth.”

  “It does concern me!” she insisted. “I know thou dost do naught for naught. What—?”

  “A clean and painless death,” he said, and resumed his walk—

  “Nay!” she cried, hurrying after him. “I wished this not on thee! We made a deal, and I agreed nor to seek harm to thee neither to be silent an I learned o’ harm coming.”

  “This be not o’ thy making,” he said gruffly, still walking. “In any event, the deal be off; it were in power only while the Hectare governed. Concern thyself not farther on this matter.”

  But she could not let it go. “An they brought thee here for a public execution, I tolerate it not! I forgive thee aught thou intended, and thank thee for bringing me a companion. Thou must not die!”