Phaze Doubt

12 - Weva

Flach held the seed. “Methinks I be best off in a bat form, with Alien,” he said. “Canst carry the seed, Sirel?”

The bitch lifted her nose, and took the seed gently from his hand. Then Flach became a bat. “We go together!” he called in the bat language to Alien. “Cling to Sirel, and let her go in. An we spy danger, we can guide her clear.”

They lit on the wolf’s back. Then Sirel stepped into the hole. She dropped only a short distance before landing firmly at the tunnel floor.

Now Flach’s ears confirmed what Alien’s had perceived. This was a curving passage, spiraling down below the Pole. Above, in the lighted hole, motes of dust hung motionless. They were living much faster now. He should have realized that it would not be identical to the situation at the North Pole. What point, slowing down, when they had so little time to forge the weapon against the invader?

Reassured by their contact, Sirel walked on down the tunnel.

Several loops down it broadened into a chamber, where there was light: at first dim glows from fungi, then brighter glows from lamps. As Sire! stood at the edge, there was a growl, coming from darkness beyond the chamber.

“Who dost thou be?” the growl demanded. Flach could understand it because of his years with the wolves.

But Sirel couldn’t answer, because she was holding the seed in her mouth. So Flach changed forms and assumed his wolf form, Barelmosi. “We be three, coming as directed to the West Pole,” he growled.

“Who dost thou be?” the growl repeated.

“I be Barelmosi, also known as the Unicorn Adept. With me are Sirelmoba, who be my Promised bitch, and Alien, o’ the vampire bats. Now, in fairness, tell us who thou dost be, and what thou dost demand o’ us.”

The other came in view. It was an animal head: a man with the head of a wolf. “I be but a servant o’ our cause: to save Phaze from being ravished. Hast brought the seed?”

“Aye.”

“Give it here, and follow.”

Flach, assuming human form, reached to take the seed from Sirel’s mouth, and carried it to the wolfman. The wolfman took it and turned to walk into the gloom at the far end of the chamber. They followed, Alien assuming human form. Sire! retaining bitch form. Flach wasn’t certain what was coming, and knew the other two were as nervous as he.

Soon they arrived at a deeper, brighter chamber, where a group of animal heads stood. Prominent among them was an elephant head. “Eli!” Flach exclaimed. Then he had a second thought. “Or be it thee? Thou dost look older.”

“We be all older,” Eli said. He used the language of the animal heads, which was a mixture of those sounds common to most of them; Flach understood it because he had learned a number of animal languages when he mastered the animal forms. Eli had helped his father Mach train in table tennis, before Flach’s birth, for an important game with his other self; the elephant head held the paddle with his trunk, and played marvelously well. Flach had come to know him in the past year, and liked him. “We be ten years in this den, preparing for thee.”

“But I saw thee nigh three months ago!” Flach protested. “With my sire, the Rovot Adept. Dost not remember?”

“I remember. But much o’ a month ago in thy time, we descended to this realm and fashioned o’ it the Pole Demesnes, that we might train thee and make the decoys. That be ten years, our time, and aye, we be older.”

“But thou must get out, then, before thou dost age too far!” Flach exclaimed, horrified. “Thou and thy companions!”

“Nay, Adept, not so! Our lives be as long as e’er, in our terms; we feel not the loss. We have been constructively busy, and now the region be nice for thee and thy companions. For thou must remain with us a time.”

“But came I here only to deliver the Hec seed! Needs must I do one more errand before I rest, so save the planet.”

“Aye. But this be part o’ thine errand. Thou must be trained here, three years.”

“Three years!” Flach exclaimed. “But the Magic Bomb will ravage the planet within six weeks! Five weeks.” For a week had passed since he had stood at the North Pole with wonderful Icy. Ah, the demoness-Don ‘i get distracted! Nepe snapped.

“Three years our time,” Eli clarified. “One week, outside. We be at gross velocity: an hundred and forty-four times norm. Well we know the outside limit!”

Flach looked at his companions, appalled. But as he did so he realized that their presence here was part of the plan, whose nature he did not understand. Certainly he had no reason to distrust EH.

“I must trust thine information,” he said. “We be at thy service.”

“First must we take thy companions to the laboratory,” the elephant head said.

“The laboratory?” Flach asked, upset again. “That be a science notion!”

“Aye, lad! We have rovots and computers here and the rest o’ science, but the wolf and bat must needs be fresh for our purpose.”

“What purpose?” Flach demanded. “I can suffer no ill to my friends!”

“Nor shall there be ill to any,” EH reassured him. “We but need tokens from their bodies, that we may craft what be needful.”

“Tokens?”

“We may not tell thee more now,” EH said. “For thou must go out again amidst the enemy, and the secret be not secure there. But thou shallst see they be not harmed. Now do the two o’ you come w’ me, while Flach takes his leisure at thine apartment. The wolf will show thee there, Adept.”

Sirel assumed girl form. “It be all right, my Promised,” she said to Flach. “We knew we came not here for naught. We will see thee presently.”

Flach watched them go with dismay. This was not at all what he had expected.

The wolf head guided him down another tunnel to a chamber that turned out to be very much like a Proton room. There was a video screen and a bed and a machine for dialing food. “I thank thee,” he said shortly to the wolf head, dismissing the creature. He felt like a prisoner.

Alone, he turned on the screen. It did not have any input from outside, unsurprisingly; the time barrier stopped that. It did have an assortment of canned entertainments and educational programs.

He turned it off, lay on the bed, and pondered. The North Pole must have been a similar warren, that he had never before his trip there known of or suspected; the elders were good at keeping secrets when they wanted to. That had been slow time, so if the Green and Black Adepts had gone there at the same time the animal heads came here, it would have seemed like only a few minutes, perhaps, though a month passed outside. Meanwhile, here, it had been ten years! Plenty of time to get it in shape for company.

But what were they going to do with fresh “tokens” from Sirel and Alien, and the Hectare seed? He had hoped to have the answer to prior riddles once he got here, but instead he was encountering only greater mysteries.

Disgruntled, he lay there for a time, and then he slept.

He woke as Sirel and Alien returned, both in human form. “See, we be fine!” she exclaimed. “It were but a bit o’ tissue from each, and we be done.” She changed to wolf form, and back, so that he could see she hadn’t changed.

“But we be captive here, for three years,” he reminded her.

“Whate’er it takes to free our realm,” she said brightly. She looked around. “This be like Proton!” She became Troubot, in straight machine form. “Exactly like Proton,” the robot said from a speaker grille.

Alien became his Proton self, ‘Corn, fully human. “Yes, it is true.” He returned to his Phaze self. “But methinks I prefer to sleep hanging from a rafter.” He reached up, took hold of a convenient plank, and became the bat. He flipped neatly over and caught the wood with his feet.

“And thee?” Flach asked Sirelmoba. “Dost thou be similarly satisfied?

“Aye,” she said. “Because I be with thee.”

His bad mood eased. It could indeed have been worse.

She joined him in the bed for the night, evidently feeling naughty, because in neither her machine nor wolf aspects did she use a bed. She tickled him, and the rest of his bad mood dissipated. She wasn’t exactly Icy, but she was his Promised, and in due course that would be far more significant than anything he had done with the demoness.

The three of them were kept so busy they hardly had time to be bored. They were subjected to a full program of education in all the things of Proton and Phaze, but especially in music. This amazed Flach again. He liked music, for in his unicorn form he was a natural musician, with the sound of the recorder. But why were they all being trained to be expert in different instruments?

“There must be reason,” Alien said philosophically, and Sirel agreed. Indeed, the two, who had not associated with each other much before, were turning out to be surprisingly compatible. Flach was the odd one out.

So, increasingly, for the classes, he turned the body over to Nepe, who was more patient about such things. That had another advantage: it attracted Alien’s attention, for he had always been sweet on Nepe. Thus Nepe was the center of attention, because Sirel’s other self Troubot liked her too.

One of the things they learned in detail was the scientific nature of Proton. For this all three of them assumed their Proton identities, because it was mind-bendingly complex in some aspects.

Proton seemed like a planet orbiting a star, but it was not. Not exactly, anyway. It was a black hole companion to the star, far smaller and denser than it seemed. The light from the star touched its shell and whipped around it to depart at right angles, leading to strange optical effects. The globe rotated on an axis pointed to the star, so that the South Pole should have been unbearably hot and the North Pole unbearably cold. They were hot and cold, respectively, but not to the degree they might have been, because of the bending of the light; the south got less and the north more than otherwise. The hemispheres of day and night were east and west, clearly demarked at the North and South Poles, where the line of their contrast actually crossed. That was what Flach had seen as a shadow over half the North Pole. That shadow slowly turned counterclockwise, with the clockwise rotation of the globe. At the South Pole the shadow would seem to turn clockwise. There was a complex explanation for just how the light of the sun appeared to be coming from above the equator when actually it was whipping around the tiny black hole inside the planetary shell, but they didn’t pay much attention to this. After all, magic made all kinds of illusions seem real. So at night they looked at the stars, not caring what devious route their glitters took. There was a chamber whose ceiling was one-way invisible, so that they could see the day and night skies, though no creature on the surface could see down into the Pole Demesnes. That was enough.

But a greater anomaly was the orientation of the two sides of it. Most planets, being round, had lands and seas extending all the way around, continuously. Thus they had no west or east poles. Proton had such poles—because they were the limits of the original curtain between its aspects. Beyond those Poles was Phaze, the other side of the planet. But this other side had not been apparent, because it was in the realm of magic. Proton and Phaze were similar geographically, and in their fundamental natures, but the laws by which things operated differed. Yet they remained connected, with the happenings and creatures of one tending to form alignment with the happenings and creatures of the other, as interpreted by their natural laws. Between the two had been the curtain, which few folk could cross. That curtain had wandered in seemingly curvaceous fashion across the planet, from East Pole to West Pole. But when a person crossed it, he crossed to the equivalent nexus on the other half of the planet. This had been the only effective connection between the universes of science and magic, for three hundred years.

When the Adept Clef merged the frames, he had in effect caused the magic hemisphere to slide around the planet to overlap the science hemisphere. Because they were fundamentally similar, they had been compatible, and the sets of selves had become individual folk with alternate natures. But this had changed the face of the planet. With its two sides merged, it lacked anything on the far hemisphere. Now there was nothing there.

That was why there was no reference to the far side of the planet. No one could go there, for anyone who stepped over the edge would fall into the black hole and never return. A short distance beyond the four Poles, the world ended. The old fear of Earthly navigators that they might sail off the edge of the flat world and be lost was valid here. Only on the doubled shell that was the residential continent with its peripheral waters was life possible.

The plan to save the planet (half-planet shell) was simple in essence, if not in detail. It was to slide the doubled shell around to the far side of the black hole, which was in the fantasy universe. Actually this wasn’t exactly a physical thing, because the shell already rotated around the black hole, making day and night feasible in their fashion. It was in relation to the aspects of the hole, which transcended normal physics. When the sides had been separate, the curtain had served as the crossing point from science to magic. Now there was no such avenue; a bit of the magic frame was caught within the science frame, so was accessible by other creatures of the science universe. That was the problem with the Hectare. But if the shell could be slid around to the fantasy frame, then it would be accessible by the creatures of the fantasy universe—and not by those of the science one. There might be horrendous magical menaces out there, but in the three hundred years the two sides of the planet had been parallel, the only exterior contact had been from the science side, so the magic universe seemed like a better bet.

But the playing of the Platinum Flute that had merged the shells would not be enough to slide them both around. It was a general rule of magic that a particular spell worked only once for a particular person; only creatures who had evolved with alternate forms could change them repeatedly. The merger spell had been used, and would not work again, even if that were the one needed. What was needed was a slide spell, of such power as to move half a world—and the device to summon such magic and control it did not exist. Neither did any person or creature with the ability to play it.

However, it had been ascertained that such a device could be crafted, in time, and that was being done. And a creature could be generated to play it—and that was being done. So the years necessary for each were being spent under the Poles. Only the proper elements were needed, at the right time—and this was what Nepe and Flach were coordinating.

“But why are we being trained to play music?” Nepe demanded.

“Two reasons,” the bear head in charge of the class growled. The three children had learned to understand all the animals well enough, as time passed. “First, there is a need for decoys, in case the Hectare catch on; they must not know which person or creature is the one who will play. Similar iridium flutes are being crafted, only one of which is magic, so that if any are destroyed, they will be decoys. Second, you may be needed to accompany the player, for it will be a complex tune. Your flutes may not be magic, but if they help support and guide the true flute, they are essential. You must play well enough to enable the true one to play perfectly, for the fate of the frames depends on this.”

Now they understood, and continued their practice with greater enthusiasm. The three, playing lovely iridium flutes together, generated quite pretty and intricate melodies. Nepe and Flach knew that they were not as good as Grandpa Stile or Blue, and certainly not close to the Adept Clef, but they could make the animal heads pause in whatever they were doing, to listen until the melody ended.

So the time passed, and they did not find it dull. The animal head children joined them in the classes, eager to learn about the outside realm they had never known. For a self-sustaining community had come here, complete families, giving up their lives on the surface. All to accomplish the plan to free Phaze from alien exploitation. It was apparent, if there had ever been doubt, that there was an enormous and dedicated complement involved, with Flach and Nepe only one little part. But if they failed, the entire effort would come to nothing.

Suddenly, it seemed, they were older. Sirel came into her first season. Flach would have been satisfied to wait indefinitely for it, so as to remain her Promised, but it was not to be. “I need you, Barel,” she said, and though he remained young—about eleven in human terms—he knew it was true. Indeed, her readiness was acting on him, making him mature, at least when in wolf form, rapidly.

They went into a private section of the “park”—a region of honeycombed tunnels where edible plants grew magically in twilight—and there as wolves accomplished in a moment what endless prior experimentation had not approached. Suddenly they were Wolf and Bitch, adults by the standard of that society, and their Promise was fulfilled. Never again would there be this between them; like brother and sister, they had only familial interest in each other, and their shared experience.

They assumed their human forms again, and found themselves still children. But now they knew that their innocence of childhood was over, and that stage by stage, inevitably, they would discard their fancies of youth and assume increasingly those of the adult state.

“Yet still we be friends,” Sirel reminded him wistfully.

“Aye,” he agreed. “Forever friends.” And he discovered that the thing he had feared was not actually a loss, but a portal; behind were the things of childhood, and ahead were the things of the adult state. If, for example, he were to travel again with the lovely demoness Icy, and she teased him with her luscious body again, wrapping her legs around him as she pretended to instruct him on the delights of his far future, he would have a potent response! But perhaps more likely, and more important, he could now orient on adult relationships, seeking that one who would share his future in the way his dam shared his sire’s. It was a dawning but exciting prospect.

Sirel evidently was having a similar realization. Their friendship had not suffered, it had merely changed its nature. They now understood each other and themselves and their culture in a more significant way.

Suddenly, it seemed, their tenure here was done. Three years had passed, and it was time to return to the normal realm, Flach had grown so accustomed to this society that he almost regretted it; there had been comfort in living with the animal heads, and he had made friends with the animal head children. But he had not forgotten his mission.

“Remember,” Eli warned him. “Outside it be but a week past. Thou willst have to hear thy third message, and do what it directs, whate’er it be; we know not.”

“But Sirel and Alien—what o’ them?” he asked.

“The main part o’ their missions were accomplished at the outset,” Eli said. “But an thy message tell thee to keep them with thee, then that must they do. An it be other, then they be free for their own devices—until thou dost need them at the end.”

“We would participate further in thy mission,” Sirel said, “an we can. But too would we remain with each other.” For after Sirel had achieved her maturity and abated the Promise, her interest in Alien had changed. The two had been friends; slowly they became more than friends. They could not relate intimately in their animal forms, but could in the human form, and it looked very like a rare wolf-bat romance. That could bring trouble with their subcultures, but after the robot-unicorn liaison that had generated Flach, acceptance might be easier.

“An I have a choice, will I keep ye two with me,” Flach said.

“And gi’en that choice, will we remain with thee,” Alien said.

So it was agreed. The three embraced, and made their preparations for departure. They bid farewell to the animal head children they had known so well for three years, and packed supplies, and of course their three iridium flutes.

They left by the same spiral passage they had arrived by; it was the only avenue to the regular realm. The Hectare stood guard as it had three years before, standing off the Pole. Eli had assured them that it was the same one; the animals had kept watch. That meant that the deal should hold. Indeed, as the three emerged and walked past, the creature took no seeming notice. But after they cleared the Pole and shut its lid, it moved across and stood over it again. That was signal enough.

They walked back to where the unicorns and semi-human companions had waited. They were there; the firefly was first to spy the approaching party and alert the others.

“But these are older!” Echo exclaimed.

“Three years older,” Flach agreed. “Time be changed, under the West Pole, as it be under the North Pole, only it accelerates. We have lived and grown.”

“It must be,” Lysander said, from his invisibility. “No one else has come, and the BEM has kept faith. In fact, it showed us the flag of truce and challenged us to a game; it had figured out where you came from. We declined, but we did talk to it, under that truce; we told it the stories of Phaze, and it told us the stories of the galaxy.”

“It be an honorable creature,” Flach agreed. “This guard duty must be boring for it, so once it lost the game, it took advantage of the situation to do something interesting.”

“Must needs we kill them, when we win?” Alien asked. “Methinks we could get along, an they be not in a position to despoil our world.”

“If you win, they will capitulate gracefully,” Lysander said. “But unless you have something exceedingly special, that I can not stop, you will Jose.”

“The more I learn o’ the Adepts’ plan, the more certain I become that there be something special,” Flach said. “But exactly what it be, I know not.”

“Maybe it is time for your third message,” Echo said.

“Aye. I hope I insult none here an I take that message alone; I know not whe’er it be secret from some or all but me.”

“Go by thyself,” Alien said. “Tell us what thou dost deem proper.”

Flach walked toward the ocean, sat in a hollow, and brought out the message capsule. It said, TAKE WEST POLE’S PRODUCT TO SOUTH POLE, WHEN.

He pondered that. He had gone to the North Pole, it turned out, to bring the Green and Black Adepts out at the proper moment; otherwise, in that slow time, they would not have emerged when they were supposed to. and the Magic Bomb would have been set wrong. So though the message had seemed inadequate, it had turned out to be all he had needed to know. The second message had told him to take the Hectare seed to the West Pole, and to go with those with him and four the wolves sent. Those with him—actually with Nepe—had been Lysander and Echo; the wolves had sent Sirel, Alien, and the two unicorns. Evidently the word had been spread before, for them to be ready for the call. It had all been set up, somehow, so that Flach and Nepe fell naturally into the pattern. Even the use of the enemy agent, Lysander, had turned out perfectly, suggesting that the prophecy had known very well what was to happen.

But they had just left the West Pole, and the only product they had was the decoy flutes. That didn’t seem to be enough. Those flutes could have been delivered by other means; they were useful only as decoys. Take decoys to the South Pole? That suggested that the action would be somewhere else. Yet it seemed most likely that the action would be with Flach, the only loose Adept, and Lysander, the person of the prophecy. How could they be elsewhere?

And it said WHEN. What did that mean? Not now? If so. how would he know when? He was baffled.

It’s a riddle, Nepe thought. How would that distressingly gorgeous ice maiden unriddle it?

Icy? She would instantly fathom the manner some seemingly unrelated factor factored in, and suddenly everything would make sense. She would point out the obvious, that Grandpa Stile/Blue had said it would take seventeen years to forge the counterweapon, and that time was accelerated under the West Pole so that one week outside was three years inside, so mat seventeen years inside would fit within six weeks outside, and—but of course that wouldn’t match, because in only another four weeks the Magic Bomb would emerge from slow time and destroy the planet.

To which objection she would say-That if the Pole was slow, and another fast, who could say what might be under the other two? Maybe slower—or faster. In which case those seventeen years could be accommodated!

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. “Me-thought 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!”

“Not 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.

Flach took his own flute and joined in, after a few bars, playing extemporaneous counterpoint. The music was beautiful, but he had to stop soon, because the magic was gathering. The BEM had no magical power, and its music was merely sound, but Flach could summon magic when he played, and it was dangerous to do that without turning it to some particular task.

Weva reappeared in mid note- “Teach me that!” she exclaimed.

He had assumed she realized how he used music. He realized that there was more to cover. They got to work on it.

In all too brief a span, their “day” was done, and it was time to go back out into the ordinary realm and make the journey to the South Pole. There, they hoped, the mystery of their mission would be clarified at last.