Robot Adept

Chapter 1 Phaze

Suchevane stood in the canoe. She was obviously fatigued to the point of collapse, and in a misery of mixed emotion, but she remained such a stunningly beautiful figure of a woman that the rest hardly mattered. “I must needs fly home,” she said. “I may not, I think, associate with ye folk longer.”

“I understand, vampire maiden,” Mach replied, looking up from his place at the rear of the canoe. “I thank you for your great service, and hope that we may at least remain friends.”

“Mayhap,” Suchevane agreed. “I did it mostly for thee, Fleta, and glad I am that thy life be safe and thy love secure. Would I had such love myself.” She gazed for a moment at the fading brightness around them. “Would that any man evoke such splash for me!”

The woman in Mach’s arms lifted her head, gazing at her friend through tear-blurred eyes. “Wouldst thou had such love thyself,” Fleta agreed. “Fare thee well, dearest friend!”

Then Suchevane lifted her arms like wings, and with effortless elegance even in her fatigue became a lovely bat, and flew into the haze. Exhaustion made her flight ragged, but she would get where she was going.

The watery bubble floating beside the canoe bobbed gently. “I be not partial to vamps,” the face of the Translucent Adept said within it. “But that one might almost tempt an Adept.” The bubble spun, so that the face reoriented on the canoe. “I will, an thou wishest, provide thy craft a tow to my Demesnes.”

“Accepted, Adept,” Mach replied. Then he lowered his face again to Fleta’s face, and lost himself in her.

The watery bubble moved, and from it stretched a watery line that touched the prow of the canoe. Bubble and canoe floated through the air, gaining speed, traveling through the closing night.

Mach and Fleta, victims of forbidden love, were on their way into the power of the Adverse Adepts.

Mach woke to the sound of lapping water. He looked, and sure enough, their canoe was on the surface of a large lake or small sea. “How strange!” he exclaimed.

Fleta woke. “Art well, my love?” she asked, concerned.

“We’re on water,” he explained.

She laughed. “It be strange to see a boat on water? Mayhap in thy frame, rovot, but not in mine!”

He smiled ruefully. “I enchanted this canoe to float in air, that’s all. I was surprised.”

The watery bubble ahead of them rotated so that the face in it faced back. “Willst be yet more surprised, youngster, in a moment.”

Fleta stretched, arms bent, her breasts moving against him. “Must needs I call on nature,” she said. “Let me change.” She drew away from him.

“Don’t leave me!” he protested, abruptly wary. “The last time you did that, I almost lost you forever!”

She abruptly sobered. “I thought only to spare thee evil, then,” she said. “Fear not, I shall return to thee very shortly.” Then she leaned into him and kissed him with such passion that his burgeoning doubt was sublimated into joy.

While he sat half-stunned by the delight of her, she stood much as Suchevane had, and abruptly became the hummingbird. The bird was glossy black, with golden little legs and beak; it darted forward to muss his hair with its wings, then shot away.

Mach shook his head, half in rue; he was a bit jealous of her instant shape-changing ability, and wished he could simply change and fly like that.

That gave him pause for thought. He was a novice Adept, wasn’t he? He had managed to perform magic on occasion. What were his limits? The real Adepts could do amazing things; could he do likewise, if he only mastered the magic?

The more he considered, the better he liked the notion. He had conjured this air-floating canoe that had given him such good service; that was by any reckoning competent magic. He had nullified the suicide spell on Fleta by the force of his declaration of love: the triple Thee. While that was not an ordinary type of magic, neither had the spell on her been ordinary. She had asked the Red Adept to give her an amulet that would cause her to lose her ability to change forms, so that when she dived off the mountain she would be unable to save herself by changing to hummingbird form and flying away. The Red Adept, reluctantly, had granted her this. Mach had reversed Adept magic! Surely shapechanging himself would be a comparatively minor enchantment. All he had to do was work out the appropriate spells.

Fleta returned, humming up to perch on the canoe’s front seat, then shifting to girlform. She had evidently completed her business. That was another advantage of shape-changing: the nectar of just a few flowers could feed her, and she remained fed when she shifted to a far more massive form. Similarly, one bird dropping could clean out her system, for the human form as well. Magic took little note of scale.

“Going down,” the Translucent Adept’s voice came from ahead. Then his bubble dipped under the surface—and the canoe followed. In a moment they were sinking through the greenish water, but breathing normally; the water seemed like air.

Fleta moved back to take his hand. “Adept magic spooks me,” she confided. “I wish—”

He silenced her with a kiss. He knew what she wished: that they could be together without the intercession of the Adept. But it seemed that this could not be, for their union was opposed by her kind and his, so they were constrained to accept Translucent’s hospitality.

They continued down. Fish swam by, gazing with moderate curiosity at the canoe; apparently they had seen things like this before. Then the bottom came into view, and it seemed again as if they were floating through air, with the rocks and seaweed and sea moss like the terrain of some jungle land.

Now that land turned strange. Orange and blue-green sponges spread across it, and corals reached up like skeletons, and peculiar flowerlike, tentacled things waved on yellow stalks. At first these were small, but as the canoe progressed they grew larger.

Mach looked down below the canoe as they passed a long log. No, it was a pipe, with a spiral band wrapping it, getting larger in diameter as they traveled along it. Then they came to its end—and there was a big round eye gazing up at him. The thing was a living creature!

“A giant nautiloid,” the Translucent Adept exclaimed from ahead. “Creature o’ the Ordovician period o’ Earth. I have a certain interest in the paleontology o’ the seas.”

Beyond the eye were about eight tentacles, which reached for the canoe but stopped short of touching it. Mach was just as glad. “It looks like an octopus in a long shell,” he remarked.

“That might be one description,” Translucent agreed. “It is related, in the sense that the nautiloid is an order o’ molluscs, as are modern octopi and squids. But these are far more more ancient examples; the Ordovician was approximately four hundred million years ago.”

“You sound like a scientist!” Mach remarked. “Yet you are an Adept.”

“No incongruity there! The separation o’ magic and science on this planet occurred only a few centuries ago; prior to that, our history is common. The magic is employed in restoring ancient creatures who exist no longer on Earth or elsewhere. All Adepts be scientists in their fashion; it be merely that we specialize in the science o’ magic, and turn it to our purposes exactly as do our counterparts in the frame o’ Proton.”

A creature vaguely like a monstrous roach swam across the canoe, startling Fleta. “A trilobite,” Translucent said, evidently proud of the creatures of his domain. “And see, here comes a sea scorpion.”

Indeed, the thing resembled a monstrous scorpion, almost a meter long. Fleta shrank back from its reaching pincers. “At ease,” Translucent rapped, and the scorpion flipped its tail and swam quickly away. It was evident who was master here.

They came to a hill rising from the ocean floor, and the canoe bumped to a halt. “Here is thy honeymoon isle,” Translucent announced. “Secure from all intrusion, guarded by the trilobites and scorpions and nautiloids.”

“Does that mean we be prisoners?” Fleta asked nervously.

“By no means, mare,” the Adept replied. “I promised ye both a haven for love, and freedom to do as ye pleased. Ye be free to depart at any time—but naught can I promise an ye depart mine Demesnes, for my power be limited beyond.”

Mach’s powers of doubt came into play. “What is it you hope to gain from this?”

“There be only one known contact between the frames, now,” Translucent said. “That be through thy two selves, in the two frames. An thou use thy power o’ communication on our behalf, we shall establish liaison with our opposite numbers, the Contrary Citizens o’ Proton, and gain advantage. An we use this lever to unify the frames for full exploitation, our wealth and power will be magnified enormously. It be straight self-interest.”

“But I can contact only Bane, who is the son and heir of Stile, the Blue Adept of this frame,” Mach protested. “He opposes you, I’m sure, as my father Blue of Proton opposes the Contrary Citizens. If I work for you, as I think I must do in return for your hospitality, that is no guarantee that Bane will cooperate.”

“Aye, none at all,” Translucent agreed. “Yet it be halfway there, and mayhap for the sake o’ his love there he will elect to join with us as thou has done. We prate not o’ the nebulous good o’ future generations that may or may not come to pass; we proffer honest self-interest, ours and thine, and believe that this be the truest route to success in any endeavor.”

“I question this,” Mach said. “But for the sake of what you offer, which is the fulfillment of my love for Fleta, I will make my best effort to contact Bane and relay those messages you wish. I regard this as a deal made between us, not any signification of unity of interest beyond the deal.”

“Fairly spoken, rovot man,” Translucent said. “We require not thy conversion, in language or in mind, only that thou dost betray us not.”

“I will deliver your messages without distortion; my word on that is given. But I may not have complete control. If I should exchange again with Bane—”

“Then thine other self will be in my power, here,” Translucent said. “But I will not hold him; he hath no deal with me. He will be free to rejoin his own, and thy filly too. But thy loyalty in this lone respect will be mine. My messages, when it becomes possible to pass them through.”

“Agreed,” Mach said shortly. He was not completely pleased, but then he looked at Fleta and knew he had no choice. Their union would never be sanctioned by Stile or Neysa or any of those associated with them; only here with the Adverse Adepts could their love be honored.

The love between a robot and a unicorn.

The island—for so it seemed, though it was entirely under water—was a marvelous place. It was defined by a transparent dome similar to that of the cities of Proton, in which the air was good and the land dry. The dome held out the sea, and the creatures of the sea stayed clear because they were unable to swim or breathe here. Indeed, Mach and Fleta learned to make frequent circuits just inside the barrier, to spot sea snails, starfish, small trilobites and sea scorpions that had fallen through and were dying in the dryness. Mach fashioned a heavy pair of gloves so that he could handle such creatures safely; he simply picked them up and tossed them back through, for the barrier was pervious to matter other than air and water.

Once a fair-sized nautiloid blundered through, its two-meter-long shell lying dry, its eye and tentacles barely remaining in the water. Mach picked up the front section, and Fleta took the rear point, and they heaved it back into the sea. The nautiloid sank slowly through the water, as if not quite believing its luck, then jetted away, shell-first, its tentacles trailing. It was heavy enough in air, but a bubble of gas filled much of its shell, making it buoyant in water.

“Funny that there are no fish,” Fleta remarked.

Mach checked through the files of his memory. He had been educated in paleontology along with all the rest, but it had been a survey course, scant on details. “I think true fish did not develop until the late Silurian, perhaps 330 million years ago,” he said. “So this is about 70 million years too soon for them.”

“Latecomers,” she agreed wryly. “And how late be we, then?”

“Well, in the Mesozoic 200 million years ago the reptiles evolved, culminating in the dinosaurs of about 75 million years ago. Only after they passed did the mammals really come to the fore, though they had been around for 100 million or more years before. Man dates from only the last 10 million years or so.”

“We be very late!” she concluded.

“Very late,” he agreed. “And of course man’s expansion into space occurred within the past half-millennium, and his discovery of magic in the frame of Phaze—”

“Yet surely magic existed always,” she said. “Only we knew naught o’ its reality until we found the frames.”

“Perhaps so,” he agreed. “There have been legends of magic and magical creatures abounding on Earth for many thousands of years. We believe that the development of the vampires and werewolves—”

“And unicorns,” she said, shifting to her natural form. She was a pretty black creature, with golden socks on her hind legs and a long spiraled horn.

“And unicorns,” he said, jumping onto her back and catching hold of her glossy mane.

She played an affirmative double note on her horn. Each unicorn’s horn was musical, resembling a different instrument, and hers resembled the panpipes. This enabled her to play two notes at once, or even a duet with herself. All unicorns were natural musicians, but her music was special even for the species. She had had competitive aspirations, before her association with Mach caused the Herd to shun her.

“I wish I could change the way you do,” Mach said, reaching forward to tickle one of her ears.

She flicked her tail, stinging his back, and walked toward a grove standing in the interior of the island. There she abruptly lay down.

“Hey!” Mach exclaimed, tumbling off, still hanging on to her black mane.

But she changed back to girlform, so that he had a hold on her hair, and was not crushed by her mass. “No hay in this state,” she said, rolling into him.

He used his hold to bring her face in to his. He kissed her. “How glad I am that I rescued you!” he exclaimed.

“And glad I be that thou didst rescue me,” she responded. Then she tickled him on a rib.

They rolled and laughed and made explosively tender love, then sought a fruit tree for food. This island, however magically crafted and maintained, was a paradise, with many bearing trees. It was always moderately bright by day, with the sunlight coming down as if diffused by beneficial clouds, and moderately cool by night, for comfortable sleeping. There was a house on it, but they hardly used this, because Fleta had no need of it and Mach had no desire for what she did not share.

But as time passed, their satisfaction waned. “No offense to you,” Mach said cautiously, “but I find myself increasingly restive. Maybe it is because I am not accustomed to being alive.”

“Dost miss those naked girls o’ thy frame?” she inquired teasingly. She was naked herself, having no use for clothing, here. She could appear in girlform clothed or unclothed, as she chose. Her equine coat translated into a black cape, her socks to stockings, and her hooves to shoes. What happened to these items when she appeared naked, Mach had never ascertained; and she, teasingly, had never explained.

“No, that means nothing in Proton, only that they are serfs. But with you—”

“Have I not done my best to please thee, thy way?” she asked. “To have sex with thee when I be not in heat?” For she, being a unicorn mare, normally sought such interaction only when the breeding cycle demanded, and then with such intensity as to wear out any man. Her shape might be completely human, for this, but her underlying nature remained equine. The unicorns owed more to animal lineage than to human.

“Indeed you have!” he agreed. “But I want more.”

She frowned. “Mayhap another filly? Be thou eager to start a herd?”

He laughed. “No, of course not! You are all I want, and all I love! But—”

“Thou dost want me in other shape? I thought—”

“No, Fleta!” he exclaimed. “I want to marry you!”

She considered. “As the humans marry? Mating restricted one to the other, for all o’ their lives?”

“Yes.”

“But this be not the animal way, Mach. We have no need o’ such a covenant.”

“I think I do. I think of you as human.”

“I be not human,” she said firmly. “That be why thy folk—Bane’s folk—oppose our association o’ this manner. And my dam, Neysa—ne’er will she accept our union.”

He sighed. “I know it. And I think we cannot have a valid marriage without the approval of your kind or mine. So we are forced to cooperate with the Adverse Adepts, whose policies I think I should oppose.”

“I tried to free thee from this choice,” she reminded him.

“By suiciding!” he exclaimed. “You almost freed me from the need to exist!”

“Aye, I know that now,” she said contritely.

“So here we are in paradise, with no future.”

“Mayhap we could have a future, o’ a kind, if—”

He glanced sharply at her. “You know a way to persuade our relatives?”

“Mayhap. If we could but breed.”

“Breed? You mean, have offspring? That’s impossible.”

“Be it so?” she asked wistfully. “Not for aught would I dismay thee, Mach, but how nice it would be to have a foal o’ our own. Then might the relatives have to accept our union.”

“But human stock and animal stock—you may assume human form, but as you said, that doesn’t make you human. The genes know! They deal with the reality.”

“Yet must it have happened before. Surely the harpies derive from bird and human, and the vampires from bats and human, and the facility with which we unicorns learn the human semblance and speech suggests we share ancestry.”

“And the werewolves,” he agreed, intrigued. “If it happened before, perhaps it is possible again.”

“I really want thy foal,” she said.

“There must be magic that can make it feasible,” he said, the idea growing on him. “Perhaps Bane would be able to—”

“Not Bane!” she protested. “I want thine!”

“Uh, yes, of course. But I am no Adept. I’m a fledgling at magic. I don’t know whether—”

“Thou didst make the floating boat,” she pointed out. “Thou didst null the spell the Red Adept put on me. That be no minor magic.”

“In extremes, I may have done some good magic,” he admitted. “But I was lucky. For offspring I would need competence as well as luck.”

“Then make thyself a full Adept, as Bane is growing to be,” she urged. “Enchant thyself and me, that we may be fertile together. Success in that would make up for all else we lack.”

“You’re right!” he said with sudden conviction. “I must become Adept in my own right!” But almost immediately his doubt returned. “If only I knew how!”

“My Rovot Adept,” she said fondly. “Canst thou not practice?”

“Surely I can. But there are problems. No spell works more than once, so I cannot perfect any particular technique of magic without eliminating it for future use. That makes practice chancy; if I found the perfect spell, it might be too late to use it.”

“Yet if thou didst seek advice—”

“From the Adverse Adepts? I think I would not be comfortable doing that; it would give them too intimate a hold on me. I mean to do their bidding in communications between the frames, but I prefer to keep my personal life out of it.” Yet he was conscious as he spoke of the manner his personal life was responsible for their association with those Adepts; he was probably deluding himself about his ability to separate that aspect.

“Aye,” she agreed faintly. “Methinks that be best. Yet if thou couldst obtain the advice o’ a friendly Adept—”

“Who opposes our union?” he asked sharply.

“I be not sure that all oppose it.”

“Whom are you thinking of?”

“Red.”

“The troll? He’s not even human!”

“Neither be I,” she reminded him.

“Um, you may be right. He did help you try to suicide.” Mach had mixed feelings about that, too, though he knew the Red Adept had no ill will in the matter.

“He urged me not, but acceded to my will. If thou shouldst beseech him likewise—”

“It’s worth a try, certainly. But would it be safe to go there? Once we leave the protection of the Translucent Demesnes, we might have trouble returning. Our own side might prevent us.”

“I think not so, Mach. It be thy covenant they desire—thy agreement to communicate with thine other self. Thou wouldst no more do it for one side as for the other, an the agreements be wrong.”

He nodded. “Let’s think about it for a few days, then go if we find no reason not to.”

“Aye.” She kissed him, enjoying this human foible. Unicorns normally used lips mainly for gathering in food. The notion that human folk found the seeming eating of each other pleasurable made her bubble with mirth. Sometimes she burst out laughing in mid-kiss. But she kissed remarkably well, and he enjoyed holding a laughing girlform.

Before they decided, they had a visitor. It was a wolf, a female, trotting through the water to the island and passing through the barrier. Mach viewed her with caution, but Fleta was delighted.

“Furramenin!” Fleta exclaimed.

Then the wolf became a buxom young woman, and Mach recognized her also. The werebitch had guided him from the Pack to the Flock, where the lovely vampiress Suchevane had taken over. The truth was that all Fleta’s animal friends were lovely, in human form and in personality; had he encountered any of them as early and intimately as he had Fleta, he might have come to love them as he did her. He accepted this objectively, but not emotionally; Fleta was his only love.

“I come with evil tidings,” the bitch said. This appellation was no affront, any more than “woman” was for a human female. Indeed, the term “woman” might be used as an insult to a bitch. “The Adept let me pass, under truce.”

They settled under a spreading nut tree. “Some mischief to my Herd?” Fleta inquired worriedly. She was tolerated by the Herd, but no longer welcome; still, she cared for the others, and they cared for her.

The bitch smiled briefly. “Nay, not that! It relates to thy golem man.”

Fleta glanced at Mach. “The rovot be not true to me?” she asked with fleeting mischief.

“He be from Proton-frame. The Adept Stile says it makes an—an imbalance, that grows worse the more time passes, till the frames—” She seemed unable to handle the concept involved.

“Till the frames destroy themselves?” Mach asked, experiencing an ugly chill.

“Aye,” Furramenin whispered. “Be that possible?”

“I very much fear it is,” Mach said. “In the days of our parents, many folk crossed the curtain between frames, and Protonite was mined and not Phazite, generating an imbalance. They finally had to transfer enough Phazite to restore the balance, and separate the frames permanently so that this could not happen again. That depleted the power of magic here, and reduced the wealth of Proton there, but had to be done. Too great an imbalance does have destructive potential. But I would not have thought that the mere exchange of two selves would constitute such a threat.”

The bitch looked at the mare. “Be he making sense?” Furramenin asked.

“I take it on faith that he be,” Fleta replied.

“If Stile says it, he surely knows,” Mach said. “I realize that the two of you are not technically minded, but I have had enough background in such matters to appreciate the rationale. They must be able to detect a growing imbalance, and I must be the cause.”

“But what does that mean for thee?” Fleta asked.

“It means that every hour I remain in Phaze, and that Bane remains in Proton, is bad for the frames, and could lead to the destruction of both frames. We must exchange back.”

“No!” Fleta cried. “I love thee; thou hast no right to rescue me from suicide only to relegate me to misery without thee! Didst thou speak me the triple Thee for this?”

“The triple Thee?” the werebitch asked, awed. That was the convention of Phaze; when spoken by one to another and echoed by the splash of absolute conviction, it was an utterly binding commitment.

“No right at all!” Mach agreed, feeling a pang. “Yet if remaining with you means destruction for us both, and the frames themselves, what can I do? We lose each other either way.”

“Nay, there be proffered compromise,” Furramenin said. “That be the completion o’ my message: an thou agree to exchange back for equal periods, that the frames may recover somewhat, truce will be extended for that.”

“The families accept our union?” Fleta asked eagerly.

“Nay. They merely recognize an impasse, and seek to prevent further damage while some solution be negotiated.”

“If I return to Proton for a time, they will accede to equal time here with Fleta?” Mach asked. “A month there, a month here, with no interference?”

“Aye, that be the offer,” the bitch said.

“That seems to be a good offer,” Mach said to Fleta.

She gazed stonily into the ground, resisting the notion of any separation at all. Unicorns were known to be stubborn, and though Fleta was normally the brightest and sweetest of creatures, now this aspect was showing. Her dam, Neysa, was reputed to be more so.

Mach looked helplessly at Furramenin. The werebitch responded with a shrug that rippled the deep cleavage of her bodice. “Mayhap thou couldst offer her something to make up for thy separation,” she murmured.

Mach snapped his fingers. “Offspring!” he exclaimed.

Fleta looked up, interested.

“Grant me this temporary separation from you,” he said, “and on my return I shall make my most serious effort to find a way to enable us to have a baby, and shall pursue it until successful.”

They waited. Slowly Fleta thawed, though she did not speak.

Mach addressed the bitch again. “What of the Adverse Adepts? Do they accede to such a truce?”

The watery bubble appeared, floating at head height.

“Aye,” the Translucent Adept said. “Our observation in this respect marches that o’ the other side. The frames are being eroded. We profit not, an the mechanism o’ our contact destroy our realm. But the two o’ ye can communicate regardless o’ the frames occupied. Hold to thy agreement with us, and we care not which frame thou dost occupy.”

“I cannot implement that agreement unless my other self concurs,” Mach reminded him.

“And the other side cannot profit from the connection unless thou dost concur,” Translucent agreed. “The impasse remains—but an Bane appear here, mayhap we can negotiate with him.”

“I suppose that is the way it must be,” Mach said. “I must seek my other self and offer to exchange with him. I hope I can devise a spell to locate him.”

“Surely thou canst,” Translucent agreed, fading out.

“I must return to my Pack,” Furramenin said. She became the wolf, and exited at a dogtrot.

Mach pondered. To do magic, he had to devise a bit of rhyme and deliver it in singsong. That would implement it, but the important part was his conception and will. If he wished for a “croc” verbally, he could conjure an item of pottery or a container of human refuse or a large toothed reptile, depending on his thought. He had very little experience with magic, and was apt to make awkward errors, but he was learning.

What he wanted was an unerring way to locate his other self. He did not want to risk any modification of his own perceptions, because if that went wrong, he could discover himself blind or deaf or worse. But if he had an object like a compass that always pointed to Bane’s location on Proton, he could follow it, and if he made some error in Grafting it, he could correct it when the error became apparent. Was there any type of compass that rhymed with “self”?

He quested through the archives of his Proton education, but came up with nothing. How much easier it would be if that word “croc” fit! Rock, mock, smock, lock, flock—

Then it came to him: delf. Delf was colored, glazed earthenware made for table use in the middle ages of Earth. A kind of crockery, not special, except that it proffered the rhyme he needed. If he could adapt pottery to his purpose…

He worked it out in his mind, then tried a spell: “Give me delf to find myself,” he singsonged, concentrating on a glazed cup.

The cup appeared in his hand. The glaze was bright: brighter on one side than the other. Mach turned the cup, but the highlight remained on the east side.

“I think I have it,” he said, relieved. He had been afraid he would have to try several times before he got it right. Apparently the effort he had made to work out both rhyme and visualization ahead of time had paid off. He could do magic adequately if he just took proper pains with it.

“All I have to do is follow the bright side, and I should intersect Bane.” For Bane’s location in the frame of Proton would match the spot indicated in the frame of Phaze; the geography of the two worlds was identical, except for changes wrought by man. The separation of the two was of another nature than physical; the two overlapped, and were the same in alternate aspects, just as many of the folk were the same on each. Otherwise it would not have been possible for Mach and Bane to exchange identities, with Mach’s machine mind taking over Bane’s living body in Phaze, and Bane’s mind taking over Mach’s robot body in Proton.

Fleta did not respond. She was evidently still pensive because of the prospect of even a temporary separation. But he believed she could accept it in due course. Even unicorn stubbornness yielded on occasion to necessity.

Or did it? The following day did not ameliorate her reservation. Fleta did not want to go. She agreed that the compromise was valid and the measured separation necessary, but she made no effort to mask her dislike of it. “How can I be sure thou willst return, once thou art gone?” she grumbled.

“Of course I will return!” he protested. “I love you!”

“I mean that the Citizens or Adepts will not let thee back. They interfered before; hast thou forgotten?”

“It was the Adverse Adepts and the Contrary Citizens who interfered,” he reminded her. “Now they support us.”

“Until they find some other way to achieve their purpose,” she muttered. “Mach, I like this not! I fear for thee, and for me. I fear deception and ill will. I want only to be with thee fore’er. E’en if we must constantly kiss.”

“So do I,” he said. “But I am willing to make some sacrifice now, in the hope that things will improve. Perhaps our families will agree to our union, in the course of this truce, so that you will be able to return to your Herd without being shunned.”

A glimmer of hope showed. “Aye, perhaps,” she agreed.

“Now I must follow the highlight on the delf. I hope you will come with me, so that our separation can be held to the very minimum.”

She tried to resist, but could not. She converted to her black unicorn form, proffering a ride for him.

Mach mounted her, and for a moment reached down around her neck to hug her. “Thank you, Fleta.”

She twitched an ear at him in an expression of annoyance, but it lacked force.

They left the island, passing through the water as the bitch had. The Ordovician flora and fauna ignored them, having gotten to know them. Mach knew that it would have been otherwise, had the Translucent Adept not invited them; these creatures might be several hundred million years old, geologically, but this was their realm, and they were competent within it. So Fleta’s hooves avoided trampling the sponges and fernlike graptolites, and the squidlike nautiloids watched without reaction. Translucent had promised a place where Mach and Fleta could dwell safely together; this was certainly that!

They emerged to the normal land, and the past was gone; it existed only in Translucent’s Demesnes, and these were in water. Now Fleta could gallop freely, knowing the general if not the specific terrain. They traveled for a day, avoiding contact with other creatures, and camped for the night by a small stream. Fleta changed to girlform so that they could make love, having thawed to that extent, then returned to mareform to graze while Mach slept alone.

She was avoiding him, he realized. Not overtly, but significantly, by spending most of her time with him in her natural form. She denied the implication by assuming girlform for his passion, but he knew that this was tokenism; she felt no sexual need when not in heat, and did it only to please him. So he was left with no complaint to make, yet the awareness of their subtle estrangement.

She didn’t want him to return to Proton. She had agreed to it, knowing the necessity, but not with her heart. Perhaps she felt he had compromised in this respect too readily. She lacked the type of training he had had in Proton, that made it easy for him to accept the rationale of frames imbalance. She was a creature of the field and forest, while he was a creature of city and machine. Perhaps the root of his love for her lay in that. Her world represented life, for him, and that was immeasurably precious.

She thought he sought some pretext to leave her, after having won her love. How wrong she was in that suspicion! He sought a way to make their liaison permanent, recognizing the barriers that existed.

He gazed out into the night, where she grazed in pained aloofness. How could he satisfy her that her hurt was groundless? He realized that the differences between them were more than machine and animal, or technology and magic; they were male and female. He had assumed that rationality governed; she assumed that emotion governed.

And didn’t it? Had he acted rationally, he would never have fallen into love with her!

“Thee, thee, thee,” he whispered.

A ripple of light spread out from him, causing the very night to wave and the stars overhead to glimmer in unison. It was the splash, again, faint because this was not its first invocation, but definite.

Suddenly Fleta was there, in girlform, in his embrace.

She had received it, and must have flown, literally, to rejoin him. She said no word, but her tears were coursing. There was no separation of any type between them now.

On the third day they caught up to Bane. He was evidently in Hardom, the Proton city-dome that was at the edge of the great southern Purple Mountain range. In Phaze it was the region that harpies clustered. Thus the Proton name, reflecting the parallelism: HARpy DOMe, Hardom. But there were no harpies in Proton, of course, other than figuratively.

They paused to pay a call on the harpy they had befriended during their flight from the Adverse Adepts and their minions the goblins. That had been before the Translucent Adept’s intercession and their change of sides. This was Phoebe, who had by virtue of Mach’s fouled-up magic gained a horrendous hairdo that she liked screechingly well. It had enabled her to assume leadership among her kind, having before been outcast because of an illness. Fleta had cured that illness, which was the real basis of the unusual friendship; harpies generally had no interest in human or in unicorn acquaintance.

Phoebe was perched in her bower. Her head remained the absolute fright-wig that Mach had crafted, with radiating spikes of hair that made her reminiscent of a gross sea urchin. “Aye!” she screeched. “The rovot and the ‘corn. I blush to ‘fess it, but glad I be to see ye again!”

“We were passing, and thought we would pay our respects,” Mach explained. “I must return to my own frame for a time.”

“So? Methought thou didst have a thing for the ‘corn.”

“I do. I will return to her. But there is business I must attend to meanwhile.”

“Be there any aid I can render?” Phoebe asked. “Ye be mine only friends among thy kinds.”

“You have done more than enough for us. We merely wished to greet you again, and be on our way.”

“As thou dost wish,” the harpy said, shrugging. “But let me give thee another feather to summon me, in case thou shouldst have need o’ me.” She plucked it from her tail with a claw and extended it to him.

“Thank you,” Mach said, touched. Harpies were in a general way abominable creatures, but this one they had befriended seemed quite human. Probably the others would be too, if the animosity between species could be overcome. He tucked the feather into a pocket.

“Yet it be late,” Phoebe continued. “The night be cool, and my nest be warm. If ye two would stay the eve—”

Mach exchanged a glance with Fleta. This nest had fond memories for them. They decided to stay.

In the morning they continued to the spot where Bane was, on the edge of the plain just north of the Purple Mountains. The glow on the delf cup became so bright it was as if the sunlight were reflecting from it, but the sky was overcast. When the glow spread to circle the cup, Mach knew that this was where he could overlap his opposite self.

He turned to Fleta, who now changed to girlform, wearing her cape and shoes. Her mane became her lustrous black hair, a trifle wild and wholly beautiful. He embraced her and kissed her. “You must explain to Bane, if he doesn’t already know,” he said.

Mutely, she nodded. They disengaged.

It was time. But though he had to leave her, he sought some way to make the parting less absolute. He wanted to say something, or to give her something. But he could think of nothing to say, and had nothing to give.

His hand went to his pocket, reflexively. His fingers found the feather.

“Fleta—this may be foolish—but I want to give you something in token of what I will try to give you in the future. I have nothing, but…”

“There be no need, Mach,” she said bravely.

“This.” He brought out the feather.

She looked at it. Suddenly her laughter bubbled up past her bosom in the way it had, and burst out of her mouth. “A dirty harpy pinion!” she exclaimed.

“Well, technically it’s a tail feather. A pinion is from the wing.”

“Only a rovot would be thus at a time like this!” she exclaimed. She flung her arms around him and kissed him fiercely. Then she withdrew, and gravely accepted the feather. “But it be a good thought, Phoebe’s and thine. Mayhap I will have need o’ her. Certainly Bane will not.” She tucked it into a pocket in her cape.

It was foolishness of a sort that he would not have indulged in, as a robot. Therefore he valued it now. “Farewell—for now. My love.”

He stood where the cup indicated, and concentrated. Yes—he felt the presence of his other self. Now all he needed was to will the magic for the exchange, assuming that Bane joined him in the effort. “Let me gain the body of Bane,” he singsonged, knowing that the doggerel was only a token, hardly necessary for this act.

He felt the magic of the exchange taking hold. Bane was cooperating. In a moment they would—

Fleta flung herself back at him, clasping him tightly. “Thee, thee, thee!” she cried, her bravery abolished.

There was a ripple around them. Then the exchange happened. There was something strange about it; this was no ordinary event. But it was too late to reverse it; whatever was to happen, was happening.