Out Of Phaze Part 24

Fleta's mouth dropped open. Then Brown caught on. 'Thou dost fashion the illusion of eating, to go with the illusion of life for the golem."

Stile smiled. "It gets harder to deceive thee, Brown. Why didst thou send thy messenger?"

"This be not thy son, Bane, but his other self from Proton, Mach," Brown said. "He needs to know how to return to Proton."

Now Stile did a doubletake. He stared at Bane. Then he glanced at Brown. "May I?"

"Feel free," she replied.

Stile sang something under his breath. There seemed to be a play of force around Mach, but nothing else happened.

"So it be true," Stile breathed. "Contact between the frames, after twenty years!"

Brown relaxed. Evidently she had retained a certain skepticism about Mach's claim, despite her friendly treatment of him. But it seemed that Stile's magic had verified it.

"Fleta brought me here," Mach said. "We were pursued by agents of Adverse Adepts."

Stile nodded. "So that was why it came not to mine attention! They used no magic. Methought thou wast merely having a private fling with thine old companion, and I knew my son could handle the like of goblins."

"I managed to work a little magic, but it was clumsy, especially at first," Mach said. "Without Fleta, I would have been captured."

"I brought him here because I thought they would not be blocking off this castle as they were the Blue Demesnes," Fleta said. "But I could not tell him how to return to Proton."

"How didst thou come to this frame?" Stile inquired of Mach.

"I willed it-and suddenly it happened."

"But thou couldst not will thyself back?"

Mach shook his head. "It didn't seem to work that way."

Stile considered. "Where did it happen?"

"In a glade near the swamp."

Stile looked at Fleta. "What glade?"

Fleta gave a more accurate geographic description, and added that Bane had gone there several times before the exchange was made.

"Then Bane was trying for this?"

"Yes," Mach said.

"Thy position in Proton-how did it relate to thy point of arrival in Phaze?"

"Why, they were the same," Mach said.

"Then thy body occupied the same spot his did-one in each frame."

"Yes, I think so."

"That must be the key! To overlap the position, then will the exchange. Mayhap he facilitated it with a spell."

Mach sat amazed. Of course that was the key, suddenly so obvious! To overlap, so there was no physical motion required. And when he had walked away from that spot, the overlap no longer occurred, so they couldn't change back.

"I did it!" he exclaimed ruefully. "I left the spot, trapping him there without even realizing!"

"Then perhaps he is trying to locate thee, again," Stile said. "Does he have a mechanism for that?"

"I don't know," Mach said. "But I think so, because he knew where to be, while I did not realize that location mattered. But if so, it may not work in Proton."

"He would have used another spell," Stile agreed. "Or perhaps the two of you are attuned to each other. If thou dost try to tune in on him-"

"I never thought of that!" Mach exclaimed, feeling quite stupid. He sat still and concentrated, thinking of Bane. Where are you, my other self?

He felt the faintest of stirrings, as though he had reached something far distant. But he couldn't be sure.

"Try it again, periodically," Stile suggested. "I think this be a thing no other can do for thee." He leaned forward. "But in the meantime, there be things we must grasp. This be contact between the frames, when we thought it impossible. A psychic rapport between the two of you-mayhap a unique one. I see now why the Adepts be after thee; they knew before I did, and seek contact with Proton."

"Yes," Mach agreed. "They want me to carry messages, and have offered me anything I want."

Stile nodded. "We all be starved for news! But thou- if thou be the son of mine other self, who is thy mother?"

"Sheen."

"Sheen be the best and loveliest of women, but she also be a robot. Do robots bear babies now?"

"No. I am a robot too." Quickly Mach explained.

"Yet thou dost resemble Bane, physically?"

"Precisely, as far as I can tell."

"And thou dost have a soul, for now it be here."

"And his is in my robot body," Mach agreed.

"I suspected that a machine could have a soul when I knew Sheen," Stile said, and his eyes looked far beyond the chamber. "Now it seems we have the proof." He shrugged. "Tell thy mother I remember her, and be glad for her fortune in marrying Blue." Then he left, and only the golem remained, brown and wooden, the melting ice cream untouched before it.

"He seemed not much interested in thee!" Fleta said indignantly.

Mach smiled. "He was interested. He is like my father; only a small fraction of the thought and emotion in him leaks out. I'm glad to have met him, and I shall carry back his message."

"Methinks Stile was a bit too restrained," Brown remarked. "He will be watching thee, Mach."

"I know it." Mach looked at Fleta. "I think our time together is limited, now that I have the key to my return."

"Aye," she agreed faintly.

"I will provide you with a suite here, until the time," Brown said.

It was a nice suite. "She understands," Fleta whispered.

"She understands," Mach agreed. "She may have had some forbidden love of her own."

For the first time, they spent a night in human quarters, without fear of pursuit or discovery, and it was sheer delight. They made love with the desperation born of the knowledge of coming separation.

"But surely I need not stay always in Proton," Mach murmured. "If I could come here once, I could come here again, at least for a visit, to see you."

"Aye," she breathed with sudden hope. "If Bane agreed. I don't know how he would feel-"

"Bane be a good man. He would do it." They lay in silence for a time. Then he asked: "You told the Brown Adept that you love me."

"I had no right," she said.

"Surely it has happened before! With animals being able to a.s.sume human form, and sharing human intelligence-has no unicorn, or werewolf, or vampire ever before loved a human being?"

"Oh, aye," she said. "But it be discouraged for aught but play."

"Play-as in bed? But not serious, as in love?"

"Aye. Love be special."

"Surely it is! And until I occupied this human body, I think play was all I ever experienced. But now I believe I love you, Fleta, and I don't see how that can be wrong. I know what you are, and if you love me too-"

She shook her head. "Mach, mayhap there be secret love twixt our kinds on occasion, but ne'er open. Sometimes a human man will take a wereb.i.t.c.h as a concubine, and she would do it not if she loved him not. Sometimes an animal be so fetching, like Suchevane the vampiress, that she could take a human man."

"Who?"

"Suchevane. She be the loveliest of her kind. Methinks Bane played a game with her, too." She grimaced. "But thou dost have no need to meet her," she concluded firmly.

"So animals and human beings never marry."

"Nor speak the three," she agreed.

"The three? Three whats?"

"When thy kind-and sometimes other kinds-bespeak true love, the one will address the other three times, and then there be no doubt."

"Three times? You mean if I said 'I love you' three times, then you would believe me?"

"Thee," she said. "But say it not, Mach."

"Thee? But I don't talk that way."

"Aye. Thou art not of Phaze."

"Thee-three times?"

"Say it not!" she repeated. "This be ne'er offhand!"

"I don't understand."

"Aye," she murmured, and kissed him.

In the morning they joined Brown for breakfast, then went out for a walk around the Demesnes. Mach paused to concentrate on his other self-and felt Bane much more definitely than before. "He's closer!" he said. "He must be tuning in on me, making his way here."

"Aye," she said, her lip trembling.

He kissed her. "I will return!"

"I will wait for thee."

They were coming into a pleasant flowery garden, whose blooms were all shades of brown. "I'm getting to like the color," Mach remarked.

"These be grown on the best fertilizer there be," Fleta said.

"Oh? What's that?"

"Unicorn manure."

He laughed, thinking it a joke. But she was serious. "When my dam, Neysa, met Brown, and Brown helped Stile, the unicorns agreed to provide her fertilizer for her garden, and so it has been e'er since."

That reminded him of her nature. She had not a.s.sumed her natural form since their arrival at the Brown Demesnes. "Fleta, before we part, would you-" She glanced askance at him.

"Would you play me a tune? I think your music is lovely."

"But to do that-"

"What is wrong with your natural form?" She hesitated. It was obvious that she preferred to relate to him in the human fashion. Then she shrugged, and became herself, with her glossy black coat and golden socks. She played a melody on her horn, and then a two-part tune, the pan-pipes playing counterpoint. How she could do that he was not sure; he a.s.sumed that magic a.s.sisted it. Perhaps the high notes were played at the narrow tip of the horn, and the low ones at the broader base. But the music was as pretty as he could imagine. He would always remember her for this, for her sound as much as for her appearance.

She finished, and changed back to girl form. 'Thou dost value me only for my melody," she teased him.

"I would value you just as much if-" Mach looked around, seeking a suitable metaphor for the occasion. They were near a pleasant pool, at whose brown-mud border fat frogs squatted. "If your horn sounded like the croaking of frogs."

She laughed, but there was an angry croak from the nearest frog, who evidently had overheard. In a moment all the frogs had the message, and were glaring at him.

"Methinks thou didst misspeak thyself," Fleta said, suppressing a merry chortle in the way she had, at bosom-level.

Mach was abashed. It had never occurred to him that the frogs would understand. "I-"

"Croak!" the largest frog said witheringly. Then it turned about, facing the other frogs. They settled themselves in a ring around the pool, at the water's edge. Then they croaked.

Some had low croaks, and some had high croaks, while most were in the middle ranges. They croaked in sequence-and suddenly a melody emerged, each croak a note. More than that: it was the same melody Fleta had just played on her horn, in both its parts. The frogs were duplicating it in all its detail, and in this mode it had another kind of beauty, as great in its fashion as the original had been.

The frogs completed it, and were silent. They waited.

Mach knew he was on the spot. In his ignorance he had affronted the frogs, without cause. He owed them an apology.