Robot Adept (2 page)

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 ex ansion 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 per suade 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.