Out of Phaze (14 page)

The unicorn stomped about, making sure that all the birds were gone. Then she leaped back toward the path, and the sound of her retreating hoofbeats faded.

Mach relaxed. That creature had rescued him before, then disappeared; she had just done it again, and left again. Evidently she had no ulterior motive. Maybe she was just a guardian of the path, routing whatever monsters intruded on it. That was fortunate for him!

He took a large leaf with which to clean himself off, then pulled his remaining clothing together as well as he could. He was even more ragged than before, but after the scrape with the harpies, he knew when he was well off. He made his way to the path.

Fleta was coming back along it. “Oh, Mach!” she exclaimed, spying him. “I feared for thy safety!”

“So did I,” he admitted. “But the unicorn saved me.”

“Aye; I summoned her. These be the Herd Demesnes.”

“You summoned the unicorn? How could you do that?”

She shrugged. ‘There be more to magic than conjuration. That creature is no enemy of thine, Mach.”

“Apparently not. But I wish I understood her live.”

“Who can e’er know the true heart o’ another?”

“Who, indeed!”

She peered at his outfit. “I see—“

“Never mind what you see!” he snapped, trying to adjust a swatch of cloth.

“. . . that thou hast lost thy leaves,” she finished, returning to her normal impishness.

They walked on along the path. It took them east for perhaps two kilometers, then debouched onto a broad grassy plain. Mach stood and stared.

“Hast ne’er seen grazing land before?” Fleta inquired.

“Never before,” he agreed. “This is marvelous! This whole world is green and growing!”

“And thine is not?”

“Mine is not,” he agreed. “Outside the domes there is only barren sand and air that living people can’t breathe.”

“Air not to be breathed? How can that be?”

“Pollution. The mines and factories pumped their wastes into the ground and water and air, until virtually all natural life was extinguished. The only suitable environment for life is maintained within the domes.”

She shook her head. “Methinks I would not like thy world!”

“I never thought about it. But now that I’ve seen this—I think I do like it better than Proton.” Actually, it was life he was coming to like, despite its inconveniences. He had never before experienced the sheer feeling of it. Even the discomfort was a pleasure of a sort, because it was an aspect of the new responsiveness of his body. When he made an error and suffered pain, that represented a far more effective feedback than the cautionary circuits he had known. A robot, for example, could chew a hole in his own finger, and some did, because there was no pain. That was unlikely to happen with a living person.

“Dost like the taste of thy finger?” Fleta inquired teasingly.

Mach jerked it away from his mouth. Had he been about to test that pain reflex?

“Thou’rt funny,” she said.

“And you are lovely,” he said. He reached for her, and she did not avoid him, and he brought her in to him, and she did not hold back. He kissed her, and she kissed back.

“Ah, Mach, this be foolishness,” she said. “But I do like thee. I shall miss thee sorely when thou returnest to thy world.”

Mach thought again of Doris, the cyborg girl with whom he had kept company. He had evidently liked her better than she liked him. He had known Fleta less than a day, yet already he felt a greater emotion for her than he had for Doris. That could be accounted for by his living system, whose functions and emotions could be stirred on an involuntary basis. But it seemed to him, objectively, that Fleta was a nicer girl than Doris, even after all reasonable allowances were made for the differences between their frames and their states.

“Fleta, is it really forbidden for us—for you and me— to like each other?”

“Mach, I think it is. I—there are things about me that—an ye knew of them, I think thou wouldst not hold me this close.”

“Yet you know of them—and you do not object?”

“Mayhap I be more foolish than thee.” And she kissed him again. The kiss became intense, and he knew that whatever else might be the case, her feeling for him was genuine. She believed that he would not like her, once he knew her secret; he doubted that this would be the case, but the knowledge that he could not remain with her after he learned how to return to his own frame restrained him. She was forbidden, not because there was anything wrong about her, but because he was no of her world. He found that deeply disturbing.

“Be these tears thine or mine?” she inquired.

“Mine,” he said. “My first.”

“Nay, mine too, and I think not my last.”

“Fleta, I like you because you are a lovely girl who has helped me face this strange world. I lost my girlfriend in the other frame. Therefore my foolishness is understandable. But if you know we are not for each other, why do you waste your time with me?”

“I should not answer,” she said.

He smiled sadly. “But I think you will.”

“I will. My—my mother loved thy father—I me; Bane’s father, but always knew he must wed Bane’s mother, the Lady Blue. And so it was, and rightly so.”

‘The Lady Blue?” he asked. “Citizen Blue is my father.”

“Aye. He married first the Lady Blue, and then he died, and then he went to thy frame and begot thee. Adept Stile stayed here and begot Bane. And I, even as my dam, seem partial to thy line. Bane knew better; ‘twas e’er a game with him. But thou dost not know, and—and O, I do thee such wrong!”

“Then tell me the wrong you are doing, so I can judge for myself!”

She shook her head. “Too soon thou willst know, and then it will end. I lack the courage of my mother; cannot tell thee yet.”

“You are married to another!” he exclaimed.

“Nay, Mach!”

“Then I am! Or about to be. Something like that.”

“Nay, we both be free, that way.”

‘Then I just don’t understand!”

“For that give I thanks.” She kissed him again, then separated. “We must on to the Blue Demesnes. But it be noon; we must eat, ere we grow weak from hunger.”

“You’re changing the subject!” he said.

“Aye.”

“I wish you would just tell me, and let me judge.”

“What dost thou think of animals?” she inquired.

“Animals?” You mean like—like dragons?”

“Aye. And pigheads and such.”

“I don’t see the relevance, but very well, I’ll answer. I’m a robot, so I haven’t had much experience with animals of any type. But I know they are living creatures, and so they have needs and feelings, and that is to be respected. That unicorn, for example; twice she has saved my life, but I don’t know her motive. But regardless, she’s a beautiful creature, and I respect her view of her life. As long as an animal doesn’t attack me, I—well, what are animals except other kinds of living creatures? The least of them has a greater personal reality than I do.”

She embraced him again. ‘Thou’rt lovely, Mach.”

“Now will you answer my question?”

She smiled. “Nay.”

“But I answered yours!”

“Aye.” She disengaged, giving him no further answer. He sighed with frustration. There was so much he had yet to learn about the ways and motives of living creatures, Fleta especially.

She found them more fruit, and they ate. Then they trekked north across the plain. Mach’s living legs were tiring, but he did not complain; after all, if delicate Fleta could keep the pace, so could he.

Progress was good, because of the open and level ground. But in midafternoon Fleta paused. “Mach, we have a choice,” she said. “The most direct path to the Blue Demenses be straight north from here, but the most secure path be toward the east.”

“What is the difference in time?”

“We might be there by nightfall, an we take the left through the Lattice. An we take the other, we must night on the trail, and arrive tomorrow noon.”

Mach was tempted to specify the right path, so as to be the night with her, but discipline prevailed. ‘The left, then.”

She nodded, and he realized that she had hoped he would choose the other path. He was coining to understand her quite well by the nuances of her gestures. But his machine heritage provided him a type of discipline that many living folk lacked.

They went left, and within the hour reached the Lattice. This turned out to be a huge network of cracks in the earth. At the fringe the cracks were shallow, but soon they became formidable, several centimeters across and quite deep, extending in endless zigzags. They had to step carefully to avoid wedging their feet in them.

The cracks became larger yet, until they were chasms in themselves. “Now must we be silent,” Fleta said.

“Silent? Why?”

“So as not to rouse the demons below.”

Mach peered down into a crack. Demons down there? After the monsters he had already seen, he didn’t want any more.

They proceeded to a region where the cracks were so extensive that they covered more area than the ground did. Mach found this nervous business; one slip could plunge him into the darkness below. But Fleta evidently knew where she was going.

They came to a dead end. Ahead and to either side the crevices closed them in; only behind was there a jagged path.

Fleta gestured. Mach saw that the path resumed beyond a narrow part of the crack. They would have to jump.

Fleta showed the way. She took a running start, then leaped, landing neatly on the other side. She moved back out of the way, giving him room.

Mach followed suit. He had trained for jumping in the Game, and this body was the same as his own, apart from the fact that it was alive. It was healthy and responsive. He could handle this readily, even when tired.

They went on, winding through the maze. Mach wondered how such a configuration of terrain had come about. Was there an equivalent feature in Proton? He had never really explored the exterior world there; now he wished he had.

They came to another jump. Mach realized that Fleta knew exactly where the gaps were narrowest; otherwise they would soon have been lost amidst impassable cracks.

But just as she was about to leap, a grotesque head popped up from the chasm. “Hhaarr!” it growled.

“The demons!” Fleta exclaimed with dismay. “Me-thought we would not rouse them!”

Other heads appeared from the cracks to the sides and rear. The two of them were surrounded!

“Seems more like a trap to me,” Mach muttered. “We weren’t making a lot of noise.”

Now the demons were scrambling to the surface. Each had a body as misshapen as its head. Short legs, huge long arms, bulbous chest-barrel, horns and tail. And gaping mouths bulging with yellow teeth.

“There be no reasoning with demons,” Fleta said. ‘They eat our kind.”

Mach did not see much hope, but he was ready to fight. “Stand back to back with me,” he said, drawing his axe. “I’ll club any that come close.”

‘That will not stop them; they feel not much pain. O, Mach, I fear the time has come to let the secret be known.”

“Your secret?” he asked, watching warily as the circle of demons closed in about them. “I think it had better wait until we have fought off this crowd.” But he had severe misgivings about that; each demon was approximately his own size, and there were many of them. Unless he could figure out an effective spell. What rhymed with “demon”?

“I be the unicorn,” Fleta said. ‘Thou must ride me to safety. Now!”

“You—what?” But as he looked at her, she vanished. In her place was the black unicorn who had saved him twice before.

The closest demon lunged. Mach swung his axe, catching the creature in the face. The blade cut right through, splitting the head in two—but there was no blood, and the demon kept coming. Now he understood Fleta’s reluctance to fight these things; they were truly inhuman.

He dodged the demon, then leaped to the back of the unicorn and grabbed a handful of black mane. ‘Take off!”

She started moving. A demon grabbed for her, but the long horn whipped about and speared the thing, shoving it back and over into the chasm behind it. Then the unicorn started trotting back along the path, where there were fewer demons; progress forward was impossible, because there was a phalanx of the creatures.

The demons pursued, but they could not match the velocity of the unicorn. In a moment the two of them were clear.

But more demons were climbing from the cracks back along the path. There seemed to be an endless number of them. Another phalanx of them formed up before the other jump, grinning.

But now the unicorn had velocity and inertia. She charged straight into them, bowling them over. At the brink she leaped, carrying Mach and a clutching demon with her. Mach twisted about and clubbed the demon on the head; when that had no effect, he chopped at the arm it had clutching the mane, and severed it. Then the demon dropped away, leaving the hand and part of the arm still locked on.

Now the crevices became too small to hide demons, and that threat abated. The unicorn charged on, her hooves striking the firm places with precision. She knew what she was doing; she must have traveled this route many times before!