Out of Phaze (21 page)

“Are you all right, Fleta?” he asked nervously.

“I think I must leave thee now,” she said tightly. “I had hoped to see thee safely o’er the mountain, but that must needs wait.”

“Fleta, where do you have to go?” he asked.

“To the herd I was destined for, before I met thee.”

“Well, of course you can go there, if you wish! But why right now?”

“Mayhap I can go, and return in a few days to see thee the rest of thy journey. Thou shouldst be safe here.”

“Well, yes, if that’s the way you feel! But—“

“It be fairest to thee.” She looked about. “There be fruit trees ahead, and so long as thou dost not go east to the river, and dost avoid being spotted from the air—“

“Fleta, please tell me why! Have I given you some offense? If I am too much of a burden—if I’m not doing enough—“

“I see I must needs tell thee. I must go to the stallion to be bred.”

“Right now?”

She made a wan smile. “As soon’s I can reach him. It be a fair distance.”

“Another long run? You’ll wear yourself out! Can’t it wait for a more convenient time?”

“Mach, must I speak more directly than I like. With thy kind, breeding be at convenience. Not so with my kind. When a mare dost come into heat, she must be bred; she doth have no choice. Be she in the wrong herd, the local stallion must do it; no choice for him either. That be why I could not approach mine own Herd in this time.”

Mach remembered what he had learned of horses and other animals. The females came into heat at intervals, and bred compulsively. They had no interest in such activity at any other time, but were desperate for it then. Fleta was an animal and so followed this pattern. She had seemed so much like a human being, especially because she had remained most of the time in her human form, that this aspect of her nature had not occurred to him.

“Now at last I understand why you had no concern when we went naked,” he said. “When you—saw me aroused. You knew that—that breeding occurs only within a creature’s own species. So you had no interest in—“ He found himself beginning to flush, and didn’t care to discuss it further.

“That be but a half truth, Mach,” she said. “I would fain have played with thee as I did with Bane in years o’ yore. But it be not seemly, when the parties are of age to know better.”

“Yes, of course. We are two different species. There can be no such thing between us.” He sighed. “Go and do what you must, Fleta; I will wait for your return.”

“Aye.” But she did not move, and he saw her lower lip trembling again.

“What’s the problem, Fleta? Don’t worry about me; I’ll be fine, here.”

“I fear for thee nonetheless,” she said. “If the goblins spy thee—“

“I’ll take that chance! Please, Fleta, don’t let me interfere with your life any further!”

“O, I wish there were the right plants in these mountains!” she exclaimed.

“Plants?”

“Herbs. We eat them at need, to suppress the cycle.”

“Oh.”

“O Mach, I love thee and would not leave thee vulnerable to the dangers of Phaze. I want to leave thee not!”

Mach took a step toward her, his arms outstretched, intending to comfort her, but she backed hastily away. “I dare not touch thee now!” she whispered.

“But I mean you no harm, Fleta!” he protested.

“Dost thou not see—it be thee I would be bred by, not some stupid stallion!”

Mach was stunned. “But—but I’m not your species! We agreed that it was not proper for us to—“

“Aye, we agreed,” she said, biting her lip. “And no way it would take. I be a pighead even to say this, but—“

“Are you saying—you and I—?”

“The body knoweth not; it thinks one breeding be as good as another. I could stay with thee till the time pass—“

“Stay—and—?”

“Dost despise me now?” she asked, her face wet with tears. “Fain would I ne’er have had thee know, but me-thought I could get thee to safety before—“

Mach worked it out aloud, to be sure there was no misunderstanding. “If you and I tried to breed, nothing would come of it because of the difference in our species. But then you would not have to run off to the stallion. You could stay with me.”

“That be my thought. I know I have no right—I know it be wrong—“

“Fleta, I come from a different culture. Robots and androids and human beings—we do this sort of thing all the time, knowing none of it can take. I myself am the offspring of an impossible marriage between a man and a machine. I have not—not tried to engage in—not with you, because—I understood you did not want it!”

“Ne’er did I say I wanted it not,” she said. “I said it should not be. I spoke not for myself, but for my culture.”

“Then we have no problem!” he exclaimed. “I have have longed for—if I had realized—“

“Then—thou wouldst do it?”

“Just tell me when!”

Something gave way in her. “Now?” she asked faintly.

Mach stepped toward her again, and this time she did not retreat. “Now and forever!” he cried.

They came together, and he discovered in a moment that this was no ordinary tryst. He tried to kiss her, but she was too busy trying to tear off his clothing and her own. All she wanted was one thing, and she wanted it instantly.

They did that one thing, but such was the urgency and haste of it that it was not, for him, the fulfilling experience he had anticipated. He lay beside her on the leafy ground, his clothing half off, her cloak the same, and wondered whether that really could be all there was to it, in the living state. No preliminaries, no caressing, no speaking, not even kissing; just the straight, raw thrust of it. Yet of course she was an animal, and this was the way her kind did it, regardless of the form assumed. He should have known.

She turned to him, on the ground. There were twigs in her hair, and dirt was on her breasts. “Mach?”

“Yes?”

“Canst—again?”

“Again? Now?”

As a robot, Mach could have done it; as a living creature, he found it difficult. “Um, let’s work up to it a bit more slowly, this time,” he said.

“But I need it now!” she protested. To be in heat: to have a temporary but insatiable appetite for sex. He understood this intellectually, but his body could not keep the pace.

“I’ll try,” he said.

He tried, and to his surprise found he was able. The body was young and healthy, and the mind retained desire. This time the culmination was slower, but she seemed satisfied.

He relaxed, glad he had gotten through. She would not have to charge off to the herd.

But in a few minutes she stirred again. “Canst—?”

“Fleta, there is only so much flesh can do!” he cried.

“But an it not do more, must needs I seek the stallion—and this I want not!”

Because her body governed this need, not her mind. Mach would have found this baffling, had he not had his own experience with involuntary arousal.

So Mach tried again. This time he made a production of it, deliberately kissing her and playing with her breasts and stroking her body. She tolerated this, but it was not her interest; she craved the breeding, nothing else. Finally he was able to do it a third time, and then she relaxed.

But too soon she stirred again. “Canst—?”

Mach lurched to his feet. “Must—urinate,” he said, and headed for the bushes.

In the bushes he did what he said he would do, but his mind was elsewhere. He had thought that one or two acts would satisfy the need; now he knew that the need was as far beyond his means as the galloping travel across the plain had been. Yet Fleta was under the control of her cycle; she had to be bred, as she put it, and if he could not serve in lieu of the stallion, she would be compelled to seek that stallion. He had to find a way to accommodate her, at least until her cycle moved on.

He gazed at his limp anatomy. This was hopeless! Then he had a notion. He worked it out in his head, and then hummed to summon his magic. “Grant me the skill to perform at will,” he sang, thinking of sex.

The fog formed and dissipated—and abruptly his potency was restored. For once his magic had worked the way he wanted!

He strode back to Fleta. Without a word he took her in his arms and did what she wished. There was no special joy in it; the spell merely made him potent, not satisfied. Perhaps that was why it worked, he realized: he now had no more satisfaction in the act than she did therefore was never satiated. Then, before she could stir again, he did it again. And again. He was magically competent.

Finally, after half a dozen repetitions, she was satisfied. She embraced him and slept. He relaxed, but his anatomy did not. Sure enough, in half an hour she woke, wanting more.

So it was for the afternoon, and the night, and the following morning. Finally, in the afternoon, her cycle moved on, and she needed no more from him. It was Mach’s turn to sleep the sleep of exhaustion, as the energy drained from his body by the potency spell had to be restored. If Fleta had run hundreds of kilometers in an afternoon, he had performed a similar feat.

They resumed their journey, climbing the great Purple Mountain. But now some of the urgency was gone. Why was he going to see the Brown Adept? Mach asked himself. To find out how to return to Proton? What, then, would become of Fleta? To escape the pursuit by the various monsters? They seemed to be free of it here. Yet if he did not go—if he just stayed here—what of Bane, whose body and world these really were? He had no right to think only of himself.

Fleta paused, looking at him. “Thou’rt all right?”

“Just wishing I could stay here forever, with you. But that would be at Bane’s expense.”

“Aye. And he be an apprentice Adept. Our love be not for eternity.” She looked so forlorn as she said it, that he had to take her in his arms and kiss her. This time she responded warmly.

“Funny thing,” he said. “Yesterday, when—you wouldn’t kiss me.”

“This be love,” she said. “That be breeding.”

“But can’t the two be joined?”

Her brow furrowed. “They be two different things!”

“Not in my frame.”

“What a funny frame!”

“I suppose so.” What point to debate it with her? Her nature did not equip her to understand.

They found a niche to spend the night, well up the mountain. After they had eaten, and the darkness closed in, Mach brought up the question of the afternoon again. “When you’re out of heat, you don’t seek sex,” he said.

“Aye. It be pointless, then.”

“But can you do it?”

“Can, aye. Did, as game with Bane. But why?”

“Because I prefer to combine love and sex. That’s the way it is, with human beings.”

“But when it be impossible to breed—“

“When we did it, it was impossible to breed. But we did it anyway, for another reason.”

‘To prevent me from running away,” she agreed. “And glad I am that thou didst manage that, Mach! But now there be no danger o’ that.”

“So even your kind can do it for other reason than for breeding.”

She considered. “Aye.”

“I’d like to do it for other reason now. For pleasure.”

“Why of course, Mach, an it please thee! It meaneth naught to me, other than as a game.” She hiked up her cloak and spread her legs. “But be not long about it, so I can sleep.”

“My way,” he said. He kissed her, and kissed her again, and proceeded from there, and she cooperated warmly, though evidently confused about his progress, until at last they completed the act in the midst of another kiss.

“Oh, Mach,” she whispered breathlessly. “I think I like it thy way better!”

“Aye,” he agreed, smiling.

“Let’s do it again!”

“Tomorrow!” he said.

She sighed. But she rested her head against his shoulder and slept, instantly. Mach suspected she had been teasing him, but he was not about to inquire.

They crossed the range at a high, chill pass, where the wind cut through bitingly. Fleta changed to unicorn form for this occasion, because this body was better for both the terrain and the cold, and Mach rode her, huddling as low as he could.

But as they moved toward the shelter of the tree-line, a shape loomed in the sky. It was a harpy, and not Phoebe, for the hair was wrong. In a moment there were several harpies, closing in. They had been spotted.

Fleta raced for the trees. Then she stopped, and changed to hummingbird form, and Mach climbed a twisted tree and hid as well as he could in the foliage. The harpies flapped close and peered about, calling out curses, but could not locate the fugitives. Frustrated, they departed, for they too were getting chilled.

Mach descended, and Fleta joined him in human form. “But they will alert the goblins,” she said. “And from the goblins we cannot hide thus.”

“We’ll just have to move as far as we can, so they don’t know where we are,” Mach said. “In a direction they don’t expect.”

They moved southwest. Fleta showed the way in bird form, and Mach charged along as rapidly as he could. When they came to a clifflike formation that would have taken time to skirt, Mach managed to conjure some rope, and used it to swing himself down, drawing on a skill developed for the Game. In this manner they made | good progress, hoping to get beyond the range the goblins would search.