Phaze Doubt Part 30

By the codes. The patterns were inherent; Hectare used them to communicate in the planted stage, before they developed sonics. A tentacle could tap the ground, communicating with other rooted individuals, exchanging information.

He tapped the floor with a knuckle and a heel, in the GREETING, STRANGER pattern.

Two tentacles tapped in response: ACKNOWLEDGMENT, STRANGER.

It was a valid response!

The tentacle tapped again. YES, I AM GENUINE. I AM THE SEED YOU BROUGHT FROM THE CITY.

Suddenly it fell into place. They had grown a Hectare hybrid! They had merged it with bat, wolf, and human stock, all of which had been brought to the Pole.

"I believe you," he said, awed. "But what is the point?"

Weva the girl reappeared. "I have told thee much about me. Dost not feel thou shouldst respond in the manner I asked?"

"I will tell you all you wish to know about me. But as I said, my love is elsewhere."

"That can I change." She brought out her flute, played it briefly, and gestured. "Now that love be gone."

"Of course it isn't!" he exclaimed. "You can't just-"

But he had to stop, for he realized it was true. He no longer cared particularly for Echo.

"You have a potion?" he asked. "A null-love potion?"

"Nay, merely mine Adept magic skill- Wouldst prefer I make thee love me?" She lifted her flute.

"No! Please!" He realized that he was in the presence of a creature who could twist him any way it chose, and it frightened him. "I see you have power, but I ask you not to use it on me further. Just tell me what you want of me."

She nodded. "I see we understand each other. I would convert thee to our cause-the cause o' Phaze-for I be a creature o' Phaze. But Flach tells me the prophecy would be invalidated then, so this may not be. I ask thee only this: e'en as I spare thee humiliation and loss o' forced love, though I could do these without stopping the prophecy, so must thou consider carefully whe'er thy side be the correct one."

"I am a Hectare agent. I must fulfill my mission."

"Yet there may be ways and ways to see thy mission. Canst keep thy mind open to that extent?"

"I can try. But-"

"Then let us go from here; it be time." She pulled her robe back up and crawled toward the entrance.

He crawled after her, his mind whirling. This creature-part bat, part wolf, part human, part Hectare-was indeed something special! Thirteen years in the making, but only a little over a month in his time. He had helped Nepe get the Hectare seed, never dreaming how it would be used! Now Weva combined the Hectare intellectual power with the human imagination and the Adept magic. She was surely the tool the Adepts intended to use against the Hectare investment. But how could she change anything? And how was Lysander needed to complete it?

Thirteen-and she had tempted him s.e.xually, just to demonstrate her power, it seemed. She had convinced him; there was no way he could oppose her directly. He had demurred mainly on instinct, in effect capitulating and begging for mercy. Now in his mind's eye he saw her slender body nested in the open robe, her nascent but well-formed b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It would have been easy to, as she put it, play with her, despite his relation with Echo.

Echo! Weva had deprived him of his love for Echo-and now there was a void. He was out of love!

Weva pushed up the lid. There was a roar, as the watching dragon spied the motion and charged.

"Begone, beast," Weva said crossly.

The noise cut off. Weva drew herself out of the hole. Amazed, Lysander followed.

The dragon was lumbering away, having lost interest in them. Weva had changed its mind with a mere two words and no music! But if she could do that, why hadn't she done it before?

Because she had wanted to make her little demonstration to him. The supposed need to hide from the dragon had been a pretext. Now that he knew exactly where he stood, she could get about her business of going where she was going.

What would she have done, if he had agreed to play with her? Probably she would have done it, being genuinely curious and perhaps without scruple. Though that was odd, because of her Hectare component.

"But it is still a long way to the South Pole!" he said. "We'll need transport."

"Aye. It be nigh."

Coming toward them was a huge manlike figure. Its heavy tread shook the ground. It seemed to be made of tree trunks and cables.

"That's a wooden golem!" Lysander protested. "The Brown Adept now serves the Hectare!"

"Aye. But she has spot control not. She sends them out on their missions, and knows not what they do till they return."

"But they do her will! That thing will haul us right back to the Brown Demesnes! And you can't interfere with Adept magic without signaling our location."

"Aye. I dare not use my power. But illusion be lesser magic, making no splash, as be emotion control."

As the monster golem came close, Weva signaled it by waving her arms. It bore down on them.

"What by thy name, golem?" she asked as it loomed close and halted.

"Franken," it said, though it did not breathe.

"Well, Franken, what thou seekst be at the South Pole," Weva said to it. "Carry us swiftly there."

"Aye, Brown," it said.

What?

The golem reached down with a giant wood hand and closed it gently around Weva. It lifted her up over its shoulder and set her in a storage box mounted on its back. Then it reached for Lysander and did the same for him.

They rode standing in the box, whose sides came a bit above waist level on Lysander. There were handholds. Evidently this was a standard setup for transporting human beings. Their heads could see over the wood bole that was the golem's head. The thing was now striding south at a horrendous rate; it was almost like flying.

"But you neither look nor sound anything like Brown!" he whispered.

"To it I do, and that be what counts. Thou needst whisper not; it hears only when addressed."

"But you've never even met Brown! You can't-"

"Dost love me still, Lysander?" she asked.

Startled by the change in her voice, he looked at her. She was Echo! The sound and look were identical. Had he not known that there was no way it could be true, he would have been sure it was her.

"Point made," he said. "And you probably don't resemble Echo to the golem, just to me."

"Aye."

"You miss on only one thing: Echo is Protonite. She speaks as I do."

"Oops!" she exclaimed, chagrined. Then: "Do you still love me, Lysander?" This time the emulation was perfect. Weva was a very quick study!

"No I don't, as you know, Weva," he said. "You took that from me. Are you going to give it back?"

"And play my game with you, to wile the time as we travel?" she inquired. She still resembled Echo exactly, her brown fluffy hair blown back by the breeze of their swift travel, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s shaking under the robe with the rocking of each big golem tread.

That made him pause. Maybe he should leave well enough alone, lest this provocative woman/child entertain herself at the cost of his future with Echo.

But that thought opened others. There would be no future at all, if his mission succeeded. The Magic Bomb would destroy the planet. So what was the point of being true to Echo? She would be better off if he were untrue to her-and to his mission. And he-he was objective now, no longer blinded by a potion-inspired love. Did he really want that love back? He could function better without it.

If he did not take back that love, he could do as he wished with Weva. She was young, but the way of this planet made physical age of little account; a robot was adult from the moment of its creation, unless otherwise programmed, and the creatures of Phaze let nature be their guide. If a female was mature enough to desire s.e.x, she could indulge as she chose, requiring only an amenable male. That was probably seldom a problem. So Weva's notion of playing with him was valid on her terms. She could do it in the semblance of Echo, or Jod'e, or Alyc, or in her own; she would have control of the situation regardless. If the planet was soon to be destroyed anyway, why not enjoy the time remaining?

Yet Echo had shared the love potion, and her love had not been nullified. She was a good creature; he could appreciate her qualities with clear vision now. He would never of his own choice have taken up with a woman who could turn harpy, and whose body even in her human state was fas.h.i.+oned of metal and plastic, but his experience had shown him better. He had been in love with a good woman, who had returned his love; it had been an excellent state. She had the mind of a harpy in the body of a robot; he had the mind of an alien creature in the body of an android. They were a good match, and he would be satisfied to let it stand.

"Give me back my love, but do not play games with me," he said.

Weva's natural likeness reappeared. "Thou canst gain from that only if thy mission fails," she pointed out.

"And if it fails, I will be a criminal in the new order," he agreed. "I have no future here, either way. But until then, I choose to live honorably."

"I fathom that not!"

"You have a Hectare component. Surely you understand honor."

"Nay, that were not in my syllabus."

That was interesting. Apparently this Hectare protocol did not manifest full-blown. Perhaps it had to be evoked by contact with other Hectare as the individual developed. He did not remember how his own honor had developed; it seemed always to have been part of him. He was learning something about his own nature, by seeing the effect of an alien upbringing on her. "I'm not surprised. Your whole life must have been taken with learning to play the flute and becoming Adept and integrating your several components and preparing for whatever it is you will do to try to save your planet. There would have been no time for such subtleties as the concept of honor."

"Aye. Teach me of honor."

She had taken him by surprise again. "You want to take time with a subtle concept that can only inhibit your immediate benefit as it inhibits mine?"

"Aye, Lysan. My thirst be to know what I know not. An thou dost prefer not to play with me, teach me instead."

"All right. Give me back my love for Echo."

"I can not."

"What?"

"Magic works but once in Phaze, an it be not inherent. I nulled the potion, but it be a far cry greater to null the null, and I fear it would be not the same."

"But what will I do, when I am with Echo again?"

"I know not, and care not. Teach me honor."

It was, he saw, a thing she needed to learn! She had carelessly changed his life in a way she could not reverse. An honorable person would not have done that.

He was Hectare. She was Hectare, in a sense. It was proper to provide what her alien tutoring had lacked. That might even have an effect on his mission, if he could make her appreciate her Hectare heritage.

"Then listen, child," he said grimly. He started in.

The golem marched tirelessly south, through the day and night. Lysander talked, and slept, and talked again, with hardly a murmur from Weva, but she was listening and learning. He was surprised by the amount he knew of the subject, but realized that he had been thinking about it because of the awkwardness of his own position as an enemy of Phaze that a prophecy claimed could help save the planet. It was not that the definition was complicated, but that the nuances were. Weva wanted example after example, of what was honorable in a theoretical situation, and what was not, and why. She seemed fascinated by the subject, and he realized that he was abating a lack she had not before been aware of. She was Hectare, in this respect, and becoming more so as she absorbed the lesson.

"But how canst thou call it integrity, an thou dost prevaricate?" she asked.

"My loyalty is to my mission, in a hostile camp," he explained. "I must complete it, and if telling the truth to an enemy would endanger it, then I must lie. However, in all things not related to my mission, I tell the truth. And when I make a deal, I honor it, even with the enemy."

"Mayhap I fathom that," she said.

Meanwhile it grew hotter as they neared the Pole. The dragons had long since been left behind; perhaps they could handle-the heat, but it was too far from their hunting range. There was just a sea of baking sand. Weva took off her cloak and fas.h.i.+oned' it into a canopy to shade them from the sun; that, and the air rus.h.i.+ng by, cooled them almost enough. But they needed water, so she risked a small conjuration to fetch a jug of it for him, and a.s.sumed the form of a humanoid robot herself, so that she didn't need to drink. Throughout, she continued to listen to his discourse on honor, and to question it. Evidently the Hectare component intended to get this quite straight, and to live by it, in future.

There was something odd on the horizon. Weva, as the robot, saw it before he did, and inquired. "Be there a storm, here? Flach said naught o' that."

Lysander considered, fearing that it was a sandstorm, then realized what it was. "We are approaching the South Pole. There is an anomaly that would show up here, and perhaps also at the North Pole if a snowstorm doesn't obscure it. That is the night."

"But it be near noon!" she protested.

"Time for a small planetary physics lesson. The light comes to this planet from its sun, as is the case elsewhere, but it makes a right-angle turn, and-"

"Because o' the black hole," she said. "Phaze be but a sh.e.l.l round the hole, and the light be bent. Now I fathom it!"

"Black hole?" he asked blankly.

"Thou didst not know?"

He realized that she probably did know what she was talking about. "You mean what we take as a planet is something else? You say a sh.e.l.l-?"

"Aye. Half sh.e.l.l, now that the frames be merged. Canst not see it from s.p.a.ce?"

"It looks just like a planet, from s.p.a.ce."

"Aye, a planet with only one side! Saw thou not the missing half?"

He tried to visualize what he had seen during his approach to the planet, but his normally clear memory let him down. He had no picture of the far side of Proton/Phaze. Probably he had seen only the near side, and not questioned it. That might be the case with all travelers; the effect that turned the light at right angles might also deceive the eye about what else was seen or not seen. This place was stranger than it seemed, and that was saying much.

Weva guided the golem to the edge of the night, sparing them the further ravage of the sun. They walked in shadow, and it was a relief. They had no trouble seeing ahead, because of the sunlight just to the side.

Lysander glanced up, cautiously. The sun was glaringly bright in its sphere, but stars twinkled in the adjacent sphere. There was no hint of the mechanism by which the light was bent; it was either full day or full night.

They came to the South Pole. It was a simple marking on the ground, across which the shadow fell: the shadow of night. That would rotate counterclockwise, always covering half the Pole as it did half the planet-or half the sh.e.l.l.