Part 20 (1/2)

”I meant that facetiously,” the White Adept said. ”We do not believe the computer will allow thee to approach it unless it knows thou wilt side with it. I have made our case to thee, but thou hast not reacted with proper fury. Something we know not of has influenced thee against us.”

The knowledge of his other self's acquiescence-that was the influencing factor. '”Of course I am not with thee!” Stile exclaimed. ”I am not with anyone who kidnaps and dehorns my steed. Thy methods make thy side suspect.”

”And the methods of the Oracle make it not similarly suspect?”

Stile spread his hands. ”I admit I know not the final truth. I will seek the Oracle.”

”I did not think thou wouldst join us. But I undertook to make the case. Hadst thou accepted honestly-”

”I have done nothing dishonest!”

”Aye. So we must destroy thee. Yellow will not like that, but it must be done. When we leave this bubble, it will be war between us. The other Adepts have ma.s.sed their power, and the goblins are ready.”

”Fortunate art thou that thy trust in this truce was well placed. Else would I simply confine thee here.”

”Honor is not a luxury many of us can afford,” she said sadly. ”Yet in the name of honor, some are fools. Thou wilt not attack us or the Oracle without fair warning. This makes thee ideal for whatever side can use thee.” She sighed. ”I do not hate thee. Blue. I respect thee. I, too, am true to my cause, and it is a worthy one. Thou art true only to thine honor, and therein lies thy grief. Phaze will never be safe whilst Blue remains. Thus says our enemy the Oracle, and this we do believe. We like it not, but so must it be. Be on thy guard against my kind. Blue.” Stile studied her. The White Adept was no young thing, and she had not bothered with Yellow's type of vanity. She looked old and ugly and careworn. He had encountered her before and found little to please him. But he knew she was a witch and a skilled one; backed by the power of the other Adepts, she was far more formidable than she appeared. Her warning had to be heeded. The Adepts would now be fully unified and coordinated. The veil was off; nothing would be held back. She was giving him the most forceful warning she could, without betraying her a.s.sociates.

He would have to get away from here in a hurry, the moment the sh.e.l.l opened. Yet where could he escape to? The Adepts could follow him anywhere in Phaze. White's warning, perhaps, was intended to focus his attention on this problem so that he would have a fair chance. His respect for her had been small; now it had enlarged. She had taken pains to give information that he needed, when she really hadn't had to. ”I thank thee for thy courtesy, White,” he said.

Stile released the spell that enclosed them and stood on guard. If the witch tried to strike against either unicorn, Stile would counter the spell. By the same token, if he started magic against the lurking goblins, she would block it. Since no spell could be used twice, it was sheer waste for Adept to squander magic against Adept. Their special powers would cancel each other out-until the other Adepts oriented-and she had told him they were ready. He was outgunned and would have to move fast so that they could not keep proper track of him.

”We must travel!” Stile cried. ”I must stave off magic; you two handle the rest!” He vaulted aboard the nearest unicorn, which happened to be the Herd Stallion. Clip was now outside the prison, probably having s.h.i.+fted to hawk-form to pa.s.s by the bars. That meant he was back in full health. But Stile was happier riding the Stallion, whom he knew to be in full possession of his powers. Clip might tire quickly.

The Stallion blasted out a medley of chords. Goblins had appeared in the pa.s.sage; they hastily faded back, heeding the warning. Clip went to hawk-form and flew ahead, leading the way. The Stallion launched himself forward. Stile was only peripherally aware of these details. His attention was on the White Adept. As the Stallion moved out, she started drawing a symbol in the dust on the floor. Stile sang out a spell that was mostly in his head: ”Dust-gust!”

The dust stirred up into a cloud, gusting about the cavern. The witch was unable to complete her sketch. Her spell had been intercepted. She could not function any better in this swirl than Stile could when he had been a victim of the silence-spell. She looked up-and Stile saw with surprise that she was smiling. It was as if she were glad to see him escape. She must have spoken truly when she said she did not like this business. She had to fight him, but didn't really mind failing. Some Adepts, it seemed, were not as bad as others.

However, he had to heed her warning about the other enemy Adepts, most of whom he had never interacted with. They would not hold back, once they got around White's tacit obstruction and oriented directly on him. Meanwhile, the goblins were bad enough. These were their pa.s.sages, and they were thoroughly conversant with the dusky recesses. The Herd Stallion was retracing the route they had descended-but suddenly a great iron gate slammed into place ahead, blocking the way. The Stallion could not pa.s.s and Clip barely squeezed back through the narrow aperture to rejoin them. They were caught in the pa.s.sage, and a solid ma.s.s of goblins was wedging in behind them.

The Stallion played more chords. Clip, answering the command, s.h.i.+fted to man-form and joined Stile on the Stallion's back. He was clothed now, with a rapier. He drew this and faced back, menacing a few goblins who tried to squeeze in behind.

Stile got the idea. He unwrapped his concealed broad sword and sat ready to slice at any goblins who got within range to either side. His main attention was on whatever signs of hostile magic there might be, but he could slash while hardly looking.

The Stallion charged the goblins. They scattered, throwing their spears away in their frantic scramble to get clear. It was not that they were cowardly; it was that a ton of unicorn bristling with horn and two armed riders was a truly formidable thing. Any who tried to stand their ground would be skewered or slashed or trampled. As it happened, a number could not get out of the way in time and were indeed trampled and skewered.

There was a side pa.s.sage. The unicorn hurtled into this, causing Stile to grab for the mane in order to hold his seat, and thundered along it.

Suddenly there was a ledge. The Herd Stallion could not brake in time. He leaped out over the edge, into the dark ness of nothing.

Then Stile found himself riding the dragon. The Stallion's dragon was not large for this type, being perhaps only twelve feet long from snout to tail, and Stile's weight bore him down. Fortunately Stile was not large for his own type, and the dragon was able to spread his wings and descend slowly. Clip, of course, had converted to hawk form.

Stile still wore his grotesque shoes and turban. Quickly he sloughed these off, lightening the burden on the reptile; but the descent continued.

The dragon snorted fire that illuminated the cavern. They were in a deep cleft whose upper reaches were lit by wan shafts of moonlight. There was their escape! But the dragon could not make it that high under Stile's weight. Stile readied a spell, felt the questing magic of another Adept, and had to hold back. He could be messed up much as he had messed up White's spell, and in midair that could be disastrous. Also, it seemed the enemies could not quite locate him as long as he remained in the dark and cast no spells. He had to hold off until it was safer. So the dim light above faded, and they dropped down into the deeper depths silently.

There was a detonation of something. Light blazed and metallic fragments whistled by. Someone had fired an ex plosive amulet or something similar at them. This was blind shooting, hoping to catch the dragon by a random shot; the a.s.sailants did not have a perfect fix on Stile's party. Now he was certain that if he used defensive magic, he would give away his location. Better to lie quiet, like a submarine on a water planet, and hope the depth-charges missed.

The dragon tried again to rise, but could not. Stile felt the body heating with the effort. This could not continue long.

There was a pop behind them. The Stallion-dragon turned his head to send back a jet of flame-and the light showed a griffin, an eagle-headed lion, the next enemy Adept sending. ”Uh-oh,” Stile murmured. ”Can't hide from that.”

But the Stallion was burning hot from his exertions. He looped about, aimed his snout at the pursuing griffin, and exhaled a searing shaft of fire.

The griffin squawked as it was enveloped in flame. The blaze of its burning wings lit up the entire cavern. It tumbled down to the water, smoking feathers drifting after it.

But the next sending was another dragon, a big one. Its chest pumped like a bellows, building up pressure for a devastating blast that would incinerate Stile and the Stallion. The enemy was now fighting fire with fire. The hawk winged at it, too small and fast for the dragon to catch or avoid. The dragon ignored the bird, knowing nothing that size could dent its armored hide. The enormous metal-foil wings beat swiftly, launching the dragon forward.

The hawk dived, zeroing in on the dragon's head. Stile could only watch with dismay, knowing Clip was throwing away his life in a useless gesture, a diversionary effort that was not working. He could not even think of a preventive spell on this too-brief notice.

The dragon opened its monstrous mouth to take in the tiny missile-and Clip changed abruptly to unicorn-form. He struck horn-first, piercing the dragon's head, his horn pa.s.sing from inside the throat right on between the eyes and out, penetrating the little brain on the way. The strike was so unexpected and powerful that the monster simply folded its wings and expired. It plummeted to the water, while Clip changed back to hawk-form and flew clear. ”Well done!” Stile cried, amazed and gratified. Now for a time there were no more sendings. But Stile knew worse attacks were in the offing. His party had to get out of the chasm-and could not. Already they were close to the nether water. He had to relieve the Herd Stallion of his weight-yet was sure that the one enchantment the enemy Adepts would have blocked would be a personal transport-spell. They were trying to force Stile to use it-and launch himself into oblivion.

The Stallion sent forth more fire, just enough to light the way. The dark water below reflected with slight iridescence, as if oily. Stile mistrusted that. He didn't want the Stallion to fall into that liquid. He would have to risk magic. Not transport, of course; something unexpected. The hawk had been circling. Now he came back, squawking news. Over and over he cried it, until Stile was able to discern the word. ”Curtain!” Stile cried. ”The curtain is ahead?”

That was it. Now Stile had a better alternative. ”Fly low. Stallion, and I'll pa.s.s through the curtain. Then thou and Clip can fly up and escape in the night. They want thee not, only me, and soon thou canst return to thy herd. I'll climb up on the Proton side, where magic can't reach me.” Of course there would be other problems across the curtain, but he would handle them in due course. The Stallion was in no position to argue. He glided low-and there in the dark was the scintillation of the curtain, crossing the chasm. ”If there's any sort of ledge- I don't want to drop too far.”

There was no ledge. It would have, to be the water. They intersected the curtain, and Stile spelled himself across.

CHAPTER 10 - Force.

He fell a few feet-or rather a meter or so-knowing he was through the curtain only because he no longer had dragon support. He splashed into the water, feeling the instant shock of cold. He was, of course, an excellent swimmer; no top Gamesman neglected such a sport. But the water was polluted, stinking, and perhaps contained harmful acids; the Citizens of Proton cared nothing for the planetary environment outside the domes. He didn't want to stay here long! The air, too, was foul. But here in the depths, it was thicker than above and seemed to contain more oxygen. He did not enjoy it, but he could survive longer on it than antic.i.p.ated. Still, he had another resource. He swam back to the curtain, which pa.s.sed right down through the water. He organized himself, then willed him self through and said: ”Bring nuts and dried fruit, scuba and wetsuit.” And the spell, shaped by his imagination, clothed him in a warm, flexible body swimming suit complete with flippers, breathing apparatus, and a bag of mixed nuts and bits of dehydrated fruit. Something formed in the water near him. It was huge and toothed, and it threshed its way toward him with powerful flukes. Stile hastily spelled himself back across the curtain. He had done the unexpected and escaped the enemy Adepts without using a transport-spell, but they remained alert for him.

His new equipment went with him. This was one way in which magic and science juxtaposed; he could create or fetch scientific devices by magic in Phaze and take them across for use in Proton. Now he was comfortable in the water and had concentrated food to sustain him. He could get where he was going.

Only-where was he going? He wanted to locate that computer-but where was it?

Again, no problem. He prepared himself and pa.s.sed through the curtain. ”Weapon and gem, doslem doslem,” he sang, grabbed the two objects that formed, and dodged back to Proton before the ma.s.sive crunch of a hostile spell could catch him. The enemy would never have expected him to conjure these particular items! He saw the Adept attack through the curtain-a blaze of light silhouetting ma.s.sive jawless teeth, closing and disappearing as they intersected the demarcation of the curtain. A demon from the deeps, indeed! Technically an indirect attack, a sending, but surely fatal to whatever it caught. They were not playing innocent games, these enemy Adepts! Now he had what he needed. He could stop playing peekaboo through the curtain, especially since one more trip across it would probably get him crunched. The enemy had targeted him too closely; his scant leeway had been used up. Now he could get where he was going-on the Proton side of the curtain.

He swam, holding the straps to his last two acquisitions in his teeth. The flippers enabled him to move rapidly through the water. He didn't need light; he could tell where the walls were by the lapping of the waves his swimming made.

The chasm narrowed, until he was swimming between vertical walls only a couple of meters apart. Still no way up or out. He didn't like this; his special equipment was sealed in watertight packages, but he needed to get on dry land to use it safely.

Well, he could dive. He had a hunch there was a way out of here and a way from here to the computer-Oracle, because the goblins needed access to guard it. Of course this was the other frame-but with the normal parallelism, chances were good there were Proton pa.s.sages too. All he had to do was find them.

He dived. He did not fear any monsters in this murky lake; they could not survive in this pollution. But he was careful about sharp jags of rock that might tear his suit. The deft was wider below, giving him more room to grope along. He should have conjured a light; he hadn't thought of it. On any venture, something important was always forgotten! But one of his instruments had an operating light that he could use for general vision-once he put it into use.

The walls closed in above. Good-he did have a pa.s.sage here, for there was a slight current. Soon he groped up ward and discovered a new cavern-and this one had sloping sides that he could scramble up on, getting free of the water.

Perched awkwardly on the rock, for his bad knees prevented him from squatting, he opened one of his doslems. This one was the weapon: Disrupter-Optical-s.p.a.ce-Light Modulator. D 0 S L M. He set it on low and activated it. There was a faint, humming, beam, and a section of the cave wall glowed and sagged, melting without heat. Its particles had been disrupted, losing their cohesion; solid had turned to liquid. Good enough. The doslem was governed by light-beam computer, in which beams of light functioned in lieu of solid circuitry and semiconductor diodes and information chips. It was much more compact than the solid state and could generate potent effects, as the melted patch of wall showed.

Now Stile turned to the other doslem, the gem. In this case the D stood for Detector. It was an even more marvelous instrument. A miniature panel controlled its as sorted functions of timing, direction, and detection. In his hands it emitted just enough light to clarify the cave region in which he hunched, and it gave readouts mapping the extent of air-filled and water-filled recesses. There were other caves here, and some were within the range of the disrupter; he could melt a hole through the thinnest section of wall. Some pa.s.sages were squared off-obviously artificial. His hunch had proved correct! Stile checked for refined metals, orienting on copper, aluminum, iron, and gold. Soon he located a considerable cache of these, southeast of his present location. He checked for magnetism and found it in the same region. This certainly seemed to be the computer, or whatever portion of it existed in the frame of Proton.

Stile scouted about, then selected the thinnest wall to disrupt. He gave the melt time to settle, then stepped through to the adjacent cave. He was on his way. It took time, and on occasion he rested and ate from his supply of nuts and fruit. He located reasonably fresh water by tuning in on it with the detector. He had a sense of location; he was in the cave network whose upper exits he and the Lady Blue had noticed on their honeymoon, after departing the snow-demon demesnes. He marched, cut through to a new pa.s.sage, and marched again, slept, and marched again. He hoped the two unicorns had flown up and out of the cavern system, knowing that he. Stile, could take care of himself on the other side of the curtain. There was no way to communicate with them now, since he was no longer near the curtain. They simply had to have faith.

At times, as he tramped onward, he thought about the nature of the curtain and the parallel frames. How was it that he could so readily conjure scientific equipment that was inoperative in Phaze, yet was operative when taken back across the curtain? If it was that solid and real, why couldn't it function in Phaze? If it was not, why did it work here? The curtain could be a very thin line indeed, when magic so readily facilitated science. Was there no conservation of energy with regard to each frame? Any thing taken across the curtain was lost to its frame of origination, wasn't it? Also, how could objects of Proton frame design be brought to Phaze? Did his magic generate them from nothing, or were they actually stolen from warehouses and factories and hauled through the curtain? He doubted he could visualize the inner workings of a doslem well enough to build one directly, so doubted he could do it by magic, either-but the alternative implied a doser connection between frames and greater permeability of the curtain than conventional wisdom supposed. Magic would have to reach beyond the curtain, right into the domain of science. There was so much yet to learn about the relations.h.i.+p of frames!

And this computer he was searching out-had it really murdered Stile's alternate self, the original Blue Adept, by means of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Why? How did all this tie in with the approach of the end of Phaze and Stile's own involvement in that? Was the computer-Oracle due to perish in that termination of the frame, and Stile him self- He paused to review what had been more or less idle speculation. If Stile was going to help destroy Phaze, and the computer was in Phaze, it might indeed be destroyed too. So maybe it sought to prevent him from partic.i.p.ating in this business. Maybe it was really on the same side as the other Adepts. So it had generated mischief to eliminate him in both frames, being foiled only by that other mes sage, the one that had brought Sheen to protect him. Yet it had been prophesied that he would help the computer return to Proton, where it would act to destroy Phaze; that put him on its side and set it against the Adepts. Maybe the destruction of Phaze was inevitable, and the computer needed to cross to Proton in order to escape the holocaust. But then why should it have tried to kill him twice? That made no sense at all.