Phaze Doubt Part 11

But beyond the image was a decorative vase he had spied before. He swept it up, turned, and hurled it with precise aim at the lens complex in the ceiling. The vase smashed-and so did the lens. Now he could not be stunned from above.

He leaped back and grabbed Jod'e. He put a nerve hold on her shoulder. She stiffened, realizing that she was helpless; any effort to break free would be prohibitively painful. "Do not move," he ordered Tan.

The man was not directly facing him, and remained in that orientation. "Thou canst hurt her, but thou canst compel me not," Tan said. "In a moment will I turn and compel thee with mine Eye. I suggest thou dost desist before thou bringst upon thyself a type of punishment thou willst find really distasteful."

But Lysander was already backing toward the exit panel. He kept his head behind Jod'e's so that the Adept could not get a bead on him.

Tan stalked him. Whatever else might be said against the man, he was neither coward nor fool; he was yielding nothing. He was moving slowly but purposefully, closing the distance between them.

"You wouldn't have bonded this woman to you if you didn't desire her," Lysander said as his back touched the panel. "You wouldn't want her hurt."

"I want thee hurt not either," Tan said evenly. "In a moment thou willst be as loyal to the new order as she."

Lysander squeezed the nerve in Jod'e's shoulder. She screamed. Tan stopped advancing.

But Lysander wasn't merely stalling for time; that was pointless. With his free hand he was tapping on the panel. He knew a way to make it open, if the Hectare had been true to form. Hectare, experienced at planetary subjugation, never left things entirely in the hands of the natives; they made sure at the outset that ultimate control was in the tentacles of the nearest Hectare. That meant rekeying the locks-all locks-to be responsive to Hectare hidden codes. One of the standard codes was auditory; a pattern of taps that few others could duplicate if any knew of their existence. Because Lysander's brain was Hectare, he knew and could perform the cadences.

With one bare heel he tapped with one changing pattern. With his knuckle he tapped with another. As the two converged, interrelating, the Hectare code overrode the ordinary mechanism, and the panel slid open.

Lysander stepped back, hauling Jod'e with him. He saw Tan's mouth open with amazement. The man had not known of this device, of course; he was merely a quisling, used without being trusted. Then the panel slid back, separating them.

Now he was out-but where was he to go? They were among serfs who were hurrying on their errands. The pursuit would commence in seconds. What was he to do with Jod'e?

That turned out to be easy. "Now you're free," he told her "Follow me; he'll be out in a moment." He let her go, and started down the hall.

"He's here!" Jod'e cried, not trying to run. "He's getting away!"

Lysander came to an intersecting hall and ducked into it. He could not try to conceal himself as another serf; all the serfs here would be checked. He couldn't run far; the halls would be closed off any moment. The chances of any ordinary serf escaping capture were approximately nil.

But he was not an ordinary serf. He jumped to a private door panel and did a quick double tapping. It opened and he stepped in-just as the rumble of the larger hall-sealer panels commenced. All the serfs in that section of the hall were trapped, and would not be freed until their ident.i.ties were verified.

He was in another Citizen residence, but it was empty. Its owner would have been interned. He ran through to the kitchen, where the food-delivery apparatus was, and the waste-disposal mechanism. He did not need to use the code tapping here; the conduits were not locked. He climbed onto a garbage cart and touched Us Go b.u.t.ton.

In a moment he was zooming through the nether pipes of the city, heading for one of the central processing stations. When the cart slowed, approaching the first sorting stop, he jumped off, surprising the robot. "An error in cla.s.sification," he told it. "I will correct it." The machine would not question a human voice of authority.

He got on the machine trundleway and walked to the human section. From there he exited to the main network of halls. He had escaped, for now; since the bit of beacon tape was gone from his back, they would have to do a citywide search to run him down.

They would do that, of course. No dictatorial government could tolerate dissent. But it would be awkward for them, because they would not want to disrupt the ongoing flow of business, and would not want to admit that any serf could give either a Citizen or a Hectare the slip. The Hectare whose image he had seen would not tell Tan about the code; it would keep that secret, realizing that Lysander was something unusual. Tan would just have to a.s.sume there was a defect in the door panel that had released Lysander by chance.

As for Jod'e: he had tested her, and verified what he feared. Tan's Evil Eye had been effective, and she was now his creature. Had she been faking it, she would have run with Lysander; instead she had sounded the alarm the moment she was able. That had made no practical difference, but had shown him that it was pointless to be further concerned about her.

Perhaps it was for the best. Jod'e would probably be well treated. Had she fled with him, and had they made good their escape from the city this time, she would have lived the life of a fugitive. Eventually he would have betrayed her to the Hectare, along with the people of the resistance movement. It was kinder to have her taken now. He would let others know that it had not been voluntary, and they would respect her.

But it surely would have been nice to be with her for the interval of his penetration of the resistance movement. He had adapted so well to his human body that its delights had become his delights. Loving her. and being loved by her-how he wished that could have been true, for a time. As it was, he had lost his second woman.

But now he had not only to escape the city, but to make contact with the resistance. That meant he needed help to escape: the help of someone who had the appropriate contacts. He had no idea who that might be. This was the trickiest part of his effort. If one of them did not contact him, before the net closed on him, his mission would be cut short prematurely. No, the Hectare would not let him go; they had no tolerance for ineffective agents. His best fate if captured would be a return to Tan for the Evil Eye, and then a.s.signment to Alyc as her love slave. If the Eye wasn't effective, or if Alyc no longer desired him, they would simply melt him down for protoplasm.

He walked along the pa.s.sage, back toward the concourse. He had to expose himself to as many serfs as he could, hoping that one of them would know how he had tried to escape, and would be looking for him. Any decent resistance network would have ways of keeping abreast of the news, and would know of the business with Tan. They would know that speed was of the essence.

Someone caught his arm. Lysander jumped, in a purely human reaction; he had been lost in his thoughts, which was another human trait. It was a woman, with feathery brown hair and black eyes. " 'Sander!" she said. "Remember me?"

In a moment he made the connection. "The harpy!" He had met her briefly, when little Flach had become a winged unicorn and flown him to the Purple Mountains. Actually, the cyborg, in her Proton form.

"You seemed interested in my legs, as I recall," she said.

He had been trying to verify the nature of her form changing, by holding on to her as she s.h.i.+fted. "They were good legs."

Despite their being metal and plastic, crafted to emulate living legs. On this planet, it was practically impossible to tell emulation from living flesh.

"I hear you're in trouble."

"You understate the case."

"Will you trust me?"

"That depends whom you serve."

"Citizen Powell."

Not the Hectare. She must be his contact! "Yes."

"This way." She turned and led him through the thronging serfs.

7 - Bomb

Nepe, in the form of a serf boy, was running an errand for one of the quislings. She had planted this ident.i.ty long ago, and had used it before, just keeping her hand in; no computer check would cast doubt on it.

She was sad that Grandpa Blue had had to report for internment, but understood how it was. The spy Alyc had tagged him and all his family and a.s.sociates; any who tried to skip out would have been pursued. Of course Blue could have avoided capture, but to what point? They would only have chased him until they got him, and meanwhile started imprisoning, torturing, and murdering his a.s.sociates to encourage him to cooperate. He preferred to avoid that.

So Blue had reported in, and so had Red and Brown, and the former Adverse Adepts: Yellow with her power over animals, Orange with his plants, Translucent with his water magic, and White with her glyphs. Purple and Tan had been freed, and had immediately joined the other side. But five had not: Clef (Tania no longer counted, since Tan had taken back the t.i.tle of Adept), Black with his lines, Green with his fire. Robot (Flach's father), and Flach himself, the Unicorn Adept. So of fourteen now-recognized Adepts, seven were captive, two collaborated, and five were hiding.

Nepe knew why the Robot Adept hid: he had taken the Book of Magic, and if he had not been the strongest Adept before- no one was certain whether that honor belonged to the Red Adept-he surely was now. The Book of Magic was the ultimate compendium of enchantments, and could make anyone Adept in short order. It had to be kept out of the hands of the likes of Purple and Tan, if Phaze was to have any chance at all to throw off the Hectare yoke. So the Robot would hide the Book, and if it ever came to the point where the enemy was going to get it, he would destroy it instead.

Nepe also knew why she hid: she was the most elusive creature on the planet, and served as the messenger for the resistance to the invader. She and Flach had had a lot of experience in hiding, and so were natural for the role.

Clef was hiding in order to protect the other single most valuable thing of Phaze: the Platinum Flute. It had been crafted by the Platinum Elves, and yielded by them only for the most serious reason: to save Phaze. When Clef had played it the first time, the frames of Proton and Phaze had been drawn together and temporarily overlapped and then hurled apart, enabling Blue to take over in Proton and Stile in Phaze. When he had played it the second time, the frames had been permanently merged, a year ago, again enabling the good forces to overcome the evil forces, when all seemed lost.

Now, suddenly, the planet was in trouble again, and it seemed that nothing but the Flute could rescue it. But even that seemed too little, for the Hectare were already in control. The Flute had done its job twice; there seemed to be nothing else it could do. But it represented hope, and had to be kept safe. So Clef was doing that, and as long as Clef and the Flute remained out of enemy power, that faint hope remained.

But why had the two other Adepts hidden? They had been a.s.sociated with the wrong side before, and never evinced much political interest anyway. Were they merely ornery, or were they up to something?

Nepe's thoughts were interrupted by Echo. She had found Lysander! They had known the man was somewhere in the dome, and that he was in trouble because he had refused to join the enemy, but he had turned out to be surprisingly good at hiding. They needed him, because of the prophecy. Nepe wasn't sure she believed the prophecy, or that Lysander was the one it referred to, but Mach had said to rescue him if possible, and she was trying to do that.

She knew that Echo would not have brought him if he wasn't ready to go. As the two approached, Nepe turned and fell in beside them. "Look for a group of three," she said. "Man, woman, and boy."

"Who is this?" Lysander demanded suspiciously.

"Who do you think, unbeliever?" she replied without looking directly at him.

"There," Echo said, gesturing to three serfs walking the other way. "They're not a group, but-"

"Turn and close on them."

They did so, and in a moment were following the others. Nepe turned over the body to Flach, who did not have to pretend being male. He murmured some doggerel verse in a singsong: "Make those front three like he, thee, and me."

The appearance of the three serfs changed. Now the man resembled Lysander, and the woman Echo, while the boy looked like Nepe in boy form.

Flach spread his hands, holding his companions back. They slowed, letting the mimic-three separate from them. The mimic-boy crossed away from the man and woman, going his own course, but it didn't matter; it had simply been easier to do the magic on them as a close group.

In a moment Flach guided them into a side pa.s.sage where fewer serfs walked. When it seemed likely that no one was looking, he uttered another singsong verse: "Take the rest to Oche's nest." He willed the implementation, and the two vanished.

Flach walked on, watching for anyone watching him. None seemed to be, but he didn't trust that. He would wait. He turned the body back to Nepe, who was best at Proton matters.

What would Lysander think, when he found himself back under the harpy's tree? Nepe wondered. He had just been betrayed by two girlfriends; would he be suspicious of the third? For that was what Echo would be. They had chosen Jod'e for him, but the Tan Adept had gotten her. They had to write her off, as Mach put it. They had feared they would have to write Lysander off too, but somehow he had escaped. The word was that he had banged against the door panel, and it had opened. Tan must have been furious at that malfunction at that critical time! But maybe the prophecy had known that Lysander would squeak through.

But it was more likely that he had simply drawn on his enemy knowledge to make that door open, seemingly by accident. That confirmed that Tan didn't know Lysander's nature. Interesting: the Hectare didn't trust Tan either! They were merely using him, and when he was of no further use to them, they would dispose of him.

But Lysander was dangerous. If it weren't for the prophecy, they would never have brought him in. would never have brought him in. Suppose he wasn't the one? Then they were probably lost already, because the prophecy didn't say there would be one, only that only such a person, alien to the culture and opposed to it, could save it. There might be no such person, or they might have the wrong one, or they might have the right one and he would choose not to save them. It seemed exceedingly chancy.

Chancy-yet their only hope. So she had rescued Lysander, the enemy agent, and Echo would be his woman. Echo didn't know the truth; she was likely to have a severe disappointment coming up. But if that happened, they would all be lost. If it didn't, he would save them, and their gamble would have paid off. So Echo would do her best to make Lysander happy, exactly as Jod'e would have, so that when it came to the point of decision, he would be more likely to choose for Phaze instead of for the Hectare.

Meanwhile, she had to check in with others. Satisfied that she was not observed, she ducked into a service niche. "Nepe," she murmured. "Admit."

A panel slid aside. She climbed into the rear service area, and the panel closed behind her. The self-willed machines were maintaining a low profile, hoping to escape the notice of the Hectare, but they cooperated with Nepe. That was part of her situation; she had lived among them for years, and her father was one of them, and her grandmother. They trusted her, though her actual flesh was alien.

"Mach," she said, stepping into a baggage transport cart.

The cart began to move. Nepe focused on her body, changing it slowly from human boy to machine. Flach could change in an instant, but he had to use a different spell each time, so he didn't waste it. Nepe was slower, but she could do the same form a thousand times if she had to. So she did most of the changing, when it wasn't an emergency.

She was ready by the time the cart brought her to her father. Actually he was Flach's father, but it was all complicated, and both Mach and Bane were really fathers to both Flach and Nepe now, since the mergence, and maybe before. She rolled out on small wheels, a spot bag handler.

She rolled up to the larger machine. Mach was in humanoid form, unloading suitcases from a baggage compartment near the airport. Without hesitation he dumped a bag on her, then picked up two suitcases and strode away down the hall. She followed, heeling like a trained canine. The conquest of the planet was fresh, but care was being taken not to disrupt the tourist trade. Many tourists, in fact, didn't realize that a hostile occupation was in progress. They would not be bothered as long as they didn't interfere.

"Mission accomplished," she reported on the machine frequency. Communication of many types and many levels was required to run the complicated society of Proton, and this had not changed with the advent of magic. Anyone in authority could listen in on the machine frequency, but there was little point to it, and there were thousands of exchanges of information going on simultaneously throughout the city. Each machine had limited range, to allow the use of the same frequencies without much interference.

"Tsetse is being a.s.signed to Brown," Mach replied. "Investigate."

Nepe detoured into a side hall and rolled up to a disposal unit. Her bag was a dummy. She had the unit take it in, and then herself.

Soon she was connected to the command network. Troubot- status of Tsetse, she sent.

In a moment a message came back: Order just in. Guidebot to take her to Brown Demesnes.

By whose order?

Citizen Purple.

The renegade Citizen! That meant that some sort of mischief was afoot. Yet what would Purple's interest be in the Brown Adept? She was harmless to the Hectare, now that she was under house arrest.

Could this relate to Grandam Neysa's odd behavior, when she had hustled Flach from that wooden castle? Well, maybe Nepe could satisfy her curiosity while performing her investigation.

a.s.sign me.

Done. Reach this location ASAP. City coordinates followed.

Nepe disconnected and got moving. Troubot would do anything for her, even if it weren't business. As she caught a machine transport and zoomed to the address, she reflected briefly on that.

Troubot was a machine she had a.s.sociated with for years. She considered him male, and he considered her female. He was in love with her. That might have seemed ludicrous to anyone offplanet, but it was feasible on Proton, where the self-willed machines could have feelings. But in Phaze, Troubot became Sirelmoba, the pretty little b.i.t.c.h who was Flach's Promised. There, the s.e.xes were reversed. But for years it had been a.s.sumed that alternate selves had to be of the same s.e.x, and almost always they were. Why was it different here?

She had pondered this before, many times, but could come to only one conclusion: the s.e.xes did match, either male to male or female to female. The only exceptions were when one of the selves was neutral. Troubot was neutral, because a machine had no inherent s.e.x. Troubot thought of himself as male, so he was male, but there was nothing else to substantiate it. Nepe's father Mach (technically, Bane in Mach's body) thought of himself as male, so he was male. Her Grandmother Sheen thought of herself as female, and indeed she looked and acted female. But all were in essence neuter machines. All could be set up with other bodies and other programming and be of opposite s.e.x. So there really wasn't a change of s.e.x, just a change of perception.

Nepe herself, like her mother Agape, was also neutral in essence. Her living component was Moebite, whose species was s.e.xless, but a.s.sumed s.e.xual ident.i.ties when visiting other planets, in deference to the prevailing standard. So she, like the machines, simply a.s.sumed a s.e.x, and remained with it because she preferred it. So when she became Flach it wasn't any true s.e.x change, only an apparent one. He was male and she was neuter, technically.

Yet it certainly felt different!

She reached the location. A gray-eyed, silvery-haired serf woman of about thirty sat in a s.h.i.+pment station. The hair was no sign of decline; it had been permanently tinted. She was an extremely pretty woman despite being past the flush of youth. This was Tsetse, formerly Tania's obliging receptionist, then Citizen Purple's mistress. Beautiful, complaisant, and not unduly smart: she had been ideal for her positions.

Nepe had known Tsetse for five years, and privately liked her. The woman was fundamentally innocent, amenable to whatever was required of her. But since she was now Purple's serf, if no longer his mistress (he knew her age), she was not to be trusted. It was important that Tsetse never suspect Nepe's ident.i.ty.

"Guidebot for serf Tsetse," Nepe said through her speaker grille.

The woman stood. "Here." She looked nervous, and her eyes were a bit puffy. She had evidently been crying.

"Follow." Nepe rolled down the hall at a comfortable walking pace. There were many means of transport, but serfs typically walked unless the distance was far or their a.s.signments were urgent; that was why the halls were usually filled. Normally a serf did not rate a machine guide, but if the mission was important it could happen. Anything could happen at the whim of a Citizen, of course, and that was evidently the case with those who served the new masters. It was also possible that the a.s.signment of a guide was a reminder to a perhaps reluctant serf that the directive was to be obeyed without question.

Since Tsetse was the most docile of serfs, why was such a reminder considered to be in order? She should simply have been given the order to report to her a.s.signment at a given hour, and left to find her own way there. All transport was free for serfs, on the presumption that they were serving the interests of their employers, and directories of routes were available at convenient locations. She could have gone alone.

The woman was evidently unhappy. Had there been a falling-out? Yet this was hardly a punitive a.s.signment. The Adept Brown was a good woman. For many years she had had a werewolf servant whom she had treated well. She would surely treat Tsetse well.

But there was another mystery. Purple had been Brown's prisoner, and now she was his. Why should he not only allow her to keep her residence, but a.s.sign a pleasant servant to her? Purple had never been noted for generosity to anyone.