“Methinks she set a trap for us,” Stile murmured. Probably his counterspell would have protected him, but he could not be certain. Following too closely after the Red Adept was dangerous! “Take me to safe ground while I ponder new spells,” he said.
Neysa took him by the hand and led him, while Stile concentrated fully on the task at hand. Soon they were standing on the ground outside the Red Castle, and he had what he needed.
But first one concern: “Neysa, I know thou dost not like magic applied to thee—”
She blew him a look of get-on-with-it, as he had known she would. She had once hated his practice of magic, but after she had accepted his status as the Blue Adept she had seemed to revel in the evidences of his power.
“Identify the one we scorn, by orienting with thy horn,” Stile sang to her. Neysa, still in girl-form, turned her head with its tiny decoration-horn toward the south, obviously aware of the Red Adept. “And trace thine oath-friend without fail, by orienting with thy tail.” She spun about, slapping her pert derrier with her hand as if stung by a fly. Her lack of a tail in this form was a problem. Then she converted to unicorn, and it worked perfectly.
“Let me step across the curtain, and do thou trace me,” Stile said. “Just to be sure.” This was consuming time while Red escaped, but if this operated the way he hoped, that wouldn’t matter.
Stile spelled himself across, ran a hundred meters over the sand, and crossed back, gasping for the good air of Phaze. Neysa was right there, some three hundred feet from her starting point, her pretty black tail facing him. It worked!
“Good enough!” Stile exclaimed. “Thou canst now trace us both—even across the curtain. I will check with thee whenever I lose her. If she recrosses, we will have her. I shall see thee anon!” And he passed through the curtain again, setting off in the direction Neysa had pointed for the Red Adept. No traps out here!
But this was Proton, and outside a dome; quickly the rarefied and polluted air affected him. The Red Adept seemed to be within the dome—which of course was her Proton-home. Stile would have no safe access there!
He found the curtain and passed back through. Neysa was there, having paced him neatly. “I’ve got to organize for this better,” he said. “It’s certain she’s organized! It’s not safe to go after her in her Proton-home.”
He paced in a circle for a moment. Even his two brief excursions into the atmosphere of Proton had depleted him. Inside the dome the air would be good—but she would have power he lacked. Her Citizen-mother might not like Red, but would act to protect the dome against intrusions by hostile serfs. “I need to smoke her out, then chase her down in neutral territory. I’d better enlist Sheen’s help in the other frame. But I don’t want to take mine eye off the prey. So I’ll need to call her. Yes.” He walked to the spot where he had seen a tube connection to the dome. There would be a communication screen at the transport terminal.
He spelled himself through. Certain spells were elementary; he didn’t even have to rhyme. Just an originally phrased wish sufficed, for him or any eligible person. He had wasted a number of rhymes before catching on to this.
In a moment he was in the station. There was good air here! He called Sheen.
She appeared immediately on the screen. “So soon? Game is tomorrow—”
“Come to this address!” Stile said. “I may need help.”
The screen went blank. Red had intercepted the call; he should have known she would not be sitting idle. He might have avoided her little traps along the way, by declining to pursue her directly, but she knew he would come for her here. He had made a tactical error. Stile dived for the curtain.
A nozzle started hissing out vapor as he moved. Some sort of gas, probably stun-gas. Red seemed to like that sort of thing. Had she known precisely where and when he would appear, she could have nailed him. As it was, it was a close call; he got a whiff of it as he crossed the curtain, and reeled as he emerged in Phaze. Neysa steadied him with her solid body, and in a moment his head cleared.
“Good thing I stayed close to the curtain,” he said. “I’m going to have to create a distraction, so she won’t spy me next time. The Oracle says Blue will destroy Red; I’ll start the process now. Let me have my harmonica.”
Neysa shifted to girl-form. She now wore a little knapsack over her dress—she manifested clothed or naked at will—in which she carried Stile’s harmonica and other oddments. Stile had never quite fathomed how she was able to carry foreign objects on her human body that disappeared when she changed form, yet were not lost. She could change to firefly-form while carrying his harmonica, though it was far larger than the firefly, and have no trouble. He kept discovering new aspects of magic that made little sense in scientific terms—and of course magic did not make scientific sense. If it did, it wouldn’t be magic. So he just had to accept that impossible things happened magically, and let it be.
He took the harmonica and played a brooding, powerful theme. For this job the Platinum Flute might have been better, but that had never really been his. He hoped Clef was getting along with the Mound Folk all right, and wondered whether the musician really could be the Foreordained they wanted, and if so, in what manner he was destined to save Phaze. Sometimes Stile had the feeling that he was just one thread in a complex skein, doing whatever it was he was fated to do, with no more free will than a robot had. So many seemingly coincidental things had happened to him—but of course he could be manufacturing a pattern for nothing. Clef might not be the Foreordained; the mountain might not tremble when he played the Flute. So Stile’s encounter with him would have been no more than the randomness it appeared to be.
His magic was now intense. He concentrated on the Red Castle. “Make of this, the Red Demesne, a holocaust, a wreck obscene.”
They watched. The entire structure shimmered. Smoke appeared. The remaining creatures associated with it scrambled out as if fleeing something horrible. Behind them licked tongues of greenish flame. The smoke expanded, bursting out windows in its urgency to breathe free. Gouts of it roiled up in burgeoning masses resembling the grotesque heads of goblins.
Then the explosions came. Whole walls shoved outward. Partitions sailed flaming in wide arcs, to crash and splinter in minor puffs of fire. Rockets of light shot out, and sprays of burning fog. All colors were represented, but gradually red predominated: this was the home of the Red Adept, after all.
“That should give her something to think about,” Stile said. “I really don’t like such destruction, but I must destroy the entire works of the Red Adept. I mean to leave no springboard for her to wreak her mischief again.” He thought once more of Hulk and Bluette. Had she survived? He hoped so, though he did not want to deal with her directly. What grief Red had brought upon her, merely to try to trap him, Stile. Yes, Red had to be destroyed.
The pyrotechnics continued at the castle, reducing it steadily to the obscene wreck specified by the spell. Meanwhile, Stile stepped back across the curtain, checking to see whether Sheen had arrived. He avoided the gassed station, knowing that Sheen would check for him outside. He came back to Phaze for air, then checked Proton again.
On his third crossover, he spied her. She ran to him, opening her chest compartment to bring out an oxygen mask for him so that he could handle the Proton outdoor air. Quickly he explained the situation. “So what I have in mind is to interrupt the power to the dome-field generator,” he concluded. “Can you get me a heavy-duty cutting laser?”
Sheen smiled. She opened her compartment again, and presented him with a compact Protonite-powered portable metal-cutting laser unit and a power-cable locator. “Bless you!” Stile exclaimed, kissing her, then replacing the mask.
They walked across the desert, searching out the cable. Stile was apprehensive that someone would think to look outside the dome, and would spot them, but that was a chance they had to take. Citizens and serfs of Proton were very much dome-oriented, and simply ignored the outer world as if it did not exist. That might help. T
his should not take long; the force-fields that formed the air-enclosing domes drew a lot of power. Such heavy-duty cables were easy to locate. Soon they found it.
Stile aimed the laser-cutter down and turned it on. The sand bubbled into glass as the beam plunged into it. It formed a glass-lined hole leading down to the shielded cable. Then it cut through the cable itself, casing and insulation and all, centimeter by centimeter.
There was a flash from the hole. Air puffed from the dome in decompression. The force-field was gone.
“I think she will be out presently,” Stile said with grim satisfaction. “Now I have sworn to kill her, but I want to be fair about it. I don’t want you to do the job for me. Since there are regulations against the execution of serfs by serfs, in the frame of Proton, I’ll need to drag her into Phaze. Maybe we can bring her to trial there, and put her away ethically. So you leave it to me—but keep an eye on me, because I don’t expect Red to pass up any advantage or ploy, legal or illegal, that she thinks will work. She’ll try to keep our feud private, because if the Citizens investigate her connection to Hulk’s murder she’ll be exiled from Proton. So this is private between us—and I don’t want to be the victim of cheating.”
“Your logic is human,” Sheen said wryly. “If I weren’t programmed to love you—”
“Get on with it. Get a vehicle or something.”
“Bluette’s Employer has launched an investigation. Very soon he will obtain a transcript of Hulk’s experience.” She walked toward the shuttle tube. The gas would have no effect on her, and she would be able to use the communication screen to contact her friends.
So Bluette’s Employer was taking action. Red was already getting into trouble on Proton. But that didn’t change his own need to deal with her.
Stile ran on into the dome-area, now a shambles from the abrupt decompression. With luck he could catch Red during this initial period of confusion. All the occupants should be gasping, looking for long-neglected oxygen equipment, not paying attention to anything except their personal discomfort.
But as he entered, a vehicle charged out—a sand buggy with a bubbletop, painted red. She was taking off.
Stile ran for the cellar section. Maybe there would be another vehicle. He had to have some way to follow.
There were three other vehicles—all in flames. Red had made sure she would not be pursued.
Well, he had another avenue. Stile hurried to the curtain and stepped through, removed his abruptly inoperative oxygen mask, and looked about. Neysa was there, of course, pointing the way. “I’ll spell myself to a spot ahead of her, then recross,” Stile said.
But the unicorn nudged him, blowing a negative note. She wouldn’t let him go alone.
“All right—we should stay together,” Stile agreed. “But I don’t want to wear thee out chasing after a Proton car. I’ll have to enhance the trip by magic.”
Neysa still was not keen on magic practiced on herself, but accepted this as she had the horn-tail enchantment, with equine grace. “We two proceed with smiles, Red’s direction fifty miles.” That made it possible to overshoot Red’s position, and land ahead—which was where he wanted to be.
They moved rapidly across the landscape, as they had when leaving the White Demesnes. In a moment they were there. It was a pleasant enough glade east of the Red Demesnes. Neysa’s directional horn pointed west; they had outdistanced the quarry.
“All I have to do now is cross back and intercept her, and—” Stile stopped. “Oh, no!”
For the curtain was nowhere near there.
“Well, we’ll just have to pace her until she intersects the curtain,” Stile said.
They paced her, moving near the limit of the unicorn’s capacity. It was a strange business, because away from the curtain they could not see Red at all; only Neysa’s horn pointed out her location in the parallel world. It was like following a ghost.
A ghost. Stile wondered whether there was a similar curtain-effect on other worlds. Back on Planet Earth, when the legends were being formed—could a curtain have accounted for the perception of ghosts? People or creatures that were and were not present? So much seeming fantasy could be accounted for, if—
Then Stile spied the curtain. “This is it!” he said. He tore off his clothes and set his mask back in place as he spelled himself through.
Red had evidently been heading for this intersection with the curtain. The car was slowing. It swerved almost immediately to charge him. Was she trying to drive him back across the curtain? Stile distrusted that, so he stayed put. The car had four choices; it could swerve to the left to catch him as he dodged that way, or to the right, or go straight ahead on the assumption he would risk standing still, or it could stop. He doubted it would stop. She intended to smash him if she could, and make him step back across the curtain otherwise.
She made a good effort. She feinted slightly to the left, then to the right, trying to provoke his motion. Stile stood still, and the car accelerated straight at him.
At the last moment, Stile leaped up. The car was sleek and low, more powerful than the dune buggy he had at first conjectured. It passed right under him. Sometimes it paid to be an acrobat. He landed neatly in the swirl of sand the vehicle had stirred up without even a twinge from his bad knees.
Now he saw another vehicle approaching. That would be Sheen, having obtained a car from her friends. No wonder Red was in a hurry; any delay, and the pursuit would catch up.
But why had Red wanted him out of Proton? If she planned to cross the curtain, why force him to cross too, when she knew he had the advantage in Phaze. That didn’t seem to make much sense.
Stile got ornery when unsatisfied. Red was up to something, and wanted him out of the way so she could do whatever it was—and so he had better stay right on her. He hailed the second car, and sure enough, it was Sheen. She slowed to pick him up, then accelerated after the fleeing car.
Sheen’s car was larger and faster; her friends had provided well. Stile did not inquire how they had produced it so quickly. Some computer entry had surely been made to account for its use. They zoomed over the sand at some hundred to hundred and ten kilometers per hour, a velocity even Neysa could not match. In Phaze, she would have to run sixty to seventy miles an hour cross-country. She might facilitate things by changing to firefly-form to cross the worst of it, but she would inevitably fall behind.
A huge plume of dust swirled up behind each car. Before long they had closed in on Red’s vehicle, traveling a little to the side so as to be clear of her cometlike wake. That dust served to emphasize the barrenness that was Proton—a world that science had improved into desolation.
Red cut southeast, angling toward the Purple Mountain range. Where was she going?
“Do we have any way to bring her to a stop?” Stile asked. “I don’t like getting too far ahead of Neysa, in case we have action on the other side of the curtain.”
“Oh, yes. This is an attack vehicle. We can fire a disrupter to short out her electrical system.”
“That’s ideal!”
But now Red’s car shot into a channel in the mountain. It slewed through a curvaceous pass and up a barren slope. Sheen’s car followed, but could not get a direct shot at it. Now, directly behind, they suffered the full effect of the dust-wake. Red obviously was familiar with this region; Sheen and Stile were not.
On they skewed, wending through the mountain foothills and gullies at dangerously high velocity, never getting a clean shot. “I don’t like this,” Stile said. “She thinks in terms of traps. Things that wait quiescent until invoked. She’ll have something set up here.”
“I can call my friends on the car’s band, and ask them to—”
“No! They have to maintain their anonymity. A ‘clerical error’ freed this car; that’s as far as they can go. It’s my job.”
“No, they do not need to resort to supposed error. There are ways to—”
“No.”
“I believe I have remarked on your defe
ctive living logic before.”
“I believe so,” Stile agreed.
“Do you have any assurance at all that you will survive this foolishness?”
“Yes, the Oracle says that I will sire a son by the Lady Blue, whom I just married, and since I have not yet—”
The car began to ride up the side of the channel. “You married the Lady Blue?”
Oops. He had forgotten the ramification that would have on this side of the curtain. “I did.”
She brought the car back to level, but the course seemed none too steady. “Then it is over between us.”
“No! Not over. Just—modified. We’re still friends—”
“With a machine?”
“With a machine!” he shouted. “You’re still a person! I still love you as a person!”
She accelerated, closing the gap that had opened between vehicles, though the dust obscured almost everything. “Yes, of course.”
And Stile knew that whatever he had gained in Phaze had been at a necessary cost in Proton. The next stage in his inevitable alienation from Sheen had come to pass. They had known this would happen, but still it hurt. “I don’t suppose you’d settle for an oath of friendship?” he asked with an attempt at lightness.
“I am less complicated than a living creature like Neysa. Oaths are not part of my programming.”
Stile was spared the embarrassment of struggling further with this dialogue by their sudden encounter with Red’s car. She had drawn it up in an emergency stop just around a turn in the channel and jettisoned herself with the emergency release. Now her stalled vehicle blocked the way at a narrow neck, impossible to avoid. Stile saw her running up the steep slope, getting clear of the inevitable crash. The trap had sprung.
Sheen’s finger moved with mechanical speed and precision, touching a button on the dashboard. The ejection mechanism operated. Stile was hurled in his seat out the top of the car. A gravity diffuser clicked on, softening his fall, letting him float to the ground.