“But what is the point?” Bane asked. He knew that idlers would not survive long in Phaze, and doubted they would be tolerated long in Proton.
“The point is to ascertain whether the diverse species can successfully integrate,” the screen replied. “If this is affirmative, the entire society will be similarly integrated. There will be no distinctions between species or types, only between serf-status and Citizen status. Machines and aliens will have equal access to the benefits of Proton society.”
Bane nodded. This made sense to him. He would not have known how well unicorns and human beings could get along together, after centuries of noninvolvement with each other, if he had not known Neysa and Fleta.
Now he was learning how pleasant it could be to know an alien creature.
He glanced at the bed where Agape lay—and paused, astonished. She was there, but her form was not. She had become a mound of dark jelly that spread across the bed like so much spilled pudding. Only its cohesion and continuing quiver distinguished it from inanimate substance. She really was an amoeba: a blob of protoplasm.
Should he be revolted? He decided not to be. He had seen Fleta change to her natural unicorn form many times, and to her other hummingbird form, and back to girl form. That was interesting, not revolting; why should this be different? Agape had not concealed her nature from him, she had only tried to spare his feelings, because it seemed that other human beings had been upset by her true form. But he had come to know her mind and her personality, and he liked these. She was quite different from himself, physically; what did it matter?
He had had enough of education for now. He asked the screen for entertainment, and was rewarded by a “light-show” of phenomenal color and complexity. The lights brightened and dimmed, radiated out and in, changed shape and color, and assumed odd and fleeting shapes. Sometimes Bane, the viewer, seemed to be flying into a rapidly expanding bank of clouds; sometimes he seemed to be swimming in strange water. The configurations never repeated; he kept being surprised by what happened next.
Finally he told the screen to turn itself off. He walked about the room, thinking, trying to assimilate all that he had learned. One impression came through strongly: he liked this frame of Proton, despite its appalling degradation of the wilderness outside the domes. It had more than enough scientific magic inside the domes to make up. True, it had serious problems—but those represented not so much a liability as a challenge. Citizen Blue, who had been reared in Phaze, seemed to be Bane’s own kind of man. It would have been nice to work with him to complete the necessary changes in the society. In time, perhaps, even the pollution could be cured, and Proton could become green again outside. Of course he had to return to his own frame, but he would always be glad to have had this experience in this one.
Many hours had passed, but Agape still slept and he did not wish to disturb her. He experimented with his body, discovering that though in the rush of events he had not been aware of many differences between his own body and this one, those differences were significant. It was not just a matter of not getting tired and of not needing sleep; his involuntary physical reactions had become voluntary. He could elevate his reactions at will, becoming keyed up or relaxed simply by so directing his body. He could make himself sexually excited instantly, and turn it off as readily. It was helpful to know, since it could have been embarrassing with Agape if he depended on natural reactions.
At last he turned himself down to standby state, and this was very like sleep. He could, after all, have slept, had he realized how to do it! He just had to turn his body close to off for a period.
An alarm jolted Bane out of his simulated sleep. “The Citizen will see you in ten minutes,” the voice of a serf came from the screen.
“Uh, right,” Bane said. He turned to the bed.
Agape was stirring; evidently the alarm had awakened her too. Already her protoplasm was changing its shape. Legs and arms grew out at the ends, and her head. None were well formed; they most resembled the appendages a child might tack on a homemade doll. But once the size was right, the specific features developed. In just a few minutes she was herself—or rather, that artificially human form he had come to know.
She sat up, gazing at him. “Now you have seen me as I truly am,” she said.
“I think thou hast marvelous magic,” he said. “I could not change my form as thou dost.”
“You’re not an amoeba.”
“I am an Adept—or will be one,” he said. “I can change the forms of others, but not my own.”
“You really are not disturbed?”
“I really am not,” he said. And now it was true; the screen had provided him with the proper perspective, so that he understood the rationale of her nature and her presence, and approved of it. She was a nice person who was trying to accommodate herself to what was for her an alien situation. She needed support, not objection.
She stood, then stepped up to him and kissed him. “I fear I will not encounter your like again,” she said sadly.
“Nor I thine.”
“Two minutes,” the screen announced. “Present yourselves at the exit to your chamber.”
“We must not delay,” Agape said. “I have not been on Proton long, but I know from my briefing that serfs must always address Citizens as Sir and obey them implicitly. Perhaps I should talk, if it can be arranged.”
“Aye.” They presented themselves at the exit. The wall opened.
The serf conducted them quickly to a smaller chamber. They stepped in, but the serf did not. The door slid closed.
Suddenly the four walls vanished. They were in an enormous room. They stood on a beach whose sand spread endlessly to either side. Not far behind were palm trees, their fronds shimmering in the breeze. Ahead crashed the restless breakers of the fringe of a mighty ocean.
They stood staring, both awed by the scene. Then Agape put out her hand. “It is holo,” she murmured. “The walls still enclose us.”
“Holo?”
“Pictures, like those on the screen you watched last night. Very realistic.”
Bane touched the wall, verifying its presence. It seemed as if they were in an invisible box set on the beach, but he understood what she meant; the box was real, the beach illusory. “If this be not magic, what need have Citizens for it?” he asked.
On the ocean appeared a sail, and the sail expanded. It showed up as a sailboat, blown quickly by the wind toward them. On the boat, operating it, was a ruddy, heavyset man. He guided it to the beach, then quickly furled the sail and dragged the small craft right up before the place where Bane and Agape stood. He lifted out a chest and set it on the sand. He brought out a key, put it to the big old-style lock, and unlocked it. He lifted the lid of the chest.
From the chest rose a head. It kept rising, until a complete woman stood in the chest. There could not have been room for her within it. She seemed quite young, possibly fifteen, and her hair was as white as snow, set with a silver tiara. She wore a white gown set with bright gems.
The woman glanced at the boatsman, who was now standing at attention. “Sir,” he said, “these are the refugees.”
This was the Citizen! Bane realized. He had expected an old man, not a young woman, but obviously Citizenship knew no age or sex.
“Your identities?” Citizen White inquired.
“Agape of Moeba,” Agape said immediately. “And this is Mach, the son of Citizen Blue. Sir.”
The woman frowned. “I think not,” she said. She stared at Bane. “Tell me your identity in your own words.”
Somehow she knew about the exchange! “I be Bane, son of the Blue Adept, also called Stile.”
“And how came thee here?” she inquired.
For a moment Bane was too startled to speak. “Thou—thou knowest?”
She smiled. “How long since thou hast been to the White Demesnes?”
“The White Adept!” he exclaimed. “But—”
“But she be old and ugly?” the woman inquired wi
th a smile. She made a gesture, and abruptly she was old and fat. Then she reappeared in her young edition. “Since when be the son of an Adept deceived by appearances?”
“But there be no connection to Phaze!” Bane cried. “I be the first in a score of years to come to Proton, and that only in a body not mine own!”
“Really,” the woman said, smiling condescendingly. She turned to the serf beside her. “Set me adrift again, Grizzle, and open the window to Phaze for these two serfs.”
“Sir!” the man agreed.
The Citizen lost height. She sank back into the chest. When her head disappeared, the serf closed the lid, locked the lock, and lifted the chest back into the sailboat. He turned back to Bane and Agape. “The floors-man will take you there,” he said. Then he dragged the boat back to the water, stepped into it, unfurled the sail, and commenced tacking into the wind.
The scene vanished. They were back in the box. The door opened, and they stepped back into the hall.
“This way,” the serf said.
They followed him down the hall to another door. “You’ll need clothes,” he said, bringing out a white shirt and trousers of the Phaze variety for Bane and a white dress for Agape. “We don’t usually send others through, so white’s all we’ve got. You can change them when you get where you’re going.”
“But I am a serf!” Agape protested. “I can’t don clothing here!”
“We do wear it in Phaze,” Bane told her. “Thou wouldst be as out of place there naked as here in clothing.”
“I suppose,” she agreed uncertainly. She got somewhat awkwardly into the dress and slippers provided. The serf helped her get her outfit adjusted, and in a moment she looked, by Phaze standards, quite nice.
Bane completed his dressing, bending to fit the shoes to his feet. They fit well enough.
“This way,” the serf said, showing them on down the hall to still another door.
They entered another cubicle. This one closed on them, then abruptly ascended, startling them. Its walls were transparent; they could see the dimly illuminated walls of the region through which it passed.
It came up into a forest. It halted at ground level, and the panel on one side opened. They stepped out onto the forest floor. The cubicle closed itself up and descended back into the ground; a lid closed, making the ground complete.
“This is Phaze?” Agape asked.
“It seems like it,” Bane said. “It be hard to believe that return could be so simple!”
“But I—I am not magical!” she said. “How can I be here?”
“The same way I be here,” he said. “I exchanged bodies not; I be still in the robot body. We made a physical crossing!”
“All the time the Citizens knew this route!” Agape said. “It was not your imagination!”
He glanced at her. She was very fetching in her dress; it fitted her beautifully. “Thou didst doubt?”
She spread her hands. “I know that robots can be programmed and reprogrammed. They must believe what they are programmed to believe; they cannot do otherwise. I was sure that you believed, but not sure that you really came from Phaze. I apologize, Bane.”
“Accepted, Agape!” he said. “I could prove my origin not as readily as thou didst.”
“If this really is your frame, where should we go? I really don’t belong here.”
“I think thou dost belong with me,” he said. “Thou didst help me wend my way through Proton; now it be my turn to help thee in Phaze.” He brought her in to him and kissed her. “And how glad I be that this be not our separation, Agape!”
She clung to him. “Oh, Bane, I told you I wanted to learn how your species indulges in sex, and I do, but I think that was only part of it. What I really want is to be close to you. I felt so alone, so—so alien when I came to Proton, and you have made me feel like a person.”
“Thou hast made me feel wanted,” he said. And that, he realized, was the essence. He preferred to be genuinely wanted and needed by an alien creature, than to be routinely accepted by the most human of women.
They walked through the forest. “This must be near the White Demesnes,” he said. “That would be northeast of the Blue Demesnes, and some distance away. I recognize this particular region not, but if we go southeast we’ll get home.”
“Home to you, perhaps,” she said.
“Thou dost not want it?” he asked.
“Oh, Bane, I am not your kind! I have a task to accomplish—”
“But after thou dost accomplish it, and make thy report—what then?”
“Oh, Bane, I just don’t know! This is all so sudden, so strange!”
“Meanwhile, come and meet my family,” he said. He looked at her appraisingly. “And let’s see how thou wouldst be in blue.” He paused, considering, then sang: “Turn me blue, and her too.”
There was a flash, and abruptly both of their outfits were blue instead of white.
Agape looked at him, and at herself, astonished. “Magic! You did it!”
“I be an apprentice Adept,” he said. But privately he was bothered by a detail; there had never before been a flash when he performed magic. Was he losing his touch?
They walked on. Suddenly there was a commotion to the side. Gnarly little men appeared, about half the size of Bane.
“Goblins!” he said. “They be usually trouble!”
“Are they human beings?” Agape asked. “They seem so small!”
“They may be descended from human stock, but they be hardly human anymore. Mostly they interfere not with our kind, but they can be ugly on occasion. I want not to waste magic; I’ll see if I can bluff them off.”
The goblins charged up. “Fresh meat!” they exclaimed, licking their twisted lips.
“Back off, goblins!” Bane cried. “Else I transform you all to worms for the birds!”
“And who dost thou think thou art?” one of them challenged him.
“I think I be the son of Blue,” Bane said.
“Blue be far from here,” the goblin retorted. “We’ll roast thee and thy buxom wench for dinner!”
“Goblins be worms,” Bane sang. “As birds want—”
“We’re going!” the goblin cried, and all of them scurried back the way they had come.
Agape was impressed. “Could you really have turned them to worms?”
“Methinks so; I have tried to transform that many not simultaneously before,” Bane said. “My father could readily do it, of course. But we prefer to employ magic only as a last resort.”
“Oh, why is that?”
“Because a given spell only works well once. I have to figure out a new one each time. So if I use magic when I don’t need to, I be cutting down my options for the future. That could make me pretty much impotent, later in life.”
“Ah, now I understand!” she exclaimed. “So life is not entirely easy, even with magic!”
“Not necessarily easy at all,” he agreed. “Because there be also hostile magic.” He paused. “Speaking of which—the White Adept really has never been very friendly with the Blue Adept, not since the separation of frames. Why would she do us this big favor now?”
“Perhaps she is a nicer person than you thought.”
He laughed. “Adepts aren’t nice folk! They are concerned only with their own powers.” Then he reconsidered. “No, some are all right. The Red Adept owes his position to my father, so he’s always friendly, and Brown Adept’s all right too. She helped Fleta and the weres a lot. She’s the one who makes the golems.”
“The golems?”
“They be like robots,” he said with a smile. “ look and act like men, but they be dead sticks. Generally.”
They went on. “Mayhap I should conjure us directly there,” Bane said. “So thou dost not have to walk so far.”
“Save your magic,” Agape said with a smile. “I don’t mind walking with you.”
They came to a mountain. There was a large cave visible at its base. “The vampires!” Bane exclaimed.
“Vampires! The kind that suck blood?”
“They do, but not indiscriminately. It be part of special rituals they have for coming-of-age and such. We have nothing to fear from them.” He walked toward the cave-entrance. Agape followed, not at all at ease.
A man in a gray cape stood guarding the cave, though bats wheeled in the sky nearby. He came alert as the two approached. “Who be ye?” he challenged.
“I be the son of Blue,” Bane said. “This be my friend a shape-changer. I come to see my friends.”
“Who be thy friends?” the man asked.
“Vanneflay,” Bane said.
“Sorry, he be away these three days.”
“Vidselud, then,” Bane said.
“Him, too.”
Bane considered. “Then Suchevane.”
The man shrugged. “That be a coincidence! He, too.”
“All away?” Bane asked, surprised.
“But thou’rt welcome to join us in a meal,” the guard said. “Any son of Blue be welcome here.”
“Uh, Bane—” Agape whispered uncomfortably.
Bane smiled. “My friend be nervous about vampire viands. Thank thee, but we shall move on.”
The guard made a negligent wave of his hand.
They returned to the forest and walked on toward the west until they were well clear of the vampire’s mountain. Bane was deep in thought.
“I’m glad we didn’t stay there!” Agape said. “The thought of eating blood—”
“That bothers thee? Is blood not easier to imbibe than solid food?”
“We don’t consume flesh,” she said.
“Actually, the vampires wouldn’t have offered us blood. It’s too valuable, and they always take it fresh. That isn’t what bothers me.”
“What bothers you, Bane?”
“This be not Phaze.”