Blue Adept

CHAPTER 11 - Trap

Now was the time to use his magic. “Trace her place!” he sang, and a new light appeared, leading the way into the passage. “Fret the threat,” he added, to abate whatever nasty little surprises lurked along the passage. This wouldn’t stop them all, but it should help. A little alertness should do the rest.

Stile charged into the passage, following the light. Then the light stopped. But the Red Adept wasn’t there. Baffled, Stile retraced his steps. He squinted at the glow from one side and the other.

“The curtain,” Neysa said. She was back in girl-form. Now he saw it—the faint shimmer of the curtain across the passage. What a neat device! No enemy confined to Phaze could follow her there.

He had little time if he was to catch her. “Neysa—I must go through. I—“ He could not find the words to tell her what he had to: his gratefulness for her vital help and support right up to this moment; his continued need of it; but the impossibility of having it in Proton-frame. Unless she could cross in girl-form—but then she would be fixed in that form, unable to revert to natural status, and highly vulnerable in the unfamiliar world. No, he did not want her there! So he simply grabbed her and kissed her. “Make a spell for me to follow,” she said. Good idea! In fact, why not put tracers on both himself and the Red Adept? If this device worked, he could check with Neysa every time he lost track of his enemy, and receive guidance. That would ensure his success. His magic was more versatile than Red’s; he might not be able to abolish her by a direct spell, but he could at least track her. Maybe.

The present glow-tracker was designed to follow where Red had gone; it was balked by the curtain, so hovered there helplessly. Stile hesitated to step through at the same spot; no telling what Red had in store there for the un-wary.

A small demon-animal blundered down the hall. One of the animated amulets, running late. Stile and Neysa flattened themselves against the wall and let it pass. The thing wandered on past the curtain, never perceiving it, seeking escape from the Red Demesnes. It turned the far corner—and there was an explosion.

“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 herel 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 knap-sack 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 2 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. Mean-while, 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. This 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, 111 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 Blue Adept 283 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 Pro-ton. 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, 2 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 ac-counted 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 in-tended 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 some-thing, 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 pro-vided 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. Be-fore 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 defective 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 be-tween vehicles, though the dust obscured almost every-thing. “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.

The moving car collided with the stationary one. Both exploded. A ball of flame encompassed the mass, and smoke billowed outward. Protonite didn’t detonate like that; Red’s vehicle must have been booby-trapped with explosives. It had been a trap, all right. Then Stile realized he was alone. “Sheen!” he cried in anguish. “Why didn’t you eject too?” But he knew why. She had wanted to be junked cleanly when she lost him; she had seen to it herself.

He knew there was nothing he could do for her. It was Red he had to go after. He shucked his car seat and charged across to intercept the Adept.

She had a hand weapon. She pointed it at him. Stile dived, taking advantage of the irregularity of the ground. The laser beam seared the sand ahead of him, sending up a puff of acrid fumes. Then he crawled rapidly to the side, grabbed a small rock and hurled it at her. He did this without lifting his head or body; he could throw accurately by sound.

But she too had moved, crossing to get a shot from a better vantage. Only Stile’s continuing motion saved him from getting lasered. But now he too was armed—with a number of good throwing rocks. He could throw them rapidly and with excellent effect, when the target presented itself—if he did not become the target of the laser first. They maneuvered. Watching, listening, stalking. Red was no amateur at this; she knew how to stay out of trouble—and she had the superior weapon. He would have to catch her by surprise, score with a rock before she could bring her laser to bear, and close for the finish. It was a challenge similar to certain Games, and he was good at this type of thing too. But she had the advantage of weapon and familiarity with the terrain.

Nevertheless, he outmaneuvered her, got in a good location, and prepared for attack. He wanted to knock her out with a score on the head, but his stones were too light for certainty. He was more likely to stun her momentarily or injure her, and have to take it to hand-to-hand combat. So be it. Too bad he had not brought his sword across the curtain. But he could do a lot of damage to a human body, bare-handed, in a very short time.

He watched for his moment, then made his move. He rose up and hurled his first stone. His aim was good; it glanced off her head, making her cry out. But her thick red hair had cushioned it somewhat; the stone only gashed her, not seriously.

Then she leaped—and disappeared.

The curtain! The curtain was here, and she had used it.

In this respect, too, she had been better prepared than he.

He charged across to it and willed himself after her. Suddenly the mountain greened about him. He stood on verdant turf, with patches of purple flowers decorating the slopes. The air was warm and fragrant.

Red was still reeling from the blow of the stone. Blood colored her hand where she had touched the gash, and her hair was becoming matted. But when she saw him she raised the laser and fired at point-blank range. Of course it didn’t work. The curtain was not the demarcation of worlds, but of frames—modes of energy-application. She was getting rattled, making mistakes now. Stile hurled another rock at her. His weapon was good in either frame!

But she dodged the rock and brought out an amulet. Where she had carried it he didn’t know, since she was naked, as serfs had to be in the other frame. “Invoke!” she cried.

The amulet expanded into a ravening griffin—body of lion, head and wings of eagle. It oriented on Stile and leaped.

Stile spelled himself hastily back through the curtain. He was in Proton again, inhaling oxygen through the mask. How bleak this frame was! Smoke still drifted up from the wrecked vehicles. Sheen had been there, suiciding rather than continue an animation that had become meaningless.

Stile concentrated a moment, then willed himself back through the curtain. “Creature fly up into sky!” he sang, and the griffin, just now turning on him after having over-shot him, abruptly spread its wings and ascended. It was out of the fray.

Stile launched himself at Red, who held another amulet. She had a flesh-toned compartment belt, he saw now, that held her assorted weapons; from a distance she looked properly naked. He caught her hand and wrenched the amulet from her. “Invoke!” he cried.

The amulet grew into a flying octopus. It reached hungrily for Red. Stile had realized before that there were malign amulets that attacked the invoker, and benign ones that fought on the side of the invoker. Since Stile had stopped invoking amulets. Red was using these benign ones against him. He had just stolen one and turned it against her.

Now Red dived across the curtain, escaping the malice of her own creation. Stile went after her—and almost got clobbered by a rock. She was using his tactic against him, now.

He grappled with her. She was a foot taller than he—in this frame, about thirty centimeters—and had more mass.

She was strong, too. A virtual Amazon, a naked tigress, eager to kill. Her claws gouged at his eyes, her knee rammed his groin. But Stile saw the smoking wreckage where Sheen had perished, and was a savage animal himself. Every person he held dear was being destroyed one way or another; he would destroy in turn. He was expert in several martial arts; he knew which nerves to pinch, the vulnerable spots to strike, the pressures that would disjoint which joints, on man or woman. He blocked her attack and concentrated on his own.

Again Red was overmatched, and realized it. She willed herself back into Phaze—and Stile went with her, not relenting. But here her amulets functioned; she invoked one, and it hissed out of a bottle, a genie, a giant gaseous man all head and arms. Quickly Stile recrossed the curtain. He needed a spell to banish a genie. And another to take the offense. He might not be able to attack Red directly, but he could isolate her or—

Something was moving in the now almost-quiescent wreckage of the two vehicles. Stile’s attention was instantly distracted from the battle. Could it be—With timorous hope he hurried over there. Yes—a shape was struggling to extricate itself! This was not the fantasy frame; it couldn’t be a demon!

“Sheen?” he called tentatively.

“Stile?” her voice came back, oddly distorted.

“Sheen, you survived! I thought—“

“I am a machine. I am damaged, not yet defunct. Unfortunately.”

“Let me help you—“

“Do not touch me. I am hot.”

She was indeed. As she completed her extrication, he saw the extent of the damage. Most of her superficial flesh had been burned away. Her face was rubble. Her lovely skin and hair had been stripped to reveal scorched metal, with dangling shreds of substance. Wisps of smoke and steam drifted upward from her joints, and hot oil dripped from her chest cavity. She looked about as much like a corpse as a machine could. An animated corpse—a zombie.

“Sheen, we must get you to a repair shop! You—“

“Go after Red, Stile!” she cried weakly. “Do not let me distract you. I am of no further use to you. If I did not have this damned self-preservation circuit that cut in—“ Still, he was torn. Once before she had suffered injury on his behalf, making him realize how important she was to him. Her damage this time was surely worse, though she remained animated; all of her surface had been charred by the flame, and she was probably operating ineffectively on the last dregs of her Protonite charge. Yet it seemed that this merely reflected her emotional desolation, for she was programmed to love him—and never would be his lover again.

Perhaps it would be kinder simply to allow her to expire.

She was close to the end now.

The thought triggered a savage reaction. “Vengeance I have sworn, but it shall not take precedence over friend-ship,” Stile said. “Walk with me across the curtain. I can restore you, there.”

The eyeless husk of a head oriented on him. The tattered remnant of her speaker spoke. “You must not. Red will trap you—“

“I think Red is already far from here. I have given her time enough to escape. She is less important than you.”

“You must not give her time to set up—“ Sheen’s voice failed at last. Her power was fading. Even Protonite had finite limits.

“Walk, or I must carry you,” Stile said sternly, knowing she would not allow him to harm himself by touching her burning surface.

She walked with decreasing stability. Charred fragments fell from her. Something rattled and buzzed inside. Finally she crashed forward, still smoking. But she was half across the curtain.

Stile located an unsmouldering spot on her torso and touched his finger to it and willed them both across the curtain. The grass appeared, the air freshened, and her body sizzled in the greater moisture. He removed his finger before it burned.

The Red Adept, as he had surmised, was gone. He had been besting her; she had wanted to escape all along, salvaging time and resources to meet him again in a situation more favorable to herself. He didn’t like letting that hap-pen, but he had been afraid that if he left Sheen too long it might not be possible to restore her—or that he himself would die or lose power and be unable to return to her. If he had let her perish in favor of his vengeance, he would 2 have sacrificed much of what he valued: his own humanity. He might have gone on to establish his power and security as the Blue Adept—and become more like the other Adepts, corrupted by power, cynical and sel5sh to the point of worthlessness.

There was the sound of hooves. Neysa was catching up, Ere snorting from her nostrils, bringing the harmonica just when he needed it. He would be able to use his magic to restore Sheen as he had before, and then would return her to Proton for reanimation. Maybe he could include a spell to make her feel better about the situation; that probably would not work, but it was at least worth a try. Then it would be time to set up for the next Round of the Tourney. Round Eight brought him up against a young woman of the Age 22 ladder, a fair player whose skills he knew from prior experience. She was Tulip, a gardener-tender for a Citizen who favored ornamentals. She was as pretty as a flower herself, and not averse to using her sex-appeal to gain advantage. But Stile had no intention of prejudicing a likely victory by such dalliance. He put it into MENTAL, and so nullified her choice of NAKED. No body-contact sport this time! They wound up in WORD GAMES. “Travel from FLESH to SPIRIT,” the Game Computer said. “Time five minutes.”

Stile and Tulip got to work. The challenge was to fashion a chain of words linked alternately by synonyms and homonyms, converting “Flesh” to “Spirit” by readily definable stages. Both length and time counted; within five minutes, the shortest viable chain would win. Beyond that time limit, the first person to establish any viable chain of any length would win. So it behooved them each to take up most of that five minutes to seek the shortest possible chain. To settle on a given chain too quickly would be to invite the opponent to come up with a shorter one within the time limit and win; to take too long beyond the time limit invited loss to a longer but sooner-announced chain. The point of decision could be tricky.

Flesh, Stile thought. Synonyms would be Body, Meat, Fatten—there would be others, but these sufficed. If he explored every single avenue, he would not complete any one chain in time. Selectivity—there was the key to this challenge.

Now try Meat, as the best prospect for homonyms:

Meet as in proper. Meet as in a competitive event. Mete as in measure. Try the competition-event for synonyms: Contest, Race, Competition. Then Race, jumping to the homonym, meaning subspecies, and the synonym Color, and on to Hue—was this leading to Spirit? Not rapidly. Better try an alternate, and return to this if necessary. His first job was to establish a viable chain, any chain, within five minutes. That would be an automatic win if Tulip failed to find one.

Of course, if they both came up with the same chain, the first to announce it would win. So if he found a good one, he should announce it regardless of time. But he was not worried about that; he had pretty good judgment on word-chains.

He glanced covertly at Tulip. She was chewing on her lip, making little gestures with her left hand, as though shaping a slippery sequence. Was she making faster progress? He didn’t think so, as she really wasn’t that bright, but it was possible. Then she caught him looking, and made a suggestive motion with her hip. He had to turn his eyes away, lest she bring his thoughts right back to Flesh and cost him the Game. That was what she was trying to do, the flirt. Maybe that was how she had gotten this far.

Try Meet as in proper. Synonym Fit, homonym Fit as in the contour of clothing. Yes, then Suit, and its homonym Suit as in satisfy, or the synonym Please. Homonym Pleas, as in several requests. Synonym—was he returning to Fit, as in a fit plea for favor? If so, this was a dead-end, a waste of time, like a loop in the maze-puzzle he had fallen into in another Game with another woman. Too much time had passed; he couldn’t afford that! This simple game became confusingly tricky under the pressure of competition. No, no loop here; define it as a wish, as desire. And Desire as a homonym, meaning the urgency to possess, achieve, prevail—he certainly had that!—which was a possible synonym for team spirit—

Spirit! There it was! And jump to homonym Spirit as in Soul, and his chain was complete.

Unless that Desire link was faulty. Pleas—Desire—

Spirit. The Computer might reject that as inexact. Better to work out a tighter chain.

But four minutes were passed. Not enough time to figure out a new chain. Tulip looked as if she were on the verge of completing her own chain. Stile decided to go with this one. “Chain!” he announced.

“Damn!” Tulip muttered.

“Present,” the Computer said.

Stile presented it, trying to conceal his nervousness about the Desire connection. But the Computer did not challenge it; it was fairly liberal on the adaptations of language.

Still, Tulip had another minute to produce a shorter chain, or a better one of the same length. Stile waited nervously.

But she seemed to have given up. The time expired without her entry. Stile had won, more or less by default. “It would have been different in NAKED/PHYSICAL,” Tulip said tearfully. She had choked at the crisis-point in this Game, and now suffered the reaction.

“That’s why I avoided it,” Stile said, though he would have put it into some subcategory like foot-racing and probably beaten her anyway. She really hadn’t lost much; with her appearance, she should do well enough in the wider human galaxy. But it had the mild distaste of an unjustified victory.

The separations between Rounds were diminishing.

Round Nine was due in the afternoon of the same day. Stile planned to spend the interim devising strategy and spells to finish the Red Adept, and to get some rest and refreshment. He was also concerned about Sheen; he had restored her in Phaze, again, and she was now fully operational. But how could he abate the hurt of her nonliving heartbreak? His attempted spell had not taken effect. She seemed to have lost much of her will-to-animation, and there seemed to be no way he could restore it. She needed the one thing he could not give—his complete love. Maybe, he thought again, he should have let her perish, instead of languishing like this. He had promised a clean death to the Red Adept; could he do less for his friend? There was a knock on the apartment door. That was unusual; visitors usually announced themselves on the screen. Sheen, alert to threats, went to see to it. “Oh,” she exclaimed, in a perfect representation of surprise. “You survived!”

“I must speak to—Stile,” the visitor said. Stile snapped alert. That was the Lady Blue’s voice! He went to the door. There she stood, a little disheveled but irremediably splendid. Bluette, of course; she had escaped the robot and sought out the name and description Hulk had given her. Smart woman!

Yet this was extremely awkward. “Come in,” Stile said. “Of course I’ll help you. I’m on the trail of the woman who killed Hulk now. But one thing you must know at the outset: I want nothing personal to do with you, after this.” Her brow furrowed prettily. “Nothing?”

“I am married to your alternate self, the Lady Blue of Phaze. You look exactly like her, Bluette—you are exactly like her—but she is the one I love. This is no reflection on your own merit, that I sincerely appreciate. And I know you have no personal interest in me. But—well, if she thought I was seeing you—“

She smiled, oddly at ease. “I understand.”

“Stile,” Sheen said, evidently making some sort of connection. “She is not—“

“Not my woman,” he agreed. “Bluette, I never wanted to meet you. It—it’s too confusing. And I know, after all you went through—is that robot still on your trail? That we can take care of!”

“Stile, listen,” Sheen said. “I just realized this is—“

“Look, don’t make this any more difficult than it is!” Stile snapped. “Every second she stands here—this woman is so like the one I love—“ The woman smiled again. “Now thou dost know what I went through. Adept. The false so like the true.”

“What?” Something didn’t jibe here.

“Thee... Thee... Thee.”

Stile froze. “Oh, no!”

“I am the Lady Blue,” she said. “Fain would I listen longer to thy protestations of other love, my Lord, but I did cross the curtain to bring thee a vital message.” Never had Stile imagined the Lady Blue in this frame.

“But that means—“

“That Bluette is dead,” Sheen finished. “It has after all been several days. We should have heard from her before this, had she escaped.”

“Oh, God,” Stile said. “That I did not want. And now the two of you have met—that was never supposed to happen!” In the back of his mind, moving rapidly to the fore, was his concern that the robot might do some harm to her human rival. He had to get the Lady Blue out of here!

“Thou speakest as if there be some shame here,” the Lady Blue said. “I have long known of thy most loyal friend in this frame, the lovely Lady Sheen, and I am glad to meet her at last.” She turned to address Sheen directly. “I am oath-friend to Neysa. Can I be less to thee? If thou wouldst honor me with thy favor, 0 noblest of Ladies—“ And Sheen was crying. It was not the sort of reaction a robot was supposed to have, but it was natural to her. “Oh, Lady—oh. Lady!”

Then they were hugging each other, both crying, while Stile stood in mute confusion. Somehow it seemed that Sheen had been restored—yet the mechanism of it was beyond his immediate comprehension.

When the first flush of their emotion subsided, the Lady Blue delivered her message to Stile. “A bat-lad came to the Demesnes, sore tired from rapid flying. Methought he wanted healing, but it was news for thee he brought.”

“Vodlevile’s son!” Stile exclaimed. “I never thought he would—“

“He said the Red Adept had returned to the ruin of her Demesnes and fashioned a terrible spell, a basilisk-amulet that would destroy whatever it touched, being invoked by the very frame of Phaze. This she meant to give thee in the frame of Proton, and when thou didst bring it across the curtain—“

“Her final trap!” Stile said. “A basilisk—a creature whose very touch brings horrible death, whose gaze petrifies. But why does she think I would accept such an amulet from her?”

“The bat-lad said she made it resemble something thou couldst not refuse. Something thou wouldst immediately take across the curtain. That was all he knew; he dared not get within the range of her power. He thought it was news thou shouldst have—and I thought so too. So I tried to reach thee—and succeeded.”

“It is as if Bluette gave her life, to make this message possible,” Stile said. “And the vampire child—my trifling favor to him may be destined to save my life. Yet this is strange. Why should I need to be warned against doing what I would not have done anyway? Well I know the power of Red’s amulets! In this frame they are harmless, but I would never carry one across to Phaze.”

The Lady Blue spread her hands. “Mayhap we can piece it out, my Lord. I must return to the wolves in three hours, lest they worry. Meanwhile, may I view more of this wondrous frame of Proton? This may be mine only chance to visit it, and tain would I know as much of thy homeland as I can.”

“I’ll show you,” Sheen said. “I’ll show you everything!” Sheen was a machine, but she would not deceive Stile. If she accompanied the Lady Blue, she would protect her. And if that was what she wanted, how could he deny it? Thus it was that Stile found himself alone with his puzzling piece of information, while the two Ladies toured the local domes.

Who would have thought that the source of Sheen’s woe would also be the abatement of it? Yet from the moment the Lady Blue had addressed her as Lady Sheen—

What healing magic there was in a title! The Lady Blue, without apparent premeditation or design, had granted equal status to Sheen and proffered friendship and respect. Sheen had been instantly conquered. The issue of her machine-nature had not even been a consideration. Stile returned to his deliberations. He decided that the Red Adept planned to gift him with the amulet through some third party, so that he would not suspect its nature.

22Perhaps a silver brooch for the Lady Blue; of course he would take that to her in Phaze. But now he had been warned; he would not take anything across the curtain. In two hours the two returned, forever friends. “What a frame this is!” the Lady Blue exclaimed, exactly like the tourist she was. “Never since I saw the West Pole have I seen the like! Truly a magical world!”

The West Pole? “You mean in Phaze there really is a—?”

“Thou didst not know? I will take thee there, my love, once this business here is done.”

“I will go there,” Stile said. Fascinating, that an alien creature from some far galactic world had heard about the West Pole, while Stile who seemed to live almost on top of it had not. “Now—I love thee. Lady, and fain would have thee stay—but until the message of the Oracle has been appropriately interpreted, guaranteeing me the chance to stay with thee, I must remain apart from thee.”

“I go, my Lord.” She approached Stile and kissed him. Then Sheen accompanied her to the curtain. Stile continued his research for the next Round of the Tourney, fearing his company would only endanger the Lady Blue, here on Proton. She had acted with considerable courage, coming here and finding her way through the mysterious technological habitat of Proton. He loved her for that courage —but this was not her frame.

Round Nine carried a two-year tenure bonus for the loser, and the prospect of much more for the winner. Stile was now into “safe” territory; he could not be exiled from Proton after washing out of the Tourney. This removed some of the tension. It was now more important to deal with the Red Adept than to win any particular Game. Oh, to win the Tourney would be grand—but the odds remained against him, especially with one loss on his tally. But once he eliminated Red, the entire frame of Phaze was awaiting him, and a happy life with the Lady Blue. So he would play his best, but without the terrible urgency he had had before. That was just as well, since he had other things to do than research his prospective opponents. That research had become a chore.

His opponent this time was a female Citizen. Three Citizens in one Tourney—his luck was bad! But no—probably half the survivors of this level were Citizens, so this was no luck at all.

Still he did not intend to mess with her. He had the letters, so couldn’t stop her from picking her specialty—probably MENTAL or ART. But he might interfere with her plan. He chose MACHINE.

It came up 4C, Machine-Assisted ART. Not his favorite, but probably not hers either. They could find themselves doing esthetic figures while parachuting from a simulated-airplane tower, or playing a concert on a theremin, or doing sculpture by means of selective detonations of incendiary plastic. He would probably feel more at home in these pursuits than she.

But when they gridded through, she outmaneuvered him. They had to compete on the sewing machine, making intricate patterns and pictures on a cloth background. She as a Citizen had had a lot more exposure to cloth than he; indeed, she wore an elaborate dress-suit with borders stitched in gold and silver thread. But she had always had serfs to do her dressmaking for her. So unless she had practiced in this particular art—

Stile, of course, had practiced. He had spent years advancing his skills in every facet of the Game. He knew how to use a sewing machine. He was not expert, but he was adequate.

As it turned out, he was moderately better than the Citizen. It was an unspectacular Game, but the victory was his.

Now for the finish against Red. Sheen’s friends, who as machines had great difficulty perceiving the semi-subjective curtain, had come up with a device to detect it. Sheen now carried this device. She would know, in much the way Neysa knew the whereabouts of Red, where the curtain was. That way Red would not again elude him by stepping across a fold of the curtain he did not know was near. Stile prepared carefully. Sheen carried an assortment of small weapons and devices—a laser, a radiation grenade, a periscope, stun-gas capsules, and a folding steel broad-sword. Her friends had provided a gyro-stabilized unicycle seating two, so she could ferry him rapidly about, any-where where crowds would not find it too attention-fixing.

33A great deal went on in Proton that failed to attract the notice of Citizens, but there were limits. In fact, part of this deadly “game” would be the effort to force Red to call attention to herself, while Stile escaped it. His only crime was the sabotage of Red’s dome; that had probably annoyed her Citizen-mother, but might be attributed to a repair-machine malfunction. Red would have known the truth, but not wanted to report it and have her own situation investigated. She, on the other hand, had been responsible for the deaths of Hulk and Bluette—oh, a double pain and guilt there!—and these were recorded on holo-tape. She would be banished instantly, even if she won more tenure through the Tourney, once those murders came to light. Unless she won the Tourney and became a Citizen. Then she would be immune to all reprisal. Stile had to make sure she did not succeed in that.

They set out in quest of the enemy. Stile had a full day before Round Ten—and if that were not time enough, he would resume the chase after the Round. His oath of vengeance would soon be satisfied, one way or the other. First he went to the curtain at a remote spot and stepped across. Neysa was there—with the Lady Blue. Startled, Stile protested. “Lady, I wanted thee to be under the protection of the werewolves.”

“A wolf went to the Oracle,” she said. “And learned that his oath-friend Neysa was in dire peril from this mission. Since Neysa will not give over, the wolves and unicorns are now patrolling the curtain, ready to aid her if need be. Rather than interfere with this effort, I too patrol the curtain.”

Stile was not wholly satisfied with this, but realized that this was another device of the animals to help him. They wanted to be in on the action. “I expect to deal with Red in Proton,” he said. “My magic is stronger than hers, in Phaze, so she is unlikely to cross the curtain before settling with me. Do you all take care of yourselves.”

“Indeed,” the Lady agreed. “And thee of thyself, my love.”

How glad he would be when this was over, and he could love her without restraint. But that had to wait, lest he void his Oracular guarantee.

Neysa pointed the direction of Red. Then Stile returned across the curtain to Sheen, drove a distance parallel to the curtain, recrossed, and got a new bearing. Now he was able to triangulate. It seemed Red was near the spot she had halted before, when he intercepted her and leaped over her car. She must have a secret place there. They drove there, at moderate speed, so that Neysa could pace them easily. If Red tried to step across the curtain again, she would be in immediate trouble. Of course her amulets could destroy Neysa and the Lady Blue, so Stile still didn’t want them participating in the conclusion. But they could certainly watch from a safe distance. At least they would know the outcome as soon as it hap-pened. And perhaps the Lady’s presence represented a guarantee for Neysa, since the Lady could not bear him any son if she died at this stage. The Lady should survive, and would hardly allow Neysa to perish in her stead. The direction was east. They avoided individual domes and slowed as they neared the spot. It would have been fun, touring the desert like this, comparing the landscape to that of Phaze, if the mission weren’t so serious. There were crevices and mounds and the depressions where lakes might once have been. Where they could be again, if the Citizens ever developed the interest to restore the planet instead of depleting it. But that was a hopeless notion; Citizens cared nothing for the external environment. In fact the very hostility of it gave them additional control over the system, for no serf could flee outside. There was nothing where Red was supposed to be. Sand and low sand dunes covered the entire area. They sought the nearest fold of the curtain. Stile crossed. Mare and Lady were there. Stile obtained two more pointings, narrowing down the location precisely. Red was not in Phaze, but in the equivalent spot in Proton was a bunker, a room set below the level of the ground. It was filled with amulets; obviously a cache of Red’s.

But these amulets would not work in Proton. The curtain passed through this spot, but it was dark beyond it. Stile would have to cross it to find out what was there. Neysa blew a negative note. Red was in the dark be-yond. She could surely see Stile, since he was here in the lighted frame. She could be holding a sword high in both hands, waiting to decapitate the next person who crossed. A simple enough trap.

So Stile avoided it. He removed himself some distance, crossed to Proton, and explained the situation to Sheen. “It is surely a trap,” she agreed. “She means you to come to her. Don’t chance it.”

“I’m not going to let her escape! She’ll never come out if I just leave her alone.”

Sheen opened her chest compartment and brought out the laser-cutter. “Make a hole, drop in a stun-capsule.” That seemed appropriate. Stile started the laser. Quickly the hole formed. Soon it broke through the steel ceiling of the bunker. Then he dropped in the capsule. There was a hiss as it activated, and a puff of the gas emerged from the hole. “I heard something in there fall,” Sheen said. “Now for the periscope.” She brought out the tiny device. It was electronic, and needed no solid extension into the hole; its perceptor-unit was mounted on an almost invisible thread that dangled down.

It showed the Red Adept sprawled naked on the floor of her miniature fortress, an old-fashioned dueling pistol in one hand, an amulet in the other. Had she planned to force the amulet on him at gun-point? If so, she had been amazingly naive.

“I am suspicious,” Sheen said. “There is no entrance here in Proton; she uses Phaze as access. She expected you to enter that way. There could be an automatic weapon set to cover the curtain.”

“Yes. We had better force entry from here.” They set about it. Sheen had several construction bombs, and used them to blast away the sand and rip open a man-sized aperture in the wall of the bunker. Then she entered first.

“No automatic weapon,” she reported. “Still, I think you’d better stay clear.”

“The hell with that,” Stile said, walking down the sand embankment. “I can’t have the ladies doing everything for me.”

“But we can’t be sure this was the extent of the trap! It’s too simple; even I could have worked out something more sophisticated, and I have no creative imagination. At least let me search the premises—“

“You do that. I’ll tie up Red.” Because Stile found he could not kill her, this way. Now when she was unconscious. Funny how she had allowed herself to be gassed, when she must have heard the laser-drill. He leaned over the body, not squatting, because of his knees. Sheen commenced her inspection of the bunker. Something nagged him, but he couldn’t place it at the moment. “I won’t touch that amulet, certainly!” Abruptly, Red moved. Her head turned to cover him, and her pistol whipped up. She was not unconscious after all!

Stile hurled himself to the side as the gun went off. Had he been squatting, as a normal man would have done, he could have been fatally caught; the gun was aimed for the heart of a squatting man. As it was, the bullet slammed into his left thigh.

It was a bad hit. Now Stile exerted his trance-control. He let himself fall backward while clapping both hands to the wound. The pain was terrible, but he was bringing it under control, while he slowed the pulsing eruption of blood. He could not afford to lose consciousness; he could bleed to death rapidly. The major artery had been nicked or severed; he would need a surgeon’s prompt attention. Meanwhile Sheen launched herself at Red. Pistol and amulet flew wide and Red was hurled against the wall. But then Red righted herself and hurled Sheen away, with inhuman strength. “This is a robot!” Sheen cried. “A machine, like me!”

“True,” the Red-figure said. “I bear this message for Stile: make haste away, midget, for at this moment the Red Adept is launching an explosive drone vehicle tuned to the bullet in you. How much damage the drone does depends on your location when it catches you.” They heard the noise of machinery moving, some distance away. Something was rising from another bunker.

“Run, Blue!” the robot continued, “Suffer the joys of the chase, rabbit. Message ends.” And the robot went dead.

“Sheen!” Stile cried. “Carry me to the curtain. They can help me there, and the drone can’t cross—“

“The amulet!” Sheen cried. “It is the bullet!”

“The bullet!” Stile echoed. Now the full nature of this terrible trap was apparent—and he had almost fallen into it despite the warning the Lady Blue had brought. If he crossed with the bullet in him, it would animate into the basilisk, and he would be dead before he could utter a spell. But if he did not cross—

Now they heard the released drone, cruising across the sand toward them. There could be enough explosive in that to blow up a mountain.

Sheen stooped to pick him up. She carried him to their unicycle and set him in the seat and flung the safety harness around him while Stile clung to consciousness and to his leaking thigh. Then she jumped in herself and started the motor.

The drone-car was rounding the bunker, picking up speed. Sheen accelerated away at right angles to its path. In moments they were traveling seventy kilometers an hour, leaving the drone behind. This was not a particularly fast velocity for travel on a surfaced road, but across the desert landscape it seemed horrendous. “We’ll have to get the bullet out before we take you to a doctor!”

“How can we get it out without a doctor, especially if we can’t stop?” Stile gritted. He was not in the most reason-able of moods at the moment, as he fought to keep blood and body consciousness together. The rough riding did not help.

“I’ll summon one of my friends to intercept us.”

“Summon one to blow up the drone!”

“They won’t do that. It would attract attention to their nature. But one will help you and depart. Then the drone won’t matter.”

“Not to rush you,” Stile said. “But I can only hold on here a short while. I’m in partial trance, suppressing the circulation to my leg, but the wound is bad and I’m slowly losing control. My last reserves are depleting.”

“I know the experience,” she said. “We’ll stay right be-side the curtain, so you can cross the moment we get the bullet out. Then you’ll be able to use magic to—“

“I can’t heal myself with magic.”

“The Lady Blue will find some other Adept to help you, I’m sure. Perhaps the Lady Yellow—“

“Yellow is no lady! She is an old crone.” But he was being querulous in his adversity. Yellow probably could help. He remembered how the Lady Blue had won her favor by starting the applause at the Adept pavilion. The Lady Blue was good at that sort of thing. Sheen guided the unicycle to the curtain. Stile perceived it now with remarkable clarity. Had it intensified, or was his current state of pain-blocking trance responsible? It hardly mattered; he could see across as though it were an open window.

The unicycle was handily outdistancing the drone at the moment—but in Phaze Neysa was having trouble keeping up. The terrain was more varied there, with trees and streams and bushes obstructing her route. “Slow it. Sheen. Neysa is wearing herself out—and I’ll need her there the moment I cross.”

Sheen slowed—but then the drone gained, cutting into their lead. This was worrisome; that lead was their margin of safety. In addition the landscape was getting rougher. They were heading generally west, curving north with the curtain, back toward the major cluster of domes. On the prior trips they had maneuvered comfortably around the obstructions of boulder, dune, crevasse and ridges. But the curtain crossed these heedlessly, and this made the drive difficult. Sheen had to skid along awkward slopes, bounce through gullies, and plow through the mounds of sand. The drone suffered also—but it was squat and sturdy with broad wheel-treads, and it kept on going. The hazards of this chase would shake apart the unicycle before they stopped the three-wheeled pursuer.

Neysa, meanwhile, was encountering problems in Phaze. Stile watched her helplessly, as Sheen guided the unicycle along the curtain, now one side of it, now the other, causing his view to shift about considerably. The unicorn could handle the irregularities of the terrain, but there were also creatures in the way. She had to charge through a colony of demons, and in a moment they were in pursuit like so many drones, eager for unicorn flesh. Neysa could have escaped them easily if she had not been staying close to the 306 Blue Adept Blue Adept 307 curtain, and if she had not had to worry about the security of the Lady Blue. Or she could have turned to fight them, putting them to flight with a few well-placed skewers—had she not had to keep up with Stile’s vehicle. Now the demons were popping up everywhere from crevices in the rock, cutting her off. They were grinning; they knew they had her.

Neysa blew a desperate summons on her horn. Stile could hear the sound, faintly, across the curtain, even as he rode in the same channel Neysa ran in, overlapping her without any tangible evidence of it. He could only actually see her when the curtain was between them so that he could look through it, and that happened only in snatches. The curtain was a funny thing, something he would have to explore more thoroughly some day and come to under-stand. Like the Oracle, it was a phenomenon that seemed to have no origin and no reasonable explanation; it merely existed, and was vital to communication between frames. Again Neysa sounded. The call resounded across the wilderness. The demons growled in laughter; sound could not hurt them. Stile wished he could cross over and help out with a spell—but that notion was folly. Then a ranging werewolf, summoned by the horn, spied them. He bayed. His oath-friend was being molested. This was why they were patrolling the curtain; they had been warned of this danger. Their numbers were thinly spread, because the convoluting curtain traversed a tremendous amount of territory, but their keen perceptions made up the difference.

The bays of other wolves responded. Suddenly they were converging, their sounds approaching at a gratifying rate. In moments they were in sight, and leaping with savage glee and righteous anger at the demons. One thing a were-wolf lived for—a good fight in a good cause. Now the predatory laughter of the demons turned to rage at this interference. But soon it turned to fear, as more and more members of the wolfpack closed upon them, lips peeling back in the terrifying grin of attack as they cut in between demons and unicorn. Neysa ran on with a single note of gratitude, still carrying the Lady Blue, still pacing Stile. The sounds of, the battle grew loud, then faded behind. The demons had chosen the wrong creature to attack, this time. Sheen continued to guide the unicycle. She handled it with desperate skill. Now a dome lay across the curtain. They had to skirt it—but when they intercepted the curtain again, Neysa was there, thin jets of fire issuing from her nostrils. She was overheating, but would not allow herself to fall behind. The Lady Blue clung to her, riding with consummate skill, watching out for other hazards, guiding Neysa into the best channels with little advisory nudges, not directives. The unicorn had charge of the run, but the Lady was able to devote more attention to the route. Neysa was concentrating increasingly on the single effort of main-taining the pace; she no longer lifted her head to survey the course. She trusted the Lady’s guidance. Stile knew exactly how it was; he had raced the marathon in times past, and had reached the stage where nothing existed except his agonizing pumping legs and the called course-corrections of friends. Vision itself became expendable. Stile was struggling similarly now. His hands were soaking in blood. His consciousness was slowly slipping. He was panting with the sheer effort of keeping flesh and spirit together. Flesh and spirit—had that been a premonition, that Tourney Game? He had succeeded then—but this struggle was harder, with more dependent on it. Still the drone pursued.

He saw snatches of scenes across the curtain, hills, then a river. Neysa had to ford it, her hot hooves sending up gouts of steam as they touched the surface. Then it grew deeper and she swam, falling behind. She could not shift to firefly and wing across it, because of the Lady Blue. The unicycle was traversing the dry bed of that river. Then the curtain curved down toward the south again, past the caves of the vampire bats, back across another arm of the river at the ruins of the Red Demesnes. Other unicorns were running with Neysa now, clearing the way. Bats were flying, spotting problems, getting them allevi-ated. A dragon was taking a snooze across the curtain; faced by six charging unicorns, it hastily vacated the spot. Little Folk of the daylight kind stood aside to let the strange procession pass. The grueling run went on.

All for him. Stile realized with pained gratitude. All the unicorns, werewolves and vampires extending themselves to their limits just to help him preserve his life. Neysa, running herself to destruction. Could it be worth it? Now her hooves were glowing red; her very flesh was burning up. She left a narrow trail of smoke where her passage had ignited the leaves of the forest floor. Then a new vehicle closed with the unicycle. It locked on, matching the pace exactly. Machine arms reached out. Sensors traveled down Stile’s body, touching his gory leg. Anesthetic came. Germicidal radiation flared. There, at the bouncing velocity of the chase, the robot surgeon removed the bullet, patched the torn artery, stitched and bound the wound while simultaneously injecting Stile with artificial blood matching his type. It retouched the nerve block on that leg so that no pain returned. Then the arms and tentacles retreated, the other vehicle disengaged, and went its own way with a parting warning: “Protect our interests!”

—tell no one in Proton how he had been helped.

When Sheen’s friends chose to render assistance, they did so with enormous precision and effect. Stile knew he could not go to any hospital now; he had sworn not to betray the self-willed machines, so he had to conceal the nature of this surgery from the Citizens. But that was easy enough to do; he no longer needed surgery. Still, he was near to unconsciousness. His human re-serves had been depleted, and neither surgery nor artificial blood could take the place of rest. Sheen steered the unicycle to the curtain. Neysa made a final desperate effort, caught up, and galloped directly along it. The unicycle slowed to accommodate her. The drone closed in rapidly. Now unicorn and unicycle were superimposed, separated only by the frames. “Do iti” Sheen cried. Stile willed him-self through.

He fell across Neysa’s hot back. The Lady Blue flung her arms about him, clasping him, her healing hands already helping. He was safe at last!

Across the curtain. Sheen’s vehicle accelerated. She had the bullet now. The drone followed her. Stile, relieved, lost consciousness.