Blue Adept (44 page)

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.