Robot Adept (9 page)

The harpy flapped heavily in place, considering that.
 
“Nay, I can make sense not o’ that! Why send him off, an thou helpless ‘gainst a dragon?”

“So I could learn where I am, by myself.”

“Surely thou knowest where thou art! Canst not see the mountains? This be the fringe o’ the Harpy De mesnes, and I be queen o’ the dirty birds, for now, so long’s my hairdo sustain itself. I be Phoebe, befriended by the mare not long agone. There be no mystery here!”

“If you did not know whether you were in a strange land, or had had a spell cast on you to make you think you were there, what would you do?” Agape asked.
 

“Why, I’d go out and look!” the harpy screeched.
 
“I’d know soon enough—“ Then she paused. “Belike thou hast a point. But thou must chance not Fleta’s body to dragons! She will need it when she returns.”

“If I had any portion of her abilities, I would use them,” Agape said. “But I am not a unicorn; I cannot change forms in her manner.”

The harpy came down for a bumpy landing in the grass. “Thou hast her body; thou must needs be able to change.”

“I don’t know how. On Proton I can change form, but the mechanism differs.”

“Mayhap thou dost just need encouragement. Here, take my claw, and when I fly, do thou likewise.” She extended a filthy foot.

“But I don’t know how to begin!” Agape protested.
 
“Nonsense, alien lass. Knowing be no part of it. Just do it!” She shook her foot invitingly.

Bemused, Agape took hold of the foot. Then Phoebe spread her greasy wings and launched into the air, her dugs bouncing. Agape willed herself to do likewise.
 
Suddenly she was flapping her own wings. But she was out of control; she went into a tailspin and plunged back to the ground.

“Thou didst it!” Phoebe exclaimed, hovering. “Thou hast her hummingbird form! But why beest thou not flying?”

Agape tried to answer, but all that emerged was a peep.

“Well, change back to girlform and tell me,” the harpy said, coming down for another crash landing.
 
Agape tried, but nothing happened.

“Mayhap I shouldn’t’ve messed. I fear thou art stuck in birdform, and know not how to fly!”

Agape nodded her tiny head affirmatively. Magic was definitely not for novices!

The harpy considered. “It be my fault; I told thee to try. Needs must I take thee to a shapechanger. The werewolves be not too far, and methinks Fleta has friends among them. Come, bird—let me carry thee there, and we shall see.” She reached for Agape.
 
Agape shied away, suddenly terrified. The claw was huge, larger than her whole present body!

Phoebe paused. “Aye, I see thou be afraid o’ me now, and ‘tis true my kind preys on thine, or at least on true birds. But I mean thee no harm; remember, I be friend to Fleta.”

Agape realized that she had to trust the harpy. She hopped toward her.

Phoebe reached out again, slowly, and closed her claws about Agape’s body. That foot could have crushed the life from her, but it did not; it merely tightened to firmness. Then the harpy lurched back into the air.

She flew east, carrying Agape. The air rushed past, though the harpy did not seem like a particularly effective flyer. Probably the flight was boosted by magic.
 
Well, it was one way to travel!

As they moved across the plain, Agape wondered how it was that she had been able to change form from a woman to a hummingbird, instantly. There was a question of mass: the woman had hundreds of times the mass of the bird. Where had it gone? When Agape changed form, in her own body, she never changed mass. Had she sacrificed any significant portion of her mass, she would have lost her identity.
 
She realized that magic was the only explanation.
 
Magic took no note of the laws of science; it had its own laws. Apparently mass was not a factor. But it was still a strange business!

“Uh-oh,” Phoebe screeched under her breath.
 
Agape twisted her neck, which was marvelously supple, and saw lumbering shapes closing in. More harpies!
 
“List well, alien,” Phoebe said urgently. “My filthy sisters think I’ve got prey I mean to hide away, so they mean to raid it from me. I can escape them not; must needs I hide thee till they leave off.” She swooped low.
 
“Come to none ere I call to thee, for they will snatch thee and chew thy bones in an instant! Now hide, hide!” And she let go.

Agape fell into the grass. It was less than a meter, and she was so small and light that no damage was done.
 
She half napped, half scrambled on down through the tangle, getting out of sight.

But another harpy had seen her. “Haa!” she screeched, and dived, claws outstretched.
 
Agape scooted to the side, and the harpy missed. But the ugly bird had not given up; she looped just above the grass and came back, more agile than she looked.
 
“Come here, thou luscious morsel!” she screeched.
 
Agape tried to scoot away, out of reach, but the harpy loomed over her, about to pounce.

“Mine!” Phoebe screeched, zooming in and colliding with the other, knocking her out of the way. Just in time!

Agape found a mousehole and scrambled down it.
 
She did not like going into darkness under the ground, but it definitely was not safe above!

Then she heard the sound of scratching, or of excavation. A harpy was trying to dig her out!
 
Fortunately the mouse tunnel had been constructed with exactly such tactics in mind. It branched and curved and extended forever onward. She scooted along it, hoping she didn’t encounter the proprietor, leaving the harpy behind. Then she settled down to wait.
 
When silence returned, she crept back the way she had come. She was not constructed for crawling, but was so small that she could pretty well run two-legged along the tunnel. That was one advantage to tiny size!
 
“Agape! Agape!” a harpy screeched. “They be gone now. Come to me!”

It was Phoebe! No other harpy would know her true name. Agape made her way out of the tunnel, and gave a peep.

Phoebe spied her. “Ah, ‘tis a relief!” she screeched.
 
“I thought sure I’d lost thee! Come, we must to the weres ‘fore else amiss occurs!” She took Agape in her claw again, and lunged into the air.

They reached the Were Demesnes without further event. Three husky wolves veered toward Phoebe the moment they spied her, evidently meaning business.
 
The harpy was tired from her long flight, and could not achieve sufficient elevation to avoid them. Their teeth gleamed.

But her voice was enough. “Halt, weres!” she screeched. “Slay me not, for I bring a friend of thine for help!” She lifted her foot, showing Agape.
 
One of the wolves became a buxom young woman in a furry halter. “That be Fleta in birdform!” she cried.
 
“What dost filth like thee do with her?”

Phoebe flopped tiredly to the ground. “Bitch, I be friend to Fleta; she cured my tail-itch, and her friend Mach gave me this spectacular hairdo. But this be not the ‘corn; she be her other self from Proton-frame, who knows not how to change form. So I brought her to thee, ‘cause thou knowest the art o’ shape-changing and mayhap can help her.”

The young woman reached down to pick Agape up.

“Be this true? Thou be not Fleta?”

Agape nodded her beak affirmatively.

“Then mayhap we owe thee, harpy,” the woman said.
 
“Choose a tree and roost, and we shall let thee be in peace.”

“I thank thee, bitch,” Phoebe said. “Do thou help her if thou canst; Fleta will need her body, an she return. This be Agape, an alien creature, but not inimical.” Agape realized that the harpy was not being insulting to the werewolf girl; the female of the species was called a bitch.

The girl held Agape up at face level. “I be Furramenin. I talked with thee at the Translucent Demesnes not long ago.”

Agape shook her little head no.

Furramenin laughed. “Ah, yes, that be right! It was Fleta I talked to, not thee! Thou art Agape! Come, let me instruct thee in form-changing. Let me shift to bitch form, and then do thou take my paw and shift to girl form with me. Understand?”

Agape nodded yes. The girl set her down.
 
The wolf reappeared. Agape hopped across to touch a front paw. Then the girl manifested—but Agape remained a bird.

They tried it again, and again, but with no success.
 
“Must needs it be with a flying creature,” the woman concluded regretfully.

“Aye, bitch,” Phoebe called from the branch she had chosen. “I got her to birdform, but could get her not back.”

“Then will I take thee to Fleta’s friend Suchevane,” Furramenin decided. “In the morning.”

Suchevane! Agape knew that name! That was the one the Citizens had not known, whom Bane had recommended.

Then she felt faint, and fell the tiny distance to the ground.

“What be the matter?” Furramenin exclaimed. “Be thou sick?”

“I know, I think,” Phoebe screeched from her branch. “She be locked in hummingbird form, and the bird has high metabolism. She has eaten not in hours.
 
She be starving!”

“Of course!” the werebitch agreed. “We must feed her! But what do such birds eat?”

“Nectar, methinks,” the harpy replied.

They ranged out and gathered fresh flowers and brought them back. Furramenin held the flowers up for Agape, but she did not know how to eat. Her long bill poked through the delicate petals, getting little nectar.
 
“This be trouble,” Furramenin muttered. “An we could get her to girlform, we could feed her, but she may starve before we succeed!”

They consulted with the Pack leader, who it seemed was a wolf named Kurrelgyre, who told them to take her to the vampires and the Red Adept. “Start now, tonight,” he said.

So it was that Agape found herself tied to the back of a running wolf, moving rapidly through the night.
 
She was too weak to react, but was conscious, except when she slept. The motion continued interminably, across what she took to be plains, and through what seemed to be forest, and past some dark river. Furramenin seemed indefatigable in her bitchform, but Agape could tell by the lather that leaked from the corner of her mouth that she was straining.
 
She faded out, and in, and it was morning. Then out, and in again, and it was deep into day, and they were arriving at the caves of the vampires.

There must have been dialogue and explanations, but Agape was too far gone to assimilate them. She was in the process of dying; she knew it. Her foolish attempt to go out on her own had led her inevitably to harm.
 
It was hard to disbelieve that she was in Phaze, now, but it was too late; her belief no longer mattered.
 
She woke briefly to find herself in the air again, carried by a larger creature. Phoebe? No, the smell was not the same. Then she faded out again.

The world shimmered, and she felt an ineffable change.
 
Then things steadied, and she found herself still in Mach’s embrace.

But it was different. She looked up at him—and his face had changed. It was similar to its normal configuration, but somehow less flexible. His arms, also, were somehow less yielding.

She glanced to the side, and discovered that they were in a chamber. What had happened to the field?
 

“The exchange has been accomplished,” he said. “We had better disengage.”

He still sounded like Mach! But this was definitely not the same body. Now she noticed that their clothes were gone, too, “Where be we?” she asked.
 

“In an office maintained by a Citizen, he informed me. Citizen Tan, I think.” Then he drew away from her, surprised. “But you already know that. Agape.”

She was startled. “I be Fleta!”

His startlement mirrored her own. Then he laughed.

“Don’t tease me like that, Agape! I love her.”

“Tease thee? I tease thee not! What magic hast thou wrought, Bane, to conjure us so swiftly here?”

He gazed at her, evidently sorting things out. Then he spoke slowly and carefully. “This is the frame of Proton. I am Mach, a self-willed humanoid robot. Are you telling me you are not Agape, but Fleta of Phaze?”

“Aye, I be Fleta of Phaze,” she repeated. “If this truly be Proton-frame, and thou truly be Mach, then must I ha’ traveled here with thee. Be that possible?”

Again he considered. Then he touched his bare chest, and a door opened in it, showing odd wires and objects.
 
“I am the robot, as you can see; this is my own body, not Bane’s.” He closed the door, and his chest looked normal again. “Let me question you briefly. Who was the last person we met, on the way to the exchange?”

“Phoebe,” she said promptly. “The harpy whose hair thou didst ruin, and she takes it as elegance. But she be decent, especially for her kind. I have her feather in my pocket—“ But her hand found no pocket, for she had lost her cloak.

“And then we made love,” he said.

“Nay, we followed the delf till the glow was brightest, and only kissed, and then—“