Out of Phaze

Mach relaxed. That creature had rescued him before, then disappeared; she had just done it again, and left again. Evidently she had no ulterior motive. Maybe she was just a guardian of the path, routing whatever monsters intruded on it. That was fortunate for him!

He took a large leaf with which to clean himself off, then pulled his remaining clothing together as well as he could. He was even more ragged than before, but after the scrape with the harpies, he knew when he was well off. He made his way to the path.

Fleta was coming back along it. “Oh, Mach!” she exclaimed, spying him. “I feared for thy safety!”

“So did I,” he admitted. “But the unicorn saved me.”

“Aye; I summoned her. These be the Herd Demesnes.”

“You summoned the unicorn? How could you do that?”

She shrugged. ‘There be more to magic than conjuration. That creature is no enemy of thine, Mach.”

“Apparently not. But I wish I understood her live.”

“Who can e’er know the true heart o’ another?”

“Who, indeed!”

She peered at his outfit. “I see—“

“Never mind what you see!” he snapped, trying to adjust a swatch of cloth.

“. . . that thou hast lost thy leaves,” she finished, returning to her normal impishness.

They walked on along the path. It took them east for perhaps two kilometers, then debouched onto a broad grassy plain. Mach stood and stared.

“Hast ne’er seen grazing land before?” Fleta inquired.

“Never before,” he agreed. “This is marvelous! This whole world is green and growing!”

“And thine is not?”

“Mine is not,” he agreed. “Outside the domes there is only barren sand and air that living people can’t breathe.”

“Air not to be breathed? How can that be?”

“Pollution. The mines and factories pumped their wastes into the ground and water and air, until virtually all natural life was extinguished. The only suitable environment for life is maintained within the domes.”

She shook her head. “Methinks I would not like thy world!”

“I never thought about it. But now that I’ve seen this—I think I do like it better than Proton.” Actually, it was life he was coming to like, despite its inconveniences. He had never before experienced the sheer feeling of it. Even the discomfort was a pleasure of a sort, because it was an aspect of the new responsiveness of his body. When he made an error and suffered pain, that represented a far more effective feedback than the cautionary circuits he had known. A robot, for example, could chew a hole in his own finger, and some did, because there was no pain. That was unlikely to happen with a living person.

“Dost like the taste of thy finger?” Fleta inquired teasingly.

Mach jerked it away from his mouth. Had he been about to test that pain reflex?

“Thou’rt funny,” she said.

“And you are lovely,” he said. He reached for her, and she did not avoid him, and he brought her in to him, and she did not hold back. He kissed her, and she kissed back.

“Ah, Mach, this be foolishness,” she said. “But I do like thee. I shall miss thee sorely when thou returnest to thy world.”

Mach thought again of Doris, the cyborg girl with whom he had kept company. He had evidently liked her better than she liked him. He had known Fleta less than a day, yet already he felt a greater emotion for her than he had for Doris. That could be accounted for by his living system, whose functions and emotions could be stirred on an involuntary basis. But it seemed to him, objectively, that Fleta was a nicer girl than Doris, even after all reasonable allowances were made for the differences between their frames and their states.

“Fleta, is it really forbidden for us—for you and me— to like each other?”

“Mach, I think it is. I—there are things about me that—an ye knew of them, I think thou wouldst not hold me this close.”

“Yet you know of them—and you do not object?”

“Mayhap I be more foolish than thee.” And she kissed him again. The kiss became intense, and he knew that whatever else might be the case, her feeling for him was genuine. She believed that he would not like her, once he knew her secret; he doubted that this would be the case, but the knowledge that he could not remain with her after he learned how to return to his own frame restrained him. She was forbidden, not because there was anything wrong about her, but because he was no of her world. He found that deeply disturbing.

“Be these tears thine or mine?” she inquired.

“Mine,” he said. “My first.”

“Nay, mine too, and I think not my last.”

“Fleta, I like you because you are a lovely girl who has helped me face this strange world. I lost my girlfriend in the other frame. Therefore my foolishness is understandable. But if you know we are not for each other, why do you waste your time with me?”

“I should not answer,” she said.

He smiled sadly. “But I think you will.”

“I will. My—my mother loved thy father—I me; Bane’s father, but always knew he must wed Bane’s mother, the Lady Blue. And so it was, and rightly so.”

‘The Lady Blue?” he asked. “Citizen Blue is my father.”