Out of Phaze

From the chest rose a head. It kept rising, until a complete woman stood in the chest. There could not have been room for her within it. She seemed quite young, possibly fifteen, and her hair was as white as snow, set with a silver tiara. She wore a white gown set with bright gems.

The woman glanced at the boatsman, who was now standing at attention. “Sir,” he said, “these are the refugees.”

This was the Citizen! Bane realized. He had expected an old man, not a young woman, but obviously Citizenship knew no age or sex.

“Your identities?” Citizen White inquired.

“Agape of Moeba,” Agape said immediately. “And this is Mach, the son of Citizen Blue. Sir.”

The woman frowned. “I think not,” she said. She stared at Bane. ‘Tell me your identity in your own words.”

Somehow she knew about the exchange! “I be Bane, son of the Blue Adept, also called Stile.”

“And how came thee here?” she inquired.

For a moment Bane was too startled to speak. ‘Thou— thou knowest?”

She smiled. “How long since thou hast been to the White Demesnes?”

“The White Adept!” he exclaimed. “But—“

“But she be old and ugly?” the woman inquired with a smile. She made a gesture, and abruptly she was old and fat. Then she reappeared in her young edition. “Since when be the son of an Adept deceived by appearances?”

“But there be no connection to Phaze!” Bane cried. “I be the first in a score of years to come to Proton, and that only in a body not mine own!”

“Really,” the woman said, smiling condescendingly. She turned to the serf beside her. “Set me adrift again, Grizzle, and open the window to Phaze for these two serfs.”

“Sir!” the man agreed.

The Citizen lost height. She sank back into the chest. When her head disappeared, the serf closed the lid, locked the lock, and lifted the chest back into the sailboat. He turned back to Bane and Agape. “The floors-man will take you there,” he said. Then he dragged the boat back to the water, stepped into it, unfurled the sail, and commenced tacking into the wind.

The scene vanished. They were back in the box. The door opened, and they stepped back into the hall.

“This way,” the serf said.

They followed him down the hall to another door. “You’ll need clothes,” he said, bringing out a white shirt and trousers of the Phaze variety for Bane and a white dress for Agape. “We don’t usually send others through, so white’s all we’ve got. You can change them when you get where you’re going.”

“But I am a serf!” Agape protested. “I can’t don clothing here!”

“We do wear it in Phaze,” Bane told her. ‘Thou wouldst be as out of place there naked as here in clothing.”

“I suppose,” she agreed uncertainly. She got somewhat awkwardly into the dress and slippers provided. The serf helped her get her outfit adjusted, and in a moment she looked, by Phaze standards, quite nice.

Bane completed his dressing, bending to fit the shoes to his feet. They fit well enough.

“This way,” the serf said, showing them on down the hall to still another door.

They entered another cubicle. This one closed on them, then abruptly ascended, startling them. Its walls were transparent; they could see the dimly illuminated walls of the region through which it passed.

It came up into a forest. It halted at ground level, and the panel on one side opened. They stepped out onto the forest floor. The cubicle closed itself up and descended back into the ground; a lid closed, making the ground complete.

“This is Phaze?” Agape asked.

“It seems like it,” Bane said. “It be hard to believe that return could be so simple!”

“But I—I am not magical!” she said. “How can I be here?”

“The same way I be here,” he said. “I exchanged bodies not; I be still in the robot body. We made a physical crossing!”

“All the time the Citizens knew this route!” Agape said. “It was not your imagination!”

He glanced at her. She was very fetching in her dress; it fitted her beautifully. “Thou didst doubt?”

She spread her hands. “I know that robots can be programmed and reprogrammed. They must believe what they are programmed to believe; they cannot do otherwise. I was sure that you believed, but not sure that you really came from Phaze. I apologize, Bane.”

“Accepted, Agape!” he said. “I could prove my origin not as readily as thou didst.”

“If this really is your frame, where should we go? I really don’t belong here.”

“I think thou dost belong with me,” he said. “Thou didst help me wend my way through Proton; now it be my turn to help thee in Phaze.” He brought her in to him and kissed her. “And how glad I be that this be not our separation, Agape!”

She clung to him. “Oh, Bane, I told you I wanted to learn how your species indulges in sex, and I do, but I think that was only part of it. What I really want is to be close to you. I felt so alone, so—so alien when I came to Proton, and you have made me feel like a person.”

“Thou hast made me feel wanted,” he said. And that, he realized, was the essence. He preferred to be genuinely wanted and needed by an alien creature, than to be routinely accepted by the most human of women.