Out of Phaze

Bane dodged to the side without stopping. In a moment a dart struck the ground near his prior course. The plane passed on by and ascended. Apparently it was only able to fire once on a pass, and it was doing so from too far away to compensate for his last-moment maneuvers.

They reached the entrance to the cave. “Bane, you can’t!” Agape cried. “You can’t take the finger deep enough to lead the plane in, and still get out yourself— and the plane will come out the moment it discovers that it’s only the finger, anyway!”

“Not if I throw the finger into the water, and then bash out that weak section so the roof falls down, trapping it inside.”

“No!” she cried. ‘The collapse will be behind the wall; I felt the nature of the stresses. You will be trapped too!”

The plane was coming in again. “I’ll take that chance!”

“No, I’ll take it!” she said, grasping the finger. “I can get out through the river channel; you can’t.” She hurried into the cave.

He let her go. It was too late to stop her without getting caught by the plane—and he realized that she was right. She could melt and climb in a way that he could not. He scrambled for cover outside the cave.

The plane came down, aiming for the cave. It slowed as its sensors showed the nature of the terrain. But its sensors also told it that the target was in the cave, and could not be reached from outside it, so it followed.

Bane watched as the small craft corrected course and flew inside. He realized that the Citizen was guiding it, and had to be very careful here, lest he crash it before reaching his target. But the plane could not travel too slowly, lest it drop to the ground. It had to get in there and score; then it wouldn’t matter what happened to it, because the game would be over.

Had Agape had enough time to reach the water and throw the finger in? Would their trap work if she sprang it? Now his doubts loomed grotesquely large. How could he have let her take that risk in his place? She was such a good, caring, self-sacrificing creature! Probably if he had occupied his natural body, whose emotions were not under control the way those of the machine were, he would not have let her do it. He hadn’t even shown her what he had promised—and if she got caught in the collapse of the cave-roof, he would never have the chance, because she would be not merely Game-dead, but all-the-way dead.

There was a rumble. The ground shook, and dust swirled out from the mouth of the cave.

She had done it. But at what cost?

Bane went to the cave, but it was so full of dust that he could not see anything. He just had to hope that the plane had been trapped, and that Agape survived, and was making her way out. There was nothing he could do but wait.

He returned to the minor fort where they had spent the night. He recovered his staff and sword and bow. The game was not over until either he was “dead” or time ran out.

A huge shape loomed in the sky. Bane peered up at it from cover. It was a dragon! It was circling the peak of the mountain, looking down.

Bane considered. That had to be a robot, because there were no magical creatures in Proton. That meant it was the Citizen in another guise. That in turn meant that the airplane had been destroyed rather than trapped, so their plan had failed in that respect. Now the Citizen was free and Agape was not: the opposite of what they had tried for.

But why was the dragon circling the mountain, instead of searching for Bane himself? That didn’t seem to make sense.

Then he reasoned it out. The Citizen was still orienting on the finger! It had been dark in the cave, and when the roof collapsed the finger had not been touched, being deeper in. It would not have been obvious that the finger was unattached; after all, it had been moving purposefully until that point.

The Citizen thought Bane was trapped inside the cave! The dragon was trying to figure out how to reach him in that impenetrable fastness. Or perhaps making sure he didn’t escape, so that he would starve in there. Death by starvation was still death; that would represent victory for the Citizen.

But what of Agape? Had she survived, or was she truly dead? The Citizen might not care, but Bane did! He had to assume that she was all right, and was making her way slowly up through the channel used by the stream. That could be quite tortuous; he should be patient.

Patient? He should be half mad with anxiety! These robot feelings lacked the punch of the natural ones, because he could control them; if he decided not to care about the fate of his companion, then he didn’t care. That might be convenient for a machine, but he preferred the natural way, inconvenience and all. In his own body, he’d be—

He analyzed it, as he could do with this body. He concluded that his first thought was correct: he would be quite smitten with Agape. Oh, it was true that she was an alien creature who dissolved into a puddle of jelly when she slept. It was true that she hardly knew