Phaze Doubt

He cracked a small smile. “Get offplanet if you can.”

“But Daddy—“

“You are on your own, alien flesh.” It was an endearment he used on her, referring to her Moebite ancestry. “On your way, and do not communicate with me again.”

She knew he meant it. She scooted away from him, the weight of the planet suddenly on her little shoulders. They were playing what in the game was known as hard ball.

When she was safely alone, she activated the capsule for the first message. It was simple: GO TO NORTH POLE.

That was all. She waited, hoping that there would be some explanation, but was disappointed.

She pondered it, her mind whirling. Tsetse had been delivered to Brown, and suddenly to save the planet Nepe had to go to the North Pole! How could she make sense of that?

Well, she could make a little piece of sense of it. Brown now understood what was at stake for her. Brown had also caught on to Nepe’s presence. That meant that the enemy would be on her trail. But maybe not immediately. Brown might take a few hours to realize what she had to do, and Purple might have trouble tracing Nepe after that, even with magic. So maybe there would be no pursuit. But the Hectare might have devices that no one else knew about, that could sniff out even a magic trail, with a little advice from an Adept. So they couldn’t take a chance. So Mach had given Nepe the full dose, on the assumption that they would trace him down through her, and take him out of the game. He could not afford to assume otherwise.

So before she went to the North Pole, she had better mask her trail. But quickly, because she didn’t know how much they already knew. Mach had said they might have Brown’s golems stake out the Poles. What did the Poles have to do with all this? Probably the answer was in the Book of Magic, which Mach had taken somewhere. He must have hidden it where it wouldn’t be found by the enemy, because with it they could overcome anything any Adept tried.

Where would that Book be? Where else: the North Pole! So if she went there and got it, maybe she could use it to do whatever else was needed.

Nepe moved about within the city, crisscrossing her trail so that it would be excruciatingly difficult for anyone to track her by any normal means. She was good at hiding, as good as any creature could be, but there remained that lurking doubt: if Brown had told immediately, and Purple had put a magic tracker on her, that would be impossible to shake by physical means. So she might be wasting her time here.

Still, Flach was experienced at magical hiding, and he could do his best to nullify that tracker spell. So after she was done here, she would turn it over to him, and he would complete the job.

It all seemed reasonably simple. But she very much feared it wasn’t.

8 - North

Flach put together such a combination of moves and transformations that he doubted that anyone or anything could untangle them. He even assumed bug forms and spied on any Hectare that were outside of their antiseptic chambers. All seemed quiet, apart from the grim business of the takeover itself.

In the course of this, Flach got a fair notion of what the Hectare were doing. They were setting up to exploit the resources of the planet. Crews were being assembled to cut the greatest forests for exportable lumber. That would destroy the environment, and many wild and magical creatures would die. It had been exactly that type of ruinous exploitation that had ruined Proton before, so that life was possible only within the force-field domes, with all else a noxious desert. Other crews were to mine out all the remaining Protonite. That would destroy the magic, leaving the planet completely mundane. What would happen to the starving, magic-gelded creatures? It looked very much as if their flesh would be melted down for protoplasm banks.

Mach was right: it was better that the planet be destroyed, than that the Hectare have their way with it.

The Hectare themselves were true bug-eyed monsters; indeed, the serfs and ordinary folk of Phaze had instantly named them BEMs. It seemed that there were two or more major alliances in the galaxy, one of which was the humanoid. Proton had once been in the humanoid sector, but the pattern of colonization had in due course left it stranded with a few others in alien territory. So there was no hope of rescue by human forces; it would be too costly for them to penetrate this deep with sufficient force to accomplish anything—and even if they did, the Hectare might simply destroy the planet rather than give it up. So Proton was on its own—just as any alien planets were on their own when they had the misfortune to find themselves within human territory.