Phaze Doubt

“Maybe they did,” he agreed, realizing that if the Adepts had known about Alyc, they might have learned about him too. In that case, it would be pointless to conceal his mission longer. It would be better to come out into the open. Maybe the love potion was distorting his judgment, but it did seem to make sense. “But can we wait a little? Love is new to me, and I want to savor it before it is dashed.”

“No, you had better tell me now. I was never one to postpone either the best or the worst.”

“I am an agent of the Hectare.”

She shook her head. “But if you were, why would you tell me? If I said one word to my sister harpies...” She trailed off, her thought evidently bothering her.

“I did not tell you, or anyone else, not even the local Hectare administrators, because it is essential that no one be able to betray my mission. It is my assignment to infiltrate to the heart of the resistance, and then destroy it, so that there is no further threat to Hectare dominance. No coercion could have made me tell. But now I have to tell you, because our love can not be true if what you know of me is false. I am not just an android with a borrowed living brain. I am an android with a Hectare brain.”

She stared. “How can it help your mission to reveal this to me?”

“It can not. Now, if you will, assume your harpy form and kill me. I will not resist you.”

“Your love makes you do this?”

“Yes.” He smiled briefly. “I see now that the Hectare, having no direct knowledge of love, did not condition me against it. But I am a Hectare, a bug-eyed monster, in human form. Kill me now, because if you do not, you are unlikely to do it later.”

“I love a Hectare?” she asked, dumbfounded.

“You love the form of a human being. I knew you for what you were when love took me; you knew only a lie about me. You are not bound. Do your planet the most good you can. Kill me.”

“But if you love me, won’t you join my side? Maybe that’s what the Adepts want.”

“If you love me, will you join the Hectare?”

“I can’t do that!” she protested. “My world is my nature! All that I am, even the metal and plastic—I can not be untrue to that!”

“You have answered yourself,” he pointed out. “I am Hectare. I must serve my species.”

“If I do not kill you, you will betray our last source of resistance to the enemy?”

“Yes. That is my mission.”

“You can’t want to do that! You would not have told me, if—“

“I don’t want to do it, any more than you want to love your home world. It is in my nature to do it. Can you love me, knowing my nature and my mission?”

“If I see you about to betray my world, I will try to stop you,” she said.

“Is that an answer?”

“I do love you, despite what you have told me. I will not tell anyone, I will only try to stop you, and die if I fail.”

“You have no call to keep my secret. You should at least tell the Adepts.”

“I think they know. It makes it certain that you are the one the prophecy means. So I must believe that I am helping my world by keeping silent.”

Lysander found himself both surprised and unsurprised. If the Adepts truly believed the prophecy, then he could indeed be the one—because of what he was. Yet it had to require a great deal of faith on her part to trust in that. “Now we know we are enemies, or that we serve opposite sides. Can we still love each other?”

She stood, gesturing him to do the same, and took his hands in hers. “I will answer, and so will you, together. Then we will know.”

“But—“

“Speak only your true feeling, as I speak mine. Are you ready?”

He nodded, not sure what she thought this was going to accomplish.

She squeezed his hands. “When I squeeze again, we’ll speak.”

Then she squeezed. “Yes,” they said together.

Something strange happened then. A ripple seemed to go out from them, causing the air to shimmer, and the walls of the cave. It was as if the color of reality shifted, though color wasn’t quite it. But he didn’t care. He drew her into him and embraced her. He didn’t care how it had come about; his love for her was real and complete.

She melted into him, as passionate as he. “So it is true,” she breathed in his ear.

“I don’t understand.”

“You saw the splash?”

“Do you mean the ripple in the air?”

“That was the splash of truth. It comes only when the emotion is true and strong, and only once for a situation. We spoke our love, and it is true, though we are in Proton form. Phaze is here too, and it manifests. I love you and you love me; there is no doubt.”

He found he had to believe. “Then stay with me, and when I do what I have to do, you do what you have to do.”

“Yes. But until then, let it be only love between us.”

He was satisfied with that.

It seemed a moment later that there was a scratching at the entrance, above. “They are opening the door,” Echo said. “I must see what they want.”

Lysander looked at his watch. “Five days have passed,” he said, startled. “It must be time for us to come out.”