Phaze Doubt

The eerie trace of wrongness did not fade; it got worse. Lysander knew what was happening: the delay occasioned by the failure to zero in the North Pole correctly had thrown the timing off slightly, and that imbalance was recycling and building. If it expanded logarithmically, as such things could, they could still get dumped, and all would have been for nothing.

Echo was near him. He caught her hand and squeezed it to let her know that whatever happened, he was glad for their association. Then an elf girl caught his free hand, and someone else caught Echo’s free hand. The impulse spread, and soon everyone in the chamber was linked, including Flach and Weva and Chief Oresmite. The music went on, through all their heads and all the frames, translating the figures to reality, carrying them all on the wave of force that was the detonation of the Magic Bomb.

That Bomb had been confined by the slowed time at the North Pole. That had been a bad Pole on which to err!

The linked hands provided comfort, but the wrongness worsened. Lysander felt as if his guts were being removed and convoluted topologically and strung through the electrical conduits of his brain. He didn’t dare vomit, because he didn’t want the contents of his stomach suffusing his brain. He suspected that the others were experiencing similar distortions. If the frames didn’t complete their journey soon—

The music stopped. They were there!

There was a silence. Then the Chief looked around. “We remain alive,” he said. “That means it is successful. But per haps not entirely. We must proceed cautiously.”

“The timing,” Weva said. “I couldn’t quite compensate. I think things are all right, but some detail may have changed.”

The group let go of hands. Lysander brought Echo into him. “Just so long as you are not changed!” he said.

Her eyes were round. “I fear I be. I—“

“Check your body,” he suggested. All around them others were similarly concerned. No one seemed quite certain what had happened, but knew that something fundamental was not the same.

“Well, it be metal and plastic, o’ course, as always. I’ll show thee.” She opened her robe and touched the place where her left breast was latched. “Uh-oh.”

“You look fine!” he said. “I don’t care if your latch is broken.”

“There be no latch.”

“Well, whatever. I have accepted the local way, and you are part of it.”

She closed her robe. “E’en an I be not exactly the creature thou hast known?”

He experienced an unpleasant chill. “Are you trying to say that your emotion has changed? That now the crisis is past, you don’t—“

She put her finger across his lips. “Nay, Lysan! I love thee yet! I would spend my life with thee! But an I be other—“

He swept her in and kissed her. “My emotion didn’t change either. I love you too, and no potion is responsible. But I think we have work to do outside.”

“Aye,” she breathed, seeming relieved.

The others had come to a similar conclusion. They were forging toward an exit.

But when the hatch was opened, a stormy swirl of air rushed in, blowing back the elves.

“Must be a dust storm,” Lysander said.

“But it’s wet!” an elf protested.

So it was. “Then it’s safe to go out there,” Lysander said. “I’ll do it.”

The elves gave way for him, and he scrambled through the tunnel and thrust his body up through a hole. There was a storm raging- all right; warm rain plastered his robe to his body in a moment.

Echo emerged after him. “This be not the heat o’ the South Pole!” she said.

“But it’s warm enough. Drop your robe and come on; we can handle this.”

She did. He took her hand, and forged on, trying to gain a point of perspective.

Then a rift opened in the clouds. The sun shone down, directly south of the Pole.

Lysander froze. South?

Beside him, Echo was similarly amazed. “Be the magic gone?” she asked. “The sunlight bends not?”

Flach and Weva came up behind them. “Now I see what happened,” Weva said. “That imbalance—the shell got twisted! The South Pole is now the West Pole!”

“That’s why the storm,” Flach agreed. “The temperature patterns changed; it has to get resettled.”

“A quarter turn!” Lysander said. “We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“It was worse,” Weva said. “We have changed similarly.”

Lysander looked at her. “No you haven’t.”

She smiled. “You are an idiot, ‘Sander.”

“Is there something I’ve overlooked?”

Echo touched his shoulder. “Aye, because thou be not affected, mayhap, having an alternate self not. Watch me change forms.”

Then she assumed her Phaze-harpy form, and flew a short distance into the air.

Her body was shining metal, and her feathers plastic. “Now do you understand?” she called.

“You’re a robot harpy—a cyborg!” he exclaimed.

“I am Echo.” She descended to the ground, and resumed to human form. “And I be Oche. Now dost recant thy pledge to love me?”

Suddenly the change in language penetrated. Echo had been talking in the Phaze dialect! The cyborg harpy talked in Proton dialect. They had changed!

“But you said you still loved me!” he said, stunned.