Robot Adept

Fleta returned, humming up to perch on the canoe’s front seat, then shifting to girlform. She had evidently completed her business. That was another advantage of shape-changing: the nectar of just a few flowers could feed her, and she remained fed when she shifted to a far more massive form. Similarly, one bird dropping could clean out her system, for the human form as well. Magic took little note of scale.

“Going down,” the Translucent Adept’s voice came from ahead. Then his bubble dipped under the surface—and the canoe followed. In a moment they were sinking through the greenish water, but breathing normally; the water seemed like air.

Fleta moved back to take his hand. “Adept magic spooks me,” she confided. “I wish—”

He silenced her with a kiss. He knew what she wished: that they could be together without the intercession of the Adept. But it seemed that this could not be, for their union was opposed by her kind and his, so they were constrained to accept Translucent’s hospitality.

They continued down. Fish swam by, gazing with moderate curiosity at the canoe; apparently they had seen things like this before. Then the bottom came into view, and it seemed again as if they were floating through air, with the rocks and seaweed and sea moss like the terrain of some jungle land.

Now that land turned strange. Orange and blue-green sponges spread across it, and corals reached up like skeletons, and peculiar flowerlike, tentacled things waved on yellow stalks. At first these were small, but as the canoe progressed they grew larger.

Mach looked down below the canoe as they passed a long log. No, it was a pipe, with a spiral band wrapping it, getting larger in diameter as they traveled along it. Then they came to its end—and there was a big round eye gazing up at him. The thing was a living creature!

“A giant nautiloid,” the Translucent Adept exclaimed from ahead. “Creature o’ the Ordovician period o’ Earth. I have a certain interest in the paleontology o’ the seas.”

Beyond the eye were about eight tentacles, which reached for the canoe but stopped short of touching it. Mach was just as glad. “It looks like an octopus in a long shell,” he remarked.

“That might be one description,” Translucent agreed. “It is related, in the sense that the nautiloid is an order o’ molluscs, as are modern octopi and squids. But these are far more more ancient examples; the Ordovician was approximately four hundred million years ago.”

“You sound like a scientist!” Mach remarked. “Yet you are an Adept.”

“No incongruity there! The separation o’ magic and science on this planet occurred only a few centuries ago; prior to that, our history is common. The magic is employed in restoring ancient creatures who exist no longer on Earth or elsewhere. All Adepts be scientists in their fashion; it be merely that we specialize in the science o’ magic, and turn it to our purposes exactly as do our counterparts in the frame o’ Proton.”

A creature vaguely like a monstrous roach swam across the canoe, startling Fleta. “A trilobite,” Translucent said, evidently proud of the creatures of his domain. “And see, here comes a sea scorpion.”

Indeed, the thing resembled a monstrous scorpion, almost a meter long. Fleta shrank back from its reaching pincers. “At ease,” Translucent rapped, and the scorpion flipped its tail and swam quickly away. It was evident who was master here.

They came to a hill rising from the ocean floor, and the canoe bumped to a halt. “Here is thy honeymoon isle,” Translucent announced. “Secure from all intrusion, guarded by the trilobites and scorpions and nautiloids.”

“Does that mean we be prisoners?” Fleta asked nervously.

“By no means, mare,” the Adept replied. “I promised ye both a haven for love, and freedom to do as ye pleased. Ye be free to depart at any time—but naught can I promise an ye depart mine Demesnes, for my power be limited beyond.”

Mach’s powers of doubt came into play. “What is it you hope to gain from this?”

“There be only one known contact between the frames, now,” Translucent said. “That be through thy two selves, in the two frames. An thou use thy power o’ communication on our behalf, we shall establish liaison with our opposite numbers, the Contrary Citizens o’ Proton, and gain advantage. An we use this lever to unify the frames for full exploitation, our wealth and power will be magnified enormously. It be straight self-interest.”

“But I can contact only Bane, who is the son and heir of Stile, the Blue Adept of this frame,” Mach protested. “He opposes you, I’m sure, as my father Blue of Proton opposes the Contrary Citizens. If I work for you, as I think I must do in return for your hospitality, that is no guarantee that Bane will cooperate.”