Robot Adept

Bane did indeed! The Red Adept had murdered the Blue Adept, whose soul had taken refuge in his harmonica: then Stile, Blue’s other self, had crossed the curtain and taken Red out, replacing her with Trool the Troll. Stile had married Blue’s widow, the Lady Blue, and begotten Bane. Blue, meanwhile, had crossed to Proton, animating Stile’s body. Stile was actually using a golem body crafted by Trool, animated by magic; he was a golem with the soul of a man. Or, in Proton terms, very like a cyborg. Bane had actually been conceived before that shift of bodies; there could be none conceived thereafter. All this Bane understood—but it seemed that there were aspects he had not been told.

“The permanent separation of frames was intended to prevent any further imbalances from developing,” the Oracle continued, its light still swirling. “But it seems that there is after all imbalance.”

“Because Mach and I exchanged frames,” Bane said.

“That should not have been possible.”

“For an entity that is supposed to know everything, thou dost seem to be short some information.”

“True. I lacked news of the developments in Phaze. I must ascertain what changed,” the Oracle said. “I have the transcript of your life experiences, but this is not enough. I must know how you exchanged.”

Suddenly Bane was back in the dream, but this time he was himself. He was in the retreat he had fashioned, really only a rock in a glade, communicating with his other self. He had not at first realized that this was what he was doing; he had been drawn into this glade for no reason he could ascertain, and now felt the odd presence. “Who be ye?” he asked, and felt it echo in alien language, Who are you?

I am Mach! the answer came, definitely not his own thought. Then: Let’s exchange places.

The notion intrigued him “Aye—for a moment.” He improvised a quick spell, and sang it, to facilitate the process, whatever it might lead to.

Then, with an abrupt wrenching, he had found himself in the frame of Proton, and his remarkable adventure had begun.

“Amazing!” the Oracle exclaimed.

“Thou dost be just a computer, a thinking machine,” Bane said. “Dost feel surprise?”

“Yes. We machines can experience emotion when our design permits, as is the case with Mach. I have discovered the source of your ability to exchange. It is because the connection between the frames was never completely severed. You and Mach tuned in to that open channel, and used it, and later your friends did too. Now that channel is broadening with use, complicating the imbalance—but the imbalance has been building slowly throughout the life of that channel. I never thought to check for such a thing!”

“A channel between the frames? But how came that to be? Methought all connection was severed before my birth.”

“I recognize the psychic pattern. It is that of your father—Stile.”

“My father? But he ne’er—”

“Not consciously, no. But it seems that this is something more fundamental than consciousness. He originated in this frame. He now inhabits a golem body. The life-force derives from Proton, and retains a connection to its origin. Ever since the frames separated, that lone connection has existed—feeding a slight but detectable imbalance. You are his son; you resonate to his life-force, for you derive from it. You used his channel.”

“Then needs must I agree: amazing!”

“I shall have to consider this discovery. It may be that a complete separation of the frame is not feasible without cutting off the life-force of Stile.”

“Nay!”

“Have no concern, Bane; I would not cut that connection, had I the means to do so. Stile and Blue have been my instruments, and you and Mach are becoming my instruments.”

“Yet hast thou been known to kill thine instruments!”

“Not permanently, as it turned out.”

Bane removed the plug from his ear. “Thou dost strike me as a creature of expedience, without scruples.”

“Granted. I am not even a creature, but a thing, possessing no more life than does your present body.”

Which felt alive to him. Bane knew how Mach had felt, and how Mach’s robot mother Sheen felt. The Oracle was reminding him of the capabilities of its state of existence. “Point taken, machine. But I trust not thine expedience.”

“But you can trust my logic. If that psychic connection between Stile and his living body is broken, he may die or lose his sanity or suffer no measurable malaise; we cannot know. But if that line ceases to exist, the channel by which you and Mach communicate and exchange places will be gone, and all that you contemplate will end, and my chance to rectify the accumulated imbalance will abort. Therefore I value Stile’s life and your own, and will not act to imperil them.”

Bane wasn’t sure about that, but accepted it for the time being. Except for one bad thought: “An that line be cut, there be no problem of linking of the frames. Canst thou not solve it most readily by cutting the line?”