"Maybe your magic can help, though. Generate an image of me, like a holograph. Then you can jump it around, and no one will know exactly where I am, so the enemy won't be able to attack me."
"Now that might work," she said. "It's risky, but so are the alternatives. Your convoluted organic brain does come up with artful wrinkles." She made a combination of gestures and sounds, sketched a little figure in the dirt — he could see it and her, as the invisibility-spell affected only the enemy's observers — and suddenly Stile found himself standing in the path of the cyborgs. He felt a squeeze on his hand and knew Sheen was with him, and that his consciousness had joined his distant image. This was clever magic; his respect for the book increased.
The leader of the cyborgs spied him and approached. This was an obvious machine, with gleaming metal limbs and chambers for attachments on its torso. But it was no robot; the brain was human, taken from the body of some aging, or ill, living person. Cyborgs could be exceedingly tough and clever. "I perceive you, sir," the machine-man said, orienting a lens on him. "But you have no substance. You are therefore an image. I can not be sure of your validity. Please identify yourself in a manner I can accept."
"I am an image of Citizen Stile," Stile said. "Also the Blue Adept. My employee Mellon should have primed you with key information about me. Ask me something appropriate."
"Yes, sir. Who is your best friend?"
"In which frame?"
"That suffices, sir."
Oh. Clever. It was the type of response, rather than the actual information, that had been keyed. "Let's get busy, then," Stile said. "This region is infested with goblins with modern weapons. I doubt they are good shots, but don't take chances. If you can drive them away from this area, that would be a big help. But don't attack any animalheads or unicorns. There's quite a bit of illusion magic around, so be careful."
"We understand, sir."
"I'm not sure you do. Send out scouts to the base of that slope." He indicated it. "They will pass the line of illusion and see the truth. Pay attention to what they tell you. This is likely to be deadly serious; your lives are in jeopardy."
"Thank you, sir."
They would have to find out for themselves. Stile murmured the word "animalhead" and found himself on a hill where the animalheads were gathered. The elephanthead chief spied him with a trumpet of gladness. "We have found thee at last, Adept!" he exclaimed; evidently Stile's prior spell of intelligibility remained in force. Spells did seem to have a certain inertia about them, continuing indefinitely unless countered or canceled. "We feared ourselves lost."
Quickly Stile briefed the elephant on the situation. "Now I'll be clearing a path for the ball to roll along," he concluded. "In mine own body I'm invisible, but the goblins will quickly catch on and interfere. So if thy force can divert them from this side, and while the cyborgs operate on the other side-"
"Cyborgs?"
"They are combination people, part human, part machine, strange in appearance but worthwhile when-"
"They are like us!"
"Very like thy kind," Stile agreed, startled.
"We are ready," the elephanthead said.
Now Stile was prepared to place the first wad of explosive. But as he returned his awareness to his invisible body, he discovered that Sheen was already attending to it. She had mined two wedges and was on the third. But the goblins were all about, digging their trenches and organizing themselves for the battle.
Stile had always thought of goblins as occurring in undisciplined hordes; these were highly disciplined. They were supervised by sergeants and commissioned officers, their insignia of rank painted or tattooed on their arms.
Despite his indetectability, Stile was nervous. There were too many goblins, and they were poking around too many places; at any time, one of them could make a chance discovery of the plastic explosive. He needed to distract the goblins' attention right now, before the cyborgs and animalheads went into action, lest his game be lost at the outset.
"Goblin leader," he murmured.
He stood beside a command tent. An ugly goblin with an authoritative air was surveying the field with binoculars. "I trust it not," the goblin murmured. "They be too quiet."
"Perhaps I can help thee," Stile said.
The goblin glanced quickly at him, showing no surprise. "I had thought to see thee ere now, Adept," he said. "I be Grossnose, commander of this expedition."
Stile could appreciate the derivation of the name; the goblin's nose was unusually large, and shaped like a many-eyed potato. But physical appearance had little to do with competence. Stile found himself liking this creature, for no better reason than that he must have risen to power in much the way Stile himself had, overcoming the liability of appearance to make his place in his society. "I compliment thy expertise," Stile said. "I had thought thy forces to be intercepted by our ogre detachment."
"We force-marched around the ogres," Grossnose said. "They be not our enemy."
"I prefer not to be thine enemy, either."
"Then hear our terms for peace: leave the Phazite in place, and thy party will be granted safe passage elsewhere."
"Declined," Stile said. "But if thy troops depart in peace, we will not hinder them."
"Now understand this, Adept. If fight we must, we shall be forced to seek the source of thy power. We shall make a thrust for the book. We have held off so far only that it be not destroyed. The book may be more valuable than that entire ball of Phazite, and it were a shame to put it into hazard. But this forbearance makes mischief; already the Adepts be quarreling as to who shall possess that book. I prefer to leave it in thy hands, as thou art least corruptible by power. But I can not allow that demon ball to cross to Proton-frame; that be the end."
"The end of the present order, mayhap," Stile said. "For Citizens and Adepts. They will have to share power more equitably in the new order. Other creatures will have proportionately more power, including thine own kind. Dost thou really oppose that?"
"Nay," the goblin admitted with surprising candor. "But I do serve the present order."
This was an honest, clever, incorruptible commander, the worst kind to oppose. "I regret what will come to pass," Stile said. "If we meet again after this is over, I would like to converse with thee again. But this next hour we are enemies."
"Aye. Go about thy business, Adept. Thou dost know what be in the making."
Stile knew. It was the irony of war that slaughter and destruction came about when both sides preferred peace. He faded out, and found himself back with Sheen.
"We have to move fast," he said. "They are going to go after the book."
Indeed, a troop of goblins were already charging the hill, lasers blazing. But they were met by the animalheads, who sprang from ambush and grappled with the goblins before the latter's modern weapons could be brought into play against this close-range opponent. The goblins' inexperience with such weapons cost the enemy dearly now; the animalheads were wresting them from the goblins and using them themselves.
Simultaneously the cyborgs commenced action — and their weapons were completely modern. Some had stunners, some gas jets, some lasers, and some projectile hurlers, and they knew how to use them. The battle was on.
Stile and Sheen moved hastily along their projected channel, placing the remaining explosive. Their hour was passing, and the plastic would detonate at its assigned moment regardless of their proximity. It was funny stuff, gray-white and slightly tacky to the touch, like modeling clay; it could be torn into fragments of any size, shaped as desired, and it would adhere to whatever it was pressed against. They fitted it into the chinks of stones like mortar, and on the undersurfaces of wooden beams. The goblins should not notice the plastic unless warned about its nature.