“I thought thou didst plan to stay here,” he said finding himself disappointed.
“I do. I will stay just as long as I can. I will become a Citizen if I can. I will send my reports by spacemail. I will remain here. There is more to learn here than sexual reproduction.”
“Then thou willst be a human being for the rest of thy life, or seem to be.”
“Yes, Bane. Already I feel somewhat human, with you.”
“Willst thou show me, at least a little, thy true form?”
“I do not wish to revolt you, Bane.”
“I will make thee a deal,” he said. “Show me thy true nature, and I will show thee how to—to be a human woman. Some.”
“Some? Bane, I must learn it all!”
“But these things are not done just as a business,” he protested. “It—I have never done it all with a human woman, actually. Just games with Fleta and the like.”
“Show me a little, and I will show you a little,” she offered.
He laughed, somewhat uneasily. “Fair enough, Agape. Here be a little.” He leaned farther toward her, tilted his head, and touched her lips with his own.
Her lips were unresponsive. It was like kissing mush.
He drew back. “That was it?” she inquired.
“Thou dost have to kiss back!” he exclaimed.
“You mean, to purse my mouth while you purse yours?”
“Aye. Only with some feeling. This be supposed to be an emotional contact, knowest thou not?”
“Ah, now I understand. To feel desire during the act.”
“Thy kind does feel desire?”
“It does. It merely expresses it in another fashion.”
“Shallst try again?” He leaned forward, and touched her lips with his for the second time.
And this time hers were firm and highly responsive. He found it easy to get into the spirit of the kiss. He reached his arms about her, and she emulated his action. He pressed her in close, and she pressed him in close, and it was several times the experience he had anticipated, despite the bulkiness of her suit.
Except for one thing. She was doing what he did— too perfectly. She was like a three-dimensional mirror image. Nothing originated with her; it all was a reflection of him.
He drew back. “Much improved,” he said. “But thou must not copy me in every detail. That makest thou seem—like a machine.”
She laughed. “I understand! One must not be mechanical.”
“Perhaps Mach would have had different advice,” he agreed, smiling.
“I did not know you had changed identities, but I think I will know the difference hereafter. Though your body is a machine, your mind is alive.”
He nodded. “I wonder how that be possible? I certainly feel not like a machine.”
“I believe our forms determine our natures to a degree,” she said. “I do not feel like an amoeba, either.” She sighed. “And now I must make my small showing, and perhaps you will never kiss me again.”
“I’ll make the effort,” he promised.
She peeled back her suit, so that she became bare to the waist. “Watch me.”
“I be watching thee.”
“My hand, not my torso.”
“Oh.” He modified his gaze accordingly.
She held up her left hand. It was a fine, esthetic extremity, with four slender fingers and an opposed thumb, each nail delicately tinted. But slowly it changed. The fingers lost firmness, becoming floppy balloons. They sank back onto the body of the hand, which melted into a glob.
Bane stared. ‘Thou hast no bones?”
“No bones anywhere in my body. Only tissue that I make firm, patterned after human bones, to support the structure.”
“When Fleta changes, she does it instantly. One moment she be a pretty girl; the next she be a hummingbird. Of course that’s magic.”
“I cannot do that,” Agape admitted. “It does require a little time for me to change, and I must melt into my natural state before assuming an alternate form. And— I do not know the hummingbird. Is it of similar mass to the human form?”
Bane snorted. “Hardly! It’s a tiny thing, hardly bigger than my thumb. Size matters not, with magic.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I think anyone in Proton would find it hard to believe.”
“My mass remains constant. I could assume the form of a bird, but it would be of my present weight, and could not fly.”
‘Thy hand—it could become something else?”
For answer, she concentrated. The lump of protoplasm at the end of her arm grew projections, each of which sprouted further projections, until she had about thirty thin fronds there. “A Formican appendage,” she said. “I remember that form from the time I visited their planet.”
“So thy magic be limited in speed and size, but unlimited in form,” he concluded. “I think thy ability be as good as Fleta’s.”
‘Thank you—I think,” she said. The new appendage dissolved, and the human hand began to reform. “You are not revolted?”
“Agape, I be used to shape-changing. Once did I envy the werewolves their ability to change from human form to canine form, and have all the powers of the animal. And I liked Fleta in all three of her forms.”
‘Then I am relieved. I will change form for you, when you ask me to.” She leaned toward him, and he, understanding her desire, kissed her. This time she was responsive without mirroring him. She was a rapid learner!
The vehicle slowed. They broke. “We are there,” Agape said, hauling up her suit and restoring her helmet. “We shall search for your other self now.”
Bane was almost disappointed. He cared less about shapes than about personality, thanks to his experience with the magical creatures of Phaze, and both her human form and her attitude were easy to accept. It was too bad he would lose contact with her when he exchanged places with his other self and returned to Phaze.
They opened the vehicle and stepped out. They found ruins. There had evidently once been a small dome here, with a castle in it of the same type as that of the Blue Demesnes in Phaze, but all was wreckage now. The desert sand was doing its best to bury the remains.
But there was no wreckage in Phaze. Bane walked around the oddly familiar premises, seeking some hint of his other self. If he overlapped the space, or even came close, he would know. It would not work for any other person; he could be walking right through others in Phaze, and never know. But his own self he could not miss.
It wasn’t here. There was no sign of the self at all. Bane criss-crossed every part of the ruin, finding nothing.
“He didn’t get here,” he said at last.
“Surely some delay,” Agape said quickly. “Proceeding afoot, unfamiliar with the terrain—it might require days.”
“It might. It also might mean he’s dead.”
“We must not believe that!” she said. “I—I have no experience with this phenomenon of dual selves, but I conjecture—wouldn’t you feel something if there were demise? Is there not some continuing connection between the two of you?”
“I suppose there should be,” Bane agreed thoughtfully. “I tuned in to him in the first place by going with the flow. The closer I got, the more I felt it, when I listened.”
“Listen now!” she urged.
He stood and listened. He tried to extend his awareness out, to become perceptive to the soul of his other self, wherever it might be. He could almost see his ambience reaching out in a great circle, sensitive to the ambience of his other identity in Phaze.
He found it! Faintly in the distance, like an echo, he felt the rapport. “He be alive!” he exclaimed. “There!” He pointed to the southwest.
“Back the way we came,” Agape said. “Or a little west; the vehicle curved eastward.”
“We can go directly toward him!” Bane said, relieved. “Oh, thank thee for the notion, Agape!” He took hold of her, intending to kiss her, but discovered it was impossible while she was in suit and helmet.