“You bet! But you have it easy, because you’re not native, so you didn’t have to merge with your opposite.”
“You and the harpy are the same individual?”
“Just as Flach and Nepe are,” Echo said. “You see, when there were two frames, one was science, the other magic, and long-term residents were represented in both. When they merged, so did the folk, and I’m telling you, it was carnage for a time! But now most of us have made the adjustment. When we go into the domes, we strip down and are serfs; outside we’re in Phaze. Then we dress and speak in the Phaze manner, and do whatever magic we can. It’s a pretty good combination, actually.”
“I don’t wish to impose, but would you object to providing more evidence? Could you, for example, change forms if I were holding you?”
She eyed him again. “That’s the neatest come-on line I’ve heard yet! Sure, hold me, handsome.” She stepped into his arms and kissed him.
He closed his arms around her, less interested in the kiss than in the mechanism of the change. He held her firmly—and then found himself with an armful of feathers. She had become the harpy, her lips still touching his. He was so surprised he let go.
She fell away, and had to flap her wings to recover before she hit the ground. “Thou didst drop me, thou dork!” she screeched. There was the tinkle of Nepe’s laughter.
If this wasn’t supernatural, it was a device beyond his reckoning. Echo had felt every inch the human woman—and she had been within his grasp as she changed.
“Let me try again,” he said. He squatted, and grabbed her two bird legs. “Change back.”
Abruptly he was holding on to one knee and one thigh. Both were definitely human.
“Satisfied?” Nepe asked. “Or do you want to squeeze her gams some more?”
Hastily he let go, though his human orientation was returning, and he found the legs interesting. “If it isn’t magic, it’s beyond me,” he confessed.
“It’s science,” Echo said. “I’m a cyborg. See, my body’s inanimate.” She opened her robe, exposing her breasts. She touched the right one, and it swung out from her torso to reveal a hollow cavity instead of mammary glands. “But Oche, she’s magic, all right.”
“I’ll take thee to the wolves,” Flach said, having changed without notice.
“Wolves? I’d rather not.”
But the lad was determined. “Take my hand; I’ll conjure thee to the Pack.”
With resignation, Lysander reached for the hand. “Come see me some time when you’re not busy, handsome,” Echo said. “I work for Citizen Powell, when I’m on duty in Proton. You?”
“Citizen Blue,” he said.
“You’re lucky!”
Then his hand made contact—and the scene changed.
They stood at the edge of a lovely valley whose Mower-specked expanse led down to a small meandering stream. A herd of horses were grazing, guarded by a single stallion pacing the perimeter. Horses? No, unicorns; each had its horn, and the colors were beyond anything seen on ordinary equines.
The stallion galloped up. He had a bright blue coat and red “socks” on his hind legs. As he moved, he played music on his horn, sounding very like a mellow saxophone.
The unicorn who had carried Lysander reappeared. This one had a black coat and blue hind socks, seeming to have a family resemblance to the stallion. He played a return melody, his flute-like theme prettily counterpointing the saxophone.
Then both animals became human, the change like the flick of an image on a computer screen. The boy was familiar, but the man was not. He had black hair and a black suit, with blue socks, and was of mature age. He looked tough.
The man eyed Lysander. “My grand-nephew tells me that thou be a new employee of Blue, and that thou hast difficulty assimilating our culture.”
“Correct. I had understood that magic was mainly illusion.”
“Flach will happily demonstrate magical illusion!” the man said. As he spoke, a disembodied eye appeared in the air behind him, the white of it grotesquely veined. A second eye formed beside it, and the two focused on Lysander. Slowly the right one winked. “But not now,” the man said sternly, without turning. The eyes vanished. “I suspect thy best course be to assume that what thou seest be valid, until thou dost become convinced. Ignorance be lethal, here.”
“I believe that, sir.”
The man frowned. “Oh, aye, thou seest me clothed, so dost assume I be a Citizen. Nay, in Phaze there be no Citizens. When the mergence came, we had to compromise in a number o’ ways, because some folk were merged and others had no other selves, and the status o’ selves could be different in the frames. So—“ He paused. “Be I confusing you?”
“Yes,” Lysander admitted.
The unicorn reappeared, and blew a loud note. Immediately there was the sweet tinkle of bells, and a mare broke from the Herd. Her coat was a deep red verging on purple, and her mane rippled iridescently. She was an astonishing and beautiful creature.
Then she became a blue heron, and flew toward them. Soon she landed, becoming a unicorn as her feet touched ground. She tinkled her bells again questioningly—but the sound was actually from her horn.
The stallion played another brief melody. The mare’s head angled so that one eye could orient on Lysander.
“Go with Belle,” Flach said. “Great-Uncle Clip wants to talk with me.”
“You mean, ride her?”
“If thou dost wish,” the boy said. “Oh—she will explain about the mergence.”
“But I can’t understand bells!”
“Now thou canst,” Flach said.
Lysander chose not to argue. He presumed there was some point to all this. His job was to go along, learning what he needed to. Certainly what he was experiencing was amazing, and the surprises showed no signs of abating.
He approached the beautiful mare. Up close he saw that she was old, like the stallion; flecks of gray showed in her hide. “May I ride you, Belle?” he asked.
Her bell sounded. “Aye.”
“Thank you.” He climbed on her back.
Then he did a doubletake. “I understood you!” he exclaimed.
She laughed with the pealing of bells. “Flach did it. He be the Unicorn Adept. We o’ the Herd be proud o’ him.” She started walking, leaving the man and boy behind.
“Unicorn Adept?”
The bells tinkled again, melodiously. “Clip asked me to clarify our system for thee.” These were not her precise words; rather, he was translating the sounds into his own sentences, as he was coming to understand the dialect of Phaze. It didn’t matter; he understood her perfectly. It was apparent that any further effort to resist acceptance of magic was likely to be futile; it was the readiest explanation for what was going on. “There were two frames, one magic, the other science. We unicorns lived in magic Phaze, while the Citizens and serfs lived in science Proton, in their domes, because they had polluted all the air and ruined the land. Many o’ us had other selves, but we could cross o’er not.”
“Let me see whether I understand,” he said. “You were a unicorn, and some person in Proton was the same as you?”
“Nay, some mare,” she tinkled. “I have no human form; it were not one I chose. We unicorns can usually learn two other forms, and I chose the heron and the cat. Clip chose man and hawk. So we trot together, and we fly together, but when I go to Proton with him he be a man and I be a horse. But I like it there not, so I remain out on the range.”
“The frames merged, and now the domes are Proton, and the outside land is Phaze?”
“Aye, by agreement. So when a Citizen steps outside, he assumes his Phaze form. If he be Adept, he has great power, but most o’ them be just ordinary folk. So the Proton folk mostly stay in their domes, and we Phaze folk remain mostly outside. Many of us have no opposite selves anyway, so it be easier. Things really changed not much, after the mergence settled down, except that the Adept Stile gained power.”