She tried to resist, but could not. She converted to her black unicorn form, proffering a ride for him.
Mach mounted her, and for a moment reached down around her neck to hug her. “Thank you, Fleta.”
She twitched an ear at him in an expression of annoyance, but it lacked force.
They left the island, passing through the water as the bitch had. The Ordovician flora and fauna ignored them, having gotten to know them. Mach knew that it would have been otherwise, had the Translucent Adept not invited them; these creatures might be several hundred million years old, geologically, but this was their realm, and they were competent within it. So Fleta’s hooves avoided trampling the sponges and fernlike graptolites, and the squidlike nautiloids watched without reaction. Translucent had promised a place where Mach and Fleta could dwell safely together; this was certainly that!
They emerged to the normal land, and the past was gone; it existed only in Translucent’s Demesnes, and these were in water. Now Fleta could gallop freely, knowing the general if not the specific terrain. They traveled for a day, avoiding contact with other creatures, and camped for the night by a small stream. Fleta changed to girlform so that they could make love, having thawed to that extent, then returned to mareform to graze while Mach slept alone.
She was avoiding him, he realized. Not overtly, but significantly, by spending most of her time with him in her natural form. She denied the implication by assuming girlform for his passion, but he knew that this was tokenism; she felt no sexual need when not in heat, and did it only to please him. So he was left with no complaint to make, yet the awareness of their subtle estrangement.
She didn’t want him to return to Proton. She had agreed to it, knowing the necessity, but not with her heart. Perhaps she felt he had compromised in this respect too readily. She lacked the type of training he had had in Proton, that made it easy for him to accept the rationale of frames imbalance. She was a creature of the field and forest, while he was a creature of city and machine. Perhaps the root of his love for her lay in that. Her world represented life, for him, and that was immeasurably precious.
She thought he sought some pretext to leave her, after having won her love. How wrong she was in that suspicion! He sought a way to make their liaison permanent, recognizing the barriers that existed.
He gazed out into the night, where she grazed in pained aloofness. How could he satisfy her that her hurt was groundless? He realized that the differences between them were more than machine and animal, or technology and magic; they were male and female. He had assumed that rationality governed; she assumed that emotion governed.
And didn’t it? Had he acted rationally, he would never have fallen into love with her!
“Thee, thee, thee,” he whispered.
A ripple of light spread out from him, causing the very night to wave and the stars overhead to glimmer in unison. It was the splash, again, faint because this was not its first invocation, but definite.
Suddenly Fleta was there, in girlform, in his embrace.
She had received it, and must have flown, literally, to rejoin him. She said no word, but her tears were coursing. There was no separation of any type between them now.
On the third day they caught up to Bane. He was evidently in Hardom, the Proton city-dome that was at the edge of the great southern Purple Mountain range. In Phaze it was the region that harpies clustered. Thus the Proton name, reflecting the parallelism: HARpy DOMe, Hardom. But there were no harpies in Proton, of course, other than figuratively.
They paused to pay a call on the harpy they had befriended during their flight from the Adverse Adepts and their minions the goblins. That had been before the Translucent Adept’s intercession and their change of sides. This was Phoebe, who had by virtue of Mach’s fouled-up magic gained a horrendous hairdo that she liked screechingly well. It had enabled her to assume leadership among her kind, having before been outcast because of an illness. Fleta had cured that illness, which was the real basis of the unusual friendship; harpies generally had no interest in human or in unicorn acquaintance.
Phoebe was perched in her bower. Her head remained the absolute fright-wig that Mach had crafted, with radiating spikes of hair that made her reminiscent of a gross sea urchin. “Aye!” she screeched. “The rovot and the ‘corn. I blush to ‘fess it, but glad I be to see ye again!”
“We were passing, and thought we would pay our respects,” Mach explained. “I must return to my own frame for a time.”
“So? Methought thou didst have a thing for the ‘corn.”
“I do. I will return to her. But there is business I must attend to meanwhile.”
“Be there any aid I can render?” Phoebe asked. “Ye be mine only friends among thy kinds.”
“You have done more than enough for us. We merely wished to greet you again, and be on our way.”
“As thou dost wish,” the harpy said, shrugging. “But let me give thee another feather to summon me, in case thou shouldst have need o’ me.” She plucked it from her tail with a claw and extended it to him.
“Thank you,” Mach said, touched. Harpies were in a general way abominable creatures, but this one they had befriended seemed quite human. Probably the others would be too, if the animosity between species could be overcome. He tucked the feather into a pocket.
“Yet it be late,” Phoebe continued. “The night be cool, and my nest be warm. If ye two would stay the eve—”
Mach exchanged a glance with Fleta. This nest had fond memories for them. They decided to stay.
In the morning they continued to the spot where Bane was, on the edge of the plain just north of the Purple Mountains. The glow on the delf cup became so bright it was as if the sunlight were reflecting from it, but the sky was overcast. When the glow spread to circle the cup, Mach knew that this was where he could overlap his opposite self.
He turned to Fleta, who now changed to girlform, wearing her cape and shoes. Her mane became her lustrous black hair, a trifle wild and wholly beautiful. He embraced her and kissed her. “You must explain to Bane, if he doesn’t already know,” he said.
Mutely, she nodded. They disengaged.
It was time. But though he had to leave her, he sought some way to make the parting less absolute. He wanted to say something, or to give her something. But he could think of nothing to say, and had nothing to give.
His hand went to his pocket, reflexively. His fingers found the feather.
“Fleta—this may be foolish—but I want to give you something in token of what I will try to give you in the future. I have nothing, but…”
“There be no need, Mach,” she said bravely.
“This.” He brought out the feather.
She looked at it. Suddenly her laughter bubbled up past her bosom in the way it had, and burst out of her mouth. “A dirty harpy pinion!” she exclaimed.
“Well, technically it’s a tail feather. A pinion is from the wing.”
“Only a rovot would be thus at a time like this!” she exclaimed. She flung her arms around him and kissed him fiercely. Then she withdrew, and gravely accepted the feather. “But it be a good thought, Phoebe’s and thine. Mayhap I will have need o’ her. Certainly Bane will not.” She tucked it into a pocket in her cape.
It was foolishness of a sort that he would not have indulged in, as a robot. Therefore he valued it now. “Farewell—for now. My love.”
He stood where the cup indicated, and concentrated. Yes—he felt the presence of his other self. Now all he needed was to will the magic for the exchange, assuming that Bane joined him in the effort. “Let me gain the body of Bane,” he singsonged, knowing that the doggerel was only a token, hardly necessary for this act.