Juxtaposition (54 page)

“I should think so,” she agreed, eyeing the steep, almost cliff-faced crest. “You anticipated this? Why did you come here, then? The giants could have pushed it around the hill and across the curtain much faster, and we could have won the game by now. As it is, the enemy will have time to set up something worse.”

“Yes,” Stile agreed gravely.

The giant currently taking aim at the ball paused. He shook himself, and sweat flung out from him like rain.
 
“You’ll have a workers’ revolt soon,” Sheen cautioned.

“You’ve got to have some reason for this foolishness.” But Stile was listening for something. Now at last he heard it: an abrupt intensification of the faint Flute music in the background.

“The Oracle has just crossed the line,” Stile announced.
 
“Or rather, the line has crossed the Oracle. That computer is now within the zone of juxtaposition. From there, it can use its own stored moving equipment to transport itself the rest of the way to Proton.”

“The Oracle!” Sheen exclaimed. “It had to cross to Proton to complete the exchange. To be able to make its vast expertise available for the reorganization of the Proton economic complex.”

“The goblins have just enabled it to do that,” Stile agreed. “Now we can tip the ball over the crest, roll it down across the line—and Clef can let the curtain collapse into singularity and vanish.”

“You did have a cunning notion! You knew the curtain had not spread far enough, that the Oracle was hung up here, right under this mound, so you—“

“We still have to get the ball across,” Stile reminded her. “We haven’t won yet.”

But now the giants renewed their efforts. The ball was shoved up over the cliff face with a convulsive joint effort, and began its inexorable roll down toward the curtain.
 
They charged up after it, scrambling for handholds at the brink, feeling the exhilaration of victory. As they crested the ridge, they saw the opposite slope blackened with goblins; all the rest of that army had force-marched here for the final confrontation.

The individual goblins could not stop the massively rolling ball, of course; they plunged desperately from its path.
 
The slope was so steep that even the giants would be hard put to halt the ball before it crossed the curtain halfway down.

On the horizon Stile now spied the ogres, who had just arrived on the scene. They were ready to fight, but were understandably hesitant about wading into so vast an army of goblins. But it seemed the ogres would not be needed now.

On the next hill to the north was a device Stile recognized only from his researches into planetary warfare—a nuclear cannon. Powered by atomic fusion, this pre-Protonite weapon could fire a solid projectile into deep space—or into any object in its viewfinder at a lesser range. Stile knew the canny Grossnose would have it loaded with a half-ton slug of Protonite—the only sub stance that could have a proper effect on the rolling ball.
 
The goblin commander had devised his strategy to counter Stile’s strategy without pause.

“Get back over the ridge!” Stile cried. “Down, giants! Now!”

The earth trembled as they obeyed, trusting his warning.
 
Giants, unicorns, and others all huddled in the shelter of the ridge.

The cannon fired. The Phazite ball exploded into thou sands of fragments and a great cloud of dust. Phazite rained down around them in the form of stones, pebbles, gravel, and sand.

Sheen jumped to cover Stile’s body with her own tougher one, and the cyborg did the same for the bear head. The unicorns changed to their flying forms and huddled under the same shelters. But the giants were in some discomfort; they swatted at the pieces that struck them, as if bitten by gnats.

Now the great goblin army went into action, obviously rehearsed. Each goblin ran to pick up one fragment of Phazite and carry it south, away from the border of the juxtaposition. “No!” Sheen cried. “Fragmentation doesn’t matter, so long as it gets across the line to Proton-frame. But this will finish us!”

Grossnose’s final ploy had been a brilliant one. Once more the goblin had outmaneuvered Stile, giving up a lesser thing—in this case the Oracle—for the sake of a greater one. The ball had had to crest the hill to come into range of the nuclear cannon.

But Stile refused to give up. One hope remained.
 
“Trool! Brown!” Stile called. “If you hear me—use the book! Do something while the enemy Adepts are relaxing in victory!” Did they hear? Could Brown locate a spell and use it in time? Stile was afraid not.

Suddenly there was a strange wrenching, as of vastly potent magic gone astray. Then the world stabilized, seemingly unchanged. The goblins still charged forward with their burdens, seeming slightly dizzy but hardly incapacitated.

Sheen looked at Stile in despair as the last of the sand fall cleared. “We can’t possibly stop them all,” she said.
 
“We have ogres and unicorns, but there are too many goblins, too hard to catch. The book-spell failed, or was blocked by the other Adepts. Lady Brown simply lacks the experience to use that sort of magic properly.”

“I don’t know,” Stile said. “That didn’t feel like blocked magic.” He was getting a notion what it might have been, but decided not to say. It could not make a difference at this point. “Let the goblins be; no sense getting ourselves in trouble in a futile effort.”

The giants and unicorns turned away from him in disgust, but left the goblins alone. Soon virtually all of the Phazite was gone, carried away in pieces or in bagfuls. The battle was over.

Commander Grossnose strode over the crest. “Congratulations on an excellent campaign. Adept,” he said graciously. “Thou didst trick me on crossing the Oracle—but I countered with the cannon. The power of the Oracle in nonseparated frames becomes moot. But if thou wouldst be so good as to answer a point of curiosity—“

“Certainly,” Stile agreed.

“What was the nature of that last great spell thou didst attempt to perform? I felt its vast power—but naught happened.”

Trool and the Brown Adept appeared, she with the book of magic clutched in her arms. “We can answer that, goblin,” she said. “It was reversal.”

Grossnose’s constricted brow wrinkled. “Reversal? I understand that not.”

“Thou knowest—changing directions. So west turns east, and north turns south—or seems to. The Oracle told us to do it, once it got into jux and could use its holo—hologramp—its magic pictures to talk to us. That’s one smart machine!”

“North turns south?” the goblin asked, dismay infiltrating his face.

“Yep. Thine army just carried all the Phazite the wrong way—north across the line.”

The goblin commander stood for a long moment, absorbing that, grasping the accuracy and import of the Statement. All of them had been deceived, for it had been an extremely powerful spell of a quite unanticipated sort—as it had needed to be, to avoid interference by the enemy Adepts.

Grossnose turned again to Stile. “Congratulations on a better campaign than I knew. Adept,” he said gravely, as gracious in defeat as he had been in victory. “The final ploy was thine.” He marched back up the slope, his troops falling in behind him.

The victory had been won; juxtaposition could end, and the frames could safely separate, never to intersect again in this region of the universe. Stile could see the glimmer of the curtain contracting, dosing more rapidly from the south so as to finish at the site of the Oracle beneath them.
 
Or was that from the north it was dosing? It was hard to be sure, with that reversal-spell. Beyond that line, north was the verdant world of Phaze; at the crest to the south was the barren desert of Proton. Only the directions were reversed, not the terrain, somehow; the goblins had marched the wrong way home. Not that it mattered; they were creatures of Phaze who would remain there regardless, just as the robots and cyborgs would remain in Proton.

Stile himself would now return forever to Proton, to settle his debt to Citizen Merle, marry Sheen, and work with the Oracle-computer to reform the existing order. His alternate self would reanimate to be with Neysa and Clip and Stile’s other friends of Phaze and the Lady Blue. How much better off he would bel

“Thy life seems not dreary to me,” the Blue Adept thought. “The sheer challenge, the strange and fascinating bypaths of politics, the marvelous Game, and the ladies in Proton—no woman could be better than Sheen. Thou hast far the best of it, methinks.”

“Just do thou wrap up my commitments in Phaze,” Stile thought back sourly. “Petition must be made to the Herd Stallion to release Clip to pair with Belle; that is best for both of them. And it is in my mind that Trool the troll, with his integrity and skill at sculpture, should be given the book of magic and become the new Red Adept, fashioning useful magic amulets for—“

“That was my thought, fool!” Blue thought. “Of course I will—“ Then the closing curtain caught them. “Ah, the reversall” Blue thought, amazed, as his other soul was drawn from Stile’s association.

“Farewell, self!” Stile blinked. Blue had caught on to something Stile had not, it seemed, and now it was too late to ascertain what.
 
That, and the whole wonderful world of Phaze, were gone.
 
He felt the bitter tears of loss. Never to see the Lady Blue again, or Neysa—

But he could not afford self-pity. He had things to do in this world. He opened his eyes.

He was lying on a bed in a chamber of the Blue Demesnes. The Proton replica, of course. He must have lost consciousness, and Sheen had brought him here and left him to recover in decent privacy. Sheen was certainly the perfect woman; too bad she had not been able to remain in Phaze—but that would have been too complicated any way.

He got up, felt momentarily dizzy with the sudden rising, and quickly squatted to let the blood return to his head. It was as if he had been lying here a long time, his body unused; he felt somewhat awkward and unsteady, but now was recovering rapidly.

He stared at his knees with slow amazement. They were fully flexed, without pain. His injury had been cured! Oh—of course. Sheen had taken advantage of his unconsciousness to have him in surgery, and now he was better. Though he really would not have expected her to do that without consulting him first.

He walked to the door. The short hall was dark, so he sang a spell: “Right—light.” Immediately there was light, though only half as bright as he had intended.

Wait—he could not do magic in Proton!

He glanced back—and saw the harmonica lying on a table beside the bed. Blue’s harmonica, left with the—

Then he heard a light tread on the floor, probably someone alerted by Stile’s own motion. He recognized it immediately: the Lady Blue. Sheen’s step was quite different.

He knew with a shock of incredulous joy that something had gone wrong. The reversal had sent himself and his alternate self to the wrong frames! Stile’s soul had gone to the golem body, whose knees were good, while the Blue Adept had left Phaze—

Phaze would not be safe until the Blue Adept departed it forever. The prophecy had been fulfilled after all. Stile was in Phaze, not the true Blue Adept, who had been here all along, in the harmonica, until this final separation. The Brown Adept, unacquainted with the book of magic, prompted by the all-knowing Oracle, had made the reversal-spell too comprehensive, and thus—

And the other prophecy, which he had thought had come after the fact—that Stile would be betrayed, for his own good, by a young-seeming woman. Brown seemed as young as they came. That mixup had been no accident! She had perceived more clearly than he where his true future lay, and had acted to make it come true. How neatly it all fit together now! The Blue Adept, loath to live with a woman who no longer loved him, and fascinated by the marvelous world of science and the beautiful, loyal, deserving creature Sheen—who was as much intrigued by Blue, a person in Stile’s own image and spirit who had left his love for the Lady Blue behind—

Now the Lady Blue came into view, breathtakingly lovely and somber. Her face composed, she approached Stile. “My Lord, thou knowest I will serve thee in all things with grace and propriety,” she said sadly. “What is to be, must be.”

She thought he was Blue, of course—and she loved Stile. She had the mettle to carry through, to bear and raise his son, with no word of regret or reproach—but this time she would not need it.

“Beloved,” Stile said. “I have news for thee, thee, thee...”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Piers Anthony was born in August, 1934, in England, spent a year in Spain, and came to America at age six. He was naturalized American in 1958 while serving in the U.S.
 
Army. He now lives in Florida with his wife Carol and their daughters Penny and Cheryl. His first story was submitted to a magazine in 1954, but he did not make his first story sale until 1962. Similarly, he submitted his first novel, which was also his thesis for his B.A. degree from college, in 1956, but did not sell a novel until 1966. In 1985 his 50
^th
book was published. His first Xanth novel, A Spell for Chameleon, won the August Derleth Fantasy award for 1977. His novel Ogre, Ogre may have been the first original fantasy paper back ever to make the New York Times bestseller list, and all his fantasies since then have been bestsellers. He is currently writing three or four novels and answering twelve hundred letters a year. His house is hidden deep in the forest, almost impossible to find, and he now has a computer in the horse pasture.