“More than training?” he asked. This business of the flutes still perplexed him. Why should they all have to play them, when not one of them could touch the expertise of the Adept Clef? “Be thine the magic flute?”
“Nay, I can play thine as well as mine.” She exchanged flutes with him, and they verified that they were the same.
“Then what?” he asked, covertly annoyed at being out-skilled.
“It be my BEM component,” she explained. “The BEMs be apt in coordination, because o’ their many tentacles and eyes. Beman’s BEM aspect can play best o’ all.”
“That would I like to hear,” Flach said, intrigued.
The BEM appeared. The sight no longer startled Flach; he had become familiar with it, and his interaction with the guard outside had prepared him. Beman was no monster to him, in any form.
The BEM lifted the flute and fastened an air hose to it, so that the stream of air passed across the mouthpiece and caused a sustained note. Then it applied tentacles to the holes and keys, and played.
The sound was phenomenal. Flach had heard his Grandfather Stile play, and knew that on all the planet only one was better. That was the Adept Clef, whose sound was magical, figuratively and literally. In unicorn form, with his recorder horn, Flach could play very well, because it was natural to that form. The recorder was a form of the flute, with a mellower sound, and this gave him an advantage when, in human form, he played the flute. He played it very well. Thus it had been a surprise when Weva had turned out to be better, since she had no unicorn component. But now he understood that her BEM component was indeed the source of that talent. The BEM might be doing a mathematical translation, and not have any particular feeling for the spirit of the music, but its technical expertise was superlative. Weva, with animal and human components, supplied the feeling the BEM might lack, and so even her relatively clumsy human fingers had marvelous skill.
Flach took his own flute and joined in, after a few bars, playing extemporaneous counterpoint. The music was beautiful, but he had to stop soon, because the magic was gathering. The BEM had no magical power, and its music was merely sound, but Flach could summon magic when he played, and it was dangerous to do that without turning it to some particular task.
Weva reappeared in mid note- “Teach me that!” she exclaimed.
He had assumed she realized how he used music. He realized that there was more to cover. They got to work on it.
In all too brief a span, their “day” was done, and it was time to go back out into the ordinary realm and make the journey to the South Pole. There, they hoped, the mystery of their mission would be clarified at last.
13 - South
Lysander remained uncertain whether he was doing the right thing. So far he seemed to be forwarding the cause of the enemy more than that of the Hectare. Yet what else was he to do? The members of the planetary resistance knew his mission, and allowed him along only so long as he was useful to them. If he balked, they would drop him. If he turned them in, the secret plan they were implementing would never be discovered, for they themselves did not know it.
So he went along, knowing that the cunning child Nepe/Flach was using him. But he had one saving hope: that the prophecy they believed in was valid, and that only he could in the end give the natives their victory. That meant that their effort would fail without his participation and cooperation, which they could not in the end buy. Their magic had been effective in causing him to love Echo, but that love would not make him abandon his mission. So he retained the trump card, and eventually they would have to give him the chance to play it.
Unless this whole business of the prophecy was a lie, to make him cooperate. Yet that seemed unlikely, because their entire framework was marvelously consistent; everything they had told him had turned out to be true. Even the matter of the spell of invisibility: why make your enemy invisible, giving him enhanced power to snoop on you, unless you really need him? Why make one of your own partisans love him, unless you expect him to join your side?
Actually, the invisibility was wearing off now. He could see himself, translucent. So he now wore clothes, and smeared dirt on his extremities, making himself completely visible; it was better than the halfway state. It remained impressive enough, as magic: a single quick spell lasting for two weeks before beginning to weaken. He had no doubt that Flach could have changed him into a toad with similar longevity.
He stroked Echo as she lay beside him, sleeping. Her body was a machine powered by a pellet of Protonite, but her brain was living human, and it did need sleep. When it slept, the rest of her system shut down, and she was responsive only to significant physical shocks. His touch meant nothing to her now. In addition, his love for her was artificial, brought about by magic. But it was authentic. The magic had somehow reached into whatever senses his android body had, and his Hectare brain, and made those connections that natural love would have, and done them more securely than nature would have. A person who was killed by artificial means was just as dead as one who died of natural causes; similarly, his love was just as thorough.
It was interesting, though, that the love spell was not wearing off the way the invisibility spell was. Perhaps they were different kinds of spells. But it was possible that the spell was wearing off—only to be replaced at the same rate by natural love. He might be able to work his way out of love if he tried, by magnifying any doubts that seeped in. But he didn’t care to try; there was no reason, when he enjoyed the emotion so much.
Would he have to give her up, when the time to implement his mission came? He was very much afraid he would. He felt grief for the action he knew he would take, betraying her along with the rest. But his discipline as a Hectare required it, and in this respect their effort of making him love a native woman had been wasted. It would not make a traitor of him. He did love her, but he loved honor more, for that was inherent in his Hectare nature. Never in all the history of the Hectare species had one of them betrayed its agreement on even the slightest matter. The protocols of honor were refined to a degree virtually incomprehensible to other species. Thus the Hectare guard, having made a deal with the enemy, honored it in letter and spirit, absolutely. True, it was betraying its species in the process—but had it won the wager, it would have helped its side similarly significantly. The protocols allowed for this; as long as the wager was fair, and the stakes equivalent, it was legitimate.
Lysander’s mind reflected on the name, Hectare. This was actually a translation of a concept obscure to aliens. There was a human geographic measure termed the “meter,” which was about one man’s pace. In two dimensions, this became a square meter. One hundred square meters were an “are,” and a hundred ares constituted a “hektare” or “hect-are,” or ten thousand square meters. One BEM eye facet could track approximately one square meter at a distance, and the full eye complex could track, individually, approximately ten thousand such units. The massive brain could integrate that information and coordinate response, limited only by physical factors. Since there were not ten thousand tentacles capable of firing ten thousand laser beams simultaneously, this was a limit; with computer assistance, such coordination was feasible, and a BEM in a spaceship could indeed fire at ten thousand enemies and score on each. So the name seemed appropriate as an indication of the capacity of the species. The natives of this planet had seen only a fraction of the BEM potential. That was why the guard had no concern about the visitors to the West Pole; it was aware that they might lack the protocols of honor, but it could laser all of them well before any one of them could pull the trigger on a hand weapon. Lysander had spoken truly, as he had to, when he advised them that gaming was the only way past this guard.