Round Nine was due in the afternoon of the same day. Stile planned to spend the interim devising strategy and spells to finish the Red Adept, and to get some rest and refreshment. He was also concerned about Sheen; he had restored her in Phaze, again, and she was now fully operational. But how could he abate the hurt of her nonliving heartbreak? His attempted spell had not taken effect. She seemed to have lost much of her will-to-animation, and there seemed to be no way he could restore it. She needed the one thing he could not give—his complete love. Maybe, he thought again, he should have let her perish, instead of languishing like this. He had promised a clean death to the Red Adept; could he do less for his friend? There was a knock on the apartment door. That was unusual; visitors usually announced themselves on the screen. Sheen, alert to threats, went to see to it. “Oh,” she exclaimed, in a perfect representation of surprise. “You survived!”
“I must speak to—Stile,” the visitor said. Stile snapped alert. That was the Lady Blue’s voice! He went to the door. There she stood, a little disheveled but irremediably splendid. Bluette, of course; she had escaped the robot and sought out the name and description Hulk had given her. Smart woman!
Yet this was extremely awkward. “Come in,” Stile said. “Of course I’ll help you. I’m on the trail of the woman who killed Hulk now. But one thing you must know at the outset: I want nothing personal to do with you, after this.” Her brow furrowed prettily. “Nothing?”
“I am married to your alternate self, the Lady Blue of Phaze. You look exactly like her, Bluette—you are exactly like her—but she is the one I love. This is no reflection on your own merit, that I sincerely appreciate. And I know you have no personal interest in me. But—well, if she thought I was seeing you—“
She smiled, oddly at ease. “I understand.”
“Stile,” Sheen said, evidently making some sort of connection. “She is not—“
“Not my woman,” he agreed. “Bluette, I never wanted to meet you. It—it’s too confusing. And I know, after all you went through—is that robot still on your trail? That we can take care of!”
“Stile, listen,” Sheen said. “I just realized this is—“
“Look, don’t make this any more difficult than it is!” Stile snapped. “Every second she stands here—this woman is so like the one I love—“ The woman smiled again. “Now thou dost know what I went through. Adept. The false so like the true.”
“What?” Something didn’t jibe here.
“Thee... Thee... Thee.”
Stile froze. “Oh, no!”
“I am the Lady Blue,” she said. “Fain would I listen longer to thy protestations of other love, my Lord, but I did cross the curtain to bring thee a vital message.” Never had Stile imagined the Lady Blue in this frame.
“But that means—“
“That Bluette is dead,” Sheen finished. “It has after all been several days. We should have heard from her before this, had she escaped.”
“Oh, God,” Stile said. “That I did not want. And now the two of you have met—that was never supposed to happen!” In the back of his mind, moving rapidly to the fore, was his concern that the robot might do some harm to her human rival. He had to get the Lady Blue out of here!
“Thou speakest as if there be some shame here,” the Lady Blue said. “I have long known of thy most loyal friend in this frame, the lovely Lady Sheen, and I am glad to meet her at last.” She turned to address Sheen directly. “I am oath-friend to Neysa. Can I be less to thee? If thou wouldst honor me with thy favor, 0 noblest of Ladies—“ And Sheen was crying. It was not the sort of reaction a robot was supposed to have, but it was natural to her. “Oh, Lady—oh. Lady!”
Then they were hugging each other, both crying, while Stile stood in mute confusion. Somehow it seemed that Sheen had been restored—yet the mechanism of it was beyond his immediate comprehension.
When the first flush of their emotion subsided, the Lady Blue delivered her message to Stile. “A bat-lad came to the Demesnes, sore tired from rapid flying. Methought he wanted healing, but it was news for thee he brought.”
“Vodlevile’s son!” Stile exclaimed. “I never thought he would—“
“He said the Red Adept had returned to the ruin of her Demesnes and fashioned a terrible spell, a basilisk-amulet that would destroy whatever it touched, being invoked by the very frame of Phaze. This she meant to give thee in the frame of Proton, and when thou didst bring it across the curtain—“
“Her final trap!” Stile said. “A basilisk—a creature whose very touch brings horrible death, whose gaze petrifies. But why does she think I would accept such an amulet from her?”
“The bat-lad said she made it resemble something thou couldst not refuse. Something thou wouldst immediately take across the curtain. That was all he knew; he dared not get within the range of her power. He thought it was news thou shouldst have—and I thought so too. So I tried to reach thee—and succeeded.”
