The hour ended and they turned in their stubs and left the classroom. “Tomorrow let’s focus on shields,” Ike said. “I want to find a setting that will protect us from the sword.”

  “Yes. But we still don’t know what we’re fighting for. What does Pomegranate College teach? Is it something we really want to learn?”

  “This setting is so sophisticated that it has to relate in some way, if only to select people who are really good at survival in strange circumstances. I’m guessing that there may be danger. But if we learn how to handle it, that may not be an issue.”

  “You’d think they’d give us some better hint.”

  “I think they want us to figure it out for ourselves. Teaching us is one thing; they can do that. But having a real aptitude and motivation for learning it is another. They want to find students with that.”

  “I think you’re right.” She paused. “There’s something else.”

  He glanced at her, appreciating her beauty yet again. “Should I be wary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t tease me, Felony. Out with it.”

  “When I asked about magic, it wasn’t just about appearance. It was about love.”

  “Uh-oh. You’re going to feed me a love potion?”

  “No. That would be unethical. Also, we can’t eat or drink here; the emulation doesn’t go that far.”

  “What, then?”

  “But we can work spells. I could enchant you into loving me. If you wanted me to.”

  “Two things there. First, this setting is all about appearance, not inner feeling. You got my attention by converting your appearance, not by directly enchanting me. I don’t think that would work. Second, what’s this about if I want you to? Why would I want you to mess with my feelings, assuming you could do so?”

  She smiled, and it seemed to brighten the welkin. “Now you’re asking questions and I am answering. That’s unnatural, but I’ll try. First thing: the magic may be real, in which case I could indeed enchant you. Second thing: I don’t want to compel you. I don’t think that would last. I want you to do it on your own. Then it will be permanent.”

  Ike considered. “Felony, I am seriously intrigued. I don’t believe in magic, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume it is so. If the spell is not permanent, then it should be safe to experiment with it. So go ahead. Try it.”

  “I will, Ike. But to be completely fair, I will not take advantage of it now. This is a demonstration only.”

  “Fair enough. Do it.”

  “Because if I did it, and took advantage, next thing we’d be on the turf making it.” She lifted his hand, which he realized she had been holding all along. She used her fingers to form his hand into a one-finger salute. Then she wrapped her hand around that finger, as she had before. The symbolism was unmistakable, and far more potent now. And, given what the body suits could do, it was feasible. They could have virtual sex that would be almost indistinguishable from real sex. That was a really interesting notion.

  “I will try to restrain myself,” Ike said, bemused. “Show me.”

  They paused on the walk, and she faced him. “Gaze into my eyes.”

  He did. “They’re brown.” And absolutely beautiful.

  Then her pupils seemed to expand. They became huge, spreading beyond her eyes, then beyond her face, overlapping each other, becoming one spiral. They were like merging vortices drawing him in, not physically so much as emotionally.

  Then they contracted, leaving him still gazing into her normal face. It was the same, only different.

  “I’ll be damned,” he breathed. “I do love you!” He moved to kiss her.

  She drew back. “Stay clear, Ike. I’d love to kiss you, but not now. Go home.”

  “The magic! It worked! It made me love you.”

  “Yes. Now you know. It will wear off in a day. So tomorrow when you’re back to normal I’ll do whatever you want. Even enchant you again, if that’s what you decide. Then it will be fair.”

  “Fair,” he echoed.

  Then he was alone, exiting the setting. He must have done it on auto-pilot, bemused by the emotion inspired by the spell. His passion for Felony had blossomed far beyond anything he had felt when he saw her new body. The magic really did work, amazingly.

  He remained distracted as the limo took him home, and thereafter. He had operated on the assumption that the setting was virtual reality, seeming real only because the participants suspended their disbelief and got into it, much as they might forget their surroundings when reading a really good book. But that love spell was something else! It had touched his heart and revved up his emotion amazingly. Suddenly he loved her, and this was no imagination.

  Ike sat down in his room and pondered. He was a rational person, with no belief in the supernatural. He knew magic was not real. So how could this love spell actually work? He knew that things like voodoo depended on the belief of the participants; if they thought an evil hex was real, they suffered from it, while nonbelievers who knew better did not. He did not believe in magic, so how could it work on him? If he and Felony had been physically together there could have been pheromones, but their togetherness was illusion. Sure, it had seem real when he picked her up and carried her away from the predator bird that time, but that was a matter of their film suits reacting to each other, like the kissing only more comprehensive. Strictly sight, sound, and touch, no chemistry. Her spell had touched him inside, and he still felt it.

  Oh, did he ever feel it! His heart was beating hard and her image was in his mind. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, be with her in every sense. He was in love.

  And that could not be. Felony was a fine girl, surely worthy of love, and it might happen, but he was more cautious about emotional commitment. Ike learned well from experience, and getting dumped for wanting too much, too fast, had been a hard lesson. Felony in her beauty stage could likely be a lot of fun, but that was not at all the same as love. So how could he feel it so strongly?

  Ike was good at answers. He had posed the question; now he had to answer it. How could he account for the way he felt, if magic didn’t work? This was not some magic show, where the stage magician used suggestion, sleight of hand, and stage props to make impossible things seem to happen, like a sexy young woman getting sawed in half. This was real, in its fashion.

  Suggestion. Felony had said she had a crush on him, and strongly hinted that she would do anything he wanted her to. She had held his hand in a really suggestive manner. That had put the idea forcefully into his head. Then she had looked into his eyes. Since she was after all just an image, she could arrange to have her eyes magnify; all she needed was a special code to alter her eye image, just as she had altered her body image. Sleight of hand, in a manner, not magic.

  Then the jolt of love had hit him. No pheromones? There could be pheromones! He was in a controlled environment, the air in the cell provided by the air conditioning of the building. Introduce a waft of the right pheromones and he would feel it immediately. He had read about it: touching, massage, or sex evoked something called oxytocin that seriously affected feeling and behavior. It could be released as a nasal spray. Put that in his cell, and his emotion would leap, and he would interpret it as he had been conditioned to: as love. Voila!

  No now he had the answer. But it evoked another question: why did the professors of Pomegranate facilitate such a thing? Obviously they had done it for Felony; she had asked them, and they had set it up. Were they playing favorites? He doubted it; the relationship between applicants was no proper concern of theirs. They wanted the best potential students, and if they had already chosen them they would not need to bother with special effects. Why, then?

  That question brought its own answer. Magic might not be real in real life, but in the framework of the setting it was valid. They could hardly have made a more persuasive demonstration than this. Now Ike would take magic seriously, as Felony did, at least in the context of the exam. That was surely the lesson.

  Now all he had to do was give the “spell” time to wear off. Already his feeling was fading, though one thing was clear: it was a good feeling. It would be no bad thing to be in love with Felony.

  Next day when they met she was lovely but reticent. “Are you over it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Do you want to do anything?”

  “Oh, yes! But not right now. We need to study shields, and we need to talk.”

  “Have you figured it out?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Because I don’t really believe in magic.”

  “Next time come in your own body. Then I’ll kiss you.”

  “You’re getting to like me!”

  “Yes. I love your luscious illusion body, but I want to get to know you better as you really are.”

  This time they were down to a class of two. It seemed the other applicants were attending other classes, or were out in the field. Professor Entrep happily demonstrated the formats of the laser shield. It could be made to seem hard, so that it was physically solid to outside objects, or sticky, so that what touched it became tangled in it. But the one that most interested Ike was reflective: whatever came at it was bounced back the same way it had come. So a sword beam would either glance off or return to tag the one who sent it. That could be a nice response to assassination from ambush.

  “I think you’ve got it,” Entrep said. “I have no more to teach you. Either of you. You may keep the laser stubs; you are ready to use them in the field.”

  “Thank you,” Felony said, and kissed him on the cheek. She remained in her lovely image, and it was apparent that it had impact even on one who knew better.

  They walked out to the tree where the predator bird had hidden, but this time there was no attack. They sat down beneath the tree, and Ike explained about suggestion, sleight of hand, and pheromones.

  “So that’s it!” Felony exclaimed. “But why would they—”

  “Because to get along in this setting, we need to believe in magic,” Ike said.

  “But if we use magic to win our passes, and get admitted, what then? There can’t be magic in the real Pomegranate, can there?”

  “There might be science that resembles magic. We need to be able to figure it out. That may be the mental agility they are looking for.”

  She was troubled. “I really don’t know if I want to commit to a college blind. I prefer to know what I’m getting into. As it stands, my main reason to sign up is to continue my relationship with you.”

  “Mine too,” Ike said. “But in case we don’t both make it, let’s exchange addresses now, so we can get in touch in the real world.”

  “You really want to? Knowing I’m not your type?”

  “You are my type. I was hung up on bodies. Now I’m learning better. You are more woman than I ever encountered before. You can put on a luscious body to give me a treat, but my real relationship is with the real you.”

  “Oh, Ike!”

  Then they kissed, exchanged addresses, and parted.

  Chapter 4:

  Familiars

  Back home, Ike texted Felony. Are you there, for real?

  She answered immediately. I am here for real.

  They had established real-life contact. Ike was thrilled, because he had somehow feared that the whole thing was illusory, and that he was falling in love with a nonexistent woman. But now that he could talk with her outside the context of the Pomegranate setting, he discovered he did not have a lot to say.

  Yet somehow when he put down the phone, an hour had passed. They lived a thousand miles from each other, geographically, but now it felt as if she were in the next room. They had agreed to try another class before going out into the field; it would delay their quest for passes, but it seemed safer. There was just too much they did not yet know about Pomegranate.

  Next day they met on campus. Felony was back in her unenhanced body, lean and plain, but he no longer cared. His foolish fascination with appearance was abating. He took her in his arms and kissed her. She melted.

  Then they went to the class listed as Familiars. Neither of them had any idea what it was about, but they were pretty sure all the classes related to survival, so they needed to get a proper notion of this one.

  Again, they were the only ones. The professor was a woman of motherly heft and manner. “Welcome, Ike and Felony,” she said. “I am professor Howell, and this class is on Familiars. Do you have any idea what it is about?”

  “No,” they said almost together.

  “A familiar is a supernatural spirit in the form of an animal that aids a witch or warlock in performing magic. This is always by mutual consent: you do not catch and tame an animal, nor does the animal choose you. As with human relationships, chance and compatibility play a significant part. So the first thing you need to do is find your familiar. Name it, and bring it back here. Then we will be able to exploit the relationship for mutual advantage.”

  “The familiars—if we don’t choose each other,” Felony asked, “how to we get together?”

  “In real life this can be difficult,” Howell said. “But here in this setting it will be facilitated. Go out and look in the greenhouse, and it should occur.”

  Ike and Felony exchanged a glance, mutually shrugged, and left the classroom. Now their guiding lines reappeared, leading them around the campus to what appeared to be a larger greenhouse. Exotic plants abounded, and so did a number of small animals: dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, tortoises, lizards in the foliage, and assorted colorful birds perching in the limbs of small trees, ranging from wrens to hawks. Many of those were spectacular in their plumage, sporting displays unlike those Ike had seen on Earth.

  “All potential familiars,” Felony murmured. “I have no idea which one is mine.” It was a question.

  “The plain one,” Ike said, in a moment of inspiration.

  “Who can have other merit,” she agreed wryly. It was a personal matter, but new she knew he had seen beyond appearance. She held up her hand, and an olive-drab parrot flew to it. “You called?”

  “You talk?”

  “Some.” And there was the indication of merit: no only was it talking, it was making sense.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Not yet.”

  Felony smiled. “Then I will call you Demeanor. Miss Demeanor. Because my name is Felony, and you’re not as bad as I am.”

  The bird laughed. “You’re a rare one, Felony! I like you. I will be your familiar.”

  Felony smiled. “We’ll get along.” Just like that, she had her familiar, in this contrived setting, having identified the correct one.

  Now it was Ike’s turn. Like Felony, he had no idea, except that he didn’t like to be too conventional. Witches had cats or frogs? He wanted something else. So he walked around the greenhouse, looking. The animals looked back. It was increasingly impressive. There were foxes, wolves, goats, pumas, leopards, bears, alligators, rattlesnakes, pythons, and some that seemed foreign to the planet. None of them particularly turned him on, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. He was not looking for a fancy animal, but a talented and compatible one, quite a different matter.

  Then he saw a small blue snake caught in a crevice. It was struggling to free itself, without success. It must have tried to crawl through the panels from outside, and gotten stuck. Ike reached across, caught the edges of the crevice with his fingers, and carefully pried them apart, enabling the snake to slide free. “There you go, fellow. But watch it, in here; there are formidable predators. You might be better off outside.”

  Then his jaw dropped, because the snake slithered into the air and did not drop. It hovered there, floating.

  “I could be mistaken,” Ike said. “You do have your special ability.”

  The blue snake remained suspended, gazing at him. Was he missing something?

  Then Felony spoke behind him. “Familiar.”

  The familiar! He had forgotten in his distraction with the snake’s ability. “You want to join me?” he asked, holding up his open hand.

  The snake slithered smoothly through the air to his hand. Just so. He had found what he was looking for, where he had not expected it.

  “Name him,” Felony murmured.

  Oh. Yes. But suddenly his mind was blank. What was an apt name for a small flying snake? All he could think of was the odd color. “Blue.”

  Felony sniffed. He had muffed that one.

  But the snake seemed satisfied. He slithered out of Ike’s hand, crossed the air in front of him, found his breast pocket, crawled in and curled up. He was at home.

  They exited the greenhouse and returned to the Familiar classroom. “Good enough,” Professor Howell said. “You have chosen well.”

  The parrot perched on Felony’s shoulder. Blue poked his head out of the pocket.

  “It was mostly accident,” Ike said. “It just happened.”

  “Exactly. Now the thing about your familiars is that they are of this setting in a manner the two of you are not. You are emulating your presence here, acting via film suits and film interfaces, suspending your disbelief. But the familiars are integral to this setting, needing no film. So you don’t need to worry about feeding them; they can forage for themselves. They will wait for you when you’re off the set. They can accomplish things you can’t. They are also familiar with this realm in a manner you are not. They can warn you of hazards you will otherwise miss.”

  “Suppose we aren’t paying attention at the moment?” Ike asked. “Blue does not appear to talk.”

  “Your familiars understand your speech perfectly. Miss Demeanor can say a few words. Blue can hiss: once for yes, twice for no.” It seemed the professor already knew the names they had given the familiars, though they had not mentioned them; yet another reminder that nothing here was truly private. “You should practice communication now, because this is vital.”

  “Is this true, Blue?” Ike asked the snake.