Mach’s body was hierarchically organized, with a number of self-powered subunits contributing to the performance of the whole. The particular unit he had removed related to the verification of pressure-feedback from his left arm. It was redundant, and he could operate without it for a time. He closed up the aperture, so that his body seemed unchanged, and made adjustments to the separate unit. It was of a standard design, and could be adapted for several purposes. Now he was adjusting it not for internal feedback, but for external broadcast. He set the unit on the bench beside him and turned it on. It began emitting a signal. The signal passed through the glass wall and bathed the serf-guard. It was not a strong or far-reaching signal; it just induced a lethargy bordering on sleep. The serf would not even be conscious of it; he would simply not feel inclined to move or react unless strongly prodded.
Now Mach touched the skin under his right arm, keying open a chamber there. He unmade some connections and set up a bypass for a subunit whose normal purpose was to enhance the strength of his motor actions when an emergency arose. The living human analogy was a shot of adrenaline; his robot body had it under conscious control. He removed this unit and adjusted it, converting it, too, into a miniature broadcaster of a signal. Then he took it to the glass panel.
The panel was locked by a mechanism controlled by a computerized identification system. It was supposed to respond only to the presence and command of an authorized person. If anyone else attempted to open the cell, an alarm would sound. But Mach’s device sent an override signal that nullified the normal recognition circuit and released the lock. This trick, like the one to immobilize a living person, he had picked up as a child when playing with others. Many of the humanoid robots knew such things, but by tacit common agreement they did not advertise them to nonrobots. It was like the short-circuit route to sexual pleasure: only for their own kind.
He brought the unit near the locking mechanism, and tuned it, seeking the particular band for the override. Suddenly he found it; the glass panel slid open.
Mach emerged, approached the nodding serf, and led him by the hand into the cell. He sat him down on the bench, picked up the pacification unit, then left the cell again, closed the glass panel, and turned off the second unit. The locking mechanism clicked back into force. Mach adjusted the units, then opened his underarm apertures and wired the units back in. There was now no evidence of how he had done what he had done. With luck it would be some time before the serf woke, and longer before he was able to gain the attention of anyone else.
Now he set off down the hall, alert for sensors or alarms. He had some time to pass before he could afford to be actively pursued. Where would be the best place to hide?
It took only a moment to decide: the nearest Game Annex. He could lose himself pretty thoroughly in the right aspect of the Game.
Evidently the Citizen and his staff were occupied elsewhere, though it was midday. Probably this was a forbidden area, to keep the prisoner isolated. Would it be possible to go to the cell where Agape was confined and free her? Maybe, but not worth risking; he intended to stay well away from there.
He found an alarm beam, but didn’t even need to nullify it; he simply stepped over it. Then he came to the Game Annex. This was a simple Game pedestal, with a door beyond that would open on the Game chambers. Many Citizens had private annexes, as the fascination of the Game extended to every level of the Proton society, and to every species within it. In fact, that had been perhaps the major lure for the status of serf, for the self-willed machines: the right that status conferred to play the Game. Within the Game, there was no distinction between Citizen and serf; only a player’s individual skill counted. The annual Tourney allowed serfs of all types to compete on equal footing for the prize of Citizenship. But even serfs like Mach himself, who had no need for that particular route to Citizenship, were fascinated by the Game. Perhaps, he thought, it represented the expression of man’s eternal need to gamble—a need that had been passed on to man’s more sophisticated machines.
Mach bypassed the grids, as he knew that any attempt to turn them on would alert the Citizen. He opened the door beyond, and stepped into an elevator. He guided it down, seeking the basement level where the main supplies should be.
He emerged into a chamber in which a number of robots were stored. There was one that resembled a clothed hunter, complete with bow and arrows, and another like a goblin, and another like a harpy. There were also guided machines, such as small airplanes. A fancy Game setup indeed. The main Game Annex had everything, of course, but the small subannexes like this were generally limited to basics. Citizen Purple evidently liked to play in exotic settings. That surely told something about his character, but Mach wasn’t sure what. After all, he himself had found love in a most exotic setting. He sat at a control console and put the helmet over his head. He operated the controls, which were of standard type, and animated the goblin. The ugly little robot walked and turned at Mach’s direction. There was a speaker system, so that he could speak through the goblin’s head, but he didn’t use it. He was satisfied that he had a notion of the type of entertainment Citizen Purple preferred: vicarious participation in fantasy settings.
Well, to work. Mach opened a panel in his abdomen and removed another subunit. This one normally monitored his power usage. His main power source was a chip of Protonite, and it would last for a year if not expended wastefully. When too much power was being used, the monitor warned him, so that he could cut down. But that monitor, like the other subunits, could be turned to other purposes.
He adjusted it, again as with the others, to become a signal generator. It was simply a matter of amplifying and redirecting its normal output. But its new signal was not a normal one; the mechanisms had a feedback circuit, intended to shut down its signal when the monitored energy-use declined to tolerable levels, that in this circumstance had the effect of a random modulation. Both the strength and frequency of the signal would vary unpredictably.
Mach activated this unit, then put it in the clawed grasp of a robot harpy. Then he used the console controls to animate the harpy, and sent her up the access shaft to the main Game-playing site. He watched through her eye-lenses as she came up into the site—and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. This was imitation Phaze! There were trees all over the Purple Mountains, exactly as was the case in Phaze. He knew; he had recently crossed those mountains with Fleta!
Fleta. Abruptly his mood shifted. He was no longer in the living body, so his emotions were under control, but he had no desire to control this one. All that he had longed for, all his pseudolife as a humanoid robot, had been granted during his sojourn in Phaze. He had experienced the wonder of true life there—and the corollary wonder of true love. That wonder was muted, now—but his memory of both remained.
He wanted both, again. The existence he had in the frame of Proton had lost its luster for him. What future did he have here? Perhaps he would become the first robot Citizen—but what was the point, without Fleta? Better to be a common resident of the magic frame, with her!
But Bane was back in his own body, now, and surely understood the superiority of it. Bane had evidently dallied with Agape, here, but he had known, as Mach had known with Fleta, that it could not be permanent. Perhaps they could exchange again, for visits to each other’s frames, but Proton was the one Mach was stuck with for permanent residence. Paradise lost!
He sent the robot harpy napping into the sky with the signaling unit. He had her fly over an otherwise-inaccessible section of the mountain, swoop low, and drop the unit in a crevice. That would make it hard to locate and harder to recover. Then he brought her back to the exit ramp and to the nether chamber. He positioned her exactly as she had been before, and turned off the control console.
He left the premises quietly. His luck had about expired; now he would have to hide in earnest.
He found a utility closet some distance removed and got into it. He concealed himself behind cleaning equipment that the serfs
used, and tuned out.
Within the hour a commotion commenced. Mach came alert, but did not move; again he appreciated the fact that as a robot, he could remain absolutely still for an indefinite period. Since he was in the lowliest of places, it might be some time before they thought to look for him here.
Serfs hurried along the passage. Soon the Citizen himself huffed past, muttering. Mach attuned his hearing to the voice of the Citizen, so as to pick up what the man said when he reached Mach’s vacated cell. This should be fun!
The Citizen reached the cell. “How the hell could he get out?” he demanded. “The damned thing’s still locked!”
Evidently the response did not satisfy him. “Well, open it!” he snapped. Then, evidently to the guard-serf trapped inside: “You are fired!” The firing of a serf was a serious business; the chances were that that serf would not be able to get another position, and would have to leave the planet. This serf, of course, was mainly a victim of circumstance.
“He has to be somewhere on the premises!” the Citizen cried. “Our barriers are proof against any unauthorized departure!” Yet the glassed-in cell was supposed to have been secure, too. Mach was privately pleased that he had thought to remove his devices and close the cell. As a robot he should not ordinarily have had the originality for that, and evidently the Citizen had assumed that the normal tolerances applied. Thus Purple had departed to take his meal or nap, leaving Mach to his own devices—and was now paying the consequence. Had he been smarter, he would have realized that the son of Citizen Blue would have to be a rather special robot with the latest technology. And that a robot who had just returned from a genuine experience of life could have been inspired to a certain lifelike originality. Now that minor mystery of the locked cell was buying Mach invaluable time.
“A what?” the Citizen rapped. Then: “But no signal can get out either!” Which meant they had picked up the signal, and were about to trace it down. That would take them some time. When they finally located it, they would not know how the signal unit had gotten there.
“Check the alien bitch!” the Citizen said. “He’s bound to try to spring her!”
But of course Mach hadn’t done that, yet. Agape was supposed to wait till night, then make her break. Mach hoped to remain hidden until after she started her action; then he could relax. All this was only a distraction, to keep the Citizen and his minions occupied until Agape could escape.
The Citizen’s voice faded out; Mach could hear with preternatural acuteness when he tried to, but there were limits, and the Citizen had passed out of range. The commotion continued, as the serfs launched a methodical search for the signal-unit and for Mach himself. At first, surely, they would believe that he was in the vicinity of the signal generator, and comb through the Game region—which would be a tedious chore indeed! Once they ascertained that the generator was a separate item, they would go through the remaining premises with determination. He would inevitably be found—but probably not before Agape started her escape and enlisted the aid of the self-willed machines.
When they did catch him, he suspected, they would ask him about the signal he had been sending: what was its nature, and to whom was it directed? He would tell them that it was a phony signal, meaning nothing, merely random noise, that could not penetrate the Citizen’s signal-barrier. And they would not believe him, because why would he have gone to such an extraordinary effort to put out that signal if it could not accomplish anything? So the quest would continue, and that distraction would give Agape more leeway for her escape. And once she escaped, it would be only a matter of time before Citizen Blue had news of Mach’s location. Then the real fun would begin!
He was only a machine. But he was a machine in love, just as his mother Sheen was; he understood her better than he had before. As far as he was concerned, the Experimental Project was a success; as part of it, he had become as human as any of his kind had ever aspired to be. And he found that he enjoyed making a fool of Citizen Purple. He hoped Bane was doing the same to the Purple Adept.
Now it was time to dream of life, and of Fleta, and what he wished might have been. Time for machine dreams.
Mach tuned out, waiting.
Chapter 12
Apprentice
Bane, conscious of his agreement with Mach, gave no sign as he found himself in the passage lighted by magic-glow rather than scientific effects. He had been walking naked; now he was fully clothed, and that seemed strange after more than a week in the other state. He did not want anyone to know, yet, that the bumbling visitor had been replaced by the skilled native. “He is near,” he said. “I know I can do it. But show me Fleta first, in good health.”
“Do it now, or she shall lose her horn now,” Purple said sternly.
Rage flared in Bane. They were going to dehorn Fleta? That would deprive the unicorn of all her magic power and most of her will to live! The Adverse Adepts had done that to her uncle Clip, before Bane was born, and only Stile’s total magic had been able to mend that horn. Any chance that Bane might have worked voluntarily with these Adepts dissipated with this news. Fleta was hardly his love, but she was an old friend, and such a threat against her alienated him instantly.
He did not need to conceal his emotion, for Mach felt as strongly about the mare as Bane himself did, if in a different manner. The propriety of Mach’s relationship with the unicorn was questionable, but since Mach was now back in his own frame, that didn’t matter. It would be ironic if Fleta were mutilated to punish a person who might never see her again anyway.
“Thou hast made that threat before,” Bane said grimly. “How can I know that thou hast not already done it?”
“So now thou dost affect native speech?” the Purple Adept remarked contemptuously. “Forget it, alien; thou canst not fool anyone.”
Oops—it seemed that Mach had maintained his own dialect. Well, Bane had been in Proton long enough to pick it up. “I thought it was close enough,” he muttered, as if disgruntled. “Anyway, show me she’s all right, or I’ll know she isn’t.” Indeed, he had no respect for the word of this man, and realized he would be foolish to deliver the message from Proton without ensuring that the terms were met.
The Adept scowled, but yielded. “One time, then—but try not my patience further.”
They went to the cell where Fleta was confined. She was in her natural form, and an amulet had been tied to her horn, nullifying it. She was also in a halter, with her head tied in place so that she could not move it to scrape off the amulet, and trolls kept watch.
Appalled, Bane approached the cell—and felt the presence of an invisible magic barrier. He knew its nature immediately; it was a standard Adept spell that was used to confine animals or ordinary folk. This was a strong one, that could restrain a unicorn despite the antimagical powers of the species. Even with her horn free, Fleta could not penetrate this barrier; she would merely be able to change her form in her cell.
But he knew what to do, now. He had to provide her with a spell for spot nullification without alarm. “What holds me?” he demanded, as if he didn’t know.
“Never mind,” Purple said, and the barrier dissolved. Bane approached the tied animal. He put his mouth to her ear, as if whispering an endearment. “This spell, new role,” he sang quietly. “Make horn-sized hole.” And the powerful magic of his will reached out to change the amulet on her horn.
Her near eye widened, showing white momentarily. He knew she felt his spell, and knew that Mach could not have performed magic of this level. She realized that the amulet no longer locked her into her present form; it had been turned to his purpose. She would know what to do, and when.
He turned away. Without a word he walked out of the cell, feeling the magic barrier snap back into place behind him, and proceeded back down the tunnel toward the point of rendezvous.
At the proper place he paused, overlapping Mach and verifying that the robot had done his part. Then he changed his expression. He touched his clothing. “Then I be back!
” he exclaimed.
“Contact!” the Purple Adept said.
Bane turned to him. “I bear a message from thine other self: Contact be established, and the next move be thine.”
“But that’s the message I sent him!”
Bane shrugged. “He be thine other self.”
Purple’s visage clouded suspiciously. “How do I know thou hast really made the change? Thou couldst be the same one I captured!”
“Perhaps thou willst believe it by this,” Bane said. Then he sang: “Make a funnel to a tunnel.”
The floor of the passage opened up in a circular depression, deepening in the center. It did indeed soon come to resemble a funnel. Below it there was evidently a new tunnel: one leading out from this fastness.
Without delay, Bane jumped into the funnel and slid down into the tunnel. He landed on his feet and started running along it.
But in a moment shapes loomed up ahead of him. Trolls! The Purple Adept had summoned more of his minions, and they were blocking him off.
Bane halted, knowing that he could not pass these nefarious creatures of the underworld. They could tunnel naturally as fast as he could by magic, and they could move more rapidly here than he could. He backed to the funnel, and hiked himself up, scrambling up its slope until he stood again before the Adept.
“Then perhaps this,” he said. He sang: “Let me fare, through the air.”
The ceiling opened, revealing open sky above. Bane spread his arms and sailed up, quickly leaving the structure of the Purple Demesnes. But from the horizon came a monstrous flock of harpies, that quickly converged on him.
Bane looked at the ugly half-birds, and reversed course. He plunged down again, and in a moment stood again before the Purple Adept.
“Or this,” he said. Then he sang: “Make me most like a ghost.”