Meanwhile, Agape was doing something; he heard fragments of the instructions to her. It seemed she was required to melt into a new brain-container that was being set into the machine.
All this occurred extremely rapidly. In less than a minute the two of them had been installed into the cyborg. His accurate robot time sense told him it was so, despite the subjective human impression.
The entrance to the chamber opened. Bane saw this with his two widely separated eyes, and heard it with his buried ears. Six serfs charged in.
“Search this room!” one directed the others. “They have to be in here!”
They spread out and searched, but could not find the fugitives. They did find a panel that concealed a service tunnel leading to another drama complex. “Check that complex!” the leader snapped. “They must have crawled through.”
Four men hurried out. But the leader was too canny to dismiss this chamber yet. “Check these machines, too,” he snapped. “Some of them are big enough to hold a body.”
They checked, opening each machine and poking inside. They checked the cyborg, and found only its brain unit and operative attachments. At length, frustrated, they departed.
DO NOT REACT. Bane saw these words appear briefly on a wall panel, and realized they were for him. The hunt remained on; this could be a trap.
After a few minutes the speaker said: “Cleaners ten, twelve and nineteen to the adjacent drama chamber for cleanup.”
“We are nineteen,” Agape’s voice came faintly to him. “I will direct you; you must operate the extremities.”
So they were now a true cyborg: a living brain and a mechanical body! Bane discovered that when he tried to walk, his legs were wheels. He started a little jerkily, but soon got the hang of it, and propelled them after the other contraptions toward the door.
Outside the serfs were waiting. Obviously they expected Bane and Agape to walk out, thinking that they were safe.
He took them around and into the drama suite the two of them had vacated. “Brush the floor,” Agape said.
Bane tried to reach with an arm—and extruded an appendage whose terminus was a roller brush. He lowered this to the floor and twitched his fingers. The brush spun. He started brushing the floor.
DO NOT REACT, a panel flashed.
Then a serf wearing the emblem of Citizen Blue entered. “Good thing I got here in time!” he exclaimed. “They had us blocked off. Come on; we’re going home.”
Bane continued brushing.
“Hey, you’re safe now!” the man said. “At least, you will be when we get you to the Citizen’s territory. Come on!”
Bane ignored him, playing the dumb machine.
Disgruntled, the serf departed.
They continued brushing the floor. In due course the job was done. The two other machines had cleaned off the chairs and dusted the walls. “Return to storage,” the speaker said. They returned to the storage chamber. There they parked and waited for another hour. What was going on? Obviously the self-willed machines were protecting them, but could the chase still be on? Where was Citizen Blue?
The panel flashed. REACT.
Then Citizen Blue walked in, followed by Sheen, his wife. “Is this chamber secure?” Blue asked.
“Yes, Citizen,” the speaker replied.
“I owe you.”
“No. Your activities benefit our kind.”
Blue faced the cyborg brusher. “Are you in good condition?”
Now at last Bane felt free to answer; Blue was evidently legitimate. “Yes,” he said through his mouthspeaker, which was now set near the top of the apparatus.
“This is a respite, not the end. You will assume our likenesses. Keep alert.”
Then the dismantling unit approached, and reversed the prior procedure. It extracted Bane’s arms, legs, torso and head and assembled them, so that soon he was back to his original condition. Agape was removed from the brain chamber, as a mound of jellylike flesh, and she stretched out and up and became herself in human form.
“You will assume our forms,” Blue said. “We shall not be challenged in the halls, but you would be.”
Agape began to change again, orienting on Sheen.
“No,” Blue said. “Emulate me. The sensors can distinguish between flesh and machine.”
“But I am alien,” she protested. “They will know I am not human. I can emulate only an android, if they test.”
“They distinguish human from android by fingerprints,” Blue said. “The self-willed machines will give you my prints.”
She nodded. She shifted until she looked so much like him that Bane was startled. Then she went to a unit in the wall where a unit overlaid her blank fingertips with pseudoflesh molded in the likeness of Blue’s prints. Blue got out of his Citizen’s robe and set it on her. The emulation was complete.
Meanwhile Sheen was attending to Bane. She simply had the dismantling unit remove her brain unit and exchange it with his. Abruptly Mach was in her body, and she was in his. This one would certainly pass inspection!
“Go to my private residence and remain there until we return,” Blue said. He was applying pseudoflesh the self-willed machines provided, remolding his face and body to resemble Agape’s. He had done this before, when he had rescued Bane from the captivity of Citizen Purple; he was good at emulations himself.
“But thou—when they find thee and take thee for Agape—” Bane protested.
“They will discover they are in error,” Blue said. “Sheen and I will serve as diversion until the two of you are safe. This is a necessary precaution; they want you very much.”
“Do not be concerned for us,” Sheen said from his body. “We are immune to molestation.”
Bane hoped that was the case. He faced the door.
“And let her do the talking,” Blue said from Agape’s apparent body.
Bane had to smile. It would not do to have the seeming Sheen speaking the dialect of Phaze!
They left. There were serfs, but those stood respectfully aside, eyes downcast. The two of them walked down the hall to the nearest transport station. Agape, as Blue, lifted her right hand to the panel. The prints registered. In a moment the panel slid to the side to reveal a blue chamber: Citizen Blue’s personal conveyance. They stepped in.
The chamber moved, first rising, then traveling horizontally. There was no challenge, no delay; they were being transported to the Citizen’s residence.
Bane wanted to take Agape in his arms and kiss her—but even had this been in character in their present guises, he would have found it awkward when she looked like Citizen Blue, who almost exactly resembled his own father Stile.
She looked at him and made a wicked smile. Then she took him in her arms and kissed him. Any watcher would have sworn that it was male kissing female, rather than vice versa.
The transport delivered them directly to Citizen Blue’s suite. There were no servants there, so no awkwardness about identities.
Should they maintain their emulations? They realized that they had to, because Bane had Sheen’s body. It was strange, seeing himself in the mirror, looking so like his other self’s mother! So they settled down and watched news features on the screen, and waited.
An hour passed. Then the entrance chime sounded. The entry vid showed Bane and Agape.
“They’re back!” Agape exclaimed, hurrying to the entrance. She touched the admit button as Bane came up behind her.
Suddenly Bane froze. His body had gone nonresponsive; it was as if it had been disconnected. He couldn’t even speak.
Agape stepped forward—and the two figures jumped up to take her by the arms. Astonished, she tried to draw back, but they put a bag over her head.
Bane realized that these were not Citizen Blue and his robot wife, Sheen. They were impostors, similar to the serf with Blue’s emblem—but he could not act.
“When you are ready to cooperate, send word,” the Citizen figure said to Bane. “Then you may see her again.”
Ap
palled, he watched them haul Agape back to a waiting vehicle. They had used a ruse to capture her after all!
Then a new figure showed up—and this one also looked like Citizen Blue. “Now there are two ways we can do this,” he said.
The Sheen-figure whirled and leaped at him.
A net shot from the wall and wrapped about her, lifting her up and suspending her in the air.
“That was the second way,” the Blue figure said.
The first Blue figure tried to run, but another net trapped him similarly.
Bane recovered use of his body. “Agape!” he cried, running to her.
Serfs appeared. They hauled away the two netted figures. “I wanted to catch them in the act,” Citizen Blue explained. “Now I have proof.”
Agape had dissolved into jelly, but when she felt Bane’s touch she recovered and reformed, this time assuming her normal female shape.
Sheen appeared. They returned to the suite, and a machine servitor approached to transfer computer-brains. Bane had his own—or rather Mach’s—body back.
“We have been watching, but until they made their move, it was pointless to act,” Blue explained. “They were watching all the planetary ports, and indeed, all the exits from Hardom; there was no chance to get Agape out. But they gained nothing by keeping her bottled up here; they had to gain direct possession of her. So we tempted them by arranging a game beyond the protected region, and they finally took the bait.”
“The bait!” Bane exclaimed, horrified.
“The seemingly vulnerable pair,” Blue said. “Unfortunately, they were more determined than we expected; they arranged to send false signals of normalcy, so that we believed they had not struck. It was a good thing you thought to seek the help of the self-willed machines.”
“They helped us,” Bane agreed, feeling somewhat dazed as he remembered. “I knew not that this body came so readily apart!”
“Now that they have made their move, they will be trying more openly,” Bane continued. “They have shown a certain cleverness in their efforts. We shall have to hide Agape until we can get her offplanet.”
“Then hide me with her!” Bane exclaimed.
“Yes. But you may not enjoy the manner of concealment.”
“I enjoy not the need for separation,” Bane said. “Needs must I be with her while I can.”
“I believe we have worked out a situation in which you can be together without suspicion,” Blue said. “But you will have to be careful and alert, because it is risky.”
“It be risky just acting in a play!” Bane exclaimed, and they laughed.
“We shall set the two of you up as a menial robot and an android girl,” Blue explained. “You will be substituted for the ones assigned to go to a common location. The self-willed machines control placements; they will arrange it. Such assignments occur constantly; there should be no suspicion.”
“But won’t they be watching us?” Agape asked.
“They will. They will continue to see you here.”
“Oh.” It had been demonstrated how facile such emulations could be.
So it was that the two of them were smuggled out, while another robot and android took their places as guests of Citizen Blue. They found themselves assigned to a young Citizen who was opening a new office in the city and required a humanoid robot and humanoid android to maintain it during his absences. It promised to be a routine and rather dull matter. But at least they would be constantly together, and in the off hours no one would care what kind of relationship they had. It was possible that they would never even see the Citizen himself.
The employer turned out to be Citizen Tan. Bane felt a shock when he learned of their assignment. Perhaps the self-willed machines considered this citizen to be a harmless nonentity, as Citizens went. But Bane suspected that he would be parallel to the Tan Adept in Phaze, and that meant he was in the Adverse or Contrary orbit.
If Citizen Tan caught on to their true identities, they would be already in the power of the enemy.
And Citizen Tan very well might, for if he was the other self of the Tan Adept of Phaze, he had the potential for a most devastating ability: the Evil Eye.
But they had no choice, now; they had to go. And it seemed they were lucky, for Citizen Tan made no appearance. They ran his office, with Agape receiving messages and smiling at vid callers—naturally her features had changed, so that she did not resemble the girl he had known—while he handled mechanical chores. He, too, no longer resembled the original Mach; his brain unit had been set into another body.
At night, when no business was to be done, they lay together and made love. They knew that permanent separation could occur at any time; that made love constantly fresh.
Then, in the early morning, Mach contacted Bane. Mach had amazing news.
Stile, Bane’s father, had ascertained that their exchange was generating an imbalance that was damaging the frames. They had to exchange back—but the Adverse Adepts had welcomed Mach and Fleta to their Demesnes. So now Mach represented them, as far as communications between the frames were concerned. When they exchanged, Bane would not be pursued by the Adepts; he could go where he wished. But they wanted to talk to him, to try to persuade him to their side. He could trust the Translucent Adept.
All this was transferred on one gob of thought and impression; it would take him hours to digest the ramifications. Meanwhile, he was sending his own information back: how he and Agape had agreed to separate, though they loved each other, and the Contrary Citizens were trying to abduct her to use as a lever on him. How they were now hiding in a place the Citizens should not suspect, until Agape could be smuggled offplanet.
“Don’t leave me!” Agape cried, realizing what was happening. She clapped her arms around him and clung close, almost melting into him. “I love you, Bane!”
Then the exchange occurred.
Chapter 3
Agape
Agape realized that she had lost consciousness for a moment, for she found herself sagging in Bane’s embrace. She lifted her head, and saw an open grassy plain. It was chill early morning outdoors, with no pollution in the air.
She blinked, and tried to shape her eyeballs more carefully, as they were evidently malfunctioning. It didn’t work; her flesh remained fixed as it was.
Bane put his hands on her shoulders and set her gently on her feet. “We have exchanged, Fleta,” he said. “I be not Mach.”
There was a little pop in the air behind him, and a bit of vapor seemed to center on him for a moment. Then it dissipated.
Agape stared at him. Then she took one of his hands and squeezed it. The hand was flesh, not plastic!
“You are alive,” she breathed.
“Aye, filly!” he agreed. “Now canst thou tell me more o’ the truce Mach made with Translucent? Fain would I have stayed with my love in the other frame, but not at the price of destruction for all.”
“Destruction for all?” she echoed blankly.
“In our contact, he told me that our exchange made an imbalance that needs must be abated. So he sought me, though he loved thee and wished ne’er to be apart from thee.”
She looked again at the plain. Could it be?
“Where are we?” she asked.
He laughed. “Where thou hast always been, mare! In Phaze, of course.”
“In Phaze?” she repeated.
“Aye. Surely thou dost not mistake this for Protonframe!”
Suddenly she realized that this could be yet another trick of the Contrary Citizens. Citizen White had attempted to fool Bane into thinking he was back in Phaze, by putting him—and Agape—into a setting resembling Phaze, and emulating the magical effects. But he had caught on, because his magic did not operate quite as usual, and the vampire-actors had not correctly identified one of the vampires he named. Then Citizen Purple had hunted them in a setting resembling the Purple Mountains of Phaze, but stocked with robots in the forms of dragons and such. The Citizens were very good at emulations, as the
ir narrow escape from the pseudo-Citizen Blue and Sheen had shown.
“Are you sure this is Phaze?” she asked. “Not another trick?”
He smiled. “I know my living body from Mach’s robot body, without doubt,” he said. “There be no question in my mind.” Then he glanced sharply at her. “But thee, my lovely animal friend—why dost thou ask this?”
He was living flesh, certainly. But was he Bane?
“Please—do some magic,” she said. “Just to be sure.”
“Gladly, Fleta!” He made an expansive gesture, then sang: “Bring me fare, for the unicorn mare!”
A basket of oats appeared: feed for a horse—or a unicorn. Certainly it was magic—or a clever illusion.
“I am not the unicorn,” she said abruptly.
He smiled. “Thou canst hardly fool me, Fleta! I have known thee long, and sometimes intimately. Who art thou, if not my friend?”
“I am Agape.”
He stared at her. “Be thou joking, mare?”
“I am your lover in Phaze. We are hiding from the Contrary Citizens until I can get offplanet and return safely to my home world, Moeba. I don’t want to go, but the Citizens want to use me as a hostage against you, so I must flee.”
He considered for a moment. Then he asked: “Exactly where were we hiding?”
She started to answer, then stopped. If this was another pretend-Phaze, then he was not Bane, and he was asking not to verify her identity, but to find out where the two of them were. If she told, the Citizens would immediately pounce and take them both captive, and this time they might be unable to win free. “Ask some other question,” she said.
“Thou dost doubt me?” he asked, surprised.
“You are doubting me.”
He smiled. “Aye. Then tell me aught that Mach could not have told Fleta.”
She launched into a detailed description of their recent history before the final hiding: the brownie-baking game, the sex in the gelatin, the rendition of You Never Can Tell and their pursuit by the minions of the Contrary Citizens.
“Enough!” he exclaimed. “I be satisfied! Thou art my love! But how came thee here?”