“Alternative self? Is this an aspect of human existence?”
Mach smiled. “In a manner. Most residents of Proton have an analog in the sister-frame of Phaze, wherein science is supposed to be inoperative and magic is operative. I find this difficult to credit, but my father claims it is so, and I am not programmed to believe him to be in error. It is at any rate academic, as there is no access to Phaze.”
Agape brightened. “A human myth!” she exclaimed. “A thing known to be untrue, but believed regardless.”
“That seems to be a reasonable view of the matter,” he agreed.
“Do you, a machine, have any desire for the future?”
“None that can be realized.”
“But perhaps a myth? A hope you would possess if it were reasonable?”
“I would desire to be alive,” Mach said.
“Yet you are not, and can never be.”
“Therefore it is pointless to desire it,” he concluded.
Again she gazed at him in her somewhat disconcertingly alien manner. “I think that I shall now be able to exist in this society. I thank you for your assistance. Perhaps at some point I may be able to render you a similar favor of comprehension.”
“There is no need.”
They stood and left the booth.
“Ha!” a young woman cried, spotting them. She had hair that was almost orange, that flounced about her shoulders as she moved. “So it’s true!”
Mach knew that he was in for a difficult scene. “Doris, allow me to explain—” he began.
“Shut in a booth with another woman!” she flared. “With the privacy curtain in place! I don’t need any explanation for that!”
“But we weren’t doing anything,” he protested. “Agape required assistance—”
“I can guess what kind!” Doris cried, eying Agape’s torso. “Just couldn’t wait to get your hands on some alien flesh, could you!”
“I do not understand,” Agape said. “Have I committed an error of protocol?”
“Protocol!” Doris said. “Is that what you call it? Melting in his arms?”
“She didn’t—” Mach began.
“I did melt,” Agape agreed. “But not for his arms.”
“Don’t tell me for what part of him you melted!” Doris cried. She whirled to confront Mach. “And I thought I was your girl! You’re just like any other male! The moment you see a chance to grab something new—”
“You misunderstand—” Mach said.
“Not anymore! You and I are through!”
“Please listen,” Mach said, reaching out to her. “I never—”
Doris stepped in and slapped him resoundingly on the cheek. “Don’t lie to me, metal-heart!”
By this time a small crowd had gathered to admire the proceedings. One young man stepped up. “Is this machine bothering you, Doris?”
“Stay out of this, Ware!” Mach snapped, allowing his emotional circuits to govern in the human manner. Ware was an android, and Mach had had enough android-sponsored trouble for this day.
“Yeah? Make me!”
Doris’ gaze passed from one to the other appraisingly. She was a cyborg, and by all accounts there were ghosts in those machines. A person could never be quite certain what a cyborg would do. “Yes, why don’t you make him?” she asked Mach.
She was trying to promote a combat between them! Mach had to head that off, in the interest of species harmony; he knew how his father would react to any such episode.
“The Game,” Mach said. “We’ll settle this in the Game.”
Ware laughed coarsely. “The Game? Why should I bother? Why not just settle it right here?”
Naturally the android didn’t care what kind of a scene he made; he had nothing to lose, and perhaps a lot to gain. He had no chance at future Citizenship, because he wasn’t the son of a Citizen or an expert Gamesman himself, but he could interfere with Mach’s chance—for himself and his kind.
“For a prize,” Mach said. “To make it worthwhile.”
“What worthwhile prize could you have to offer? You’re just a serf, like me!”
Doris smiled. “I’ll be the prize,” she said. “Winner gets my favor.”
“No—” Mach began.
But Ware’s eyes were lighting. He had always had a hankering for Doris, but until this moment she had not given him any positive signal. “Good enough! For Doris!” he agreed.
“Can a person be a trophy?” Agape asked, perplexed.
“Why not?” Doris asked with satisfaction. “You were!”
Mach wished he had the circuitry for a human sigh. He would have to put his relationship with Doris, which had been generally a good one, on the line. She was angry with him for insufficient cause, but had found a way to hurt him. He would have to go through with it.
They went to the Game Annex. They stood at opposite grid stations and touched their choices. Mach had the numbers, so selected 2. MENTAL, to nullify the android’s advantage of temporary strength and throw it into the android’s weakness of intellect. Ware selected B. TOOL, throwing it into the huge general category of tool-assisted mental games. Mach was strong here, so his prospects were brightening.
The subgrid for this category differed from that for the physical games. Mach had the numbers again: 5. SEPARATE, 6. INTERACTIVE, 7. PUZZLE, 8. COOPERATIVE. Ware had the letters: E. BOARD, F. CARDS, G. PAPER, H. GENERAL.
Mach chose 7. PUZZLE, trusting that his wit was quicker than the android’s. Ware chose H. GENERAL, which broadened the range of choices.
They filled in the sub-subgrid with various types of mechanical puzzles: jigsaw, matches, string, knots, cube assembly, Ruble cube and a labyrinth. When the final choices were paired, the result was the labyrinth. Well, Mach should be able to solve that faster than the android could.
“Hey, didn’t you run that one this morning, Ware?” a bystander called.
“Yeah,” Ware replied, satisfied.
Oh-oh. The format of the labyrinth was changed on a daily basis. A player never could know which variant or detail it would have—unless that player had experienced it on the same day. Ware had gotten a major break.
Or had he made his own break, knowing that Mach preferred mental or tool-assisted games, and liked puzzles? Had he somehow planned for this encounter? If so, he was smarter or more determined than Mach had credited.
Still, Mach had run the labyrinth many times, and was familiar with most of its variants. He might not be at as great a disadvantage as he feared. There were interactive properties that could nullify advance knowledge.
They adjourned to the labyrinth chamber. This time it was set up in the form of a huge circle with three entrances. Doris was designated the Damsel in Distress, and Mach was the Rescuing Hero, and Ware was the Monster. Mach’s object was to find and rescue the Damsel before the Monster found her and dragged her away to his lair. If Mach could bring her out his entrance, he would be the victor; if Ware brought her out his, he was. The Damsel was required to go with whomever touched her first. In a double sense, Mach realized.
He had kept company with her because, as a cyborg, she had the body of a robot and the mind of a human being. She had originally been human, but an accident to her body had rendered it inoperable, so her brain had been transplanted to the machine, where it was maintained in a bath of nutrients and connected to the machine’s perceptive and operating units. Such mergers had always been problematical, for no human brain could align perfectly with anything other than a human body, but as cyborgs went she had been more sensible than most. She had been given the finest of bodies, which she delighted to use for every purpose, and because she was both human and machine, she understood Mach’s ambivalence. He had one human and one machine parent; having experienced the machine existence, he longed for the human one, the other face of his coin. Doris had actually known both, and that made her endlessly fascinating. But she did have that erratic streak, which could make her difficult to deal with at times. Evidently she was
toying with the notion of having physical relations with a flesh creature, having satisfied herself about those with a nonflesh creature. Now that she was angry with him, she was using this notion to force him to respond.
All because he had tried to help the alien female get adjusted. Yet Agape had been in genuine need; what else could he have done? A machine could have ignored her plight, but a human being would have helped, and it was the human model he preferred to emulate.
They entered at their doors. The game was on.
It was gloomy inside, but his vision adjusted automatically to the changed conditions. He could see well enough. The passage curved and recurved and divided. There was no way to be sure which passage would lead most directly to intersect with Doris’ door; he would have to depend on speed and memory, learning the maze as he went. For the trick was not merely to find the Damsel first, it was to bring her back out. If he got her, but then the Monster intercepted them, he would probably be lost, because the Monster was by definition the stronger of the two males, and would win any direct encounter. This was counterbalanced by the Damsel’s established preference for the Hero; she would try to help him find her, and would even search for him, while trying to avoid the Monster. If the Hero touched her first, she would go quietly wherever he led; if the Monster caught her, she would go with him, but would scream all the way, making it easier for the Hero to intercept them and perhaps prevent the Monster from making his exit.
Now Mach heard her screams. The Monster had caught her already! How could it have happened so quickly?
But as he moved on, he realized that the sounds were wrong. Doris was still alone. She wasn’t exactly screaming, she was calling. “Hero! Hero!” she called. “Come find me!”
The fool! Didn’t she realize that the Monster could hear her just as well as the Hero could? Since Ware was already familiar with this variant of the maze, the advantage would be his; he could go directly to her without false detours.
Then Mach heard his rival, pounding along a nearby passage. Ware knew where he was going, certainly!
Well, there was one way to even things up: he could follow the Monster! Mach ducked into a cul-de-sac, hiding, as the android passed, then emerged and pursued him quietly. Soon they both arrived at the Damsel’s site. As Ware closed on her, she neither screamed nor fled as she was supposed to; she simply waited for him. Had she forgotten all the conventions of this game?
Ware slowed, approaching her. He reached out his hand to tag her, and she extended her hand to him.
Something very like human emotion took Mach. Doris was trying to give the victory to Ware!
Mach launched himself at the back of the Monster. By striking by surprise, at the moment the rival’s attention was distracted by imminent victory, he might score against him; the Game Computer allowed for such tactics. All he had to do was touch Ware from behind—
“Look out!” Doris cried.
Ware, alerted, swung around to meet Mach’s charge. They collided, face to face.
“Hero killed,” the voice of the Game Computer announced. Thanks to Doris’ betrayal, Mach had lost the game—and her favor.
Back in his private serf chamber, Mach pondered the ramifications. He had thought that Doris’ anger with him was a misunderstanding, spawned by his appearance with the alien female. Now he realized that he had misjudged the cyborg. She had grown tired of him, but preferred a pretext to separate. After all, if she formally broke up with him, others might conclude that she liked breaking hearts (or power cells, as the case might be) and be wary of her, leaving her without male company. She was not the sort to risk that. So she had engineered it so that another male had taken her away from Mach. That left her nominally innocent. She had had her prospective companion, the android Ware, get his fellow android Narda to set Mach up with Agape, then had sought out the pair and made a scene—with Ware handily near. How cunning! Then she had worked to ensure Ware’s victory, by “misplaying” her part, and finally openly betraying Mach. Thus he, Mach, had become the butt of the play. Had he “won” her, then there would have been no onus on her, and she could have tried another ploy at another time.
So he was without a girlfriend—and perhaps had been for longer than he had realized. What was he, after all, except a machine—that could not even experience the grief that a human or android or even alien being would at such a situation! No wonder Doris had grown tired of him. Living creatures had genuine emotions that made them less predictable and more interesting. How he wished he could be alive!
He lay on his bed, which he didn’t really need because it was not necessary for him to sleep, and invoked his creative circuit. This was newly developed, and had been installed only a few months ago. He had taken to playing with it at odd moments, savoring the illusion of erratic thought. It had random factors included, so that the same starting thought could lead to different results, some of them only marginally logical. Living creatures were capable of illogic, and that was part of their appeal. Even the cyborg Doris, with her inanimate body and living brain, could be marvelously illogical when she chose. Mach wanted that capacity for himself, but so far had never been able to originate a truly illogical thought process. The circuit was only a circuit; he could reflect on it, but it did not govern him. He always knew the illogic for what it was, and that prevented him from being truly alive.
Now he tried a special variant. He tried to imagine himself in the mysterious frame of Phaze, where magic supposedly operated and science did not. That was so illogical that it would represent a monumental leap of belief on his part. If he could successfully believe that, he could believe almost anything—including the possibility of somehow coming alive.
He imagined having a living brother his own age, there in Phaze. No, not a brother—an alternate self, who bore the same relation to him that Stile did to Citizen Blue. The same person he was, only split apart from his reality, existing in that nonreality of Phaze. It was of course nonsensical to postulate a robot having an alternate self—but no more so than the notion of a land of magic. How convenient that that land was forever sealed off from Proton, according to his father’s story! No way to prove or disprove it! What had happened, a generation ago? Had Stile exchanged places with another Galactic called Blue, who had been raised on another planet in the galaxy? Called it “a fantastic world” and that was how the idea of fantasy started? But now Mach concentrated, trying to believe in the literal magic, in the living boy just like himself, with whom he might establish rapport. He tried to force the delusion on himself, to make himself irrational. If only he could believe!
Then, almost, it seemed that he achieved it. Something like a thought came to him: Who are you? A thought he might not have originated. A living thought.
I am Mach! he thought back. Let’s exchange places! As the android girl had done, boldly offering to change companions, and succeeding.
All right—for a moment, the thought came back. His imagination was achieving a new level! It really seemed like another person thinking.
Mach made a special effort of concentration and longing—and suddenly experienced a strange wrenching. Alarmed, he eased off; had he blown a circuit? He felt quite strange.
Then he opened his eyes.
His room had changed.
Chapter 2
Fleta
Room? It was no longer a room at all! It was a forest glade. He was sitting on a rock in its center.
Mach blinked. Sometimes dust fouled his lenses and distorted his vision; the act of blinking normally cleared it.
The glade remained. Late afternoon sunlight slanted down to touch the thickly braided vines and leaves at one side, and grass grew ankle-deep in the center. None of this existed, of course, in his room.
Mach got up and went to the edge, intrigued to discover how far this illusion carried. He touched a broad leaf—and it felt genuine. He pulled on a vine, and it resisted his effort, being springy.
He had tried to switch places with his phantom twin—an
d found himself here. Was there really a twin, and had he really switched—or had he merely succeeded in establishing his belief in the impossible? Surely the latter—but this still represented a significant victory. He had achieved illogic!
Moved by the wonder of it, he walked around the edge of the glade. He found a path leading from it, twisting like a serpent between the large trees until it disappeared in the distance. Should he follow this? He looked down at himself, considering—and made another phenomenal discovery. He was clothed! He wore boots, trousers and a long-sleeved shirt—all blue. He had been so distracted by the living glade that he had not noticed his own condition!
His first reaction was shock. He was impersonating a Citizen! That could get him ejected from the planet!
Only in very special situations, such as in costumed drama in the Game, were serfs permitted apparel.
His second was wonder. How had he come by such an outfit? Had he taken it from his father’s collection? Citizen Blue did prefer this color. But Mach would have had to be crazy to do such a thing, and that was a state a robot was incapable of achieving.
Or was it? Wasn’t believing the impossible a condition of insanity? If he could convince himself that he was in a glade instead of his room, could he likewise garb himself in his father’s clothing without realizing? If so, this effect was dangerous!
Quickly he removed the clothing. But he discovered as he did so that it fit him perfectly. This was odd, because Mach was five centimeters taller than Citizen Blue. The Citizen was a very small man whose enormous political power more than made up for his lack of physical stature. Mach could have been any height he chose, but did not want to create any awkwardness for his father, so he had compromised by assuming his mother’s height. This put him in the low-average range for women, and well below average for men. But he had long since realized that physical height was not the most important aspect of individual importance, so he was satisfied. But now—how could he have worn his father’s clothing without it binding on him? This clothing seemed to have been fitted specifically for his own body.
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