Phaze Doubt.
by Piers Anthony.
1 - Lysander
Lysander found his a.s.signed seat in the shuttle as it commenced slow acceleration. The s.p.a.ceship had been a liner, with individual cabins for each pa.s.senger, but the planetary shuttle was cramped in the manner of an atmospheric transport. Well, he was used to tight quarters, after his time in the laboratory.
He hesitated, glancing at the young human woman in the adjacent seat. She was in the process of getting out of her dress by working it up past her legs and b.u.t.tocks. "Please, excuse me, if it is not an imposition-"
She looked up at him, pausing in her labor. She had short curly black hair and dark brown pupils, in those respects almost matching him. But what was coming into view below didn"t match. "Am I embarra.s.sing you?" she inquired brightly.
"No, I am most interested. Your form strikes me as pulchritudinous."
She blinked. "What?"
Evidently he had used the wrong term. "Of aesthetic outline. Comely. Subject to admiration. Incitive of s.e.xual ambition."
She smiled. "Attractive?"
"Yes, thank you. That must be the operative term."
"You"re not from this neighborhood," she remarked.
"This is a perceptive observation. Indeed I am not. But you-you are a native of the upcoming planet?"
"Yes. In a manner. I"m a serf. We don"t wear clothing."
"Now I understand. I read the handbook. I will be a serf too, to earn what I need to be recognized as an independent individual. But would you be willing to exchange seats? I have little experience of planetfall and would like to gaze out the window."
"Oh, of course. I"ve seen it before." She got up and stepped to the center aisle, her dress remaining halfway up. Lysander took the seat she had occupied. Then she lifted her dress the rest of the way off, over her head, leaving only pink bra and panties. She was a well-endowed female, quite appealing in that limited outfit. She folded the dress carefully and took the outer seat.
"Thank you," Lysander said. "May I introduce myself? I am Lysander, from Planet Grenadier. I am a specialist in robot feed back circuitry."
"Alyc," she responded. "That"s A-L-Y-C, not ALICE. We serfs have little of our own except our names. I"m a.s.sistant what ever for Citizen Blue. Not in your cla.s.s, I guess."
"Cla.s.s?"
"I"m not educated like you. I just help with housework and cooking and whatever, as I said. I never got beyond regular schooling."
He smiled. "There may be a misunderstanding. I did not have schooling. I am an android."
She stared at him momentarily, startled. "You"re joking!"
"My humor is limited, as it is in all my kind. My body was generated in the laboratory."
"But androids are, well, not smart. You don"t talk at all like that!"
"Perhaps that is because my brain is fully organic. It was taken from a living creature and implanted in the android body in the manner of a cyborg. I was pre-educated in the laboratory so my only challenge was learning to use the body."
"That"s fascinating!" she said. "I never heard of an android cyborg!"
"So as you understand, I am not in your cla.s.s, not being a proper man. I have existed in this form only two years."
She was gazing at him with increasing interest. "You haven"t had social experience on your own world?"
"I am not entirely certain what you mean. I am conversant with the appropriate modes for eating, eliminating, sleeping-"
"Man/woman," she said. "Interaction."
"I have been instructed on the mechanism for copulation."
Alyc laughed. "Dating. Dancing. Kissing."
"The mechanisms for relating the local calendar to current events, or-" He saw by her expression that he was not reflecting her intent. "I suspect not."
"Would you like to start with me? I mean, until you get into things in Phaze?"
"Phase? To be in phase, or out of phase?"
She laughed again. "Phaze. With a z. The magic part of Proton."
"Magic? I think I must misunderstand."
"So you don"t know about that. Well, I guess they haven"t bruited it about, offplanet. You"ll see. But what I meant was whether you would like to be my boyfriend, until you find a girl of your intellect?"
"But you are full human!" he protested. "My indoctrination is specific about the perils of miscegenation. I am obliged to inform any human person of my status as quasi-human."
She turned earnestly to him. "I am a serf. And you will be too. We"re all equal, on Proton: humans, robots, cyborgs, androids, and aliens. All naked, too; will you be able to handle that?"
He frowned. "The social-the types interact? I a.s.sumed that the social interaction was confined android to android, and man to woman, in practice."
"You are a man, Lysander, as I"m sure I can show you. The only forbidden interaction is disobedience to a Citizen. Of course serfs don"t normally marry, but they do have relationships. So-" She looked at him questioningly.
"In that case, yes, I would like to be your social friend. As I remarked, your physique is attractive."
"Oh, I"m so pleased!" she exclaimed. "I"m sure it will be very nice, the little time it lasts."
"These affiliations are of limited duration?"
"With me they are. You see, I like smart men, and I can attract them at first, but they always leave me for smarter women."
"I apologize in advance for doing that."
She started to laugh, but changed her mind, remembering that he wasn"t much for humor. "Well, let"s make it count." She leaned over to kiss him.
"Secure belts for landing." It was the shuttle announcer system, giving warning of higher acceleration. The vessel had been accelerating at just under one gee throughout, backward, its jets toward the planet. In this manner it had reduced the momentum it had started with at the ship. But now it had to make planetfall, and that would require more than one gee.
"Never fails," Alyc said. "Just when things get interesting." She kissed him quickly and settled back into her seat, fishing for her harness.
Lysander heeded the directive, and snapped his own seat harness about his humanoid body, glancing around as he did so. The other pa.s.sengers were all humanoid, most of them seeming to be fully human beings, some seeming to be robots. This was hardly surprising, since Proton was a human colony; few creatures of planets other than Earth found it compatible. Gravity, atmosphere, diurnal cycle, light intensity, and temperature range closely matched those of the colonizing planet.
"Is it all right if I watch the approach?" he asked. "I am of course interested in what you propose, but you will remain, while the vision of the landing will be fleeting."
"Of course it"s all right," she said, after a slight hesitation. "I"ll just hold your hand, meanwhile."
Lysander peered out of the old-fashioned porthole. They were approaching the planet obliquely, and he had an excellent view of it. He was indeed fascinated by it.
The odd thing about Planet Proton was that its South Pole pointed directly toward its sun, always. Most planets in most systems rotated in the planes of their ecliptics, so that their equators were warmest and their poles coldest. Some were skew, so that their poles were alternately heated as they proceeded through their years. But Proton acted as if it were on a fixed axle extending from the star, in seeming defiance of the laws of physics.
The acceleration increased. Gee rose to about 1.5. His right hand felt odd. He tore his eyes away from the porthole and looked at it.
Alyc was holding his arm to her bosom and kissing his hand. It was warmth of her breath on his fingers that had distracted him. Relieved that it was nothing serious-sometimes this body reacted in odd ways to stress, and 1.5 gee was a type of stress-he returned his gaze to the porthole.
What Lysander found hard to figure was how the planet maintained a regular day-night cycle. With the sunlight coming always toward the South Pole, there should be no changes; the southern hemisphere should always be day, the northern hemisphere night. Yet that was not the case. The planet acted as if the light were turned at right angles, and it cast its night shadow to the side. The manual indicated that scientists had never been able to agree exactly how this was possible, but it was so. The prevailing theory of the moment was that the planet acted with respect to light like a black hole, bending the light ninety degrees without affecting anything else. This left formidable questions unanswered, but was the best that was offered. Apparently no competent local study had been undertaken to resolve the mystery.
Then the shuttle changed orientation. The planet seemed to swing back and out of sight. They were coming down to the surface. There was nothing of interest to be seen now.
Alyc still had his hand. She was licking it. Lysander tried to remember whether this was normal procedure, but found no applicable facet. He had to a.s.sume that it was within tolerance for the species.
Alyc saw him looking. "I"m sorry," she said. "High-gee makes me nervous." She removed her mouth, but did not let go of his hand.
A stress reaction. He filed the information in a facet. Others might have different mechanisms of coping. Still, it was possible that it was not the mere availability of more intelligent companions that caused males to leave this woman.
The gee increased. Then there was a b.u.mp, and the gee reverted to one. They were down.
Alyc relaxed. She released Lysander"s hand. "I feel so much safer on solid land," she said. "Low-gee or high-gee just-" She shrugged. Then she touched the center of the bra, and it separated and fell away. "We might as well wait for the others to clear," she said, nodding her head at the people now stepping into the aisle.
Lysander noted that a number of the others had done as Alyc had, and were now naked. They carried their clothing bundled under their arms. They seemed to have no luggage.
Alyc drew up her legs, bending the knees. In a moment she had worked the panties off. "You might as well strip here," she said. "That way, they"ll think you"re a returning serf, like me, and you won"t have to go through the indoctrination routine."
Lysander nodded. He preferred to avoid attention. He started to get out of his clothes, awkwardly, in the seat.
Alyc jumped to help him. Her hands touched his body caressingly, not shying away from the genital region.
"I am not certain this is wise," he said.
"Oh, no, it"s better to strip now," she a.s.sured him.
"The presence of your hands is causing a reaction," he explained.
"Oh, that"s right-you"re new here. You think naked is s.e.xy!"
"I was under that impression. Am I mistaken?"
"Yes, here. Serfs aren"t s.e.xy, they"re dull. We really have to work at it to get s.e.xy. Clothing helps a lot; I got so heated up the first time I went offplanet-" She shrugged again. "But I know it"s the other way around, with you. I can take care of it, though. Just get naked so I can-"
He realized that she intended to proceed to a s.e.xual engagement. Human interest in the act declined after it had been indulged. But he foresaw points of awkwardness, because he understood that such an act was normally done in a private place, and would attract some attention if done publicly. Also, his inexperience was likely to contribute to miscues. It would be better to avoid it at this time.
However, he did not wish to walk out of the ship in an obvious state of s.e.xual excitement; that too might attract attention.
He would have to draw on his true nature to turn it off. "I think I am adapting to the culture," he said. "Allow me a moment."
"If you wish." She seemed disappointed.
He reverted to his core facet. Now he saw things as he would if in his natural body, rather than as the humanoid body did. He opened the two eye segments available and looked at the woman.
She was completely repulsive. A mat of long fur sprouted from the top and rear of her head to dangle around the auditory flaps and the jaw bone, tufts of it coiling of their own accord. Her breathing orifice projected, and her eyes were rounded and set in sockets. a.s.sorted white teeth showed within the peeling gash of her sustenance intake orifice. Substantial bags of flesh hung around her front. She had two ma.s.sive upper limbs and a bifurcate base.
He shut off the eyes; the awful vision was too strong. If he allowed it to go further, he would be unable to function in this alien society, and therefore unable to pursue his mission.
He stood and quickly completed the disrobing. He had no s.e.xual interest in the female now. He hoped he would be able to damp down the vision of her fleshy nature when the time came, as it inevitably would, to indulge in the way she preferred.
"I guess you did adapt," Alyc said. "Well, maybe some other time. It isn"t too good in a shuttle, anyway, I think." She evidently would have been glad to make a trial of it, however.
"Yes. Now I must enter the city and seek employment."
"You don"t have a job yet?" she asked.
"I understand that employment is inevitable. Was I required to achieve it before coming?"
"Oh, no! I just thought maybe you had been brought in for your expertise. A special a.s.signment."
"No, I merely wish to achieve a suitable situation, in a culture that accepts androids more readily than does my own."
"Then maybe you can apply for work with Citizen Blue!" she exclaimed, delighted. "He"s a good employer, really he is! He"s very generous. Most Citizens don"t allow their serfs offplanet until their terms are up and they have to go, forever, but he let me travel."
Lysander frowned, though this was exactly what he wished. "Wouldn"t that be a conflict of interest?"
She was preceding him down the aisle, her fleshy posterior shifting its ma.s.ses in ways that threatened to alienate him again. He focused his two eyes on her face as it turned halfway back toward him. "Conflict?" she asked, perplexed.
"If you and I are to have an a.s.sociation, wouldn"t that disallow employment by the same Citizen?"
She laughed, as she so readily did. "No way! Citizens don"t care about serf interactions. Just so long as they do what they"re told. The only trouble is when a Citizen wants a serf-girl for s.e.x and doesn"t want anyone else using her. But Blue isn"t like that; he"s true to his wife, as he has been for twenty years."
"She must be a remarkable woman."
"She"s a robot. They have a son." She paused, waiting for his reaction.
He made it, as they left the shuttle and pa.s.sed into the interior chamber of the s.p.a.ceport. "A robot had a son?"
"The son"s a robot too," she explained. "Her name is Sheen, and his is Mach. Mach-Sheen, Machine, you see; it"s sort of a pun, only n.o.body laughs. And he"s married to an alien female, and they have a daughter, Nepe. Only it"s more complicated than that."