"It must have. Now it"s a self-willed machine."
"Well, let"s see what it"s like. Do you prefer to be the fox or the geese?"
"I have no choice. It marked you the fox."
"Oh. I hadn"t noticed. Very well, I"ll play the fox. You have played the game before?"
"Yes, it"s fun, the way it"s set up. Only I don"t like the way other women cut in."
"Women cut in? Are we talking about the same game? This should be a board, with marbles-"
"You"ll see."
Something was definitely askew. Lysander shut up and followed the blue line.
The chamber was larger than necessary for a table and board game; indeed, neither was there. Instead there were rows of human-sized neuter mannequins standing as if ready to march to war.
"I think we have the wrong room," Lysander said.
"No we don"t. It"s a life-sized game. Those are the geese, and you"re the fox."
"But in the game, the fox tries to jump the geese and remove them, while the geese try to block in the fox so it can"t move."
"See, the places are there," she said, pointing to the floor. Sure enough, it was laid out in the game pattern-and each mannequin was standing in a circle. "You don"t literally jump the geese, you just touch each one so she gets orT the board and you step beyond her. It"s the same, only larger."
"She? Those mannequins are neuter."
"No they aren"t." She stepped up to the center of the forward line, which had one blank circle. As she did so, things changed. Suddenly all the mannequins were clothed in frilly dresses that were padded to make them look female, and all had wigs that contributed to the effect. So did Alyc-and in the dress and wig, she looked astonishingly like the others. Rather, they all looked like her. It was a transformation that seemed almost magical.
Almost? Now he knew that magic was literal, here; it could indeed be involved. "But you"re in clothing! I thought only Citizens-"
"In the games it"s okay. It"s costuming. But we would never go like this outside!"
He nodded. Special license for costumes made sense. It also gave serfs a chance to act out whatever fantasies they might have. He was coming to appreciate why the Game Annex was so popular among those who might not otherwise have been game-minded. It represented therapy on unspecified levels.
"Now play," Alyc said. "You move first."
Lysander saw that there were instructions playing on the screen, for any who happened not to be conversant with the details of the game. He discovered that this was the archaic version: thirteen geese, and moves were allowed in any direction, including slantwise. He had not played that variant, but could adapt readily enough.
He stepped to the board, before the ladies. Abruptly he became clothed himself, in a fine coat of brown fur, reminiscent of a wealthy fox. The coat was real; he felt its pleasant heft. Now, zeroed in, he stepped diagonally toward the geese. He knew he was at a disadvantage; the geese could win every time, if played correctly. That was why the archaic form had given way to the modern form, where the geese could move only forward or sideways, while the fox was unrestrained. But the moves could be tricky, and Alyc was not the brightest person, so he should be able to win anyway. Not that winning was important, in this instance; he was just letting Alyc show him around.
He had taken his turn. Now she took hers. She could not jump him or attack him; she could only try to box him in. But she had thirteen pieces, and as few as six could box him, if the position was right, and eight otherwise. So he had to eliminate a sufficient number of geese to make her win impossible. If he got her down to five, that was it; she could not claim a draw by skulking along the sides. A draw was possible if both players were conservative; that, again, was reason to modify the old form of the game.
It was odd, seeing thirteen women just like Alyc. She had remarked that clothing was a s.e.xual turn-on for serfs, instead of nudity; already he was coming to accept that. Alyc nude was an interesting figure of a woman, as he had come to appreciate during the night. But Alyc clothed was exciting. When she walked, the dress swung about her legs and accented her hips, making the legs seem more shapely and hinting at further marvels beyond. The bodice nominally covered the bosom, but somehow showed a fair amount and made the remainder intriguing. The woman was now twice as appealing as she had been before.
In fact, all the women were appealing. The mannequins had a.s.sumed the mannerisms of life. Each was breathing and blinking, and a girlish tremor went through any one of them he looked at. In fact, they were warm and soft, as he discovered when he tagged one for removal; he had caught her unflanked and "jumped" her. She gazed at him with muted hurt and walked sadly off the board, making him feel guilty-and she was only a mannequin. There had to be magic!
Alyc was not a skilled player, as he had suspected, and he won the game handily. The last one he removed from the board was her; he had almost lost track as the positions changed during the game. It had been an experience quite different from what he had antic.i.p.ated.
The mannequins lost their clothing and returned to their immobility. Lysander and Alyc became as they were, naked serfs. The whole thing was a bit hard to believe.
They were about to depart the chamber, when another serf woman stepped up. "I wish to challenge the winner," she said.
Lysander looked at her. She was spectacular, with golden hair, deep green eyes, and a figure that made Alyc"s look somewhat dumpy. "Is that permitted? We were a.s.signed this game by the computer."
"It is permitted if there is no other a.s.signment for the chamber," the woman said. "Let me introduce myself. I am Jod"e, android; I work for Citizen Troal."
"I am Lysander, android, working for Citizen Blue," he said. "This is Alyc, who also works for Citizen Blue. She is showing me around, and I"m not sure-"
"It"s the custom," Alyc said with disgust. "They can cut in if they want to, and you have to play a challenger one game."
He sympathized with Alyc"s annoyance. Apparently a handsome new serf was fair game for the sharks. It surely was worse when the new serf was a shapely woman. But he did not want to make a scene. "One game, then," he said shortly.
"A variant," Jod"e said. "I will be a goose. You must kiss each goose you jump, and if you jump me without recognizing me, I win regardless of the position."
He looked at Alyc. "A variant?"
"She challenged you," Alyc said grimly. "You can insist on the same rules as the prior game. But usually a serf goes along. It"s all supposed to be fun, after all."
Lysander was not pleased. He was a spy, true, and his loyalty was not to this planet. But apart from that, his sense of fair play was straight. It was a matter of honor, a concept which was ingrained in the Hectare brain. He had made a commitment to Alyc, and he did not care to abridge it. Jod"e was trying to lure away Alyc"s boyfriend, and that seemed less than right at this stage. Evidently this sort of thing had happened before, and Alyc was used to it, but he did not like being a party to it. Let his a.s.sociation with Alyc run its natural course; if later they agreed to break it up, then he was fair game for predatory women. Also, Alyc was a useful contact with Citizen Blue, so he had reason to remain with her.
Well, he would play the game. But the interloper would get nothing from it. "I agree," he said. "Your variant."
Jod"e smiled. It was a phenomenal smile, crafted to impress, and he was impressed. At the same time he wondered why she was making this effort to vamp him. Was it just because he was here? Or to spite Alyc? But Jod"e seemed not to know Alyc, or to have known of Lysander before seeing him at this game. Was she a shark who simply took whatever offered and threw it away when finished?
Jod"e stepped into the key circle, and the mannequins walked to their places. The transformation occurred again. This time all looked like Jod"e, and a stunning collection it was. Every one of them was a vision of delight.
"Turn your back a moment, while I shuffle," Jod"e said.
He turned away. When he turned back, the a.s.sembly looked the same-but he knew that Jod"e had switched places with one of the mannequins, so that he could not identify her by location. He thought it would be easy to pick her out from among the mannequins, but discovered it was not; he did not know her as well as Alyc, and there was nothing to distinguish her. Those mannequins were amazing!
He made his move, and a figure made the counter. He saw right away that Jod"e was a more experienced player than Alyc, and knew how to press her advantage. Now he wondered how the figures knew when and where to move; there was no separate layer giving directions, because she was right there among them, as silent as they. He would have to ask Alyc about that, later; there was indeed more to this game than he had thought.
They maneuvered, each side taking turns. Then he got a chance to trap and jump one of the figures. He suspected that Jod"e had done it deliberately, for she had played flawlessly until then. True to the new rule, he kissed the doomed figure.
She felt exactly like a woman. Her lips were warm and soft, and he felt the tickle of the breath through her nose. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s messed against him enticingly. He let a hand slip down behind her, out of Alyc"s view, and squeezed a b.u.t.tock through the cloth; it felt exactly like living flesh. This must be the real Jod"e, presented because she wanted to kiss him. But he had already seen amazing things, when there was magic, and there had to be magic here; how could he be sure it was her?
So he pressed in with his fingers, not only squeezing the b.u.t.tock but feeling as far as he could into the cleft between b.u.t.tocks. How far could a neuter mannequin emulate a living woman? It still felt real. He hooked a finger, giving a slow, personal goose, no pun. How long could a living woman keep from reacting to this impertinence? Alas, he found evidence neither way; she seemed to be perfect, physically, and she didn"t react.
But he could delay his decision, and announce his guess when he game ended. So he released her, and she walked to the side, off the board.
The play continued. The geese had been reduced by one, but in here were still more than enough to barricade him against the side, and he was hard-pressed. Then another opportunity offered, and he stepped up to kiss another figure off the board. He came in slowly, looking down into the decolletage of her dress, to see whether the padding that made the figure look female was visible. What was there was visible, but it wasn"t padding; the dress covered a very firm pair of heaving b.r.e.a.s.t.s, with an extremely nice cleavage. He pressed against that bosom as he kissed her, and it still felt genuine. If this were not the real woman, he was up against a much stiffer challenge than he had realized.
He released her without a word, and she walked away to join the other. The two of them stood motionless at the side, not seeming much more like dummies, despite their costumes.
There were more moves, and still he was hard-pressed. Then a third opportunity came, and he took it. He was now far more intrigued by the riddle of ident.i.ty than about the game itself There had to be some way to tell!
This time he placed himself so that his body blocked most or hers from the view of Alyc, and as he bent to kiss her lips the fingers of his right hand gathered in the back of her dress until he hauled up the hem and was able to get in underneath. Slowly kissing her, he reached into her cleft and felt most intimately She wore no panties; the costuming was only external. He ex-plored until he found the aperture he sought: damp and hot. She definitely had the equipment of a living woman.
Yet so had the other two, as far as he had been able to ascent tain. Could the magic have made the mannequin alive, just for the game? Or was it illusion, so detailed that it was complete She had tolerated his exploration with the patience of the inanimate; she never flinched or reacted in any way. He was inclined to believe that all three were mannequins, because of their lack of reaction, but he wasn"t sure. He released her, and she joined the others.
On the fourth one he tried a deep kiss. He opened his mouth on hers, and forced his tongue between her lips. He met her tongue, completely human and ready, matching his, move for move. This had to be real-yet maybe not. If magic could trans-form a boy into a unicorn, why couldn"t it give a mannequin functioning mouth? Or an anatomically correct cleft? Or were the mannequins fashioned as complete android women who seemed lifeless between games, but could animate their bodies for the game? Still, he had seen them without b.r.e.a.s.t.s before the game started, yet now they all had them.
He let her go too. As far as he could tell, all of them were complete, and were in every way alive. Yet they could not be. He was baffled.
Desperate, he tried one more thing, when she gave him his chance at the fifth one. He moved to kiss her, but instead of meeting her lips squarely he caught her lower lip between his lips, sucked it into his mouth, and bit it. If he tasted blood- "Mmmph!" she protested, jerking back. "You win, you guano!" Then she became a large bat, and flew away.
Astonished, he stared after her. "A-a-" he stammered.
"A vamp-girl," Alyc said. "How clever of you to figure that out! She had me fooled; I thought she was a wereb.i.t.c.h."
"But I-" It was still too much to grasp.
"A vamp can"t handle blood, even her own," Alyc continued. "I mean, they eat it only for very special ceremonies, and it sends them into frenzy. She had to get out of here before she went wild."
"But they all seemed alive!" he said. "I was just guessing; I didn"t know that was the one. I couldn"t tell them apart at all!"
Alyc smiled. "Then you lucked out. She pulled a double whammy on you. They were all her."
"But they were all different!"
"No, I saw what was happening, because I was outside the game. She used magic all right, but just on you. To make you think you were taking five different figures, when it was really the same one each time. That"s pretty easy magic, for Phaze folk, if they work at it. Each time, you kissed her, and then one of the dummies walked off, and you thought it was the same. I was so mad! But I couldn"t say anything. I just had to hope you would see through the trick, and make her pay-and you sure did, Lysander, you sure did! That was a stroke of genius!"
"It was luck more than genius," he confessed. "I was trying to test for the real one, but every one of them seemed so authentic. You mean I kissed the real one five times?"
"Yes. I was getting good and jealous, but you know I was laughing too. When you goosed the goose-!"
So she had seen enough to figure it out. But she was laughing, and he laughed with her. "And she had to stand there and take it, so as not to give herself away. I thought it was a dummy I was goosing!"
"Maybe it was," she said cheerfully. "Then when you b her-oh, Lysander, I was worried, but you sure came through Let"s go back to my room and you can do it all to me, except the biting."
"Good enough!" he agreed. He was getting good at schooling himself not to react s.e.xually in public, but now that he realized what he had been doing to a real woman, the notion was getting ahead of him. "Hurry!"
They ran down the halls. Soon they got to her chamber, where they proceeded to pa.s.sionate s.e.x without bothering with the preliminaries.
After that, things were quieter. He played other games with i Alyc, and enjoyed her frequent s.e.xual favors. There was much to be said for enthusiasm!
He saw Jod"e again, and she did not seem to hold his bite against him.
"You beat me," she said. "I thought I had you beaten, but you turned the ploy. I have to respect that." She did not make any further move on him, but he encountered her often enough, because her off-shift was the same as his. He would have been quite intrigued by her, had it not been for his prior a.s.sociation with Alyc, and Jod"e"s too-bold opening move with the game.
He got into the work that Citizen Blue had for him. Blue was trying to fathom exactly what had gone wrong with the Game, Computer; he suspected that the arrival of magic in Proton had infected the computer and given it full self-awareness. Even the self-willed machines were not usually independent; they had awareness and desire, but were satisfied to honor the existing order. The Citizen"s son Mach had been special-and now it seemed the Game Computer was, too.
But the Game Computer was complex and canny. It seemed to have borrowed something from the Oracle, which was a self willed machine whose ultimate motives were at best uncertain. Lysander needed to learn more about both of these, because both were integral to the functioning of the planetary society, and could generate significant problems for the occupying force;-after the conquest. He asked to see the source code for the game-, grid program, but it seemed that this was sealed off, to prevent any possible cheating. He had to figure it out from the field, as it were.
He played game after game, exhausting Alyc"s patience. "You"re a gameoholic!" she complained.
"You have me dead to rights," he confessed. "But at least I am working for Citizen Blue while I indulge my fell appet.i.te. I am searching for some pattern that will offer an insight into the change in the Game Computer. It isn"t in the circuitry; it has to be in some interaction between the program and the magic of Phaze. Something that makes the machine not only conscious, but independent. I think it must be a tricky kind of feedback-"
"Yes, yes, I know; your specialty. Let"s make love."
"That is an attractive counteroffer," he said. He had learned the code terms: "making love" meant copulation.
They retired to her chamber. He had by this time lasted longer with Alyc than any of her prior boyfriends, and he knew why: he wanted no disruption in his relation with Citizen Blue"s household. That was the center of the governance of the planet, and the likely center of any resistance to the conquest. As long as he remained with Alyc, that a.s.sociation was secure. But it was also true that once he had attuned himself to the s.e.xual activity of the human body, it was a pleasant enough diversion. Serfs were treated to eliminate any chance of disease or conception, so s.e.x was free. Those who wished to marry and have offspring had to pet.i.tion their employers, who might or might not grant them the treatment that enabled conception. Neither Lysander nor Alyc (or, as the Phaze forms would put it, nor Lysander neither Alyc) wanted that, so were content with the normal indulgence. Actually he, as an android, was infertile anyway. So if she wanted it twice a day, he was satisfied to oblige. He gave all other women short shrift, which further pleased Alyc.
Thus his life settled in, for a month-until the investment.
6 - Hectare
It happened with stunning swiftness. Lysander and Alyc were in the Game Annex, between games, about to punch a beverage from the food dispenser. Jod"e approached. "May I join you?" she inquired, politely enough.
Alyc, having long since ascertained that Lysander had no s.e.xual interest in Jod"e, was amenable to her company. It served to show every serf on the premises that she, Alyc, had nothing to fear from even the most beautiful compet.i.tion. Jod"e had more of a taste for games than Alyc did, so often played them with Lysander, whose interest was insatiable. So the three of them were about to drink-when the announcement blared from all the speakers.
"This is Citizen Blue. An alien fleet has surrounded the planet without warning. It has the capacity to destroy all life and industry here. We have no choice but to yield to superior force. Hold your places for superior force. Hold your places for the announcement by the Coordinator of the Hectare."
Jod"e stared at them, astonished. "Can this be a joke?"
"No joke," Alyc said. Her face was a.s.suming a more serious mien, unsurprising in the circ.u.mstance.
After a moment a harsh, computer simulated voice spoke.
"The Planet Proton is within the sector controlled by Alliance forces. Investment by the Hectare is proceeding. The following personnel will report to the central concourse for internment: all Citizens, Adepts, and government functionaries. If in doubt, report. Any eligible personnel who fail to report will be declared surplus. All interested in serving the new regime in a supervisory capacity report to the Game Annex. All others will proceed about normal business until directed otherwise. There will be minimal disruption."
"Report for internment?" Jod"e said. There was a murmur all around; the other serfs were as amazed and confused.
"Exactly," Alyc said. Now her bearing had changed completely; she was no longer the enthusiastic, slightly low intellect serf. "I am an agent of the Hectare, sent to perform advance reconnaissance. I will identify all the members of the leading Citizen"s household and family and see that they are apprehended. I advise you, Jod"e, to volunteer for service in the new regime; the Hectare will find compatible use for all who do volunteer."
Jod"e shook her head. "I am amazed! I never figured you for a traitor, Alyc! I"m not about to become one myself. I"ll take my chances with the old order."
Alyc shrugged. "As you wish." She turned to Lysander. "But you, I am sure, are more sensible. You have expertise that the Hectare can use as readily as the Citizens could; the Hectare are game fanatics, and will want to correct the Game Computer malfunction promptly. I can guarantee you an excellent position-and it hardly needs clarifying that you will remain my paramour."
Lysander was astonished. He had never imagined that Alyc could be a Hectare agent! But she was not the type of agent he was. His duty required a response she would neither understand nor appreciate.
"I"m sorry," he said. "It"s been fun with you, Alyc. But though I have been here only a month, I have come to respect this culture for what it is, and I shall not betray it to any alien usurper." That was an outright lie, required by his mission. But what followed was the truth. "Had I known you were an enemy agent, I would have turned you in at the outset. You fooled me, and I am disgusted."