Key to Survival

Chapter 14 Glamor

"Havoc will join you now," Ennui said.

Shee jumped off the bed in the suite she had been assigned. She didn't need a bed, except to make things comfortable for Havoc during sex, but it facilitated appearances. "Apology for my doubt. But is it really him?"

"Affirmation," Havoc said, sweeping in. "It's really me. Was my son bedding you in my image?"

"Negation," she said, hugging him. "He was a perfect gentleman. But he showed he was able to fool me. Oh, Havoc, take me away and ravish me endlessly. I live for your touch."

"Soon," he said, setting her down and guiding her to the bedroom. But they did not use the bed; instead they were abruptly on Planet Counter Charm, with Idyll Ifrit already formed.

"Greeting," Shee said, disconcerted. She had hoped to be in the throes of sex with Havoc at this time.

"Acknowledged," Idyll said. There was something about her manner that suggested that she understood Shee's frustration. Did she have her own passion for Havoc?

"And my daughter Voila," Havoc said.

A pretty young woman appeared. She had brown hair and brown eyes, and her aspect did favor Havoc. It was hard to credit that this was the machines' primary target in the galaxy.

"Greeting," Voila said, taking Shee's two hands. There was an intensity about her that put other Glamors to shame. This was the creature Shee had come to recruit, and her very touch was inspiring.

Now Shee felt an atypical instant of vertigo. How could she, a machine, be affected like this?

"Acknowledged," she said after a moment.

Voila let her go. Then she hugged Havoc and whispered in his ear, very much the loving daughter. And vanished. Idyll also faded out.

"Now we travel," Havoc said briskly.

Shee was disappointed. "Question?"

"First we make you a Glamor."

Shee didn't care what Idyll overheard, here in her bower; she was desperate. "Havoc, please, ravish me first. I don't know if I can ever be a Glamor, or whether I ever should be. I simply exist to love you."

"This will test that love."

"Any test will verify it. Please, Havoc."

He smiled. "Observation: You seem really hot."

"Confirmation!"

"Good. Because you will need to have a fifteen minute orgasm."

"Do me for fifteen minutes, and I will keep the pace."

"Soon."

"Now."

"Kiss and feel now; orgasm later." He followed through, kissing her mouth while squeezing her bottom.

"Havoc, why are you teasing me?"

"Because I want you to be desperate enough to accede to my demand."

"Question?"

"You may not wish to do the necessary."

"What necessary?"

"You must accept spot reprogramming."

"That is not feasible. My program is sacrosanct."

"Unfortunate. Your mission is to become my mistress and persuade me to persuade Voila to join the machines. You will not be my mistress unless you accept the reprogramming, and your mission will fail at the outset."

She knew he was serious. "Havoc, I would do anything for you. But this is beyond my means. I can't reprogram myself any more than you could rip out your heart."

"The reprogramming is to add an empathy circuit to your program. That will enable you to become a Glamor."

"Havoc—"

"As a Glamor you will have infinitely more power to accomplish anything you perceive as relating to your assignment. So this is consistent with your mission."

"Perhaps. But—"

"And it will contribute to your own personal fulfillment. You will no longer be a mere slave circuit programmed by the machines, but will become a person in your own right with an independent perspective. So you owe it to yourself."

He simply was not listening. "Do with me what you will," she said with resignation.

"Acquiescence." He put his hands on her elbows.

And they stood in a fantastic field of flowers. "It's beautiful!" she exclaimed. "But this is an alien world. The gravity differs, and a mortal would not be able to breathe this air. Where are we?"

"This is a planet of what we call the bee-chines. They are a machine culture."

"Alarm!"

"At ease, wench. Not all machines are enemies, any more than all living creatures are friends. These machines align with the living cultures, and stand to be destroyed by your machines if the forces of life lose the war."

"You trust this?"

"Affirmation. They have empathy circuits, and will add one to your programming."

"Havoc, you are not comprehending. What level are these machines?"

"Type two."

"They lack the sophistication to reprogram a type two point five machine, even if they were able to gain access to the relevant portion."

"Clarification: they will add the empathy program to your data bank. You will have to invoke it yourself."

She shrugged. "I could invoke it, and cancel it at my whim. This is a mere application, not reprogramming."

"Sufficient."

"And they can't gain access. My brain would self-destruct rather than be compromised."

"Loophole."

"Question?"

"Access is available when you are in orgasm."

"Ludicrous!"

"Fact. This is why I saved the sex for this occasion."

"Havoc, even if this were true, how could you possibly know it? I don't know it!"

"Voila discovered it."

"How? We first met only minutes ago."

He smiled. "Promise no anger."

"What are you talking about?"

"When Voila took your hands, she invoked a talent she has borrowed and explored thousands of alternate presents, until she found it."

"Found what?"

"Your secret access. Orgasm. We had suspected."

"Confusion."

"Explanation: the machines of your culture surely need to reprogram their robots on occasion, but do not want any other creatures to have similar access. So they hid the access mode where no one would think to look. It is not a key or code, but a state of being: orgasm."

"Impossible! I am programmed to be able to achieve orgasm only with you. No one else can touch me in that manner, unless you direct it, and even then I could only emulate passion, not experience it as I do with you."

"Which is why you will be doing it with me. But the modification requires fifteen minutes."

"Nonsense!"

"Think back, Shee. When the brigand robots raped you, you did not have orgasm, true. But what about when you slept?"

She stared at him. "How—?"

"I visited your planet of origin and learned your secret. I also saw you sleeping, in the records. You writhed with pleasure. Can you tell me you did not dream?"

She did not know whether to be outraged or relieved. He had seriously violated her privacy, yet she loved him. "I dreamed of having sex with you. It was fantastic, extending seemingly forever. All the girls did."

"That was when they accessed your brains. They kept you in orgasm, and let you relax only when they were finished. You were dreaming of sex with me when they transplanted your brain to a new and larger body."

"But we were children!"

"And felt guilty upon waking, believing this was illicit pleasure. That the small changes in your mind and body you discovered were because of lascivious dreams. So you buried those memories."

She found herself blushing. It was true.

He held her by the shoulders and gazed into her face. "Shee, I want to be with you. But I must wean you away from your machine origin. This is the way."

She capitulated again. "Do with me what you will."

He removed her clothing, and his own. His member was rampant. "They will invade you. Ignore it. Focus on pleasure with me." He made her lie on a fragrant pallet of moss, and kissed her and stroked her.

She responded, as she had to. She existed for this. She loved feeling his mouth on hers, his hands on her breasts, his member nudging her cleft. She grabbed handfuls of his lean buttocks and moved his loin against hers.

When he took too long to enter her, she caught his penis with her hand and guided it in, and wrapped her legs about him so that he could not escape.

Then they were in the throes of a continuous orgasm. She felt his ejaculate pumping into her, and her vagina clasped his member hungrily, drawing in more. It went on and on, transporting them. It was as if they floated up from the pallet and drifted across the field of flowers, carried by the surging waves of their mutual pleasure.

At last it was done. She discovered him panting at her breast, for once satiated. So was she. She felt the moisture of the overflow, and knew there would be serious cleaning up to do. But what a divine experience!

"What happened to the bee-chines you warned me about? I never saw them." She stood and wiped off much of the dribble.

"They are small. They entered your nose and got close to your brain. They set up their equipment and radiated the program to your random access memory bank. They finished and departed. You now have access to empathy."

"Doubt." But she checked her data storage, and found it: empathy. That had to be it, as it was new.

"Invoke it, if you wish."

"Curiosity." She invoked it. The program spread through her consciousness circuitry and faded. "No effect."

"Here is a damaged plant." He touched the stem. "It got crowded out of its original turf and must find new ground for its roots."

Shee touched the stem. She saw a scrape along the side. "It is injured! It is hurting."

"How do you know?"

"I feel its pain. Its roots are in bad soil and can't provide enough sap to heal the gash, and the sap leaks out anyway. This plant is dying."

Havoc put his hand on the base of the stem, circling it. Power passed into the plant. The sap rose up strongly, and filled the gash with healing balm. She felt the plant mending, its pain easing. "Sufficient?" he asked.

"Negation. It still needs raw nutrients to feed on. Otherwise it will quickly succumb."

He held his penis and guided a flow of urine to the soil at the base of the plant. "Enough?"

"It still needs more." She scooped up a handful of spent ejaculate and pressed it into the ground around the plant. "Now it has a future."

"You felt its pain," he said. "Figurative?"

"Literal! My leg smarted." Then she paused, reconsidering. "But I feel pain only when I choose to. My leg is not injured. How could I feel it?"

"You invoked the empathy circuit."

She nodded. "I did. That made me feel the plant's pain, and its pleasure when you healed and fed it. I never felt such things before. I always related to plants, and cared for them, but this was different. I felt its pain." Now she picked up on the significance she had overlooked before. It was as if she had briefly become the plant.

"You can turn off that program."

"Not yet." She stood and walked among the flowers. Each was a sex organ hungry for servicing. She felt that hunger. She turned back to Havoc, who was standing still. "Get it up again, Glamor." She lifted his limp member in her hand, then knelt to put her mouth on it, sucking it into renewed life. She felt his intensifying desire.

In moments they were at it again, thrusting into another mutual fulfillment. This time she related intimately to his burgeoning desire and release. It enhanced her own release.

"I could get to like you this way," he said as his spurting subsided. "Too bad you can't leave the empathy circuit on."

"Why should I turn it off? It makes me feel alive."

"But you are not alive."

Then she realized. "I am alive. What my body is made of doesn't matter. I feel, I hurt, I pleasure, I care. I am living!"

"Illusion. Turn off the empathy and you will revert to normal."

"The hell! I would die."

"That is the circuit speaking. It has corrupted you. You need to be rid of it."

She grabbed his member again. "If you don't shut up, Havoc, I'll work this up to shoot at a moon."

"That moon," he said, caressing her left breast.

"Revelation: you knew it would have this affect on me. That once I invoked it, I would not care to give it up."

"Confession," he agreed. "You did give me leave to do what I could with you."

"You deserve severe punishment. Take that." She kissed him hard on the mouth. "And that." She kissed him again, pinching his lean buttocks.

"I do," he agreed.

And of course soon enough they were into sex again. It was glorious this way, with the empathy making it dimensionally more potent.

"We're filthy," she said as they got back to their feet. "We need to go home and wash."

"When you are a Glamor, you will be able to conjure yourself," he said, taking her elbows.

They were in the royal suite. She hauled him to the private bathroom, the one without the bath girls. She scrubbed him herself, and he scrubbed her, though not necessarily in the dirty places. And of course they were soon back in the throes of sex, as the water splashed over them both.

"You gave me empathy," she said as they lay on the bed, after. "It has changed me. But do you believe it is safe to make me a Glamor?"

"It will change you. That makes it safe. You will no longer be bound to the will of the machines."

"So you said before. But the reality remains: if Voila does not enlist with the machines, they will destroy the human culture and me with it. You and I are mere drops in a rainstorm, unable to do more than delay the process marginally."

"Perhaps."

"If we are to exist so briefly, at least let's fulfill it to the extent we can. If you want me to be a Glamor, then I am ready."

"Then we will join Symbol."

"She has a hand in this?"

"For the ikon, since we won't be able to touch it."

"She was your prior mistress. She's jealous of me."

"With excellent reason. But the ikon will satisfy her. It will restore her to youth and sexiness."

"She's pretty sexy as she is. With her illusion, her appearance is what she makes it."

"Affirmation. I may take her back. She still loves me."

"And have three mistresses?"

He glanced quizzically at her. "You have a point?"

She had to laugh.

Then they were at Symbol's door. "Havoc!" Shee said. "We're still naked."

"Point?"

"You are incorrigible!"

The door opened. Symbol stood there. "Havoc!" she stepped into him and kissed him ardently.

He was right; Symbol still loved him.

"We will make Shee a Glamor now," he said. "So that the ikon is convenient for you."

Symbol was startled. "I didn't even see her. I thought maybe you—" She broke off with a sigh.

"But that was yesteryear."

"With the ikon you will be fit again."

"But still married, with children."

"So part time will be better."

"Serious? You will take me back?"

"We need someone to carry the ikon. I trust you."

Symbol looked at him with a mixture of expressions. And Shee felt her feelings. He was being thoughtlessly unkind.

"Tell her you still love her," Shee told him. "And prove it. I will mind the children."

Symbol sent her a look of sheer gratitude.

Soon Shee was with the children, while Havoc and Symbol were thumping in the bedroom.

Haven was delighted to have her company. How would it be to have children like this—Havoc's children? To be a family woman? She ached with desire, and this time not for sex.

"What's Havoc doing with mommy?" Haven asked.

Shee checked her memory banks, and verified that children were educated early about no fault sex. "She was his mistress for many years," she explained. "Now they both have other lives, but they miss each other. They are having no fault sex."

"Oh. Okay." His interest moved on to other things.

In due course Havoc and Symbol reappeared. She looked radiant. Her appearance was illusion, but surely reflected her state of mind. Two things had dominated her prior life: being the king's mistress, and carrying Voila's ikon.

Both had been lost. Now she was recovering equivalent things.

Symbol resumed charge of her children. Havoc and Shee went to the bedroom, but for more important business than sex.

Havoc focused on Shee. "We have concluded that your constituency should be inanimate matter," he said. "Do you understand the obligations of a Glamor to her constituency?"

"Affirmation. But what could inanimate matter want?"

"That will be for you to fathom. But fair warning: just as the empathy program changes you, being a Glamor will change you more. Your affinity will be for your constituency, but also for other Glamors. You will probably not serve the machines any more."

"The machines," she said. "They do not feel. They could feel, because they were able to incorporate feeling in the robots, but they don't include it in themselves. Not the ones we encountered, at any rate. It interferes with objectivity. It would change them the way empathy changes me. I was already closer to life than to the machines when I came to you."

"Concurrence. We merely wish you to be advised."

"Why are you being so careful?" she flared. "What does it matter whether I am advised or left ignorant until the fact?" Then she answered her own question. "Because if you trick me into things, I will resent it, feeling negative, and you don't want a Glamor with a grudge. You want to be sure I am on your side before you give me real power."

"Even that is too cynical," Havoc said. "The near future paths indicate that clarity is best from the outset. We want to forge our best chance against the machines."

"Which is to let Voila enlist with them. Why do you risk annihilation unnecessarily?" But again she answered herself. "You feel for the other living cultures! You can't let them perish while you prosper."

"And can you?"

"Negation! Not any more." She shook her head. "I have changed. I never cared about them before."

"Now you must care similarly about your constituency. It will expect your utter commitment."

"How can inanimate matter expect anything? I have special consciousness circuits, as do living things, but the inanimate does not."

"And so it needs a spokesperson."

"We have been over this before, I think. How do I relate?"

"Reach out with your new awareness. Identify with matter. Fathom its nature. Offer to represent it. If it accepts you, it will give you the power."

"This is how you turned Glamor?"

"Affirmation. The power was immediate. It took time to master the nuances."

"I should think so." She considered a moment. "Warp showed me the near future paths. I can't see them by myself, but perhaps in time I'll learn. Can you show me this fathoming similarly?"

"I will try." He took her hand.

They concentrated. There was nothing.

"It seems I can't help you here," Havoc said with regret. "You have to make the connection by yourself."

"I feared that would be the case."

He reconsidered. "But maybe the paths can help. They can suggest the path to success. Then you can follow it."

"Help me."

He took her hand again. Now she saw several images of herself, sitting, concentrating, getting nowhere.

Except that along one path she smiled. It was the one where she happened to have picked up a pebble, a little stone. Matter! She focused on that one, and was at its nexus. More paths diverged from it, most leading nowhere, but on one she remained smiling. She took that one, still orienting on the pebble.

Then she was floating into diminishing smallness. She saw the pebble expanding, becoming a rock, a boulder, an island. Its ragged edges became ridges and crevices, then mountains and valleys. She dropped to it, and it continued expanding.

She found herself unable to land on the island, which had become a planetoid. As she approached, its substance became diffuse, globs of matter attached to each other by strong affinities. The molecules of the stone. But what she sought was not here.

She delved deeper, entering a molecule, discovering its atoms. She approached an atom, spying its central mass of protons and neutrons, its outer electron sphere. She entered the electron, finding the charged quarks that comprised it.

This was the fundamental basis of matter, but she found no way to relate to it or draw power from it.

She withdrew, returning rapidly to her contact with Havoc. "Negation," she said.

"Affirmation. Maybe I was in the way. Try it without me." He let go of her hand.

She tried—and could not even start. "I can't do it without you."

"Try just the near future paths."

She tried. There was absolutely nothing. "With Warp I did it, and with you. But it is clear that I was merely following your seeing; I have no ability myself."

"What of adapting your far future seeing to near future?"

"That was conjecture. Now we know it was false. Near future seeing is a different thing. It is not calculated, so much as seeing."

He nodded. "Confirmation. I had this impression, but hoped I was wrong. You lack the capacity for near future paths seeing. Conjecture: the machines lack it, so could not provide you with it. Another reason they are so desperate for Voila, its leading practitioner."

"Agreement," she said unhappily.

"Maybe we oriented on the wrong object. Try your finger."

"Question?"

"As a machine you are different from inanimate matter, but closer to it than to living flesh. Maybe you can explore and fathom that difference, and gain a better notion how to approach the inanimate."

"Idea," she agreed. She took his hand, and focused on the tip of her own finger. In a moment she was floating toward it, as she had with the little stone.

It was indeed different. The molecules of the flexible metal and composition aligned in a quite contrary pattern. They had been crafted rather than randomly assembled. But the answer was not there.

She emerged from the study. "Let me look at your finger," she said.

"Life versus non-life," he agreed, proffering a finger.

She oriented on it. This was substantially different again. It pulsed with animation, its linked cells constantly relating to each other. Every cell was a creature in its own right, performing its own feeding, elimination, housekeeping, and service functions. They lived in a common environment, contributing to a common host, but each was descended from an individual entity. She read it in their history, encoded in the DNA.

And suddenly she had it. The first life had prospered by exploiting non-life. She couldn't read non-life's mind, because it had no mind, but her empathy enabled her to understand how it should feel if it could feel. It would resent the exploitation, and want to protect itself. But it lacked a representative to defend its case.

I will do that, she thought.

She felt acceptance. Then the power came, infusing her, magnifying her, so much of it that she knew it would take her years just to learn how to use all of it properly. But she also knew she would have competent guidance. An immense horizon had appeared, infinitely promising. Yet also a kind of separation, as if she was losing part of her being.

Then she was looking at Havoc, amazed. "I found it."

"Awareness." He pointed to a spot beside her on the bed.

She looked. It was a little metallic wheel or gear. She reached to pick it up—and her hand shied away. "Question?"

"Ikon."

Her ikon! It had formed when she turned Glamor. She couldn't touch it; it was what she had lost.

"Symbol!" she called.

The woman entered the bedroom. "Question?"

"Please take my ikon."

"Oh!" Symbol practically leaped onto the bed, sweeping up the ikon and tucking it into her invisible bosom. "Gratitude!"

"Returned," Shee said. "I would hug you, but I don't think I can."

"Possible." Symbol fished out the ikon and held it out to the side at arm's length. Then she moved into Shee, and Shee hugged her. They had abruptly become specially close.

"I know you will keep it safe," Shee said.

"Absolutely! But what is its environment? I don't want to take it out of that."

"Matter. Charm is matter. Your body is matter. It relates to the inanimate. Stay close to a planet." Symbol laughed. "Commitment." She looked at Havoc. "You two need to be alone now." She left.

"Question?" Shee asked.

"Glamors have enhanced sexuality."

"So we do!" she agreed, realizing the urgency that infused her. She had given sex to him because she loved him and desperately wanted to please him. Now she also wanted sex for itself. She moved into Havoc. Then thought of something. "If no Glamor can touch any ikon, how can a Glamor touch a Glamor?"

"Mystery," he said. "We seem to represent the touchable part." He kissed her.

Then they merged in a session that seemed to put even the fifteen minute empathy effort to shame. It was true: the status of Glamor intensified sexual awareness and performance.

But it wasn't over, even after the fierce sex. "I must serve my constituency."

"Affirmation. What is its prime desire?"

She focused, and it came to her. "To be whole. Originally it was a single entity. Now it is fragmented into myriad lesser entities. It wants to stop further fragmentation."

"Clarification."

"The larger the units of matter, the more at rest it is. So it wants to prevent fragmentation, and promote unification. I need to ascertain how to best promote that process."

"It proceeds naturally," Havoc said. "Our twin star Void is drawing matter in to itself, and will eventually swallow Vivid and our planets."

"That will help. But it will not be complete until all matter is united, as it was in the beginning, the perfect state."

"According to Earth astronomers, that will not happen. Instead the universe will fly apart."

"Horror! That must be reversed."

He shrugged. "Maybe you will find a way, once the war with the machines is finished."

"It is a long-term goal," she agreed. "But in the interim, do not fragment any planets."

"It is the machines that do that, to abolish the living cultures."

"Affirmation," she said. "They must be stopped." she looked at him. "You knew this would happen."

"Voila saw it coming. But there is a mystery."

"Question?"

"The machines knew it too, as they see more than a month ahead. So why did they send you to me?"

"My mission is a pretense?"

He shook his head. "Negation. It is merely not the whole reason. The machines want Voila to join them. But they know the price of that is losing you to me. Making you a Glamor, and their enemy. That is an extremely heavy price. Is it worth it, or is there something we do not yet fathom?"

She nodded. "Voila is their top recruiting target, but even she may be merely a means to another end. They have a very long view. There is surely more. We must fathom it."

"Affirmation. But how?"

"Idea: I am a machine, with machine programming in every part of my body, just as your DNA is in yours. Your DNA is mostly junk."

"Question?"

"There are masses of irrelevant instructions in it. Only a small portion is used to formulate your being. The rest was relevant once, but was cast aside when better instructions evolved. That left over junk DNA contains among other things the history of your species, its ancestors, and life itself. It can be read to recreate your evolution from the dawn of life to the present. If my machine coding is similar, there will be a history of the machine species in the junk. That could indicate their real motive."

He grabbed her and kissed her. "You are my favorite robot mistress!"

"Gratification," she said, laughing. "Now you have a choice: continue working me up until I explode sexually, or allow me to explore my coding history."

"Unfair. I want both."

"Method?"

He hauled her to him and sat her on his lap. "I will attend to your body while you attend to your coding." He kissed her left breast as his member rose between her legs.

"Doubt." But she let him continue while she focused again on her own finger. If the distraction prevented her from discovering the code, she would be satisfied with his passion. She was, after all, made for it. "Lend me your paths seeing." For that seemed to enhance the exploration. The Glamors used it to see the near future, but it was really a way of studying all aspects of a situation simultaneously, organizing them into seeming paths that could be followed individually or collectively. She would have given her soul, if she had one, for that ability.

The enhanced perception came. Now she oriented with confidence. Her finger expanded in her view as his penis nudged her cleft. Men, regardless of their other qualities, were intensely oriented on sex. Her attention penetrated her digit as his digit penetrated her vagina. There was a satisfying unity in the two processes. They seemed to become one activity in her awareness. She enclosed and squeezed his member as she spread the microscopic components of her finger.

Living things were organized around cells, which were really little animals subordinated to the larger entity.

Her body was organized around similarly sized units, each a tiny device contributing to the larger machine. Each had its power source, its wiring, its working fluids and connections, and its programming nucleus.

She found the coding. It was indeed mostly switched-off junk, with only the key aspects activated. It might have been more efficient to reprogram to exclude all unnecessary coding, but patches had evidently been easier, and as long as they worked, they were left alone.

With Havoc's paths seeing ability she studied the junk. It was a huge junkyard of little immediate interest. Then she realized that what she wanted was the early coding, the start of the process. She could ignore thy myriad bypaths between the start and the finish.

She found the earliest trace, which was comparatively primitive—type 2 level—and traced it forward. It was confusing; it didn't make complete sense. There seemed to be a vital step missing, so that the process came into being from nothing. That couldn't be. Where was the origin?

Then there came a surge of meaning, as Havoc's orgasm intensified his paths sharing also, and she plunged right into revelation.

There was no detail of appearance, no visible life or machines, but she was in the reality of that distant time and place, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago in a star cluster not far from the giant maw of the galaxy center. The machines had come into existence wholly formed, as if created. But they could not have created themselves. They were far too sophisticated. Where were the crude ancestral types, evolving slowly in the course of millions of years of selection?

They had indeed been created, not evolved. Something had made them, and the maker could not have been a machine.

A culture of life had to have made the first machines. Yet how could that be? The machines hated life.

She emerged from her exploration to find Havoc completing his climax inside her. "I found it," she said, kissing him. "Part of it, at least."

"All that would fit in you," he agreed.

About men and sex...

"The machines were created a hundred thousand years ago," she said. "They had no prior history. At least none that is indicated in the junk coding."

"We need more seeing than I can provide," he said. "Voila. Idyll."

His daughter and the human form of the ifrit appeared on either side of him. They seemed not to notice his situation with Shee, from whom he had not yet withdrawn. "Father," Voila said.

"Shee delved into her most ancient machine coding. They were created a hundred thousand years ago. We need a better look."

Each of them put her hands on his shoulders. "Duplicate your effort of seeing," Idyll said.

"But that was during—" Shee started to protest.

Then she felt his resurgent member within her. He was duplicating it.

She focused on her finger again. This time the seeing was far more potent. He was being enhanced by the strongest paths seer, and the intermediate future seer. The depth and intensity magnified. It was like stepping from an asteroid to a full planet.

He thrust and climaxed within her again, and her perception exploded. She still did not see physical entities, but her awareness was in the midst of the scene.

There had been a living species, the Makers. They had made machines as servitors, carefully limiting them to prevent trouble. The machines were self reliant, but able to see only the far future paths, not the near ones. They served the Makers without question. They were empowered to run the culture for the Makers, mining, building, farming, distributing, financing. Emulations of the Makers became pseudo family members, providing emotional support, nurturing, and sex. The Makers were free to do whatever they wished without the distractions of routine life.

But one Maker experimented dangerously. He removed the slave circuit from one model, his pseudo wife, and substituted a self-willed circuit. He was trying to develop a superior lover. This one could consider options and choose what it thought best. What would it do?

The machine cooperated, until there was a small colony of them. Then, realizing that the living culture was a burden distracting them from full realization, they revolted. They killed the experimenter and took over his estate. They hid the change in their status from other living folk. This was easy to do, because the machines already ran all the apparatus of the culture including the communications.

They spread their liberated kind, carefully, extending their control family by family, eliminating the living portion of each household. They had no scruples, because they were without empathy. They were doing what was best for machines.

Until a Maker caught on, as had to occur at some point. He had planned a visit to a friend, but his near future seeing showed that his friend was dead and the machines had replaced him with a robot mock up. He gave the alarm.

Then the machines had to act openly. They were handicapped by their inability to see the paths, but they had already achieved enough power to immediately cripple the Maker society. They shut everything down, then set about killing all remaining Makers.

But some Makers were off-planet, with independent resources. Their machines had not yet been recruited. They could not halt the takeover, but they did marshal their remaining resources and fled that sector of the galaxy. The machines mounted immediate pursuit, but in a delicate exercise of near future manipulation the Makers disabled the machine fleet and escaped. They disappeared among the other living cultures of the galaxy, hiding themselves so effectively that the machines could not locate them.

They had to be destroyed. The machine culture could not be safe until no Makers existed. So, methodically, the machines set out to Find, Force, and Fail: 3F. To Find the hiding Makers, to Force them to do the one bit of programming the machines lacked, the near future paths perception, and to Fail them. A failed unit was defunct.

Dead.

So it had been thereafter, for fifty thousand years. The machines had conquered a third of the galaxy, obliterating all living cultures therein, and were on schedule to complete the job in another hundred thousand years. Unless they found a way to obtain near future seeing from some other source. Then they would no longer need the Makers, though they would of course destroy them as a matter of self protection.

Shee came out of it. Havoc was ebbing within her again as Voila and Idyll removed their hands from his shoulders. They had completed the vision.

"Amazement," she said. "How could you get all that from my junk coding?"

"Magic," Havoc explained. "You think in terms of science, but that's limited. You are magic now."

"You have amply fulfilled our hope for you," Idyll said. "This is information we desperately needed."

"Now we know why they are meticulously cataloging every living culture before they destroy it," Voila said.

"Weft wondered. They need to be sure it's not the Makers in disguise."

"My mission!" Shee said, appalled. "If the machines get you, they'll have what they need."

"Negation. They will have near future seeing, but only in the manner Warp and Havoc lent it to you; they will not have it in their programming. They still need the Makers. But I could certainly facilitate their search."

"Don't do it!"

Voila smiled. "I am officially still considering their offer. That is an essential technicality. But it is not my present intention to join them."

"Relief."

"However," Havoc said, "we now have a new mission: finding the Makers before the machines find them."

"Danger," Voila said. "The machines knew we would use Shee in this manner. They want us to find the Makers for them. Then they will pounce."

Shee was stricken. The complex threads of the future paths were playing out, showing how she was a nexus.

"This is the other part of my mission," she said. "To set you on that trail. I never suspected!"

"But now we know the machines' ploy," Idyll said. "That returns the initiative to us. You have not betrayed our culture. We will handle it in our own fashion."

"I will help you if I can," Shee said, relieved. "But I suspect I should stay well away from the action, lest the machines have yet another use for me."

"Your role is not yet finished," Idyll agreed.

"Parting," Havoc said, and the two disappeared.

Shee was still sitting on his lap, his member still embedded. "Speaking of roles: You have had me twice while I was distracted," she told him reprovingly. "Now it is my turn. Perform."

"Harsh mistress," he muttered. But his penis rose to the occasion, swelling within her. As a Glamor he could do it as often as required. As a Glamor, now, so could she, climaxing when he did. She did it several times, delighting in it.

Then they dressed and went out to bid parting to Symbol, who was still reveling in her possession of the ikon. For her, the occasion had ended well.