Out of Phaze

1. Mach

The two young men dived into the pool. Mach struck the water more precisely and got the lead, but Rory splashed harder and caught him a third of the way along, then drove ahead for the victory. Panting and ruddy-faced with his effort, he laughed as Mach finished. "Slowpoke!"

Mach shrugged. He had expected to lose, because his power was produced evenly; he could not put forth that extra surge of energy for a spot activity. However, neither did he tire; he could maintain a similar pace indefinitely. Had the race been longer, he would have won.

Rory knew that, of course; it was only the luck of the grid that had given him the victory. He liked to tease Mach about his supposed unwillingness to try harder. It was his human way, for he was fully human. Mach was, of course, unhuman in all but form and consciousness.

They shook themselves dry and watched while two girls lined up at the far end of the pool for their own contest. Both were young and well-formed, with tresses that fell down about their breasts with the provocative suggestion of clothing. One waved.

"Hey, I think they're following us!" Rory exclaimed. "Let's wait for them!"

"Yes, they collaborated to match our choice of contest," Mach agreed.

Rory squinted as the two young women dived in, wincing as one made a bad entry. "Android," he muttered. "They're clumsy."

"Less so than prior generations," Mach said. "Soon the androids will be up to the human norm in coordination and intellect."

"I'd rather have them clumsy and stupid," Rory said.

"So you can love them and leave them," Mach agreed. They had been over this before. The human male was easily aroused, but also easily satisfied. Mach himself could invoke his arousal circuit, and could also nullify it, but preferred to do neither. He wished that his body could move his mind in the involuntary natural human fashion, but it never happened.

The girls completed their race and heaved themselves dripping from the pool. The breasts of the android bounced as she shook herself. The other girl was more diffident, standing somewhat awkwardly, so that her body did not show to advantage.

"Looking for company?" Rory asked, his eyes traveling up and down the android's body.

"You're human, aren't you?" the android inquired. "I'd like to trade."

"Favors?" Rory asked, licking his lips.

"Companions."

Rory nodded. "Sure, why not! Here's Mach." He hauled on Mach's elbow.

"Here's Agape," the android said, giving the other girl a little shove. "I'm Narda."

"I'm Rory. Let's go somewhere."

The two walked away, leaving Mach with Agape. He had not sought her company, but found himself thus abruptly committed.

"I don't believe I have seen you before," he said to the girl. Actually, he was sure of it; his memory for detail was of course infallible.

"I'm new," she agreed, speaking with an odd accent. "I just arrived yesterday. Narda was showing me the Game."

And now Mach was obliged to take over the task the android had been assigned. Well, he really had nothing better to do. "I will show you whatever you wish, Agape," he said, carefully pronouncing her name the way the android had, three syllables with the accent on the first. "But I should advise you at the outset that I already have a liaison with one of your sex."

"My apology if I am violating a custom," Agape said. "Are liaisons required?"

"They are not. But sometimes they are expected." He studied her more closely. "Are you android? You seem different."

"I am-alien," she said. "This is not my natural form. But I was advised that if I wished to participate in this experiment, it was best to assume it. Have I given offense?"

Alien! No wonder! "No offense." Mach became more interested as his circuits grappled with the shift of concept. He had never interacted this closely with a humanoid alien before. The experimental community consisted of human beings, robots, androids and cyborgs, all in perfect human form, and in the course of the past year there had been a number of changes as individuals were shifted from one city to another. The purpose was to create a new, egalitarian society in which no serfs were ghettoized. It seemed to be working, and now these integrated serfs were being spread about the planet of Proton so as to bring the enlightened attitude to all. Whether that latest effort was to be successful remained in doubt; the wider society of Citizens and serfs clung to its prejudices as if they were points in the Tourney.

Now aliens were being included. This was ambitious indeed. Mach perceived the input of his father in that. Citizen Blue had been laboring for twenty years to revamp the society of Proton, and had accomplished a great deal. Obviously the effort was not slackening.

"Is my presence a burden to you?" Agape inquired.

"It is not. I was merely assessing the implications."

"I am concerned that I merge inadequately."

"This is to be expected at the beginning," Mach said. "I will show you the premises."

"This is appreciated."

He took her through the stations of the Game Annex, explaining how any legitimate resident was free to play any of the games of the grid. He told her how many serfs, including himself, practiced the Game diligently, because each year there was a Game Tourney whose winner was granted Citizenship and became a member of the ruling class. Apparently Narda had simply brought her along without explanation, and dumped her at the first opportunity. This was not proper behavior, but allowances had to be made for androids. They tended to be less socially aware than others were.

He brought her to a cubicle and showed her the two panels. "This is the selection mechanism," he explained. "You stand at one, and I stand at the other. Each panel presents the primary grid, with the numbered terms across the top, and the lettered ones down the side. One player chooses from the numbers, the other from the letters. On my grid the letters are highlighted, so I must choose from them. On yours it will be the numbers."

"Yes," she agreed. "They read '1. PHYSICAL, 2. MENTAL, 3. CHANCE, 4. ARTS.' But I do not grasp what they mean."

"You must select one. If you wish to indulge in a physical competition, touch 1. If you prefer mental, touch 2. I will touch one of mine, and where they intersect will define the nature of our game."

"How very clever," she said. "I shall touch the first."

"It is not necessary to tell me your choice. It is the mystery of it that provides much of the appeal." But since this was only a demonstration, Mach checked his choices of A. NAKED, B. TOOL, C. MACHINE and D. ANIMAL, and touched B. He was of course a machine himself, but that made no difference here. Citizen Blue had given the self-willed machines serf status, which meant they could play the Game.

The square for PHYSICAL/TOOL brightened, then expanded into a new pattern. "This is the secondary grid," Mach explained. "It helps to define the tool-assisted physical games. We must choose again-you from the lettered ones, I from the numbered ones, this time."

"E. EARTH, F. FIRE, G. GAS, H. H20," she read. "I don't believe I understand."

"They really stand for the type of surface on which the game is to be played," Mach said. "Flat, Variable, Discontinuous or Liquid. Some programmer decided to get clever with the letters, matching them up with words. It is true that the earth is normally a flat surface, and fire forms a variable surface, and gas is discontinuous if you seek to stand on it, and H20 stands for water, which is a liquid. All you need be concerned about is the nature of the surface upon which you prefer to play, whether flat, or like a mountain, or-"

"Thank you," she said, and touched her choice.

His own choices were 5. SEPARATE, 6. INTERACTIVE, 7. COMBAT and 8. COOPERATIVE. He touched the second.

The square for FLAT SURFACE/INTERACTIVE brightened. Now the grid became a smaller one of nine boxes, with a list of terms at the side. "We get to fill in this one ourselves," he explained. "Choose any game that you like."

"I do not know these games," she protested. "Marbles, earthball, Jeu de boules-"

Because she was alien. All the common flat-surface ball games were unknown to her.

"We'll simplify it," he said. "We'll fill the entire subgrid with one game, tiddlywinks. Then I'll show you how to play that."

And so they did. Their selection made, they adjourned to a chamber with a table, and thereon was the tiddlywinks set. Mach showed her how to make one chip jump when pressured by another, and she was delighted. They played the game, and he won, but she was quite satisfied. Now she had a notion how things were done on the Planet of Proton.

They exited the Game Annex. Mach would have preferred to go his own way, but was uncertain how to dispose of Agape. He had been given a commitment to assist her, and though he knew the basis for that assignment was largely spurious, he also knew that she needed guidance, and that he was a more responsible guide than the android Narda had been. Thus he could not let it go as casually as he had undertaken it.

"Am I now becoming a burden to you, Mach?" she inquired nervously.

"This is true," he agreed. "But I conclude that I should assist you further, so that you will be able to handle our society alone."

She made an uncertain laugh, as though both the act and the basis for it were novelties. "You are unlike Narda."

"She is an android. I am a robot."

She turned her head to gaze at him with perplexity. "I had assumed you were android or human, like the others. You resemble those."

"I am crafted to resemble them, just as you are. But my interior operations are no more human than are yours." He spotted a dining region. "Do you wish to eat?"

"That is appealing," she agreed.

He guided her to one of the food dispensers. "You may describe whatever you wish, and it will craft it for you," he said.

"I am incompletely familiar with local custom. Perhaps I should attempt whatever you choose to consume."

Mach smiled. "Oh, I don't have to eat. My power cell takes care of my energy needs."

"Yes, of course; you are a machine. Perhaps we should dispense with this activity, in that case."

Mach considered. He suspected that she was hungry, but so anxious about making an error of custom that she was afraid to make her own choice. "I can eat," he said. "I merely do not need to. Suppose I order nutro-drink for each of us?"

"My gratitude." Indeed, she was almost fawning.

He placed the order, and in a moment they had two tall containers of the beverage, complete with straws.

"Is it permissible to be private?" she asked.

"Certainly." He showed the way to a booth, and the curtain closed about them, cutting off all sight and sound of the remainder of the dining alcove.

Mach sipped his drink, using the straw. Agape hesitated. "It is a matter of generating a partial vacuum in the mouth," he explained. "That causes the pressure of the air to push the fluid up through the straw."

"My concern is not of that nature," she said. "I am an alien, amoebic in nature. I can maintain the human form for ordinary pursuits, but am unable to do so for imbibation. I am concerned that my mode of assimilation would be a social indiscretion in your presence."

"I will of course leave the booth if you prefer," Mach said. "But I am scientifically interested in your biology, and I am not subject to annoyance because of differing modes of operation."

Still she hesitated. "Narda termed it 'gross.' I believe that is why she preferred to separate herself from me."

Androids were notorious for their crudities of behavior and humor. What could Narda have found gross? "Please be reassured, Agape. I am a machine. I have no emotion not programmed, and even those can be evoked or revoked at will. Nothing you might do would dismay me."

"You are certain?"

"I am certain."

"Then I shall assimilate this material."

She put her hands to the container and stretched it wide, so that it gradually reformed into a broad, shallow dish. Mach had known how malleable the material was, as the empty containers were normally compacted into balls and rolled into the recycling hopper, but he had never before seen a person reform one while it was full of fluid.

Now she leaned forward, bringing her head directly over the dish. Her features melted, the nose, eyes, ears and mouth disappearing. Her head receded into her neck, and her breasts lifted to join it, forming a single globular mass above the table. This mass flattened and descended until it covered the full dish. The flesh dipped into the beverage.

In the course of the next few minutes the beverage disappeared, absorbed into the pancake-shaped mass of flesh. The amoeba was assimilating nourishment in the fashion of its kind.

Then the mass lifted, forming another glob. The glob stretched out, narrowing to form the neck, bulging below to fashion breasts, and shaping gradually back into the human features above. The configuration he recognized as Agape returned, features clean, eyes and mouth closed.

The eyes opened, and then the mouth. "Do you wish to depart my presence now?" she asked.

"No. I find your process of assimilation fascinating."

"It is not gross to you?"

"It is educational to me. I appreciate being shown it."

She looked at him without further comment. He remembered to resume work on his own drink.

"If I may inquire without offense," she said, "how is it that you, a machine, have been crafted in human form? I have seen other machines in other forms, suited to their tasks."

"I am what is known as a humanoid robot. I have been crafted to resemble a living human being as closely as is feasible, in both the physical and mental states. It is part of my father's effort to integrate the self-willed machines into the society of Proton. If humanoid ones can be successful at this, then the nonhumanoid ones can follow."

"But do not human beings grow from small creatures formed within the bodies of their parents? Surely you have a maker, not a father."

"I have a father and a mother," Mach said firmly. "My father is Citizen Blue, an immigrant from the frame of Phaze. My mother is Sheen, a female robot. It is possible for a female robot to be implanted with a human egg-cell that can be fertilized internally by a human male, and for her to nourish that cell in the laboratory of her body and birth it in the human fashion, becoming a surrogate mother to his child. But Sheen elected not to be modified to accommodate this; she preferred to have a robot baby, like herself. Therefore I am a robot, but my basic programming makes my awareness and intellectual quotient very similar to those of my father."

"But then you were constructed as an adult, fully formed as you are now."

"I was crafted as a robot baby, incontinent and untrained. I was adjusted for growth on a weekly basis, trained and educated by hand. Periodically my metal skeletal structure was replaced, and my wiring revamped, but I never changed size or appearance in any large step. In this manner I proceeded in the course of sixteen years to my present size, and thereafter have remained constant. I was put through normal human schooling, along with the androids, cyborgs and human beings of my group. I regard myself as a human being in all except flesh."

"You are very like a human being," she agreed. "I did not realize your nature until you advised me. But what is the point of this significant effort?"

"To demonstrate that complete integration of the diverse intelligent elements of our society is feasible," he replied. "In the past there has been discrimination against robots, cyborgs and androids. In the future all will participate on an equal basis."

"And perhaps aliens too," she agreed. "Now the rationale behind my own participation becomes clear. I was not informed by my own planetary authorities; I was simply given my assignment. Your father is a perceptive being."

"This is true. But the job is not yet complete, and there is substantial opposition. We must all be careful."

"Opposition? I did not realize."

"The majority of Citizens would have preferred to retain the prior system, in which only chosen human beings had power, and only human beings were eligible to compete for Citizenship."

"You mentioned this before. What is a Citizen?"

"A member of the governing class of Proton. Citizens have enormous power, and the right to wear clothing. We serfs must address any Citizen as 'sir' and obey any directive he gives."

"But I had understood that serfs had opportunity to achieve power. That if I succeeded in accommodating myself to this society, such opportunity would become mine."

"This is true, but such opportunity is limited. A Citizen can confer an inheritance of his position on a designated heir, the new Citizen to exist when the old Citizen dies or abdicates. It is understood that when my father dies, I will assume his Citizen status, and be perhaps the first robot Citizen. But there is doubt that this will come to pass, because the Council of Citizens may succeed in outlawing such accession. It is also possible for any serf to win Citizenship through the annual Tourney, as I mentioned; this is in effect how Blue obtained his position, though it was actually won by his alternative self."

"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, Rubic 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.