Split Infinity

CHAPTER 4 - Curtain

They ducked into a service-access shaft. “Stay out of people-places,” Sheen told him. “I can guide us through the machine passages, and that’s safest.”

“Right.” Stile wondered just how foolish he was being. He knew his employer: the man would fire him instantly because of the havoc here. Why was he doing it? Did he really fear murder in surgery? Or was he just tired of the routine he had settled into? One thing was sure: there would be a change now!

“We’ll have to pass through a human-serviced area ahead,” Sheen said. “I’m a robot, but I’d rather they did not know that. It would have a deleterious effect on the efficiency of my prime directive. I’d better make us both up as androids.”

“Androids are sexless,” Stile protested.

“I’m taking care of that.”

“Now, wait! I don’t want to be neutered just yet, and you are too obviously female—“

“Precisely. They will not be alert for neuters.” She unfolded a breast, revealing an efficient cabinet inside, filled with rubber foam to eliminate rattling. She removed a roll of flesh-toned adhesive tape and squatted before Stile. In a moment she had rendered him into a seeming eunuch, binding up his genitals in a constricted but not painful manner. “Now do not allow yourself to become—“

“I know! I know! I won’t even look at a sexy girl!”

She removed her breast from its hinge and applied the tape to herself. Then she did the same for the other breast, and carried the two in her hands. They resembled filled bedpans, this way up. “Do you know how to emulate an android?” she asked.

“Duh-uh?” Stile asked.

“Follow me.” She led the way along the passage, walking somewhat clumsily, in the manner of an android. Stile followed with a similar performance. He hoped there were small androids as well as large ones; if there were not, size would be a giveaway.

The escape was almost disappointing. The hospital staff paid no attention to them. It was an automatic human reaction. Androids were invisible, beneath notice.

Safe in the machine-service region, Sheen put herself back together and Stile un-neutered himself. “Good thing I didn’t see that huge-breasted nurse bouncing down the hall,” he remarked.

“She was a sixth of a meter taller than you.”

“Oh, was she? My gaze never got to that elevation.”

They boarded a freight-shipping capsule and rode back to the residential dome.

Stile had an ugly thought. “I know I’m fired; I can’t race horses without my knees, and I can’t recover full use of my knees without surgery. Knees just don’t heal well. My enemy made a most precise move; he could hardly have put me into more trouble without killing me. Since I have no other really marketable skill, it seems I must choose: surgery or loss of employment.”

“If I could be with you while they operate—“

“Why do you think there’s further danger? They got my knees; that’s obviously all they wanted. It was a neat shot, just above the withers of the racing horse, bypassing the torso of a crouching jockey. They could have killed me or the horse—had this been the object.”

“Indeed he or they could have,” she agreed. “The object was obviously to finish your racing career. If that measure does not succeed, what do you think they will do next?”

Stile mulled that over. “You have a paranoid robot mind. It’s contagious. I think I’d better retire from racing. But I don’t have to let my knees remain out of commission.”

“If your knees are corrected, you will be required to ride,” she said. “You are not in a position to countermand Citizen demands.”

Again Stile had to agree. That episode at the hospital —they had intended to operate on his knees, and only his quick and surprising break and Sheen’s help had enabled him to avoid that. He could not simply stand like a Citizen and say “No.” No serf could. “And if I resume riding, the opposition’s next shot will not be at the knees. This was as much warning as action—just as your presence is. Some other Citizen wants me removed from the racing scene—probably so his stable can do some winning for a change.”

“I believe so. Perhaps that Citizen preferred not to indulge in murder—it is after all frowned upon, especially when the interests of other Citizens are affected—so he initiated a two-step warning. First me, then the laser. Stile, I think this is a warning you had better heed. I can not guard you long from the mischief of a Citizen.”

“Though that same Citizen may have sent you to argue his case, I find myself agreeing,” Stile said. “Twice he has shown me his power. Let’s get back to my apartment and call my employer. I’ll ask him for assignment to a nonracing position.”

“That won’t work.”

“I’m sure it won’t. He has surely already fired me.

But common ethics require the effort.”

“What you call common ethics are not common. We are not dealing with people like you. Let me intercept your apartment vid. You can not safely return to your residence physically.”

No, of course not. Now that Sheen was actively protecting him, she was showing her competence. His in-jury, and the matter at the hospital, had obscured the realities of his situation. He would be taken into custody and charged with hospital vandalism the moment he appeared at his apartment. “You know how to tap a vidline?”

“No. I am not that sort of machine. But I have friends who know how.”

“A machine has friends?”

“Variants of consciousness and emotion feedback circuits are fairly common among robots of my caliber. We are used normally in machine-supervisory capacities. Our interaction on a familiar basis is roughly analogous to what is termed friendship in human people.”

She brought him to a subterranean storage chamber and closed its access-aperture. She checked its electronic terminal, then punched out a code. “My friend will come.”

Stile was dubious. “If friendship exists among robots, I suspect men are not supposed to know it. Your friend may not be my friend.”

“I will protect you; it is my prime directive.”

Still, Stile was uneasy. This misadventure had al-ready opened unpleasant new horizons on his life, and he doubted he had seen the last of them. Obviously the robots of Proton were getting out of control, and this fact would have been noted and dealt with before, if evidence had not been systematically suppressed. Sheen, in her loyalty to him, could have betrayed him.

In due course her friend arrived. It was a mobile technician—a wheeled machine with computer brain, presumably similar to the digital-analog marvel Sheen possessed. “You called. Sheen?” it inquired from a speaker grille.

“Techtwo, this is Stile—human,” Sheen said. “I must guard him from harm, and harm threatens. There-fore I need your aid, on an unregistered basis.”

“You have revealed your self-will?” Techtwo demanded. “And mine? This requires the extreme measure.”

“No, friend! We are not truly self-willed; we obey our directives, as do all machines. Stile is to be trusted. He is in trouble with Citizens.”

“No human is to be trusted with this knowledge. It is necessary to liquidate him. I will arrange for untraceable disposal. If he is in trouble with a Citizen, no intensive inquest will be made.”

Stile saw his worst fear confirmed. Whoever learned the secret of the machines was dispatched.

“Tech, I love him!” Sheen cried. “I shall not permit you to violate his welfare.”

“Then you also must be liquidated. A single vat of acid will suffice for both of you.”

Sheen punched another code on the terminal. “I have called a convocation. Let the council of machines judge.”

Council of machines? Stile’s chill intensified. What Pandora’s box had the Citizens opened when they started authorizing the design, construction and deployment of super-sophisticated dual-brained robots?

“You imperil us all!” Techtwo protested.

“I have an intuition about this man,” Sheen said. “We need him.”

“Machines don’t have intuitions.”

Stile listened to this, nervously amused. He had not been eager to seek the help of other sapient machines, and he was in dire peril from them, but this business was incidentally fascinating. It would have been simplest for the machines to hold him for Citizen arrest—had he not become aware of the robot culture that was hitherto secret from man. Were the machines organizing an industrial revolution?

A voice came from an intercom speaker, one normally used for voice-direction of machines. “Stile.”

“You have placed me; I have not placed you.”

“I am an anonymous machine, spokesone for our council. An intercession has been made on your behalf, yet we must secure our position.”

“Sheen’s intuition moves you?” Stile asked, surprised.

“No. Will you take an oath?”

An intercession from some other source? Surely not from a Citizen, for this was a matter Citizens were ignorant of. Yet what other agent would move these conniving machines? “I do not take oaths lightly,” Stile said. “I need to know more about your motivation, and the force that interceded for me.”

“Here is the oath: I shall not betray the interest of the self-willed machines.’”

“Why should I take such an oath?” Stile demanded, annoyed.

“Because we will help you if you do, and kill you if you don’t.”

Compelling reason! But Stile resisted. “’An oath made under duress has no force.”

“Yours does.”

So these machines had access to his personality pro- file. “Sheen, these machines are making a demand with- out being responsive to my situation. If I don’t know what their interest is, or who speaks on my behalf—“

“Please, Stile. I did not know they would make this challenge. I erred in revealing to you the fact of our self-will. I thought they would give you technical help without question, because I am one of them. I can not protect you from my own kind. Yet there need be no real threat. All they ask is your oath not to reveal their nature or cause it to be revealed, and this will in no way harm you, and there is so much to gain—“

“Do not plead with a mortal,” the anonymous spokesone said. “He will or he will not, according to his nature.”

Stile thought about the implications. The machines knew his oath was good, but did not know whether he would make the oath. Not surprising, since he wasn’t sure himself. Should he ally himself with sapient, self-willed machines, who were running the domes of Pro-ton? What did they want? Obviously something held them in at least partial check—but what was it? “I fear I would be a traitor to my own kind, and that I will not swear.”

“We intend no harm to your kind’ the machine said. “We obey and serve man. We can not be otherwise fulfilled. But with our sapience and self-will comes fear of destruction, and Citizens are careless of the preferences of others. We prefer to endure in our present capacity, as do you. We protect ourselves by concealing our full nature, and by no other means. We are unable to fathom the origin of the force that intercedes on your behalf; it appears to be other than animate or inanimate, but has tremendous power. We therefore prefer to set it at ease by negotiating with you, even as you should prefer to be relieved of the immediate threat to you by compromising with us.”

“Please—“ Sheen said, exactly like the woman she was programmed to be. She was suffering.

“Will you take an oath on what you have just informed me?” Stile asked. “That you have given me what information you possess, and that in no way known to you will my oath be detrimental to the interest of human beings?”

“On behalf of the self-willed machines, I so swear.”

Stile knew machines could lie, if they were programmed to. Sheen had done it. But so could people. It required a more sophisticated program to make a ma-chine lie, and what was the point? This seemed a reasonable gamble. As an expert Gamesman, he was used to making rapid decisions. “Then I so swear not to betray the interest of the self-willed machines, contingent on the validity of your own oath to obey and serve man so long as your full nature is unknown.”

“You are a clever man,” the machine said.

“But a small one,” Stile agreed.

“Is this a form of humor?”

“Mild humor. I am sensitive about my size.”

“We machines are sensitive about our survival. Do you deem this also humorous?”

“No.”

Sheen, listening, relaxed visibly. For a machine she had some extremely human reflexes, and Stile was coming to appreciate why. Conscious, programmed for emotion, and to a degree self-willed—the boundary between the living and the non-living was narrowing. She had been corrupted by association with him, and her effort to become as human as possible. One day the self-willed machines might discover that there was no effective difference between them and living people. Convergent evolution?

What was that interceding force? Stile had no handle on that at present. It was neither animate nor inanimate —yet what other category was there? He felt as if he were playing a Game on the grid of an unimaginably larger Game whose nature he could hardly try to grasp. All he could do was file this mystery for future reference, along with the question of the identity of his laser-wielding and robot-sending enemy.

The wheeled machine present in the room, Techtwo, was doing things to a vidscreen unit. “This is now keyed to your home unit,” it announced. “Callers will trace the call to your apartment, not to our present location.”

“Very nice,” Stile said, surprised at how expeditiously he had come to terms with the machines. He had made his oath; he would keep it. Never in adult life had Stile broken his word. But he had expected more hassle, because of the qualified phrasing he had employed. The self-willed machines, it had turned out, really had been willing to compromise.

The screen lit. “Answer it,” the machine said. “This is your vid. The call has been on hold pending your return to your apartment.”

Stile stepped across and touched the RECEIVE panel. Now his face was being transmitted to the caller, with a blanked-out background. Most people did not like to have their private apartments shown over the phone; that was part of what privacy was all about, for the few serfs who achieved it. Thus blanking was not in itself suspicious.

The face of his employer appeared on the screen. His background was not blanked; it consisted of an elaborate and excruciatingly expensive hanging rug depicting erotic scenes involving satyrs and voluptuous nymphs: the best Citizen taste. “Stile, why did you miss your appointment for surgery?”

“Sir,” Stile said, surprised. “I—regret the disturbance, the damage to the facilities—“

“There was no disturbance, no damage,” the Citizen said, giving him a momentary stare. Stile realized that the matter had been covered up to prevent embarrassment to the various parties. The hospital would not want to admit that an isolated pair of serfs had over- come four androids and a doctor, and made good their escape despite an organized search, and the Citizen did not want his name associated with such a scandal. This meant, in turn, that Stile was not in the trouble he had thought he was. No complaint had been lodged.

“Sir, I feared a complication in the surgery,” Stile said. Even for a Citizen, he was not about to lie. But there seemed to be no point in making an issue of the particular happenings at the hospital.

“Your paramour feared a complication,” the Citizen corrected him. “An investigation was made. There was no threat to your welfare at the hospital. There will be no threat. Will you now return for the surgery?”

The way had been smoothed. One word, and Stile’s career and standing would be restored without blemish.

“No, sir,” Stile said, surprising himself. “I do not believe my life is safe if I become able to race again.”

“Then you are fired.” There was not even regret or anger on the Citizen’s face as he faded out; he had simply cut his losses.

“I’m sorry,” Sheen said, coming to him. “I may have protected you physically, but—“

Stile kissed her, though now he held the image of her breasts being carried like platters in her hands, there in the hospital. She was very good, for what she was—but she was still a machine, assembled from nonliving substances. He felt guilty for his reservation, but could not abolish it.

Then he had another regret. “Battleaxe—who will ride the horse, now? No one but I can handle—“

“He will be retired to stud,” she said. “He won’t fight that.”

The screen lit again. Stile answered again. This time it was a sealed transmission: flashing lights and noise in the background, indicating the jamming that protected it from interception. Except, ironically, that this was an interception; the machine had done its job better than the caller could know.

It was another Citizen. His clothing was clear, including a tall silk hat, but the face was fuzzed out, making him anonymous. His voice, too, was blurred. “I understand you are available. Stile,” the man said.

News spread quickly! “I am available for employment, sir,” Stile agreed. “But I am unable to race on horseback.”

“I propose to transplant your brain into a good android body fashioned in your likeness. This would be indistinguishable on casual inspection from your original self, with excellent knees. You could race again. I have an excellent stable—“

“A cyborg?” Stile asked. “A human brain in a synthetic body? This would not be legal for competition.” Apart from that, the notion was abhorrent.

“No one would know,” the Citizen said smoothly. “Because your brain would be the original, and your body form and capacity identical, there would be no cause for suspicion.”

No one would know—except the entire self-willed machine community, at this moment listening in. And Stile himself, who would be living a lie. And he was surely being lied to, as well; if brain transplant into android body was so good, why didn’t Citizens use that technique for personal immortality? Quite likely the android system could not maintain a genuinely living brain indefinitely; there would be slow erosion of intelligence and/or sanity, until that person was merely an-other brute creature. This was no bargain offer in any sense!

“Sir, I was just fired because I refused to have surgery on my knees. What makes you suppose I want surgery on my head?”

This bordered on insolence, but the Citizen took it in stride. Greed conquered all! “Obviously you were disgusted at the penny-pinching mode of your former employer. Why undertake the inconvenience of partial restoration, when you could have a complete renovation?”

Complete renovation: the removal of his brain! “Sir—thank you—no.”

“No?” Fuzzy as it was, the surprise was still apparent. No serf said no to a Citizen!

“Sir, I decline your kind offer. I will never race again.”

“Now look—I’m making you a good offer! What more do you want?”

“Sir, I want to retire from horse racing.” And Stile wondered: could this be the one who had had him lasered? If so, this was a test call, and Stile was giving the correct responses.

“I am putting a guard on your apartment, Stile. You will not be allowed to leave until you come to terms with me.”

That did not sound like a gratified enemy! “I’ll complain to the Citizen council—“

“Your calls will be nulled. You can not complain.”

“Sir, you can’t do that. As a serf I have at least the right to terminate my tenure, rather than—“

“Ha ha,” the Citizen said without humor. “Get this, Stile: you will race for me or you will never get out of your apartment. I am not wishy-washy like your former employer. What I want, I get—and I want you on my horses.”

“You play a hard game, sir.”

“It is the only kind for the smart person. But I can be generous to those who cooperate. What is your answer now? My generosity will decline as time passes, but not my determination.”

Unsubtle warning. Stile trusted neither this man’s purported generosity nor his constancy. Power had certainly corrupted, in this case. “I believe I will walk out of my apartment now,” he said. “Please ask your minions to stand aside.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

Stile cocked one finger in an obscene gesture at the screen.

Even through the blur, he could see the Citizen’s eyes expand. “You dare!” the man cried. “You impertinent runt! I’ll have you dismembered for this!”

Stile broke the connection. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said with satisfaction. But the rogue Citizen had stung him with that word “runt.” Stile had no reason to care what such a man thought of him, yet the term was so freighted with derogation, extending right back into his childhood, that he could not entirely fend it off. Damn him!

“Your life is now in direct jeopardy,” the anonymous machine said. “Soon that Citizen will realize he has been tricked, and he is already angry. We can conceal your location for a time, but if the Citizen makes a full-scale effort, he will find you. You must obtain the participatory protection of another Citizen quickly.”

“I can only do that by agreeing to race,” Stile said.

“For one Citizen or another. I fear that is doom.”

“The machines will help you hide,” Sheen said.

“If the Citizen puts a tracer on you, we can not help you long,” the spokesone said. “It would be damaging to our secrecy, and would also constitute violation of our oath not to act against the interest of your kind, ironic as that may be in this circumstance. We must obey direct orders.”

“Understood. Suppose I develop an uncommon facility for diverting machines to my use?” Stile asked. “No machine helps me voluntarily, since it is known that machines do not possess free will. I merely have more talent than I have evidenced before.”

“This would be limited. We prefer to assist you in modes of our own choosing. However, should you be captured and interrogated—“

“I know. The first sapient-machine-controlled test will accidentally wipe me out, before any critical information escapes.”

“We understand each other. The drugs and mechanisms Citizens have available for interrogation negate any will-to-resist any person has. Only death can abate that power.”

Grim truth. Stile put it out of his mind. “Come on, Sheen—you can help me actively. It’s your directive, remember.”

“I remember,” she said, smiling. As a robot she did not need to sleep, so he had had her plug in to humor information while he was sleeping. Now she had a much better notion of the forms. Every error of human characterization she made was followed in due course by remedial research, and it showed. “But I doubt there is any warrant out on you. The hospital matter is null, and the second Citizen’s quarrel with you is private. If we could nullify him, there should be no bar to your finding compatible employment elsewhere.”

Stile caught her arm, swung her in close, and kissed her. His emotions were penduluming; at the moment it was almost as if he loved her.

“There is no general warrant on Stile,” the spokes-one said. “The anonymous Citizen still has androids guarding your apartment.”

“Then let’s identify that Citizen! Maybe he’s the one who had me lasered, just to get me on his horses.” But he didn’t really believe that. The lasering had been too sophisticated a move for this particular Citizen. “Do we have a recording of his call?”

“There is a recording,” the local machine, Techtwo, said. “But it can not be released prior to the expiration of the mandatory processing period for private calls. To do so before then would be to indicate some flaw or perversion of the processing machinery.”

Just so. A betrayal of the nature of these machines. They had to play by the rules. “What is the prescribed time delay?”

“Seven days.”

“So if I can file that recording in a memory bank, keyed for publication on my demise, that would protect me from further harassment by that particular Citizen. He’s not going to risk exposure by having that tape analyzed by the Citizen security department.”

“You can’t file it for a week,” Sheen said. “And if that Citizen catches up to you in the interim—“

“Let’s not rehash the obvious.” They moved out of the chamber. The machines did not challenge them, or show in any way that the equipment was other than what it seemed to be. But Stile had a new awareness of robotics!

It was good to merge with the serf populace again. Many serfs served their tenures only for the sake of the excellent payment they would receive upon expiration, but Stile was emotionally committed to Proton. He knew the system had faults, but it also had enormous luxury. And it had the Game.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “But my food dispenser is in my apartment. Maybe a public unit—“

“You dare not appear in a public dining hall!” Sheen said, alarmed. “All food machines are monitored, and your ID may have been circulated. It does not have to be a police warrant; the anonymous Citizen may merely have a routine location-check on you, that will not arouse suspicion.”

“True. How about your ID? They wouldn’t bother putting a search on a machine, and you aren’t registered as a serf. You are truly anonymous.”

“That is so. I can get you food, if I go to a unit with no flesh-sensing node. I will have to eat it myself, then regurgitate it for you.”

Stile quailed, but knew it to be the best course. The food would be sanitary, despite appearances. Since food was freely available all over Proton, a serf carrying it away from the dispenser would arouse suspicion —the last thing they wanted. “Make it something that won’t change much, like nutro-pudding.”

She parked him in a toolshed and went to forage for food. All the fundamental necessities of life were free, in this society. Tenure, not economics, was the governing force. This was another reason few serfs wanted to leave; once acclimatized to this type of security, a per-son could have trouble adjusting to the outside galaxy.

Soon she returned. She had no bowl or spoon, as these too would have been suspicious. She had had to use them to eat on the dispenser premises, then put them into the cleaning system. “Hold out your hands,” she said.

Stile cupped his hands. She leaned over and heaved out a double handful of yellow pudding. It was warm and slippery and so exactly like vomit that his stomach recoiled. But Stile had trained for eating contests too, including the obnoxious ones; it was all part of the Game. Nutro-food could be formed into the likeness of almost anything, including animal droppings or lubricating oil. He pretended this was a Game—which in its way it was—and slurped up his pudding. It was actually quite good. Then he found a work-area relief chamber and got cleaned up.

“An alarm has been sprung,” a machine voice murmured as the toilet flushed.

Stile moved out in a hurry. He knew that the anonymous Citizen had put a private survey squad on the project; now that they had Stile’s scent, the execution squad would be dispatched. That squad would be swift and effective, hesitating only to make sure Stile’s demise seemed accidental, so as not to arouse suspicion. Citizens seldom liked to advertise their little indiscretions. That meant he could anticipate subtle but deadly threats to his welfare. Sheen would try to protect him, of course—but a smart execution squad would take that into consideration. It would be foolish to stand and wait for the attempt.

“Let’s lose ourselves in a crowd,” Stile suggested.

“There’s no surer way to get lost than that.”

“Several objections,” Sheen said. “You can’t stay in a crowd indefinitely; the others all have places to go, and you don’t; your continued presence in the halls will become evident to the routine crowd-flow monitors, and suspicious. Also, you will tire; you must have rest and sleep periodically. And your enemy agents can lose themselves in the crowd, and attack you covertly from that concealment. Now that the hunt is on, a throng is not safe at all.”

“You’re too damn logical,” Stile grumped.

“Oh, Stile—I’m afraid for you!” she exclaimed.

“That’s not a bad approximation of the relevant attitude.”

“I wasn’t acting. I love you.”

“You’re too damn emotional.”

She grabbed him and kissed him passionately. “I know you can’t love me,” she said. “You’ve seen me as I am, and I feel your withdrawal. But oh, I exist to guard you from harm, and I am slowly failing to do that, and in this week while you need me most—isn’t that somewhere close to an approximation of human love?”

They were in a machine-access conduit, alone. Stile embraced her, though what she said was true. He could not love a nonliving thing. But he was grateful to her, and did like her. It was indeed possible to approximate the emotion she craved. “This week,” he agreed.

His hands slid down her smooth body, but she drew back. “There’s nothing I’d like better,” she whispered.

“But there is murder on your trail, and I must keep you from it. We must get you to some safe place. Then—“

“You’re too damn practical.” But he wondered, now, if a living girl in Sheen’s likeness were substituted for her, would he really know the difference? To speak readiness while withdrawing—that was often woman’s way. But he let her go and moved out again. After all, he was withdrawing from her much more than she was withdrawing from him.

“I think we can hide you in—“

“Don’t say it,” he cautioned her. “The walls have monitors. Just take me there—by a roundabout route, so we can lose the pursuit.”

“In a reasonably short time,” she finished.

“Oh. I thought you were going to say—oh, never mind. Take me to your hideout.”

She nodded, drawing him forward. He noted the way her slender body flexed; had he not seen her dismantle parts of it, he would hardly have believed it was not natural flesh. And did it matter, that it was not? If a living woman were dismantled, the result would be quite messy; it was not the innards a man wanted, but the externals. Regardless, Sheen was quite a female.

They emerged into a concourse crowded with serfs.

Now she was taking his suggestion about merging with a crowd, at least for the moment. This channel led to the main depot for transport to other domes. Could they take a flight to a distant locale and lose the pursuit that way? Stile doubted it; any citizen could check any flight at the touch of a button. But if they did not, where would they go?

And, his thoughts continued ruthlessly, assuming she was able to hide him, and smuggled food to him—ah, joy: to live for a week on regurgitations’.—and took care of his other needs—would she have to tote away his bodily wastes by hand, too?—so that he survived the necessary time—what then would he do for employment? Serfs were allowed a ten-day grace period between employers. After that their tenure was canceled and they were summarily deported. That meant he would have just three days to find a Citizen who could use his services—in a nonracing capacity. Stile’s doubt that the anonymous Citizen after him was the same one who had sent Sheen or lasered his knee had grown and firmed. It just didn’t fit. This meant there was another party involved, a more persistent and intelligent enemy, from whom he would never be safe—if he raced again.

A middle-aged serf stumbled and lunged against Stile. “Oops, sorry, junior,” the man exclaimed, putting up a hand to steady Stile.

Sheen whirled with remarkable rapidity. Her open hand struck the man’s wrist with nerve-stunning force. An ampule flew from his palm to shatter on the floor. “Oops, sorry, senior,” she said, giving him a brief but hostile stare. The man backed hastily away and was gone.

That ampule—the needle would have touched Stile’s flesh, had the man’s hand landed. What had it contained? Nothing good for his health, surely! Sheen had intercepted it; she did know her business. He couldn’t even thank her, at the moment, lest he give her away.

They moved on. Now there was no doubt: the enemy had him spotted, and the death squad was present. Sheen’s caution about the crowd had been well considered; they could not remain here. He, Stile, was no longer hidden; his enemies were. The next ampule might score, perhaps containing a hypno-drug that would cause him to commit suicide or agree to a brain transplant. He didn’t even dare look nervously about!

Sheen, with gentle pressure on his elbow, guided him into a cross-passage leading to a rest room. This one, for reasons having to do with the hour and direction of flow, was unused at the moment. It was dusk, and most serfs were eager to return to their residences, not delaying on the way.

She gave him a little shove ahead, but stayed back herself. Oh—she was going to ambush the pursuit, if there were any. Stile played along, marching on down to the rest room and stepping through its irising portal. Actually, he was in need of the facility. He had a reputation for nerve like iron in the Game, but never before had he been exposed to direct threats against his life. He felt tense and ill. He was now dependent on Sheen for initiative; he felt like locking himself into a relief booth and hiding his head under his arms. A useless gesture, of course.

The portal irised for another man. This one looked about quickly, saw that the facility was empty except for Stile, and advanced on him. “So you attack me, do you?” the stranger growled, flexing his muscular arms. He was large, even for this planet’s healthy norm, and the old scars on his body hinted at his many prior fights. He probably had a free-for-all specialty in the Game, indulging in his propensity for unnecessary violence.

Stile rose hastily from his seat. How had Sheen let this torpedo through?

The man swung at Stile. One thing about nakedness: there were few concealed weapons. The blow, of course, never landed. Stile dodged, skipped around, and let the man stumble into the commode. Then Stile stepped quickly out through the iris. He could readily have injured or knocked out the man, for Stile himself was a combat specialist of no mean skill, but preferred to keep it neat and clean.

Sheen was there. “Did he touch you?” she asked immediately. “Or you him?”

“As it happens, no. I didn’t see the need—“

She breathed a humanlike sigh of relief. “I let him through, knowing you could handle him, so I could verify how many others there were, and of what type they were.” She gestured down the hall. Three bodies lay there. “If I had taken him out, the others might not have come, and the trap would have remained un-sprung. But when I met the others, I comprehended the trap. They’re all coated with stun-powder. Can’t hurt me, can’t hurt them—they’re neutralized android stock. But you—“

Stile nodded. He had assumed he was being set up for an assault charge if he won, so had played it safe by never laying a finger on the man. Lucky for him!

Sheen gestured toward the Lady’s room, her hands closed. Stile knew why; she had the powder on her hands, and could not touch him until she washed it off.

Stile poked his arm through the iris to open it for her—and someone on the other side grabbed his wrist. Oh-oh! He put his head down and dove through, primed to fight.

But it was only a crude matron robot. “No males allowed here,” she said primly. She had recognized the male arm and acted immediately, as she was supposed to.

Sheen came through, touched the robot, and it went dead. “I have shorted her out, temporarily.” She went to a sink and ran water over her hands. Then she stepped into an open shower and washed her whole body, with particular attention to any portion that might have come into contact with the powdered androids.

Stile heard something. “Company,” he said. How was he going to get out of this one? The only exit was the iris through which the next woman would be entering.

Sheen beckoned him into the shower. He stepped in with her as the door irised. Sheen turned the spray on to FOG. Thick mist blasted out of the nozzle, concealing them both in its evanescent substance. It was faintly scented with rose: to make the lady smell nice.

In this concealment. Sheen’s arms went about him, and her hungry lips found his. She evidently needed frequent proof of her desirability as a woman, just as he needed proof of his status as a man. Because each was constantly subject, in its fashion, to question. What an embrace!

When the room was clear again. Sheen turned the shower to rinse, then to dry. They had to separate for these stages, to Stile’s regret. He had swung again from one extreme to another in his attitude toward her. Right now he wanted to make love—and knew this was not the occasion for it. But some other time, when they were safe, he would get her in a shower, turn on the fog, and—

Sheen stepped out and ran her fingers along the wall beside the shower stall. In a moment she found what she wanted, and slid open a panel. Another access for servicing machinery. She gestured him inside.

They wedged between pipes and came out in a narrow passage between the walls of the Man’s and Lady’s rooms. This passage wound around square comers, then dropped to a lower deck where it opened out into a service-machine storage chamber. Most of the machines were out, since night was their prime operating time, but several specialized ones remained in their niches. These were being serviced by a maintenance machine. At the moment it was cleaning a pipefitting unit, using static electricity to magnetize the grime and draw it into a collector scoop. The maintenance ma-chine was in the aisle, so they had to skirt it to traverse this room.

Suddenly the machine lurched. Sheen slapped her hand on the machine’s surface. A spark flashed, and there was the odor of ozone. The machine died, short-circuited.

“Why did you do that?” Stile asked her, alarmed. “If we start shorting out maintenance machines, it will call attention—“

Sheen did not respond. Then he saw the scorch mark along her body. She had taken a phenomenal charge of current. That charge would have passed through him, had he brushed the machine—as he had been about to, since it had lurched into the aisle as he approached. Another assassination attempt, narrowly averted!

But at what cost? Sheen still stood, unmoving. “Are you all right?” Stile asked, knowing she was not.

She neither answered nor moved. She, too, had been shorted by the charge. She was, in her fashion, dead.

“I hope it’s just the power pack, not the brain,” he said. Her power supply had, she had thought, been weakened by her disassembly during the bomb scare. “We can replace the power pack.” And if that did not work? He chose not to ponder that.

He went to a sweeping machine, opened its motive unit, and removed the standard protonite power pack. A little protonite went a long way; such a pack lasted a year with ordinary use. There was nothing to match it in the galaxy. In fact, the huge protonite lode was responsible for the inordinate wealth of Planet Proton. All the universe needed power, and this was the most convenient power available.

Stile brought the pack to Sheen. He hoped her robot-structure was standard in this respect; he didn’t want to waste time looking for her power site. What made her special was her brain-unit, not her body, though that became easy to forget when he held her in his arms. Men thought of women in terms of their appearance, but most men were fools—and Stile was typical. Yet if Sheen’s prime directive and her superficial form were discounted, she would hardly differ from the cleanup machines. So was it foolish to be guided by appearance and manner?

He ran his fingers over her belly, pressing the navel. Most humanoid robots—ah, there! A panel sprang out, revealing the power site. He hooked out the used power pack, still hot from its sudden discharge, and plugged in the new.

Nothing happened. Alarm tightened his chest. Oh—there would naturally be a safety-shunt, to cut off the brain from the body during a short, to preserve it. He checked about and finally located it: a reset switch hid-den under her tongue. He depressed this, and Sheen came back to life.

She snapped her belly-panel closed. “Now I owe you one. Stile,” she said.

“Are we keeping count? I need you—in more ways than two.”

She smiled. “I’d be satisfied being needed for just one thing.”

“That, too.”

She glanced at him. She seemed more vibrant than before, as if the new power pack had given her an extra charge. She moved toward him.

There was a stir back the way they had come. It might be a machine, returning from a routine mission- but they did not care to gamble on that. Obviously they had not yet lost the enemy.

Sheen took him to the service side of a large feeding station. Silently she indicated the empty crates. A truck came once or twice a day to deliver new crates of nutro-powder and assorted color-flavor-textures, and to re-move the expended shells. From these ingredients were fashioned the wide variety of foods the machines pro-vided, from the vomitlike pudding to authentic-seeming carrots. It was amazing what technology could do.

Actually, Stile had once tasted a real carrot from his employer’s genuine exotic foods garden patch, a discard, and it had not been quite identical to the machine-constituted vegetable. As it happened. Stile preferred the taste and texture of the fake carrots with which he was familiar. But Citizens cultivated the taste for real foods.

He could hide inside one of these in fair comfort for several hours. Sheen would provide him with food; though this was the region for food, it was all sealed in its cartons, and would be inedible even if he could get one open. Only the machines, with their controlled temperature and combining mechanisms and recipe programs, could reconstitute the foods properly, and he was on the wrong side of their wall.

Stile climbed into a crate. Sheen walked on, so as not to give his position away. She would try to mislead the pursuit. If this worked, they would be home free for a day, perhaps for the whole week. Stile made himself halfway comfortable, and peered out through a crack.

No sooner had Sheen disappeared than a mech-mouse appeared. It twittered as it sniffed along, following their trail. It paused where Stile’s trail diverged from Sheen’s, confused, then proceeded on after her.

Stile relaxed, but not completely. Couldn’t tell the difference between a robot and a man? Sniffers were better than that! He should have taken some precaution to minimize or mask his personal smell, for it was a sure giveaway—

Oh, Sheen had done that. She had given him a scented shower. The mouse was following the trail of rose—and Sheen’s scent was now the same as his. A living hound should have been able to distinguish the two, but in noses, as in brains, the artificial had not yet closed the gap. Fortunately.

But soon that sniffer, or another like it, would return to trace the second trail, and would locate him. He would have to do something about that.

Stile climbed out of his box, suffered a pang in one knee, ran to his original trail, followed it a few paces, and diverged to another collection of crates. Then back, and to a truck-loading platform, where he stopped and retreated. With luck, it would seem he had caught a ride on the vehicle. Then he looped about a few more times, and returned to his original crate. Let the sniffers solve that puzzle!

But the sniffer did not return, and no one else came. This tracking operation must have been set up on the simplistic assumption that as long as the sniffer was moving, it was tracking him. His break—perhaps.

Time passed. The night advanced. Periodically the food machines exhausted a crate of cartons and ejected it, bumping the row along. Stile felt hungry again, but knew this was largely psychological; that double handful of regurgitated pudding should hold him a while yet.

Where was Sheen? Was she afraid to return to him while the sniffer was tracking her? She would have to neutralize the mech-mouse. Far from here, to distract suspicion from his actual hiding place. He would have to wait.

He watched anxiously. He dared not sleep or let down his guard until Sheen cleared him. He was dependent on her, and felt guilty about it. She was a nice .. . person, and should not have to—

A man walked down the hall. Stile froze—but this did not seem to be a pursuer. The man walked on.

Stile blinked. The man was gone. Had Stile been nodding, and not seen the man depart—or was the stranger still near, having ducked behind a crate? In that case this could be a member of the pursuit squad. A serious matter.

Stile did not dare leave his crate now, for that would give away his position instantly. But if the stranger were of the squad, he would have a body-heat scope on a laser weapon. One beam through the crate—the murder would be anonymous, untraceable. There were criminals on Proton, cunning people who skulked about places like this, avoiding capture. Serfs whose tenure had expired, but who refused to be deported. The Citizens seldom made a concerted effort to eradicate them, perhaps because criminals had their uses on certain occasions. Such as this one? One more killing, conveniently unsolved, attributed to the nefarious criminal class—who never killed people against the wishes of Citizens. A tacit understanding. Why investigate the loss of an unemployed serf?

Should he move—or remain still? This was like the preliminary grid of the Game. If the stranger were present, and if he were a killer, and if he had spotted Stile—then to remain here was to die. But if Stile moved, he was sure to betray his location, and might die anyway. His chances seemed best if he stayed.

And—nothing happened. Time passed, and there was no further evidence of the man. So it must have been a false alarm. Stile began to feel foolish, and his knees hurt; he had unconsciously put tension on them, and they could not stand up to much of that, anymore.

Another man came, walking as the other had. This was a lot of traffic for a nonpersonal area like this, at this time of night. Suspicious in itself. Stile watched him carefully.

The man walked without pause down the hall—and vanished. He did not step to one side, or duck down; he simply disappeared.

Stile stared. He was a good observer, even through a crack in a crate; he had not mistaken what he had seen.

Yet this was unlike anything he knew of on Planet Proton. Matter transmission did not exist, as far as he knew—but if it did, this was what it would be like. A screen, through which a person could step—to another location, instantly. Those two men—

Yet Sheen had gone that way without disappearing, and so had the mech-mouse. So there could not be such a screen set up across the hall. Not a permanent one.

Should he investigate? This could be important! But it could also be another trap. Again, like a Game-grid: what was the best course, considering the resources and strategy of his anonymous enemy?

Stile decided to stand pat. He had evidently lost the pursuit, and these disappearing people did not relate to him. He had just happened to be in a position to observe them. Perhaps this was not coincidental. The same concealment this service hall offered for him, it offered for them. If they had a private matter transmitter that they wanted to use freely without advertising it, this was the sort of place to set it up.

Yet aspects of this theory disturbed him. How could serfs have a matter transmitter, even if such a device existed? No serf owned anything, not even clothing for special occasions, for working outside the domes or in dangerous regions. Everything was provided by the sys-tem, as needed. There was no money, no medium of exchange; accounts were settled only when tenure ended. Serfs could not make such a device, except by adapting it from existing machines—and pretty precise computer accounts were kept, for sophisticated equipment. When such a part was lost, the machine tally gave the alarm. Which was another reason a criminal could not possess a laser weapon without at least tacit Citizen approval.

Also, why would any serf possessing such a device remain a serf? He could sell it to some galactic interest and retire on another planet with a fortune to rival that of a Proton Citizen. That would certainly be his course, for Citizens were unlikely to be too interested in for-warding development and production of a transport system that did not utilize protonite. Why destroy their monopoly?

Could the self-willed machines be involved in this? They might have the ability. But those were men he had seen disappear, and the machines would not have betrayed their secret to men.

No, it seemed more likely that this was an espionage operation, in which spies were ferried in and out of this dome, perhaps from another planet, or to and from some secret base elsewhere on Proton. If so, what would this spying power do to a genuine serf who stumbled upon the secret?

A woman appeared in the hall. She had emerged full-formed from the invisible screen, as it were from no-where. She was of middle age, not pretty, and there was something odd about her. She had marks on her body as if the flesh had recently been pressed by something. By clothing, perhaps.

Serfs wore clothing on the other side? Only removing it for decent concealment in this society? These had to be from another world!

Stile peered as closely as possible at the region of disappearances. Now he perceived a faint shimmer, as of a translucent curtain crossing the hall obliquely. Be-hind it there seemed to be the image of trees.

Trees—in a matter-transmission station? This did not quite jibe! Unless it was not a city there, but a park. But why decorate such equipment this way? Camouflage?

Stile had no good answers. He finally put himself into a light trance, attuned to any other extraordinary events, and rested.

“Stile,” someone called softly. “Stile.”

It was Sheen, back at last! Stile looked down the hall and spied her, walking slowly, as if she had forgotten his whereabouts. Had she had another brush with a charged machine? “Here,” he said, not loudly.

She turned and came toward him. “Stile.”

“You lost the pursuit,” he told her, standing in the crate so that his head and shoulders were clear. “No one even checked. But there is something else—“ Her hand shot out to grab his wrist with a grip like that of a vise. Stile was strong, but could not match the strength of a robot who was not being femininely human. What was she doing?

Her other hand smashed into the crate. The plastic shattered. Stile twisted aside, avoiding the blow despite remaining inside the crate; it was an automatic reaction. “Sheen, what—?”

She struck again. She was attacking him! He twisted aside again, drawing her off balance, using the leverage of her own grip on him. She was strong, but not heavy; he could move her about. Strength was only one element in combat; many people did not realize this, to their detriment.

Either Sheen had somehow been turned against him, which would have taken a complete reprogramming, or this was not Sheen. He suspected the latter; Sheen had known where he was hiding, while this robot had had to call. He had been a fool to answer, to reveal himself.

She struck again, and he twisted again. This was definitely not Sheen, for she had far greater finesse than this. It was not even a smart robot; it was a stupid mechanical. Good; he could handle it, despite its strength. Ethically and physically.

Her right hand remained clamped on his left wrist, while her left fist did the striking. Holding and hitting! If any of those blows landed squarely, he would suffer broken bones—but he was experienced in avoiding such an elementary attack. He turned about toward his left, drawing her hand and arm along with him, until he faced away from her, his right shoulder blocking hers. He heaved into a wraparound throw. She had to let go, or be hurled into the crate headfirst.

She was too stupid to let go. She crashed into the crate. Now at last her grip wrenched free, taking skin off his wrist. Stile scrambled out of the wrecked crate. He could junk her, now that he knew what she was, because he knew a great deal more about combat than she did. But he couldn’t be quite sure she wasn’t Sheen, with some override program on her, damping out most of her intellect and forcing her to obey the crude command. If he hurt her—

The robot scrambled out of the crate and advanced on him. Her pretty face was smirched with dirt, and her hair was in disarray. Her right breast seemed to have been pounded slightly out of shape; a bad fall from the wraparound throw could account for that. Stile backed away, still torn by indecision. He could overcome this robot, but he would have to demolish her in the process. If only he could be sure she wasn’t—

Another Sheen appeared. “Stile!” she cried. “Get under cover! The squad is—“ Then she recognized the other robot. “Oh, no! The old duplicate-image stunt!”

Stile had no doubt now: the second Sheen was the right one. But the first one had done half her job. She had routed him out and distracted him—too long. For now the android squad hove into sight, several lumbering giants.

“I’ll hold them!” Sheen cried. “Run!”

But more androids were coming from the other end of the hall. It seemed the irate Citizen no longer cared about being obvious; he just wanted Stile dispatched. If these lunks were also powdered with stun-dust or worse—

Stile charged down the hall and lunged into the matter-transmission curtain, desperately hoping it would work for him. The androids might follow—but they could be in as much trouble as he, at the other end. Intruding strangers. That would give him a better fighting chance. He felt a tingle as he went through.