Unicorn Point

4 - Blue

Agnes answered the call. In a moment she came to inform Citizen Blue. She was getting old and gray, as she had been no young thing when he had hired her from ofiplanet four years before, but she had quickly become his most reliable and trusted servant. Indeed, she was more like a friend, de spite being an alien creature. She normally remained well in the background, so that few visitors noticed her at all. “It is for you, sir.”

“Who is it, Nessie?” he inquired, though he had an ex cellent notion.

“Citizen Tan, sir.”

He nodded. He gestured to the screen in this room, giving it leave to light, as Agnes disappeared. Sure enough, it was Citizen Tan. “Your grandchild has disappeared,” Tan said abruptly. “You know something of this.”

“Now how could I know about that?” Blue inquired. “Isn’t she in your camp’s charge?”

“You put her up to it!”

“Did I? That must have been very naughty of me.”

“If you shelter her as a runaway, you will be in violation of the truce.”

“I wouldn’t think of it. Tan.”

“We shall recover her! And when we do—“

Blue frowned. “Are you suggesting that you would mis treat a child? I would not care to see that, for I fear it would prejudice your relationship with the child’s parents, who might become uncooperative.” This was of course a cutting under statement; Bane—and Mach, too—would not tolerate any threat against Nepe; she was untouchable. “You’re so damned smug!” Tan exclaimed. “But she can’t remain hidden long. We’ll scour the planet for her, and if we discover any complicity at all on your part—”

“Now why should I want to prevent my granddaughter from making her scheduled visit to me? You know how I delight in her company. Indeed, this smacks of some device on your part, to keep her from me. Should I lodge a complaint?” Citizen Tan faded out, scowling.

Agnes reappeared. “She will be all right, sir?”

“I am sure of it, Nessie. You trained her, after all. Who else could have done it better?”

“But she is only four of your years old!”

“And perhaps the brightest child on the planet.”

She nodded, fading back again.

Now Blue placed a call of his own, to Citizen Purple. The fat Adept scowled, but had to listen.

“We have operated under a truce,” Blue said. “We agreed not to harass each other directly, your side and mine, and your side has access to the Oracle during the time I am visited by my granddaughter. However, I have not received my scheduled visit this time. This represents a violation on your part.”

“We’re looking for her!” Purple snapped. “I am sure you are. When you find her, and deliver her to me, I shall see that my part of the agreement is honored. Until then, you will be denied access to the Oracle.” Purple’s mouth opened, but Blue cut the connection before the foul language got through. He had just dropped the other shoe.

Sheen entered. “You are not being nice, dear,” she re marked. She was naked in the serf style, slender and grace ful, despite being nominally his age. But her hair betrayed her years, with some gray strands among the brown, and her breasts rode lower than they once had. Yet even these were not true indicators, for they were crafted. She was a robot, ageless unless restyled.

“What would a machine know about niceness?” he re torted, smiling.

“Certainly not a great deal from association.” He grabbed her and kissed her. “How long have we been married? Two and a half years?”

“You may have slipped a decimal, sir.”

“I get that from association.”

“I doubt it.”

He held her a moment more. “Thou dost still so much resemble the metal maid I met and loved, when I returned to life.” He reverted to his native pattern of speech only in times of emotion, or for effect.

“I am the same!” she protested. “Crafted to please your other self, shaped to his taste.”

“And to mine,” he agreed. “I loved one before thee, but she came to love me less, and so I left her—and found thee. Thy love never flagged.”

“Because you never changed my program. If you want me to have another personality—”

“Tease me not! In my life must needs there be one thing constant, and that be thee and thy program.” He squeezed her close, and kissed her again.

“Careful, Blue,” she murmured in his ear. “You are get ting aroused before schedule.”

“Trust thee to remember that!” he exclaimed, for it was true.

He released her and faced the exit panel. “Mustn’t keep my audience waiting,” he said, reverting to the Proton mode of speech.

“Play thy role well, my love,” she said. He smiled. She normally used Phaze language only to tease him, but this time he knew it was more than that. “Fear thou not, 0 Lady Sheen. I shall play them a game that shall keep them rapt.” Then he stepped out.

For this was the point of this exercise. He had trained his grandchild Nepe carefully, as Stile had trained Flach in Phaze. He knew about this because the two children were able to communicate with each other: a secret only Stile and Blue and their ladies (Agnes included) had known until this point. Now Stile had given the signal for the children to hide, and Blue had to trust his other selfs judgment. He did not know where Nepe had gone, but he did know she would need about twenty-four hours to secure her situation. It was now his job to provide her that period. The future of this ploy, and likely the planet, depended on his success in creating an effective diversion.

Now we shall play a game, he thought as he emerged into the hall. A game of high stakes! He knew that every word he spoke and every action he took would be noted, outside the protection of his Citizen’s sanctuary. The Contrary Citizens believed he had some complicity in Nepe’s disappearance, as indeed he had. He had made his provocative calls to ensure that belief. Now he was going out, and they should believe that he was going to contact his granddaughter. If they were assured of that, they would put all their resources into watch ing him, instead of into the more routine but effective effort of a cordon and pattern search for her. It was a ploy so obvious that only a fool should fall for it—and he hoped to make a fool of the enemy Citizens.

He walked around the halls as if merely exercising—or making sure he was unobserved. Of course there should be no way to shake the hidden observation of the enemy; he depended on that. If they lost him, they might by default get moving on the pattern search, expensive and disruptive, as that would be. He was offering them a seemingly much easier route.

After he was satisfied that he was alone, he approached a Citizen portal and summoned his transport. This was a box somewhat like an ancient elevator, that traveled through channels unavailable to serfs. The sides consisted of holographs of Phaze, so that it looked as if he were in a glass cage swinging along over the Phaze surface. He loved Phaze, of course, and wished he could revisit it; but he loved this technological frame more. To him, the ways of magic were familiar and frankly somewhat dull, while the ways of science were, even after a quarter century, novel and exciting. With magic, each spell could be invoked only once; with science there was no limit. And Sheen was a creature of science. He had been fascinated by her from the outset, knowing her nature; she represented in one package all the wonders of this frame. To the locals, the notion of a living man loving a robot was ludicrous—but Blue was not a local, he was an immigrant from a foreign frame. Sheen was beautiful, she was conscious, she was feeling, she was loving. Science had fashioned the whole of her, and that was much of her allure. She had loved Stile, and lost him to the Lady Blue; but she had been ready to accept Stile’s alternate self instead, and that had been the key. A living woman would not have done it, but the robot lacked the particular consciousness of self that counted here. Blue had Stile’s body and Stile’s nature; he was Stile’s other self. Sheen was programmed to love the first two, and though she knew of the third, her programming did not find it significant. She had, in effect, Stile under another name.

The carriage halted, and Blue stepped out into a crowded hallway. Naked serfs were walking in both directions; they took no overt note of the voluminously cloaked Citizen sud denly in their midst, but all were careful to leave a clear aisle for him. That was the way of it; any serf ignored any Citizen, unless the Citizen spoke to him. Then that serf obeyed the Citizen implicitly.

He was at the entrance to the android laboratory. Each Dome City had its own robot, android and cyborg labs, where units were custom designed for particular purposes or individual Citizens. Sheen had originated in the robot lab, a standard female format with a then-new and sophisticated program for the emulation of emotion. But because she was of the self-willed machine variety, that simulation was virtually in distinguishable from the reality experienced by living creatures. Stile had discussed this with her, and become satisfied that her programmed feeling was as valid as his unprogrammed feeling, for his feelings were the result of his nature and experience. Perhaps that had started him on the route to the acceptance of the self-willed machines as legitimate social entities: people.

Blue had carried that concept further, setting up the experimental community that gave equal status to humans and four other categories in their human forms: androids, self-willed robots, cyborgs and aliens. This was in part his payoff to the self-willed machines who had helped him survive the malice of Citizens, when he had been a serf. But it was also simple cultural justice. The other entities had similar abilities and sensitivities, and desired similar justice. Blue’s experimental community had demonstrated the feasibility of the integration of these five categories as equals. He had placed his own robot son Mach into this community, with greater success than anticipated. Who could have suspected that Mach would exchange minds with his other self in Phaze, and set off a chain of events that threatened to overturn all that Blue had accomplished here!

Still, this had also resulted in the appearance of Stile’s son Bane in Proton, and his association with the alien female Agape, and their intricately crafted child Nepe. Now Nepe was helping Blue to hold his position as nominal leader of the Citizens. As long as he controlled more wealth than his opponents did, his policies governed; when the balance of wealth shifted, theirs would govern. They would not be able to undo a quarter century of reforms in a day, but certainly the effect would be deleterious to individual rights. The Contrary Citizens preferred things as they had been before Stile started the great change: unbridled wealth and power to the ruling class, and human serfs dedicated to serving the will of the Citizens. It was in its way a classic liberal-conservative struggle.

He entered the laboratory. “At ease,” a serf murmured, advising all employees that a Citizen was present. Blue walked through the linked chambers of the lab, in specting the android production line. At the beginning was the tank of “soup”—the living pseudoflesh from which the creatures were formed. A human being was conceived and birthed and grown to adult status, and eventually died. An android being was fashioned complete at one time, and educated rapidly; thereafter it lived and functioned and died in the human manner. Unfortunately, androids tended to be stupid; there seemed to be no proper substitute for nature’s way, when it came to intelligence. Blue’s experimental community had turned out the smartest androids yet, by making them small and letting them grow and learn in the human manner. But this was an inefficient way to do it; for most purposes, an instant stupid android, trained to a special task, was far more cost effective than a smart one who was years in development. Most, of course, were not even humanoid; they were shaped for myriad tasks that were beneath the notice of humans, including cleanup of the grounds beyond the dome.

The intense pollution tended to corrode robots, and was unbreathable for humans, but androids could be crafted who breathed it, needing no special suits.

However, Blue’s purpose in visiting this lab had nothing to do with the manufacture of androids. He had come here be cause this was the most likely hiding place for little Nepe. She, as a creature of alien flesh with robot specifications, could assume any living form, so could readily emulate an android of the appropriate size. Obviously she would hide among the new androids of the lab, because it was in the familiar city and the new ones were not yet trained in specific tasks. She could accept the training and go out on assign ment, and no one would catch on.

Blue smiled faintly. Certainly that was the reasoning he wanted the Citizens to follow. The moment he left the lab, they should be closing on it, checking every current android, verifying its origin and nature. The ordinary machines could not distinguish between android and alien flesh, but lab personnel could. They would soon verify the legitimacy of every android, here and in all the other labs of Proton. And in a few hours they would know that Nepe was not among them. In this manner he was generating his first diversion. He was giving them a promising false lead. He knew they were watching him, and he hoped that they believed that he had either made passing contact with Nepe, or tried to and failed. They might believe that she was here, but that he had realized he was being watched, so had shied away. Regardless, they would have to make a thorough check.

He walked slowly on out, having said nothing. He stepped back into his transport, and went next to the cyborg lab. The cyborgs were essentially robot bodies housing living brains; they were more intelligent than androids, but also more erratic. They tended to get notions of their own, and that could be inconvenient for an employer.

Nepe was small enough to be able to form herself into the brain portion of a large cyborg. She could then direct it, and have a hiding place for some time in the otherwise metal body. The Citizens would thus have to eliminate all the cyborgs, too, and that would represent several more hours of effort, and divide their resources. They could hardly afford to make their search openly; they did not want others catching on. Thus a search that might be completed in one hour would take several, because of the inefficiency of secrecy. Again, it would prove fruitless.

Stile returned to his transport. He was sorry there was no alien lab, to further divide the enemy force. But aliens were relatively few, and they were not generated in any lab. Nepe, being one alien herself, was unlikely to try to masquerade as another. In any event, the Citizens would already have run tracers on every alien on the planet. They would know the child was not among them.

That left only the straight robots and the straight humans. Of these, only the robots had a lab. He went there next, though it should be obvious that Nepe could not emulate a completely inanimate being. His tour was cursory; evidently he didn’t expect to fool anyone this time. If they thought he was trying a double fake, and that Nepe was after all hiding here, they would have to expend valuable time anyway. At last he went to the Game Annex. Nepe had prevailed on her uncle to play a formal game here; he had made special note of the particular console they had used. The Citizens might suppose she had somehow left a message for him here; they would have to examine the console, perhaps even replacing it with another so that they could take it apart in privacy. All part of the game!

Now he was going to give them something more challenging to ponder; so far he had merely warmed up. He touched a finger to the screen of the console.

Words flashed on the screen. WHAT IS YOUR WILL, CITIZEN BLUE? Naturally all the consoles were programmed to recognize all Citizens; in fact, a Citizen could hardly go anywhere unrecognized.

“I wish to play with my wife,” he replied with the faintest of smiles. The machine would not pick up the double entendre.

In a moment Sheen’s face appeared on the screen. “Yes, sir?” she inquired. In the privacy of their suite she treated him with familiar deference; in public, the familiarity was absent.

“I become bored,” he said. “Let me play with you.” A smile very like his own crossed her face.

“Shall I come to you, sir, or will you come to me?”

“Remain where you are, for now. Address your console.”

“Yes, sir.” Her face faded out.

The primary grid appeared. He had the numbers, and chose 2. MENTAL. It would be tricky to play a physical game without her presence. In a moment the secondary grid appeared: TOOL-ASSISTED MENTAL. 2B. “Two Bee or not Two Bee,” he murmured, frowning at it. He had the numbers again, so had to choose be tween 5. SEPARATE 6. INTERACTING 7. PUZZLE and 8. COOPERATIVE. He touched 6.

Her choices were E. BOARD F. CARDS G. PAPER H. GENERAL: all tools for mental games. She had chosen G, for the new box was INTERACTIVE PAPER GAMES. They filled in the third grid with games from the proffered list: tic-tac-toe, sprouts, lines-and-boxes, life, magic squares and word games. When they made their selections, the result was CROSSWORD. They would play an interactive cross word game. Victory would go to the one who forced the other into an impossible word.

Of course the watching Citizens would be sure that this was a pre-arranged game—and they would be correct. Blue and Sheen had played exactly as they had agreed to play, before he left the suite. They were playing “long-distance” to ensure that the Citizens could tap into the game. The crossword grid was eighty-one squares: nine on a side. Blue had the first move, and represented the horizontal, so he wrote in the word ASTERISKS across the top. Sheen started with the first S and filled in SNOW, verti cally, setting a solid end-block below. Blue pondered, then put in VOID, the 0 overlapping hers. He had to build on her word, because he was allowed no vertical words himself. Thus it was truly interactive. She countered with VOICES, extending down from his V. The words seemed to come naturally, but they were also sug gestive. What message would a cryptography expert see in them? How could a child of four interpret such a sequence? What would he be trying to tell her, that was so important for her to know? Surely there were some very nice headaches being sown here!

He took off from her 0 and made OWED.

She formed KING descending from his K in ASTERISKS.

He filled in FUN, to her new N.

She made FORMS descending from his F.

He made MORE crossing her R.

She called out a pre-existing word by marking in a + above it: I. E. The game was getting tight.

He filled in NO below the ER in ASTERISKS.

U

E

A S T E R I

+ N + N 0 +

V 0 I D + F

0 w E D + 0

I + + M 0 R

c M

E S

S +

+

Sheen was abruptly left with an impossible word: the RO did not count against her, because he had formed it complete, giving her no chance to improve on it. But how could she make anything legitimate from the vertical letters ENDDM? “End DM,” she said, appearing on the screen, behind the grid, so that the letters crossed her face.

“What does DM stand for?”

“Dumb Machine.”

Blue laughed. “Sorry, I don’t know any dumb machines, certainly not you. You lose.”

She sighed. “I think the game was fixed.”

“You have a suspicious inanimate mind.”

“What is the penalty?”

“You have to ask, woman? The usual, of course.”

“Oh, no sir, not the usual!” she protested with mock affright. They had played this charade before, and always enjoyed it.

“The usual,” he repeated grimly. “Get your torso over here.”

“There? In public?” she asked, appalled.

“The very best place. What good is a victory if not publicly savored?”

“You are a monster, sir.”

“To be sure. Do not keep me waiting, or it will go hard with you, serf.”

“I hear and obey with alacrity, sir,” she said, fading.

Blue touched the screen again.

WHAT IS YOUR WILL, CITIZEN BLUE?

‘ ‘This game was but a prelude to another. Reserve a jelly vat for my use.”

DONE, CITIZEN BLUE.

“Audience is permitted for this game.”

VERIFY: AUDIENCE PERMITTED? That was as close as the Game Machine ever came to astonishment.

“Yes.” Normally Citizens conducted their affairs with paranoid privacy unless they had reason to chastise a serf in public; Blue’s wife was a serf, but he was not given to doing that to her. His permission for an audience was of course a requirement for one; serfs would be rounded up for the event. Actually this would be no punishment for the serfs; Blue knew himself to be by far the most popular Citizen of Proton, because of his steadfast efforts to mitigate the lot of serfs and his open marriage to a machine. Every group supported him, except the Contrary Citizens. That one exception, of course, more than counterbalanced the rest; had he not been set up with the dominant wealth of the planet by his other self, his tenure would have been brief. Wealth governed Proton, literally, and this was a power he had exercised ruthlessly against the other Citizens, maintaining his position. Only the sophisticated financial instruments devised by the Oracle from the input of the Book of Magic could wrest that power from him—and now he had a pretext to cut off that source of in formation from his enemy.

He walked slowly to the bath region of the Game Annex, giving Sheen time to get there. Yes, wealth was the key—and the Oracle and Book of Magic were the ultimate keys to wealth, and he and Stile controlled both. They had monitored the progress of the enemy, and acted when necessary: just before the balance of wealth shifted. Nepe had kept him informed, and he had trained her, with the invaluable expertise of Agnes. Now her absence froze things as they were. If she remained hidden, Blue and Stile would retain power; if she were found, they would lose it. It was that simple. He reached the bath region. Sheen was there, having found swift transport. She took his arm, and they went to the reserved vat. They could have found their way simply by zeroing in on the clamor, for as they entered the chamber they spied the audience: about a hundred naked men, women, children, androids, humanoid robots and humanoid cyborgs. They had been clamoring with excitement, for the privilege of watching a living Citizen in an event like this was rare indeed. There was a sudden hush as they saw Blue and Sheen. In the center of the chamber was the vat, its sides dropping sharply away from the floor. It was round, about four meters in diameter, and was filled with whipped pseudo-gelatin, lime flavored. This differed from the real thing mainly in being harmless to living flesh even when it got in the eyes, and in being two point three times as slimy.

Sheen released his arm, stepping ahead of him to gaze in to the quivering green mess. “Permission to speak frankly, sir,” she said with-evident distaste.

“Denied,” he said, setting his cupped hand on her buttock and boosting her forward. She screamed and flailed wildly as she fell into the vat. The male members of the audience applauded. A Citizen, of course, could do no wrong. Some of the females looked as if they might have another opinion, but were not bold enough to express it.

Blue beckoned to the nearest serf. The young man scram bled up and came to him. “Sir?”

“Remove my garment and hold it clean until I emerge.” The serf did not answer, as no answer was required. He set his hands carefully at Blue’s shoulders and lifted the voluminous blue cloak. In a moment it was off, and Blue stood naked. He stepped out of his blue sandals while the serf folded the cloak and held it reverently. That serf would be famous for a day: he had Held Citizen Blue’s Cloak! The other serfs tried not to stare, but were obviously fascinated by the sight of a naked Citizen in public. Many of them would have seen naked Citizens before, but only in the privacy of personal services. The average serf was so far beneath the notice of the average Citizen that clothing counted merely as a matter of status. A Citizen could of course do anything he wanted, including parade naked in public, but it was rare for this to happen.

Blue knew himself to be quite fit for his age, and had no shame of his body. He stood for a moment, letting them admire it. There had been a time when a grown man who stood, in the Phaze system of measurement, an inch under five feet tall would have been an object of humor, sometimes of ridicule. That time was past. Today that stature was a badge of honor.

Sheen remained in the gelatin, treading slime, waiting for him. Thick froth matted her hair and clung to portions of her torso. She had been attractive in her normal nudity; she was doubly so when partially shrouded by the foam. Well she knew it, too; now a surprisingly firm breast showed, and now a segment of lithe leg, flashing amidst the green. At one point both legs showed, angling in toward a torso that was artfully masked. The folk of other cultures thought nakedness made a woman sexually appealing; those of Proton knew that it was selective concealment that had the most potent effect. A num ber of the serfs were gazing at her with envy, for her situation. Any serf woman would have been glad to trade places with her, even if only for this hour. There would probably be a rash of jelly baths following this event. And the watching eyes of the Citizens behind their spy lenses would have to track all of it, searching for continuing clues to Blue’s possible contact with his granddaughter. How could an engagement with one’s own wife in public accomplish this? Certainly Blue was not doing this without reason! He smiled. They would be right: he had excellent reason! This was as good a diversion as he could arrange, given the short notice he had had.

He dived into the vat. The froth was thin at the top, but thickened below, so that it sustained him and brought his body to a halt well clear of the bottom. He stroked until he was upright. There was Sheen, facing him with a hat fashioned of foam.

“Ha, woman!” he cried, and ducked below the bubbly surface. Sheen screamed again as he caught her ankles and dumped her down.

Now they were both below the surface, out of sight. But it was possible to breathe here, by sucking air between the teeth to strain out the bubbles. Sheen of course did not need to breathe, except when she needed air for speech. “Hold still, creature!” he cried for the benefit of the audience that peered closely at the heaving surface of froth.

“Is that an order, sir?” she replied defiantly. There was laughter from above; of course it wasn’t an order, in a game like this.

“Now I’ve got you—oops!” Obviously she had slipped out of his grasp. It was almost impossible to hold on to a person in this slippery stuff. Both remained out of sight. Sheen screamed again, signaling that he had caught her again.

“Spread your legs, wench!” he ordered.

“Spread them yourself, sir!” More delighted laughter from above; the audience could picture exactly what was happen ing.

“If you don’t, I’ll tickle you!”

There was a pause. Then, hesitantly: “Where will you tickle me, sir?”

“Maybe on the feet.”

“That’s all right.”

“Then maybe on the knees.”

“The knees? I think I can handle that.”

“Then maybe the thighs.”

A pause. “I’ll survive it somehow.”

“How about the belly?”

“Oh, no, not the belly! Anywhere but there!”

“Anywhere?” His voice was quivering with suggestion.

“Uh—just where else did you have in mind, sir?”

“WHERE DO YOU THINK, WENCH?”

“I’ll spread my legs!”

“Too late! I’d rather tickle you. Just let me get my finger in there—“ She screamed yet again, piercingly. The laughter from above was almost overwhelming.

What the audience did not realize was that the activity under the whipped gelatin was quite different from that suggested by the dialogue. Sheen opened a breast-cabinet and brought out heavy makeup materials. She applied paint to his hair, wherever it occurred, changing it to match her own. She put green contact lenses into his eyes, so that they also matched hers. She removed both her breasts and fastened them to his body with flesh-colored adhesive, and applied pseudoflesh to his hips and buttocks. She used more of it to cover his genitals and mold them into a mound like hers. This was feasible because her midsection was larger than his; there was room for layering. Soon Blue resembled her so closely that only a careful inspection would give him away. Meanwhile, instead of tickling her—it was difficult to tickle a robot—he was helping her to assume his form. He removed her hairpiece and put on one that resembled his hair. He used a special pen to draw lines on her legs that made them look thinner and more muscular. He used pseudoflesh to thicken her waist. He removed her ears and substituted a set she had brought that resembled his. And he applied to her crotch a prefabricated unit of pseudoflesh that was cast in the shape of his male genitals. Then he smoothed out her now-flat chest, and painted a few hairs. The double transformation was complete.

At this point they were grunting suggestively, as though engaged in heavy activity, while the audience above quieted, striving to overhear and interpret what was occurring. All sex was free on Proton, and serfs indulged at will (or the will of their Citizen employers), but again the concealment enhanced the fascination. Blue made a final, satisfied groan, and they were quiet.

Then Blue stroked upward through the froth so that his head broke the surface. “Well, I didn’t get tickled!” he said in his best emulation of Sheen’s voice.

“Liar!” Sheen called from below, in his voice. “You got well tickled inside. If you haven’t had enough—“ Blue looked alarmed, and clambered out of the vat. Patches of lather covered portions of his body, making it more difficult for anyone to tell that he was not a naked woman. He hurried out, as if afraid the Citizen was about to call him back for another round.

“It’s better when they resist,” his voice came from behind, as Sheen broke the surface in his likeness. “Next time, translucent gel!” The audience applauded. The serfs had seen far less than they thought, and were convinced they knew what had happened below. A majority of the males now had erections. There would be a mass sex orgy the moment Sheen, as Citizen Blue, gave leave for general use of the vat. It was significant that none of the women was trying to leave early. He hurried to the connected shower stall, and quickly rinsed the foam from his hair and body. Sheen, in the guise of the Citizen, would have a portable shower brought in, and the serfs would gladly operate it and the dryer, and help her back into his blue cloak. Then she would take his transport back to their suite.

He had to smile. Sheen was a machine, but what a machine! She did things so well. He trusted her absolutely, and yes, he did love her.

He emerged from the shower, stood in the dryer a moment, and departed the premises without attracting undue attention. He walked down the hall to a public transport, got on, and rode across the city. When he reached the far side he got off, then took another transport, glancing around as if to see whether anyone was following. Reassured, he proceeded to the jetport and boarded a flight to the dome of Gobdom. This took a while, and he sat absolutely still and straight, in the manner of a robot who had tuned out, not snoozing in the human manner.

At Gobdom he walked around as if on business, checking again for any pursuit. When there seemed to be none, he boarded a flight to Anidom.

He knew he was being watched, and that his exchange with Sheen had not fooled the eyes that were following him. They would be equipped with sensors that read beneath the surface, fathoming his fleshly nature, and Sheen’s robotic nature. The serfs had surely been deceived, but not the Citizens. Still, it was a good ruse, for it had a reasonable chance of making the Citizens think that he was trying to conceal his activity. Indeed, the exchange would have been effective, had ordinary lenses been used; the best ones were considerably more expensive than the standard ones, and required far more sophisticated application. But for this all-important purpose, he knew the best was being brought into play. So the Citizens thought he was trying a simple ruse to fool them, making a public show of his location and a very clever identity exchange so that no one would suspect. Now they might believe he was going to his true rendezvous. Indeed, they had a potent confirmatory hint in the crossword game he had played with Sheen. For there was a key word written therein, supposedly concealed. From the top left, slantwise down, crossing both the horizontal and vertical words: AN IDOM. The dome to which he was now going. How might he have gotten this message to Nepe? They would just have to make their own conjectures. Obviously there was a way. Perhaps the child had access to a Game Grid screen, and could tune in to the game he had played long distance with Sheen. The moment she saw that slanting message, she would know, and she would be there at the appointed hour to meet him. Then they would have her. Blue kept a straight face, maintaining his robotic demeanor, but internally he was smiling. The Citizens would be so sure of their victory—and so disappointed when it slipped away. For Nepe would not be meeting him here, or anywhere else. Her orders were never to meet him or contact him at all. She was entirely on her own. That way no action or word of his could give her away, no matter how closely the Citizens monitored his every eyeblink. He had confidence in her, and yet he feared for her. She was so young! If only he had had another year to train her, even six months, to perfect it. But he trusted the judgment of his other self in Phaze; if Stile had concluded that the break had to be made now, that was surely the case. Perhaps things had gotten tighter in Phaze than in Proton. Probably the Adverse Adepts had been about to catch on to the true powers of little Flach, and had been planning a preemptive captivity.

Well, he was doing his part, protecting Nepe to whatever extent he could. He would dally for several hours in Anidom, poking into obscure comers, and in the course of it perform another identity switch in a seeming effort to shake any pur suit that remained. Then he would give it up and go home. If the Citizens had not found her by that time, they were unlikely to thereafter.

For Nepe would be hiding in the manner they least expected: in the form of a robot. Stile could not make himself into a machine well enough to deceive the special eyes, but Nepe could. She could form her flesh into metallic hardness throughout, and function so like a robot that only a physical dissection could expose her nature. He and Agnes had drilled her on this until she had it almost perfect: the impossible identity. She might be one of the mechanical servitors the Citizens used as they searched for her. Blue himself did not know what variant she would assume, or where she would operate. His only concern now was that she hide successfully. The success of this ploy depended on Nepe and Flach in Phaze. But it was also true that he loved the little alien creature, and wanted her safe even if his power and the welfare of Proton were not on the line.

His thoughts turned naturally to Phaze. Why had he never sought to make direct contact with the other frame, now that Mach and Bane had demonstrated that it was possible, and Nepe and Flach had confirmed it? He had learned that it was his continuing link with Stile, and their exchanged identities, that kept the frames from separating completely. He was a native of Phaze, living in Proton, while Stile was from Proton, and living in Phaze. As long as that was the case, the frames would be linked. Presumably if he overlapped his other self and made the effort, he could exchange with Stile, and be back in Phaze. So easy, perhaps, yet he had never even made the effort.

He knew why. It was because he preferred Proton, and Stile preferred Phaze. Blue loved Sheen, whose marvels of body and accommodation had been demonstrated today, and never wanted to leave her. Stile loved the Lady Blue similarly. Suppose they overlapped, and exchanged—and were unable to return to their present situations? The frames might be forever separated, their final link cut, and Blue would be stuck in marriage with the Lady Blue, and Stile with Sheen. The Lady Blue was a fine person, but it had not worked out between them, just as it had not worked between Stile and Sheen. No, he dared not risk it, and he knew Stile felt the same. They would never contact each other direct. Not unless the salvation of the frames depended on it. And if that should ever turn out to be the case—well. Blue had a little ace in the hole that might allow him to rejoin Stile without losing everything. It was so enormous a gamble that he would never risk it except as the final resort. If successful, it would still change the faces of the frames forever. If it failed—there was no telling what would happen. He knew, because of the increasing parallelism of the frames, that Stile had a similar notion, to be similarly implemented. For the actions had to be together. And, because one or both of them were likely to be in straits too dire to allow direct implementation, he had set the trigger in a place no one would suspect. It could be summed up in one key word:

‘Corn.