“Oh.” She considered momentarily. “All right.” Oops. She was going along with it! “All right?” he de-manded. “Just how far do you go with robots?”
“My best friends aie robots,” she assured him. “Come to the bed.”
Angry now. Stile let her go. But she was laughing. “You amorous idiot!” she exclaimed. “Did you think I didn’t know you?” And she flung her arms about him and kissed him with considerably more passion than before.
“What gave me away?” Stile asked.
“Aside from the differences between man and robot that I, of all people, know?” she inquired mischievously. “Things like body radiation, perspiration, heartbeat, respiration and the nuances of living reactions?”
“Aside from those,” Stile said, feeling foolish. He should have known he couldn’t fool her even a moment.
“Your hands are tanned,” she said.
He looked at them. Sure enough, there was a distinct demarcation where his Phaze-clothing terminated, leaving his hands exposed to ‘the strong rays of the outdoor sun. All living-areas on Proton were domed, with the sunlight filtered to nondestructive intensity, so that only moderate tanning occurred. And of course there were no demarcations on the bodies of people who wore no clothing. Not only did this uneven tanning distinguish him from the robot, it distinguished him from the other serfs of Proton!
“I’ll have to start wearing gloves in Phaze!”
“No such heroic measures are necessary,” she assured him. She brought out some tinted hand lotion and worked it into his hands, converting them to untanned color. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Stile said grate-fully.
“You’d stay in Phaze the whole time, with that blue lady.”
“No doubt.”
“Well, this is another world,” she informed him. “I had a piece of you before you ever knew she existed. You have a good six hours before the first Game of the Tourney, and I know exactly how to spend it.”
She did, too. She was as amorous as she was lovely, and she existed only to guard and to please him. It was easy to yield to her. More than easy.
Afterward, as they lay on the bed, she inquired: “And how exactly are things in Phaze?”
“I killed the golem who was impersonating me, and gave my friend Kurrelgyre the werewolf advice on how to regain his standing in his pack—“
“I know about that. You returned here for the final pre-Tourney qualifying Game, remember? What did you do on your last trip there?”
“The werewolves and the unicorns helped me to establish my identity as the Blue Adept,” Stile said, grossly simplifying the matter. “I do magic now. But I have to fight the unicorn Herd Stallion to preserve Neysa from breeding for a season.”
“I like Neysa,” Sheen said. “But doesn’t she get jealous of the Lady Blue?”
“No, they are oath-friends now. Neysa knows my destiny lies with my own kind.”
“With the Lady Blue,” Sheen said.
Stile realized he had carelessly hurt Sheen. “She is not of this world, as you pointed out.”
“That’s what you think. It’s a different world, but she’s here too. She can’t cross the curtain, can she? So she must have a double on this side.”
Stile suffered a shock of amazement. “That’s right! There must be another self of her living here. My ideal woman, all the time right here in Proton.” Then he caught himself. “An ideal—“
“Oh, never mind,” Sheen said. “We both know I’m not your kind, however much I might wish to be.”
“But why did you tell me—“
“Neysa helped you reach the Lady, didn’t she? Can I do less?”
There was that. Sheen identified with Neysa, and tried to emulate her reactions. “Actually, I can’t afford to go looking for her now—and what would I do if I found her?”
“I’m sure you’d think of something,” Sheen said wryly. “Men usually do.”
Stile smiled. “Contrary to appearances, there is more than one concern on this male mind. I am fated to love the Lady Blue, though she may not be fated to love me—but how can I love two of her? I really have no business with her Proton-alternate.”
“You don’t want to see her?”
“I don’t dare see her.”
“My friends can readily locate her for you.”
“Forget it. It would only complicate my life, and it is already somewhat too complicated for equanimity. How long can I continue functioning in two frames? I feel a bit like a bigamist already, and I’m not even married.”
“You really ought to settle this.”
He turned on her. “Why are you doing this?” But he knew why. He had hurt her, and she was expiating the hurt by exploring it to the limit. There was a certain logic in this; there was always logic in what Sheen did. They both knew he could never truly love Sheen or marry her, any more than he could have loved or married Neysa. Sheen would always love him, but could never be more to him than a temporary mistress and guardian. “You’re right,” she said, her pursuit abated by his pointed question. “It is best forgotten. I shall store it in the appropriate memory bank.”
“You don’t forget something by remembering it!”
“We have a Tourney to win,” she reminded him, aptly changing the subject in the manner of her sex.
“You understand,” he cautioned her. “I can not reasonably expect to win the Tourney. I’m not at my peak Game capacity, and in a large-scale double-elimination competition like this I can get lost in the crush.”
“And if you lose early, your tenure as a Proton serf ends, and you’ll have to stay in Phaze, and I’ll never see you again,” Sheen said. “You have reason to try. We need to find out who has been trying to kill you here, and you can only pursue an effective investigation if you become a Citizen.”
“There is that,” he agreed. He thought of the anonymous Citizen who had had his knees lasered and gotten him washed out as a jockey. The series of events that action had precipitated had paradoxically enriched his life immeasurably, introducing him to the entire frame of Phaze—yet still an abiding anger smouldered. He had a score to settle with someone—and Sheen was right, it was an incentive to win the Tourney if he possibly could. For the winner would be granted the ultimate prize of Proton:
Citizenship. Runners-up would receive extensions of their tenure and the chance to compete again in a subsequent Tourney. So he did have a chance, a good chance because of his Game abilities—but the odds of final victory remained substantially against him.
He wondered, coincidentally, whether the history the Lady Blue had recently related had any bearing. A snow demon had fired a freeze-spell at the Blue Adept, and it had caught the Hinny and damaged her knees. Stile had been lasered in the knees while riding a horse. Was this an example of the parallelism of the two frames? Things did tend to align, one way or another, but sometimes the route was devious.
“One Game at a time,” Sheen said. “If and when you lose, I’ll just have to abide by that. I know you’ll try.”
“I’ll try,” he agreed.
They reported on schedule to the Game Annex. Sheen could not accompany him inside; only Tourney entrants were permitted now. She would go to a Spectator Annex and tune in his game on holo, unless it happened to be one in which a live audience was permitted. She would lend her applause and opinion when feedback opportunity occurred. There was a line at the entrance. There was hardly ever such a crowd—but the Tourney came just once a year. Six hundred serfs had to report at once, and though the Game facilities were extensive, this was a glut. When he stepped inside, the Game Computer inter-viewed him efficiently. “Identity?” a voice inquired from a holographic image of the capital letters GC suspended a meter before him at head height. The computer could make any image and any sound emanate from anywhere, but kept it token. Proton was governed by Citizens, not by machines, and the smart machine maintained that in memory constantly.