The bubble burst with a loud pop. The fragments dissolved into air, with a sizzle and a smell like frying batter. Where the bubble had been stood a soft, richly blue mass with several oddly-shaped appendages.
“I think,” Geste said, “that something a little more primitive is in order. Our guest is a native of Denner's Wreck."
“I got you, boss."
The blue mass sank into itself, melting away like butter over a hot fire, and then hardened into a new shape.
It had become a bed. Four of the appendages had transformed into bedposts; the rest had vanished. The blue stuff, whatever it might actually be, now looked like fine fur.
Bredon relaxed, tucked the knife back out of sight, and carefully approached the bed.
It was, as far as he could determine, just a bed. Except for its color, the blue fur that adorned it was an ordinary fur coverlet, with a texture much like good-quality rabbit. The pillow and mattress were also blue, but felt like ordinary down-filled linen. Both the spiced-flower smell and the frying odor were gone, now, replaced by a cool, clean, inviting fragrance that reminded him of freshly-washed linen hung out in a spring breeze.
With a shrug, Bredon dropped his vest and climbed into the bed.
The room vanished; the bed seemed to be floating in a soft black void. He could no longer hear the music.
Bredon had seen too many wonders to be much disturbed by this, and he was utterly exhausted. He rolled over and went to sleep.
Outside the illusionary void, Geste settled back into a floating seat that popped silently up out of the floor when he first began to bend his knees. A feelie vine slithered up silently to caress his ankles, and a messenger weasel jumped down from the forest and stood alert at his side, ready to run any errand its master might care to give it. Food trees ripened a variety of tasty products, prepared to drop them on an instant's notice, and certain other trees, the cousins of the feelie vines, pumped lubricious sap into erectile tissue and stood ready. Soothing scents spilled into the air. The music transformed itself from nondescript background noise to one of Geste's favorite suites, a piece slightly over a thousand years old that Bredon would not have recognized as music at all.
The Trickster paid no attention to his obedient creatures. He watched, amused, as Bredon slept. “Resilient, isn't he? He's just taking it all in stride,” he said.
“That's just because he doesn't know what the hell is going on, boss; he doesn't know enough to be scared."
“You're probably right,” Geste agreed. “I think I'm scared.” He motioned for a drink; a silver service floater extruded itself from the floor by his foot, startling the waiting weasel.
“Why did you bring him here, boss?” Gamesmaster asked. “You aren't exactly in the habit of bringing folks home for dinner, after all."
Geste reached out and picked the waiting goblet off the floater. “You know what's been going on?” he asked. He tasted the drink, grimaced, then put it back on the floater.
The floater sank back into the floor and another, pale blue this time, emerged, but remained coupled by a thin strand of material. The messenger weasel nuzzled against Geste's hand, its fur testing the chemical composition of his sweat and relaying the information to the household machines to help them design a better beverage, which would be fed up to the waiting floater.
Geste paid no attention to that. He was too worried to pet the weasel, and let his hand hang limply against it.
“You mean old Thaddeus doing his best to blow away the High Castle, with Brenner and a bunch of other folks in it?” Gamesmaster said. “Sure, I know. I keep in touch. I've been getting all the dope from your floater, and from Mother, and from a dozen other places."
Geste squinted critically up at the ceiling and remarked, “You talk too much, you know that? You might want to consider reprogramming yourself a little, toning that down."
“I'll keep it in mind, boss, but I still want to know why you brought that noble savage here. Why did you come home at all, for that matter?"
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Geste replied. “I promised that I'd set him up with Sunlight, didn't I? I can't take him back to his village until I come through on that; I've got a reputation to live up to, and besides, it should be pretty funny, watching the two of them together. You know what Sunlight is like, her whole ethereal, too-good-for-mortal-flesh routine, and here this poor kid wants to haul her into bed-she probably hasn't been laid by a human being in centuries, let alone some yokel who can't have any more romantic technique than one of those damned rabbits that are all over this planet.” He snorted, and picked up his new drink.
“You're getting off the subject, boss."
He sipped at the goblet and nodded. “Yeah, I am; sorry. Anyway, I really did want to see what happened when I got the two of them face to face. I was looking forward to it. And I was looking forward to seeing Sheila again; it's been… what, half a year, almost?"
“Maybe a third."
“Still too long. In any case, I was looking forward to a little light-hearted fun, and a few interesting days, and instead I found myself in the middle of what might turn into a full-blown war. You know Thaddeus’ history; he's started wars before. He may be out to rebuild his father's stupid little empire again. That threw me off-stride; I haven't thought in terms of wars or empires or interstellar politics for centuries now. All I could think was that if I took Bredon home, he'd say I had welshed, and if I dropped him anywhere else I might be too busy to ever come back for him."
“If Thaddeus is out to conquer this corner of the galaxy, and you try to stop him, you could wind up too dead to come back and pick the kid up."
“I know-I thought of that, too. So I could take him home, or I could keep him with me, or I could bring him here. Keeping him with me on that little airskiff wouldn't work; he'd just get in the way. So here he is. And I want you, and all the rest of Arcade, to look after him, and see that he has what he needs, until I get back. Do whatever he tells you so long as it won't hurt anything. If I do get killed, you see that he gets home safely."
“You got it, boss. No problem."
“Good. Now, what can we do about Thaddeus?"
The intelligence had no quick answer for that. After a moment it hummed quietly to indicate its befuddlement.
“Fat lot of help you are,” Geste muttered.
“Sorry, boss, but I'm a housekeeper, not a general. This is way the hell outside my programming. I don't know the first thing about stopping a war."
“You should-it's not that different from a game, and you know plenty about games."
The intelligence hesitated, then asked, “You think I should treat this like a war game?"
“Of course-why do you think they're called war games in the first place?"
“Well, yeah, I know that, but I never knew whether they were accurate simulations or not. If it's like that, the first thing we need is military intelligence, if you'll forgive the phrase. We need to scout out exactly what the situation is. Boss, you're the best-equipped person on the planet for that; you've got more spy gadgets than all the rest put together."
“That's true, I guess,” Geste admitted, leaning back. “I never planned on using them for anything but fun, but I've got them, don't I? Start sending them out there, then. First priority is tapping into Thaddeus’ own systems, finding out what he's done already, and what he plans to do. Put as many snoopers, crackers, and tapping devices onto that as you can-either silicon-based or organic or just transmitted software, whatever you can get in there. You'll need a lot, because he's always refused to centralize anything. For the real-world stuff, I want records of all movements in and out of Fortress Holding-record heat-signatures, or emissions, or whatever other features can be used to distinguish them, and try and identify the individual machines. Anything that seems slow and stupid enough, put a spyscope or a homing bug on it-follow it and see what it does. And can we do anything about bent-space measurement?"