"Hello, Owner Good-bye," a woman's sweet voice said. Thus I heard the trader's little joke for the first time.
"Who speaks?" Uncertainty filled me, though I rarely succumb to that emotion.
"This, your vehicle, speaks, Owner Good-bye. What are your instructions?"
"My name to you is Lord."
"'Good-bye'is the name I was initialized to. I'm sorry to say I cannot respond to orders given by anyone named Lord. This is among my prime drivers. If you wanted to be called by another name, possibly you should have chosen more carefully. I'm sorry, Owner Good-bye."
Oddly, there was no insolence in the voice. Still, I was for a moment blind with rage. I collected my wits by telling myself that it was only a machine. Machines are dominated only through skill; they do not respect power, or personal presence. "I see. Is there any way for me to speak to you, face-to-face? In some manner I cannot now imagine? This vague mut tering at walls makes me uneasy."
"Of course. I see the problem now that you draw my attention to it. I'll bud a communication icon, to be replaced later by one tailored more precisely to your preferences."
A smoothly contoured chair thrust suddenly from the floor beside me. I sat down, watched soft color cascade down the wall, restful tints of clear, cold greens and smoky aqua. The light seemed to come from above, filtered through greenery. I found myself in a grotto of mossy blue stone, cool and damp, a place that did not exist on our hot, dry world.
A pace in front of me, the floor bulged, then burst swiftly upward into a human shape. In an instant it stood complete, a woman wearing heavy clothing, a most beautiful woman, though her coloring was bizarre. Her skin was white, though a delicate rose washed through it, and the texture was as fine as the skin behind an infant's knee. She wore her thick, straight yellow hair in two heavy braids. "My model lived on a heavy world, Owner Good-bye, so I thought at least her shape might be suitable."
"Must you use forever the entire tedious length of my 'name'? Can you not call me simply Owner? Or, if that isn't allowed, Good-bye?"
"Yes, I can do that."
"And your name?"
"I have none yet. You might wish to consider carefully, Good-bye, before assigning me one, since the same strictures I mentioned earlier apply. You'll have to call me by it ever after."
I clamped my lips tight.
In an hour I had learned enough to shape the neomach into the form of a giant dustbear, a six-legged desert carnivore. My personal seal carries the image of a speared dustbear, rampant.
The icon, as the woman shape called itself, stood beside me in the control center. I could not keep myself from regarding it as a woman, though I knew it was formed from the neomach's body.
The icon put me in a sculptured chair. Two tendrils of neomatter touched my temples delicately, little cold kisses. I jerked my head, but the tendrils stayed with me.
"Careful, Good-bye; you'll injure yourself or loosen the pickups." The voice was calm, sweet. I leaned back in the chair. "And now?" "Will us forward; be a bear. Go for a run."
I cannot describe the state I fell into then. I was still myself, still Taladin Lord Bondavi, but at the same time I was something massive and powerful, something that loped out of the Square on six legs, scattering those who stood in my path.
I accelerated down the long, straight northbound lane of Dignity Boulevard, passing through the great gray blocks of the factories, then through the rambling dormitories of the workers. As I passed, the off-shift workers lined the rooftops in their thousands, cheering. I could not see individual faces, but I knew that on each face a lustful envy burned.
I was joyfully absorbed in the sensations that burned through my powerful pseudobody. What matter that the trader had escaped? I had her machine!
I passed through the green farms that fringed the city, out into the badlands. I made amazing leaps: across gullies, up cliffs. I laughed aloud, and came to a stop at the top of an ocher rock-stack, balanced there lightly, as happy as I have ever been. "Incredible," I said.
"Yes." Her voice also held some deep emotion. I remembered that I was inside a newborn thing, for all its built-in wisdom. This was the first time she had run across the desert like a gale. "Will you fly now?"
The question took me unaware somehow, despite the fact that I had coveted the trader's neomach from the moment I first saw it, coming down from the sky. It had planed slowly in, wingtips flickering as it felt its way through the flawed air boiling up from the hot concrete of the Square.
Ours is a fiercely windy world; our best airships were tethered balloons, fat, awkward things, useful only as observation posts.
I had gone aloft only once, several years before. That visit had exposed my weakness, though only to myself, I believe.
It had taken all the strength I had, simply to stand rigid and apparently calm, as the tether crew paid out the cable and we rose into the air. We stopped, I was told, at a safe altitude, and I endured the commander's explanation with a frozen face. I do not remember anything he said. The height seemed monstrous to me, as if we were now so far above the safe ground that we could never get back.
I did not begin to shake until I was back in my chariot, alone.
Now I could not immediately respond to my new machine. "No," I finally said. "I'll wait. Until I'm familiar with this phase of your operation."
A look crossed the icon's face. I was almost sure I had seen resentment.
I rode back to my city, making the bear prance and dance and somersault. Once, I came to a gully unexpectedly, and windmilled down the sandy embankment, laughing.
When we had returned to the Square, I pulled the tendrils from my head and rose from the chair. I was reluctant to leave. I stood by the open lock for a moment, wondering if the trader had arranged another joke. When I stepped out, would the lock shut, never to open again?
"Leave the lock open," I said.
"Have you selected a name for me yet?" Something in the pleasant voice betrayed eagerness.
As a young boy, I forced pethood upon a painted lyretongue, a dour, scaly creature, resembling a bald weasel in both size and temperament. Its name came not from the sound it made — a meager collection of grim croaks — but referred to the graceful split tongue, heavy with venom, that it carried in its mouth. Mine had been deprived of his poison sac, which may have contributed to his habitual bad temper. In any case, he was not affectionate, and in fact bit me many times.
My people rarely keep pets. When they do, a long-established custom rules the naming of these otherwise useless creatures. A pet is traditionally named for some virtue the owner lacks, to his regret. I called my lyretongue Patience.
That was during the years my older brothers assassinated each other. "Patience! Patience, come instantly. I know you're hiding here somewhere," I would say, searching for him in the unfamiliar terrain of an obscure relative's house.
One day he escaped, and I never saw him again.
I brought my thoughts back from those dark years. "I'll call you Patience."
"As you wish."
I detected no disloyal undertones, and stepped confidently from the lock and down the ramp. The lock stayed open.
Nefrete met me at the bottom of the ramp, eyes glittering, mouth stony. "Who was that?" She pointed up the ramp.
I was taken aback, and I did not touch her in greeting. "There's no one aboard the neomach." I would have explained about the icon, but she would not allow me to speak.
"Don't lie! I saw the ghost-woman clearly. Accept my advice for once. Instruct the thing to fly away and never come back, and let that ghost go with it."
Was she mad? I could think of nothing to say, so I brushed by her and went to my private apartments, where she could not follow. First the death vision, now this. My mate seemed to be undergoing a cycle of eccentric passions.