He made his move, and a figure made the counter. He saw right away that Jod’e was a more experienced player than Alyc, and knew how to press her advantage. Now he wondered how the figures knew when and where to move; there was no separate layer giving directions, because she was right there among them, as silent as they. He would have to ask Alyc about that, later; there was indeed more to this game than he had thought.
They maneuvered, each side taking turns. Then he got a chance to trap and jump one of the figures. He suspected that Jod’e had done it deliberately, for she had played flawlessly until then. True to the new rule, he kissed the doomed figure.
She felt exactly like a woman. Her lips were warm and soft, and he felt the tickle of the breath through her nose. Her breasts messed against him enticingly. He let a hand slip down behind her, out of Alyc’s view, and squeezed a buttock through the cloth; it felt exactly like living flesh. This must be the real Jod’e, presented because she wanted to kiss him. But he had already seen amazing things, when there was magic, and there had to be magic here; how could he be sure it was her?
So he pressed in with his fingers, not only squeezing the buttock but feeling as far as he could into the cleft between buttocks. How far could a neuter mannequin emulate a living woman? It still felt real. He hooked a finger, giving a slow, personal goose, no pun. How long could a living woman keep from reacting to this impertinence? Alas, he found evidence neither way; she seemed to be perfect, physically, and she didn’t react.
But he could delay his decision, and announce his guess when he game ended. So he released her, and she walked to the side, off the board.
The play continued. The geese had been reduced by one, but in here were still more than enough to barricade him against the side, and he was hard-pressed. Then another opportunity offered, and he stepped up to kiss another figure off the board. He came in slowly, looking down into the décolletage of her dress, to see whether the padding that made the figure look female was visible. What was there was visible, but it wasn’t padding; the dress covered a very firm pair of heaving breasts, with an extremely nice cleavage. He pressed against that bosom as he kissed her, and it still felt genuine. If this were not the real woman, he was up against a much stiffer challenge than he had realized.
He released her without a word, and she walked away to join the other. The two of them stood motionless at the side, not seeming much more like dummies, despite their costumes.
There were more moves, and still he was hard-pressed. Then a third opportunity came, and he took it. He was now far more intrigued by the riddle of identity than about the game itself There had to be some way to tell!
This time he placed himself so that his body blocked most or hers from the view of Alyc, and as he bent to kiss her lips the fingers of his right hand gathered in the back of her dress until he hauled up the hem and was able to get in underneath. Slowly kissing her, he reached into her cleft and felt most intimately She wore no panties; the costuming was only external. He ex-plored until he found the aperture he sought: damp and hot. She definitely had the equipment of a living woman.
Yet so had the other two, as far as he had been able to ascent tain. Could the magic have made the mannequin alive, just for the game? Or was it illusion, so detailed that it was complete She had tolerated his exploration with the patience of the inanimate; she never flinched or reacted in any way. He was inclined to believe that all three were mannequins, because of their lack of reaction, but he wasn’t sure. He released her, and she joined the others.
On the fourth one he tried a deep kiss. He opened his mouth on hers, and forced his tongue between her lips. He met her tongue, completely human and ready, matching his, move for move. This had to be real—yet maybe not. If magic could trans-form a boy into a unicorn, why couldn’t it give a mannequin functioning mouth? Or an anatomically correct cleft? Or were the mannequins fashioned as complete android women who seemed lifeless between games, but could animate their bodies for the game? Still, he had seen them without breasts before the game started, yet now they all had them.
He let her go too. As far as he could tell, all of them were complete, and were in every way alive. Yet they could not be. He was baffled.
Desperate, he tried one more thing, when she gave him his chance at the fifth one. He moved to kiss her, but instead of meeting her lips squarely he caught her lower lip between his lips, sucked it into his mouth, and bit it. If he tasted blood—
“Mmmph!” she protested, jerking back. “You win, you guano!” Then she became a large bat, and flew away.
Astonished, he stared after her. “A—a—“ he stammered.
“A vamp-girl,” Alyc said. “How clever of you to figure that out! She had me fooled; I thought she was a werebitch.”
“But I—“ It was still too much to grasp.
“A vamp can’t handle blood, even her own,” Alyc continued. “I mean, they eat it only for very special ceremonies, and it sends them into frenzy. She had to get out of here before she went wild.”
“But they all seemed alive!” he said. “I was just guessing; I didn’t know that was the one. I couldn’t tell them apart at all!”
Alyc smiled. “Then you lucked out. She pulled a double whammy on you. They were all her.”
“But they were all different!”
“No, I saw what was happening, because I was outside the game. She used magic all right, but just on you. To make you think you were taking five different figures, when it was really the same one each time. That’s pretty easy magic, for Phaze folk, if they work at it. Each time, you kissed her, and then one of the dummies walked off, and you thought it was the same. I was so mad! But I couldn’t say anything. I just had to hope you would see through the trick, and make her pay—and you sure did, Lysander, you sure did! That was a stroke of genius!”
“It was luck more than genius,” he confessed. “I was trying to test for the real one, but every one of them seemed so authentic. You mean I kissed the real one five times?”
“Yes. I was getting good and jealous, but you know I was laughing too. When you goosed the goose—!”
So she had seen enough to figure it out. But she was laughing, and he laughed with her. “And she had to stand there and take it, so as not to give herself away. I thought it was a dummy I was goosing!”
“Maybe it was,” she said cheerfully. “Then when you b her—oh, Lysander, I was worried, but you sure came through Let’s go back to my room and you can do it all to me, except the biting.”
“Good enough!” he agreed. He was getting good at schooling himself not to react sexually in public, but now that he realized what he had been doing to a real woman, the notion was getting ahead of him. “Hurry!”
They ran down the halls. Soon they got to her chamber, where they proceeded to passionate sex without bothering with the preliminaries.
After that, things were quieter. He played other games with i Alyc, and enjoyed her frequent sexual favors. There was much to be said for enthusiasm!
He saw Jod’e again, and she did not seem to hold his bite against him.
“You beat me,” she said. “I thought I had you beaten, but you turned the ploy. I have to respect that.” She did not make any further move on him, but he encountered her often enough, because her off-shift was the same as his. He would have been quite intrigued by her, had it not been for his prior association with Alyc, and Jod’e’s too-bold opening move with the game.
He got into the work that Citizen Blue had for him. Blue was trying to fathom exactly what had gone wrong with the Game, Computer; he suspected that the arrival of magic in Proton had infected the computer and given it full self-awareness. Even the self-willed machines were not usually independent; they had awareness and desire, but were satisfied to honor the existing order. The Citizen’s son Mach had been special—and now it seemed the Game Computer was, too.