Now that it was feasible to do, Bane found that he had lost the desire for sexual activity. Part of it might have been her sheer accommodation; no challenge remained, when she was completely willing and malleable. But most of it was his foolish gut feeling that once Agape had learned all that he might teach her in this regard, there would be no need for her to remain with him. Thus he wanted to conserve the experience rather than expending it, to keep her with him longer. He knew this was nonsensical, but it unmanned him for the moment.
“Let’s play another game,” he said.
She gazed at him in surprise. “Another game? But I thought—”
“Thou didst think rightly! But I—I find I be not ready. I want to experience more things with thee, a greater variety, while I may. I want to build up a store o’ precious memories. Or something. I know not exactly what I want, only that I want it to be with thee.”
“I see I have much to learn yet about the human condition,” she said, perplexed.
“Nay, it be not thee, but me,” he reassured her. “Only accept that I love thee, and let the rest be confused.”
She spread her hands in a careful human gesture. “As you wish, Bane.”
They went out to play another game, and another, and another, the victories and the losses immaterial, only the experience being important. So it continued for several days, with physical, mental and chance games of every type. They raced each other in sailcraft, they played Chinese checkers, they bluffed each other with poker, they battled with punnish riddles. Sometimes they cheated, indulging in one game while nominally playing another, as when they made love while theoretically wrestling in gelatin. Whatever else they did, they lived their joint life to the fullest extent they could manage, trying to cram decades into days.
They found themselves in machine-assisted art: playing parts in a randomly selected play whose other parts were played by programmed robots. Each of them was cued continuously on lines and action, so that there was no problem of memorization or practice. It was their challenge to interpret their parts well, with the Game Computer ready to rate their performance at the end. They had specified a play involving male-female relations, of a romantic nature, with difficulties, and the computer had made a selection from among the many thousands in its repertoire.
Thus they were acting in one by George Bernard Shaw titled You Never Can Tell, dating from the nineteenth century of Earth. Bane was VALENTINE and Agape was GLORIA CLANDON. They were well into the scene.
“Oh, Miss Clandon, Miss Clandon: how could you?” he demanded.
“What have I done?” she asked, startled.
“Thrown this enchantment on me…” And as he spoke the scripted lines, he realized that it was true: she had enchanted him, though she had not intended to.
“I hope you are not going to be so foolish—so vulgar—as to say love,” she responded with uncertain feeling. According to the play, she had no special feeling for him, but in reality she did; this was getting difficult for her.
“No, no, no, no, no. Not love; we know better than that,” he said earnestly. “Let’s call it chemistry…” And wasn’t this also true? What was love, really? But as he spoke, he became aware of something that should have been irrelevant. They had an audience.
“Nonsense!” she exclaimed with more certainty.
They had not had an audience when they started. Several serfs had entered the chamber and taken seats. Why? This was a private game, of little interest to anyone else. “…you’re a prig: a feminine prig: that’s what you are,” he said, enjoying the line. “Now I suppose you’ve done with me forever.”
“…I have many faults,” she said primly. “Very serious faults—of character and temper; but if there is one thing that I am not, it is what you call a prig.” She gazed challengingly at him.
“Oh, yes, you are. My reason tells me so: my experience tells me so.” And his reason and experience told him that something was wrong: there should be no audience.
“…your knowledge and your experience are not infallible,” she was saying, handling her lines with increasing verve. “At least I hope not.”
“I must believe them,” he said, wishing he could warn her about the audience without interfering with the set lines. “Unless you wish me to believe my eyes, my heart, my instincts, my imagination, which are all telling me the most monstrous lies about you.”
“Lies!”
Yet more serfs were entering the audience chamber. Were they players waiting for their turn? “Yes, lies.” He sat down beside her, as the script dictated, but wasn’t sure he did it convincingly. “Do you expect me to believe that you are the most beautiful woman in the world?”
Now she was evidently feeling the relevance! “That is ridiculous, and rather personal.”
“Of course it’s ridiculous…” His developing paranoia about the audience was, too! He wished they could just quit the play here, and get away; he didn’t trust this at all. But as they exchanged their lines, his apprehension increased. Suppose the Contrary Citizens had managed to divert Blue’s minions, so that there was no protection for the moment?
“And I’m a feminine prig,” she was saying.
“No, no: I can’t face that: I must have one illusion left: the illusion about you. I love you.”
She rose, as the cue dictated, and turned. Then she spied the audience. She almost lost her place. “I am sorry. I—” Now she did lose it, and barely recovered. “What can I say?”
What, indeed? Now it seemed sure: the Citizens were about to make their move. But how could he get away from here with Agape, without setting off the trap? They needed a natural exit, to get offstage, out of sight.
“…I can’t tell you—” he was saying.
“Oh, stop telling me how you feeclass="underline" I can’t bear it.”
And he saw that the scene was coming to a close. Here was their chance! “Ah, it’s come at last: my moment of courage.” He seized her hands, according to the script, and she looked at him in simulated terror, also scripted. But their emotions were becoming real, for a different reason. “Our moment of courage!” He drew her in to him and kissed her. “Now you’ve done it, Agape. It’s all over: we’re in love with one another.”
Oops—he had used her real name, not her play name! But he couldn’t change it now. It was time for his exit.
“Goodbye. Forgive me,” he said, and kissed her hands, and retreated.
But now the men of the audience were advancing on the stage. Bane ran back, grabbed her arm, and hauled her along with him offstage.
“It is happening!” she exclaimed as they ran for a rear exit.
“I think so. We must get back to the main complex, where Citizen Blue is watching.” For this particular chamber was outside the region of the Experimental Project of humans, robots, androids, cyborgs and aliens living in harmony. Most facilities were set within it, but when particular ones were crowded, the Game Computer assigned players to the nearest outside ones. Thus it seemed that Bane and Agape had inadvertently strayed beyond the scope of Citizen Blue’s protection, and the Contrary Citizens had seized the moment.
There were serfs in the hall outside. They spotted Bane and Agape and moved purposefully toward them.
They retreated back into the play complex. But they could hear the serfs in pursuit here too, coming through the stage region.
“The service apertures,” Agape said. “Go there!”
Bane obeyed. Maybe there would be an escape route there.
There was not. The service door led only into a chamber in which an assortment of maintenance machines were parked.
“We be lost!” Bane exclaimed.
“Maybe not!” She hurried to a communications panel, activated it, and tapped against it with a measured cadence.