Out of Phaze (3 page)

was both human and machine, she understood Mach’s ambivalence. He had one human and one machine parent; having experienced the machine existence, he longed for the human one, the other face of his coin. Doris had actually known both, and that made her endlessly fascinating. But she did have that erratic streak, which could make her difficult to deal with at times. Evidently she was toying with the notion of having physical relations with a flesh creature, having satisfied herself about those with a nonflesh creature. Now that she was angry with him, she was using this notion to force him to respond.

All because he had tried to help the alien female get adjusted. Yet Agape had been in genuine need; what else could he have done? A machine could have ignored her plight, but a human being would have helped, and it was the human model he preferred to emulate.

They entered at their doors. The game was on.

It was gloomy inside, but his vision adjusted automatically to the changed conditions. He could see well enough. The passage curved and recurved and divided. There was no way to be sure which passage would lead most directly to intersect with Doris’ door; he would have to depend on speed and memory, learning the maze as he went. For the trick was not merely to find the Damsel first, it was to bring her back out. If he got her, but then the Monster intercepted them, he would probably be lost, because the Monster was by definition the stronger of the two males, and would win any direct encounter. This was counterbalanced by the Damsel’s established preference for the Hero; she would try to help him find her, and would even search for him, while trying to avoid the Monster. If the Hero touched her first, she would go quietly wherever he led; if the Monster caught her, she would go with him, but would scream all the way, making it easier for the Hero to intercept them and perhaps prevent the Monster from making his exit.

Now Mach heard her screams. The Monster had caught her already! How could it have happened so quickly?

But as he moved on, he realized that the sounds were wrong. Doris was still alone. She wasn’t exactly screaming, she was calling. “Hero! Hero!” she called. “Come find me!”

The fool! Didn’t she realize that the Monster could hear her just as well as the Hero could? Since Ware was already familiar with this variant of the maze, the advantage would be his; he could go directly to her without false detours.

Then Mach heard his rival, pounding along a nearby passage. Ware knew where he was going, certainly!

Well, there was one way to even things up: he could follow the Monster! Mach ducked into a cul-de-sac, hiding, as the android passed, then emerged and pursued him quietly. Soon they both arrived at the Damsel’s site. As Ware closed on her, she neither screamed nor fled as she was supposed to; she simply waited for him. Had she forgotten all the conventions of this game?

Ware slowed, approaching her. He reached out his hand to tag her, and she extended her hand to him.

Something very like human emotion took Mach. Doris was trying to give the victory to Ware!

Mach launched himself at the back of the Monster. By striking by surprise, at the moment the rival’s attention was distracted by imminent victory, he might score against him; the Game Computer allowed for such tactics. All he had to do was touch Ware from behind—

“Look out!” Doris cried.

Ware, alerted, swung around to meet Mach’s charge. They collided, face to face.

“Hero killed,” the voice of the Game Computer announced. Thanks to Doris’ betrayal, Mach had lost the game—and her favor.

Back in his private serf chamber, Mach pondered the ramifications. He had thought that Doris’ anger with him was a misunderstanding, spawned by his appearance with the alien female. Now he realized that he had misjudged the cyborg. She had grown tired of him, but preferred a pretext to separate. After all, if she formally broke up with him, others might conclude that she liked breaking hearts (or power cells, as the case might be) and be wary of her, leaving her without male company. She was not the sort to risk that. So she had engineered it so that another male had taken her away from Mach. That left her nominally innocent. She had had her prospective companion, the android Ware, get his fellow android Narda to set Mach up with Agape, then had sought out the pair and made a scene—with Ware handily near. How cunning! Then she had worked to ensure Ware’s victory, by “misplaying” her part, and finally openly betraying Mach. Thus he, Mach, had become the butt of the play. Had he “won” her, then there would have been no onus on her, and she could have tried another ploy at another time.

So he was without a girlfriend—and perhaps had been for longer than he had realized. What was he, after all, except a machine—that could not even experience the grief that a human or android or even alien being would at such a situation! No wonder Doris had grown tired of him. Living creatures had genuine emotions that made them less predictable and more interesting. How he wished he could be alive!

He lay on his bed, which he didn’t really need because it was not necessary for him to sleep, and invoked his creative circuit. This was newly developed, and had been installed only a few months ago. He had taken to playing with it at odd moments, savoring the illusion of erratic thought. It had random factors included, so that the same starting thought could lead to different results, some of them only marginally logical. Living creatures were capable of illogic, and that was part of their appeal. Even the cyborg Doris, with her inanimate body and living brain, could be marvelously illogical when she chose. Mach wanted that capacity for himself, but so far had never been able to originate a truly illogical thought process. The circuit was only a circuit; he could reflect on it, but it did not govern him. He always knew the illogic for what it was, and that prevented him from being truly alive.

Now he tried a special variant. He tried to imagine himself In the mysterious frame of Phaze, where magic supposedly operated and science did not. That was so illogical that it would represent a monumental leap of belief on his part. If he could successfully believe that, he could believe almost anything—including the possibility of somehow coming alive.

He imagined having a living brother his own age, there in Phaze. No, not a brother—an alternate self, who bore the same relation to him that Stile did to Citizen Blue. The same person he was, only split apart from his reality, existing in that nonreality of Phaze. It was of course nonsensical to postulate a robot having an alternate self—but no more so than the notion of a land of magic. How convenient that that land was forever sealed off from Proton, according to his father’s story! No way to prove or disprove it! What had happened, a generation ago? Had Stile exchanged places with another Galactic called Blue, who had been raised on another planet in the galaxy? Called it “a fantastic world” and that was how the idea of fantasy started? But now Mach concentrated, trying to believe in the literal magic, in the living boy just like himself, with whom he might establish rapport. He tried to force the delusion on himself, to make himself irrational. If only he could believe!

Then, almost, it seemed that he achieved it. Something like a thought came to him: Who are you? A thought he might not have originated. A living thought.

I am Mach! he thought back. Let’s exchange places! As the android girl had done, boldly offering to change companions, and succeeding.

All right—for a moment, the thought came back. His imagination was achieving a new level! It really seemed like another person thinking.

Mach made a special effort of concentration and longing—and suddenly experienced a strange wrenching. Alarmed, he eased off; had he blown a circuit? He felt quite strange.

Then he opened his eyes.

His room had changed.

Room? It was no longer a room at all! It was a forest glade. He was sitting on a rock in its center.

Mach blinked. Sometimes dust fouled his lenses and distorted his vision; the act of blinking normally cleared it.

The glade remained. Late afternoon sunlight slanted down to touch the thickly braided vines and leaves at one side, and grass grew ankle-deep in the center. None of this existed, of course, in his room.

Mach got up and went to the edge, intrigued to discover how far this illusion carried. He touched a broad leaf—and it felt genuine. He pulled on a vine, and it resisted his effort, being springy.

He had tried to switch places with his phantom twin— and found himself here. Was there really a twin, and had he really switched—or had he merely succeeded in establishing his belief in the impossible? Surely the latter—but this still represented a significant victory. He had achieved illogic!

Moved by the wonder of it, he walked around the edge of the glade. He found a path leading from it, twisting like a serpent between the large trees until it disappeared in the distance. Should he follow this? He looked down at himself, considering—and made another phenomenal discovery. He was clothed! He wore boots, trousers and a long-sleeved shirt—all blue. He had been so distracted by the living glade that he had not noticed his own condition!

His first reaction was shock. He was impersonating a Citizen! That could get him ejected from the planet! Only in very special situations, such as in costumed drama in the Game, were serfs permitted apparel.

His second was wonder. How had he come by such an outfit? Had he taken it from his father’s collection? Citizen Blue did prefer this color. But Mach would have had to be crazy to do such a thing, and that was a state a robot was incapable of achieving.

Or was it? Wasn’t believing the impossible a condition of insanity? If he could convince himself that he was in a glade instead of his room, could he likewise garb himself in his father’s clothing without realizing? If so, this effect was dangerous!

Quickly he removed the clothing. But he discovered as he did so that it fit him perfectly. This was odd, because Mach was five centimeters taller than Citizen Blue. The Citizen was a very small man whose enormous political power more than made up for his lack of physical stature. Mach could have been any height he chose, but did not want to create any awkwardness for his father, so he had compromised by assuming his mother’s height. This put him in the low-average range for women, and well below average for men. But he had long since realized that physical height was not the most important aspect of individual importance, so he was satisfied. But now—how could he have worn his father’s clothing without it binding on him? This clothing seemed to have been fitted specifically for his own body.

His thoughts were interrupted by an appearance in the sky. It seemed to be a huge, grotesque bird—but what a bird! Mach stared disbelievingly. He had studied birds, learning the major types, because Birdwatching was one of the events in the Game. No bird like this was listed. This one had a huge, misshapen head, and dangling breasts like those of an old woman.

A what, and what? Mach shook his head and looked again, but the creature had already disappeared.

He knew what it was, however. The description fit that of a harpy—a mythical construct, part avian, part human. The appearance of such a creature was of course another impossibility. Even if some sinister laboratory had crafted an android in that guise, the dynamics of flight would have rendered the harpy groundbound. The necessary wingspan and muscular attachments—

Mach found his heart beating rapidly. The implausibilities of his situation were threatening to overwhelm his equilibrium! He was not encountering just one unbelievable thing, but a complex of them! Trees, clothing, mythology—

His heart? He had no heart! He was a robot!

Mach set his right palm at his chest. He felt the beating of it. He lifted his left hand, set his right fingers against the wrist beside the large tendon and pressed in. Again he felt that steady beat.

He was breathing, too. He had always been able to breathe, so as to be able to talk, but it had been optional, never necessary, and he normally didn’t bother unless in company. Now he held his breath—and in moments was uncomfortable, exactly as if becoming starved for oxygen.

He reached under his left arm, seeking the stud that opened a panel there. He found none. Slowly he moved his fingers to his forearm. He pinched the skin there, hard.

Pain flared, and in a moment a red spot appeared where his fingernail had dug into the skin.

Mach had to lean against a tree to keep from reeling. He was alive! His body was fashioned of flesh; it had a heart, and it felt direct pain.

Now he knew that he had suffered a far greater breakthrough than he had anticipated. He had made his belief in the impossible total, and stepped into the realm of the living. Of course this could not be literal, but even as a dream it was astonishing, for robots did not dream. That new circuit had really performed! He had achieved what no robot had ever done before: fashioned a total illusion of life.

But now that he had done this, what had he really accomplished? Metallic insanity? Was his body lying on the bed while his brain was locked into its own program of fantasy? That could be fun for a while, but after a few hours he would be in trouble, because his mother would discover him and bring in a technician to repair the glitch. If the case were judged to be too extreme, they would reprogram his brain unit, wiping out everything he had accomplished here, including the memory of it. He would be forever after bound to his natural robotic state.