'E. EARTH, F. FIRE, G. GAS, H. H20,' she read. 'I don't believe I understand.'
'They really stand for the type of surface on which the game is to be played,' Mach said. 'Flat, Variable, Discontinuous or Liquid. Some programmer decided to get clever with the letters, matching them up with words. It is true that the earth is normally a flat surface, and fire forms a variable surface, and gas is discontinuous if you seek to stand on it, and H20 stands for water, which is a liquid. All you need be concerned about is the nature of the surface upon which you prefer to play, whether flat, or like a mountain, or-'
'Thank you,' she said, and touched her choice.
His own choices were 5. SEPARATE, 6. INTERACTIVE, 7. COMBAT and 8. COOPERATIVE. He touched the second.
The square for FLAT SURFACE/INTERACTIVE brightened. Now the grid became a smaller one of nine boxes, with a list of terms at the side. 'We get to fill in this one ourselves,' he explained. 'Choose any game that you like.'
'I do not know these games,' she protested. 'Marbles, earthball,
Because she was alien. All the common flat-surface ball games were unknown to her.
'We'll simplify it,' he said. 'We'll fill the entire subgrid with one game, tiddlywinks. Then I'll show you how to play that.'
And so they did. Their selection made, they adjourned to a chamber with a table, and thereon was the tiddlywinks set. Mach showed her how to make one chip jump when pressured by another, and she was delighted. They played the game, and he won, but she was quite satisfied. Now she had a notion how things were done on the Planet of Proton.
They exited the Game Annex. Mach would have preferred to go his own way, but was uncertain how to dispose of Agape. He had been given a commitment to assist her, and though he knew the basis for that assignment was largely spurious, he also knew that she needed guidance, and that he was a more responsible guide than the android Narda had been. Thus he could not let it go as casually as he had undertaken it.
'Am I now becoming a burden to you, Mach?' she inquired nervously.
'This is true,' he agreed. 'But I conclude that I should assist you further, so that you will be able to handle our society alone.'
She made an uncertain laugh, as though both the act and the basis for it were novelties. 'You are unlike Narda.'
'She is an android. I am a robot.'
She turned her head to gaze at him with perplexity. 'I had assumed you were android or human, like the others. You resemble those.'
'I am crafted to resemble them, just as you are. But my interior operations are no more human than are yours.' He spotted a dining region. 'Do you wish to eat?'
'That is appealing,' she agreed.
He guided her to one of the food dispensers. 'You may describe whatever you wish, and it will craft it for you,' he said.
'I am incompletely familiar with local custom. Perhaps I should attempt whatever you choose to consume.'
Mach smiled. 'Oh, I don't have to eat. My power cell takes care of my energy needs.'
'Yes, of course; you are a machine. Perhaps we should dispense with this activity, in that case.'
Mach considered. He suspected that she was hungry, but so anxious about making an error of custom that she was afraid to make her own choice. 'I
'My gratitude.' Indeed, she was almost fawning.
He placed the order, and in a moment they had two tall containers of the beverage, complete with straws.
'Is it permissible to be private?' she asked.
'Certainly.' He showed the way to a booth, and the curtain closed about them, cutting off all sight and sound of the remainder of the dining alcove.
Mach sipped his drink, using the straw. Agape hesitated. 'It is a matter of generating a partial vacuum in the mouth,' he explained. 'That causes the pressure of the air to push the fluid up through the straw.'
'My concern is not of that nature,' she said. 'I am an alien, amoebic in nature. I can maintain the human form for ordinary pursuits, but am unable to do so for imbibation. I am concerned that my mode of assimilation would be a social indiscretion in your presence.'
'I will of course leave the booth if you prefer,' Mach said. 'But I am scientifically interested in your biology, and I am not subject to annoyance because of differing modes of operation.'
Still she hesitated. 'Narda termed it 'gross.' I believe that is why she preferred to separate herself from me.'
Androids were notorious for their crudities of behavior and humor. What could Narda have found gross? 'Please be reassured, Agape. I am a machine. I have no emotion not programmed, and even those can be evoked or revoked at will. Nothing you might do would dismay me.'
'You are certain?'
'I am certain.'
'Then I shall assimilate this material.'
She put her hands to the container and stretched it wide, so that it gradually reformed into a broad, shallow dish. Mach had known how malleable the material was, as the empty containers were normally compacted into balls and rolled into the recycling hopper, but he had never before seen a person reform one while it was full of fluid.
Now she leaned forward, bringing her head directly over the dish. Her features melted, the nose, eyes, ears and mouth disappearing. Her head receded into her neck, and her breasts lifted to join it, forming a single globular mass above the table. This mass flattened and descended until it covered the full dish. The flesh dipped into the beverage.
In the course of the next few minutes the beverage disappeared, absorbed into the pancake-shaped mass of flesh. The amoeba was assimilating nourishment in the fashion of its kind.
Then the mass lifted, forming another glob. The glob stretched out, narrowing to form the neck, bulging below to fashion breasts, and shaping gradually back into the human features above. The configuration he recognized as Agape returned, features clean, eyes and mouth closed.
The eyes opened, and then the mouth. 'Do you wish to depart my presence now?' she asked.
'No. I find your process of assimilation fascinating.'
'It is not gross to you?'
'It is educational to me. I appreciate being shown it.'
She looked at him without further comment. He remembered to resume work on his own drink.
'If I may inquire without offense,' she said, 'how is it that you, a machine, have been crafted in human form? I have seen other machines in other forms, suited to their tasks.'
'I am what is known as a humanoid robot. I have been crafted to resemble a living human being as closely as is feasible, in both the physical and mental states. It is part of my father's effort to integrate the self-willed machines into the society of Proton. If humanoid ones can be successful at this, then the nonhumanoid ones can follow.'
'But do not human beings grow from small creatures formed within the bodies of their parents? Surely you have a maker, not a father.'
'I have a father and a mother,' Mach said firmly. 'My father is Citizen Blue, an immigrant from the frame of Phaze. My mother is Sheen, a female robot. It is possible for a female robot to be implanted with a human egg-cell that can be fertilized internally by a human male, and for her to nourish that cell in the laboratory of her body and birth it in the human fashion, becoming a surrogate mother to his child. But Sheen elected not to be modified to accommodate this; she preferred to have a robot baby, like herself. Therefore I am a robot, but my basic programming makes my awareness and intellectual quotient very similar to those of my father.'
'But then you were constructed as an adult, fully formed as you are now.'
