Out of Phaze

'Thou art a hard man,' Mach muttered.

They returned to the key section of the passage. 'It be very close here,' Mach said. 'I feel his presence.'

'Well, merge!' the Citizen said impatiently.

Mach tuned in, and felt Bane approaching. He stepped up to meet him. They overlapped.

Did you do it? Mach thought.

Aye. And thee?

Yes.

Then it be time.

Time, Mach agreed.

They separated. Mach remained in Proton; they had not tried to exchange frames this time. They had just needed the news of their success to be delayed until now. For Mach had no compelling personal reason to visit Agape, and Bane had none to visit Fleta; the enemy forces would keep the females securely isolated after the exchange. Indeed, this was the only safe policy – as the strategy he and Bane had formulated should show.

Mach looked around, feigning confusion. 'Where am I?' he asked.

'Proton,' the Citizen replied.

'Then I am back! The exchange worked!'

'That's right, robot.'

'Then I have a message for you.'

'A message? But I just sent your other self with one!'

Mach smiled. 'It seems your opposite number had the same notion you did. His message is this: Contact has been reestablished.'

'I know that!' Purple snapped. 'What else?'

'Nothing else. He said you would know what to do, and what message to return.'

'That's the message I sent him!'

'Evidently great minds run in similar channels,' Mach said.

'Don't get cute with me, robot!'

Mach smiled grimly. 'How can I be cute with a person for whom I have no respect?'

'I'll have you dismantled and fed into the refuse recycler!' the Citizen snapped.

'And lose your only contact with Phaze? Whom do you suppose you are fooling, Purple?'

The Citizen began to assume the color of his name. 'You play a dangerous game, machine.'

'Listen, you idiot – this isn't Bane you're talking to! You can't deceive me the way you did him. I am the son of Citizen Blue, and Blue will grind your meaty

posterior into hamburger when he finds out what you have done. How long do you think you can keep it secret?

Purple asserted some control over himself. 'Do you forget that I have your alien girlfriend hostage to your cooperation?'

'What alien girlfriend? I broke up with Doris the cyborg before I went to Phaze; I have no girlfriend in this frame.'

The Citizen took stock, realizing that he had lost that aspect of his leverage when Bane and Mach returned to their own frames. Then he saw his avenue. 'So you do have a girlfriend in Phaze. And if I know my other self – as I surely do – he has that girl in his power. If you don't bring back a message from me, he will take it out on that girl. And that you wouldn't like. Am I correct, machine?'

Mach grimaced, answer enough.

'So you will cooperate – and when Bane returns here, he will cooperate, because I have his girlfriend. We've got you, robot.'

'Until Citizen Blue learns. Then you may not like the reckoning that comes.'

'By the time Blue learns, there may have been a shift in the balance of power. Then I may like the reckoning well enough.'

Mach realized that the cunning Citizen had big aspirations. He was going to use the contact with Phaze to increase his own power, making himself invulnerable to retribution. He could do that only with Mach's cooperation. Therefore the sensible thing to do was not to cooperate. But Fleta was indeed hostage, and until he knew she had been freed – and Bane knew Agape had been freed – they did indeed have to cooperate.

But his resources were not yet exhausted. He needed to distract the Citizen's attention from Agape for about twenty-four hours.

'I'll play you a Game,' Mach said. 'I will break out of this captivity within twenty-four hours. Then you may do with the alien female what you wish – but my father will settle with you for interfering with the Experimental Project and generating an interplanetary incident. I suspect he will simply ship you to Moeba for alien justice.'

'I'll play no Game with you, robot!'

'You can't avoid it, Purple. You have already established it: you have taken me captive. My challenge is to break out. If I fail, I will have to cooperate with you. If I succeed, you will be finished. So it's your gain against your loss. But I'll offer you a draw at the outset: free me and the alien now, and there will be no retribution for what you have already done.'

'You try to dictate terms to me, you inanimate contraption? I already hold the winning cards! There'll be no deal but this: you will deliver the message I send, or you will remain locked up forever!'

'So you decline the proffered draw,' Mach said calmly. 'Then let the Game proceed. Twenty-four hours.'

'There is no Game! No time limit!'

'Keep repeating it, and you may even come to believe it.'

'You will cooperate! You have no choice!'

'You assume I will deliver the correct message?'

'Don't try to bluff me, machine! You always tell the truth. If you take a message, you will deliver it accurately.'

'Yet you assume I'm lying when I tell you the Game is on?'

'You can imagine any Game you want, in your cell! That's all in your circuits.'

'We shall see.'

A serf conducted Mach to a cell, and he was locked in. Three walls were solid stone, the fourth of transparent glass, too thick and strong to break. He had no privacy, and a serf stood guard on the other side of the glass. This was a tighter cell than the one in which Agape was confined; the Citizen knew Mach was more dangerous than the alien female.

Mach sat on the bare bench and crossed his arms. He tuned out, remaining motionless for half an hour while he planned the details of his action, preprogramming as much as he could. When he was satisfied with his plan, he allowed himself to think about Fleta, back in Phaze. He was back in his robot body, and had control over his emotional circuits, but now he released that control and simply felt. He discovered that his feeling for Fleta was just as strong now as it had been in Phaze. A machine could love, for he did.

All too quickly his preset time was up. Mach came alert again.

The serf still guarded the cell, but was no longer paying full attention. In fact, the serf was snoozing on his feet. That was what Mach had counted on. It was easy for a machine to remain alert indefinitely, but difficult for a living person. Faced with Mach's complete immobility, the guard had quickly grown bored and careless.

Mach did not move his hands, but he did twitch the fingers of his right hand, where they were covered by his left upper arm. His middle finger pressed a stud in a private pattern, and a section of pseudomuscle slid aside to expose an access to the internal circuitry of his torso. Robots had always been constructed with access– panels, but Mach was of the most advanced type. His brain was the most sophisticated yet devised for this purpose, and his body was as competent and reliable as any machine could be. The interaction of the two gave him potential that perhaps his own designers had not anticipated.

The fingers quested within the circuitry, dislodging certain fastenings, until a small subunit was loose. Watching the serf-guard to be sure the man did not turn his head, Mach removed that subunit, sliding it out and