Unicorn Point (34 page)

She smiled reminiscently, enjoying the indiscretions, then resumed her narrative. “In the end I made him a deal: my help in his endeavor in exchange for his single tryst with me.
 
I called him my bantam—you may have noted my affinity for chickens—and I confess I was hot for him, both personally and as a matter of pride. You see, I have had an undisclosed number of rejuvenations; I am of great-grandmotherly age, not the maiden I appear. I knew my body interested him, as indeed it should; I crafted it to appeal to the masculine taste in subdued but potent manner. Some women believe that mass is everything, and have their breasts and buttocks expanded enormously; it is true that men notice these attributes, but they also convey a suggestion of cheapness. Proportion is the secret; modest projections whose contours are esthetic attract the male interest on a more subtle level, and the resultant desire can be more pervasive and lasting. It is the difference between fish eggs and caviar. So Stile wanted me, but could not admit it; I had to trap him into a commitment. He found my age to be more of a barrier than my nature; indeed, he was having relations with a machine at the time. Men are like that.”

She paused, eying the hens speculatively. “I don’t suppose you’d like to have a rooster here?”

The hens looked dismayed.

Merle laughed. “Yes, it is true that a rooster’s notion of love is what my kind would call rape. Not a really significant difference between the species, but we females can live with out it. That, perhaps, is an aspect of the attraction Stile had for me: not only was he small, being shorter than I, but he was a gentleman in the old sense. It was an unconscious chivalry I found most charming. He was more of a man in every respect than most, but small, and shy, and charming in his naivete. But what a change he wrought in Proton society!
 
He assumed power, and brought the frames together, then separated them after alleviating the imbalance which had de veloped because of the export of Protonite. You see, the par allelism between Proton and Phaze is such that what is not equivalent tends to become so, but the Phazite had remained while the Protonite was diminishing, and that struck at the very root of the nature of the frames, and would have led to mutual destruction had he not acted. So he did what had to be done, and separated the frames so that no more mischief could occur, and settled in Phaze.”

She paused again, as if interrupted, but the hens were rapt.
 
“What’s that, you say? How could he meet his commitment to me, if he was gone? Well he did, in his fashion. He left his beautiful bantam body here, taken over by his other self, the Blue Adept of Phaze. The Citizens had to accept this exchange, because many of them had other selves in Phaze and had agreed that in the event of the death of one of them, the Phaze alternate would be accepted in lieu. It was a device for ensuring proper succession, you see. So Citizen Blue ap peared, wielding the power of Stile, and the battle between them has continued ever since. The Contrary Citizens wish to recover control so that they can exploit the planet without regard for tomorrow, while Blue fights to maintain a proper balance, and also to liberalize Proton society. Philosophy is no concern of mine, but I do like Blue as I liked Stile, so I support him. And it was Blue who discharged Stile’s commitment to me.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, what a night we had! The man was between loves at the time, having lost his wife to his other self, and not yet committed to the robot woman; he had a lot to give. He really made me feel the age I looked. But that was it; thereafter he married the machine, and has been faithful to her since. Still, I am minded to play a little game with him, if you do not object. After all, I like to think that I am approaching parallelism with the Yellow Adept, who can use an elixir to make herself as blushingly beautiful as she once may have been, and who was once rather taken with Stile herself. We do have our little ways with those of the masculine persuasion.” The hens looked at her quizzically. They now had an excellent view of what she offered men, as they squatted almost within the area enclosed by her spread legs, but did not seem to understand.

“You see, things have heated up recently,” she explained.
 
“Blue’s robot son Mach managed to exchange with Stile’s human son Bane in Phaze, establishing the first contact be tween the frames in twenty years. What a can of worms that opened! We humans don’t appreciate worms the way you chickens do. The robot boy, delighted to have a living body, fell in love with a unicorn there, while the human boy loved an alien creature here. Didn’t that make conventional folk sweat! Now both those couples have offspring, who have be come pawns in the larger power play. Little Nepe is captive of the Citizens, and little Flach captive of the Adepts in Phaze.
 
So they have scheduled a big double tourney to settle it, and the winner will have the ultimate power. Am I boring you?” The hens gazed at her. They did not seem bored.

 
“Well, then, I shall tell you the rest of it. I have been busy helping Citizen Blue with the negotiations. The details of the Proton Tourney had to be worked out to satisfy the disparate interests of both sides, and this was most difficult to do, be cause of course each wanted the advantage. My mind has not been so pleasantly exerted in decades! We finally hammered out a compromise. For the first contest, each side would choose a player from the elder generation—the ones who fought each other when Stile was on the scene in Proton.
 
Thus Citizen Purple met the robot Sheen, Blue’s wife, in a dragon duel, and I regret to say defeated her in fair play. For the third contest, each side will choose a representative from the middle generation, those who came on the scene when Mach and Bane exchanged places. And for the second con test, players have been chosen from the young generation, or those who entered the picture more recently. That completes the span of generations. But because this contest may be cru cial—there may be no third contest, if the Citizens win this one—they arranged another device. Each side got to choose the opponent the other side would put up.”

She laughed. “Yes, I see how that amazes you! How could such a thing be workable? Wouldn’t the choices be designed to be the worst possible players, to guarantee the loss? And the answer is, of course—but the array of choices is sharply limited. Only those who actually have participated in signif icant events were eligible. The Oracle passed judgment, re jecting ineligible nominations. Thus the Citizens came to be represented by a young woman named Tsetse—some time I really must explore the derivation of that name!—who has no Game training but who, being the secretary of Citizen Tan’s sister and the mistress of Citizen Purple, qualifies despite the defection to Tania. Her assets are said to be almost entirely in her body, not her brain. The Citizens are not pleased, but are stuck for it. And Blue’s side is to be represented by a robot friend of little Nepe’s called Troubot, former informa tion expediter for the Citizens. Now you might think such a robot would be ineligible to represent Blue, but the Citizens pointed out that he in effect defected when he helped Nepe’s alien mother to escape the planet, and to that logic the Oracle acceded. So Troubot it is; he will play against Tsetse for extraordinarily high stakes. But there is just one little problem.”

She paused again, artfully, and sure enough, the hens peered at her attentively, enraptured by her narration. Merle was good at making an effect, and she enjoyed it now. “But I doubt that you would be interested in such a detail. Perhaps it is time for me to go tease Blue.”

Heningway actually stood and came closer, as if to plead for the finale. Merle stroked her again and relented. “Very well, it is this: Troubot can not be found. He is hiding, surely fearing the vengeance of the Citizens, and though the call has been spread across the networks, he has not responded. I am not a robot, but I believe I can guess his concern: how can he be sure the call is legitimate? It could have been put out by the Citizens, to lure him in, so that they can capture and destroy him. Naturally he is cautious. But as it happens, the call is legitimate, and if Blue does not succeed in presenting Troubot for the contest by tomorrow. Blue will have to forfeit the game and the planet to the Contrary Citizens. So you can see the matter is critical. Blue is desperate—exactly as the Citizens hoped. They have found a ploy that may defeat him by default, and Tsetse will never have to play. It’s a beautiful tactic, I must confess; I could hardly have thought of one better.”

She stood. “Well, you have been an excellent audience, but I think I shall go call Blue and tease him a bit. I’ll make him come here, so you can see him sweat. Enjoy your selves!”

Merle departed, closing the chamber door behind her. The hens remained where they were for a time, listening; only when they heard the second door close, signaling the woman’s entry into her house proper, did they rise. Then Heningway went to the door to peek out, while the others milled about aimlessly, pecking at stray grains.
 
Heningway, reassured that the woman really was gone, re turned to the center of the little flock. She gave a coded series of clucks. Immediately the others clustered close. They hud dled, stretching their necks, touching their beaks together.
 
With that contact, their nature changed. A person watching would have seen only their peculiar formation, but one who tuned in their electrical activity would have discovered the reality.

For the six individuals represented the components of a larger apparatus. The little flock was not a flock, but the parts of a self-willed robot. Each part was equipped with chicken legs and chicken head and feathers, but was not alive. Each was set up to emulate the simple acts of a hen: walking, pecking, defecating. The droppings were of pseudo-organic matter, because these hens had no digestive systems. The main brain unit was in the part labeled Heningway, with supplementary parts distributed among the others so that they could react to events in a reasonable manner. Fortunately, hens were not expected to be overly ambitious, and this was an extremely protected environment.

The whole entity was Troubot, the machine for which everyone was searching. He had delivered Agape to the spaceport, then gone into hiding, knowing that he was now a marked machine. From his years of association with Nepe he had learned much, and knew how to hide so mat he could not be found. The principle, she had explained, was surprise: to do the unexpected. Thus she had become a machine, the one form others thought impossible for her. Of course she had never been a true machine, but rather a cyborg, but she had so masked her living portion that it was virtually indistinguishable from inanimate substance. This was, she had explained, merely an extension of her natural ability to harden her substance into bonelike or hornlike rigidity. It was normally done only to part of the body, for the sake of stability, or to emulate the body of some other form, such as me human form. But with effort and practice she had extended it to al most the whole of her body, and had made her flesh harder than bone or hoof, so that it most resembled metal. Thus she had remained safely hidden despite a thorough search for her, because they were not searching for a robot.
 
Troubot had learned the principle, and applied it well. First he had considered what would be the least likely form for him to assume, and concluded that it would be that of a living creature. But he realized that this would be a creature of at least his present size, and if others reasoned mat he might assume such a form, they had but to check for all new creatures at or above that size; that of a large dog. There were not many, and virtually all were on the estates of Citizens, and duly registered; verification could be very quick, and he would soon be isolated. That was too much of a chance to take. So he worked out a second ploy, reducing the size by breaking himself into components. He had learned how to do this by studying the manuals available in the information service that he used; it took some special engineering, but he had had years to work it out, and had done so. Now he had used it, becoming a flock of six hens, concealing himself by flesh, size, number and sex. He had replaced the flock of this Citizen, having ascertained that though she maintained her birds well, she had grown out of the habit of visiting them, so that for weeks at a time they were fed only by the auto-matic servitors.

He had come to her estate, bridged the security measures she really was not security conscious, being a socialite who lived mainly for the challenge of social relations—and taken her birds to a holding area for quarantine. He had set it up so that they would be fed just as before, in a chamber much as before, and no notice of this detention was fed into the planetary records. As a trouble-shooting robot, he was good at this sort of thing; he had taught Nepe how, just as she had taught him her skills, during the years of their friendship.
 
Thus the hens were safe, and could be replaced in Merle’s coop at any time, no one the wiser. In this manner he had disappeared, and the searchers had had no better luck locat ing him than they had had with Nepe. Only the capture of her other self in Phaze had led to her exposure. Then he had resumed the job she had done for him, and when it appeared there would be suspicion because of his association with her, he had moved into other employment, remaining free.
 
But after he helped Agape me search became far more intense. It seemed everybody wanted him, and he wasn’t sure for what reason. Nepe had put it succinctly: “Hide, Troubot, and don’t get caught!” That he had done.
 
Now Merle had resumed paying attention to her hens. Did she know? If so, what did it mean? She was aligned with Blue, but was of an independent nature; no one ever knew what was in her heart. As a general rule, she did what was best for Merle, and never let an opportunity pass for some private advancement.