Piers Anthony: Robot Adept

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.

“Approach the cyborg brusher,” the speaker said. The lid lifted on the top of a huge cleaning machine.

“Come, Bane!” she said, running toward the device,

“What—?”

“The self-willed machines are helping us! Trust them!”

Bemused, he followed her. “Remove the brain unit,” the speaker said.

There was a pounding on the door. Evidently it had locked behind them, barring access by the serfs. That could not last long, for all doors had manual overrides.

Bane saw that there was a complicated apparatus just below the lid, with wiring and tubing and plastic-encased substance that looked alive. He took hold of the handles at either side and lifted. He had to exert his robotic strength, for the unit was heavy, but it came up and out.

“Set it here,” the speaker said. A panel slid aside, revealing a chamber set in the wall.

He carried the brain unit across and shoved it into the chamber. The panel slid shut. Evidently this was a servicing facility for the living cyborg brain.

“Stand for dismantling,” the speaker said. Another machine rolled toward him.

Bane hesitated. Then he heard an ominous silence at the door. They were setting up for the override! He stood for dismantling.

Quickly, efficiently, and painlessly the machine removed his arms, legs and head. It carried these to the big cyborg husk and installed them in the bowels of it. Then it stashed his torso in a refuse chamber in its base. Finally it separated his head into several parts, and his perceptions became scattered. The chamber seemed to wave crazily as one of his eyes was carried across and set into a perceptor extension. He had no idea how it was possible for him to see while his eyes were disconnected from his head, or to remain conscious while his head was apart from his body, but evidently it was. The machines of Proton had strong magic!

Meanwhile, Agape was doing something; he heard fragments of the instructions to her. It seemed she was required to melt into a new brain-container that was being set into the machine.

All this occurred extremely rapidly. In less than a minute the two of them had been installed into the cyborg. His accurate robot time sense told him it was so, despite the subjective human impression.

The entrance to the chamber opened. Bane saw this with his two widely separated eyes, and heard it with his buried ears. Six serfs charged in.

“Search this room!” one directed the others. “They have to be in here!”

They spread out and searched, but could not find the fugitives. They did find a panel that concealed a service tunnel leading to another drama complex. “Check that complex!” the leader snapped. “They must have crawled through.”

Four men hurried out. But the leader was too canny to dismiss this chamber yet. “Check these machines, too,” he snapped. “Some of them are big enough to hold a body.”

They checked, opening each machine and poking inside. They checked the cyborg, and found only its brain unit and operative attachments. At length, frustrated, they departed.

DO NOT REACT. Bane saw these words appear briefly on a wall panel, and realized they were for him. The hunt remained on; this could be a trap.

After a few minutes the speaker said: “Cleaners ten, twelve and nineteen to the adjacent drama chamber for cleanup.”

“We are nineteen,” Agape’s voice came faintly to him. “I will direct you; you must operate the extremities.”

So they were now a true cyborg: a living brain and a mechanical body! Bane discovered that when he tried to walk, his legs were wheels. He started a little jerkily, but soon got the hang of it, and propelled them after the other contraptions toward the door.

Outside the serfs were waiting. Obviously they expected Bane and Agape to walk out, thinking that they were safe.

He took them around and into the drama suite the two of them had vacated. “Brush the floor,” Agape said.

Bane tried to reach with an arm—and extruded an appendage whose terminus was a roller brush. He lowered this to the floor and twitched his fingers. The brush spun. He started brushing the floor.

DO NOT REACT, a panel flashed.

Then a serf wearing the emblem of Citizen Blue entered. “Good thing I got here in time!” he exclaimed. “They had us blocked off. Come on; we’re going home.”

Bane continued brushing.

“Hey, you’re safe now!” the man said. “At least, you will be when we get you to the Citizen’s territory. Come on!”

Bane ignored him, playing the dumb machine.

Disgruntled, the serf departed.

They continued brushing the floor. In due course the job was done. The two other machines had cleaned off the chairs and dusted the walls. “Return to storage,” the speaker said. They returned to the storage chamber. There they parked and waited for another hour. What was going on? Obviously the self-willed machines were protecting them, but could the chase still be on? Where was Citizen Blue?

The panel flashed. REACT.

Then Citizen Blue walked in, followed by Sheen, his wife. “Is this chamber secure?” Blue asked.

“Yes, Citizen,” the speaker replied.

“I owe you.”

“No. Your activities benefit our kind.”

Blue faced the cyborg brusher. “Are you in good condition?”

Now at last Bane felt free to answer; Blue was evidently legitimate. “Yes,” he said through his mouthspeaker, which was now set near the top of the apparatus.

“This is a respite, not the end. You will assume our likenesses. Keep alert.”

Then the dismantling unit approached, and reversed the prior procedure. It extracted Bane’s arms, legs, torso and head and assembled them, so that soon he was back to his original condition. Agape was removed from the brain chamber, as a mound of jellylike flesh, and she stretched out and up and became herself in human form.

“You will assume our forms,” Blue said. “We shall not be challenged in the halls, but you would be.”

Agape began to change again, orienting on Sheen.

“No,” Blue said. “Emulate me. The sensors can distinguish between flesh and machine.”

“But I am alien,” she protested. “They will know I am not human. I can emulate only an android, if they test.”