She nodded knowingly. “But you,” she said to Sheen. “You had best keep that luscious body out of his sight, or you could mess it up for your mistress.” Stile smiled. Naturally the serf assumed Sheen was also an employee. Sheen could mess it up for any rival woman, and not just because of her beauty.
The shuttle slowed. “This is my station,” the woman said. “Yours is next. Good luck!”
When they were alone. Stile turned to Sheen. “I don’t like this. We can’t skip out on a command appearance, but something seems wrong. Could the message be faked?”
“It’s genuine,” Sheen said. She was a machine; she could tell. “But I agree. Something is funny. I’m summoning help.”
“I don’t think you should involve your friends in this. They don’t want to call the attention of a Citizen to them-selves.”
“Only to trace the origin of that message,” she said. “And to rouse your robot double. I think we can stall a few minutes while he travels by fast freight.” The shuttle stopped. They got out and moved to a local food dispenser, using up the necessary time. Sheen ate a piece of reconstituted carrot. She was a machine but could process food through her system, though it never was digested. Stile contented himself with a cup of nutro-cocoa. In a surprisingly short time a freight hatch opened and the Stile-robot emerged, carrying a shipment tag. “Start breathing,” Sheen told it, and the model animated. “Take this card, report to this address. Broadcast continuously to me.”
Without a word the robot took the card, glanced at it, and walked down the passage. The thing looked so small! Stile was embarrassed to think that this was the way he appeared to others: a child-man, thirty-five years old but the size of a twelve-year-old boy.
“Move,” Sheen murmured, guiding him through a service aperture. “If there is trouble, we need to vanish.” She located a storage chamber, and they settled down to wait. “Now,” she said, putting her arms about him and kissing him. She was fully as soft and sensual as any live woman. But she froze in midkiss. “Oops.”
“What—my lips lose their living flavor?”
“I’m getting the report from the robot.” Sheen used the term without self-consciousness. She was to an ordinary robot as a holograph was to a child’s crayon-picture. “It is a mistake. The male Citizen has no visitor, and he sent no message. Oooh!” She shook her head. “That hurt.” How could she feel pain?
“An unkind word?”
“Destruction. He had the robot shoved in a meltbeam disposer. The robot’s gone.”
Just like that! Stile’s own likeness, presenting himself in lieu of Stile, melted into waste material! Of course it was foolish to get sentimental about machines, Sheen excepted, but Stile had interacted briefly with the robot and felt a certain identification. “Did he know it was a robot?”
“I don’t think so. But he knows now. People don’t melt the same way. They scorch and stink.” She cocked her head, listening. “Yes, we have to decamp. The Citizen is casting about for other intruders.”
Stile remembered his encounter with the Black Adept, in Phaze: absolute resistance to intrusions. Enforcement by tacit murder—it seemed that type of personality was not unique to Adepts.
Sheen was drawing him on. Suddenly they were up and out, on the bleak surface of Proton adjacent to the Citizen’s pleasure dome. She opened her front and removed a nose-mask. “Put this on; it is supplied with oxygen. It will tide you through for a while.”
Stile obliged. When he found himself gasping, he breathed a sniff through his nose and was recharged. The external landscape was awful. The ground was bare sand; no vegetation. A bare mountain range showed to the near south, rising into the yellowish haze of pollution. Stile made a quick mental geographical calculation and concluded that these were the Purple Mountains of Phaze. They were actually not too far from the region of the Mound Folk. Except that no such Little People existed in this frame. Or did they? Most people had parallels; how could there be entire tribes in one frame, and none in the other? “Sheen, do you know of any people living in those mountains?”
“The Protonite mines are there,” she reminded him. “The serfs that work there get stunted—“ She broke off, glancing around. Something stirred. “Oh, no! He’s got perimeter mechanicals out. We’ll never get through that.” Stile stood and watched, appalled. From trenches in the ground small tanks charged, cannon mounted on their turrets. They formed a circle around the domed estate, moving rapidly, their radar antennae questing for targets. Sheen hauled him through the forcefield into the dome. The field was like the curtain: merely a tingle, but it separated one type of world from another. As they crossed it, the rich air enclosed them, and a penetration alarm sounded. They were certainly in trouble!
“Can your friends defuse the robot tanks?” Stile asked as they ran through outer storage chambers.
