Out of Phaze by Piers Anthony Page B

get out of it that readily, Mach. We’ll use my chamber.”
    “Your chamber,” he agreed numbly. So machines did not forget. How long could he maintain this charade?
    She led him to her chamber, nearby. She spoke a word, and the wall fogged. They passed through.
    Her room was very much like his, small and almost devoid of decoration. Machines, it seemed, did not require many human artifacts.
    “How would you like it?” Tilly inquired. “We’re private here; no limits.”
    There was too much he didn’t understand. Bane decided it would be better to tell her the truth. “I must explain—I’m not what you take me for,” he said.
    “Not through with Doris?” she asked. “Look, Mach, she’s so hot with that android now, you’d better write her off. She’s never coming back to you. What’s a cyborg, anyway, but a pickled human brain stuck in a robot body? I never did see what you saw in her. You’re a robot, Mach! And not just any robot. You’re going to be a Citizen one year.”
    A human brain in a robot body? That sounded grotesque! “It’s not—not Doris. I don’t even remember her. It’s—I’m not Mach. And I think I need help.”
    She eyed him. ‘This is a private game, right? What are you up to?”
    “I’m from another frame,” he said. “I switched places—“
    “Another frame,” she repeated. “What do you claim you are?”
    “A human being. Alive. Only now I’m caught in—“
    “So you want to pretend you’re not a machine,” she said. “That’s not a good game. It hasn’t been that long, historically, since we self-willed machines were granted the status of serfs. The Citizens would love to take it away from us. All they need is a pretext. You know that. So find some other game; this one’s dangerous.”
    “This is no game!” Bane protested. “I’m from Phaze, the frame of magic, but—“
    “All right, so you won’t get serious,” she said, pouting. “So let me show you something.”
    “Show me?”
    She brought her left hand to her face. She put her little finger between her teeth and bit down on it. Her white teeth sank into the flesh and tore a small hole in t. She worked at the wound, biting deeper. There was no blood.
    “There,” she said after a moment, surveying the damaged finger. “I reached the nerve-wire. Now give me yours.”
    “Mine?”
    She reached out and caught his left hand, and brought it to her mouth. Bane did not resist. He watched while she put his own little finger to her mouth, and bit into it. He felt no pain, though soon the substance of his finger was torn open. It seemed to be padding, and deeper inside, a wire. Exactly like hers.
    He was, indeed, a machine. Rather, his other self, Mach, was. A nonliving robot in human form. That much Tilly had demonstrated beyond question.
    “Now I’ll show you how to bypass the clumsy human sexual process,” Tilly said. “We robots have something much better.”
    She held his left hand with her right hand, and brought her left hand to it. She touched her chewed little finger to his, pushing them together so that their central wires touched.
    Suddenly Bane was transported by a pleasure so wild and strong as to be unutterable. It originated in his finger, but was so potent that it spread immediately throughout his body. It was indeed like sexual fulfillment, but more intense, and it kept on and on, never diminishing. He realized that Tilly, too, was experiencing it. Her face was fixed in an expression of rapture.
    Then the contact slipped, and the pleasure faded. Now Bane felt depleted. He sat heavily on the bed.
    “See?” Tilly asked. “It continues as long as contact is kept, as long as our energy sustains it. Living people can experience it only for a few seconds, but we have no such limit.”
    “No such limit,” Bane agreed, staring at his torn finger. This was illicit pleasure, surely—but what potency it had!
    “Now tell me more about how you aren’t really a robot,” she said.
    He