Split Infinity (10 page)

“You’re too damn logical,” Stile grumped.

“Oh, Stile—I’m afraid for you!” she exclaimed.

“That’s not a bad approximation of the relevant attitude.”

“I wasn’t acting. I love you.”

“You’re too damn emotional.”

She grabbed him and kissed him passionately. “I know you can’t love me,” she said. “You’ve seen me as I am, and I feel your withdrawal. But oh, I exist to guard you from harm, and I am slowly failing to do that, and in this week while you need me most—isn’t that somewhere close to an approximation of human love?”

They were in a machine-access conduit, alone. Stile embraced her, though what she said was true. He could not love a nonliving thing. But he was grateful to her, and did like her. It was indeed possible to approximate the emotion she craved. “This week,” he agreed.

His hands slid down her smooth body, but she drew back. “There’s nothing I’d like better,” she whispered.

“But there is murder on your trail, and I must keep you from it. We must get you to some safe place. Then—“

“You’re too damn practical.” But he wondered, now, if a living girl in Sheen’s likeness were substituted for her, would he really know the difference? To speak readiness while withdrawing—that was often woman’s way. But he let her go and moved out again. After all, he was withdrawing from her much more than she was withdrawing from him.

“I think we can hide you in—“

“Don’t say it,” he cautioned her. “The walls have monitors. Just take me there—by a roundabout route, so we can lose the pursuit.”

“In a reasonably short time,” she finished.

“Oh. I thought you were going to say—oh, never mind. Take me to your hideout.”

She nodded, drawing him forward. He noted the way her slender body flexed; had he not seen her dismantle parts of it, he would hardly have believed it was not natural flesh. And did it matter, that it was not? If a living woman were dismantled, the result would be quite messy; it was not the innards a man wanted, but the externals. Regardless, Sheen was quite a female.

They emerged into a concourse crowded with serfs.

Now she was taking his suggestion about merging with a crowd, at least for the moment. This channel led to the main depot for transport to other domes. Could they take a flight to a distant locale and lose the pursuit that way? Stile doubted it; any citizen could check any flight at the touch of a button. But if they did not, where would they go?

And, his thoughts continued ruthlessly, assuming she was able to hide him, and smuggled food to him—ah, joy: to live for a week on regurgitations’.—and took care of his other needs—would she have to tote away his bodily wastes by hand, too?—so that he survived the necessary time—what then would he do for employment? Serfs were allowed a ten-day grace period between employers. After that their tenure was canceled and they were summarily deported. That meant he would have just three days to find a Citizen who could use his services—in a nonracing capacity. Stile’s doubt that the anonymous Citizen after him was the same one who had sent Sheen or lasered his knee had grown and firmed. It just didn’t fit. This meant there was another party involved, a more persistent and intelligent enemy, from whom he would never be safe—if he raced again.

A middle-aged serf stumbled and lunged against Stile. “Oops, sorry, junior,” the man exclaimed, putting up a hand to steady Stile.

Sheen whirled with remarkable rapidity. Her open hand struck the man’s wrist with nerve-stunning force.
 
An ampule flew from his palm to shatter on the floor.
 
“Oops, sorry, senior,” she said, giving him a brief but hostile stare. The man backed hastily away and was gone.

That ampule—the needle would have touched Stile’s flesh, had the man’s hand landed. What had it contained? Nothing good for his health, surely! Sheen had intercepted it; she did know her business. He couldn’t even thank her, at the moment, lest he give her away.

They moved on. Now there was no doubt: the enemy had him spotted, and the death squad was present.
 
Sheen’s caution about the crowd had been well considered; they could not remain here. He, Stile, was no longer hidden; his enemies were. The next ampule might score, perhaps containing a hypno-drug that would cause him to commit suicide or agree to a brain transplant. He didn’t even dare look nervously about!

Sheen, with gentle pressure on his elbow, guided him into a cross-passage leading to a rest room. This one, for reasons having to do with the hour and direction of flow, was unused at the moment. It was dusk, and most serfs were eager to return to their residences, not delaying on the way.

She gave him a little shove ahead, but stayed back herself. Oh—she was going to ambush the pursuit, if there were any. Stile played along, marching on down to the rest room and stepping through its irising portal.
 
Actually, he was in need of the facility. He had a reputation for nerve like iron in the Game, but never before had he been exposed to direct threats against his life.
 
He felt tense and ill. He was now dependent on Sheen for initiative; he felt like locking himself into a relief booth and hiding his head under his arms. A useless gesture, of course.

The portal irised for another man. This one looked about quickly, saw that the facility was empty except for Stile, and advanced on him. “So you attack me, do you?” the stranger growled, flexing his muscular arms.
 
He was large, even for this planet’s healthy norm, and the old scars on his body hinted at his many prior fights. He probably had a free-for-all specialty in the Game, indulging in his propensity for unnecessary violence.

Stile rose hastily from his seat. How had Sheen let this torpedo through?

The man swung at Stile. One thing about nakedness: there were few concealed weapons. The blow, of course, never landed. Stile dodged, skipped around, and let the man stumble into the commode. Then Stile stepped quickly out through the iris. He could readily have injured or knocked out the man, for Stile himself was a combat specialist of no mean skill, but preferred to keep it neat and clean.

Sheen was there. “Did he touch you?” she asked immediately. “Or you him?”

“As it happens, no. I didn’t see the need—“

She breathed a humanlike sigh of relief. “I let him through, knowing you could handle him, so I could verify how many others there were, and of what type they were.” She gestured down the hall. Three bodies lay there. “If I had taken him out, the others might not have come, and the trap would have remained un-sprung.
 
But when I met the others, I comprehended the trap. They’re all coated with stun-powder. Can’t hurt me, can’t hurt them—they’re neutralized android stock. But you—“

Stile nodded. He had assumed he was being set up for an assault charge if he won, so had played it safe by never laying a finger on the man. Lucky for him!

Sheen gestured toward the Lady’s room, her hands closed. Stile knew why; she had the powder on her hands, and could not touch him until she washed it off.

Stile poked his arm through the iris to open it for her—and someone on the other side grabbed his wrist.
 
Oh-oh! He put his head down and dove through, primed to fight.

But it was only a crude matron robot. “No males allowed here,” she said primly. She had recognized the male arm and acted immediately, as she was supposed to.

Sheen came through, touched the robot, and it went dead. “I have shorted her out, temporarily.” She went to a sink and ran water over her hands. Then she stepped into an open shower and washed her whole body, with particular attention to any portion that might have come into contact with the powdered androids.

Stile heard something. “Company,” he said. How was he going to get out of this one? The only exit was the iris through which the next woman would be entering.

Sheen beckoned him into the shower. He stepped in with her as the door irised. Sheen turned the spray on to FOG. Thick mist blasted out of the nozzle, concealing them both in its evanescent substance. It was faintly scented with rose: to make the lady smell nice.

In this concealment. Sheen’s arms went about him, and her hungry lips found his. She evidently needed frequent proof of her desirability as a woman, just as he needed proof of his status as a man. Because each was constantly subject, in its fashion, to question. What an embrace!

When the room was clear again. Sheen turned the shower to rinse, then to dry. They had to separate for these stages, to Stile’s regret. He had swung again from one extreme to another in his attitude toward her. Right now he wanted to make love—and knew this was not the occasion for it. But some other time, when they were safe, he would get her in a shower, turn on the fog, and—

Sheen stepped out and ran her fingers along the wall beside the shower stall. In a moment she found what she wanted, and slid open a panel. Another access for servicing machinery. She gestured him inside.

They wedged between pipes and came out in a narrow passage between the walls of the Man’s and Lady’s rooms. This passage wound around square comers, then dropped to a lower deck where it opened out into a service-machine storage chamber. Most of the machines were out, since night was their prime operating time, but several specialized ones remained in their niches. These were being serviced by a maintenance machine. At the moment it was cleaning a pipefitting unit, using static electricity to magnetize the grime and draw it into a collector scoop. The maintenance ma-chine was in the aisle, so they had to skirt it to traverse this room.

Suddenly the machine lurched. Sheen slapped her hand on the machine’s surface. A spark flashed, and there was the odor of ozone. The machine died, short-circuited.

“Why did you do that?” Stile asked her, alarmed. “If we start shorting out maintenance machines, it will call attention—“

Sheen did not respond. Then he saw the scorch mark along her body. She had taken a phenomenal charge of current. That charge would have passed through him, had he brushed the machine—as he had been about to, since it had lurched into the aisle as he approached.
 
Another assassination attempt, narrowly averted!

But at what cost? Sheen still stood, unmoving. “Are you all right?” Stile asked, knowing she was not.

She neither answered nor moved. She, too, had been shorted by the charge. She was, in her fashion, dead.

“I hope it’s just the power pack, not the brain,” he said. Her power supply had, she had thought, been weakened by her disassembly during the bomb scare.
 
“We can replace the power pack.” And if that did not work? He chose not to ponder that.

He went to a sweeping machine, opened its motive unit, and removed the standard protonite power pack.
 
A little protonite went a long way; such a pack lasted a year with ordinary use. There was nothing to match it in the galaxy. In fact, the huge protonite lode was responsible for the inordinate wealth of Planet Proton.
 
All the universe needed power, and this was the most convenient power available.

Stile brought the pack to Sheen. He hoped her robot-structure was standard in this respect; he didn’t want to waste time looking for her power site. What made her special was her brain-unit, not her body, though that became easy to forget when he held her in his arms. Men thought of women in terms of their appearance, but most men were fools—and Stile was typical.
 
Yet if Sheen’s prime directive and her superficial form were discounted, she would hardly differ from the cleanup machines. So was it foolish to be guided by appearance and manner?

He ran his fingers over her belly, pressing the navel.
 
Most humanoid robots—ah, there! A panel sprang out, revealing the power site. He hooked out the used power pack, still hot from its sudden discharge, and plugged in the new.

Nothing happened. Alarm tightened his chest. Oh—there would naturally be a safety-shunt, to cut off the brain from the body during a short, to preserve it. He checked about and finally located it: a reset switch hid-den under her tongue. He depressed this, and Sheen came back to life.

She snapped her belly-panel closed. “Now I owe you one. Stile,” she said.

“Are we keeping count? I need you—in more ways than two.”

She smiled. “I’d be satisfied being needed for just one thing.”

“That, too.”

She glanced at him. She seemed more vibrant than before, as if the new power pack had given her an extra charge. She moved toward him.

There was a stir back the way they had come. It might be a machine, returning from a routine mission- but they did not care to gamble on that. Obviously they had not yet lost the enemy.

Sheen took him to the service side of a large feeding station. Silently she indicated the empty crates. A truck came once or twice a day to deliver new crates of nutro-powder and assorted color-flavor-textures, and to re-move the expended shells. From these ingredients were fashioned the wide variety of foods the machines pro-vided, from the vomitlike pudding to authentic-seeming carrots. It was amazing what technology could do.

Actually, Stile had once tasted a real carrot from his employer’s genuine exotic foods garden patch, a discard, and it had not been quite identical to the machine-constituted vegetable. As it happened. Stile preferred the taste and texture of the fake carrots with which he was familiar. But Citizens cultivated the taste for real foods.