Floating Castles

She was inside, and immediately the great wings of the neomach cupped for takeoff. I retreated, and the neomach floated away into the sky, silently, as if it weighed no more than thistledown.

When it was gone, I went to the neomach. Nefrete stood by my new machine, her chin tilted imperiously, though her eyes were wide and haunted. It occurred to me that I should ask her to explore the machine with me. If I did not, she would be sure to feel slighted. But her strange vision still weighed on me, and then adolescent greed seized me, so that I walked past her without a glance, and stepped into the lock alone.

The interior was a small cube, three meters on a side, a dull, featureless white, lit by some hidden means. I stood in another world, still a little foggy with an acrid gas. Then the floor shifted, and I staggered. There was a shout from outside, and the lock was suddenly solid behind me.

"Hello, Owner Good-bye," a woman's sweet voice said. Thus I heard the trader's little joke for the first time.

"Who speaks?" Uncertainty filled me, though I rarely succumb to that emotion.

"This, your vehicle, speaks, Owner Good-bye. What are your instructions?"

"My name to you is Lord."

"'Good-bye'is the name I was initialized to. I'm sorry to say I cannot respond to orders given by anyone named Lord. This is among my prime drivers. If you wanted to be called by another name, possibly you should have chosen more carefully. I'm sorry, Owner Good-bye."

Oddly, there was no insolence in the voice. Still, I was for a moment blind with rage. I collected my wits by telling myself that it was only a machine. Machines are dominated only through skill; they do not respect power, or personal presence. "I see. Is there any way for me to speak to you, face-to-face? In some manner I cannot now imagine? This vague mut tering at walls makes me uneasy."

"Of course. I see the problem now that you draw my attention to it. I'll bud a communication icon, to be replaced later by one tailored more precisely to your preferences."

A smoothly contoured chair thrust suddenly from the floor beside me. I sat down, watched soft color cascade down the wall, restful tints of clear, cold greens and smoky aqua. The light seemed to come from above, filtered through greenery. I found myself in a grotto of mossy blue stone, cool and damp, a place that did not exist on our hot, dry world.

A pace in front of me, the floor bulged, then burst swiftly upward into a human shape. In an instant it stood complete, a woman wearing heavy clothing, a most beautiful woman, though her coloring was bizarre. Her skin was white, though a delicate rose washed through it, and the texture was as fine as the skin behind an infant's knee. She wore her thick, straight yellow hair in two heavy braids. "My model lived on a heavy world, Owner Good-bye, so I thought at least her shape might be suitable."

"Must you use forever the entire tedious length of my 'name'? Can you not call me simply Owner? Or, if that isn't allowed, Good-bye?"

"Yes, I can do that."

"And your name?"

"I have none yet. You might wish to consider carefully, Good-bye, before assigning me one, since the same strictures I mentioned earlier apply. You'll have to call me by it ever after."

I clamped my lips tight.

In an hour I had learned enough to shape the neomach into the form of a giant dustbear, a six-legged desert carnivore. My personal seal carries the image of a speared dustbear, rampant.

The icon, as the woman shape called itself, stood beside me in the control center. I could not keep myself from regarding it as a woman, though I knew it was formed from the neomach's body.

The icon put me in a sculptured chair. Two tendrils of neomatter touched my temples delicately, little cold kisses. I jerked my head, but the tendrils stayed with me.

"Careful, Good-bye; you'll injure yourself or loosen the pickups." The voice was calm, sweet. I leaned back in the chair. "And now?" "Will us forward; be a bear. Go for a run."

I cannot describe the state I fell into then. I was still myself, still Taladin Lord Bondavi, but at the same time I was something massive and powerful, something that loped out of the Square on six legs, scattering those who stood in my path.

I accelerated down the long, straight northbound lane of Dignity Boulevard, passing through the great gray blocks of the factories, then through the rambling dormitories of the workers. As I passed, the off-shift workers lined the rooftops in their thousands, cheering. I could not see individual faces, but I knew that on each face a lustful envy burned.

I was joyfully absorbed in the sensations that burned through my powerful pseudobody. What matter that the trader had escaped? I had her machine!

I passed through the green farms that fringed the city, out into the badlands. I made amazing leaps: across gullies, up cliffs. I laughed aloud, and came to a stop at the top of an ocher rock-stack, balanced there lightly, as happy as I have ever been. "Incredible," I said.