Key to Survival

When the appointed hour came, no families boarded the shuttle. The bluff had been called.

"Reconsidering," the robot said. "There is room for all."

Victory!

The leader man nodded as if this were routine. "We will board together, after we shut down our camp."

They did so, and Flame and Marionette boarded last, true to their word.

And there, already aboard, were the three losing families. The machines had been true to their word: the people had lost, but not died.

They were true on the payments, too. The robot produced Earth credits and paid the seven winners double, the three losers half.

Satisfied, the families settled in for the return voyage. Several people approached Marionette to thank for her her guidance; she had bluffed out the machines.

But Flame knew it wasn't over until they were safely off the machines ship. She was desperate to know what the machines had in mind, but dared not use her future seeing to get any hint.

The information wasn't long in coming. The holo Vila was watching abruptly shifted to assume an amorphous form. "Glamor," it said.

The three of them gazed at it. Was this the final challenge?

"You are the aware machine," Flame said. "Controller level."

"Your companions are hostage. I will hole the ship, depressurizing it and causing all living creatures aboard to suffocate. Only you can save them."

It certainly wasn't being subtle! "Save them? How?"

"Destroy me before I act. You have one minute."

This was indeed the crisis. If she used her Glamor powers, the machine would record the magic force and send it to the machines command before it ceased functioning. If she did not, all mortals on the ship would die. Machines were not much for bluffing, and cared nothing for individual lives.

But she was prepared. "Negation."

"They will not die comfortably."

"They will not die at all," Flame said. "You will not hole the ship."

"For what reason?"

"Such an act would become an Incident that would alert the entire human culture to the menace of the machines before you wish it to be recognized. It will also defeat your hierarchy's primary purpose. It wishes to recruit my sister Voila to join the machines. Vila here is Voila's little sister. Marionette here is her brother's fiancee. I am not Warp, but his sister Flame, emulating him in order to mock up a sample family for this mission. If we die by machine treachery, Voila will be alienated and will never enlist with you; the chances of recruiting her would drop to zero. Your superiors would not be pleased."

"But you will save them, and yourself."

"Negation. I will die with them."

"This is a human bluff. All living things cling to their lives, whatever the cost."

"Try me," Flame said grimly. "I am as you can verify an Amazon. You surely know the nature of Amazons. The others don't have a choice."

They waited. The machine's holo faded and was replaced by Vila's program. The ship was not holed.

Marionette and Vila broke into tears of relief, hugging Flame from either side. They had known she would not yield. They had not known whether the machine would.

This time their victory was real.

But details remained. "Machine, I know you are listening," Flame said. "I revealed myself to you so that you would understand that you were dealing with an Amazon. But it occurs to me that your superiors in the machines hierarchy might not understand how an Amazon came to join the mission without your knowledge. The fact is you are not at fault; nothing can penetrate the disguise of a Glamor. But this fact may not yet be in the machines' data bank.

They might assume that you were defective, and terminate you. This would be unfair; you performed well. So probably it is best simply to delete this one item from your memory before making your report. It is after all irrelevant to the larger mission. It is of course your decision."

There was no response, but she suspected that the machine would follow her recommendation. Machines of that rank, with high level individual consciousness, surely had an instinct of self preservation.

And that would preserve her secret, so that no member of this mission beyond their little family unit would know that Warp was not here. So no one, especially the machines, would wonder exactly what Warp was really up to.

Now she had homework to do. She had to review the history of Havoc's association with the girl Opaline. It would probably be dull, but if Idyll recommended it, there was surely excellent reason.

So that night, as the ship traveled, she lay and opened the memory capsule Gale had given her. Actually, things were seldom dull when Havoc was involved. Why had he bothered to travel for several days with an ordinary mortal girl, when so much else was going on? Certainly he liked women of any age, and they liked him, but there had to be more to it than that. Flame was not romantically smitten with her father the way Weft was, but she had high respect for his abilities. He was after all the martial artist who had trained her before she became an Amazon.