Robot Adept Read Online Free PDF

growth. A passing couple noticed. “I’d like to know what game they’re getting!” the man said.   Too late, Bane remembered that he was now able to control such reactions. He thought the correct thought, and his member subsided. But his desire remained, for he could not control his mind as readily as his body.   He touched the number 1. PHYSICAL. He wanted to get physical with her, in or out of the game.   She had already made her selection. It was B. TOOL.   Was she teasing him with another idiom, because of the reaction he had just quelled?
    He grimaced. The way his thoughts were going, he would have preferred A. NAKED. Of course that wasn’t literal; it simply meant that the players were relegated to their bare hands. All serfs of Proton were unclothed; that had no significance here. It had taken him some time to get used to this, but now he accepted it.
    A new set of boxes appeared on his screen. This was the Secondary Grid, and its numbers across the top were labeled 5. SEPARATE 6. INTERACTIVE 7. COM BAT 8. COOPERATIVE. Down the side were E.   EARTH F. FIRE G. GAS H. H2O. The letters were highlighted for him this time.
    He looked at her again. She had reverted to a more normal figure and color, except for her nipples and eyes, which were now electric green. What would she choose?   8. COOPERATIVE? Maybe he could still get close to her. “Earth” meant a flat surface, as opposed to the variable or discontinuous surfaces of the following options, or the liquid surface of H;0. Cooperation on a flat surface—that might be good.
    He touched the E panel. Again, her choice was ready.
    She had chosen 5. SEPARATE. So much for that.   Was she teasing him again? No, she was merely playing the game, unaware of his thoughts. They would do what they would with each other after the game; they had no need to do it in the game. He was being foolish.   They were in 1B5E: the category of tool-assisted physical games, individually performed on a flat surface. That did not sound very appetizing to Bane.   This time the grid was only nine squares, with the numbers 9, 10 and 11 across the top and the letters J, K, and L down the left side. There were no words there, but there were a number of choices listed to the right.   These consisted of ball games, wheeled games, and as sorted odds and ends games that had perhaps been lumped into this category because it was the least irrelevant place for them.
    Bane hesitated, not sure where to go from here.   “Now we place games,” Agape explained. “May I have the first turn?”
    Bane shrugged. “Thou mayst.”
    She put her finger to her screen and evidently touched KNITTING, for that word brightened on his screen.   Then she must have touched the center square of the grid, for abruptly the word was there.
    “Knitting?” he asked. “What kind o’ game be that?”
    “A woman’s game,” she said smugly. “I am not good at it, because we do not have it in my society, but I had to learn its basics in order to come here; I suspect that you, being arrogantly male, have never had experience with it.”
    Bane opened his mouth, and shut it again. She had him dead to rights.
    “Now you place one,” she said.
    “Ah.” If knitting was a tool-assisted physical game of the female persuasion, there were many others of the male persuasion. He put his finger on BALL: Throwing. She would have trouble throwing a ball as far as he could! He touched the upper left square, and the expression appeared there.
    She put SEWING beside it in the top row.   He scowled. If she got three lined vertically, then got to choose the numbers, she would be guaranteed one of her choices! But no, he remembered now that the turns alternated; the last person to place a game, which on this odd-numbered grid would be her, had to yield the choice of sides to the other. So he could choose the vertical and avoid that.
    All the same, he played it safe. He put ICE SKAT ING in the middle of the bottom row.
    She