Unicorn Point by Piers Anthony

might believe that she was here, but that he had realized he was being watched, so had shied away. Regardless, they would have to make a thorough check.
    He walked slowly on out, having said nothing. He stepped back into his transport, and went next to the cyborg lab. The cyborgs were essentially robot bodies housing living brains; they were more intelligent than androids, but also more erratic. They tended to get notions of their own, and that could be inconvenient for an employer.
    Nepe was small enough to be able to form herself into the brain portion of a large cyborg. She could then direct it, and have a hiding place for some time in the otherwise metal body. The Citizens would thus have to eliminate all the cyborgs, too, and that would represent several more hours of effort, and divide their resources. They could hardly afford to make their search openly; they did not want others catching on. Thus a search that might be completed in one hour would take several, because of the inefficiency of secrecy. Again, it would prove fruitless.
    Stile returned to his transport. He was sorry there was no alien lab, to further divide the enemy force. But aliens were relatively few, and they were not generated in any lab. Nepe, being one alien herself, was unlikely to try to masquerade as another. In any event, the Citizens would already have run tracers on every alien on the planet. They would know the child was not among them.
    That left only the straight robots and the straight humans.   Of these, only the robots had a lab. He went there next, though it should be obvious that Nepe could not emulate a completely inanimate being. His tour was cursory; evidently he didn’t expect to fool anyone this time. If they thought he was trying a double fake, and that Nepe was after all hiding here, they would have to expend valuable time anyway.   At last he went to the Game Annex. Nepe had prevailed on her uncle to play a formal game here; he had made special note of the particular console they had used. The Citizens might suppose she had somehow left a message for him here; they would have to examine the console, perhaps even replacing it with another so that they could take it apart in privacy. All part of the game!
    Now he was going to give them something more challenging to ponder; so far he had merely warmed up. He touched a finger to the screen of the console.
    Words flashed on the screen. WHAT IS YOUR WILL, CITIZEN BLUE? Naturally all the consoles were programmed to recognize all Citizens; in fact, a Citizen could hardly go anywhere unrecognized.
    “I wish to play with my wife,” he replied with the faintest of smiles. The machine would not pick up the double entendre.
    In a moment Sheen’s face appeared on the screen. “Yes, sir?” she inquired. In the privacy of their suite she treated him with familiar deference; in public, the familiarity was absent.
    “I become bored,” he said. “Let me play with you.” A smile very like his own crossed her face.
    “Shall I come to you, sir, or will you come to me?”
    “Remain where you are, for now. Address your console.”
    “Yes, sir.” Her face faded out.
    The primary grid appeared. He had the numbers, and chose 2. MENTAL. It would be tricky to play a physical game without her presence.   In a moment the secondary grid appeared: TOOL-ASSISTED MENTAL. 2B. “Two Bee or not Two Bee,” he murmured, frowning at it. He had the numbers again, so had to choose be tween 5. SEPARATE 6. INTERACTING 7. PUZZLE and 8.   COOPERATIVE. He touched 6.
    Her choices were E. BOARD F. CARDS G. PAPER H. GENERAL: all tools for mental games. She had chosen G, for the new box was INTERACTIVE PAPER GAMES.   They filled in the third grid with games from the proffered list: tic-tac-toe, sprouts, lines-and-boxes, life, magic squares and word games. When they made their selections, the result was CROSSWORD. They would play an interactive cross word game. Victory would go to the one who forced the other