Phaze Doubt

This time he placed himself so that his body blocked most or hers from the view of Alyc, and as he bent to kiss her lips the fingers of his right hand gathered in the back of her dress until he hauled up the hem and was able to get in underneath. Slowly kissing her, he reached into her cleft and felt most intimately She wore no panties; the costuming was only external. He ex-plored until he found the aperture he sought: damp and hot. She definitely had the equipment of a living woman.

Yet so had the other two, as far as he had been able to ascent tain. Could the magic have made the mannequin alive, just for the game? Or was it illusion, so detailed that it was complete She had tolerated his exploration with the patience of the inanimate; she never flinched or reacted in any way. He was inclined to believe that all three were mannequins, because of their lack of reaction, but he wasn’t sure. He released her, and she joined the others.

On the fourth one he tried a deep kiss. He opened his mouth on hers, and forced his tongue between her lips. He met her tongue, completely human and ready, matching his, move for move. This had to be real—yet maybe not. If magic could trans-form a boy into a unicorn, why couldn’t it give a mannequin functioning mouth? Or an anatomically correct cleft? Or were the mannequins fashioned as complete android women who seemed lifeless between games, but could animate their bodies for the game? Still, he had seen them without breasts before the game started, yet now they all had them.

He let her go too. As far as he could tell, all of them were complete, and were in every way alive. Yet they could not be. He was baffled.

Desperate, he tried one more thing, when she gave him his chance at the fifth one. He moved to kiss her, but instead of meeting her lips squarely he caught her lower lip between his lips, sucked it into his mouth, and bit it. If he tasted blood—

“Mmmph!” she protested, jerking back. “You win, you guano!” Then she became a large bat, and flew away.

Astonished, he stared after her. “A—a—“ he stammered.

“A vamp-girl,” Alyc said. “How clever of you to figure that out! She had me fooled; I thought she was a werebitch.”

“But I—“ It was still too much to grasp.

“A vamp can’t handle blood, even her own,” Alyc continued. “I mean, they eat it only for very special ceremonies, and it sends them into frenzy. She had to get out of here before she went wild.”

“But they all seemed alive!” he said. “I was just guessing; I didn’t know that was the one. I couldn’t tell them apart at all!”

Alyc smiled. “Then you lucked out. She pulled a double whammy on you. They were all her.”

“But they were all different!”

“No, I saw what was happening, because I was outside the game. She used magic all right, but just on you. To make you think you were taking five different figures, when it was really the same one each time. That’s pretty easy magic, for Phaze folk, if they work at it. Each time, you kissed her, and then one of the dummies walked off, and you thought it was the same. I was so mad! But I couldn’t say anything. I just had to hope you would see through the trick, and make her pay—and you sure did, Lysander, you sure did! That was a stroke of genius!”

“It was luck more than genius,” he confessed. “I was trying to test for the real one, but every one of them seemed so authentic. You mean I kissed the real one five times?”

“Yes. I was getting good and jealous, but you know I was laughing too. When you goosed the goose—!”

So she had seen enough to figure it out. But she was laughing, and he laughed with her. “And she had to stand there and take it, so as not to give herself away. I thought it was a dummy I was goosing!”

“Maybe it was,” she said cheerfully. “Then when you b her—oh, Lysander, I was worried, but you sure came through Let’s go back to my room and you can do it all to me, except the biting.”

“Good enough!” he agreed. He was getting good at schooling himself not to react sexually in public, but now that he realized what he had been doing to a real woman, the notion was getting ahead of him. “Hurry!”

They ran down the halls. Soon they got to her chamber, where they proceeded to passionate sex without bothering with the preliminaries.

After that, things were quieter. He played other games with i Alyc, and enjoyed her frequent sexual favors. There was much to be said for enthusiasm!

He saw Jod’e again, and she did not seem to hold his bite against him.

“You beat me,” she said. “I thought I had you beaten, but you turned the ploy. I have to respect that.” She did not make any further move on him, but he encountered her often enough, because her off-shift was the same as his. He would have been quite intrigued by her, had it not been for his prior association with Alyc, and Jod’e’s too-bold opening move with the game.