Split Infinity (35 page)

But Stile knew a skill variant of a chance game that Beef evidently did not. He slipped it in, played for it, and got it: War, Strategy.

The ordinary card game of War consisted of dealing the pack randomly into two piles, with each player turning up cards on one-to-one matches. The higher card captured the lower, and both went into the winner’s victory pile. When the first piles were through, the piles of winnings would be shuffled and played in the same fashion, until finally one player had won the en- tire deck. It was pure chance, and could take many hours to finish. The strategy variant, however, permitted each player to hold his cards in his hand, selecting each card to play. When both were laid face down on the table, they would be turned over, and the higher card won. This play was not truly random; each player could keep track of his assets and those of his opponent, and play it accordingly. He could psych the other player out, tricking him into wasting a high card on a low one, or into losing a trick he should normally have won by playing a card too low. Games were normally much shorter than those of the pure-chance variation, with the superior strategist winning. The element of pure chance could not be reintroduced; a strategist could beat a hand played by chance. Thus Stile had his opportunity to exert his skill, judging his opponent’s intent and playing no higher than needed to win.

They played, and soon Stile’s expertise told. He took queens with kings, while yielding deuces to aces. Steadily his hands grew, providing him with more options, while those of his opponent shrank. Luck? The luck had been in the grid.

In due course Stile was able to play seven aces and kings in succession, wiping out Beef’s queen-high remaining hand of seven with no luck allowed at all. He had won, and Rung Eight was his.

Beef shook his head ruefully. “I will remember that variant,” he said. He didn’t mind losing, but he hated to be outsmarted so neatly.

They returned to the Game-annex. But Stile’s two wins had attracted notice. A knot of serfs stood before the 35M ladder. “Hey, Stile,” a woman called. “Are you making your move this year?”

He should have known privacy would be impossible.
 
He was too well known in these circles, and what he was doing was too remarkable. “Yes,” he said shortly, and made his way to the ladder. He punched the challenge for Rung Seven.

The holder of that Rung was already present. He was Snack, an average-heighted man who specialized in board games and light physical exercises. He was more formidable than the two Stile had just taken, but still not really in Stile’s class.

“I will respond to your challenge in one day,” Snack said, and left.

This was exactly the sort of thing Stile had feared. A rung-holder had to meet a challenge from the rung below, but could delay it one day. Stile had to rise rung by rung; he could not challenge out of order. He had no choice but to wait—and that would interfere with his return to Phaze.

Sheen took his arm. “There’ll be an audience tomorrow,” she said. “When a player of your caliber makes his move for a tenure-abridging Tourney this close to the deadline, that’s news.”

“I wanted to qualify quickly, so I could return to Phaze before the Tourney,” Stile said. “Neysa is waiting and worrying.”

Even as he said it, he knew he should not have.
 
Somehow the words got out before his mental intercept signal cut them off. “Cancel that,” he said belatedly.

She looked straight ahead. “Why? I’m only a machine.”

Here we go again. “I meant I promised to return to meet her at the palace of the Oracle. It was her question to the Oracle that freed me. The only one she can ask in her lifetime—she used it up just to help me. I must return.”

“Of course.”

“I made a commitment!” he said.

She relented. “She did send you back to me; I should return the favor. Will you promise to return, to meet me again?”

“And to qualify for the Tourney. Yes. Because you have also sacrificed yourself for me.”

“Then we shall send you on your way right now.”

“But I have to compete for Rung Seven in one day!” “So you will have to work fast, over there.” She drew him into a privacy compartment. “I’ll send you across to her—right after I have had what I want from you.” And she kissed him most thoroughly, proceeding from there.

She was a robot, he reminded himself—but she was getting more like a living woman than any he had known since Tune. And—he was not unwilling, and she did turn him on. It would be so easy to forget her nature . . . but then he would be entering another kind of fantasy world, and not a healthy one.

Yet how could he continue with a robot in one frame and a unicorn in the other? Even if he entered the Tourney and won, against all the odds, and located his other self in Phaze and assumed his prerogatives there—impossible dreams, probably—how would he alleviate the developing conflict between females?

Sheen finished with him, cleaned him up, brushed his hair, and took him to the dome geographically nearest the Oracular palace in the other frame, according to his understanding of the geography. They scouted for the curtain. They were also wary of the anonymous killer, but apparently the break in Stile’s routine had lost that enemy for the nonce. It was hard to keep track of a fast-moving serf on Proton!

The curtain did not intersect this dome, but they located it nearby. They went outside, into the polluted rarefaction of the atmosphere, and Stile donned his Phaze clothing, which Sheen had brought. She never overlooked details like that, thanks to her computer mind. He would not have dared to put on any clothing at all in the sight of any Proton serfs, but outside was the most private of places on Proton.

There was a narrowing plain, the ground barren. To the northwest a wrinkle of mountains projected, as grim as the plain. Only the shining dome brightened the bleak landscape. There were not even any clouds in the sky; just ominous drifts of ill-smelling smog.

“If ever you find a way for a robot to cross . . .” Sheen said wistfully. “I think that land must be better than this one.”

“My clothing crosses,” Stile said. “Since you can have no living counterpart in Phaze, it should be possible-“

“No. I tried it, during your absence. I can not cross.”

She had tried it. How sad that was, for her! Yet what could he do?

“Here—within a day,” he gasped, beginning to suffer in the thin air, and Sheen nodded. The air did not bother her; she breathed only for appearances. “You understand—there is beauty in Phaze, but danger too. I may not—“

“You will make it,” she said firmly, kissing him once more. “Or else.”

“Uh, yes.” Stile made what he trusted was the proper effort of will, and stepped through the curtain.

It was afternoon on Phaze, and the air was wonderful. The sky was a deep and compelling blue, punctuated by several puffball clouds. The mountains to the northwest were lovely. Stile paused to look at the pretty little yellow flowers at his feet, and to inhale the spring-like freshness of it all.

How did this frame come to have such a pleasant natural environment, while Proton was so bleak? He was no longer certain that industrial pollution and withdrawal of oxygen could account for it all. What about water vapor? Obviously there was plenty of it here, and little in the Proton atmosphere. This was a mystery he must one day fathom.

But at the moment he had more urgent business.

Stile made a mental note of the location of the curtain; sometime he would have to trace its length, finding better places to cross. But this was also a matter for later attention.

The landscape was indeed the same. A narrowing plain, a nearby mountain range, a bright sun. Remove the cute clouds, and the verdant vegetation carpeting the ground, and the copses of trees, and this was identical to Proton. It was as if these were twin paintings, BEFORE and AFTER the artist had applied the color.
 
Phaze was the world as it should be after God had made the final touches: primitive, natural, delightful, unspoiled. Garden of Eden.

True to his memory, the Oracle’s palace was in sight.
 
Stile set out for it at a run. But before he had covered half the distance, Neysa came trotting out to meet him.
 
She held her head high, as they came together, so there was no possibility of striking him with her bright horn.

Stile flung his arms around her neck and hugged her, burying his face in her glossy mane, feeling her equine warmth and firmness and strength. He did not need to thank her verbally for her sacrifice on his behalf; he knew she understood. He discovered her hair was wet, and realized that his own tears of reunion were the culprit.

Then he leaped to her back, still needing no words, and they galloped bareback in five-beat to the palace where Kurrelgyre waited in man-form.

Stile had spent his life on Proton, and only a week here in Phaze, but already Phaze seemed more like home. He had been gone only a night and day, but it seemed longer. Perhaps it was because he felt more like a person, here. Actually, the only other true human beings he had encountered in Phaze were the man at the curtain who had given him the demon-amulet, and the Black Adept; still—

Kurrelgyre shook hands gravely. “I am relieved to know thy escape was successful,” the werewolf said. “I reassured the mare, but feared privately thou mightst land between domes.”

“I did. But close enough to reach the nearest dome before I suffocated.” Stile took a deep breath, still reveling in it.

“I should have crossed with thee, to make sure; but Neysa was waiting outside, and I never thought of—“

“I understand exactly how it is. I never thought of it either. I could have walked a quarter-mile along the curtain and willed myself back through to you, outside the Black Castle. That never occurred to me until this moment.”

Kurrelgyre smiled. “We live; we leam. No confinement near the curtain shall again restrain us.” He squinted at Stile. “Thou lookest peaked; have a sniff of this.” He brought out a sprig with a few leaves and a dull yellow flower, dried.

Stile sniffed. Immediately he felt invigorated.
 
Strength coursed through his body. “What is that stuff?”

“Wolfsbane.”

“Wolfsbane? Something that curses wolves? How canst thou carry—“

“I am not in my lupine form. I would not sniff it then.”

“Oh.” Stile couldn’t really make much sense of this, but could not argue with his sudden sense of well-being.
 
“Something else,” he said. “Didst thou not tell me that most of the people were parallel, existing in both frames? There are about five thousand Proton Citizens, and ten times as many serfs, and countless robots, androids, cyborgs and animals—but I have not seen many people here on Phaze, and not many animals.”

“There are at least as many people here as on Pro-ton, plus the societies of werewolves, unicorns, vampires, demons and assorted monsters. But two things to note: first, we are not confined to domes. We have the entire planet to roam—many millions of square miles.
 
So-“

“Miles?” Stile asked, trying to make a fast conversion in his head and failing.

“We use what thou wouldst call the archaic measurements. One square mile would be about two and a half square kilometers, so—“

“Oh, yes, I know. I just realized—archaic measurements—would that by any chance affect magic? I tried to do a spell using the metric scale, and it flubbed.
 
Before I swore off magic.”

“That might be. Each spell must be correctly couched, and can only be employed once. That is why even Adepts perform sparingly. They hoard their spells for future need, as Citizens hoard wealth in Proton.
 
May I now continue my original discourse?”

“Oh, of course,” Stile said, embarrassed, and Neysa made a musical snort of mirth. Stile squeezed her sides with his legs, a concealed hug. He tended to forget that she understood every word he spoke.

“So there are very few people for the habitable area, and many large regions are as yet uninhabited by men.

Thou needst not be surprised at seeing none. The second reason is that many of the people here are not precisely the form of their Proton selves. They are vampires, elves, dwarves—“ He broke off.

Stile wished he hadn’t. It had almost seemed his size was irrelevant in his frame. Foolish wish! “I never judged values in terms of size,” Stile said. “A dwarf is still a discrete individual, surely.”

“Of course,” Kurrelygyre agreed. It was his turn to be embarrassed.

They were now in the Oracle’s palace. “I have less than a day before I have to go back to Proton,” Stile said.

Neysa stiffened. “Go back?” Kurrelgyre demanded.

“I understood thou hadst no commitment there. It was only to escape the prison of the Black Demesnes that thou-“

“I have a woman there,” Stile said. “She covered for me during mine absence. I have agreed to enter this year’s Tourney, that she be not shamed. Thus it is likely that my tenure on Proton will be brief.”

“The Tourneyl Thou presumes thou canst win?”

“Doubtful,” Stile said seriously. “I had planned to enter in two years, when some top players would be gone and my strength would be at its peak—and even then the odds would have been against me. It is hard to win ten or twelve consecutive Games against top competition, and luck can turn either way. I would rate my chances at perhaps one in ten, for I could lose to a poorer player with one bad break.”