Bane was in a chamber in Vamdom, and Agape was not with him. That drained much of the delight he had had in this frame. But with this new compromise, he should be able to bring her back.
He went to a communication screen. “Citizen Blue,” he said.
Almost immediately, the man who so resembled his father came on the screen. “Ah, Bane,” Blue said. Bane hadn’t even spoken directly to him yet, and the man recognized him! How was it possible, when he was in a robot body?
“Aye, Citizen. I bear news o’ a new deal. Mach and I needs must play a tourney of our own, three rounds, and both serve the side that does prevail. The Adverse Adepts be training him, with the Book o’ Magic, and I may train with the Oracle. Dost agree?” Blue did not even hesitate. “I agree. Let me contact the other side. Meanwhile, go to the Oracle.”
“Aye. But if Agape may now return—“
“If the Contrary Citizens allow it.”
“Methinks they will.”
“We shall know in a moment.”
Blue’s face faded from the screen. Immediately a new one formed. This was a young android woman, evidently a secretary. “You have business with the Or cle?” she inquired.
Already! “I be Bane, of Phaze. Needs must I oppose mine other self in a tourney, and if the Oracle will train me for that encounter—“
“If you will report to the nearest Game Annex, the Oracle will be in touch.”
“Game Annex? But—“
“The Game Computer permits this use of its facilities,” she explained. “The location of the Oracle is private.”
So that the Contrary Citizens would not interfere with it, he realized. The Oracle was the mainstay of Blue’s power in this frame.
He made his way to the Vamdom Game Annex. Soon he was sealed in a chamber with a holo unit. Color developed in the air, swirling diaphanously. “The Contrary Citizens have agreed,” a melodious voice said. “Agape will be recalled from Planet Moeba, on the technicality that she was never in the Tourney, but served only as the host for the unicorn who was, so cannot be deported for the unicorn’s loss. She will join you here in due course. In the interim, I need to learn from you what has occurred in Phaze during the past fifteen years.”
“I will try to tell thee—“
“Your present body is a machine. Plug in your brain, and I will take a full readout.”
“Readout?” Bane was baffled.
“There is an access panel behind your left ear. Connect this.” A multipronged plug appeared, extending from the wall.
Bane found the panel and slid it open. He plugged in the plug. His awareness changed.
First he felt a kind of draining, as if his mind were pouring out through the connection. Then he felt a return flow, as if other material were entering. He knew he was not losing his own identity; the information was merely being called up and copied. But the process was 2interactive, and the act of reading his mind generated a lesser return flow, so that he perceived, as in a dream, the memories of the Oracle. At first he resisted; then he realized that this was a remarkable opportunity, and sank into the dream.
There were levels and levels of it, a memory within the dream. Bane, confused, sought the beginning—and found himself in a vision of ancient Earth, when magic was there. In the ambience of magic, things occurred that were not possible with science, such as instant shape and mass-changing, and the crossbreeding of divergent species. Indeed, crossbreeds nourished, and many such species had stabilized. Their magic was internal; they limited their effects to set form changes and particular talents, such as carving rock. They retained their potency thoughout their lives.
But every act of external magic—that which was not natural to the species—depleted the store of magic on the planet, and so its power inevitably diminished. The vacuum was slowly taken up by a new system, later codified as science. At first science was weak and un reliable, but it gained strength in direct proportion to the diminution of magic. In sum: magic waned, science waxed. Those who practiced the new discipline came to doubt that the old one had ever had validity, because they assumed that the fundamental forces of the universe were unchanging. That was their folly—but on Earth it could not be disabused. The old texts of magic were systematically destroyed, for their spells no longer operated.
But in the larger universe, magic remained, and though it was losing its effect throughout, certain nuclei retained their potency. These came to shine like beacons in the thinning ambience, and drew the devotees of the old disciplines who were by their specialized arts able to detect them from afar. One of the strongest was the planet Phaze, where enormous magical energy had imbued its specialized nether rock.
Earth was becoming inhospitable. An oracle, or , prophecy, told of a distant locale where magic would be safe. So certain creatures fashioned a great wicker boat they called the Craft of the Oracle, or Coracle. Those who were ready to risk their lives for the sake of such a dream boarded it and set sail, leaving the more conservative majority of creatures behind. The Coracle passed through the fluxes of the universe and came at last to its destination, bringing to this planet the first unicorns, werewolves, harpies, vampires, dragons, elves, goblins, ogres, demons, trolls and others, leaving behind the centaurs, rocs, merfolk, sphinxes and others. The creatures spread out to fill the ecological niches of Phaze, and flourished; in due course there were many herds of unicorns, packs of werewolves, flocks of vampires, hordes of goblins and conclaves of elves. They achieved a certain equilibrium, each dominating its chosen habitat, generally hostile to each other when there was competition for particular territory.
Then, hundreds or perhaps thousands of years later, man came to Phaze. Magic had been all but exterminated on Earth, and the crossbreeds remaining there were extinct. Some had been vicious creatures whose disappearance was little loss, but some had cultivated the best traits of their ancestor species, and their demise was a tragedy. The centaurs had been too arrogant to settle for any region less than Earth itself; now not only Earth but the universe existed without their civilization. Instead it suffered the ravages of man. Man came technologically, and brought the infectious seed of science with him. He set about colonizing the planet, calling it Proton, burning its forests and slaughtering its creatures. The animals had never been exposed to the horrors of science, and though they tried to fight back, they were being decimated. The goblins mounted a savage counterattack, wiping out several colony settlements, but the humans reciprocated by bombing the goblins’ camps and warrens and nearly wiping out several tribes. It was evident that all too 2soon the creatures here would go the way of their cou sins on Earth.
But not all the invaders were vicious or uncaring. Some few appreciated the nature of Phaze and sought to preserve its unique environment. These managed to deal with the elves to create a barrier between the frames of science and magic, separating them. This had an immediate effect, because the weapons based on sci ence no longer worked in the magic frame, and magic no longer worked in the science frame. It effectively isolated the two factions, though they actually shared the territory. They were out of phase with each other.
This was the origin of the name of the magic realm:
Phaze.
Then a peculiar effect manifested. The two frames assumed an equivalence in more than geography. Human beings who were born and raised on the planet began appearing on either side of the curtain, mirror images of each other. In some interaction between science and magic they had cloned, the parties on either side living similar lives, but utilizing different modes. It was possible for newcomers to the planet to cross the curtain, though not always easy. Clones could not; the presence of their other selves barred them. Thus the frames were increasingly separated. But this meant that only those who knew least about the opposite frames could cross to them, and this meant trouble.
Some long-time residents developed formidable powers of magic, and became known as Adepts. The potential for magic was in every creature, but the Adepts acted ruthlessly to restrict its application. Those whose powers were less soon learned to avoid the use of magic almost entirely, so as not to seem in any way competitive with the Adepts. They settled into innocuous village life, while the Adepts became like distant lords. The Adepts took it upon themselves to protect Phaze from unwarranted intrusions across the curtain, using magic to detect and eliminate most of those who crossed.
But the Citizens of the developing hierarchy of Proton were in no mood to brook such interference with their rights of exploitation. They used their computers to prepare an exhaustive analysis of the mechanisms of magic, and developed a computer that could invoke this magic without error or waste. Because a computer could not operate in Phaze, they digested these principles into a comprehensive Book of Magic that any person could use with devastating effect. The conquest of Phaze by Proton was about to resume. This of course was incipient disaster, and the more sensible elements of both cultures opposed it implacably.
A compromise was achieved: the Book of Magic was confined to Proton and hidden, so it could not be used, and the computer was put across the curtain into Phaze, where it was given limited animation as the Oracle: an entity that would answer any question once. References to Phaze in the literature of Proton were extirpated, and in a generation it was as if the other frame did not exist. But the Citizens knew of it, and some of their secretaries learned. Surreptitious crossings still occurred, but there was a conspiracy of silence about the matter. The Citizens who had other selves in Phaze could not cross, and did not want others to do so. So it was for three hundred years—until the extensive mining of Protonite in the science frame generated an imbalance that threatened to tear the fabric that separated them and destroy both. The Oracle understood this, but could not act directly to alleviate it. Its only power was answering questions directed to it, and not many of those. Therefore it used that power to cause the Blue Adept to be murdered—
Bane snapped out of the vision. “What?”
“You have assimilated the history of the frames,” the Oracle said.
“Thou didst cause Blue to die?” Bane demanded.
“Only one person seemed likely to be able to do the necessary job,” the Oracle replied. “That was Stile, in the frame of Proton, the Blue Adept’s other self. He knew nothing of Phaze, and could not cross. Therefore I devised a plan to free him for crossing, and to acquaint him in due course with this mission. This is a story whose general gist you may already know.”
Bane did indeed! The Red Adept had murdered the Blue Adept, whose soul had taken refuge in his harmonica: then Stile, Blue’s other self, had crossed the curtain and taken Red out, replacing her with Trool the Troll. Stile had married Blue’s widow, the Lady Blue, and begotten Bane. Blue, meanwhile, had crossed to Proton, animating Stile’s body. Stile was actually using a golem body crafted by Trool, animated by magic; he was a golem with the soul of a man. Or, in Proton terms, very like a cyborg. Bane had actually been conceived before that shift of bodies; there could be none conceived thereafter. All this Bane understood—but it seemed that there were aspects he had not been told. “The permanent separation of frames was intended to prevent any further imbalances from developing,” the Oracle continued, its light still swirling. “But it seems that there is after all imbalance.”
“Because Mach and I exchanged frames,” Bane said.
“That should not have been possible.”
“For an entity that is supposed to know everything, thou dost seem to be short some information.”
“True. I lacked news of the developments in Phaze. I must ascertain what changed,” the Oracle said. “I have the transcript of your life experiences, but this is not enough. I must know how you exchanged.”
Suddenly Bane was back in the dream, but this time he was himself. He was in the retreat he had fashioned, really only a rock in a glade, communicating with his other self. He had not at first realized that this was what he was doing; he had been drawn into this glade for no reason he could ascertain, and now felt the odd presence. “Who be ye?” he asked, and felt it echo in alien language, Who are you?
I am Mach! the answer came, definitely not his own thought. Then: Let’s exchange places’ The notion intrigued him “Aye—for a moment.” He improvised a quick spell, and sang it, to facilitate the process, whatever it might lead to.
Then, with an abrupt wrenching, he had found him self in the frame of Proton, and his remarkable adventure had begun.
“Amazing!” the Oracle exclaimed.
“Thou dost be just a computer, a thinking machine,” Bane said. “Dost feel surprise?”
“Yes. We machines can experience emotion when our design permits, as is the case with Mach. I have discovered the source of your ability to exchange. It is because the connection between the frames was never completely severed. You and Mach tuned in to that open channel, and used it, and later your friends did too. Now that channel is broadening with use, complicating the imbalance—but the imbalance has been building slowly throughout the life of that channel. I never thought to check for such a thing!”
“A channel between the frames? But how came that to be? Methought all connection was severed before my birth.”
“I recognize the psychic pattern. It is that of your father—Stile.”
“My father? But he ne’er—“
“Not consciously, no. But it seems that this is some thing more fundamental than consciousness. He originated in this frame. He now inhabits a golem body. The life-force derives from Proton, and retains a connection to its origin. Ever since the frames separated, that lone connection has existed—feeding a slight but detectable imbalance. You are his son; you resonate to his life-force, for you derive from it. You used his channel.”
“Then needs must I agree: amazing!”
“I shall have to consider this discovery. It may be that a complete separation of the frame is not feasible without cutting off the life-force of Stile.”
“Nay!”
“Have no concern. Bane; I would not cut that connection, had I the means to do so. Stile and Blue have been my instruments, and you and Mach are becoming my instruments.”
“Yet hast thou been known to kill thine instruments!”
“Not permanently, as it turned out.”
Bane removed the plug from his ear. “Thou dost strike me as a creature of expedience, without scruples.”
“Granted. I am not even a creature, but a thing, possessing no more life than does your present body.” Which felt alive to him. Bane knew how Mach had felt, and how Mach’s robot mother Sheen felt. The Oracle was reminding him of the capabilities of its state of existence. “Point taken, machine. But I trust not thine expedience.”
“But you can trust my logic. If that psychic connection between Stile and his living body is broken, he may die or lose his sanity or suffer no measurable malaise; we cannot know. But if that line ceases to exist, the channel by which you and Mach communicate and exchange places will be gone, and all that you contemplate will end, and my chance to rectify the accumulated imbalance will abort. Therefore I value Stile’s life and your own, and will not act to imperil them.”
Bane wasn’t sure about that, but accepted it for the time being. Except for one bad thought: “An that line be cut, there be no problem of linking of the frames. Canst thou not solve it most readily by cutting the line?”
“No. The imbalance exists. It must be redressed be fore the connection is severed, or mischief to both frames can result.”
“So thou dost seek to correct it, then cut the line?”
“That would be the sensible thing to do.”
“And thou dost expect Mach and me to help thee cut us off from our loves?”
This time the Oracle paused before answering. “I perceive that that could be awkward.”
“Awkward, hell, thou stinking golem thing! It be unacceptable.”
The Oracle was unmoved by his invective. “What would you find acceptable?”
“Do thou find a way to fix the imbalance and preserve contact between the frames, that I may remain with Agape and Mach with Fleta.”
“This may be a difficult thing to accomplish.”
“An thou dost wish to work with me longer, needs must thou bide by it.”
“As I understand it, the frames must either be completely separated, with no interaction between them, or completely overlapped, so that any imbalance corrects instantly. You evidently prefer the latter course.”
“Aye,” Bane agreed grimly.
“Since I need your active cooperation, I am constrained to accede to your terms.”
“An thou find a way to work without my cooperation, thou dost mean to renege?”
“I am reluctant to be bound to a fixed course in a changing situation.”
“Then work without me, machine!” Bane said, and faced the exit.
“But without the knowledge and training I offer, you will most certainly lose your contest with Mach.”
“And with what result?” Bane retorted rhetorically. “We keep our loves!”
“Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect mature behavior from juveniles.”
“Aye, thou calculating device!”
“Perhaps a compromise?”
Bane had learned the advantage of dealing. “Make thine offer.”
“I am supposed to train you for your encounter with Mach. Because he is long conversant with the Game procedures to be employed, and has trained in many of the games, you are at a severe disadvantage. I can at one stroke restore parity. I will do this for you now, if you will accede to a partial commitment on the handling of the frames.”
Bane considered. He would do his side little good if he went into the contest unprepared and lost badly. Despite his angry words, he did intend to do his best for his father. He did need the Oracle. “In what manner partial?”
“I will make my primary effort the unification of the frames. Only if that proves to be impossible will I seek to separate them completely.”
“Unification—“
“Means that you would be able to join Agape physically—in your own body, and Mach would join Fleta in his own body.”
That seemed so good as to be suspicious. In a moment Bane saw the flaw. “But with unification, all alternate selves would unite. Stile and Blue would be but one person, and Mach and me. That be’no solution!”
“I think not. You have had time to develop separate identities despite your initial cloning. Identical twins are the parts of a single person, but their lives make them separate. In addition, there are formidable distinctions between the bodies: Mach’s is machine, while yours is flesh; Stile’s is golem, while Blue’s is flesh. I doubt there would be mergence of that nature, this time, though there could certainly be formidable disruptions as individuals are replaced by pairs of selves in a common framework. This is why I regard this as the less desirable alternative. Nevertheless—“
“Agreed,” Bane said quickly. He was ready to handle the awkwardness of individual duplication, for the sake of interacting with Agape in his own, living body.
“Then restore the connection, and I will activate Mach’s experience.”
“Wait. I want to know exactly how thou dost mean to make me equal to Mach, in an instant.”
“You occupy his body. Your personality has taken over his general functions, but does not invoke his total experience. I shall activate the remaining circuits, that contain his complete knowledge of Proton and the Game, and his expertise as a player. You will then be able to utilize any or all of it at will.”
Something nagged at him. In a moment he realized what it was. “But an thou restore the whole of Mach, then will not I be Mach, not Bane?”
“I can alleviate any such effect by excluding the region that establishes your personal identity. Your consciousness is largely random-access memory, evoked from a file that does not exist in this host: your living body in Phaze. Similarly, your personality and awareness and memories are damped out by Mach’s awareness. It is fortunate that your two systems are compatible—but perhaps this is not coincidence, be cause of the parallelism of the frames.”
Bane considered. “Very well—but do thou do it carefully. Methinks there be treachery in the likes of this.” He plugged the cable back into his ear. There was a soundless click. Nothing obvious changed, but his awareness of his situation seemed to clarify. He knew exactly where he was, and how to get anywhere else.
“That be it?” he asked.
“Try remembering Mach’s Game experience,” the Oracle suggested.
He tried—and abruptly experienced a flood of memories going back to Mach’s childhood. Every game Mach had ever played was filed in his memory banks—and he understood the strategies for each, too. He knew that he could play any game as well as Mach could, because in this respect he had become Mach. He could compete; there was no question about it. He did not even need to train; his robot body did not lose skills by disuse the way human flesh did. Citizen Blue would be pleased, and so would Agape. Fleta was not the only one from Phaze who could play the—
Fleta? He reeled, internally.
He was in love with the unicorn.
“Oops,” the Oracle said, in a surprisingly unmechanical way.
“That love spell!” Bane exclaimed, chagrined. “It followed me here!”
“Not so. I did not exclude the emotion-circuit that activates that interest. That is Mach’s love, not yours. I shall exclude it from your compass.”
Abruptly it was gone. Bane loved Agape, not Fleta.
But he was shaken. The depth and power of that love—
He removed the cable. “He came to love her in my body. Could that love—“
“Develop a resonance in you? Certainly, if strong enough. Flesh is less denned in such matters than machine circuitry; it would be surprising if there were not some sympathetic carryover.”
“Then mayhap it was not merely the love spell that addled me,” Bane said thoughtfully.
“Nor merely the spell and resonance combined,” the Oracle said. “I perceive by your memories and my observations in Proton that she is a very fine creature. But so is Agape. Perhaps you should invoke Mach’s experience with her.”
“Nay, that were snooping!”
“When she emulated Fleta,” the Oracle prompted. The thing understood him too well! Bane called up that memory—and was impressed. Agape had assumed the aspect of Fleta, in form and voice and attitude, so perfectly that even he, Bane, almost doubted that it was not she. And Mach, knowing, had loved her—even as Bane had loved the real Fleta, for a moment. He banished the memory, and the mixed emotions it aroused.
“Truly, they both be great females,” he said. “And we both be somewhat guilty.” But he felt less guilty, now.
“You could each have settled for the one in your own frame,” the Oracle said. “Had you not each been blinded to the familiar by the lure of the unfamiliar.”
“Aye. But then would we not have exchanged. Seek not to reverse us now, machine; we have a deal.”
“We have a deal,” the Oracle agreed. “I will train you in the specific games you select to play against Mach, so that your skill improves beyond his. But this is no guarantee of victory.”
“Why not?”
“Because there is always an element of chance in the playing of the grid and of any game, even those of greatest skill. Because he will be trained in magic by the Book of Magic he will have the advantage in any game involving magic.”
“Then I will choose not that kind.”
“But he will try to choose it. The grid gives you equivalence, and your skill in playing it will be similar. You must prevail in science, for you will likely lose in magic.”
“I be no slouch in magic myself,” Bane reminded it.
“You cannot prevail against the Book. I know, for the Book is but another aspect of me. The verdict of this contest is in doubt.”
Bane pointed a finger at the shimmering light. “Do thou find a way to merge the frames, and the contest be meaningless.”
“It will be easier for you to prevail in the contest than for me to merge the frames,” the Oracle said.
“And if I win—what then o’ our loves? My father, Stile, does oppose our unions, because they lead not to a suitable heir. I be resigned—but Mach be not resigned. I favor my father o’er my love, but Mach does not. There be that in me that be uncertain whether victory be best.”
“Let me acquaint you with the nature of the Adverse Adepts and the Contrary Citizens,” the Oracle said. “You will appreciate that they must be denied control of the frames.”
“Aye, I know already! But also I know love, and this be no easy choice.”
“Win, and you will know you have done right. Then perhaps I will succeed in unifying the frames, and you will have love too, as your father did.”
”And if I win, and thou dost not succeed?”
“You are young. You will find in time that you can love again, a woman of your own frame.”
“I believe that not—nor do I want to!”
“You are young,” the Oracle repeated.
Agape returned, and they had a somewhat diffident reunion.
“I had to do what—“ she began.
“I know. As I did with Fleta. We need no more o’ that.”
“Yet—“
“I have Mach’s memories now—and in mine own living body, some of his feelings. They be not mine, but they be ones I understand. I apologize to thee for putting thee in such an unkind situation; it were my fault.”
“But—“
“Must needs I contest with mine other self, to settle who shall benefit from our communication between the frames. An I win, we shall serve my father, and Stile, and I think I must resume mine own body and be in Phaze and find a damsel there with whom I may generate an heir to the Blue Demesnes. An I lose, mayhap I can be with thee—but the frames will be ill-served.”
“I understand that,” she said. “And I agree. I love you, but I would not destroy what your father has done for the sake of that love. But what I was referring to—“
“Thou didst make Fleta for Mach.”
“Aye,” she said, with a quirk of a smile.
“And so thou didst protect him from possible discovery when he emulated me, and perhaps protected me also when I emulated him. Even as Fleta did in Phaze. Now I can see how he does love her, and he can see how I do love thee. Can we not consider that it were as it seemed, and no harm done?”
“If you wish.”
“Aye, I wish.” He looked at her. “Agape, an thou couldst have whate’er thou didst wish, what would that be?”
“To be with you in Phaze,” she said without hesitation.
“I have made a deal with the Oracle to merge the frames, an it prove possible. Then mayhap we can be together, each in our own bodies, in either frame. And Mach and Fleta too. Then could she play the Game at will, and thou couldst learn magic. And—“
“We could reproduce,” she concluded.
“Aye. But as that be no certain outcome, must needs we do it now. I did learn how Mach and Fleta could do it in Phaze, and Mach did study how we two could do it here. Dost understand how Mach was crafted?”
“Yes. He started as an infant-robot, and moved to larger body and capacity in the way a living person would grow, until he reached adult status.”
“I have it from Mach’s memory: we can craft a cyborg with a body like mine and a mind like thine. It be not a perfect solution, but I be not a living man, in this frame. So if thou wouldst be interested—“
“I would,” she said.
“Mach learned that Moebites have learned to fission unevenly, so that one retains identity while the other must immediately merge with another to gain enough mass to survive. If thine merges with the machine, for life support—“
“Yes. I have met the cyborg girls, and they can be quite interesting, if you like that type.”
“Girls,” he repeated. “It had not occurred to me, but robots be female too, and cyborgs. Mach’s mother, Sheen—“
“Yes. We shall have a female child.”
“But an I win, and we must separate—“
“The child of our union will remain,” she said firmly. “She must remain here, where the facilities exist for growing and learning.”
“Aye. But an I return to Phaze—“
“I will remain here, and care for her until she is of age. This can be justified as continued experience in the bisexual mode, that my folk need to know.”
“Must needs we name her.”
“After you—“
“And after thee—“
“BA for Bane, AG for Agape?”
“Baag? Forget it, alien!”
She laughed. “Maybe the last letters, NE—“
“And PE.”
“Nepe,” she said.
“Nepe,” he agreed.
They kissed.
In due course Bane played the grid with Mach, across the curtain, and they settled on a board game called Pole Chess. “I know it as well as Mach does,” he said. “By definition. This be a fun game.”
“I do not know of it,” Agape replied.
“It be Occidental chess, with a piece added, invoked after the first piece be lost on either side. Serious practitioners play it not, but it does have its points.” He had a month to prepare. The Oracle trained him in the nuances of this specialized variant, but expressed concern.
“You now inhabit the mind of a machine. Machines are excellent at storage and manipulation, but are not as creative as living creatures. If error-free playing suffices, the advantage is yours, but if not, it is his.”
“He has been limited all his existence,” Bane pointed out. “Can he now become creative?”
“That remains to be seen. He has strong motivation.” Bane nodded. Mach’s motivation might well be stronger than his own. Yet he had to make his honest best effort.
“Teach me some aspects of this game that Mach knows not,” he said. “And teach me flawless defense. I like not winning a game as it were by default, but this be the way methinks I should play it.”
“True.”
And while he explored the special wrinkles of the game, Agape ate voraciously to increase her mass so that she could fission, and the lab designed a cyborg unit that would support, not a human brain, but a Moe bite entity.
“There be only so much magic can do, in a game like chess,” Trool said. “Thy powers of perception and thought be now enhanced; thou willst play thy best, and make no direct error. But ultimately the victory must go to the one with the greatest experience and vision. Thou must have practice against excellent players.”
“Who are the best in Phaze?”
“Stile. The Silver Elves. The Eldest Vampire.”
“Damn!” Translucent exclaimed. “He cannot play them!”
Because they were all on the other side. “I thought I was so smart, angling for a variant of chess,” Mach said ruefully. “I only got myself in trouble.”
“There be other players,” Translucent said. “And ye be committed to a variant. Mayhap there be other experts in that variant. Some among our forces.”
Mach brightened. “I can make a spell to locate the finest available player of Pole Chess.” He did so. In a moment he ascertained that the Silver Elves dominated this variant also, but that there was one outstanding player among the snow demons. His name was Icebeard, and he was a chief of a White Mountain clan. He seldom played in tournaments, be cause he could not tolerate any warm location, so his skill relative to that of the Silver Elves was not known, but it was suspected that it was equivalent. “I will go see Icebeard,” Mach said.
“But the demons eat normal folk,” Fleta protested.
“I can protect myself, now,” Mach reminded her.
“And you, if you want to come.”
“Methinks I had better,” she said. “They may be thine allies now, but an thou sleep, it be best to have a guard.”
Translucent nodded. “I will acquaint him with thy situation. But trust him not behind thy back. Our alliance be jury-built. Conjure thyself to the base of the mountain range, then climb them afoot, that they may recognize thee.”
Mach conjured himself and Fleta to the base of the White Mountain range. The White Mountains were as massive as the Purple Mountains of the south, but more formidable because they were cold.
“One thing amazes me,” Mach said. “The frames of Proton and Phaze overlap, geographically; every feature of one is mirrored in the other. Yet Proton is a planet, a sphere, while Phaze is a flat surface. How can this be?”
“Methinks the folk o’ the other frame suffer from illusion,” Fleta replied. “They think their world must be a ball, while we know it for what it truly be, a circle.”
He glanced at her, uncertain whether she was serious. “Proton has a north and south pole, while Phaze has an east and west pole. How can those be reconciled?”
“By playing Pole Chess,” she replied.
He considered that. Pun or wisdom? Then he saw her laugh bubbling up from her belly to her bosom. He grabbed her and kissed her before it could reach her mouth. “Silly filly!” he exclaimed.
And found himself kissing the unicorn. She had changed form, leaving only her lips touching his. He changed to his stallion form, snorting. If she wanted to play it that way—
She became the hummingbird, her slender bill touching his nose. He became another.
She returned to girlform. “Ah, I forget thou be Adept now!” she exclaimed. “My Rovot Adept! Methinks I like thee better as a helpless man!”
“Tough manure, bird brain,” he said with mock gruffness as he joined her in manform. “I accepted you as a unicorn; now you have to accept me as an Adept.”
“0, sigh,” she said, not sighing. “What shall we name him?”
“What?”
“Has thou not paid attention, sludge brain? Our foal, an we conceive.”
She changed subjects as readily as she changed her form! “Aren’t you counting chickens before—“ He saw her laugh bubbling up again, and corrected himself. “Foals, before they hatch?”
“I ne’er yet saw a foal hatch,” she remarked. “An we make a name for him, he will have to step into it. So what be the name?”
She had already decided on the sex, and now was working on the name. He reached for her, seeking an other kiss, but this time she eluded him. “Mayhap combine our two names?”
“Mach, Reta,” he said, considering, “MA, FL. Mafl?”
“That be more like a sneeze!” she protested. “May hap the hind ends?”
“TA, CH,” he said. “Tach?”
“That be more like cloth ripping! Mayhap one of each?”
“FL, CH—Fletch or Flatch?”
“Flach,” she decided, pronouncing it with a soft C.
“Rash?”
“Watch thy language, rovot! Flach.”
“Flach,” he agreed, not changing the pronunciation.
Then she stepped up for her kiss.
Now they started up the trail that Mach’s magic told him led to Icebeard’s den. They had to approach slowly, so that the demons had a chance to recognize them; it seemed that the demons were suspicious, hostile folk. Fleta assumed her natural form, and Mach rode her, deciding that he needed to remain recognizable. He kept alert, though; demons were known to like starting snowslides.
Sure enough, they had not progressed far before there was the rumble of an icy avalanche starting. Mach snapped his fingers. The sliding snow became white fog, that flowed past them without impact. They proceeded as if nothing had happened.
Farther along, five snow tigers appeared, pouncing in unison. Mach made a tiny gesture, and they became five snow birds, who spread their wings and flapped wildly, not understanding what had happened. They crested the first foothill, and moved on toward the larger range. A horrendous snowstorm swept in, stirring white tornadoes from the drifts, and hailstones the size of human heads began pelting down. Mach lifted his gaze and squinted, and the tornadoes lay meekly down on their sides and expired. The hail stones slowed, becoming translucent, and bobbled in the air like balloons, finally popping into nonexistence. The storm thinned to the semblance of a canopy, and slid away to the side, leaving the sky clear. Fleta snorted musically through her horn. Mach now understood horn language. Her sentiment translated, approximately, into: “Methinks that will teach them not to mess w’ rovot Adepts.”
They moved on without pause. They were approaching the region of the ice caves, where the snow demons lived. Fleta played a merry ditty on her horn, theme and countertheme on the panpipes, as if the two of them had not a care in the frame. Indeed, it seemed they had not; Mach’s Adept magic was proof against all the demon malignance.
A snow demon appeared at the mouth of a cave. His whole body seemed to be made of ice; parts of him were even transparent. “Go ‘way, freaks!” he called in the demon fashion of welcome.
Mach lifted his left little finger. Fire blossomed behind the demon, cutting off his retreat and causing him to leap forward before he melted. He plunged into a snowbank for protection.
“How’s that?” Mach inquired innocently.
“Go melt thy buns in a furnace, flatlander!” the demon snapped.
The snow puffed into steam, leaving the demon exposed. He scrambled up the slope to reach fresh snow. “We have come to see your leader,” Mach said. “Will you lead us to him?”
“Ne’er!” the demon exclaimed.
A panel of quartz appeared beneath the demon’s feet. Beneath it could be seen the leaping flames of some subterranean conflagration. The snow above it began to melt.
The demon started to retreat, but more panels appeared, surrounding it. “Well, maybe . . .” he said doubtfully.
The panel beneath him developed a hinge. Slowly the quartz eased down, about to slide whatever was on it into the inferno below.
“. . . it would be best if I did that,” the demon concluded.
“How nice of you,” Mach said graciously. The quartz ceased its motion, turned opaque, and frosted over. They followed the demon to the mouth of the largest cave. But he stopped there. “No ‘corns allowed,” he said.
Fleta assumed girlform, huddled in her black cloak.
“Do I look like a ‘corn?” she inquired.
“Listen, mare. I just saw thee change!” A small ball of fire appeared in the air, like a star that had fallen too low.
The demon eyed it nervously. “Look, it’s Icebeard’s law! No animals inside!”
The fireball brightened, resembling the sun on a foggy morning;
The demon reconsidered. “Come to think of it, she looks not much like a ‘corn.” He led the way into the cave.
It had been cold outside, but it was colder in the cave. Mach made a spell to warm them both without affecting anything else, and Fleta gave him a glance of appreciation.
A glow, developed in the icy walls, providing wan light that became adequate as their eyes adjusted. Then the demon leaped ahead. The ceiling cracked, and ice dust sifted down. The tunnel was collapsing! Mach grimaced. The falling particles became floating motes of fire, that moved forward through the tunnel as if propelled by a stiff draft. As larger chunks came down, they too ignited and shot forward. Whatever was ahead would become quite warm, quite soon. The ceiling stabilized.
Mach turned to Fleta. “Do you know, the demons seem to live in rather shaky passages. I worry that the entire mountain might fall in on them unexpectedly.” A rumbling developed, and indeed the mountain did seem to be shaking. “If I ever got the suspicion that any of this were deliberate, I might be inclined to hasten that collapse.” The shaking increased, making that collapse seem imminent. “It isn’t smart to annoy an Adept, as I’m sure these demons know.” The shaking became horrendous, so that even Fleta flinched. The demon reappeared. “Icebeard will see thee now!” he cried.
The mountain was instantly quiet. “I thought he might,” Mach said.
The tunnel opened into a chamber whose walls were curtained with icicles. On a frozen throne sat the leader, whose beard was indeed formed of ice. “So nice to see you, Adept,” the demon leader growled.
“I came to play Pole Chess with you. Do you by chance have time for such a game?”
Icebeard considered, scowling. A distant rumble started. The demon’s aspect changed. “Yes, of course. The Translucent Adept informed me that thou didst wish to practice, and the cause be worthy.”
“Whether the cause is worthy is a matter of opinion, but the issue must be settled, and I mean to do my best. Since you are said to be the best player available to me, I want to practice with you.”
“The best player,” Icebeard said, evidently nattered. “Aye, we shall play.” He glared at a demon messenger.
“Frostbite, fetch the board and pieces!” Fleta looked around, and chose a block of ice to sit on. All she knew of chess was what Mach had told her, but she wanted to watch.
Icebeard glanced at her. “Be thou not cold, filly?”
“Nay, thank thee; I be quite comfortable.”
“Um,” he said, disappointed.
The board and pieces arrived, and they set them up on a stand. The board was a cross-hatched sheet of ice, and the pieces were finely carved ice. Mach made sure his touch was cold, so that he would not damage the chessmen. The figures were elaborate: each pawn was a grotesque little goblin, the castles were coiled dragons, the knights griffins rampant, the bishops thin trolls, the queen a glowering ogress, and the king a crowned demon.
But this was Pole Chess, so there was one additional set of pieces: the poles. These were the tallest and most regular of them all, resembling the spiraled poles that ancient barbers once used as a signal of their operations. When all the other pieces were set up, the white and black poles stood to either side, just off the board, centered.
The pole could neither take nor be taken, except in one very special circumstance. It could only block. It could move to any unoccupied square on the board in one move, but did not have to be played. It was normally used to occupy a square that a player did not want his opponent’s man to take, or to block the path of the opponent’s man, or to shield a piece from attack. In the end game it could be critical in the defense of the king. Clever use of the pole could change the complexion of a game—but it was possible also to play through without ever invoking the pole. Thus it added an element to the game without any obvious corresponding sacrifice. Some players swore that Pole Chess was the best variant ever; others condemned it as a decadent offshoot. Mach himself was neutral; he could take it or leave it, and tended to be guided by his opponent’s strength in it. A player who was good with the pole could trap himself when playing normal chess, for getting that he could not abruptly block check. But a player who was not used to it could find his careful strategy negated at the end, when the pole interfered with the operation of his major attacking piece. They played—and Icebeard humiliated Mach. The demon was a good player, all right!
They played again. This time Mach stuck to the most conventional opening and play, so that no surprises were likely, and played for a draw. He never got the chance; Icebeard overwhelmed him.
They played a third time. Mach went for innovative, risky play, trying to surprise the demon. For a while he seemed to be succeeding; then he made a foolish error, and Icebeard clamped down and never let go. “I’m not in your league,” Mach admitted ruefully. “Obviously not,” the demon said graciously. “I will make a deal with thee: get me a match with the Adept Stile, and I will train thee to win against any lesser player.”
“But I thought you would train me for the benefit of your cause!” Mach protested.
“That, too, rovot,” Icebeard agreed.
“I’m not sure that’s fair,” Mach said, and the mountain began to rumble warningly.
The demon pointed an icefinger at Mach’s nose. “Listen, rovot, thou hast proven thou dost be Adept, and can bring this mountain down about our heads. I have proven I can play Pole Chess of a level thou canst only dream of. Causes be fine, but it be best to make fair exchange for service. Thou knowest that training thee will be a colossal bore to me. Dost think it fair that he who be mooted the best player o’ the frame plays me not?”
Mach was taken aback by the force of this logic. “No, it is not fair. But it is Stile’s son I must play against. How can I get Stile to play against you, knowing that this is your price for training me to beat Bane?”
Icebeard grimaced. “Thou dost have a point, rovot!”
FIeta spoke up. “Would Stile want his son to win ‘gainst an untrained opponent?”
Both Mach and Icebeard looked at her, then at each other. “I’ll try,” Mach said. He looked at Fleta. “Do you want to come along?”
“The filly stays here!” Icebeard snapped.
“What is this? You think you need a hostage, demon?” Icebeard reconsidered. “Nay, not for this. Old reflexes die hard! Let her go with thee.”
“Nay, I will stay, an Icebeard show me how to play this game.”
The demon stared at her. “Has thou any aptitude at all, filly?”
“I know not. But when I visited Proton-frame, I played in their Tourney, and won four rounds. Mayhap I will ne’er get to play again, but an I could learn more game skills, that would please me.”
The demon softened. “Mayhap thou dost have potential. We shall shortly find out.”
Fleta went to the table, and they were setting up the pieces as Mach conjured himself to the Blue Demesnes, slightly bemused.
He stood before the Blue Castle and hailed it, as before. Again the Lady Blue emerged. “I fear thou canst not change his mind, Mach,” she said.
“Lady, this time I come to ask a favor of him.”
“He will see thee not at this time, but I will talk to thee.” She showed him into the courtyard, and they took seats at the table, as before.
He gazed at her for a moment. “You know, my mother is a robot.”
“Aye, the Lady Sheen. I know her.”
“You know her?” he asked, surprised.
“In the old days it were possible to cross the curtain physically, an one’s other self be dead. Mine other self—“ She broke off, looking troubled; but before he could think of anything appropriate to say, she resumed. “I crossed and met her, and knew she was worthy, and asked Stile to marry her. But in the end he remained with me, and it were Blue who married her.”
He continued to look at her. “You are a beautiful woman, Lady.”
“What be thy business, Mach?”
“I am in training for the first match with Bane. I know it is not to your interest to help me in my effort to defeat him, but—“
“’Interest’ be defined in sundry ways,” she said. “Bane represents the existing order, and there be good and evil in that. Thou dost represent a contrasting order, and there be evil and good in that. There be that in thy order that Bane craves, and that in our order that thou dost crave.”
“Yes!”
“So thou dost represent a part of him—the part that would marry Agape and live in Proton-frame. He represents a part of thee—the part that would have our way govern, rather than the special interest o’ the Adepts. Thou dost contest for part of his good, and he for part of thine. The victory o’ either be neither comedy nor tragedy. There be nor right nor wrong in this. It be merely the settling o’ an issue which else would destroy all.”
Mach had been braced for hostility, open or covert, and ready to argue his case purely on the issues of pride and fairness. But the Lady Blue showed no condemnation, only understanding. This realization caught him off guard, and momentarily overwhelmed him.
As a robot, he still got caught on occasion by the surges of feeling and emotion generated by the living state. “Oh, Lady, I love you,” he whispered, feeling the tears come.
Then she was standing beside him, embracing him as he sat, her maternal bosom against his cheek. “We love thee too, Mach,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “We know thou dost what thou must.”
In a moment she returned to her place, but the sensation of her embrace lingered. What a woman she was! It was easy to understand how Stile had left Proton to marry her.
“What be thy business?” she repeated gently.
“I—I—the demon—“ He took a breath and started over. ‘The snow demon Icebeard will train me in chess, if Stile will play him a match. He—he is an excellent player, and feels that Stile should at least play him once.”
“Aye.”
“So—“
“Stile will play him by correspondence, one move a day. Here be Stile’s first move.” She handed him a tiny scroll.
So they had known all along that this would happen!
Mach was largely at a loss for words.’ ‘Thank you, Lady. For everything.”
“Welcome, Mach. Do thou give my regards to thy mother, when convenient.”
“I will.” He found himself outside the castle, and conjured himself back to the cave of the snow demons. Icebeard looked up from the board. “The filly be a natural player,” he said. “Her could I more readily train than thee.”
Fleta flushed in the human manner, pleased. “Here is Stile’s first move,” Mach said. “Correspondence.”
“Ha!” the demon exclaimed, immensely gratified.
“Set up a permanent board,” he called to another demon. He unrolled the scroll and glanced at the notation. “The Lady gave thee this!” he exclaimed.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“It be the Queen’s Gambit, in her hand. She moved for him.”
Mach was dismayed. “I understood that—“
“Nay, an she committed him, Stile will play. Thou has made good thy bargain.” He glanced at the demon setting up the other board. “Pawn to queen four,” he called.
“Which color?” the demon called back.
“Idiot! White, of course!” He returned his attention to Mach. “That will be one interesting game! We see not many such gambits these days.”
“Pawn to queen four, pawn to queen four, pawn to queen’s bishop four, pawn takes pawn,” Mach said. “I’d play either side of that.”
“Thou wouldst lose either side o’ that, too,” Icebeard said. He glanced at Fleta. “Make thy move, filly, while I set up another for the rovot.”
Soon a third board was ready, and while the demon leader instructed Mach, he also instructed Fleta, evidently deriving more satisfaction from her game than from Mach’s. The training had begun.
They played on the console: the screen showed the chessboard and the positions of the pieces. To move, Mach had only to touch his piece, then touch the spot to which he wished to take it.
Mach had White, and he used the Queen’s Gambit. He knew that his trainer opposed this; he could hear Icebeard’s growly voice in his mind. “Stick to the tried and true, rovot! This gambit be dangerous for thee!” But after his session with the Lady Blue, he had to do it.
Bane responded immediately with the standard return, and they both followed through with the next set of moves. Then the real play began. Mach knew that others were reporting the progress of the game to all who were interested; the moves were being magically relayed to the White Mountains, the Purple Mountains, and the various Demesnes, including the Blue. Some were present in person: Translucent and Brown, the latter to see that Mach received no advice now from his trainer.
The game between Stile and Icebeard was not yet done, but it was evident that it was a superlative one, and no one could yet judge the advantage. Certainly Icebeard’s advice would be an unfair advantage for him. Bane was similarly limited, in Proton; a Contrary Citizen was standing over him. But Bane would have had the training of Blue, and that made Mach nervous. His father had always beaten him. The game proceeded quickly to the end-stage. The two seemed evenly matched, which was perhaps no surprise. Bane checked Mach’s king, and Mach used his pole to block it. He consolidated his position, and attacked Bane’s king, but could not penetrate the defense. Finally they ground down to a draw. One of the liabilities of Pole Chess was that it facilitated draws, because the pole made it difficult to keep a king in check. That was one reason the duffers liked it, but in matches where clear-cut decisions were needed, it could be a problem.
The score was even: half a game apiece. The next game would be on the next day. Mach conjured himself and Fleta to the White Mountains to consult Icebeard. “You were lucky, rovot!” the demon growled. “Had the boy been alert, he could have mated thee by the twentieth move.”
“What? I saw no such opportunity!”
“He be right,” Fleta murmured.
Icebeard set up the board. “You saw it, filly? Damn, I wish thou wast playing that match! Show him the move.”
The board was at the fifteenth move. Fleta moved a black pawn up one space.
“There!” the demon said. “Dost see it now, rovot?” Mach studied the position. “I see nothing so great about that.”
“Nor did Bane, the dolt! How wouldst thou counter?”
“I wouldn’t. I would attack. He has wasted a move, and given me the initiative.”
“Make thine attack.”
Mach made his move.
“Filly—“
Fleta moved a Black knight.
Mach considered the new position. “Oh, no!” he groaned.
“Next time, be on guard against all potential attacks, rovot,” the demon said gruffly. “Luck strikes naught twice the same. Bane’s mentor be even now chewing his rump to shreds for missing that, e’en as I chew thine for setting it up. He could have been one up on thee!” He could have, indeed. Mach was mortified. He thought they had played an excellent game. They had not.
“Well, there be two games, yet,” the demon said. “Filly, take him elsewhere and teach ‘him aught. I have a move of mine own to study.” He turned to the game he was playing with Stile, which was of a wholly different level.
Mach and Fleta went to the ice cave they were using for this period, and she made savage love to him. “On the morrow, play thou chess like that,” she admonished him.
“I’ll try,” he agreed contritely.
Next day Mach had Black. He was set to play conservatively, but Bane opened with the Queen’s Gambit, forcing it into more adventurous territory at the outset. However, Mach kept his eyes open for opportunities, and managed to forge an advantage in the midgame—only to be foiled in the endgame by the pole. It was another draw. Now each player had one point, and the final game would decide it.
He expected Icebeard to bawl him out again, for missing an opportunity, but the demon was grudgingly satisfied. “Thou didst play at thy level, consistency. In a conventional game, the victory would have been thine.” Mach breathed a silent sigh of relief. He had been almost more concerned about the demon’s critique than about the game itself.
“But on the morrow, it be huffdraw,” Icebeard reminded him sternly. “That be a new game, rovot.” Mach’s nervousness clamped down again. That was indeed a new game! There would be no draw this time. The demon turned to Fleta. “Filly, whate’er thou didst do yester, do it twice tonight, to put him in readiness for the morrow.”
Now Fleta quailed. She had done her ultimate yesterday! She could not hope to match it, let alone exceed it.
But she tried.
Mach had White again. This time he started conservatively, with pawn to king four, and played conservatively, trying first to avoid any error that his nonrobot flesh might be heir to, and second to pick up any slight advantage he could. He understood, in retrospect, why Bane had overlooked the winning play in the first game; he was in the robot body, and imagination was hard for that to come by. But he would not overlook it again; he would have been reprogrammed to be alert for any thing similar.
Unfortunately, it was Bane who picked up the small advantage. As they ground into the endgame, Bane was ahead by one point, but his position was stronger than that indicated and, for the huffdraw variant, stronger yet.
Huffdraw was a device that had come into play in the last few centuries, because too many tournaments were being stymied by frequent draws. Planetary championship matches had dragged on interminably, draw after draw, as each player settled for even rather than risking worse for the sake of better. This was hard on the players, and worse for the audience. Chess was in danger of fading as a competitive sport because of it. Huffdraw changed that radically. The term was borrowed from checkers, and the effect was roughly similar, but the execution differed significantly. There were several applications, depending on the type of draw that threatened. But the basic element was the removal of “dead” pieces: those that hadn’t moved in some time. If that failed, then pieces started to be added back in, until there were enough in action to force a decision.
They came to a draw by perpetual check: Mach prevented Bane from winning by checking his king continually, forcing him to protect the king rather than closing in on Mach’s. Bane used his pole to block each check, but Mach simply moved to a new position for check. This repetitive motion caused the board to assume the same configuration for a third time, by definition a draw. At that point all chessmen of either color that had not moved during the game were to be huffed, or re moved from the board as if taken. There were none, so the huff proceeded to those who had been longest without moving, as traced by the Game Computer in Proton, without regard to color. This proceeded until either the position was freed, or it proved to be impossible to free it in this manner. In this case, it was freed—but it left Mach in a weaker position than before.
Play resumed, but he was in trouble. Bane’s small advantage in pieces was looming more formidably. Mach saw a chance to play for another draw—but saw also that the resultant huffing would make him yet more vulnerable. Only if he could achieve a draw whose breakup would benefit him could he afford to take it. He used his pole increasingly, which meant he was moving his other pieces less often, and that made them vulnerable to huffing. If he could only get Bane to neglect his pieces—
But he could not. Bane had evidently drilled in this, and was playing with machinelike conservatism. He made no errors, simply letting his advantage operate. Mach tried a desperate strategy that he knew was flawed, hoping that Bane’s machine mind would not perceive the flaw. But the effort failed, and Mach’s position became hopeless.
He had to resign. He had lost the game, and the first match.
They played the grid again. This time it did not seem remarkable to Bane that he could match against his other self through the console; the three grueling chess games had made it seem natural. But this time he in tended to stay well clear of board games; Mach’s experience in that regard was far greater than his, and it had been mere luck that he had learned chess from his father, Stile, and been able to add that experience to Mach’s stored knowledge and the advice of the Oracle. If he encountered a game in which he was inexperienced, he would not be able to upgrade sufficiently to be competitive. It had been close, as it was. He had the numbers, so he chose 1. PHYSICAL. That eliminated the major region of danger! He had had a lot of experience with physical games of all types. Mach had too, of course, but Bane now had Mach’s physical body and could match any of his experience by opening the appropriate memory file. He wasn’t sure how they would be able to play a physical game, but the Oracle said it would be arranged. Soon he would discover what the Oracle had in mind.
Mach chose A. NAKED. So it was to be man against man, unadorned. The man in the machine body against the robot in the living body. Bane was ready, if the framework could arrange it.
The second grid appeared on the screen:
5. SEPAR 6. INTERAC 7. COMBAT 8. COOPER
E.EARTH
F. FIRE
G. GAS
H. H,0
He had the numbers again. He chose 6. INTERACTIVE, becoming more interested in the challenge to the system than in the game itself, for the moment. A separate game would be easy enough: they could race against a common clock, or lift similar weights, or do individual dives for rating on a common scale. But Interactive meant that they had to touch or at least be affected by each other, as with Hide and Seek. How could they do that, physically, across the frames? Mach chose H. H2O. So it was to be a water sport! Bane had no fear of that; he had swum joyfully since infancy. Were they going to stretch a pool across the frames?
But as it turned out, the H category was more than water; it was a catchall for all the surfaces: Flat, Variable, Discontinuous and Liquid. The list of qualifying games included one as simple as splashing, and one active as water tag, and—
Bane gaped. The magic games were there too! Levitation Tag, Conjuration Dodge—how could these be played in the frame of Proton? If he tried to make himself float magically, he would get nowhere; if he tried to conjure a snowball to hurl at his opponent, none would appear.
But there had to be a way, or the grid would not be showing these choices. This gave him the chance to select a game with which Mach had no experience! They assembled and played the third grid, and the result was Transformation Chase. Bane had never actually played that one, because of the number of form changing spells required; a single game would have exhausted his spells for months. But he had always liked the idea of it, and envied the unicorns who could play it with their natural magic, changing forms effortlessly. Human magic was versatile, but limited to one invocation for any given spell; the animals could do their particular magic without limit. In that way they were superior to man. But they could not do any other magic. The game was set. There would be a month for training. But Bane could hardly wait to talk to the Oracle, and ask: how? How could he transform his body into the several animal forms that would be required for the proper playing of this game? Mach would have no trouble; they could teach him the necessary spells. But this was Proton!
“Mach is in 1A,” the Oracle explained. “You are technically in 2C—Machine-Assisted Mental. He will transform directly; you will transform in emulation.”
“I be in Machine-Assisted Mental? But the grid—“
“This is a special situation. What he can do directly and physically, you cannot. But the emulation will make it equivalent.”
“How can we know that? Mine emulated figure could have powers my physical one has not.”
“The emulation will exactly match the powers of your physical body. There will be no advantage physically. You will have to convey game information to Mach so that the Red Adept can set it up there, but this will be no problem.”
”But magic—transformations—“
“Your consciousness will be attuned to the game set ting, and to Bane’s mind. It will be as real to you as your current existence is, and as accurate.” Bane realized that the Oracle knew more about al tered states of reality than he did, but still he argued. “Look, if we are to play this chase game properly, one o’ us must be the Predator and the other the Prey. When the two come together, the Predator be the victor; an we complete the circuit without that happening, the Prey wins. So we can overlap not during the game it self. Therefore there can be ne’er any connection then.
So—“
“The connection will be maintained,” the Oracle explained patiently. “The awareness will be displaced. Your body will pace his throughout, but your awareness will be with your representation in the game. Have no concern.”
Bane gave it up. His lifetime in Phaze simply had not prepared him for the peculiar convolutions of science. “If everyone else be satisfied . . .”He shrugged. He joined Agape. “I think I have a few hours off before training for the next round starts. What be good for relaxation?”
“Normally it does not require so much effort for you to think of your favorite relaxation,” she said with a smile.
He had to smile back. “Thou’rt so certain we males have but one interest!”
“Not so. Bane. You have but one interest at a time, in the manner of an animal. That’s not quite the same.”
“Let’s go walk in the park.”
They took a conveyor to the park. This was designed to resemble a wooded region of Old Earth, with fair sized trees spreading their branches overhead, and ferns growing below. It was arranged to seem considerably larger than it was, because of the premium on space within the dome, but the illusion was effective. Stray breezes wafted through, making the leaves quiver, and butterflies flitted randomly about.
That reminded him of his spying missions. He regretted those, now, despite the importance of the in formation gleaned. Would it have been better not to have done it? That would have meant falling into Tan’s trap, and also he would have avoided the need to be with Fleta, when—
“There be much in this I like not,” he muttered.
Agape did not misunderstand. “But also much to like. I will always be glad for the visit I was able to make to Phaze, and the folks I was able to know there, though I had to borrow Fleta’s body.”
“Aye. But what future have we? An I win, we be soon parted. An I lose, the frames be in peril. What choice be that?”
“It would be easier if your kind was like mine in this respect,” she said. “With no set sexes.”
“And no love between them,” he agreed. “Is that the way you prefer it?”
“No.”
They went on through the park. It had not changed, but his mood had improved.
Next day he overlapped Mach and relayed the information about the arrangements for the game. The Game Computer had worked out the basics and compressed them into a few code words for Mach to tell Trool. They would overlap again in a few days for verification.
Then: I wish we were locked not in this struggle between ourselves. Bane thought.
The issue must be settled, one way or the other, Mach responded. It would have arisen elsewhere, if not with us.
And that was probably true. Dost know that the source of our exchange be the lingering connection between Stile and Blue?
Mach was surprised. It’s not because we are alternate selves?
Nay. Other alternates can do it not, only us—because we relate to our sires.
And our loves relate to us, Mach concluded.
Aye.
That was all. They separated.
Bane reported for the first game of Round Two. “Plug in,” the Oracle directed.
Bane plugged the cable into his ear.
Suddenly he was standing in Phaze. Mach was standing beside him, and there was a little collection of chairs in which Fleta, Agape, Trool, the Translucent Adept and the Brown Adept sat. Before them was a shimmering curtain concealing the setting of the game, reminiscent of the historical curtain between the frames. Trool rose and walked to them. “Thou knowest the nature o’ this contest?” he asked Bane.
“Aye, Adept,” Bane said. “But not the nature o’ this dream!”
“It be no dream, Bane,” the troll assured him. “Only thy presence here be a vision and that o’ thine alien friend; all else be real. Do thou play the game to win.”
“Aye, Adept.” The Oracle had told him it would seem realistic, and it was! It seemed that his body was overlapping Mach’s, but his awareness was being projected to the representation of his body here. Thus he saw everything that Mach saw, here in Phaze—without actually being here. He was actually in the Game Computer’s mock-up of the scene, and the mock-up was based on the actual scene of Phaze. Technology was emulating magic.
“Thou knowest the nature o’ this contest?” Trool asked Mach.
“Yes, Adept.” Mach was in Bane’s body, so looked like Bane. Bane glanced down at himself: it was the robot body.
“The machine in Proton-frame has made Bane the Predator, this time,” Trool continued. “Mach be the Prey. An the Prey lap the course three times, he be ROBOT ADEPT 295 victor; an the Predator catch him first, the Predator be the victor. The Prey be given a five-second start. Ready, players?”
“Aye.”
“Yes.”
“Then begin.”
Mach stepped forward, into the setting. He disappeared.
Bane glanced at Agape. It was incongruous to see her here in Phaze in her own form, but of course with magic any vision could be crafted. He waved to her, and she waved back. He wondered whether Agape and Beta were talking together, and if so, what they were saying.
“Go, Bane,” Translucent snapped.
Bane stepped through the curtain.
He found himself on four feet, in a solid, striped body. He was a tiger! His passage through the curtain had triggered the first of the transformations, rendering him into the predator animal.
The setting was an irregular landscape with projecting rocks and descending gullies. There were a number of trees; in fact, parts were as solid as a jungle. This would be a good region to hide and pounce—but he knew he could not afford that. He had to run down the prey, lest it lap the course before he catch it. He sniffed the air. He smelled mongoose. That would be the Prey form, for the moment. As a tiger, he could readily kill it; the problem was running it down. On an open plain, in real life, that would be simple, but this terrain offered many hiding and dodging places; it would be hard to catch it here.
In fact, that five-second head start made the task of location a problem, let alone the task of catching. The mongoose could be through this region and into the next medium, while the tiger was still trying to sniff out the trail.
So he played it smart. He bounded directly across, 2going for the lake he saw in the distance ahead. If he could get there first, and cut off the mongoose—
But as he ran, bounding along the highest ground, he peered into the low regions, noting which ones offered the best protection and clearest access for a mongoose. This was a vital part of the game; what he overlooked could cost him the victory. He had almost reached the water when he heard a splash. The mongoose had raced right through to the next medium! (
Bane charged for the lake, trying to catch up a little.
In this game, the traveling velocities of the creatures were identical, whatever they might be in life. The Predator gained only by cutting corners or by taking advantage of opportunities like this, when he knew the location of the Prey. This slight advantage of the Predator was unlikely to make up for the five-second delay of the start, in the course of any one medium, but would inevitably close the gap a little each time. All he needed to do was to make no error, and the Prey would be his. He did not step into the water, he leaped into it, trying to gain another fraction of a second by entering it at speed. He came down with a horrendous splash—and found himself in the form of a dolphin. Ahead was a shark. A shark might not be considered prey to most creatures, but in life a dolphin could kill a shark by knocking it with the snout. Thus the shark fled the dolphin, in this situation.
The water was not deep. Aquatic plants were rooted in its sediment, reaching their stems up to the surface, forming patterns of thin columns where they clustered. Sponges were grouped on rounded nether rocks. Some rifts showed below, partially filled with sediment, and a few dipped into dark holes that might be blind caves or might be tunnels. Small fish darted about, giving way to the far more massive dolphin.
Bane forged after the shark. But the lead was still too great; he knew he could not catch up within the limit of this lake. Rather than expend his full energy trying to do so, he kept the pace and watched the surroundings, mentally mapping the terrain. The thickest growths of plants offered concealment, but also slowed progress of larger swimmers. Velocity of the contestants was equivalent, but not if they moved foolishly; he would feel better about plowing through those plants if he were smaller. As for the bottom—he paid special attention to the darkest holes, so that he would be able to spot them without faltering when he came this way again. The shark moved toward the bottom, and swerved around a greenish rock. Bane remained higher, and so was able to cut across above the rock, gaining another fraction of a second. He knew the shark would have to come up again, to enter the next medium, so in this, too, he was saving time. The fact was that Mach was not managing his forms perfectly. That was probably because a month’s training for this game was not enough to compensate for a lifetime as a robot. Mach was simply not acclimatized to the nuances of the motions of wild creatures. But he would probably catch on rapidly enough, with this experience.
However, the shark was doing the right thing, overall: swimming swiftly ahead, never pausing or looping back, so that the dolphin could not close the gap significantly. While the Predator could always gain by proper management, the longer he took to close the gap, the more chances there were for something to interfere. It was best to catch the Prey as quickly as possible, to reduce the element of chance or error.
Now the lake was turning shallow. They were approaching the far bank. The shark swam up, as it had to; there was nowhere else to go, without turning back. Bane gained another bit of distance.
The shark shot up to the surface, and through, and disappeared. Bane angled up too, breaking into air—and he was winged, with feathers and beak. In fact he was a hawk, flying strongly: a predator bird, a raptor. Ahead of him, ascending the sky, was a black bird, a crow. The Prey.
2The day was clear, with a few fleecy clouds. But on the horizon was a darkening cloudbank. A wind was stirring; if a storm were brewing, it was coming this way. That could complicate things for flying but the hawk was a better flyer than the crow. In a storm, Bane could gain on his Prey. But the storm was not close, and they would be through this medium of air before it arrived. All he could do was keep flying, and try to close the distance.
The horizon did not recede as they moved. This was the game setting, not reality; it was limited. As the crow flew, the line of the sky descended, heading down to touch the ground, sealing off further progress. The Prey had to seek the next medium.
The crow plunged through the limit, just above the horizon, and disappeared. Bane swooped down to a similar level, because it would not do to turn landbound too high in the air, and went through also. He was back in the first medium, as he had known he would be. But this time he was not the tiger, he was the mongoose. The forms did not repeat for a player, they only progressed. That was why he had studied the layout the first time through: so that he could handle it well as the mongoose.
Ahead a big snake was slithering out of sight, probably a cobra. A mongoose could handle a cobra, being swift enough in close quarters to avoid the poisoned strikes. But in this situation, he could not run any faster than the snake could slither.
But he could take a more direct route. The snake’s fastest travel was along the ground, while the mongoose could bound over some obstacles. Bane bounded, slowly closing the gap. By the time they reached the water he was only two seconds behind.
In the lake, Bane was now the shark—pursuing a squid. The squid was almost as large as the shark, and its trailing tentacles made it longer. But its body was soft, and the shark’s teeth were hard; a few chomps would sever the tentacles and render it helpless, and soon the squid would be consumed. So it fled, jetting water behind so that it shot forward as swiftly as a fish. Its motion was jerky, because it had to pause to take in more water, but the overall velocity was the same as that of the shark.
Would the squid dive, and seek refuge in one of the dark recesses at the bottom? That would be risky for it, for if it entered a blind cave, it would be trapped. There would be no caves that the shark could not eventually penetrate; the game allowed no indefinite hiding. If it had located a tunnel, it might swim through and out the far end, while the shark hovered at the near end; that would gain the Prey the time it needed to complete the course unscathed.
Mach did not take the risk. He jetted straight across, and out the far side. Bane followed, perhaps a second ‘and a half behind.
He was now the crow, and Mach was an owl. The theory for the game was that the owl was a nocturnal creature, at a disadvantage by day, so the crow harassed it, napping about just out of reach and interfering with its hunting so that eventually it starved. The hawk would not do that; if it came at the owl, it would dive straight in, and the owl, being larger would simply grab it and destroy it with talon and beak. Bane doubted that interaction like that ever occurred in nature, but that hardly mattered here; the crow chased the owl, and if they looped through the course again, the owl would chase the hawk in the vicious circle that was the hall mark of this game. It was a good game, even in mock change form, and Bane had always liked it. Mach took a moment getting oriented in owlform, and Bane gained a full second before their flights be came straight. The end was close—if nothing happened. They plunged through the sky-curtain. Bane readied himself before he crossed, curling his crowform into as tight a ball as he could, passing through like a stone and plunking into the ground.
This time he was the cobra, and though he wasn’t 3 coiled, he was bunched. He launched a strike at the nearest object even as he landed, having judged the Prey’s position by the passage through the curtain. If there were that moment of reorientation, before the run began . . .
He caught the tail of the tiger. His fangs sank in, delivering the poison—and. the game was over. The Predator had caught the Prey.
That night he did make love to Agape, but it was not enough to take his mind from the situation. “I have beaten mine other self in the first round, and I am ahead in the second. An I win again tomorrow, it be over—and I lose thee and he loses Fleta. Mayhap there be justice in it, but I like it not.”
“But the benefit of the frames—“ she started.
“Aye, I know, I know! My mind does claim I be doing right—but mine heart be doubtful. What be his crime? That he loves the ‘corn? Fleta be worthy o’ love! That did I see when—“ He broke off, embarrassed.
“Bane, I understand,” Agape said. “I occupied her body, I learned her life, her ways, and her land, and came to love them all, as I love you. Of course she is worthy of love! Of Mach’s love, or yours.”
“A love I would sunder!” he said bitterly. “Damn, would I could honestly lose this match!”
“No, you have to try your best, and win it if you can. That is where your honor lies.”
“Aye, aye! And try I will, though I fear success!”
“That is all anyone can ask of you,” she said.
He hugged her tightly. “Ah, alien creature, I do love thee! Would I could get closer yet to thee, to be a part of thee, and thee of me, forever!”
“It can be done,” she murmured. “Not forever, but for a time.”
His eyes popped open. “What meanest thou?”
“I hold human form because that pleases you, but it is not my natural one, as you know. It is possible to embrace you amoeba-style, though I fear that might repulse you.”
“Thou dost in no wise repulse me, Agape! Embrace me thy way!”
“As you will. Speak if you change your mind; I will hear you.”
She lay on top of him, on the bed, her breasts and thighs pressing on him. She kissed him, once, then put her head to the side. She started to melt. Bane lay still, feeling the change in her flesh. Her breasts lost cohesiveness, and so did the rest of her. She became like a huge pillow, warm and yielding. Then more like a water bag, and then like loose jelly. Her body spread out, making contact with all of his upper surface. The strange effect caused him to develop an erection; her melting protoplasm surrounded it warmly. She sagged, then flowed around him, between his arms and his body, between his legs. She became a padded wetsuit, a layer of warm wax all around him, and as far under him as his contact with the bed permitted. He raised his arms and legs slightly, and she completed the enclosure there; then he pushed back his head and hoisted his torso up, and she flowed around it and merged with herself.
From his neck to his feet, he was encased by her, and it was the most comfortable feeling he could remember. His body, in Proton, was of metal and plastic; it did not matter, for now it felt alive. Every part of him except his face was in her, and now she crept around his head and across that too, stopping only at the eyes, mouth and nose.
“In this body, I need not to breathe,” he reminded her. “Complete it.”
She closed the remaining gaps. Now he was cocooned by her substance, and it was like floating in warm water, only better, because she pulsed gently against every part of him, as if he had a heartbeat. He drifted in that wonderful alien embrace, and it seemed like an eternity.
Truly, he was in her, and if it could only be for an hour, it was a phenomenal hour.
In the second game of the round. Bane was the Prey. He did not know what animal he would become; that was a surprise to both players. How Trool and the Oracle had managed to come to an understanding of such details without either Bane or Mach knowing was hard to guess, since they were the conduits for the information. Perhaps they had code phrases that had meaning only for computers and trolls.
He stepped through the curtain. He was on a broad plain, with a rocky escarpment to the north, that descended from a mesa. He was a monkey. He started running immediately, knowing that whatever form Mach took would be able to destroy the monkey. Sure enough, in five seconds a panther appeared be hind him. He ran straight ahead, giving the big cat no chance to gain on him by cutting comers. But he watched the escarpment. Some of it was clifflike, and some was a jagged slope. From this distance he could not be certain, but he suspected there would be caves. If he could reach a cave, next time around . . .
What form would he be in? What would lose to a monkey, but overcome a panther? He could not come up with an answer at the moment, but he decided to make for the caves next time, and if his form could take advantage of them, he would do so. He did not slow or swerve to get a closer look; he wanted to give his opponent no hint of whatever strategy he might have in mind. But he considered options. Go directly to the escarpment, circle it, and pop into a deep cave? Climb to the mesa? If he climbed, he might just lose time, but if there were a good cave entrance that could not be seen from below . . .
He reached the shore of a wide river and plunged in. The river flowed toward the north, curving in a broad meander toward the escarpment and disappearing be hind it, but it should be possible simply to swim across it and enter the medium of air quickly. He still had his five-second lead.
He was a stingray. He swerved to swim downriver, wanting to explore the section that brushed- the escarpment. He hoped the Predator would assume the Prey was swimming straight across, and lose a second or two. No such luck. A walrus appeared upriver, and immediately reoriented and stroked down. But at least he had not lost any time.
He veered to the left, angling up. The walrus matched him, cutting the corner. Then he veered right and down, deep. As a ploy it was no good; the walrus merely matched the maneuver, cutting the corner again, picking up a bit of time.
Then Bane saw what he was looking for: a weed shrouded cave, underwater in the right bank. It could be blind, but it could also lead to the mesa, or some where amidst the escarpment.
He swerved back to the left, as if trying once more to shake the pursuit. Once more, it didn’t work. This time he carried across to the left bank, and angled up and out, sailing into the air.
He was a four-winged insect—a dragonfly. He zoomed over a great field of flowers, but they did not tempt him; dragonflies were predators in their milieu, not pollen eaters.
Behind him, by about four seconds, a bat sailed up out of the river. He could not fight that! He flew straight, maintaining his lead, until he plunged through the horizon, completing the first lap.
He landed on the plain as a skunk. So that was what would balk the panther! But why not the monkey? He angled for the mesa. The ground soon became rocky. Behind him the monkey appeared and pursued. When the monkey encountered the stony section, it paused just long enough to scoop up a stone. Bane discovered this when that stone came flying past his head. That was how the monkey stopped the skunk—by catching it from a distance! Those stones were heavy 3 and sharp; his skunk body was vulnerable. He needed more than four seconds’ distance, to get out of range. Meanwhile, he would have to dodge, which would cost him time. The chase was heating up!
He reached the foot of the escarpment and scooted up. Monkeys were better climbers than skunks were, but he had scouted this terrain from a distance the first time through, and was on the gentlest part of the slope. He found a series of ledges that ascended along the south face of it, working up toward the mesa-top. He encountered one gravel-strewn section, and scraped with his four feet, sending gravel and pebbles sliding down into the face of his pursuer. That gained him a second or so, and he made it to the top with above five seconds’ leeway.
He ran directly toward the river, watching for openings. There were none; the mesa was grassy and even. Soon he came to the brink, and scrambled over it, sliding and tumbling down the steep slope.
Then, down near the river, he spied it: a rock-blocked cave entrance. His skunk body was small enough to wedge in between the rocks, and he squeezed inside before the monkey caught up.
He didn’t pause; he followed the cave down into darkness. Then he found water. He slid into it quietly, and became an eel. Good enough: the walrus could crush the sting-ray, the sting-ray could sting the eel with its tail, and the eel could shock the walrus. There was the endless circle.
If his strategy worked, the Predator would not realize that the cave went through to the water, and would waste time either pulling away the rocks that blocked it, or waiting for the skunk to emerge, or throwing stones down into it. There was always a way for the Predator to get through, so there could be no impasse, but that way was not always obvious. Bane had gambled that the cave connected to the one he had spied below the water level of the river, and had won. He swam across the river. There was no pursuit. It had worked! He had gained enough time to ensure completion of the course without being caught. Unless the monkey waited, and devised a trap for him. That was within the rules; it was possible for Prey to nab Predator if the Prey had time to set a clever snare that injured or delayed the Predator so that it could not complete the course.
He emerged from the river and became a mosquito. Now how could a mosquito put away a bat? By stinging it, and giving it some lethal disease. Far-fetched, per haps, but viable for the purpose of the game. All these animal sets were only analogies for the root game: scissors/paper/stone. Scissors cut paper, paper wrapped stone, stone crushed scissors, making the circle. No doubt many current games derived from similarly obscure originals. A mosquito stinging a bat was as realistic as paper demolishing a stone by wrapping it. He flew swiftly—more swiftly than any genuine mosquito could have—across the field of flowers, and came back to the land medium. Now he was the panther. He had lapped his opponent, and that made him the Predator. It did not give him the victory automatically, but it certainly gave him the advantage.
But, wary of a trap, he walked to the foot of the escarpment, and climbed it as carefully and quietly as he could. There was no sign of any trap. Perhaps it had been set in the lower plain, where he might be expected to run; by choosing this route, he might have foiled it. He came to the cave entrance. The obscuring stones had been pulled aside, so that a creature the size of a monkey could enter it. Apparently Mach had decided it was a blind cave, and gone down to catch the Prey. Indeed, that would have been the correct decision, had the cave not gone through to the river! It would have been smarter for Mach to go directly to the water, and watch there to see whether any new fish appeared; in deed, he could have lain in ambush, for the Prey could win only by completing the full course, and that meant crossing the river at some point.
He sniffed the region. The smell of monkey was definitely there—but was the monkey still inside, or had it—
He heard a noise just above him, on the slope. He looked up—and the blast of the skunk caught him in the face, blinding him.
Too late, he realized what had happened. He had not lapped Mach; Mach had followed, one medium behind, keeping out of sight, and come up on him while he was distracted by the cave. The slope of the mountain had concealed the Predator, so that he needed only a few seconds’ distraction time to get close enough. Bane had given him that time, and lost the game. All he had had to do was keep moving, completing the course. Mach could never have caught him. But, wary of the nonexistent trap, he had fallen into a worse one: the trap of incaution.
“I saw it,” Agape said. “The Game Computer puts the games on holo. We saw him following you, and creeping up on you at the end.”
“What a fool I must have seemed!” he lamented.
“It is always easier to judge the play when you aren’t in it,” she reminded him. “We knew he had not remained, so could not be caught by your lapping him and putting him away so you could finish the course. But you did not know, and we knew that too.”
But his chagrin went deeper than that. “Could it be that I dawdled’ because I wanted not to win? That I betrayed my cause?”
“You wouldn’t do that,” she protested.
“How can others be sure? How can I be sure?”
She paused, considering. “There is another game to morrow.”
“Aye. Needs must I prove therein I be no malingerer.”
“You will,” she said. But she could not ease his doubt.
Bane was Predator again for the third game. This was the critical one; if he won, the match was over. Mach stepped through the curtain. Five seconds later, Bane followed.
He was a dragon. Not a fire-breather, not a flying creature, but nevertheless a dragon, with horrendous teeth and claws.
Ahead of him was a salamander. That was a far smaller creature, but formidable enough in its own right, be cause it could set fire to any vegetation it touched, and burn most other creatures. Dragons, however, were immune to heat, because so many of them were fire breathers; even those who were not, like himself, possessed enough of the fire-resistant scales and mouth armor to resist the efforts of the salamander. Thus the dragon could chomp the salamander, and the salamander was the Prey.
The landscape was fantasy too: exotic enchanted plants grew high, bearing blossoms that natural flowers could never manage. Bane recognized poison sprayers and sleep weeds and illusion spikes. As a dragon, he had little to fear from these, but a man would have had, literally, to watch his step.
However, there could be aspects of this setting that could damage a dragon, such as clefts in the ground covered by illusion. He would have to watch the path taken by the salamander, and if he saw anything strange, be warned. Meanwhile, because of the prospects for illusion, he could not afford to let the Prey get out of his sight; he could lose critical time trying to locate it through the fog of illusion.
They wound through a forest whose trees supported monstrous webs. The hidden giant spiders could not hurt either contestant because only a contestant could harm a contestant, but they could impede progress significantly. If the salamander got entangled, the dragon could catch it; if the dragon got caught, the salamander could gain vital time.
The trees thinned out, and they came to the water. This was an inverted lake: broadest at ground level, with the water extending up instead of down in an irregular dome. Effects like this did not exist in Phaze; this magic setting was Grafted of imagination rather than reality.
The salamander plunged in. Bane followed. He was now a sea serpent, chasing a kraken. The kraken was a monstrous magic weed whose stems and branches were tentacles. They had little stickers that stung and poisoned the flesh of ordinary creatures, but the hide of the sea serpent was too tough to be affected. If he caught up with the kraken, he would simply bite off its tentacles, making it helpless.
The kraken was aware of this, and propelled itself through the water by stroking with flattened tentacles, making the same speed that the serpent could by threshing its coils. The two of them churned the water, generating myriads of bubbles that sank quickly to the bottom surface.
Bane was gaining. The kraken could move as rapidly as the serpent, but it took Mach a while to catch on to the most efficient use of his paddle-tentacles. By the time he plunged out of the far side of the lake, Bane was only two seconds behind.
In air, Bane was a roc: a monstrous predatory bird, said to be able to carry an elephant aloft in its talons. Bane believed that was an exaggeration; nevertheless, very few creatures on land or in the air debated territory with a roc. Mach was a wyvern: a small fire-breathing flying dragon. He was of course no match for the roc, but dangerous to most other creatures.
They flew through colored clouds: red, green, blue, yellow, black. These might be harmless, but could also be nuisances; the wyvern brushed by a green one, and its substance adhered, stretching like taffy, fouling a wing. The wyvern whipped back its snout and blew fire at it; the green taffy shriveled and smoked and let go, but Mach had lost time. Bane was now only one second behind.
Thereafter they both skirted the clouds. Most were probably just vapor, but neither player could afford to take the chance that it wasn’t. Time was at stake, and a shift of a single second could make the difference. They plunged through the horizon, and now Bane was the salamander, chasing a basilisk. There was the completion of the circle: the basilisk was a small lizard, but its glance could stun or kill other creatures. It could not hurt the salamander, because the salamander could engulf it in a wave of fire, obscuring its glance in smoke and flame and cooking its body. But it could stun the dragon, who lacked the fire.
But with only one second separating them, the basilisk had no time to turn and glare back, and the salamander no time to start a fire. They simply ran, both maintaining the pace, keeping to the same path as be fore, avoiding the devious plants.
They reached the inverted lake and plunged in. Now it was Bane who was the kraken, and Mach was a siren: a creature with the body of a mermaid and a voice that could lure ships and large creatures to their deaths against great rocks in the water. That would be bad for the sea serpent, who would naturally have a taste for so soft and lovely a creature, and who would be charmed by her eerie voice. But the kraken was tone-deaf, and its appetite was too ravenous to be charmed away by prey, and rocks did not affect its streaming tentacles. It would simply squeeze the siren to death, then suck the body dry.
Bane knew how to use the tentacles to move the creature forward, but Mach was having no trouble with the siren, so the distance between them did not narrow. They forged through the water and out to the air.
Bane became the wyvern, and Mach was a harpy. There, again, was the circle: the wyvern could blast the harpy with fire, if it ever got close enough to remain in range while it took a deep breath, but the harpy’s poisoned talons could poison the roc.
They followed their curving route between the clouds, which had not moved, neither risking any deviation. Mach, again unfamiliar with the dynamics of the new creature, lost another half-second before attaining full velocity. Then they proceeded to the horizon, and through.
Bane was the basilisk, and Mach the dragon. Now the basilisk could glare forward—but the dragon could not be stunned from the rear, only from the front. Impasse, again.
But the dragon snagged a claw on a root, and stumbled. The basilisk almost caught up, but still could not get a line on the head, because of the mass of the serpentine body. They plunged on.
This was the last circuit; if Mach could survive the next two media, he would make it through, and win. But Bane was now within chomping distance. The next medium was the lake, and he would be the siren; she could charm from behind, because it was her voice that did it. Deep in the water, that voice would be distorted, but actual contact would undistort it. Touch the tail of the serpent, sing—and the serpent would be charmed into destruction.
The dragon dodged to the side, sideswiping a stout tree by the inverted bank, and lunged ahead. Bane, much smaller, gained time by making a leap to the water. He sailed surprisingly high.
And, in midair, he saw the dragon whip its tail around the tree. Its body reacted like rope; it snapped about, smacking against the other side of the tree. Then Bane landed in the water, and became the siren. He was ready; he had actually gotten in ahead of the other!
And Mach did not follow.
Then Bane realized that he had been tricked. Mach had let him come deceptively close—and balked. Bane had been tricked into the one-way transformation, and could not return. He could not make the circuit, lapping his opponent, as he had tried to do before; he would be out of the game, because he would have gone through form in every medium- All he could do was wait neve do so nt through-and other would never do so, now. It was an impasse—and that meant because he had not Bane had lost the game, and the round The very closeness this pursuit had done him in, denying him he needed t0 dear of the lake. Mach had won by using his mind. Bane experienced relief. He knew that he had done suro to be caught by a trick that had surprised all the watchers too. He had lost with honor -was one more round to g0- ^”g had be^ Table Mach stood at the console. He had the numbers, so he chose 1. PHYSICAL; he trusted that more than the others. Bane chose B. TOOL, evidently not trusting NAKED after his loss in the Chase. The truth was, that had been a very near thing; had Mach’s desperate ruse not worked, Bane could easily have won, and finished the match.
He had the letters on the subgrid. He chose H. H2O, having found that general-surface category compatible the last time. Bane chose 6. INTERACTIVE. The square opened out, and the list of games appeared; a number of ball games wherein more than a ball was used, such as tennis, Jai alai and bowling, so that they wound up in this catchall grouping; water games like pedal-boat bumping and underwater volley ball (wherein the ball had to be propelled under the net); and string-ball games such as tetherball. They assembled the nine-box grid, and played it, and came up with what each was evidently well satisfied to play: table tennis. There were several variants; Trool consulted with the Oracle, with Mach and Bane relaying the messages, and decided on three variants, one for each game. The first game would be standard, with identical equipment on both sides. The second would be freestyle, which meant the individual paddles could be of any type. The third was to be doublet, generally considered to be the most formidable challenge of a player’s capacities.
Mach was familiar with them all, and good at them all. But Bane now had his expertise, as well as the sureness of the machine body. Could Mach, in this fallible living body, match that? He doubted it. Therefore his month’s training would be critical. He had to come up with strategy and skill that could defeat the person he had been in Proton.
Meanwhile, there was the separate challenge of enabling the games to be played. Trool and the Oracle had made the chess games work, and the chase games; but table tennis was a physically interactive game of another nature. How could they hit a ball across the barrier between the frames? He was sure it would some how be arranged, though.
He turned to look at the Translucent Adept. “Who are the best players of this game?” he inquired.
Translucent scowled. “Stile, and certain vampires in manform. We be hoist again.”
“I have to find players better than I am, who can teach me things, and drill me in new techniques.”
“We have resources, but thou mayst like them not.”
“It doesn’t matter whether I like them! I can’t win unless I improve significantly, and even then the out come will be in doubt, because Bane will improve too, and he won’t make errors.”
“Aye, thou must practice,” Fleta agreed. “There be naught distasteful in that.”
“One who can show thee much be Tania.”
Fleta’s ears flattened back, though she was in girl form. “That creature has shown thee already too much!”
Mach had to smile, though he too was startled. “No, that was Bane she showed,” he said.
“When he were emulating thee!” she returned, as if that made Mach culpable. “And in Proton-frame—“
“But it was Tan who was making you—“
“So Tannu be bad for me, and Tania for thee!”
Translucent nodded grimly. “I realize that neither of you be partial to those of the Tan Demesnes. But Tania alone has what thou dost require.”
“What has that harpy that I do not?” Fleta demanded, one hand bunching and moving as if to paw the ground.
“A magic paddle.”
Mach’s interest quickened. “A magic paddle? To play table tennis?”
“Aye. It be a rare device, that she charmed from an elven craftsman of the carbon clan. Methinks thou must in turn charm it from her.”
“O’er my dead carcass!” Fleta snorted.
But Mach was already dazzled by the notion. “A magic paddle, of elven craftsmanship! That would be something very special!”
“Aye. So do thou come to terms with thy filly, and I will make arrangements for thee to visit the Tan Demesnes.”
Fleta did not seem to be in any mood to come to terms. “This may take a while,” Mach muttered. It did. Unicorns were known to be stubborn creatures, and Fleta showed her mettle in this respect. She did not want Mach going near Tania! But finally he persuaded her that if he did not take advantage of every opportunity to improve his game, he would lose, and then the two of them would be separated.
“But the only reason I yield,” she said grudgingly, “be because she be also in Proton, and I would be not there to safeguard thee from her clutches.”
“Good reasoning,” he said, relieved.
But it was not easy, when they went to the Tan Demesnes. Fleta insisted on carrying him there herself, in her natural form, theoretically to save his magic for more important things, but he suspected she was motivated more by the extra time it took this way. Tania was resplendent in a fluffy tan cotton dress that fitted closely about her torso. Her hair was tied back with a tan ribbon and bow, and her feet looked tiny in tan slippers.
The grass here was excellent, but Fleta was not about to change back to unicorn form and graze. Tania smiled brilliantly, flouncing her hem so that a petticoat flashed. “How nice to see thee, Mach! Hast come to play a game with a real woman?”
Mach heard something like a squeal in the back of Fleta’s throat. “A game of table tennis,” he said carefully. “The Translucent Adept said you have a magic paddle.”
“Aye, and that be not all, rovot.” She delivered a brief but intense glance, and he felt the power of her evil eye. Fleta’s head moved slightly, as if orienting a horn for action.
“I brought a good paddle carved by the Red Adept,” he said. “It has perfect heft and balance, and I can play well with it.”
“We shall see,” she said. “Let me change into some thing more comfortable.” She spun around, her skirt flaring, showing her legs up to the thickening region of the thighs, and walked to the tanion tree. Mach, accustomed all his prior life to naked serfs, was amazed at how much a little clothing could do for a woman. Tania had not looked nearly as enticing naked in Proton.
Fleta’s foot came down, just missing his toe. “What be thou looking at, machine?”
“Uh—“
“She knew we were coming,” she hissed. “Why did she change not before?”
“Remember, I’m supposed to get her to lend me the paddle,” Mach said. “I have to seem interested, though of course I am not.”
“Thou couldst have fooled me,” she muttered. Soon Tania reappeared, garbed in tight tan shorts that made her nether portion seem almost bare, and a translucently loose blouse. “This be better, methinks,” she murmured.
“She thinks!” Fleta sniffed.
After a moment Mach noticed that Tania carried a paddle. She was evidently ready to play. There was a chamber in an alcove of the tree, and the table was there. Tania took a stance at one end. “Do it to me,” she invited.
“Nay, an I could ...” Fleta breathed wrathfully.
There was a ball on the table, wedged by the net. Mach fetched it, and served it. He had not played this game in this body, but his motions were good; either his experience or Bane’s reflexes made the play easy. Tania jammed her paddle at the ball somewhat jerkily; it was obvious that she was not an apt player. But the ball came back; she had made the return. He struck the ball again, getting the feel of it and the paddle and his body. Again she was somewhat awkward, but returned it. Obviously she would soon miss, though.
He struck it the third time, angling it across the table. She stretched, almost losing her balance, and he thought she was going to hit the ball well wide—but it returned neatly enough.
Curious, he slammed it off the right comer. She blocked it in a pure reflex of self-defense—and the ball looped back to the center of his side of the table, another fair return. How had she done it?
In the course of the next several volleys, he discovered that no matter how awkwardly she moved her paddle, the ball always made a good return. He finally missed his own shot, trying too hard to make her miss. The skill was not in her, but in the paddle: that was its magic. It would not miss a point.
He lost the game, winning no points at all. He could not prevail against the magic paddle.
Tania smiled as she won. “What wouldst thou give for this paddle, rovot?” she inquired, her bosom heav ing. “To use ‘gainst Bane in thy tourney?” She had a double score to settle with Bane, he realized: he was on the other side, and he had resisted her attempt to fascinate him. She would lend Mach the paddle; she was just trying to see what else she might profit from the transaction. Meanwhile, he had Fleta to contend with.
“Nothing, Tania,” he said gruffly. “There will be three games; it could only win one of them for me. If I depend on magic, I will lose. I need to hone my playing skill, and you are unlikely to do that for me.”
Tania’s face transformed in the course of his speech from self-satisfied to furious. “Take it then, golem-brain; I care not!” And she hurled it at him.
He caught it. “If you insist, Tania.”
She glared, evidently ready to use her magic on him. He snapped his fingers, and a full-length mirror appeared before her, reflecting her outraged visage back to her. Then he turned his back and walked with Fleta away from the table and the tree.
“Methinks that were not wise, Mach,” she said, satisfied.
“Better an angry woman than an angry unicorn,” he said. “She was supposed to demonstrate the paddle, not try to vamp me. I tried to be polite, but she pushed her luck.”
Fleta was silent, but her anger was gone. Mach found practice with the animal heads. Most of these supported Stile, but one aberrant faction did not, and one of the best table tennis players of the frame was a member of that faction. This was an elephant head, who held the paddle in his trunk, and manipulated it marvelously well.
Against Eli the elephant head Mach used his regular paddle, the one Trool had carved. It had no magic, but was an excellent instrument. Mach played well, very well, for the reflexes of Bane’s body were good. But Eli tromped him; his control was superlative. This was the one who could teach him improved play without magic.
But Mach used magic, not to make returns, but to improve his own perception and stamina. To enable himself to learn, to become a better player. They played again. At first Mach, distracted by the nature of his adversary, had made easy misses. But pride soon caught up with him, and now he played with better precision—and still lost points. That trunk was so limber and controlled that the paddle seemed like a living part of it. The spins it imparted seemed magical, though they were not. When Mach tried to analyze them, he missed worse than ever. Eli’s serves were especially bad; Mach could handle them only by playing extremely conservatively and defensively, which only set him up for further trouble.
Little by little, he discovered the key: Eli’s paddle motions were complex, shifting direction and angle with blurring facility. Sometimes the paddle literally spun in his grasp, so that it was difficult to tell which side struck the ball. Since the two sides had different surfaces that imparted different qualities to the flight of the ball, this could be devastating.
“I must learn to do that,” Mach said.
“Aye,” Eli agreed. Rather, he snorted musically through his trunk, making the affirmative; human speech was difficult for him.
They played constantly during the following days and weeks. Eli had the patience of a pachyderm, and the endurance, and was pleased to have such a willing student. He demonstrated all his best shots, and showed Mach how to counter them. Mach, realizing that he would be up against a high-tech Proton paddle in at least one game, was happy to work on his defense. A good defense could not win the game for him, at this level, for it left the initiative to the opponent; but that defense had to be tight before he could score with his offense. The best defensive players took the offensive the moment a suitable opportunity offered; their opponents knew that it was folly to ease up, and so were under pressure that could cause errors. By the time the month was done, he was giving Eli some excellent games. He was vastly improved, and ready to tackle his other self in any of the three games. He had not used the magic paddle, as that was pointless; it was already incapable of making a bad shot. In fact, he felt slightly guilty, knowing that this was one instrument Bane could not match. Only by winning both the other games could Bane prevail.
Meanwhile, Fleta had special news for him. “Dost remember my heat?” she inquired diffidently.
“Oh, no—is it coming again?”
“Nay, hast not noticed it came not again?”
Mach paused. “You mean—?”
“Aye. I be with foal.”
Mach had no idea how to react, so he simply reached for her and embraced her, so cautiously that she laughed. She was a mare; her condition did not make her delicate. She was as happy as he had ever seen her. But she was not willing to let it rest at that. “This be my compensation, an I be separated from thee. But how much better will it be if we separate not.”
“If something can be worked out,” he agreed. “To save the frames, and still be together.”
“Aye. And raise our foal ourselves.”
“To be perhaps the best of unicorns—“
“Or the best of men.”
“Perhaps like both: able to change form freely, yet able also to practice magic.”
“Flach, the Unicorn Adept!” she exclaimed.
Why not? “Why not unite our species with a truly superior composite?”
“And needs must we set up a house, for I fear the Herd will welcome him not.”
“Why not a castle? I am Adept now; I can make what I choose. Our son should have the best.”
“The Rovot Demesnes,” she said, smiling.
She wasn’t serious enough, so he kissed her again. Whatever the outcome of this round, they would have that success together.
It was the day of the first game. Now at last Mach discovered how they were going to make it possible to play across the frames. As before, the two selves would overlap, standing together at one end of the table. Each would play his side. But the ball, instead of passing through the no-longer-existent curtain, would fly across the net to a simulacrum of the other player at the far end.
To Mach, it looked as if Bane were standing there, paddle in hand, in Mach’s robot body, but it was probably a golem provided by the Brown Adept. The golem would not literally play; it would merely emulate Bane’s motions.
But the ball could not physically cross between the frames. What would the golem be striking? This might be an irrelevant detail, but Mach wanted to know, as it could affect his attitude and therefore his play. He didn’t want to ask openly, which he realized was foolish; he was adapting increasingly to living ways, as he spent more time in this living body. Living creatures had awareness of pain, both physical and mental, and tended to be much more careful about things they did not quite understand than machines were. Mach was now far more sensitive than he had ever been in Proton, and he liked to believe that was an asset. So he wanted to know whether a hornet’s nest was inhabited without getting stung during the investigation, and to know the exact nature of the appearance of his opponent without suffering any embarrassment about his naiveté in asking. So he practiced another aspect of personality that came more readily to the living than to the machine: innocuous deception.
He went to Fleta for one more embrace. “Is that a golem?” he whispered to her ear.
Her ear twitched. She did retain some unicorn mannerisms in her human form! “Nay, it has no smell,” she replied. “It be a wraith.”
“Thank you.” So the whole thing, ball and player, was merely an image, a projection from the information coming through him. Trool’s spells from the Book of Magic could readily accomplish that; indeed, Mach him self could do something similar, at need.
“That be all thou dost want of me?” Fleta inquired.
Oops. “All I can ask in public,” he said, giving her backside a squeeze.
She sniffed, but she was mollified.
He returned to the table and took up his paddle. It was the standard one that Trool had made for him, without magic. In this first game, the equipment was equivalent, with each paddle meeting set specifications. The idea was to see how well each played with no ad vantage of equipment. “Let’s rally a little first,” he suggested.
“Aye,” Bane agreed. “This be a strange arrangement.”
Suddenly Mach wished that the two of them could be together like this when not opposing each other. That they could do without illusion what now required illusion. Maybe, after this contest was settled, they could see about that.
He picked up the ball and served it, throwing it up from his left palm in the prescribed manner, so that it was evident that his hand imparted no spin to it. It bounced on his side of the table and crossed the net. He knew that it became illusory at that point, transformed by magic to an image, while in the frame of Proton the Game Computer introduced a physical ball with the exact velocity, azimuth and spin of the one in Phaze. In Proton Mach was the image, generated holo graphically, seeming as real as Bane did on this side. It was an amazingly sophisticated interface, to make the appearance of an ordinary game.
Bane returned the ball, seeming at ease. It crossed back over the net. Was there a flicker as it did so? Mach could not be sure. In any event, he should not allow himself to be distracted by the intricacies of the system; he had to play as well as he could. If he even started wondering how he could move freely about, to play the ball to either side or far back from the table, without losing his overlap-contact with Mach, he would start fouling up! How much of his own motion was also illusion?
They played for a few minutes, becoming acclimatized. All was in working order. “Time for business,” Mach said, with both excitement and regret. “Aye.” Bane caught the ball in his hand, put his hands behind him, brought them out closed and held them just below the level of the table. Mach pointed with his paddle to Bane’s right hand. Bane lifted it: empty. That meant that Bane had the first serve. Bane served. The ball came across the net, low and fast, striking Mach’s right corner. Mach fielded it with a chop, using a short, sharp downstroke to return the ball with a backspin. This tended to slow its progress, causing it to drop to the center of Bane’s table rather toward the back edge. But the backspin did more than that. It changed the nature of the bounce, so that the ball tended to lift and fall short; an incautious player could have misjudged it and missed it for that reason. And more yet: when the other paddle touched it, the spin would tend to carry the ball down, perhaps into the net, for a miss.
But Bane now knew all that Mach did about the dynamics of play. He met the ball with a chop of his own, that countered and reversed the spin, sending the same kind of shot back.
Mach, ready for this, touched the ball lightly with his backhand, so that it bobbed up over the net and down just the other side: a shot that could be far more troublesome than it appeared, because normally a player stood back from the table.
But Bane was there, and with a quick flick of his wrist plunked the ball down and to Mach’s right, so that it bounced near the edge of the table and dropped to the side. Mach leaped to intercept it, but the table was in the way, and he could not get there in time to do more than flip it way up in a high arch over the net. That, of course, was a setup. Bane slammed it off the far side, and Mach had no way to return it. One-love, for Bane. Now the game was truly under way!
Mach recovered the ball and tossed it back. Bane caught it in his hand and took his stance for the next serve.
This one was backhand, cutting across to Mach’s left side. He returned it the same way as he had the first, with backspin. Mach’s return was similar again; the machine body and mind tended to stay in familiar channels. That was apt to be a weakness.
Mach followed through with the same sort of shot he had made at this point in the first rally, nipping the ball gently over the net to the center of the table. And Bane replied as he had before, with the dropshot to the side, only this time to Mach’s left. Again Mach was caught in a squeeze, and made a poor return, and got it smashed past him. Two-love for Bane.
But Mach was verifying what might be weaknesses in his opponent; that was more important than the points, at the moment. Mach had qualities of imagination he had lacked as a machine, and now he was using them for what he hoped would be his advantage. If he charted Bane’s weaknesses, he could exploit them before the game was done.
Bane’s third serve was forehand, to Mach’s back hand. One forehand crosscourt, one backhand cross court, one forehand downcourt—the next should be backhand downcourt, and the fifth a new variation. If so, Mach would know what to expect later in the game, and that would help immensely.
He returned it with a high looping sidespin shot, the kind that could utterly befuddle a neophyte but would be a lost point against an experienced player. Sure 3enough. Bane compensated for the spin and slammed it off the corner. Three-love. A lost point, but confirmation of the reaction. It was not possible to put ultimate spin on a ball with the standard paddle surface, but in a later game it would be another matter. However, he could not afford to get too far behind. He played to win on the fourth point. As anticipated, Bane served the ball backhand, to Mach’s forehand, and because he was ready for it, he slammed it right back where it had come from. It was a beautiful shot, and it caught Bane by surprise; the paddle was late, and the ball went flying to the side, out of play. Three one.
Bane’s fifth serve was a drop shot, as Mach had thought reasonably likely. He dropped it back, and gained the initiative, which in due course won him the point. Three two.
Now it was Mach’s serve. He tested Bane’s reactions on different types, and verified that Bane’s skill was basically Mach’s own—before he had come to Proton. He was thoroughly familiar with that style of play, by no coincidence, and knew its strengths and weaknesses. A defensive game would never prevail, because the robot made no unforced errors, and would outlast any other opponent. But the right kind of offense, initiated at the right occasion, could force errors. Mach was about to find out whether what he had learned from Eli the elephant head was the right kind.
It was, but not by much. Mach found that by making wild alterations in his play he could cause Bane to lose track momentarily and become vulnerable—but that same wildness made Mach’s own shots unreliable. He missed more than he should have, by taking risks, playing low-percentage shots. As a result, the score see sawed. He caught up at 9-9, fell behind to 13-10 (the server’s score was always given first), went ahead at 16 17, and tied again at 19-19.
It was make-or-break time. Mach, as the robot, would not have gambled; Mach, as the living creature, did. It was his serve, and he had no better occasion to seize the initiative. He used the Eli special, thinking of his right arm as a flexible trunk, using it to put on the backspin that looked like a topspin. He spun the paddle; both sides were the same, for this game, but the spin helped mask the particular angle and motion as it contacted the ball. If it fooled Bane the way it had himself—
It did. Bane’s return smacked into the net. He had countered for topspin, and sent the ball wrong. Now for the real gamble. Mach had not repeated shots since his experimentation early in the game; Bane should be expecting a different serve. Mach used the same one, spinning the paddle again. This time Bane, more cautious, did manage to return it—but his volley was unaggressive. Mach played it aggressively, gained the initiative, and forced the rally to its conclusion. He made the point, and won the game, 21-19. But he knew he would never catch Bane that way again. This ploy had been viable only at the end of the game, only for two points. If he ever tried that serve again, Bane would know what to do with it, and that, combined with error-free play, would suffice. Robots did learn from experience, and learned well. “Good game,” Mach said.
Bane nodded. “Until tomorrow.”
But tomorrow was freestyle. Mach would have the magic paddle. This had been the key game, setting up for the sure win tomorrow.
Bane faded out, along with the far side of the table. Mach turned to Fleta, who seemed to materialize almost in his arms. “I took him on skill,” he said, well satisfied.
“Don’t get cocky,” Translucent said. “He’s as good as you are, and you won’t take him again this way.”
“I won’t need to,” Mach said.
But the Adept did not look confident.
Bane shook his head. “He learned tricks he never knew before! I’m in a position to know. I could have finished the match by being smarter in the Chase, and now one more loss can finish it the other way. I know not we’er I have really been trying.”
“You tried,” Agape said. “You were ahead, but then he used those peculiar serves.”
“I know not who could have taught him those,” he said. “I played the game all my life, but ne’er could match my father, and knew of none other could. Stile would not have trained him, and—“ Then a thought caught up. “The renegade animal heads! They played not with others, but there were stories of an elephant head who were marvelously dexterous with his trunk! That could be it!”
“That, and the natural skill of your human body,” she agreed.
“Aye, it be a good body,” he said with a certain resigned pride. “This machine body makes errors not, but also can handle complex surprises not. He caught me often enough with shots I could calculate not in time. He knew my limits, as he should. It were his body longer than mine.”
“But you can adjust.”
“Aye. He can catch me once or twice with a new shot, but thereafter I be attuned to the device, and it be useless. I will be stronger for the next game and stronger still for the third. In only a month, he cannot have mastered enough new things to compensate for that.”
She changed the subject. “Let’s go look at Nepe.” She meant their child, who did not yet exist. But there was daily progress in the construction of the robot body, to be like that of a human baby, and the development of the particular programming required to enable that body to interface harmoniously with a partial Moebite, while being closely patterned after that of his body. Agape herself was gaining mass, eating voraciously, preparing for the time of fission. If Bane won the contest, and the two of them had to separate, they would delay long enough to get Nepe started. That, at least, they intended to salvage from victory.
Next day Bane was ready. This was freestyle, and he had prepared diligently. The key was in the paddle. Technology was able to produce a wide variety of sizes, substances, weights and surfaces, and he had tested them as thoroughly as he could. He now had a paddle that was virtually magical in it propensities. The touch of finger or thumb on the controls near the joining of blade and handle could change the hardness of the rubber (it wasn’t rubber, but tradition called it that) all the way from diamond to marshmallow, and the adhesion from glass to glue. The paddle could hold the ball so that it would not drop off, or be so slippery that the ball bounced away with its spin unaffected. It could completely damp out both the force and spin of an incoming ball, or put on devastating force and spin of its own. Because the nature of the surface was exactly what he specified it to be, without changing the appearance, the other player would have little notion what was coming. He could make an obvious gesture, applying phenomenal spin, but set the paddle on null so that none of that spin was imparted, and the other player would miss by compensating for nonexisting spin. Such paddles had been illegal for centuries for tournament play, but popular for trick play. Mach had never used one, preferring to hone his skill within tournament regulations. Adaptation to such a paddle could spoil a serious player for tournaments, because his reflexes were wrong. Only the mediocre players tried to shift back and forth between types; the top ones settled on legal variants and perfected their technique with these. Indeed, a top player could defeat any of the special-paddle players, because surface was only part of the nature of the game. Skill and training and consistency counted for more.
That was one reason that Bane had not played his best in the first game: he had adapted to the specialized paddle for the freestyle, and so not been in perfect tune for the standard paddle. He had invoked a different program for the other, so that he did play well, but he could have played better had he put all of his energy into perfecting his technique with it. Instead he had settled for the level of skill Mach had developed, and put his energy into the special mode. He expected to win this second game, because he knew that neither Mach’s prior experience nor that of his own body pre pared them for the type of play and deception this paddle offered. A good player with a conventional paddle could handle a mediocre one with a special paddle—but he was now a good player with a special paddle. That made it a new ball game.
Indeed, he had practiced against some of the ranking players of Proton, in special matches. They had used their legal paddles, and regarded it as an intriguing challenge to meet the special one. A number of them were clearly superior to Mach, as he had played before, but the paddle added considerably to Bane’s effective ness. He had taken them, in the early games, then lost again as they learned how to compensate, but all admitted that he was a more formidable player this way. They doubted that any player on the planet could take him in the first game, this way; the difference was too striking. It was hardly possible to learn in the course of a single game what he had spent a month mastering, and it was not easy to do in several games. So Bane was confident. Mach, attuned to the conventional mode of the first game, would find himself up against a totally different creature in the second. He would compensate—but hardly before he had lost the game.
Yet as they stepped up to their ends of the composite image table, Mach seemed oddly confident. Had he devised a similar paddle, and practiced against it? That seemed unlikely, because the tricks he had learned with the conventional paddle should have taken most of his training time.
They rallied, as before, and things seemed normal.
Mach had a different paddle, but of course so did Bane. He did not try any special shots, preferring to save them for the game. Soon they were ready, and Mach caught the ball and hid his fists under the table. Bane guessed right, and was right; he had the serve.
Now was time for the surprises.
He started with a fierce crosscourt topspin, the rubber softened and rendered tacky so that it imparted far more spin to the ball than would ordinarily have been the case. Mach, judging by the prior surface, would fail to compensate sufficiently, and the ball would fly well be yond the end of the table.
Mach returned it, and the ball did loop up, but the force was gone, and it plunked down in the center of the table. Obviously he had been caught by surprise, but had a lucky shot. Table tennis was a game of skill, but luck played its part, as it did in every game to some extent. That was part of the excitement: the invocation of chance.
No problem. Bane smashed it down the center, an easy put-away shot. The first point was his. Except that the ball looped up giddily, and somehow managed to catch Bane’s side of the table again. Was the frame translation mechanism malfunctioning? No, the arc was true; Mach had just somehow managed to aim it right, obviously with no certainty on his part. Sometimes it happened.
Bane made sure it would not happen again. He thumbed his paddle to maximum force, producing a surface that had all the thrusting power of a trampoline, and smashed the ball down with such velocity that Mach would have to retreat far back from the table to have any hope of returning it.
But Mach remained up close—and the ball, crazily, came back, in another shaky but fair return. It seemed impossible, but there it was. How could it have happened?
Bane, shaken by this freak series, tried a trick shot. He wound up as if for the hardest slam yet, then dinked the ball down just over the net with a heavy backspin that damped it almost to a standstill.
Mach, though, was ready. The tip of his paddle caught the ball and nipped it to the side, forcing Bane to dive for the return—and then, of course, Mach slammed the setup to the other side, winning the point. Love-one. But Bane knew that freak shots could not be de pended on. Mach had been extraordinarily lucky in his returns, then pounced on the opportunity that offered when Bane changed the pace. Had Mach been playing well back from the table, in anticipation of a slam, he would never have caught up to the dink shot. He served again, this time putting on backspin so heavy that though the ball started fast, it slowed dramatically and failed to clear the table for the second bounce on the far side. Bane returned it without even trying to counter the spin; as a result, the ball sailed up in an invitation for another smash.
Bane of course accepted the invitation, and slammed it off Mach’s backhand corner. But Mach took it on his backhand without effort, and again it looped back. Bane slammed it off Mach’s forehand corner. Yet again Mach intercepted it in what should have been a return that careered wildly, but again the ball simply looped back to strike at the center of Bane’s table. This was crazy! Mach wasn’t even trying to play offensively; he was simply making fluke returns! What was he up to? No one could play that way for long without losing the point; human reflexes were not swift enough or good enough to handle slammed balls up close.
This time Bane softened his rubber and sliced, so that the ball curved visibly in the air before striking the table. The sidespin did not have much effect on the bounce, but would be very strong against the opposing paddle. The shot was hard enough so that Mach would not have much time to analyze or compensate.
But Mach didn’t try. He simply poked his paddle at the ball—and the ball looped back in another of those high, amateurish returns.
This time Bane had been watching that paddle closely. The angle had not even been correct. By rights the ball should have flown off the table, a lost point. Yet it had flown fair, to the center of the table. It was like magic. Magic! Suddenly Bane caught on. Mach had gotten hold of a magic paddle! That possibility had never occurred to him. There had been no magic paddles in Phaze, because there was no point to them; why use magic to foul up a game of skill? But evidently someone had crafted one, perhaps simply for the challenge of it, and now Mach had it.
Bane tried to slam the ball again, but his realization about the paddle distracted him, and he missed the table. Love-two.
Obviously the paddle was enchanted so that any shot it made was fair. If no effort was made to guide it, the ball returned in neutral fashion: a high arc to the center of the table. If Mach made a more aggressive shot, then it went where he sent it—but wouldn’t miss if he sent it wrong. Thus he could try for the most difficult shots with the certainty of making them. Or not try at all, and still get the ball back. He could not miss. How was he, Bane, to win the game—when his opponent could not miss a shot? All his preparation with the special paddle had been nullified in a single stroke! Only in Phaze would magic work—but Mach was playing in Phaze. Since the validity of a shot was determined at the point of the ball’s contact with the paddle, it didn’t matter that there was no magic on Bane’s end of the table; the ball was correctly guided there. If they had set it up to exchange courts at the halfway point of each game—but in this special situation that wasn’t feasible. So Mach would have the magic through out the game.
Bane had thought he would win this game readily. Now, suddenly, he faced defeat and loss of the entire contest, because he had overlooked this possibility. He glanced at the audience. They were watching, in Proton and in Phaze, but would not speak to him in the midst of the game. What advice could anyone give him, anyway? It could not remove the enchantment on Mach’s paddle!
He was behind by two points, a trifling amount, yet he felt like resigning, to spare himself the humiliation that was coming. Could he win even a single point? But battered pride kept him going. He would play his best regardless, so that everyone would know it. He would not give up just because the game had become hopeless.
He tossed up the ball for the third serve, and tried for a horrendous slice.
And missed the ball entirely. That was the danger in trying too hard; the angle was so sharp and the speed of the paddle so great that the tiniest misjudgment could become devastating.
Love-three. When the server made his pass at the ball, that was the serve. He had missed his serve and forfeited the point. Some brave try that had been! Missed the ball entirely . . .
That was not supposed to happen to a robot; it was an unforced error. But the body was governed by Bane’s mind, and he had overridden it to try his own extreme technique. By going beyond the body’s parameters, he had enabled it to err. Yesterday Mach had used trick shots that caused the computer brain to miscalculate; this time he had done it to himself. But that was of lesser significance.
Suddenly he realized how he could give himself a fighting chance. This game was not yet over! He served again, making the paddle surface hard and fast, applying minimal spin, just enough to help control the ball. Spin made limited difference now, because the magic paddle nullified it; the balls Mach returned were spinless. But speed and placement counted, because Mach had to get the paddle to the ball. He now needed spin only to help control his shots.
Mach returned it with that familiar loping shot that was the paddle’s default. Ready for this, Bane smashed it back. Mach’s second return was higher, a perfect setup.
Bane decided to test the limit of the magic. He set his paddle for maximum hardness, and smashed the ball down as hard as his metal arm could do it. The ball flattened significantly against his paddle, then rebounded with such force that when it caught the edge of the table it broke, with half of it dropping down the side of the table while the other half dragged after. But Mach’s paddle was there, jabbing at it. And the tip of the paddle caught the crushed remnant and hooked it over the net so that it plopped in the center on Bane’s side.
The point did not count; the broken ball had to be replaced. But another type of point had been made: the magic paddle could return anything at all, even a demolished ball. As long as it touched it. Bane served again, the same way. Mach returned the same way. A very similar shot offered, and Bane wound up for the same smash. But this time he bent his wrist sharply back and slammed the ball off the opposite side of the table.
Mach, caught by surprise, did not even try for the ball. The point was Bane’s. One-three.
The magic paddle could not return what it did not touch. As far as it was concerned, the ball was out of play. It was up to Mach to get it there in time. And up to Bane to see that Mach could not get it there in time.
The remainder of the game was grueling. The robot body that made no unforced errors, and the magic paddle that never missed its shot. Bane played every shot for maximum motion on the opponent’s part, getting Mach off balance, putting the ball where he did not expect it, so that his living-body reaction was strained, and errors occurred. Mach had been a machine all his life and still tended to depend on the automatic reliability of it; but now he was living flesh, and the flesh was fallible. He could not always get to the ball, and each time he failed, Bane won the point. But Bane’s body was healthy, and the magic paddle made returns easy. He did not readily miss the ball. So the rallies were long and hard, and only when Mach tired did Bane score. That was the final key, however:
Bane’s body did not tire. He was able to keep the pace indefinitely.
So inevitably, the final point was his. Bane had beaten the magic paddle, and won the game. The score was tied, one game apiece.
“I think some thought you were not trying hard to win,” Agape said when they were private, after the grueling game. “That doubt is gone.”
“It be strange,” Bane said. “When it looked hope less, and I thought there was no point in continuing, that was when I had to try hardest to win.”
“Tomorrow will decide it,” she said.
“Tomorrow will decide it,” he agreed. “He won the game I thought he would lose, because the flesh can play not as reliably as a machine—but the flesh managed to strain the limits o’ the machine through innovative play. He lost the game methought he would win, because o’ the magic paddle—but the machine man aged to strain the limits o’ the flesh. Tomorrow—I think no one can know the outcome o’ that game.”
“No one can know,” she agreed.
“But an I win, and we must separate—“
“There will still be Nepe,” she said. “We can surely delay that long.”
“Aye. But an Mach return to this body—“
“Where else?” she asked with a wry smile.
“It would please me if thou didst play Fleta for him, again. I oppose him, but I hate him not, and his love for the filly be true.”
She did not answer right away. “I thought never to play that role again,” she said at last.
“Aye. But an I deprive him o’ her, what do I owe him in return?”
“And what of Fleta? What do you owe her?”
That returned him to reality. “Must needs I find an other way.” He got up. “I will talk with Blue.”
“And I,” she said.
They went to Citizen Blue, who met them graciously, with Sheen. “On the morrow, mayhap I will win the match,” Bane said. “And deprive myself and Mach o’ our loves, and the alien and the filly o’ theirs. That be no easy thing.”
“The imbalance must be corrected,” Blue replied. “But you will be able to visit the frames, while we work to find the key for correction.”
Bane took a deep breath. “Methinks we have the key already. It be between thee and my father.” Blue arched an eyebrow.
“The Oracle learned it,” Bane continued. “There be a line between ye two, and that be the line Mach and I followed. Methinks thou couldst exchange, an thou didst try.”
Blue whistled. “And lose our loves, even as we have asked of you.”
“I thought o’ it not that way!” Bane protested.
“But it may be that way,” Blue said grimly.
“Unless there be another way. The Oracle be studying that.”
“What way is that?”
“To end the separation o’ the frames, and merge them again.”
“But that separation is for a reason!”
“A reason that accomplished not its purpose. The imbalance remains.”
Citizen Blue nodded. “That would be a whole new game!”
“A game that leaves all of us our loves.”
“We must explore this! If you and Mach—“
“First must I win the game tomorrow. Then will Mach work with me, and with thee. Then can the root of this be explored.”
“Yes. Win tomorrow, and the essential tool is ours. The Oracle and the Book of Magic, reunited—“
“Aye,” Bane said, feeling better. Now he could do his utmost, and believe that the best would come of it. The final game was Doublet: played with two balls and four paddles. It was not popular with serious players, because it tended to get wild, but dabblers liked it, as did some specialists.
Each player had one standard paddle, and one free style paddle. Play was not required to alternate between them; rather, each ball had to be played with its own paddle. Thus this represented two separate games, played simultaneously. It could be a formidable challenge. Bane had the first serve, which meant one pair of balls. He was required to serve the standard one first: the yellow ball, with the standard paddle. The second had to follow not before the first cleared the net, and not after the first returned; the window was while the opposite player was playing the first. Thereafter there was no set order; the balls were simply played as they came.
Bane had the standard paddle in his left hand. He tossed up the yellow ball with his right, his fingers also holding the other paddle, and struck it with the correct paddle. Then he tossed the red ball with his left hand, and struck it with his high-tech paddle. Both balls were served crosscourt, requiring Mach to orient on the extremes rapidly.
The first was coming back as he completed his serving pass for the second. He played it back to the same court he had served the red one, and with a shorter stroke, so that it gained somewhat on the other. But Mach played them back to opposite courts. Whether it was better strategy to play them to the same court or to opposite courts was an open question; it depended on the player and the situation. Already Bane felt his robot intellect being extended; this was no easy task for it, tracking two at once.
Now the two balls were crossing oppositely. Theoretically there was the danger of them colliding, and that was a complication in regular play. But for this game there was no problem; the yellow and red balls were on different planes of reality, and would pass through each other without interacting. In fact, that applied to the paddles, too: the wrong one could not touch the ball, literally. Thus there would be no question whether the ball was returned with the wrong paddle; if it returned at all, it was by the right paddle. Bane wasn’t quite sure how this worked; perhaps the seemingly solid balls were mere images, extensions of the images on the far side of the table. They seemed solid, but he had learned not to believe everything that had seeming, in either frame.
Bane played conservatively, concentrating on one ball at a time, so that he could devote his whole competence to it. He put intricate spins on the red ball—only to see them nulled by the magic paddle Mach used. He went for speed and placement with the yellow ball, because the standard paddle was not as sharp on spins. But Mach could handle such straightforward play. Mach played slow on the red ball, retreating from the table to return it late, and fast on the yellow one. As a result, the two soon came into alignment. Bane tried to separate them in space, if not in time, angling the red one right and the yellow one left. That was his tactical error. Mach slammed them simultaneously, crosscourt, and Bane was unable to field them both. He had to let one go, and chose to sacrifice the red one. He returned the yellow one. Love-one. Now it was down to a one-ball game, with standard equipment. Mach had won their prior such game—but Bane had zeroed in on the new tricks and was ready for them. Deceptive spin would not catch him. Also, Mach could no longer use the magic paddle, so could fail to return the ball. This was better for Bane. He played hard, moving the ball from side to side and front to back, until Mach’s fallible living body made the error of sending too gentle a return, and Bane put it away for the point. One-one.
Now it was Mach’s serve, both balls. Because of the special nature of this game, the serve changed each time, so as to prevent a facile combination of serves from generating too great a run of points. He served the yellow ball fast, crosscourt, and the red one slow, downcourt. He was trying to get the two aligned again, so as to catch Bane in the same split as before. But this time Bane had a trick of his own to play. He returned the yellow fast and the red slow but not easy. He set his paddle to max-tack and sent what was known as the double loop: a high shot with extremely potent topspin. It came down on Mach’s side almost vertically, and bounced away almost horizontally, retaining formidable spin. That would be an extraordinarily difficult shot to return, if it were not for the magic paddle.
Meanwhile, the yellow ball had lapped the red one, and he played it before the red one landed, slamming it to the far corner. Mach knew that if he went for it, he would never get to the red one. So he let the yellow go, losing the point, and caught the red. It was one-ball table tennis again—but this was the variant Bane had proven he could win. He smashed the ball again and again, until he maneuvered Mach out of position and placed a shot he could not reach. One three, Bane’s favor.
That set the complexion of the game. Bane had greater reliability when the game was down to one ball; Mach had the advantage with two, because his living body was more flexible and his magic paddle gave him one sure return. After the initial points, neither tried to align the two balls; it gave too much of an advantage to the one who had the first chance to make simultaneous slams. Mach won the first ball more often than not, and Bane the second. The lead varied, and changed often, but it was basically even ball.
Thus it was that they came to the conclusion neither had wanted: a 20-20 tie. Now it would be sudden death; the first to gain an advantage of two points would win the game and the match.
Bane was torn: should he play conservatively, or draw on a special shot he had saved for emergency use? If he played conservatively, they would probably continue splitting points, and the game would drag out interminably. If he gambled on tricky but risky play, he could win quickly—or lose as quickly. It was his set of serves; the initiative was his.
As a robot, he knew that his best chance was conservative. Mach, in the volatile living body, could make mistakes, magic paddle notwithstanding. But as a living being who was merely housed in a machine, he felt that his best chance was to take the gamble. At least it would be over quickly.
He gambled. He served the yellow ball low and fast, so that Mach would not be able to do more than return it. He did the same with the red one. The magic paddle would return it regardless, but if he served it easy, Mach could take the initiative and make an aggressive shot, and Bane did not want that.
The yellow came back. This time he sent it in a phenomenally high shot, a towering trajectory that sent it as far aloft as the crown of a tree. That effectively put it out of play for a few seconds. Meanwhile he returned the red one with a backspin so strong that the ball actually bounced backward, back across the net, rather than on forward for Mach’s return.
Would Mach be so surprised that he let the ball go? If so, he would lose the point. Then Bane would have the lead, and the advantage on the remaining ball. Mach stepped around the table and went for the red ball. This was legal; a player could strike the ball on the opponent’s side of the table, if its natural impetus carried it there. Many players did not know that, but of course Mach did. But how would he play it—when he was unable to cross the curtain? That was the question, and because Bane did not know the answer, it was the essence of his gamble.
Mach stepped forward, across the midline—and disappeared. He was now entering the magical representation on the other side of his table. No provision had been made to project his image, here. He was in limbo. Abruptly the red ball changed course, taking off at right angles, crossing the table, bouncing, and sailing off the far side near the net. Bane had no chance to get it. He had lost the gamble; Mach had struck the ball he saw in his frame, and the question of its nature in Proton now was answered: it was illusion, and was affected by Mach’s stroke.
Twenty-twenty-one. Bane was behind, and now the yellow ball was coming down. Mach reappeared, circled the table, and set up for a left-handed slam. The element of surprise had failed, and now Mach had a setup to put away. Bane might return it, but he had lost the initiative, and the point would almost certainly be Mach’s. Mach slammed it—and it touched the comer of Bane’s side and veered crazily away, an unplayable ball. Mach had taken his own gamble, striving for a placement ordinarily beyond human ability, and won. Won everything.
And Bane, knowing that he had tried his best, honestly, and lost despite it, was relieved. He had given Citizen Blue the key to a possible reversal of the situation, while he was on Blue’s side; now he was on the other side, by the terms of the deal, and was no longer free to provide such information. The Contrary Citizens and Adverse Adepts had no more wish than Adept Stile or Citizen Blue to see the frames destroyed; perhaps some mutually satisfactory accommodation would yet be worked out. So it was not necessarily the end of decency.
Or so he hoped.