The moving car collided with the stationary one. Both exploded. A ball of flame encompassed the mass, and smoke billowed outward. Protonite didn’t detonate like that; Red’s vehicle must have been booby-trapped with explosives. It had been a trap, all right.
Then Stile realized he was alone. “Sheen!” he cried in anguish. “Why didn’t you eject too?” But he knew why. She had wanted to be junked cleanly when she lost him; she had seen to it herself.
He knew there was nothing he could do for her. It was Red he had to go after. He shucked his carseat and charged across to intercept the Adept.
She had a hand weapon. She pointed it at him.
Stile dived, taking advantage of the irregularity of the ground. The laser beam seared the sand ahead of him, sending up a puff of acrid fumes. Then he crawled rapidly to the side, grabbed a small rock and hurled it at her. He did this without lifting his head or body; he could throw accurately by sound.
But she too had moved, crossing to get a shot from a better vantage. Only Stile’s continuing motion saved him from getting lasered. But now he too was armed—with a number of good throwing rocks. He could throw them rapidly and with excellent effect, when the target presented itself—if he did not become the target of the laser first.
They maneuvered. Watching, listening, stalking. Red was no amateur at this; she knew how to stay out of trouble—and she had the superior weapon. He would have to catch her by surprise, score with a rock before she could bring her laser to bear, and close for the finish. It was a challenge similar to certain Games, and he was good at this type of thing too. But she had the advantage of weapon and familiarity with the terrain.
Nevertheless, he outmaneuvered her, got in a good location, and prepared for attack. He wanted to knock her out with a score on the head, but his stones were too light for certainty. He was more likely to stun her momentarily or injure her, and have to take it to hand-to-hand combat. So be it. Too bad he had not brought his sword across the curtain. But he could do a lot of damage to a human body, bare-handed, in a very short time.
He watched for his moment, then made his move. He rose up and hurled his first stone. His aim was good; it glanced off her head, making her cry out. But her thick red hair had cushioned it somewhat; the stone only gashed her, not seriously.
Then she leaped—and disappeared.
The curtain! The curtain was here, and she had used it. In this respect, too, she had been better prepared than he. He charged across to it and willed himself after her.
Suddenly the mountain greened about him. He stood on verdant turf, with patches of purple flowers decorating the slopes. The air was warm and fragrant.
Red was still reeling from the blow of the stone. Blood colored her hand where she had touched the gash, and her hair was becoming matted. But when she saw him she raised the laser and fired at point-blank range.
Of course it didn’t work. The curtain was not the demarcation of worlds, but of frames—modes of energy-application. She was getting rattled, making mistakes now.
Stile hurled another rock at her. His weapon was good in either frame!
But she dodged the rock and brought out an amulet. Where she had carried it he didn’t know, since she was naked, as serfs had to be in the other frame. “Invoke!” she cried.
The amulet expanded into a ravening griffin—body of lion, head and wings of eagle. It oriented on Stile and leaped.
Stile spelled himself hastily back through the curtain.
He was in Proton again, inhaling oxygen through the mask. How bleak this frame was! Smoke still drifted up from the wrecked vehicles. Sheen had been there, suiciding rather than continue an animation that had become meaningless.
Stile concentrated a moment, then willed himself back through the curtain. “Creature fly up into sky!” he sang, and the griffin, just now turning on him after having overshot him, abruptly spread its wings and ascended. It was out of the fray.
Stile launched himself at Red, who held another amulet. She had a flesh-toned compartment belt, he saw now, that held her assorted weapons; from a distance she looked properly naked. He caught her hand and wrenched the amulet from her. “Invoke!” he cried.
The amulet grew into a flying octopus. It reached hungrily for Red. Stile had realized before that there were malign amulets that attacked the invoker, and benign ones that fought on the side of the invoker. Since Stile had stopped invoking amulets, Red was using these benign ones against him. He had just stolen one and turned it against her.
Now Red dived across the curtain, escaping the malice of her own creation. Stile went after her—and almost got clobbered by a rock. She was using his tactic against him, now.
He grappled with her. She was a foot taller than he—in this frame, about thirty centimeters—and had more mass. She was strong, too. A virtual Amazon, a naked tigress, eager to kill. Her claws gouged at his eyes, her knee rammed his groin. But Stile saw the smoking wreckage where Sheen had perished, and was a savage animal himself. Every person he held dear was being destroyed one way or another; he would destroy in turn. He was expert in several martial arts; he knew which nerves to pinch, the vulnerable spots to strike, the pressures that would disjoint which joints, on man or woman. He blocked her attack and concentrated on his own.
Again Red was overmatched, and realized it. She willed herself back into Phaze—and Stile went with her, not relenting. But here her amulets functioned; she invoked one, and it hissed out of a bottle, a genie, a giant gaseous man all head and arms. Quickly Stile recrossed the curtain.
He needed a spell to banish a genie. And another to take the offense. He might not be able to attack Red directly, but he could isolate her or—
Something was moving in the now almost-quiescent wreckage of the two vehicles. Stile’s attention was instantly distracted from the battle. Could it be—?
With timorous hope he hurried over there. Yes—a shape was struggling to extricate itself! This was not the fantasy frame; it couldn’t be a demon!
“Sheen?” he called tentatively.
“Stile?” her voice came back, oddly distorted.
“Sheen, you survived! I thought—”
“I am a machine. I am damaged, not yet defunct. Unfortunately.”
“Let me help you—”
“Do not touch me. I am hot.”
She was indeed. As she completed her extrication, he saw the extent of the damage. Most of her superficial flesh had been burned away. Her face was rubble. Her lovely skin and hair had been stripped to reveal scorched metal, with dangling shreds of substance. Wisps of smoke and steam drifted upward from her joints, and hot oil dripped from her chest cavity. She looked about as much like a corpse as a machine could. An animated corpse—a zombie.
“Sheen, we must get you to a repair shop! You—”
“Go after Red, Stile!” she cried weakly. “Do not let me distract you. I am of no further use to you. If I did not have this damned self-preservation circuit that cut in—”
Still, he was torn. Once before she had suffered injury on his behalf, making him realize how important she was to him. Her damage this time was surely worse, though she remained animated; all of her surface had been charred by the flame, and she was probably operating ineffectively on the last dregs of her Protonite charge. Yet it seemed that this merely reflected her emotional desolation, for she was programmed to love him—and never would be his lover again.
Perhaps it would be kinder simply to allow her to expire. She was close to the end now.
The thought triggered a savage reaction. “Vengeance I have sworn, but it shall not take precedence over friendship,” Stile said. “Walk with me across the curtain. I can restore you, there.”
The eyeless husk of a head oriented on him. The tattered remnant of her speaker spoke. “You must not. Red will trap you—”
“I think Red is already far from here. I have given her time enough to escape. She is less important than you.”
“You must not give her time to
set up—” Sheen’s voice failed at last. Her power was fading. Even Protonite had finite limits.
“Walk, or I must carry you,” Stile said sternly, knowing she would not allow him to harm himself by touching her burning surface.
She walked with decreasing stability. Charred fragments fell from her. Something rattled and buzzed inside. Finally she crashed forward, still smoking. But she was half across the curtain.
Stile located an unsmouldering spot on her torso and touched his finger to it and willed them both across the curtain. The grass appeared, the air freshened, and her body sizzled in the greater moisture. He removed his finger before it burned.
The Red Adept, as he had surmised, was gone. He had been besting her; she had wanted to escape all along, salvaging time and resources to meet him again in a situation more favorable to herself. He didn’t like letting that happen, but he had been afraid that if he left Sheen too long it might not be possible to restore her—or that he himself would die or lose power and be unable to return to her. If he had let her perish in favor of his vengeance, he would have sacrificed much of what he valued: his own humanity. He might have gone on to establish his power and security as the Blue Adept—and become more like the other Adepts, corrupted by power, cynical and selfish to the point of worthlessness.
There was the sound of hooves. Neysa was catching up, fire snorting from her nostrils, bringing the harmonica just when he needed it. He would be able to use his magic to restore Sheen as he had before, and then would return her to Proton for reanimation. Maybe he could include a spell to make her feel better about the situation; that probably would not work, but it was at least worth a try. Then it would be time to set up for the next Round of the Tourney.
Round Eight brought him up against a young woman of the Age 22 ladder, a fair player whose skills he knew from prior experience. She was Tulip, a gardener-tender for a Citizen who favored ornamentals. She was as pretty as a flower herself, and not averse to using her sex-appeal to gain advantage. But Stile had no intention of prejudicing a likely victory by such dalliance. He put it into MENTAL, and so nullified her choice of NAKED. No body-contact sport this time! They wound up in WORD GAMES.
“Travel from FLESH to SPIRIT,” the Game Computer said. “Time five minutes.”
Stile and Tulip got to work. The challenge was to fashion a chain of words linked alternately by synonyms and homonyms, converting “Flesh” to “Spirit” by readily definable stages. Both length and time counted; within five minutes, the shortest viable chain would win. Beyond that time limit, the first person to establish any viable chain of any length would win. So it behooved them each to take up most of that five minutes to seek the shortest possible chain. To settle on a given chain too quickly would be to invite the opponent to come up with a shorter one within the time limit and win; to take too long beyond the time limit invited loss to a longer but sooner-announced chain. The point of decision could be tricky.
Flesh, Stile thought. Synonyms would be Body, Meat, Fatten—there would be others, but these sufficed. If he explored every single avenue, he would not complete any one chain in time. Selectivity—there was the key to this challenge.
Now try Meat, as the best prospect for homonyms: Meet as in proper, Meet as in a competitive event, Mete as in measure. Try the competition-event for synonyms: Contest, Race, Competition. Then Race, jumping to the homonym, meaning subspecies, and the synonym Color, and on to Hue—was this leading to Spirit? Not rapidly. Better try an alternate, and return to this if necessary. His first job was to establish a viable chain, any chain, within five minutes. That would be an automatic win if Tulip failed to find one.
Of course, if they both came up with the same chain, the first to announce it would win. So if he found a good one, he should announce it regardless of time. But he was not worried about that; he had pretty good judgment on word-chains.
He glanced covertly at Tulip. She was chewing on her lip, making little gestures with her left hand, as though shaping a slippery sequence. Was she making faster progress? He didn’t think so, as she really wasn’t that bright, but it was possible. Then she caught him looking, and made a suggestive motion with her hip. He had to turn his eyes away, lest she bring his thoughts right back to Flesh and cost him the Game. That was what she was trying to do, the flirt. Maybe that was how she had gotten this far.
Try Meet as in proper. Synonym Fit, homonym Fit as in the contour of clothing. Yes, then Suit, and its homonym Suit as in satisfy, or the synonym Please.
Homonym Pleas, as in several requests. Synonym—was he returning to Fit, as in a fit plea for favor? If so, this was a dead-end, a waste of time, like a loop in the maze-puzzle he had fallen into in another Game with another woman. Too much time had passed; he couldn’t afford that! This simple game became confusingly tricky under the pressure of competition. No, no loop here; define it as a wish, as desire. And Desire as a homonym, meaning the urgency to possess, achieve, prevail—he certainly had that!—which was a possible synonym for team spirit—
Spirit! There it was! And jump to homonym Spirit as in Soul, and his chain was complete.
Unless that Desire link was faulty. Pleas—Desire—Spirit. The Computer might reject that as inexact. Better to work out a tighter chain.
But four minutes were passed. Not enough time to figure out a new chain. Tulip looked as if she were on the verge of completing her own chain. Stile decided to go with this one. “Chain!” he announced.
“Damn!” Tulip muttered.
“Present,” the Computer said.
Stile presented it, trying to conceal his nervousness about the Desire connection. But the Computer did not challenge it; it was fairly liberal on the adaptations of language.
Still, Tulip had another minute to produce a shorter chain, or a better one of the same length. Stile waited nervously.
But she seemed to have given up. The time expired without her entry. Stile had won, more or less by default.
“It would have been different in NAKED/PHYSICAL,” Tulip said tearfully. She had choked at the crisis-point in this Game, and now suffered the reaction.
“That’s why I avoided it,” Stile said, though he would have put it into some subcategory like foot-racing and probably beaten her anyway. She really hadn’t lost much; with her appearance, she should do well enough in the wider human galaxy. But it had the mild distaste of an unjustified victory.
The separations between Rounds were diminishing. Round Nine was due in the afternoon of the same day. Stile planned to spend the interim devising strategy and spells to finish the Red Adept, and to get some rest and refreshment. He was also concerned about Sheen; he had restored her in Phaze, again, and she was now fully operational. But how could he abate the hurt of her nonliving heartbreak? His attempted spell had not taken effect. She seemed to have lost much of her will-to-animation, and there seemed to be no way he could restore it. She needed the one thing he could not give—his complete love. Maybe, he thought again, he should have let her perish, instead of languishing like this. He had promised a clean death to the Red Adept; could he do less for his friend?
There was a knock on the apartment door. That was unusual; visitors usually announced themselves on the screen. Sheen, alert to threats, went to see to it.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, in a perfect representation of surprise. “You survived!”
“I must speak to—Stile,” the visitor said.
Stile snapped alert. That was the Lady Blue’s voice!
He went to the door. There she stood, a little disheveled but irremediably splendid. Bluette, of course; she had escaped the robot and sought out the name and description Hulk had given her. Smart woman!
Yet this was extremely awkward. “Come in,” Stile said. “Of course I’ll help you. I’m on the trail of the woman who killed Hulk now. But one thing you must know at the outset: I want nothing personal to do with you, after this.”
Her brow furrowed prettily. “Nothing?”
“I am marrie
d to your alternate self, the Lady Blue of Phaze. You look exactly like her, Bluette—you are exactly like her—but she is the one I love. This is no reflection on your own merit, that I sincerely appreciate. And I know you have no personal interest in me. But—well, if she thought I was seeing you—”
She smiled, oddly at ease. “I understand.”
“Stile,” Sheen said, evidently making some sort of connection. “She is not—”
“Not my woman,” he agreed. “Bluette, I never wanted to meet you. It—it’s too confusing. And I know, after all you went through—is that robot still on your trail? That we can take care of!”
“Stile, listen,” Sheen said. “I just realized this is—”
“Look, don’t make this any more difficult than it is!” Stile snapped. “Every second she stands here—this woman is so like the one I love—”
The woman smiled again. “Now thou dost know what I went through, Adept. The false so like the true.”
“What?” Something didn’t jibe here.
“Thee … Thee … Thee.”
Stile froze. “Oh, no!”
“I am the Lady Blue,” she said. “Fain would I listen longer to thy protestations of other love, my Lord, but I did cross the curtain to bring thee a vital message.”
Never had Stile imagined the Lady Blue in this frame. “But that means—”
“That Bluette is dead,” Sheen finished. “It has after all been several days. We should have heard from her before this, had she escaped.”
“Oh, God,” Stile said. “That I did not want. And now the two of you have met—that was never supposed to happen!” In the back of his mind, moving rapidly to the fore, was his concern that the robot might do some harm to her human rival. He had to get the Lady Blue out of here!
“Thou speakest as if there be some shame here,” the Lady Blue said. “I have long known of thy most loyal friend in this frame, the lovely Lady Sheen, and I am glad to meet her at last.” She turned to address Sheen directly. “I am oath-friend to Neysa. Can I be less to thee? If thou wouldst honor me with thy favor, O noblest of Ladies—”