The unicycle was handily outdistancing the drone at the moment—but in Phaze Neysa was having trouble keeping up. The terrain was more varied there, with trees and streams and bushes obstructing her route. “Slow it, Sheen. Neysa is wearing herself out—and I’ll need her there the moment I cross.”
Sheen slowed—but then the drone gained, cutting into their lead. This was worrisome; that lead was their margin of safety. In addition the landscape was getting rougher. They were heading generally west, curving north with the curtain, back toward the major cluster of domes. On the prior trips they had maneuvered comfortably around the obstructions of boulder, dune, crevasse and ridges. But the curtain crossed these heedlessly, and this made the drive difficult. Sheen had to skid along awkward slopes, bounce through gullies, and plow through the mounds of sand. The drone suffered also—but it was squat and sturdy with broad wheel-treads, and it kept on going. The hazards of this chase would shake apart the unicycle before they stopped the three-wheeled pursuer.
Neysa, meanwhile, was encountering problems in Phaze. Stile watched her helplessly, as Sheen guided the unicycle along the curtain, now one side of it, now the other, causing his view to shift about considerably. The unicorn could handle the irregularities of the terrain, but there were also creatures in the way. She had to charge through a colony of demons, and in a moment they were in pursuit like so many drones, eager for unicorn flesh. Neysa could have escaped them easily if she had not been staying close to the curtain, and if she had not had to worry about the security of the Lady Blue. Or she could have turned to fight them, putting them to flight with a few well-placed skewers—had she not had to keep up with Stile’s vehicle. Now the demons were popping up everywhere from crevices in the rock, cutting her off. They were grinning; they knew they had her.
Neysa blew a desperate summons on her horn. Stile could hear the sound, faintly, across the curtain, even as he rode in the same channel Neysa ran in, overlapping her without any tangible evidence of it. He could only actually see her when the curtain was between them so that he could look through it, and that happened only in snatches. The curtain was a funny thing, something he would have to explore more thoroughly some day and come to understand. Like the Oracle, it was a phenomenon that seemed to have no origin and no reasonable explanation; it merely existed, and was vital to communication between frames.
Again Neysa sounded. The call resounded across the wilderness. The demons growled in laughter; sound could not hurt them. Stile wished he could cross over and help out with a spell—but that notion was folly.
Then a ranging werewolf, summoned by the horn, spied them. He bayed. His oath-friend was being molested. This was why they were patrolling the curtain; they had been warned of this danger. Their numbers were thinly spread, because the convoluting curtain traversed a tremendous amount of territory, but their keen perceptions made up the difference.
The bays of other wolves responded. Suddenly they were converging, their sounds approaching at a gratifying rate. In moments they were in sight, and leaping with savage glee and righteous anger at the demons. One thing a werewolf lived for—a good fight in a good cause.
Now the predatory laughter of the demons turned to rage at this interference. But soon it turned to fear, as more and more members of the wolfpack closed upon them, lips peeling back in the terrifying grin of attack as they cut in between demons and unicorn.
Neysa ran on with a single note of gratitude, still carrying the Lady Blue, still pacing Stile. The sounds of the battle grew loud, then faded behind. The demons had chosen the wrong creature to attack, this time.
Sheen continued to guide the unicycle. She handled it with desperate skill. Now a dome lay across the curtain. They had to skirt it—but when they intercepted the curtain again, Neysa was there, thin jets of fire issuing from her nostrils. She was overheating, but would not allow herself to fall behind. The Lady Blue clung to her, riding with consummate skill, watching out for other hazards, guiding Neysa into the best channels with little advisory nudges, not directives. The unicorn had charge of the run, but the Lady was able to devote more attention to the route. Neysa was concentrating increasingly on the single effort of maintaining the pace; she no longer lifted her head to survey the course. She trusted the Lady’s guidance. Stile knew exactly how it was; he had raced the marathon in times past, and had reached the stage where nothing existed except his agonizing pumping legs and the called course-corrections of friends. Vision itself became expendable.
Stile was struggling similarly now. His hands were soaking in blood. His consciousness was slowly slipping. He was panting with the sheer effort of keeping flesh and spirit together. Flesh and spirit—had that been a premonition, that Tourney Game? He had succeeded then—but this struggle was harder, with more dependent on it. Still the drone pursued.
He saw snatches of scenes across the curtain, hills, then a river. Neysa had to ford it, her hot hooves sending up gouts of steam as they touched the surface. Then it grew deeper and she swam, falling behind. She could not shift to firefly and wing across it, because of the Lady Blue. The unicycle was traversing the dry bed of that river.
Then the curtain curved down toward the south again, past the caves of the vampire bats, back across another arm of the river at the ruins of the Red Demesnes. Other unicorns were running with Neysa now, clearing the way. Bats were flying, spotting problems, getting them alleviated. A dragon was taking a snooze across the curtain; faced by six charging unicorns, it hastily vacated the spot. Little Folk of the daylight kind stood aside to let the strange procession pass. The grueling run went on.
All for him, Stile realized with pained gratitude. All the unicorns, werewolves and vampires extending themselves to their limits just to help him preserve his life. Neysa, running herself to destruction. Could it be worth it? Now her hooves were glowing red; her very flesh was burning up. She left a narrow trail of smoke where her passage had ignited the leaves of the forest floor.
Then a new vehicle closed with the unicycle. It locked on, matching the pace exactly. Machine arms reached out. Sensors traveled down Stile’s body, touching his gory leg. Anesthetic came. Germicidal radiation flared. There, at the bouncing velocity of the chase, the robot surgeon removed the bullet, patched the torn artery, stitched and bound the wound while simultaneously injecting Stile with artificial blood matching his type. It retouched the nerve block on that leg so that no pain returned. Then the arms and tentacles retreated, the other vehicle disengaged, and went its own way with a parting warning: “Protect our interests!”—tell no one in Proton how he had been helped.
When Sheen’s friends chose to render assistance, they did so with enormous precision and effect. Stile knew he could not go to any hospital now; he had sworn not to betray the self-willed machines, so he had to conceal the nature of this surgery from the Citizens. But that was easy enough to do; he no longer needed surgery.
Still, he was near to unconsciousness. His human reserves had been depleted, and neither surgery nor artificial blood could take the place of rest. Sheen steered the unicycle to the curtain. Neysa made a final desperate effort, caught up, and galloped directly along it. The unicycle slowed to accommodate her. The drone closed in rapidly.
Now unicorn and unicycle were superimposed, separated only by the frames. “Do it!” Sheen cried. Stile willed himself through.
He fell across Neysa’s hot back. The Lady Blue flung her arms about him, clasping him, her healing hands already helping. He was safe at last!
Across the curtain, Sheen’s vehicle accelerated. She had the bullet now. The drone followed her.
Stile, relieved, lost consciousness.
CHAPTER 12
Dance
Round Ten was getting into rarefied territory. Only twenty players remained, eighteen of whom had suffered one loss. The losers of this Round would receive a five-year tenure bonus.
Stile had another liability to go with his bad knee: the healing thigh. The bullet-amulet had lodged in his bon
e, holing the artery in passing. The damage, while bad, had not been as bad as it could have been, but he had depleted his vital resources and suffered near-shock. The Yellow Adept had provided a potion that multiplied his healing rate tenfold. Still, nature needed time to do the job, and he had been able to rest only ten hours before having to return for the next Game. He was not in ideal shape.
Sheen had led the drone back to Red’s bunker and tossed the bullet in. That had been that. She reported, objectively, that it had been a most impressive explosion, that tore open a hidden second chamber where the Red Adept had hidden. Unfortunately Red had not been there at the time. She had vanished from the scene during the drone-chase, and Stile had not thought to get another fix on her during his brief recovery period.
As a result of all this assistance and attention by the several ladies of the frames, Stile was free of immediate threats to his welfare and was able to play the Game—but he really intended to stay out of the PHYSICAL column. Sheen was taking good care of him, but she could not help him there.
His opponent this time was a man of his own ladder: nicknamed Track, age 35, the running champion of the over-30 category, and no slouch at other track events. Stile could not have beaten him at running, jumping or swimming even when in shape, and in his present condition it would have been hopeless. But Track was comparatively weak in MENTAL and had virtually no artistic awareness. So this should be an easy win for Stile—if he kept it out of PHYSICAL and CHANCE.
As luck would have it, Stile got the letters. He could not eliminate the physical column.
He considered rapidly. NAKED was absolutely out. TOOL was not good; Track was excellent at bicycle racing, tennis, billiards and other such sports. MACHINE was a little better; Track was less secure in things like motorcycle racing, while Stile was expert, and his thigh would interfere only minimally. ANIMAL—Stile was of course the champion horse racer. He could no longer flex his knees properly for best effect, but his basic skill and experience and rapport with horses remained. This was his obvious choice.
Therefore he did not take it. He went for TOOL instead, hoping to catch Track sneaking in MENTAL. 2D would have put them into animal training, and Track had an excellent touch with the circus whip.
It didn’t work. It came up 1B. Tool-Assisted Physical Games.
But Stile outmaneuvered him in the subgrid, and the Game came up Bubbles. This was about as delicate as a physical game could get.
They blew soap bubbles with straws, and wafted them across a measured alley. Scoring was by volume, distance and time—to get the greatest volume of bubble across a set distance within the time limit. Stile had the fine touch here; his bubbles were only of medium size, but were durable, while Track’s larger ones tended to pop before completing the distance.
Stile won the Game. It had been his gridding skill, once more, that had done it. They shook hands and parted, and the crowd of spectators applauded. This had hardly been a bruising or dramatic Game, but the stakes were high enough to make it interesting to all. With five more years of tenure to look forward to, Track was not hurting badly.
Stile managed six more hours accelerated healing in Phaze before reporting for Round Eleven. Now the total number of contestants was down to eleven, with only one remaining undefeated. The losers of this Round would receive a prize of ten years tenure. One thousand and thirteen had now been eliminated from the Tourney.
Stile’s opponent was another Citizen, this time a young one—about fifteen years old. Stile was pretty sure he could prevail on most games of skill, but still did not want to risk the physical ones. This time he had the numbers, so put it into MENTAL; there he would have no disadvantage.
The Citizen, surprisingly, selected ANIMAL. So it was 2D, the one Stile had played to avoid last time. When they gridded it down to the specific, they settled on Mixed-Species Communication.
Each player had three untrained animals: a dog, a cat and a rat. Each player had all-purpose animal snack treats and an electronic goad: positive and negative inducements. The task was to get all three animals to traverse a set maze without touching any of them. The first player to succeed would be the winner.
The animals, of course, were at first more interested in pursuing or escaping each other than in doing intellectual tricks. Careful management was required. The goad was adjustable, creating pain in the systems of whatever animal it was tuned to, ranging from mild to paralyzing; the cats learned very quickly not to attempt to pounce on the rats, because of the mysterious agony that balked them. But the inducement of a positive act was more difficult than the suppression of a negative one. The snacks could not be used to lead the animals; they could only be presented as rewards for proper behavior. This was confusing to the creatures.
There was a series of “locks” in which, by the design of the layout, two animals were necessarily together briefly before passing into the next stage of the maze; that was what really put it into the MENTAL column. The reward of food could lure the animals into the first lock, and the goad could prevent them from attacking one another, since they tended to repeat what had been positive before and avoid what had been negative. But the overall strategy of placement and movement and incentive was what counted in causing the animals to respond most positively.
Again, Stile’s experience and rapport with animals paid off. He completed the course while the young Citizen was still trying to get his cat to join his growling dog in the lock, instead of pouncing on the rat. Had he brought the rat to the lock first he would have been more successful; either of the other animals would have joined it willingly. Stile had brought rat, cat and dog through in that order, and by the time they finished all three were eager to continue moving forward. The Round was Stile’s.
Funny, how these important later Games seemed to be getting less consequential in actual play. Stile’s first Round Game, Football, had been his toughest; this last one his easiest. But the luck of the grid often produced such anomalies.
Again he returned to Phaze for a night’s healing and rest. It was the Yellow Adept who tended him, in her natural old-woman form. She had the potions and experience to handle it, and she represented no temptation for him to abridge his Oracular guarantee, as might have been the case with the Lady Blue.
Why was Yellow doing this? He was in hock to her again, and was getting to like her quite well as a person. It was as if his need brought out her better traits. Maybe she liked being part of a team, doing something worthwhile, earning the appreciation of others. It was something that few Adepts experienced.
The child Brown Adept also paid him a visit to wish him well. It seemed she felt a certain retroactive guilt for the use of a golem in the prior murder of Blue, and wanted to make an amend. Things were looking up.
But until he eliminated the Red Adept, nothing was settled. She must have been busy setting up new traps during the period of his convalescence. Then Sheen reported that Red had shown up in the Tourney. She too had made it to the rarefied Rounds, with a single loss. If both Red and Stile continued winning, they would eventually come up against each other there.
It happened in Round Twelve. This was hardly coincidence, at this point. Only six contestants remained, one of them undefeated. The bonus to the loser this time was twenty years tenure—a full extra term.
Stile’s thigh was now almost healed, and he had the incentive of his oath of vengeance. He was ready for Red. This was one situation she could neither escape nor cheat. By beating her here he would not only deny her Citizenship, he would wash her out of the Tourney—and since her murders of Hulk and Bluette had now come to Citizen attention, thanks to the investigation of Bluette’s Employer, she would be denied the bonus tenure. She would be exiled.
Stile pondered the meaning of this. He had wanted to kill her—yet his oath was merely to “make an end” of her. The Oracle had not predicted killing either; it had said Blue would destroy Red. Did exile constitute destruction? Perhaps. The Citizens had fairly sophisticated mechanisms to
ensure that no exiled person ever returned to Proton; no worry about that aspect. At any rate, the more Stile contemplated the prospect of coldly killing another human being, the less he liked it. He simply was not a murderer. So if this was the meaning of oath and Oracle, he would accept it with a certain relief.
Red’s position was different. She needed to kill Stile. Because if he washed out of the Tourney at this point, he would have twenty years as a tenure serf to plot her destruction, assuming she made it through to Citizenship. He would have his power base on Phaze, where he would be safe from her mischief, and could locate her and make forays at any time. The powers of Citizenship were great, but eventually he would get her, and they both knew it. So she needed more than victory in the Tourney.
There were ways to kill in the Games. The competitions were designed to be as safe as possible, but a person could have heart-failure during extraordinary physical exertion, or an anesthetic dart in pistol-dueling could be accidentally contaminated with a legal but lethal drug, or equipment could fail at a critical moment. She would surely try to arrange something like that, though it was prohibitively difficult under the experienced eye of the Game Computer. Stile, in turn, would try to prevent any such accident.
There was little delay at this stage, since the Game facilities now had to support only three Games. The audience for each would be huge. Stile was spared the unpleasantness of having to converse with his enemy. They proceeded immediately to the grid.
Again he got the letters. Every time he really wanted the numbers, it seemed, the luck of the draw denied them.
Stile did not try to play for Red’s weaknesses; he was not sure what they were, in Game terms. He played for his own strength: TOOL. He liked animals and worked well with them, but he wanted no more android-animal football games or dog-cat-rat games.