Split Infinity

CHAPTER 1 - Slide

He walked with the assurance of stature, and most others deferred to him subtly. When he moved in a given direction, the way before him conveniently opened, by seeming coincidence; when he made eye contact, the other head nodded in a token bow. He was a serf, like all of them, naked and with no physical badge of status; indeed, it would have been the depth of bad taste to accord him any overt recognition. Yet he was a giant, here. His name was Stile.

Stile stood one point five meters tall and weighed fifty kilograms. In prior parlance he would have stood four feet, eleven inches tall and weighed a scant hundredweight or eight stone; or stood a scant fifteen hands and weighed a hundred and ten pounds. His male associates towered above him by up to half a meter and outweighed him by twenty-five kilos.

He was fit, but not extraordinarily muscled. Person-able without being handsome. He did not hail his friends heartily, for there were few he called friend, and he was diffident about approaches. Yet there was enormous drive in him that manifested in lieu of personal warmth.

He walked about the Grid-hall of the Game-annex, his favorite place; beyond this region he reverted to the nonentity that others perceived. He sought competition of his own level, but at this hour there was none. Pairs of people stood in the cubicles that formed the convoluted perimeter of the hall, and a throng milled in the center, making contacts. A cool, gentle, mildly flower-scented draft wafted down from the vents in the ceiling, and the image of the sun cast its light on the floor, making its own game of shadows.

Stile paused at the fringe of the crowd, disliking this forced mixing. It was better when someone challenged him.

A young woman rose from one of the seats. She was nude, of course, but worthy of a second glance because of the perfection of her body. Stile averted his gaze, affecting not to be aware of her; he was especially shy with girls.

A tall youth intercepted the woman. “Game, lass?”

How easy he made it seem!

She dismissed him with a curt downward flip of one hand and continued on toward Stile. A child signaled her: “Game, miss?” The woman smiled, but again negated, more gently. Stile smiled too, privately; evidently she did not recognize the child, but he did: Pollum. Rung Two on the Nines ladder. Not in Stile’s own class, yet, but nevertheless a formidable player. Had the woman accepted the challenge, she would probably have been tromped.

There was no doubt she recognized Stile, though. His eyes continued to review the crowd, but his attention was on the woman. She was of average height—several centimeters taller than he—but of more than average proportions. Her breasts were full and perfect, unsagging, shifting eloquently with her easy motion, and her legs were long and smooth. In other realms men assumed that the ideal woman was a naked one, but often this was not the case; too many women suffered in the absence of mechanical supports for portions of their anatomy. This one, approaching him, was the type who really could survive the absence of clothing without loss of form.

She arrived at last. “Stile,” she murmured.

He turned as if surprised, nodding. Her face was so lovely it startled him. Her eyes were large and green, her hair light brown and light-bleached in strands that expanded about her neck. There was a lot of art in the supposedly natural falling of women’s hair. Her features were even and possessed the particular properties and proportions that appealed to him, though he could not define precisely what these were. His shyness loomed up inside him, so that he did not trust himself to speak.

“I am Sheen,” she said. “I would like to challenge you to a Game.”

She could not be a top player. Stile knew every rank-ing player on every age-ladder by sight and style, and she was on no ladder. Therefore she was a dilettante, an occasional participant, possibly of some skill in se-lected modes but in no way a serious competitor. Her body was too lush for most physical sports; the top females in track, ball games and swimming were small-breasted, lean-fleshed, and lanky, and this in no way described Sheen. Therefore he would have no physical competition here.

Yet she was beautiful, and he was unable to speak. So he nodded acquiescence. She took his arm in an easy gesture of familiarity that startled him. Stile had known women, of course; they came to him seeking the no-toriety of his company, and the known fact of his hesi-tancy lent them compensating courage. But this one was so pretty she hardly needed to seek male company;

it would seek her. She was making it look as if he had sought and won her. Perhaps he had, unknowingly: his prowess in the Game could have impressed her enough from afar to bring her to him. Yet this was not the type of conquest he preferred; such women were equally avid for Game-skilled teeners and grayheads.

They found an unoccupied cubicle. It had a column in the center, inset with panels on opposite sides. Stile went to one side. Sheen on the other, and as their weights came on the marked ovals to the floor before each panel, the panels lighted. The column was low, so Stile could see Sheen’s face across from him; she was smiling at him.

Embarrassed by this open show of camaraderie. Stile looked down at his panel. He hardly needed to; he knew exactly what it showed. Across the top were four categories: PHYSICAL—MENTAL—CHANCE—ART, and down the left side were four more: NAKED—TOOL—MACHINE—ANIMAL. For shorthand convenience they were also lettered and numbered: 1—2—3—4 across the top, A—B—C—D down the side. The numbers were highlighted: the Grid had given him that set of choices, randomly.

THE GAME: PRIMARY GRID

1. PHYSICAL 2. MENTAL 3. CHANCE 4. ART

A. NAKED B. TOOL C. MACHINE D. ANIMAL

Stile studied Sheen’s face. Now that she was in the Game, his opponent, his diffidence diminished. He felt the mild tightening of his skin, elevation of heartbeat, clarity of mind and mild distress of bowel that presaged the tension and effort of competition. For some people such effects became so strong it ruined them as competitors, but for him it was a great feeling, that drew him back compulsively. He lived for the Game!

Even when his opponent was a pretty girl whose pert breasts peeked at him just above the column. What was passing through her mind? Did she really think she could beat him, or was she just out for the experience? Had she approached him on a dare, or was she a groupie merely out for a date? If she were trying to win, she would want to choose ART, possibly MENTAL, and would certainly avoid PHYSICAL. If she were on a dare she would go for CHANCE, as that would require little performance on her part. If she wanted experience, any-thing would do. If she were a groupie, she would want PHYSICAL.

Of course she could not choose among these; he had the choice. But his choice would be governed in part by his judgment of her intent and ability. He had to think, as it were, with her mind, so that he could select what she least desired and obtain the advantage.

Now he considered her likely choice, in the series she did control. A true competitor would go for NAKED, for there was the essence of it: unassisted personal prow-ess. One wanting experience could go for anything, again depending on the type of experience desired. A dare would probably go for NAKED also; that choice would be part of the dare. A groupie would certainly go for NAKED. So that was her most likely choice.

Well, he would call her bluff. He touched PHYSICAL, sliding his hand across the panel so she couldn’t tell his choice by the motion of his arm.

Her choice had already been made, as anticipated.

They were in 1A, PHYSICAL/NAKED.

The second grid appeared. Now the categories across the top were 1. SEPARATE—2. INTERACTIVE—3. COMBAT-4, COOPERATIVE, and down the side were A. FLAT SURFACE—B. VARIABLE SURFACE—C. DISCONTINUITY—D. LIQUID. The letters were highlighted; he had to choose from the down column this time. He didn’t feel like swimming or swinging from bars with her, though there could be intriguing aspects to each, so the last two were out. He was an excellent long-distance runner, but doubted Sheen would go for that sort of thing, which eliminated the flat surface. So he selected B, the variable surface.

She chose 1. SEPARATE: no groupie after all! So they would be in a race of some sort, not physically touching or directly interacting, though there were limited exceptions. Good enough. He would find out what she was made of.

Now the panel displayed a listing of variable surfaces. Stile glanced again at Sheen. She shrugged, so he picked the first: MAZE PATH. As he touched it, the description appeared in the first box of a nine-square grid.

She chose the second: GLASS MOUNTAIN. It appeared in the second square.

He placed DUST SLIDE in the third square. Then they continued with CROSS COUNTRY, TIGHTROPE, SAND DUNES, GREASED HILLS, SNOW BANK, and LIMESTONE CLIFF. The tertiary grid was complete.

Now he had to choose one of the vertical columns, and she had the horizontal rows. He selected the third, she the first, and their game was there: DUST SLIDE.

“Do you concede?” he asked her, pressing the appropriate query button so that the machine would know. She had fifteen seconds to negate, or forfeit the game.

Her negation was prompt. “I do not.”

“Draw?”

“No.”

He had hardly expected her to do either. Concession occurred when one party had such an obvious advan-tage that there was no point in playing, as when the game was chess and one player was a grandmaster while the other hadn’t yet learned the moves. Or when it was weight lifting, with one party a child and the other a muscle builder. The dust slide was a harmless entertainment, fun to do even without the competitive element; no one would concede it except perhaps one who had a phobia about falling—and such a person would never have gotten into this category of game.

And so her reaction was odd. She should have laughed at his facetious offers. Instead she had taken them seriously. That suggested she was more nervous about this encounter than she seemed.

Yet this was no Tourney match! If she were a complete duffer she could have accepted the forfeit and been free. Or she could have agreed to the draw, and been able to tell her girlish friends how she had tied with the notorious Stile. So it seemed she was out neither for notoriety nor a dare, and he had already determined she was not a groupie. She really did want to compete—yet it was too much to hope that she had any real proficiency as a player.

They vacated the booth after picking up the game-tags extruded from slots. No one was admitted solo to any subgame; all had to play the grid first, and report in pairs to the site of decision. That prevented uncommitted people from cluttering the premises or interfering with legitimate contests. Of course children could and did entertain themselves by indulging in mock contests, just for the pleasure of the facilities; to a child, the Game-annex was a huge amusement park. But in so doing, they tended to get hooked on the Game itself, increasingly as they aged, until at last they were thoroughgoing ad-dicts. That had been the way with Stile himself.

The Dust Slide was in another dome, so they took the tube transport. The vehicle door irised open at their approach, admitting them to its cosy interior. Several other serfs were already in it: three middle-aged men who eyed Sheen with open appreciation, and a child whose eye lit with recognition. “You’re the jockey!”

Stile nodded. He had no trouble relating to children.

He was hardly larger than the boy.

“You won all the races!” the lad continued.

“I had good horses,” Stile explained.

“Yeah,” the child agreed, satisfied.

Now the three other passengers turned their attention to Stile, beginning to surmise that he might be as inter-esting as the girl. But the vehicle stopped, its door opened, and they all stepped out into the new dome. In moments Stile and Sheen had lost the other travelers and were homing in on the Dust Slide, their tickets ready.

The Slide’s desk-secretary flashed Stile a smile as she validated the tickets. He smiled back, though he knew this was foolish; she was a robot. Her face, arms and upper torso were perfectly humanoid, with shape, color and texture no ordinary person could have told from a living woman, but her perfectly humanoid body termi-nated at the edge of her desk. She was the desk, possess-ing no legs at all. It was as if some celestial artisan had been carving her from a block of metal, causing her to animate as he progressed—then left the job unfinished at the halfway point. Stile felt a certain obscure sym-pathy for her; did she have true consciousness, in that upper half? Did she long for a completely humanoid body—or for a complete desk body? How did it feel to be a half-thing?

She handed back his ticket, validated. Stile closed his fingers about her delicate hand. “When do you get off work, curie?” he inquired with the lift of an eyebrow. He was not shy around machines, of course.

She had been programmed for this. “Ssh. My boy-friend’s watching.” She used her free hand to indicate the robot next to her: a desk with a set of male legs protruding, terminating at the inverted waist. They demonstrated the manner the protective shorts should be worn for the Slide. They were extremely robust legs, and the crotch region was powerfully masculine.

Stile glanced down at himself, chagrined. “Oh, I can’t compete with him. My legs are barely long enough to reach the ground.” A bygone Earth author, Mark Twain, had set up that remark, and Stile found it useful on occasion. He accepted Sheen’s arm again and they continued on to the Slide.

He thought Sheen might remark on the way he seemed to get along with machines, but she seemed oblivious. Ah, well.

The Slide was a convoluted mountain of channels looping and diverging and merging. Dust flowed in them—sanitary, nonirritating, noncarcinogenic, neutral particles of translucent plastic, becoming virtually liquid in the aggregate, and quite slippery. The whole was dramatic, suggesting frothing torrents of water in sluices, or rivulets of snow in an avalanche.

They donned the skin-shorts and filter masks re-quired for protection on the Slide. The dust was harm-less, but it tended to work its way into any available crevices, and the human body had a number. This was one thing Stile did not like about this particular sub-game: the clothing. Only Citizens wore clothing, in the normal course, and it was uncouth for any serf to wear anything not strictly functional. More than uncouth: it could be grounds for summary termination of tenure at Planet Proton. Such Slide-shorts were functional, in these dusty environs; still, he felt uncomfortable. Their constriction and location tended to stir him sexually, and that was awkward in the company of a creature like Sheen.

Sheen seemed to feel no such concern. Perhaps she was aware that the partial concealment of the shorts attracted attention to those parts they concealed, enhancing her sex appeal. Stile, like many serfs, found a certain illicit lure in clothing, especially clothing on the distaff sex; it represented so much that serfs could only dream of. He had to keep his eyes averted, lest he embarrass himself.

They took the lift to the Slide apex. Here at the top they were near the curving dome that held in air and heat; through its shimmer Stile could see the bleak landscape of Proton, ungraced by any vegetation. The hostile atmosphere was obscured in the distance by clouds of smog.

The Slide itself was a considerable contrast. From this height six channels coursed out and down, each half filled with flowing dust. Colored lights shone up through it all, for the channels too were translucent. They turned now red, now blue-gray and now yellow as the beams moved. The tangle of paths formed a flower-like pattern, supremely beautiful. If Stile found the clothing physically and emotionally awkward, he was compensated by the view from this vantage, and always stood for a moment in minor awe.

For any given channel the colors seemed random, but for the arrangement as a whole they shaped in shirt-ing contours roses, lilies, tulips, violets and gardenias. Air jets emitted corresponding perfumes when appli-cable. An artist had designed this layout, and Stile ad-mired the handiwork. He had been here many times before, yet the novelty had not worn off.

Sheen did not seem to notice. “On your mark,” she said, setting the random starter. The device could pop instantly or take two minutes. This time it split the difference. The channel barriers dropped low, and Sheen leaped for the chute nearest her.

Stile, surprised by her facility, leaped after her. They accelerated, shooting down feet first around a broad bright curve of green, then into the first white vertical loop. Up and over, slowing dizzily at the top, upside down, then regaining velocity in the downshoot.

Sheen was moving well. Her body had a natural ron-dure that shaped itself well to the contour of the chute. The dust piled up behind her, shoving her forward.

Stile, following in the same channel, tried to intercept enough dust to cut off her supply and ground her, but she had too big a lead and was making too good use of her resources.

Well, there were other ways. This channel passed through a partial-gravity rise that was slow. Another channel crossed, going into a corkscrew. Stile took this detour, zipped through the screw, and shot out ahead of the girl.

She took another connection and got in behind him, cutting off his dust. This was the aspect of the Slide that was interactive: the competition for dust. Stile was grounded, his posterior scraping against the suddenly bare plastic of the chute. No dust, no progress!

He put his hand to the side, heaved, and flipped his body into the adjoining channel. This was a tricky maneuver, legitimate but not for amateurs. Here he had dust again, and resumed speed—but he had lost the momentum he had before. Sheen continued on in her channel, riding the piled dust, moving ahead of him—and now they were halfway down.

Stile realized that he had a real race on his hands.

This girl was good!

He vaulted back into her channel, cutting off her dust again—but even as he did, she vaulted into his just-vacated channel, maintaining her lead. Apt move! Ob-viously she had raced here many times before, and knew the tricks, and had more agility under that sweet curvature of body than he had suspected. But now he had the better channel, and he was unmatchable in straight dust-riding; he moved ahead. She jumped across to cut him off, but he was already jumping into a third chute. Before she could follow him, the two di-verged and he was safe.

They completed the race on separate channels. She had found a good one, and was gaining on him despite his careful management of dust. He finished barely ahead. They shot into the collection bin, one-two, to the applause of the other players who were watching. It had been a fine race, the kind that happened only once or twice on a given day.

Sheen got up and shook off the dust with a fascinating shimmy of her torso. “Can’t win them all,” she remarked, unperturbed.

She had made an excellent try, though! She had come closer than anyone in years. Stile watched her as she stripped off mask and shorts. She was stunningly beau-tiful—more so than before, because now he realized that her body was functional as well as shapely.

“You interest me,” he told her. In this aftermath of a good game he was flushed with positive feeling, his shy-ness at a minimum.

Sheen smiled. “I hoped to.”

“You almost beat me.”

“I had to get your attention somehow.”

Another player laughed. Stile had to laugh too. Sheen had proved herself, and now he wanted to know why. The mutual experience had broken the ice; the discovery of a new challenge completed his transition from diffidence to normal masculine imperative.

He didn’t even have to invite her to come home with him. She was already on her way.