Split Infinity

CHAPTER 13 - Rungs

Stile landed outside a dome. He gasped—for the air was barely breathable. He might survive thirty minutes without a mask, but would not enjoy it. The limited oxygen of Proton’s atmosphere was further reduced to favor the needs of the dome, and the pollution of sundry industrial processes was dumped out here. He realized—was it for the first time?—that the barren surface of Proton was the result of man’s activities. Had the machine age not come here, the atmosphere would have remained like that of Phaze. Man’s civilization had made a heaven-planet into hell.

Fortunately the dome was within five minutes foot travel. He could see it clearly, for its illumination flowed through the force field, lighting the barren plain.

Stile, his fatigue somewhat abated by his rest and the shock of the cold night, walked briskly toward the dome, drawing his clothing tightly about him. So long as he kept his respiration down, the air was not too hard on his lungs. Running would be a disaster, though. His clothing helped shield him from—

Clothing! He could not wear that here! He was a serf.

Yet without it he would soon be in trouble from the cold. He would have to wear it as long as possible, then dispose of it just before entering the dome. Maybe he could recover it when he returned to Phaze.

But he could not return where he had left, for that would put him right back in the prison of the Black Adept. He needed his clothing for the other frame, but not in this locale. He would have to risk carrying it with him.

Stile reached the dome. It was a small one, evidently the private estate of a Citizen. It was hardly safe for a serf to intrude uninvited on such a place, but he really had no choice. These few minutes had made him un-comfortable; the less exposure to outside conditions, the better. He removed his clothing, bundled it up with the shoes inside, and stepped through the dome wall.

Instantly he was in light and warmth. This was a tropical garden of the kind popular with Citizens, whose tastes seemed to run opposite to the external wasteland their policies were making on the planet. Exotic palms were at every available spot, with a cocoa-chip mulch beneath. No one was present—which was why Stile had entered here. If he were lucky, he might get through undiscovered.

He was not. An alert gardener challenged him before he had taken twenty steps. “Halt, intruder! You’re not of this estate.”

“I—came from outside. I—got lost.” Stile doubted he could afford to tell the truth, and he would not lie. “I had to come in; I would have died.”

“You look half dead,” the serf agreed.

Another serf hurried up. “I’m the garden foreman. Who are you? What were you doing outside without equipment? What are you carrying?”

That was a foreman, all right! “I am Stile, unemployed, formerly a jockey. I thought my life was threatened, so I tried to hide. But—“ He shrugged. “It’s a different world out there.”

“It sure as hell is. Were you trying to suicide?”

“No. But I nearly died anyway. I have had no food or water for two days.”

The foreman ignored the hint. “I asked you what you are carrying.”

“This bundle—it is medieval Earth costume. I thought it would help me, in the other world.” He was skirting a fuzzy line, ethically, and didn’t like it. But again: wouldn’t the truth convey less of the situation to this man than this half-truth did? What serf would believe a story about a magic world?

The foreman took the bundle and spread it out on the ground. “A harmonica?”

Stile spread his hands silently. He was now in a position where anything he said would seem a lie, including the truth. Suddenly Phaze seemed like a figment of his imagination, the kind of hallucination a man exposed to oxygen deprivation and gaseous pollutants might have. Especially if he had also suffered from hunger, thirst, and cold. In the past, men had undertaken similar deprivations as rites of passage, provoking similar visions. What had happened to him, really?

“I’ll have to notify the Citizen,” the foreman said. Stile’s hopes sank; this surely meant trouble. Had the man simply told him to clear out to serf quarters—

“Sir,” the foreman said.

“What is it, gardener?” the Citizen’s voice responded.

It sounded familiar.

“Sir, a stranger has intruded from outside, carrying medieval Earth costume, including sword, knife, and a musical instrument.”

“Bring him to the viewer.” The voice gave Stile a chill. Where had he heard it before?

The foreman conducted Stile to a booth with a holo pickup. Stile stepped inside, knowing his whole body was being reproduced in image in the Citizen’s quarters. He was dirty and abraded as well as suffering from hunger and thirst; he must look awful.

“Name?” the Citizen snapped.

“Stile, sir.”

There was a pause. The Citizen would be checking the name in the computerized serf-listing. “The jockey and Gamesman?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Play that instrument.”

The gardening foreman quickly located the harmonica and jabbed it at Stile. Stile took it and put it to his mouth. This was his proof of identity; an impostor could probably not match his skill. He played a few bars, and as it had a few hours before, the emerging beauty of the music transformed his outlook. He began to get into the feel of it—

“Very well. Stile,” the Citizen said, having no interest in the art of it. “Your present employer vouches for you. Wait here until his representative picks you up.”

His present employer? What could this mean? Stile did not respond, since no query had been addressed to him. He rejoined the foreman, who solemnly handed back the rest of his bundle.

Suddenly Stile recognized the voice he had heard. The Black Adept! This was the Proton-self of that evil magician, having no knowledge of the other frame, but very much like his other self. It made sense—this dome was very near the site of the Black Castle. Stile’s conjecture about Adepts and Citizens had been confirmed. Had this citizen any reason to suspect him—

Stile breathed a silent sigh of relief. There was no reason for such suspicion, and Citizens hardly cared about stray serfs. Since another Citizen was taking Stile off his hands, that ended the matter. Stile would have to make his explanations to his own employer, instead of wasting the time of this one. And if one of the Black Adept Citizen’s serfs ever got lost, other Citizens would return the favor similarly. Serfs were hardly worth quarreling over.

A woman arrived, very well formed. As her face turned to him—“Sheen! How glad I am to see thee!” Oops—wrong language.

She frowned. “Come on. Stile. You had no business wandering outside. Suppose you had damaged the costume? It will go hard with you if you stray again.” She turned to the foreman. “Thank you. He was supposed to bring the costume to our employer’s isolation dome, and must have lost the way. He’s a klutz at times.”

“He tried to tell me he was unemployed,” the foreman said.

She smiled. “He used to be a jockey. He must have taken one fall too many.” She made a little circle about one ear with one finger. “These things happen. We apologize for the inconvenience to you.”

“It brightens the night shift,” the foreman said, ad-miring her body. Inconvenience became more tolerable when it brought a figure like this to the scene.

She took Stile firmly by the elbow and guided him along. “This time we’ll get you where you belong,” she said with an oblique smile.

He squeezed her hand. She had taken his prior advice to heart, and become so human it was almost annoying. But she had certainly bailed him out.

When they were safely in the capsule, flying through the tube toward a larger dome. Sheen explained: “I knew you’d return. Stile, somehow. I really am programmed for intuition. So I had my friends make up a robot in your likeness, and we got you a new employer. The moment the query on you came through the computer—“

“I see.” Her friends were the self-willed machines, who could tap into the communication network. In fact, some of them probably were the communication network. What an asset they were at times!

From the general dome they took a transport rocket to Stile’s original home dome. In a matter of minutes, the travel of several days by unicorn was reversed. That reminded him of another aspect. What should he say to Sheen about Neysa?

They returned to Stile’s old apartment. Sheen had kept it in good order—or the robot who bore his name had done so. It seemed Sheen had put the robot away as soon as news of Stile’s appearance reached her. Sheen had been most industrious and efficient on his behalf.

What had it been like, here, with two robots? Had they eaten, slept, made love? Stile found himself feeling jealous and had to laugh at himself. Obviously the robot-Stile was not self-willed. It would be a true ma-chine, programmed by Sheen.

“We must talk,” Sheen said. “But I think first we must feed you and rest you. That curtain-frame has not treated you kindly. You are bronzed and scratched and gaunt around the edges.”

Stile’s thirst abruptly returned. He almost snatched at the cup of nutro-beverage she brought, and gulped it down. “Yes. Drink and food and rest, in that order,” he said. “And talk, of course.”

She glanced obliquely at him. “Nothing else?”

Ah, sex appeal! But he was restrained. “I think we should talk, then consider the else. You may not be pleased.”

“You may not be entirely pleased with what I have done, either,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “With my double?”

She laughed. “Stile, it’s impossible! He’s a robot!”

“Good thing there are none of that ilk here,” he agreed.

“You know what I mean. It’s just not the same.”

“You speak from experience?”

“No. He’s not programmed for love.”

“I had come to that conclusion. Otherwise you would not have been so glad to have me back.”

After he had eaten and emerged from the dry-cleaning unit, they lay down together. In what way, he asked himself, was this creature inferior to Tune? Sheen looked and felt as nice, and she had displayed astonishing initiative. It seemed no one knew he had been absent a week. Any attempt to kill his robot double had of course been futile.

“Your friends have rendered this apartment private?” he inquired, remembering how it had almost become his prison. But for the device of the self-willed machines, who had made it seem he was here when he wasn’t—

“Completely.” She put her arms about him, hugging him briefly, but went no further. “Shall I tell you?”

What would give a logical robot or an illogical woman pause? “You had better.”

“Your new employer doesn’t care at all about horse racing. He cares about the Game. Each year he has sponsored a leading contender in the Tourney, but has never had a win. This year—“

“Oh, no! I’m expected to compete—“

“This year,” she agreed. “And it has to be you. The robot cannot do it in your stead. Even were it legal, he cannot match your ability. I have bought you security, Stile—but at the expense of your tenure.”

“You realize that’s likely to finish your mission too? One way or the other, I won’t need protection after I enter the Tourney.”

“Had there been any other way—“ She sighed.

“Stile, you were fired for cause. No blacklist was entered against you, because your reluctance to race again was understandable, but even so, very few Citizens were interested in you. My friends had to do a research- sifting to locate—“

“The one Citizen who would hire me,” Stile finished. “I don’t fault you for that; you did the only thing you could do, and did it excellently.”

“But your tenure—“

“I now have another option.” But he was not eager to get into the matter of Phaze and his decision to remain there, yet.

“Your anonymous enemy remains. Not the Citizen who tried to make a cyborg of you; he opted out when he realized the week had passed. The original one, who lasered your knees. The one who, perhaps, sent me. There were several attempts made on the robot. My friends are closing the net, trying to locate that enemy, but he is extraordinarily cunning and elusive. I can not protect you from him long. So—“

“Infernally logical,” he agreed. “Better the Game than death. Better abbreviated tenure than none at all. But I had thought I would be all right if I made it clear I would not race again.”

“That seems to have been an unwarranted assumption. That person wants you dead—but not by obvious means. So a surgical error, or a random accident—“

“So I might as well have had my knees fixed—if I could trust the surgery.” His attention returned to the Game. “The Tourney is inviolate; no entrant can be harassed in any way, even by a Citizen. That’s to keep it honest. So the Tourney is the one place my life is safe, for the little time the Tourney lasts. But this catches me ill prepared; I had planned to enter in two years.”

“I know. I did what I could, and may have forced premature exile on you. If you want to punish me—“

“Yes, I believe I do. I’ll tell you what I have been doing. Beyond the curtain is a world of magic. I tamed a unicorn mare; she turned into a lovely little woman, and-“

“And I’m supposed to be jealous of this fairy tale?”

“No fairy tale. I said she was female, not male. I did with her what any man—“

“I am jealous!” She half-climbed over him and kissed him fiercely. “Could she match that?”

“Easily. She has very mobile lips.”

“Oh? Then could she match this?” She did something more intimate.

Stile found himself getting breathless despite his fatigue. “Yes. Her breasts are not as large as yours, but are well—“

“Well, how about this?”

The demonstration took some time. At length, quite pleasantly worn out. Stile lay back and murmured, “That too.”

“You certainly punished me.” But Sheen did not seem much chastened.

“And after that, we went to the Oracle, who told me to know myself,” Stile continued. “Realizing I must be an Adept who had been slain or otherwise abolished, I investigated—and got trapped in the castle of the Black Adept. The werewolf rescued me by sending me back through the curtain, and here I am.” He yawned. “Now may I sleep?”

“You realize that no living person would believe a story like that?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re going back.”

“Yes. I can not stay long in the frame of Proton, in any event. This gives me an alternative.”

“Unless you win the Tourney. Then you can stay for life.”

“Easier said than done, girl. In two years I would have been at my Game-proficiency peak; at the moment my chances are less than ideal.”

“As a Citizen, you could find out the identity of your enemy.”

“There is that.” He smiled. “Now, Sheen—what was it you had in mind to do when we finished our talk?”

She hit him with a pillow from the couch. “We just did it! Didn’t you notice?”

“Did what?”

She hauled him in to her, kissing him and flinging a leg over his thighs.

He squeezed her, bringing her head close against his, smelling her soft hair. “It’s great to be back,” he said seriously. “You have done good work. Sheen. But the world of Phaze—it’s such a lovely place, even discounting the magic. I feel—over there I feel more nearly fulfilled. As if my human potential is at last awakening. I have to return. Do you understand?”

“Maybe you feel as I would feel, if I passed through myself and found myself alive.” She closed her eyes, imagining. “Yes. You have to go back. But will you visit here?”

“Often. There are things for me in this world too.”

“Of which I am one?”

“Of which you are the main one.”

“That is all I have a right to ask.”

Again Stile felt a helpless guilt. Sheen loved him; he could not truly love her. It hardly mattered that a specialist could make one tiny change in her programming that would instantly abolish or reverse her feeling for him; her present program was real. Modern surgery could transplant his brain into another body, but his present body was real; he did not like fundamental changes. If he left Proton, he was leaving her, again, in the way Tune had left him. Yet Sheen herself had shortened his tenure. She was correct; she could not ask more of him.

The night was only half over, long as it had seemed.

He drew her over him like a blanket and slept.

In the morning he started his move to enter the Tourney. He went to the Game-annex, located the 35M ladder, and touched the button by the rung above his own. He was challenging Nine.

In a moment the holder of Rung Nine responded to the summons. He was, of course, a thirty-five-year-old male. For the purpose of the Game, age was strictly by chronology. There was constant disruption in the ladders, as birthdays shifted people from one to another. No one was given a place in the top twenty free; the Number One rung-holder in one age had to start at Number Twenty-One on the next age’s ladder. But at the qualifying date for each year’s Tourney the ladders were fixed; there was no disqualification by birthdays within the Tourney itself.

Apart from age and sex, the resemblance of the holder of Rung Nine to Stile was distant. He was tall and thin, like a stooped scholar. The appearance fit the reality; his name was Tome, and he was a researcher for a studious Citizen. Tome was very much a creature of intellect; he invariably selected the MENTAL column when he had the numbered facet of the Grid, and MACHINE when he had the lettered facet.

Because Tome could beat most people in games of the mind, and hold even when assisted by machine—especially when the machine was a computer—he was successful enough to hold his Rung. Because he was limited, he was not a potential champion. Tome was known as a 2C man—the definition of his specialties. Second vertical, third horizontal. If a person were weak in these, he would have trouble passing Tome.

Stile was generally strong in 2C. He could handle Tome, and the other man knew it. Stile simply had not wanted the Rung, before.

They went to a booth and played the Grid. Stile had the numeric facet; good. He regarded that as more fundamental. He would not choose MENTAL, of course; this was not a fun challenge where he wanted a good Game, but a serious challenge where he needed to win with least risk. He did not care for the 50-50 chance that CHANCE offered. Tome was pretty fair on machine arts, such as the theremin, so that was not a good risk. So it had to be Stile’s strong column, PHYSICAL.

Tome chose MACHINE, of course. Immediately the subgrid showed:

1. MOTION 2. ACTION 3. OBSERVATION

Nine types of machine-assisted competitive sports, ranging from cycle racing in 1A to stellar location in 3C. Stile had the letter facet of this grid, unfortunately; he could not select the machine-racing column, and knew that Tome would not. Tome would go for observation—unless he figured Stile for water. That would put them in 3B, which amounted to sonar location of sunken ships. Tome was not really sharp at that. But he was a fair hand at water-hydrant dueling, so might go for ACTION. Therefore Stile went for AIR instead.

He won. It came up 1C: dueling by guns, lasers, and similar powered distance weapons. Tome was good at this, but Stile was better, and both knew it.

DRAW? Tome’s query came on the panel. It was legitimate to make such an offer at any stage in the selection, and it was often done as part of the psychological combat. In this case it was an admission of weakness.

Stile hit the DECLINE button, and followed with CONCEDE?

Tome hesitated. Seconds passed. If he did not negate within fifteen, the concession would stand. Concession was always a demand, never an offer, at this stage: another rule to prevent irresponsible players from tying up the grids when they had no intention of playing a Game. But at last the DECLINE button lit.

Now the lists of individual variants appeared on the screen. Tome, the one challenged, had the first choice. He placed antique pistols in the center square of the nine-square subgrid that formed. Stile followed with a laser rifie in a comer. These were not real weapons; they would simply mark the target with a washable spot of red dye on the section hit. Very seldom was a live-ammo duel permitted, and never in connection with the Tourney.

As it happened. Stile and Tome shared a liking for antique weapons and forms, and when the grid was completed and played it came up 2B, the original pistols. The two of them walked to the dueling range nearby, while Sheen went to the spectator gallery. The holographic recording apparatus was operating, of course; every formal match was filmed, in case there should be any challenge to the result. Scholars liked to review the games of Tourney winners, right back to the original move up the rungs of the ladder, tracing with the wisdom of retrospect the elements that made those particular victories inevitable. This also meant, incidentally, that no agent in the audience could laser him in the knees or elsewhere; that shot would be recorded and the assassin apprehended immediately. This was no horse race!

They had to wait a few minutes for the use of the range. Dueling was popular, and there were a number of specialists who dueled every day. Had Stile been playing the Game with one of them, he would have avoided this option at any cost. That, of course, was the strategy of the Game; the key to victory lay in the grids. A good gridder could get by with very few Game specialties, always directing the selection to one of these. Just as Tome had to master only seven of the basic sixteen choices of the primary grid, and a proportionate number of each subgrid. An opponent could only force a selection within those seven. If an opponent’s skills overlapped those of Tome, he could be virtually assured of landing one of these, to Tome’s disadvantage. For a player who was serious, it was best to be strong in all boxes. That kept the options open, preventing him from getting trapped. Stile himself had strengths in all boxes; that was why he was the superior player here.

“You can’t be going for the Tourney,” Tome remarked. “You have two more seasons free. When the top five enter this year, we’ll both be jumped into qualiication for next year’s Tourney. I figured you’d be sliding down about now. What’s your move?”

Stile smiled. “See that girl in the stands? The pretty one? She put me up to it.”

“Oh, a Game-digger!” Tome squinted at Sheen. “For one like that, I’d make a move, certainly! She much on the mental side?”

“Limited as a robot,” Stile said.

“Going to move up to Rung Six, so you’ll be Number One after the cut? That’s risky. If someone gets sick at the last moment before qualification, you’ll be shunted into the Tourney.” Tome obviously had no doubts, in his mind, about the outcome of this match, and hardly cared; he had no intention of skirting the Tourney too closely.

“Going to Rung Five,” Stile said. “I prefer that this not be bruited about.”

Tome’s head snapped around in surprise. “This year?”

“Not entirely my choice. But I’ve had some problems in my employment.”

“So I have heard. Knee injury, wasn’t it? I’m surprised you didn’t have immediate surgery.”

“I got scared of it.”

Tome laughed. “You, scared! But I must admit you do look somewhat ravaged. Must have been a hard decision.”

“It was,” Stile agreed, though he knew that what showed on his body was the ravage of his two-day confinement in the Black Castle without food and water, rather than his mental state. Sheen had done what she could for him, but he had not yet properly recovered.

“Well, I wish you well,” Tome finished sincerely. The range cleared, and they entered. On a table at the entrance lay the set of antique pistols, with elaborate pearl handles and glistening black steel. A pistol specialist could have called out the exact vintage and make—probably eighteenth-century European—but Stile was concerned only with their heft and accuracy. Though they were replicas that fired no balls, they bucked and smoked just like the real ones.

Stile had to be sure to win this match; he could not rechallenge until the rungs had shifted, and this close to the Tourney there was unlikely to be much shifting. Players were either hanging on to their rungs to be sure that they qualified, or trying to stay below qualification range. Stile’s late decision to enter the Tourney was unusual, and would make ripples. He was going to have to bump someone who was depending on the Tourney as his last chance for extended tenure.

The Citizens had so arranged it that there were always more serfs interested in entering the Tourney than there were available slots—especially in Stile’s own age range, where many mature people were ending their tenures. There were tenures expiring in all age ranges, for serfs could enlist at any age, but the older ones generally lacked the drive and stamina for real expertise in the Game, and the younger ones lacked experience and judgment. The ladders of the Thirties, male and female, were the prime ones.

The weapons were good, of course, and as similar to each other as modern technology could make them. Each party took one, went to the centermark of the range, stood back to back, and began the paceoff at the sound of the timing bell. Ten paces, turn and fire—each pace measured by the metronome. The man who turned and/or fired too soon would be disqualified; the tenth beat had to sound.

Some people who were excellent shots in practice were bad ones in such duels. They had to have time to get set, to orient on the target—and here there was neither time nor any fixed target. Some lost their nerve when confronting an actual opponent who was firing back. Special skills and nerve were required for this sort of match. Both Stile and Tome possessed these qualities.

At the tenth beat Stile leaped, turning in air to face his opponent. Tome merely spun in place, withholding his shot until he fathomed Stile’s motion. He knew Stile seldom fired first; Stile preferred to present a difficult target, encouraging the other to waste his only shot.

Then Stile could nail him at leisure. Tome was too smart for that, Stile landed, plunged on into a roll, flipped to his feet and jumped again. Had Tome figured him for a straight bounce, his shot would have missed; but Tome was still being careful. His pistol was following Stile’s progress, waiting for the moment of correct orientation.

That moment never came. In midair Stile fired. A red splash appeared in the center of Tome’s chest, marking the heart. Contrary to popular fancy, the human heart was centered in the chest, not set in the left side.

Tome spread his hands. He had waited too long, and never gotten off his shot. He was officially dead.

Tome washed off the red stain while Stile registered the win with the Game computer outlet. They shook hands and returned to the Game-annex. Their names had already exchanged rungs. Stile punched Rung Eight, his next challenge. He wanted to capture as many rungs as he could before the alarm spread—and before news of his present weakened condition also got about. If his opponents thought it through, they would force him into the more grueling physical Games, where he would be weakest.

The challengee appeared. He was a squat, athletic man named Beef. “Tome, you challenging me?” he demanded incredulously.

“Not I,” Tome said, gesturing to the ladder.

Beef looked. “Stile! What move are you making?”

“A challenge move,” Stile said.

Beef shrugged. “I can’t decline.”

They went to a booth and played the grid. Beef was unpredictable; often he picked unlikely columns, just for the hell of it. Stile selected B. TOOL, hoping the other would not pick 3. CHANCE.

His hope was vain. Beef was more curious about Stile’s motive than about the outcome of the Game, and they intersected at 3B. The home of roulette, dice, —all manner of gambling devices. Precious little skill. Stile could take Beef in most games of skill—but chance made it even.

Yet already he was maneuvering to upgrade his chances, playing the subgrid, finessing the choices in the way he had. Suddenly it came up CARDS. Cards were technically instruments of chance—but there were quite a number of games, like bridge and poker, where skill of one sort or another counted. All he had to do was pack the final grid with this type.

Beef, however, was alert to this, and selected games like blackjack and high-card-draw. He wanted to make Stile sweat, and was succeeding. It was very bad to have an opponent who cared less about the outcome than Stile did; there was little strategic leverage. Beef made his placements on the grid so that Stile could not establish a full column of his own choices. Three of one player’s preferences in a row meant that player could select that row and have a commanding advantage. The chances of establishing a game utilizing reasonable skill remained 50-50, and Stile was hurting. He had to have better odds!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course.”

“I made a commitment!” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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