Piers Anthony - Steppe

The work of the Machine again. Players were made up for each part, so that others could not tell what they had originally looked like. Alp did not remember going through makeup, but—here was his hair, spliced as though never cut.

One more succinct reminder: he had only an idiot's notion of the capabilities of Galactic magic.

Meanwhile, the Game beckoned. The sun was high. It was noon, and the day was hot. He could relax, for all he had to do was stay alive and he would have many years' respite.

Years? Suddenly he remembered another thing about the Game: its time was not the same as that of the galaxy. The Game timescale was accelerated. Every day here was equivalent to a full year in the historical world!

So the theoretical life of a player from birth to a death of old age was in the neighborhood of seventy days. Most parts were much shorter, for they started at early maturity and often were terminated violently. Each Game hour was a historical fortnight, and each Game-minute six hours, and each Game-second six minutes.

The Game sun did not move faster. Actually, these Galactics claimed the sun did not move at all, at least not the way it obviously did. They thought the sun stood still while the plains and seas and mountains whirled around it. This was yet another idiocy he would have to contemplate at leisure. For the moment he had to grasp the nature of the Day that was really a year.

This was noon midsummer—and about twelve historical hours had passed in the two Minutes Alp had taken stock. Dusk would be the fall season and night would be winter. Spring would come at dawn. He had to find a place to stay before the snows came.

That increased the other pressure on him. The dangers that had cheapened the value of the part would strike in hours or even minutes, rather than days, because of that acceleration of the time scale. And he had to make his political move within ten days—before his decade's fore-knowledge was outrun. Otherwise he would have no advantage over the other players.

He was in a much stiffer exercise of his ingenuity than he had supposed. He couldn't do much, alone on the steppe. He had to get a horse and make contact with Game-Uigurs—soon. Every day he delayed was a full year wasted!

Yet he had to waste a few minutes more. In Game-parlance, Minutes—to show their historical gravity. One day was twenty-four hours; one Day was a year. He had to formulate a strategy that would ensure his survival and bring him the greatest profit within ten days—Days. That meant achieving a position of leadership among men—and he had no immediate idea where to find them.

There was something even more urgent than leadership, however. Alp found a good sandy place and scraped a small hole in the ground. Barely half a handspan down he encountered bedrock.

Surprised, he excavated further and inspected it. The underlying material was rocklike in its hardness but was not actually rock. More metal, perhaps. Something manufactured by man or demon. So this was not real steppe.

Well, why not? This was all the stage for the Game. Underneath were those multiple layers of Galactic civilization. He must never forget that none of it was genuine, however cleverly crafted.

Meanwhile, there was his urgent business. This sand was shallow, but it would do. He squatted and attended to it, then carefully smoothed the sand over so there was no indication.

It was the longest time, historically, such an act had ever taken him.

Supposedly the Game steppe land was similar to the original geography. But not literally. The Game-steppe spanned the galaxy. This was a large canvas indeed, covering all the skies of the night, far too vast for him to comprehend fully at the moment. Smaller regions were mapped as planets—rather, planets represented cities and oases. Horses—he paused, fighting confusion as he integrated his two sets of experience—horses were space ships. Carts that spouted hot wind and flew from star to star.

So this plain was no more literal than the hours of the Day. The whole thing was a mockup, perhaps intended to give him the feel of the Game—or to lull him into a disastrous complacency. The true stage was condensed in time and magnified in scale, and the visible plain was no more than the patch of soil covered by one fresh horse-dropping.

Why should a new player be set apart like this, on foot and without provisions? Was it a handicap, a hurdle, something for him to prove himself against? If so, it was ridiculously feeble by native Uigur standards; Alp had known how to forage from the land since childhood. This land differed from his own, but he could eat grass if he had to, and if there were any wildlife at all—

No—the isolation could be a measure of protection from exploitation by established players. Every new player represented competition or opportunity for the old; suppose there were those who laid in wait to dispatch or enslave the novice? That made sense; it was good nomad logic. The neighbors must be hostile, and this accounted for the cheapness of the part.

Alp grinned in the way he had. He nocked another arrow with the skill that few Uigurs and no Chinese could match and sent it flying at a shrub on a hillock thirty meters distant. It struck a little beyond; it was sleeker and lighter than those he was familiar with, but its flight was true. He fired another, and this time scored directly.

He might be a complete novice in the Galactic city, but he was only a partial novice here in the Game—and he could fight well. He doubted that the majority of players were really adept with their weapons. Affluence and ease tended to corrupt, and these Galactics had much of each.

But the players had to interact! They had to travel from city to city—planet to planet—or remain forever encamped at one location. The true nomad did not reside alone without horse or cattle. He was part of a tribe, sharing its protection and obligation. It would be pointless to set a man down too far from such a tribe—but perhaps dangerous to place him where others would discover him too rapidly. Probably placement varied, making contact random—but still, it had to be near some locus of activity, or there would be no Game.

So he had to find that locus, before it found him. And join it on his own terms. Even if he had to dispatch a few tribesmen first, to make his point.

Where there were sedentary people or camping nomads, there was fire. Where there was fire there was smoke.

Alp looked at the sky, carefully. It was clear. No clouds, no smoke.

Of course this was the galactic year 2332 his new memory said, and the planet was governed by contemporary conventions. Pollution was a crime. So no horse dung, no wood fires. Therefore no smell or smoke. But—

There it was! A faint streak of cloud, typical of—of the condensation pattern following a spaceship moving through atmosphere! The Galactic equivalent of smoke—or the dust raised by a running horse.

The streak pointed to the south, assuming his brief survey of the sun's elevation had oriented him correctly. Therefore there was a stable there. But Alp checked the sky carefully for other signs before acting. Did many horsemen come to that oasis? Were there other places he might go, more profitably?

He found no other indications. That one, already fading in the sky, would have to do. Had he not been alert, he would have missed it—as perhaps most players did. It was distressing being afoot, and it made him feel insecure and lonely for Surefoot. But he had ground to cover in a hurry, and he would do it.

Alp approached the camp from the south, having skirted entirely around with inborn caution. There had been guards and at least one ambush, which confirmed his suspicion about the exploitation of new players. They had known he was coming, but they had not known his background, his life-time in the historical reality the Game only imitated. He could have killed those amateurs with ease, but he had chosen merely to avoid them.