Piers Anthony - Split Infinity

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.