Piers Anthony - Split Infinity

He did. The next field intersection marked the end of the malfunction. Ah, glorious reprieve!

But he had been weakened by his deprivation of oxygen, and had lost a lot of ground. Hulk must have taken oxygen too—that was it! That strange bottle he had nursed! Oxygen, hoarded for the rough run ahead! Clever, clever man! Hulk had done nothing illegal or even unethical; he had used his brains and done his homework to outmaneuver Stile, and thereby had nearly won his race right there. Now Stile would have to catch up—and that would not be easy. Hulk was not yet two kilometers ahead, for Stile had received no notification of forfeit; but he might be close to it. Hulk was surely using up his last reserves of strength to get that lead, in case Stile made it through the malfunction.

But if Hulk did not get the necessary lead, and Stile gained on him, he still had to catch and pass him. There were about thirty kilometers to go. Could he endure? He had been seriously weakened.

He had to endure! He picked up speed, forcing his body to perform. He had a headache, and his legs felt heavy, and his chest hurt. But he was moving.

The track continued through the domes, scenic, varied—but Stile had no energy now to spare for appreciation. His sodden brain had to concentrate on forcing messages to his legs: lift-drop, lift-drop . . . drop . . . drop. Every beat shook his body; the impacts felt like sledgehammer blows along his spinal column. Those beats threatened to overwhelm his consciousness. They were booming through his entire being. He oriented on them, hearing a melody rising behind those shocks. It was like the drumming of Neysa’s hooves as she trotted, and the music of her harmonica-horn came up around the discomfort, faint and lovely. Excruciatingly lovely, to his present awareness. His pain became a lonely kind of joy.

Beat—beat—beat. He found himself forming words to that rhythm and tune. Friendship, friendship, friend- ship, friendship. Friendship for ever, for ever, for ever, for ever. Friendship for ever, uniting, uniting, uniting. Friendship forever uniting us both, both, both. Neysa was his friend. He started singing the improvised tune mostly in his head, for he was panting too hard to sing in reality. It was like a line of verse Fanapestic tetra-meter, or four metric feet, each foot consisting of three syllables, accented on the third. But not perfect, for the first foot was incomplete. But pattern scansion tended to be too artificial; then the pattern conflicted with what was natural. True poetry insisted on the natural. The best verse, to his way of thinking, was accent verse, whose only rhythmic requirement was an established number of accents to each line. Stile had, in his own poetic endeavors, dispensed with the artificiality of rhyme; meter and meaning were the crucial elements of his efforts. But in the fantasy frame of Fhaze his magic was accomplished by rhyme. His friendship for the unicorn—

An abrupt wash of clarity passed through him as his brain resumed proper functioning. Neysa? What about Sheen? He was in Sheen’s world now! Sheen had sent the oxygen!

Again he experienced his hopeless frustration. A tiny man had to take what he could get, even if that were only robots and animals. In lieu of true women.

And a surge of self-directed anger: what was wrong with robots and animals? Sheen and Neysa were the finest females he had known! Who cared about the ultimate nature of their flesh? He had made love to both, but that was not the appeal; they stood by him in his most desperate hours. He loved them both.

Yet he could not marry them both, or either one. Because he was a true man, and they were not true women. This was not a matter of law, but of his own private nature: he could be friends with anything, but he could marry only a completely human woman. And so he could not marry, because no woman worth having would have a dwarf.

And there was the ineradicable root again, as always: his size. No matter how hard he tried to prove his superiority, no matter how high on whatever ladder he rose, he remained what he was, inadequate. Because he was too small. To hell with logic and polite euphe-isms; this was real.

Friendship forever, uniting us both. And never more than that. So stick with the nice robots and gentle animals; they offered all that he could ever have.

Sheen was there by the track, holding out a squeeze bottle. “He’s tiring. Stile!” she called.

“So am I!” he gasped. “Your oxygen saved me, though.”

“What oxygen?” she asked, running beside him. “The robot—didn’t you know there was a field deficiency along the route? Didn’t you take the detour?”

“We stuck to the original track. The air gave out. Hulk had oxygen, but I didn’t. Until a robot—“

She shook her head. “It must have been my friend.” The self-willed machines—of course. They would have known what she did not. She had asked them to keep watch; they had done exactly that, acted on their own initiative when the need arose, and invoked Sheen’s name to allay any possible suspicions. Yet they hadn’t had to do this. Why were they so interested in his welfare? They had to want more from him than his silence about their nature; he had given his word on that, and they knew that word was inviolate. He would not break it merely because he washed out of the Tourney; in fact, they would be quite safe if his tenure ended early. Add this in to the small collection of incidental mysteries he was amassing; if he ever had time to do it, he would try to penetrate to the truth, here. “Anyway, thanks.”

“I love you!” Sheen said, taking back the bottle. Then she was gone, as he thudded on. She could love; why couldn’t he? Did he need a damned program for it?

But strength was returning from somewhere, infusing itself into his legs, his laboring chest. His half-blurred vision clarified. Hulk was tiring at last, and Sheen loved him. What little meaning there was in his present life centered around these two things, it seemed. Was it necessary to make sense of it?

Stile picked up speed. Yes, he was stronger now; his world was solidifying around him. He could gain on Hulk. Whether he could gain enough, in the time/distance he had, remained to be seen, but at least he could make a fair try.

Why would a machine tell him she loved him?

Why would another machine help bail him out of a hole?

Stile mulled over these questions as he beat on with increasing power, and gradually the answers shaped themselves. Sheen had no purpose in existence except protecting him; how would she be able to distinguish that from love? And the self-willed machines could want him away from Proton—and the surest way to get him away was to make sure he entered the Tourney. Because if he failed to enter—which would happen if he lost this race—he would have three more years tenure, assuming he could land another employer. If he entered, he would last only as long as he continued winning. So of course they facilitated his entry. They were being positive, helping him . . . and their help would soon have him out of their cogs. Thus they harmed no Citizen and no man, while achieving their will.

Sheen was also a self-willed machine, subservient only to her program, her prime directive. Beyond that she had considerable latitude. She had entered him in the Tourney, in effect, by gaining him employment with a Citizen who was a major Game fan. Did she. Sheen, want his tenure to end? Yet she had no ulterior motive; his printout of her program had established that. His rape of her.

Rape—did she still resent that? No, he doubted it. She knew he had done what he had to, intending her no harm. He could not have known he was dealing with a self-willed machine, and he had apologized thereafter.

No, Sheen was doing what she felt was best for him.