Robot Adept

She hadn’t paid attention to her surroundings; she had just followed the line in. She saw that she was in one of a number of open chambers, each of which contained a console, and most of the consoles had players standing by them. Many folk were playing this peculiar game! But that might be because they were doing what she was supposed to do, qualifying for the Tourney.  Mach had said that only the top ten in each age group, among the males and the females, would qualify. So now they were trying to get into the top tens.  She realized that that must be what the ladder was for. Shock had mentioned a ladder, that he was near the bottom of. A ladder was a thing that human folk used to climb up onto higher places. So she was trying to get on the ladder, starting near the bottom, which was the way with ladders.

But how was she to get to the top, if she had to win games against experienced players to climb each rung?  The Tourney was only a few days away, and even if she could win every game, there would hardly be time for them all!

A row illuminated. Shock had finally made his choice.  It was 1. PHYSICAL. The two highlights overlapped at ID.

Then the ID square expanded to fill the screen. ANIMAL-ASSISTED PHYSICAL appeared across the top, and new sets of choices appeared. This time she had the numbers, and he had the letters.  She looked at her choices: 5. SEPARATE 6. INTERACTIVE 7. COMBAT 8. COOPERATIVE. She wasn’t certain how these applied, but the safest seemed to be the first, because it seemed to mean that she could do her own thing. She touched it.

Again she had played ahead of Shock. That encouraged her, though it might be that he was making more intelligent choices. His options were E. EARTH F.  FIRE G. GAS H. HzO, whatever those meant.

When he chose, it was E: EARTH—FLAT SURFACE. So that was it: Earth, as in a plain someone could run on. That was fine with her; unicorns under stood running room.

The 1D5E square expanded to fill the screen, and a new, slightly smaller lattice appeared, with nine squares. Down the right side was a list of activities.  Shock whistled. “I don’t know how to do any of these things!” he exclaimed. “Well, let’s see where it goes.” The words BRONCO-BUSTING appeared in the top left box.

Fleta realized that he must have touched one of the words at the side, because it had disappeared from the side when it appeared in the square. So she touched her favorite: HORSEBACK RIDING. It wasn’t that she liked riding horses, but that she, being a related animal, understood them better than any of the others listed, and in her human form certainly could ride one of them.

He put BULLDOGGING in the third square, so she put GOAT MILKING in the fourth one. There were not many goats in Phaze, but they were easy enough to get along with.

They continued with DOG TRAINING, COW MILKING, CAMEL RIDING, BULL FIGHTING and CHICKEN SEXING. “That’s not what it sounds like,” Shock explained. “It’s telling the chicks apart, you know, male or female, so they know who’ll grow up to lay eggs. A good chicken sexer can make a pile, on a farm planet. Well, let’s choose up; this is it. I got the last placement, so you get choice of numbers or letters.”

She chose the letters, and touched B, the center column, because that had the horse riding in it. She was lucky; he chose 1, and the highlights overlapped at HORSEBACK RIDING. She had her first choice, which meant a good chance.

ADJOURN TO RIDING AREA, the screen said. FOLLOW THE LINE.

She looked at the floor. A new line showed, leading away from the console.

They followed it. It brought them to a corral where a number of people were riding horses. It terminated at a check-in office.

The bored attendant glanced up. “Whatcha into—easy, rough or show?” he asked.

“I don’t mind losing, but I don’t want to get dumped,” Shock said candidly. “I bruise easily.”

 “Easy,” the attendant said. “Saddle or bareback?”

“Your turn,” Shock said.

So they were still taking turns on choices. “Bare back,” Fleta said.

In due course they found themselves on two sedate horses, bareback, with reins. The one who guided his horse most accurately along a set course would be the winner.

Fleta didn’t like reins, so she dismounted, went to the horse’s head and removed the bit and the reins.  The man who had brought the horses looked surprised, but did not comment.

She remounted, and they proceeded along the course. Shock was evidently barely familiar with horsemanship; had the course not been long familiar to the animal, he would soon have been lost. Fleta leaned low, embraced her horse with legs and arms, and spoke to it in its own language: a low whinny. Her body might be alien, but her nature was equine, and now it came strongly through. She felt a sudden surge of homesickness for her homeland, and knew that this captive horse felt the same.