Robot Adept

They settled on a “team” sport—that was how COOPERATIVE translated here. In this case it was a variant of mountain climbing, with five-person teams roped together, descending into the rumbling crater of a volcano.

Well, he thought, Fleta was fleet of foot. She could navigate any slope with confidence. Except that this wasn’t really Fleta, and she wasn’t alone. She had four android teammates who were “neutral”: neither apt nor clumsy. What would count was teamwork: how well she organized and directed them for the descent into evermore-challenging territory. The victory would go to the player who brought his party safely to the bottom first. If any teammates were lost, that was a liability but not necessarily defeat, depending on the state of the other team.

The screen showed the crater: a truly impressive setting. The walls of the upper inner rim were almost vertical, the slope modifying below and finally becoming level. But there were ridges and irregularities, and vents issuing smoke and steam, and sometimes lava. The whole thing shuddered at irregular intervals, and there were occasional mini-eruptions of rocks and dust and gas. Verisimilitude was excellent; on the screen, it really did seem like a living volcano crater.

There were four established paths of descent: north, south, east and west. These varied in detail, but had similar hazards, and had been established as equivalent in difficulty. Lot determined the assignments. The Citizen’s team was given the north slope, and Agape had the south. Mach’s screen could be set up to watch the whole crater, with the tiny figures at either side, or to watch one at close range, or split to watch both parties at intermediate range. He checked the AUDIENCE indicator, and discovered without surprise that it was huge. There were relatively few games being played now, and the unicorn had captured the public fancy; also, the volcano was always popular.

Mach knew that the Citizen would have played this course before, many times, and would have every path memorized. The Game Computer changed details with each game, to prevent this kind of advantage, but there was only so much it could do. The advantage of knowledge of the course was definitely with the Citizen.

Agape looked down her path, then took a daring and most unicornlike step: she detached herself from the safety rope. A unicorn, of course, would prefer to climb alone, regarding the other members of the team as a liability rather than an asset.

She started down, using chinks in the rim-wall for handholds, until she could stand on the less formidable slope below. She found a safe-seeming vantage by a projection of solidified lava, and called directions back to her remaining team. She had to get them down safely too; she could not leave them behind. They followed her route, descending in order, until they rejoined her. It was a decent start.

Meanwhile the Citizen was proceeding conventionally and efficiently. He too led his party, not trusting the androids to be good judges of the route. He barked orders to each, moving them along. His team made the first “landing” before Agape’s did.

Then the first shudder came. The rocks shook, and several fragments of rock became dislodged and slid down. No damage was done to either party; it was merely a warning.

Agape went ahead again, spying out the best descent. She had a choice at this stage: one reasonably safe but long path, and one short but treacherous one. She gambled as a unicorn would, taking the shorter one. The Citizen took the safe one. That made Mach nervous; the Citizen surely had reason.

That reason soon manifested: there was another tremor, worse than the first. Gas hissed up from vents—and there were more such vents along Agape’s fast path than along the Citizen’s slow one. But Agape had had her team wait again while she explored, and she was watching; she lay flat as the vents expressed themselves, and had no trouble. Then she jumped across a minor crevasse, found another staging point, and brought her team down. She was now ahead of the Citizen.

Was there an upset in the making? The Citizen, seeing himself behind, hurried his team—and one of his androids misstepped and fell. The safety rope prevented him from being lost, but he took an injury, and now was limping. That was another point for Agape: all her teammates were safe.

But as she explored for the third leg of her descent, a lava vent just behind her spewed out molten rock, splattering her body. It was not real lava, of course, but jellylike emulation. Nevertheless, she had received a direct strike on the torso, and was deemed to have been burned beyond the ability to continue. The Game Computer issued a STAY IN PLACE directive; Agape was not permitted to go on.