Split Infinity

“I will wait for you,” she said, and there was some-thing plaintive in her stance. She wanted so much to protect him from harm, and could not. “Go into that world—maybe it is better for you.”

“I will come back—when I can,” Stile promised.

He saw the tears in her eyes. To hell with the as-sorted humanoid artifices such robots were programmed with; she meant it! Stile spread his arms, at the verge of the curtain. She opened hers, and they embraced intangibly, and kissed air, and vanished from each other’s perception.

He had promised—but would he be able to keep that pledge? He didn’t know, and he worried that Sheen would maintain her vigil long after hope was gone, suffering as only a virtually immortal robot could suffer.  That hurt him, even in anticipation. Sheen did not de-serve to be a machine.

Stile did not tease himself or Sheen further. He strode on through the curtain and into the forest. He had a fair knowledge of earthy vegetation, because aspects of the Game required identification of it, and a number of Citizens imported exotic plants. The light was poor, but with concentration, he could manage.

The nearest tree was a huge oak, or a very similar species, with the air-plants called Spanish moss dangling from its branches. Beyond it was a similarly large spruce, or at any rate a conifer; this was the source of that pine-perfume smell. There were large leaves looking like separated hands in the shadow, and pine needles—so there must be a pine tree here somewhere —but mostly this was a glade with fairly well-established grass in the center. Stile liked it very well; it reminded him of an especially exotic Citizen’s retreat.

Dawn was coming. There was no dome above, no shimmer of the force field holding in the air. Through the trees he saw the dark clouds of the horizon loom-ing, trying like goblins to hold back the burgeoning light of the sun, and slowly failing. Planet Proton had no such atmospheric effects! Red tinted the edges of the clouds, and white; it was as if a burning fluid were accumulating behind, brimming over, until finally it spilled out and a shaft of scintillating sunlight lanced at lightspeed through the air and struck the ground beside Stile. The whole thing was so pretty that he stood en-tranced until the sun was fairly up, too bright to look at anymore.

The forest changed, by developing daylight. The somberness was gone—and so was the curtain. That barrier had been tenuous by night; it could still be present, but drowned by the present effulgence. He could not locate it at all. That bothered him, though it probably made no difference. He walked about, examining the trees; some had flowers opening, and stray rustlings denoted hidden life. Birds, squirrels—he would find out what they were in due course.

He liked this place. It could have been a private garden, but this was natural, and awesomely extensive.

Caution prevented him from shouting to check for echoes, but he was sure this was the open surface of a planet. Not at all what he would have expected from a matter-transmission outlet.

He found a large bull-spruce—damn it, it was a spruce!—its small dry branches radiating out in all directions. This was the most climbable of trees, and Stile of course was an excellent climber. He did not resist the temptation. He mounted that big old tree with a primitive joy.

Soon he was in the upper reaches, and gusts of wind he had not felt below were swaying the dwindling column of the trunk back and forth. Stile loved it. His only concern was the occasional pain in his knees when he tried to bend them too far; he did not want to aggravate the injury carelessly.

At last he approached the reasonable limit of safety.  The tops of surrounding trees were dropping below him, their foliage like low hedges from this vantage.  He anchored himself by hooking legs and elbows conveniently, and looked about.

The view was a splendor. The forest abutted the cliff-like face of a nearby mountain to one side—south, ac-cording to the sun—and thinned to the north into is-lands of trees surrounded by sealike fields of bright grain. In the distance the trees disappeared entirely, leaving a gently rolling plain on which animals seemed to be grazing. Farther to the north there seemed to be a large river, terminating abruptly in some kind of crevice, and a whitish range of mountains beyond that. To either side all he could see was more forest, a number of the individual trees taller than this one. The mountain to the south faded upward into a purple horizon.

There seemed to be no sign of civilized habitation.  This was less and less like a matter-transmission station! Yet if not that, what was it? He had seen other people pass through the curtain, and had done so him-self; there had to be something more than a mere wilder-ness.