Split Infinity

“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.

Apart from age and sex, the resemblance of the holder of Rung Nine to Stile was distant. He was tall and thin, like a stooped scholar. The appearance fit the reality; his name was Tome, and he was a researcher for a studious Citizen. Tome was very much a creature of intellect; he invariably selected the MENTAL column when he had the numbered facet of the Grid, and MACHINE when he had the lettered facet.