Robot Adept (24 page)

Again, they were to be judged by an audience. None of the listeners was the same as those of her prior game; the Computer was careful about that sort of thing.
 
Fleta had to play first. She took the instrument, which consisted of eight tubes of graduated lengths, bound together. She sounded each note by blowing across the top of the proper tube. She played a simple yet evocative melody that had given her pleasure as a filly at the end of a perfect day of grazing, as the sun settled slowly into the trees on the horizon, setting them afire, and the evening wind fanned the high fringe of the grass to be grazed on the morrow. As she played, Phaze seemed to form around her, so lovely, and then it seemed that Mach was there too, delighted by her music as he always was, and for this moment everything was perfect.
 
Then the tune was done, and it was Proton again.
 
The audience was staring at her. Had she started to melt again? No, they merely liked the music, perhaps not having heard the panpipes as played by a unicorn before.

Her opponent looked at the piano. “I concede,” she said shortly, and walked out.

FLETA PROCEEDS TO ROUND THREE, the screen announced.

Just like that, she had won!

The audience filtered out, though several serfs glanced admiringly at the instrument as they passed.
 
“Clear the chamber,” the speaker said. “Citizen approaching.”

Fleta looked wildly around. “But I’m supposed to be protected!” she cried. “I’m still in the Tourney!”

“At ease, filly,” the Citizen said, entering the chamber. He stood somewhat shorter than she, but his bright blue robe identified him as far above her. “Not every Citizen be thine enemy.”

“The Blue Adept!” she exclaimed, astonished.
 

He smiled. “Now Citizen Blue. Thy secret has been kept; the Game Computer allowed news o’ thine identity to leak not beyond its annex. But I was o’ Phaze, and I know the music o’ the unicorn when I hear it.
 
Ah, the memories it brought!”

“Mach’s sire,” she breathed.

“Aye. And thou’rt Neysa’s foal. Glad I am to meet thee at last, however briefly, though thou dost favor her not in this guise.” He squinted at her. “Best abolish the horn,though.”

Fleta touched her forehead. She had grown the button-horn! It must have happened while she was playing the panpipes. No wonder the audience had stared!
 
Quickly she melted it; she was not trying to make a freak of herself, here.

“Mach be looking for Bane, now,” Citizen Blue said.
 
“Must needs I tell thee what we be about. He has made truce with the Adverse Adepts, in Phaze, but Bane remains with us, in Proton. We oppose not thy union with him, or Bane’s with Agape. But the news he brought o’ the imbalance—that have we verified, and so it be true that thou canst not remain here. We shall get the four o’ ye together and make the exchange back—but with a change.” He looked penetratingly at her. “Only thou willst exchange, not the boys. That will give Mach power here, and Bane power there, to seek some better compromise than this truce. Mayhap Bane, being bound to us rather than to the other side, can find a way through. We seek not to void the deal Mach made with Translucent, only to provide us opportunity to explore the situation when the Adepts be off guard. I think thou canst go along with that.”

“Aye,” she said. “But that means—“

“That thou willst find thyself with Bane in Phaze—and must make it seem that he be Mach.”

“But—but I love Mach!” she protested, appalled.
 

“Aye. That be thy challenge, and why I speak to thee now. Agape must do likewise, here.”

“I—I will try,” she agreed faintly. What a position Blue was putting her in!

“Now let us play together,” he said. He brought out a harmonica, and put it to his mouth.

Relieved to have the subject change, she lifted the panpipes. Then the two of them played an impromptu melody, and Blue was a master musician, almost as good as a unicorn in the finesse with which he handled his instrument.

When it was done, she was melting again. “Thou didst depart Proton before I was foaled,” Fleta told him.
 
“Yet do I feel I know thee well, now.”

“It were thy dam Neysa mine other self Stile knew,” he said. “So in any event, our acquaintance is based on that of two other folk. Yet be it good to renew.”

 
“0 Adept, may I hug thee?”

“Hug me, ‘corn, and remember me to my home land.”

She hugged him, finding him much like Bane, only older and smaller. His visit to her buoyed her immeasurably; now she knew that she and Mach were not fighting for their happiness alone. Stile had turned down her union with Mach, and for good reason; Blue was supporting it, and she hoped his reason was as good.
 
Then he departed, and she returned to her chamber.
 
For the second time, the aftermath of a Tourney game had lifted her outlook. She no longer felt like a complete stranger here; indeed, her homesickness for Phaze was diminishing.

Two days later she had her Round Three match. This was against a humanoid robot who reminded her eerily of Mach, but he was not. She had the numbers again, but hesitated to choose ARTS, because the records of all prior games were available, and she knew that the robot could have looked up her games and discovered her preference, and calculated accordingly. So she touched 2. MENTAL. He chose A. NAKED, as she had thought he might; it could be tricky for a robot to use a tool, as robots really were tools in a manner of thinking, and even trickier for him to use a machine.
 
He would naturally avoid her own strength, ANIMAL.
 
So he depended on his own resources, as Mach tended to do. She felt a little guilty for using her knowledge of Mach to gain an advantage over this robot, but she knew she had to do it.

The secondary grid for MENTAL came up. She had the numbers again: 5. SOCIAL
 
6. POWER 7. MATH 8. HUMOR. What should she choose?
 
She looked at the robot’s choices: E. INFORMATION F. MEMORY G. RIDDLE H. MANIPULA TION. What would he take? It depended on his type; if he were a sophisticated model, like Mach, he would have an enormous store of information, and a sizable temporary memory, but would be weak on mental tricks such as riddles. If he were a simpler model, his information and memory capacity might be much smaller, but he would still be good at manipulating what he had: numbers, for example. So she had better stay well clear of MATH!

She decided that her safest course was HUMOR.
 
Mach had a sense of humor, though not on a par with hers, but other robots might not understand it at all.
 
She touched the word.

Sure enough, he had chosen MANIPULATION, going for his strength. They were in 2A8H: SPURIOUS LOGIC. It came down to a contest in telling jokes, and topping them.

Again they had an audience. It seemed that most contestants resembled Fleta in this respect. They preferred to be judged by ordinary folk, not by the machine.

The robot was required to tell his joke first. He did so mechanically. “A smart humanoid robot was concerned that his employer was not satisfied with his performance and sought a pretext to fire him. The employer always assigned him the least rewarding tasks, such as supervising the maintenance menials. When the employer gave him an assignment to report to the robot repair annex, he feared he would be junked. So he tinkered with the wiring of a cleanup menial robot, an inferior machine, and caused it to respond to the humanoid’s identity command. Thus the menial went off to the repair annex for junking, instead of the smart humanoid!”

There was a robot in the audience who found this very funny, and two androids who smiled. But the joke fell somewhat flat for the human beings.
 
Now it was Fleta’s task to top it. If she could do so, she would nullify it, and leave her opponent scoreless.
 
She had to think quickly: what would reverse the situation in a funny manner? She thought again of Mach.
 
What would he say to a joke like this? That gave her the key.

“But it turned out that the robot was being sent to the repair annex not for junking, but for upgrading to superior status,” she said. “When the menial robot returned, it was much smarter than the humanoid robot, and was made the new supervisor, bossing the humanoid himself.”

Several humans laughed, and the two androids smiled.
 
They liked that reversal. Only the humanoid robot in the audience failed to see the humor of it. Fleta had succeeded in topping the joke.

Now it was her turn to start. She remembered a little story she had imagined as a young filly, back when she was learning to assume girlform. “A mean man of Phaze caught an innocent young unicorn in human form, when she was trying to learn the human ways so she could handle the form perfectly. He grabbed her and clapped his hand over her forehead, covering her horn button, so she could not change. ‘Now I won’t let you go unless you teach me how to change form as you do,’ he told her. ‘Teach me, or I will do something terrible for you but nice for me.’ She knew he would rape her if she did not agree, so she gave her word to help him change to equine form.

“He could not do it exactly the way she did, because he was not of her species, so she had to translate the magic to a verbal command that would work for him.
 
Actually it was two commands: the second to change him back to manform. He tied her to a post and tried the first spell, and lo! He became his analogy of the equine form, which was a silly ass. Immediately he tried to change back, but he only brayed, because his assform was unable to speak in the human mode. He was stuck for the rest of his life as an ass.”

There were a few smiles in the audience, but it seemed that most of the serfs had been expecting something like this, so were not surprised. It was after all a pretty weak joke.

It was the robot’s turn to top it. Unfortunately, he had found the joke hilarious: man becoming ass! That was almost as funny as having a menial robot sent off to be junked in one’s place. He tried to come up with an improvement on it, but his thought circuits were inadequate, and he could not.

But he was not completely dull. “Maybe there is no topper,” he said. “If there is no topper, then it doesn’t count!”

AGREED, the screen printed. TELLER MUST TOP OWN JOKE FOR VICTORY.

Oops! Fleta had not anticipated that! She had never devised a reversal of this one, having had no motive.
 
If she was a human being, and wanted to turn the joke to human account, how would she do it?

The challenge brought the response, and she had it.

It was in the form of her worst fear as a young creature.
 
“Then the unicorn changed to her natural form, for she was just coming into heat and needed to be far from here before the mating urge took her. But she forgot that she was still tied, and the rope was too strong for her to break. She was trapped—and there was this ass, smelling her condition, eager to—“ She was drowned out by a surge of laughter. The serfs found that fate very funny!

She had won the match—but at the cost of allowing her secret self to be raped by an ass. She was not completely pleased.

Mach visited her again. “I have located Bane,” he said. “I have explained what my father wants. He has agreed. But he says that Agape is far from here. He will have to go to her, and explain, and bring her here.
 
It will take at least two days.”

“Then needs must I win again on the morrow,” she said.

“You have been doing very well,” he said. “You have qualified for Round Four; you are one of the final 128 contestants. Almost 900 have been eliminated.”

“That many!” she exclaimed in wonder. “But I be just lucky!”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure of that. I think you may be cut out to be a Game player. Your instincts have been good, and your play good. Considering your unfamiliarity with this culture and your inexperience with the Game, that suggests a very good potential.”

“Nay, it be but luck,” she protested. “I fear for each new contest, that I may muff what I might have played well.”

“Which is exactly the attitude of a superior games man.” He smiled. “In any event, you have to get through only one more, and then you can exchange.”

“One more—and then be separated from thee,” she said, with mixed emotions.

Her Round Four match was against a Citizen. Fleta saw him approaching the console with horror; how could she defeat such an opponent? Furthermore, she recognized him: he was the Purple Adept, here known as Citizen Purple.

Now she knew that the Contrary Citizens had caught on to her identity, and somehow arranged to get close to her within the Tourney. If she lost this one. Purple would have her, and Mach would be helpless. The alliance of Citizens and Adepts would have both sides of it, and Bane and Mach would have to work wholly for them. Their noose was closing.

Purple looked at her, and grinned. “I mean to have your hide, animal,” he said. “You have led a charmed existence, but I have a score to settle.” Terror coursed through her. This man was serious—and deadly. Mach had said something about the way Agape had escaped captivity by this man, and Mach himself had escaped, in a violent confrontation. Certainly Purple had a score to settle—and she knew he was an evil man.