Split Infinity (44 page)

He no longer had qualms about attacking an un-armed creature. He studied the golem. The creature might be made of wood, animated by magic, but it still had to obey certain basic laws of physics. It had to have joints in its limbs, and would be vulnerable in those joints, even as Stile was. It had to hear and see, so needed ears and eyes, though these would probably function only via magic. Whoever had made this golem must have a real knack for this kind of sorcery. An-other Adept, most likely, specializing in golems.

The golem came—and Stile plunged the point of his rapier like a hypodermic into the thing’s right eye. The golem, evidently feeling no pain, continued forward, only twisting its head. The sword point, lodged in the wood, was wrenched about. It snapped off.

Stile had not been expert with this weapon, so this was less of a loss than it might have seemed. He aimed the broken end at the golem’s other eye. But the creature, aware of the danger, retreated. It turned and crashed through the window in the far wall.

Stile pursued it. He leaped through the broken window—and found himself back in the courtyard, where Neysa had been pacing restlessly, breathing out her heat. She paused, startled, at the appearance of the golem. Her eyes informed her it was Stile, with one eye destroyed, but her nose was more certain. She made an angry musical snort.

The golem cast about with its remaining eye. It spied the fountain-whale. It grabbed the statuary in both arms and ripped it from its mooring.

Neysa, alarmed, charged across the courtyard, her horn aimed at the golem. “Don’t stab it!” Stile cried.
 
“The thing is wood; it could break thy horn!”

As he spoke, the golem heaved the whale at him. The statue was solid; it flew like a boulder. Neysa leaped at Stile, nosing him out of the way of it. The thing landed at her feet, fragmenting.

“Art thou all right, Neysa?” Stile cried, trying to get to his feet without bending his knees too far.

She gave a musical blast of alarm. Stile whirled. The golem was bearing down on him with a whale fragment, about to pulp his head.

Neysa lifted her head and snorted a jet of flame that would have done credit to a small dragon. It passed over Stile and scored on the golem.

Suddenly the golem was on fire. Its wood was dry, well-seasoned, and filled with pitch; it burned vigorously. The creature dropped the whale fragment and ran madly in a circle, trying to escape its torment.
 
Blows and punctures might not bother it, but fire was the golem’s ultimate nemesis.

Stile stared for a moment, amazed at this apparition: himself on fire! The golem’s substance crackled. Smoke trailed from it, forming a torus as the creature continued around its awful circle.

And Stile, so recently out to destroy this thing, experienced sudden empathy with it. He could not let it be tortured in this fashion. He tried to quell his human softness, knowing the golem was a literally heartless, unliving thing, but he could not. The golem was now the underdog, worse off than Stile himself.

“The water!” Stile cried. “Jump in the pond!
 
Douse the fire!”

The golem paused, flame jetting out of its punctured eye to form a momentary halo. Then it lurched for the pool, stumbled, and splashed in. There was a hiss and spurt of steam.

Stile saw Neysa and Kurrelgyre and the Lady Blue standing spaced about the courtyard, watching. He went to the pond and kneeled, carefully. The golem floated face down, its fire out. Probably it didn’t need to breathe; still—

Stile reached out and caught a foot. He hauled it in, then wrestled the body out of the pond. But the golem was defunct, whether from the fire or the water Stile could not tell. It no longer resembled him, other than in outline. Its clothing was gone, its painted skin scorched, its head a bald mass of charcoal.

“I did not mean it to end quite this way,” Stile said soberly. “I suppose thou wast only doing thy job, golem, what thou wert fashioned for, like a robot. I will bury thee.”

The gate guard appeared. He looked at the scene, startled. “Who is master, now?”

Startled in turn. Stile realized that he should be the master, having deposed the impostor. But he knew things weren’t settled yet. “Speak to the Lady,” he said.

The guard turned to her. “A wolf comes, seeking one of its kind.”

Kurrelgyre growled and stalked out to investigate.
 
“Speak naught of this outside,” the Lady Blue directed the guard. Then she turned to Stile. “Thou’rt no golem. Comest thou now to destroy what remains of the Blue Demesnes?”

“I come to restore it,” Stile said.

“And canst thou emulate my lord’s power as thou dost impersonate his likeness?” she asked coldly.

Stile glanced at Neysa. “I can not. Lady, at this time.
 
I have made an oath to do no magic—“

“How convenient,” she said. “Then thou needst not prove thyself, having removed one impostor, and thou proposest to assume his place, contributing no more to these Demesnes than he did. And I must cover for thee, even as I did for the brute golem.”

“Thou needst cover for nobody!” Stile cried in a flash of anger. “I came because the Oracle told me I was Blue! I shall do what Blue would have done!”

“Except his magic, that alone distinguished my lord from all others,” she said.

Stile had no answer. She obviously did not believe him, but he would not break his oath to Neysa, though he wanted above all else to prove himself to the Lady Blue. She was such a stunning figure of a woman—his alternate self had had tastes identical to his own.

Kurrelgyre returned, assuming man-form. “A member of my pack brings bitter news to me,” he said.
 
“Friend, I must depart.”

 
“Thou wert always free to do so,” Stile said, turning to this distraction with a certain relief. “I thank thee for thy help. Without seeking to infringe upon thy prerogatives, if there is aught I can do in return—“

“My case is beyond help,” the werewolf said. “The pack leader has slain mine oath-friend, and my sire is dying of distemper. I must go slay the pack leader—and be in turn torn apart by the pack.”

Stile realized that werewolf politics were deadly serious matters. “Wait briefly, friend! I don’t understand.
 
What is an oath-friend, and why—?”

“I needs must pause to explain, since I shall not be able to do it hereafter,” Kurrelgyre said. “Friendship such as exists between the two of us is casual; we met at random, part at random, and owe nothing to each other. Ours is an association of convenience and amicability. But I made an oath of friendship with Drowltoth, and when I was expelled from the pack he took my bitch—“

“He stole thy female?” Stile cried.

“Nay. What is a bitch, compared to oath-friendship?
 
He took her as a service to me, that she be not shamed before the pack. Now, over a pointless bone, the leader has slain him, and I must avenge my friend. Since I am no longer of the pack, I may not do this legitimately; therefore must I do it by stealth, and pay the consequence, though my sire die of grief.”

Oath-friendship. Stile had not heard of this before, but the concept was appealing. A liaison so strong it pre-empted male-female relations. That required absolute loyalty, and vengeance for a wrong against that friend, as for a wrong against oneself. Golden rule.

Yet something else nagged him. Stile pursued it through the tangled skein of his recent experience, integrating things he had learned, and caught it.

“There is another way,” he said. “I did not grasp it before, because this frame evidently has a more violent manner of settling accounts than I am used to. Here, perhaps, it is proper to kill and be killed over minor points of honor—“

“Of course it is!” the werewolf agreed righteously.

 
“Just so. My apology if I misinterpret thine imperatives; I do not wish to give offense. But as I perceive it, thou couldst rejoin thy pack. Thou hast only to kill thy sire—“

“Kill my sire!” Kurrelgyre exclaimed. “I told thee—“

“Who is dying anyway,” Stile continued inexorably.
 
“Which death would he prefer—a lingering, painful, ignominious demise by disease, or an honorable, quick finish in the manner of his kind, as befits his former status, by the teeth of one he knows loves him?”

The werewolf stared at Stile, comprehending.

“And thus thou’rt restored to thy pack, having done thy duty, and can honorably avenge thine oath-friend, without penalty,” Stile concluded. “And take back thy bitch, who otherwise would be shamed by the loss of both wolves she trusted.”

“The Oracle spoke truly,” Kurrelgyre murmured. “I did cultivate Blue, and Blue hath restored me to my heritage. I thought it was the anathema of Adept magic I was fated to receive, but it was the logic mine own canine brain was too confused to make.”

“It was only an alternate perspective,” Stile demurred. “I have yet to grasp the full import of mine own Oracular message.”

“I will gnaw on that,” the werewolf said. ‘Perhaps I shall come upon a similar insight. Farewell, meantime.” And he shifted to wolf-form and moved out.

Stile looked at the sun. The day was three hours advanced. The challenge of Rung Five—in just one hour! He barely had time to get there. Fortunately, he knew exactly where the curtain was, and where his original aperture was. He had to move!

Yet he was hardly finished in this frame. He had slain the golem, with Neysa’s help, but had little idea how to proceed here; he might do best to remove him-self from this frame for a while, hoping for insights.
 
Hoping to know himself better. What did he really want? That depended, in part, on how things fell out on Proton.

“I, too, have business elsewhere,” Stile said. “I must reach the curtain quickly, and get someone to spell me through.”

Neysa brightened. She stepped up to him. She would handle it.

He mounted, and they galloped off. Neysa was still hot from her prior exertions, but knew Stile’s deadline.
 
In moments she had carried him into the pasture where they had first met.

“Neysa, I think it would be best if thou shouldst stay at the Blue Demesnes while I visit the other frame. I’d appreciate it if thou wouldst inform the Lady Blue about Proton, as thou hast heard it from the werewolf and from me; I don’t think she knows.” He felt a momentary deja vu, and placed it: this was similar to the manner he was having Sheen tell Hulk about Phaze.

Neysa stiffened. “Is something wrong?” Stile asked.

She blew a note of negation, and relaxed. Stile, intent on the precise location of the curtain-site, did not pursue the matter. Such a short time to reach the Game-annex!

They reached the place in the forest where Stile had Erst entered this frame. The curtain was there, shimmering more strongly than before. Perhaps he had simply become better attuned to it. Stile divested himself of his clothes. “I will return to the Blue Demesnes within a day, I hope. If thou wilt spell me through now—“

She made a musical snort—and he was through the curtain, emerging in the service area behind the food machines. Only then did he wonder about the unicorn’s reticence. Something was bothering Neysa—and now it was too late to ask her about it.

Well, he was sorry, but he was in a hurry. He had twenty minutes to reach the Game-annex, or forfeit.

He made it. The holder of Rung Five was Hair, who of course was almost bald. He was a well-balanced player, without many great strengths, but also without many weaknesses. That made him hard to handle on the grid.
 
Hair would be playing to Stile’s liabilities, not to his own strengths, and have a pretty good chance to land an advantageous game.

Hair studied Stile. “You look tired,” he remarked.

“Apt observation,” Stile agreed. Naturally his opponent knew all about yesterday’s marathon run. Hair would capitalize on this, choosing the PHYSICAL column. Stile would negate this by going into MACHINE- or ANiMAL-assisted, so as not to have to depend on his own diminished strength. Of course Hair would anticipate that, and shift his column, perhaps into ART. He was good on the theremin. Stile was quite ready to challenge in the classification of music, but would prefer a normal, hand-powered instrument. So he would be better off in TOOL, where he could wind up with some-thing like a trombone or a harmonica. In fact, the harmonica would be very nice right now, because he had been practicing it in the other frame.

But Hair had after all stuck with PHYSICAL, out-maneuvering him. 1B, tool-assisted physical games.
 
The second grid appeared as the murmur of the audience rose.

Stile had the letter facet again. If he chose INDIVIDUAL, he could get caught in another endurance or strength exercise, and he was hardly up to it. If Hair selected BALL, it might work out to bowling, where Stile could win—or shot-put, where he could not. Hair was no Hulk, but he could heave an object a fair distance.

1. BALL 2. VEHICLE 3. WEAPON 4. ATHLETIC 5. GENERAL

A. INDIVIDUAL B. INTERACTIVE
                     
                       
           

Or he could go for VEHICLE, and they would be in a canoe race or bike race or skating race. Stile was fast on skates, but his legs were tired; this was not his day.
 
WEAPONS was no better. He wasn’t ready to bend a powerful bow to shoot at a target 300 meters distant.
 
His aim would surely suffer. His separated cartilage in the rib cage gave a twinge; no, he could not draw a bowl But throwing the javelin or hammer was no better. Nor was pole-vaulting—God, no!—in the next box, or skiing, or even sledding. He pictured himself whomping belly first on a small sled and shooting the ice rap-ids, and his rib cage gave a worse twinge. Only in GENERAL did he have a fair chance, with things like hopscotch, horseshoes, or jacks. Or tiddlywinks— major Games had been won and lost in that game, with the audience as avidly breathless as it would have been for a saber match. Stile was expert in tiddlywinks—but knew he would not get to play them this time.