Unicorn Point (36 page)

“But how can you be sure?” Merle asked.

“He’s my friend! I’d know him anywhere, if I looked.”

Merle smiled.. “You must pardon those of us who lack your ability. How can we be sure?”

Nepe considered. “We have a secret code that only the two of us know. Let me tell it to you, and he will respond to you only when you use it.”

“Fair enough,” Merle said.

Nepe got up, went to the woman, and whispered some thing. Then Merle spoke to the two men, who had remained passive. “Agree among yourselves when I should give the code, and see whether the response is there.” Translucent shrugged, and brought out a stylus and pad.
 
He wrote something, then tore off the sheet and passed it to Merle. Blue brought out a similar pad and made a note, also passing it to Merle. She looked at each, then folded them, smiling. “Each of you has written a number, and the one modifies the other. I shall use the result, which neither of you know.”

She faced the hens. “Troubot, here is the code: three, fifteen, one.”

Troubot did not respond. The code was numeric, but she had the wrong numbers.

“Troubot,” she said again, “here is the code: nine, twenty nine, ninety-nine.”

Again he did not respond.

“Troubot, here is the code: four, four, four to the fourth power, forever four.”

That was it: Nepe’s age when they had met, formed into a cherished memory. Heningway clucked, and the others came together to huddle. They formed their pattern in front of Merle, all beaks touching.

“We seem to have a response,” Merie said. “Is it the right time?”

“I wrote the number six,” Translucent said.

“I divided by two,” Blue said.

“Indeed you did,” Merle agreed. “And six divided by two is three; I gave the code the third time. This test may have been crude, but seems indicative. Are we satisfied?” They looked at the flock, which was clustered around Nepe again. They were satisfied.

Troubot assembled himself, removing the fleshly vestments and becoming a single entity again. Now he could function fully. They took down his stats: the part numbers of his components and the electrical pattern of his brain circuitry, so there could be no subsequent confusion about his identity.
 
Then Translucent and Nepe left, and Citizen Blue took Trou bot with him. Merle was left to recover her hens from the quarantine chamber.

It was good being legitimate again, the doubt gone. But now he had a new responsibility: to represent Citizen Blue in a contest that was already partly lost. If he lost the game, Blue was done for. Troubot had never before played a Game, though he was familiar with its rules. He understood that his opponent Tsetse had not played either, but still it seemed doubtful. The matchup was too odd, for stakes too high.
 
Citizen Blue gave him access to the information net, and he spent the night reviewing strategies of the grid, and check ing the course of past games. He was as ready as he could be, considering that he had not been designed for this en deavor.

Tsetse entered the chamber after Troubot had taken his place at the console. He was a machine, but he had learned to catalogue living folk according to their physical esthetics by human definition, and she was what was best described as luscious. He had of course researched her stats, and learned that she was of average intelligence and creativity and per sonality, and below average in motivation; only her outstand ing body displaced her from the ordinary. He would do well to engage her in a mental game, where he should have an advantage. But she would seek to avoid this, being property coached. In fact, she might well seek to avoid all games of skill, and go for CHANCE, making the issue random. This might indeed be the Citizens’ best strategy; if they won, they won everything, while if they lost, they would still be even.
 
He had the letters. That meant he could not put it into the MENTAL arena. He was already a machine, so would have less advantage than she by drawing on the powers of a ma chine; the same went for tools. The animal category had po tential complications he preferred to avoid. This being the case, he went for the simplest: NAKED.

To his relief, she too selected the simplest: PHYSICAL. It would be just the two of them, with their own unaugmented abilities.

For the secondary grid he had the numbers. Again he chose the simplest: SEPARATE. That meant that they would do, essentially, their own things, not being dependent on each other. A foot race was separate, while a game of tag was interactive. Of course she could get him in trouble by her choice of surface: if she chose a water contest, he would have difficulty. He could modify his body to move in water, but this might not be permitted. She, in contrast, had a body that seemed designed by nature for swimming. However, he had found no reference to swimming in her record, and hoped that she was of the type who went to the water only for appearances.

She chose Variable Surface, again to his relief. He might have to navigate a slope, but that was easier than dealing with water. He would try to line up good options, and hope for the best on the tertiary grid.

She made the first placement, and Sand Dunes appeared in the center. Sand was another prospect he did not relish; his wheels would lose traction in it.

He put Maze Path in the top row, center. That brought a mental element into it, giving him the advantage.
 
She put Snow Bank in the upper left comer. There was another problem for him: snow. She had been well enough rehearsed, and was playing correctly.

He countered with Limestone Cliff in the lower right cor ner. He could project points to grip the rock and climb well enough, while she should have more trouble.
 
She put Glass Mountain in the upper right comer. That was mixed, for him; the glass would be too hard for his points, but his wheels could get traction when it was dry.
 
He put Tight Rope in the left column, down one. As a machine, he could achieve almost perfect balance, and his wheels could remain firm on the rope, while the woman might become highly unstable.

She put Greased Hills in the bottom left column. That was a mistake on her part; he could handle grease by poking his points through to the sand beneath.

He put Cross Country in the center of the third column, then realized that he should have put it in the bottom center column, giving him three good choices in the bottom row.
 
She filled in the last box with Dust Slide. He liked dust no better than snow; that spoiled that row for him.
 
Now the grid was complete.

TERTIARY GRID: 1A5F

Physical Naked Separate, Variable Surface

Snow Bank
         
Maze Path
      
Glass Mm

Tight Rope
         
Sand Dunes
    
Cross Country

Greased Hills
     
Dust Slide
      
Limestone

He had the choice of rows or columns. He chose the rows.
 
She would figure him to take the middle row, because two of his choices were there, so she should choose the center col umn, to stick him with Sand Dunes. Therefore he chose the top row.

But she, for what reason he might never understand, had selected the third column. The result was Glass Mountain: one of her choices, but really not bad for him.
 
They adjourned to the mountain. As true mountains went, this was small, but as inner-dome artifacts went, it was big.
 
The mountain was indeed formed of glass, or at least had a glass exterior. It was broad at the base, and slanted up to a peak about ten meters high. It was ridged and channeled, with many facets and some almost vertical cliffs which rep resented impassable barriers to naked—i.e., bare-handed—folk. Its contours were changed for each game, so that there was no point in memorizing its outline. It was normally so constructed that a person could not simply pick a gentle slope and mount to the top; he had to ascertain, usually by trial and error, which route was feasible, and do it before his opponent did. The first one to the top was the winner.
 
This was “separate”; that meant that one player could not directly interfere with the other, such as by shoving him off the mountain. But the categories were seldom pristine; there was inevitably some interaction, as when one player got to the best route before the other and so forced the other either to follow behind or to choose another route. In this case there was an added fillip: water bombs. These were little balloons filled with water which, when burst against the glass, made it too slippery for progress. A player could take as many bombs as he could hold, and use them to reduce the friction of the path his opponent had chosen. The effect lasted only a few seconds, but could make the difference when both were racing toward the top on different paths.
 
Troubot feared that his wheels would be more susceptible to slipperiness than Tsetse’s feet, because she could step over wet spots while he could not. But he had greater capacity to hold water bombs. He could fill his hopper with them, while she could carry only what she could hold in her arms. Still, he did not know how agile she was, or what the best route was. This was still anybody’s game. The audience evidently thought so; the monitor lights indicated a massive viewing, which could not be accounted for solely by the importance of the contest.

Of course. Tsetse was a lovely young woman. That would account for a significant enhancement of the number of view ers. She would be bending over to scramble up tricky slants, and perhaps taking spread-legged tumbles. That sort of thing was always big with the serfs. They would be rooting for her, to win or tumble or both, but their reactions did not matter, because they would not be audible here.
 
They started. Tsetse ran to the mountain and clambered nimbly enough up the first channel that offered. Troubot went instead to the bomb dispensary and carefully set a dozen into his hopper. This might raise his center of gravity and make his climb more difficult, but the bombs should be more of an asset than a liability.

Tsetse’s channel faded out, leaving her on a flat facet whose tilt was more to the vertical. She climbed this carefully, her toes just beginning to skid. She was about four meters up.
 
Troubot waited below, watching carefully, analyzing the slope she navigated; it did not matter who tested it, for this pur pose.

Then, just as she was about to reach the top of the facet so that she could step onto a more promising new channel above, Troubot flexed a metal arm and lofted a water bomb. His aim was good, of course; the bomb landed just above her, and the water coursed down across her feet. Friction diminished abruptly. She screamed as she lost her footing and slid down to the base of the mountain, in exactly the fashion the audi ence had hoped for.

Troubot did not wait to watch; he was not a living human male and would have had no gratification from the sight. He had merely taken the opportunity to test the efficacy of the 3 water so that he could estimate the coefficient of friction be fore and after. He believed she was on the wrong path, but wasn’t sure, so this would set her back while he tried an alternate route himself.

He found a facet that started steep, but curved to diminish the angle above. He started up this one, his wheels barely holding at the base. Yes, this seemed more promising; above the facet was a channel that curved upward around the moun tain. He rolled up this.

Splat! A water bomb struck his body. It burst, and the water cascaded down around his wheels. Traction was gone; he slipped helplessly, and in a moment was at the bottom.
 
The mountain had a soft curtain or buffer at the base, to absorb the shock of landings, so that players would not be hurt by their involuntary slides. But he had lost his progress.
 
Tsetse had retaliated.

Troubot realized that neither of them would be able to make progress if things continued like this; one could always re main at the base and bring down the other. But they were hardly likely to cooperate. So he rolled around the mountain, looking for a third route of ascent; he would have to let the woman try her own at the same time. If she got ahead of him, near the top, he would throw another bomb and stop her, while she would be unable to carry bombs aloft and still use her hands effectively for climbing.

She did not follow; evidently she was satisfied to return to her first path and follow it farther up, while he tried his new one. He was certainly ready for that, because he believed the odds were against either of the others being the right one.
 
He found a new route, and moved up it. This was the best one yet; it slanted slightly to the side, but took him two thirds of the way up toward the peak. If it went all the way—

It did not, exactly. It abruptly became vertical, and he could not ascend farther. Would he have to go all the way back down, while Tsetse continued on up? No, he saw a gentle ledge to the right that sloped toward her original route. He maneuvered very carefully, and managed to get fairly on it.
 
He rounded the curve of the mountain—and there was Tsetse coming up toward him.

He picked up a bomb from his hopper, but hesitated. If they met on this path, there was evidently no future in it for either of them. What was the point in washing her off it?
 
Better to leave her here, where she could go nowhere.
 
But she seemed to have a similar notion. She clambered to the side, and down the mountain. Her feet skidded, but it didn’t matter; she was going down anyway. Before he could do it himself, she was down and around, going for the first path he had tried.