Steppe

by Piers Anthony

  But he was a special case; most players were Galactics and so not bound by true Uigur codes. They would try to get ahead by cheating.

  Then he saw a possible solution. In life, death was final. In the Game, it was not. A player could assume a new part—and no doubt an old part could be reactivated by a new player. If Uga died here, a new Galactic would be sent in to fill his place, and Game-history would continue with only a momentary hiatus. Who else would know the difference? The part would terminate when history decreed; the player remained mortal. Despite his overall immortality!

  They had been taking ridiculous chances! How many other players had thought they were untouchable—only to wash out early, while replacement players reaped the fruits of their labors? The Game Machine didn't care about people; its concern was the proper re-enactment of history.

  Uga walked rapidly from room to room of the great palace searching for his princess, while the guards followed helplessly. Less helpless than they knew, perhaps! But this brought up another problem. What would happen if they actually found the princess? Success of this mission was not fated, either!

  Obviously they would not find her. The Emperor would not have left a royal daughter here while he departed.

  So this was futile, if Uga would only recognize that.

  Uga shoved aside the curtain of an upstairs chamber. A girl screamed. Alp felt a shock of alarm before reminding himself that there would be a thousand servants and slaves here for every royal figure.

  She was a child about nine years old—but a black-haired regal beauty. "Who are you?" Uga demanded, striding into the room.

  Though terrified, she put up some show of hauteur. "I am the Princess Kokachin, and if you don't get out of here—"

  "Take her," Uga said to Alp.

  "...my father the Emperor will have you—"

  Alp moved to sheathe his sword—but had no sheath. For the moment this minor problem upset him more than the major one: they couldn't take this princess!

  "...boiled in oil," she finished defiantly.

  Uga took the blade from his hand. "I've passed up some of the fun; now it's my turn to fight!" he said. "And if what you predict is true, I couldn't get her out of here anyway—but maybe you can!"

  For Alp had a nonhistorical part... maybe it would work, after all! Uga wasn't going to take the girl to the Khagan; he just wanted to punish the Emperor. Would the Machine allow that variation?

  Chapter 9

  KOKA

  Meanwhile, the immediate problem. Alp knew the little princess would not come willingly. She had meant her threat literally. But at least this represented a fair test of Game policy and might offer insights that would assist his private effort. He grasped the girl by the arm and leg and heaved her over his shoulder.

  He expected her to kick and claw and bite, but she didn't. Apparently it was beneath the dignity of a princess to fight, even a child-princess. Dire threats would have to do! Or perhaps she was now terrified into immobility—

  though she didn't seem afraid. But she really had little to fear; the palace guard would surely rescue her long before the Uigurs reached their horses.

  Now it was Uga and Pei-li who wielded the swords on either side of Alp. If they wanted to ditch him, now was their chance. He was almost helpless, for even the nonresisting burden of the young girl was too heavy a load to permit effective combat—even if he had his sword. And it was death to any common man to touch a Chinese princess; that was a policy of centuries.

  But the guards, strangely, remained cowed. They followed closely but did not attack again. Why weren't they fighting and dying for the princess?

  "I think you're right," Uga said to Alp as they moved out of the palace. "The mission is phony. We can't be killed—but we also can't steal a princess."

  Alp looked at him, perplexed. "We seem to be doing it!"

  "She's a double, obviously. Worthless."

  Then Alp's captive began to struggle. He needed no further proof of the accuracy of Uga's suspicion; the decoy could expect no mercy from the raiders when exposed! But Alp hung on to her, determined not to risk the counter-ruse: princess impersonating a decoy, and thus getting away.

  "I have resources to re-enter the Game even if I take a loss in this role, as you know," Uga said. "It was worth the risk to see whether your foreknowledge was accurate. I believe it is; we should otherwise all have been killed in that fracas. The princess-ruse is the Machine's way of keeping the script straight; we can't be killed here."

  Alp decided not to voice his new suspicions about the risk to players as opposed to roles. It was only a notion, and perhaps an erroneous one. They had survived an impossible situation; that could not be coincidence!

  "But even with foreknowledge, you can't avoid your fated termination," Pei-li said. "What can this gain you?"

  "What can it gain any man to play the Game?" Uga asked in return, rhetorically. Galactics played it because of the thrill of adventure without actual danger, the experience of living in times not their own and dying without death. Every person who wanted to take the stage could do so, this way, living his part. "Little is truly fixed in an individual player's role, for only the high points of his historical prototype are known. I must live and die in the framework set for me—but I can achieve a greater or lesser status, depending on how well I manage my affairs. And I can manage better if I know the limits set."

  Which was about as clear a resolution of the conflict between individual initiative and the mandate of history as Alp could have asked for. He still wasn't clear on the method of scoring the Game, except that the better a player's position at the time of his elimination, the higher his score. Alp had to earn enough to both pay off his debt to the Machine and buy a new part so that he could stay in the Game indefinitely.

  They reached their ships and pushed through the guards ringing them. Still no one tried to attack. Because the Emperor wanted the Uigurs to think they were getting away with the abduction? This bad acting could hardly fool smart nomads! Or was it because the Emperor wanted a good solid pretext to sever his alliance with the Khagan? No

  —this had been arranged with the Khagan; the pretext was merely to eliminate Uga. Perhaps it had proved to be too expensive in manpower to do the job in the palace, so they were holding back while they set up a more economical system.

  It was a play within a play, really! All they could do now was see it through. Uga mounted his horse, and Pei-li and Alp went to theirs. Uga checked with his riders by screen and gave the order to take off.

  And the Chinese let them go.

  The spare horses, on slave-circuit to the ones being used, failed to rise. Nothing could be done while in flight; their remounts were lost.

  Alp didn't like it. The T'ang troops were not that cowardly nor the Emperor that stupid. It would have been far easier to wipe out the small Uigur party outside the palace by filling them with arrows from ambush. It wouldn't matter if the pretend-princess died too; they could have spread the word about the attempted abduction and how it was aborted. This had the aspect of a more devious trap.

  "Let's get home in a hurry!" Uga said to all his men on the screen. "Our remounts slipped the leash, so we'll have to economize. Fastest route is through the fringe of that dust-nebula we passed on the way in." For a moment Alp's map-screen lighted, the nebula centered. It was, of course, impossible to look directly at an object that far away; all they would see would be its appearance of several years ago, because of the time light took to carry the image. "It's worth the small risk of collision with particles," Uga continued. "Follow me!"

  Had the man lost all nomad caution? The T'ang troops could intercept a direct route anywhere, at their own convenience, and massacre the party with minimum commotion.

  No—that had not happened historically, for the parts of Uga and Pei-li continued for several more years.

  Neither the original nor the Game Uga were fools. The Uigur party had to escape.

  Maybe the T'ang Emperor had set some
sort of trap calculated to catch the nomads in the seeming abduction of a royal daughter, resulting in a seemingly brilliant tactical victory over the fierce Uigur warriors. That would be good for many Game-points, surely! While Uga hoped to outsmart the Chinese by seeming to fall into that trap—

  and then escaping dramatically. Points there, too. Now it all made sense.

  In this technologically magic universe, words could be overheard from far away—particularly those transmitted by screen. Therefore the really important words were never spoken on the screen; real business was done in person.

  Alp had gone along with the Game conventions, but only now was the larger rationale behind those conventions coming clear.

  The Chinese ambush should be just beyond that dusty nebula, not far outside the congested galaxy center. It was growing larger in the screen-replica. The T'ang horses would be hidden by it even if there were no delay in viewing it, for the dust was thicker than it looked. Right now those troops would be moving into place under that cover, guided by Uga's careless mention of the nomad's route home. All very neat and clean—and if anything went wrong the Emperor would express complete ignorance of the matter, saving his face.

  As the complex politics of this simple trip developed, Alp discovered that he rather liked them. This was the kind of machination he understood, and he was ready to challenge the ingenuity of fat T'ang just as he would have liked to do with fat Han or fat Ch'in. All Chinese giants were very much alike, and all were legitimate prey for nomads.

  Now he considered the princess. She was jammed into his horse, slowing it though her mass was not great. He would be at a disadvantage in combat, and his horse would give out prematurely—and she wasn't even genuine!

  What should he do with her?

  Now that he had time to study her, he observed that Kokachin was a very pretty girl despite her youth. Her nose was tiny, her eyes bright, and she had delicate features. She was not afraid of him and he liked that.

  "You're awful strong," she said. "Gee, this is exciting!"

  Childish prattle! But he liked her looks and her spirit, for she could have passed for a true Steppe girl. Most Galactics were too large and flabby even to be mistaken for Uigurs, in spite of the skillful makeup of the Machine; she fit the part well.

  "I suppose you know there will be danger," he said. "We'll have to evade or fight off a T'ang ambush, and many men will die."

  "Sure," she agreed. "If it's a significant engagement, it'll be worth several points to me, and maybe I'll be able to afford a better part next time. Someday I'd like to be a real princess!"

  The ambush loomed, for they were accelerating toward it as if unaware. But she had touched on a matter Alp's new memory did not cover clearly: the system of point-scoring in the Game. "How would that work?" he asked.

  "You know. The influence weight factor. If I affect you, and you're important in history, I get a percentage of your total even if I'm not important myself. Maybe I can fall in love with you and save you from execution or something and you'll be the next barbarian Khagan and be worth a hundred thousand points and so I'll get maybe ten thousand and be able to buy into a real empress part next time!"

  So that was the way it worked! Points for influence! "I don't think I'm going to be a Khagan, but you can still fall in love with me," Alp said.

  "Gee— can I?"

  "If that's what you really want." It might be cruel to play her along, but he wanted to be sure she didn't get balky about giving out this vital information. She did not desire success half as much as he did! "How many points would you get if I were only a chief?"

  "Well, that depends," she said seriously, not seeming to find it strange that he had to ask. That was the beauty of childish naiveté! "If you were chief for a long time, and you married me as first wife, I'd get quite a few points because I'd be pretty important to you." She paused. "Or do you already have several wives?"

  This child had forthright ambitions! "Only one—and she was killed." Fifteen centuries ago—and still it hurt.

  How much better it would have been had he lived long enough to exterminate more Kirghiz!

  "Oh, I'm glad!" Koka exclaimed. "Oops! I mean that's too bad... uh..."

  "Let's figure it out together," Alp said gruffly. "How many points do you think I could be worth, and how many would that make you worth, and how good a part could that buy you?"

  "That's easy! You get one point for every Day you survive in your part in the Game, just as I do. So let's assume we both last twenty years—that's a base of twenty points. That's reasonable, isn't it?"

  "Certainly!" he agreed, and she smiled. Yes, there was nomad blood there.

  "Then you get a bonus point for every ten men you have under you each year. How many do you have?"

  Oh-oh. "I used to have three hundred—but then I suffered reverses," Alp said. He didn't explain that the reverses had been the overrunning of the Uigur empire by the Kirghiz, back in real history before he had come to the Game. "Now I serve Uga and don't really command men myself. That might improve; depends on the next few battles."

  "Oh," she said. "Well, let's say you win, and get back all your men—that's thirty points a year. And then if you live twenty years, that's six hundred. Plus your own personal points, and any you get for influencing history. It might amount to a thousand points, and if I were your first wife—you wouldn't raise any other wives above me, would you?"

  "Of course not," Alp said reassuringly.

  "Then I'd get maybe two hundred, plus my own points. About two hundred and fifty all told. The entrance fee for a genuine princess is one thousand. So if I had several good parts like that, I could work my way up in a century or so."

  "Still, that's a lot of points," Alp said. "You might not marry a chief every time, you know."

  "I know. But it's fun hoping!"

  "Just how successful can a single part get, if everything goes well?"

  "Well, I think Attila the Hun amassed half a million points. And that wasn't even in Steppe, but way off near the European fringe where they have all those squabbling principalities! So a real leader should..."

  Attila the Hun! Alp knew that name only deviously, through his scholarly researches before the fall of the Uigurs. The man must have fared better than the homefolk knew! Yet the Game history showed how the giant Hun had been decimated and his power destroyed by fat Han and the traitor Sien-pi. Had Western Hun pulled himself together for another major effort, or did Game history diverge entirely from real history, thanks to the effort of some ambitious player? He would have to review the rest of the cartoon presentation and find out!

  Meanwhile, he had gained the information he craved. He set himself a target: one thousand points to be earned in this part. Then he would be able to re-enter the Game in style and amass more next time, continuing until—

  Until the Game ended and he had to return to the galaxy? To be deported into the chasm?

  "First we'll have to make it through this battle," Alp said grimly.

  "After we win that will you marry me?"

  Alp was flattered by her single-mindedness. "You're young, yet."

  "But I'll grow!" she cried. "Oh, please, I'll never get abducted again! This is my only chance to break out of the palace-menial circuit! I could be a real good wife to you, and I'd never complain no matter how much your barbarian ger stunk—"

  "My ger does not stink!" Alp snapped. "And I'm no barbarian! I'm a literate Uigur chieftain."

  "Gee, even the Emperor can't read!" she said, awed.

  Alp saw that he had made a mistake. First, he was not literate in Galactic; second, he thought it best not to let others know about his ability to read historical Uigur. There might come a time when he had use for that talent. "All right," he said to distract her. "If we live through this battle and make it back to the Steppe, I'll have you betrothed to me, for marriage when you're of age. How does that sound?"

  "Great!" she exclaimed.

  Actually it was no promise at all,
for many early betrothals came to nothing, and much could happen in the four or five years it would take her to mature. But she had helped him more than she knew, and he would not be averse to marrying an attractive girl like her—if that was the way it worked out.

  Then he remembered that they were speaking of only four or five days, Game-time. History was accelerated, but surely not human beings! She would still be a child...

  But now the most pressing problem was sheer survival. In minutes they reached the first fringe of the dusty nebula. It was a large one, with arms of opacity extending out in several directions, separated from each other by a hundred light years or more. Here Uga's horse slowed—and as they touched the diffuse dust, Pei-li's horse broke away from the party along with five other riders. They disappeared into the dark body of the nebula.

  Uga, Alp and the ten remaining troops passed straight on through, traveling in a looser pack so that the overall diameter of the nomad posse was about the same.

  They continued at decreasing velocity toward the main mass of the nebula. Alp was grateful for this, for the bank of instruments beside the controls told him his horse was tiring. The extra weight of the girl Kokachin...

  "All present?" Uga inquired on the screen.

  Alp recognized his cue. "All present," he replied. His instruments had picked up Pei-li's departure—but dust and distance would have concealed it from the Chinese.

  "No sign of pursuit?"

  Another demand for an affirmative response. "None."

  "In what condition is your horse?"

  For that the applicable directive was: answer as pleased him, always staying wide of the truth. Uga had anticipated, with true Uigur cunning, just such a maneuver as this. "Plenty of pep—but I've dismantled my bow for cleaning, since we're in the clear."

  Uga chuckled. "Those Chinese have neither courage nor skill enough to bother us; you won't need your bow at all! We'll raid a T'ang outpost for new horses and maybe some recruits. Where's the captive princess?"