Steppe

by Piers Anthony

  She had had such exuberant notions, and perhaps she might have made good on them. She had already gotten him to go along with a proposition of marriage! Now she was out of the Game.

  Chapter 11

  TRUST

  Uga and Pei-li survived the battle; they had checked their own equipment and discovered the traitor spools. Eleven of the fifteen riders came through it also. Nomad strategy and sheer fighting ability had prevailed over T'ang deception. Comparison of notes brought the conclusion that there had been thirty T'ang horsemen, thirteen of which had been dispatched. Alp himself had accounted for three: Game-vengeance for the death of a Game-friend.

  "Not bad for a Uigur action," Uga muttered, "but not good. Better to have wiped out every one of them."

  They were, at any rate, now in the clear. The Emperor would have no chance to set up another ambush before they won free of his territory—and the Chinese troops would not be eager to fight again after sustaining such a reverse. They had thousands more available horsemen, but such loss of face hurt them severely.

  Alp was tired. He had not slept since arriving in the galaxy, and he had been hard-pressed before coming to the gorge. The partial stuns he had sustained weakened him also. But he could not relax yet.

  They raided a T'ang depot for fresh horses, and Alp left the pseudo-dead pseudo-princess at the planet for recovery by the Game Machine. He hoped she had the resources to make it back into the Game, even if her new part lacked promise. He had known her hardly an hour, objectively, and of course she had been only a child, but she had also been a lively person and he had liked her. Perhaps it was the probability that he would never see her again that made the abrupt separation so poignant. Perhaps it was her evident nomad traits. But he decided it must be her naïve ambition, so like his own though less desperate. He understood her motivation—as she might have understood his.

  Uga now divided his small fleet into three groups, each of which would post its own lookout while maintaining visual contact with its own members. That was an extremely tight formation, but since each group would be maintaining a random-variation course and staying off the communications screen it seemed safe enough. Near the Chinese capital such proximity of horses would have been suicidal, as one barrage of arrows could have knocked out all of them.

  Alp assigned his lookout, gave his horse its head—i.e., locked on to the group course—and turned to internal problems. He had to sleep—but he also had to view the remaining history of Steppe. He also had to divert his mind from the unmanly sadness that congested his chest since Koka's loss. He remembered how his wife had passed; that had been a different world, but not different enough.

  He turned on the cartoon history, stretched out in the ship, and set the sleep helmet over his head. Suddenly he was dreaming.

  Hsien-pi was now a full-fledged giant. He took over all the territory Northern Hun had had, and fired a few arrows at Alan for good measure. Alan just stayed where he was, avoiding trouble.

  Han had uplifted Hsien-pi, but the new steppe giant was of inferior character. Soon he was trading blows with his benefactor. Han beat him back—but Han was getting old. His strength declined as his corpulence increased; he grew ill, his head fell off, and three new heads tried to grow in its place. One head won out by Day 285, and the Chinese giant was called Chin.

  Alp turned his head in sleep, and the dream faded in a tumble of dwarves and beheadings and internecine conflict. After a time he turned back—and found himself in a struggle with a giant insect. No, it was only a giant, Juan-Juan, whose name in Chinese meant "unpleasantly wriggling insect," and he had taken it too literally. But there was no doubt this giant had power!

  Alp was Uigur, and now he recognized the other giant as Avar—and he was a Mongol! It galled Alp to be subservient to this inferior breed, but he had no choice. Avar controlled the old Hunnic empire. So Alp's attention flitted westward, seeking Western Hun and Attila.

  After Hun had lost his head around the beginning of the Christian era he disappeared into the western reaches for a year or so, recovering his strength. An Indo-European giant named Goth came down from the far northwest and occupied territory to the west, while Alan lived south, with several dwarves around. Beyond these, farther to the west was the huge civilized giant Rome, who had taken over all the territory once occupied by Greek and Egypt and Hittite and Philistine and others.

  Alp remembered the indignities he had suffered at the hands of old Han a Year before. Rome was another rich, fat, civilized nonsteppe giant encroaching on the prerogatives of the true nomads. Alp's own land was drying up and his cow was thirsty—but he couldn't move his Hun body west into the fertile lowlands because Rome selfishly barred the way. Well, this time Alp was in charge, and Hun would not suffer such indignity a second time!

  He moved west and beat Alan, who broke into two parts. One Alan-dwarf agreed to serve him; the other fled westward. Then Alp-hun attacked Goth, who fell into three parts, each a small giant: Ostro in the east, Visi in the west, and Gepida. Ostro-Goth and Gepida submitted to Alp, while Visi-Goth fled west along with Alan. Alp could have caught them, but it suited his purpose to let them go.

  Visi and Alan charged right into Rome's territory between 350 and 400—and lo! Rome had become too flabby and confused to stop them. After that, all the other small giants charged in, hacking chunks out of big Rome—and Rome himself fractured into two halves! In the process of fleeing from Hun, the fugitives had done Alp's work for him.

  Now it was time. Alp marched into Rome's territory himself. The half named East Rome couldn't stop him and had to hand over a big chunk of land. Then Alp moved on into West Rome's section, for he knew from the Chinese experience that no part of a civilized giant could be trusted not to make mischief eventually. Alp tore things up, battering Rome heavily, until Rome landed a lucky counterblow that made him pause. Ah well, and next Day Alp raided another section.

  But on the third day after that Alp's bold Attila-head fell off. He was blind—and in that moment of incapacity his subject-giants revolted and beat him up. "Oh no! Not again!" Alp cried in anguish, reliving the battering fat Han had given Hun so long ago. He retreated a couple of steps in order to grow a new head in peace—and two heads grew instead, and before he knew it he had split into two dwarves, Kutigur and Utrigur, who immediately started fighting each other. Avar, meanwhile, watched from the east, ready to move over and subdue them both once they had weakened each other sufficiently.

  Alp gave up in disgust. It was impossible to change the basic nature of giants! He returned his attention to his own, Uigur.

  "Throw the Mongol off!" Alp cried—and in Day 508 under his direction Uigur did just that, rebelling from Avar's dominion. But eight Days later Avar returned to cut off Uigur's head and make him vassal again. Five days later Uigur tried another revolt but didn't succeed. So in 545 he got clever and enlisted the help of his Turk cousin T'u-cheh. "Together," he whispered, "we Turks can finish the Mongol!" But T'u-cheh pusillanimously warned Avar, and Uigur was foiled again.

  After that T'u-cheh, whose name meant "strong," conspired with another giant against Avar, and beat Avar and drove him out, and took over his territory. Alp-Uigur, who had started all this, got nothing; in fact he now had to be vassal to the other Turk!

  Alp had a headache. This business of forming empires was fraught with pitfalls! But he kept trying—and after many further ups and downs Uigur succeeded in throwing off Turk dominance and prevailing over the other giants of Steppe. At last he had come into his own—in 744.

  Uigur became allied with T'ang of China. Uigur provided most of the military power and T'ang most of the civilization. But soon Uigur himself became civilized, literate, and altogether too nice for his own good. He took to painting pictures and playing music and writing books. He invented his own script. He got religion. He became the most educated giant Steppe had ever had.

  Alp woke refreshed. Now he understood the Game. The cartoon summary and his actual experience in life plus his
knowledge of the next several years gave him a useful advantage. But all too soon the Game would catch up!

  He had to have new information on the future! But how was he to obtain it?

  The Game Machine knew the full course of events. It could run the summary all the way to the end. If it were possible to outwit the Machine and get a copy of the full Game plan—then he would indeed know the future!

  That, actually, had been what the four original demons had been trying to do, in their way, when they fetched him here! Now he had some sympathy for their position. They had gambled ingeniously, stepping right out of the framework of the Game. Had they succeeded in fetching a man from a century in the Game-future, instead of a mere decade—and had he been more amenable to their management—they could have scored tremendously.

  Demons? They had been bold men, risking everything to get ahead. His kind. He could deal with them now—

  and perhaps he should. They were out of the Game, having lost all their resources in the time-fetching effort, so they should be eager for a chance to earn back some points.

  But players were not permitted to step blithely in and out of the Game. They entered formally by registering with the Machine and paying the entry fee, and they departed when their parts terminated. How had the four demons gotten below? Had they already washed out—or had they had active parts waiting for exploitation, the moment they returned with their information?

  Regardless, Alp had to maintain his present part, until he acquired enough points to buy in again. Even if he did reasonably well this time, he had little assurance that his next part would match that performance. He needed a good long-range insight, so as to be able to select superior parts and multiply his assets.

  The framework of the Game spanned the entire galaxy. So did the contemporary civilization. How were the two kept separate? On an individual planet it was simple: the Game was played on the sealed-off upper level, the Gameboard. But in space—what was to prevent a ship from crossing over, one way or the other? Could he ride his horse right into the other framework and back?

  No, his memory informed him. The Game pieces were marked, both animate and inanimate, keyed to the Game universe. And the galaxy used efficient thousand-passenger ships to cross space, not one-man horses. Attempted crossover would set off an instant alarm. Few if any sneaks succeeded.

  But Alp was not an ordinary player. He had a scheming Uigur mind. Now he had a notion how to do it.

  "You foresaw accurately," Uga said, back at their homecamp. "We failed—but survived—and now I do feel a certain antipathy for the decadent T'ang. I do not like traps—when they are laid against me."

  "I told you nothing that was not already plain to you," Alp said.

  Uga smiled. "No, you told me much. Had you been an agent of the Khagan's, you would have seen to it that I died in China. Instead you fought hard and well—very well!—on my behalf. I never saw such a demon in battle!"

  "Still not proof," Alp said. "I could not void the Game plan for your part any more than the Emperor could."

  "Yet you can participate with greater or lesser enthusiasm. I watched you, while I tempted you. I am satisfied.

  You have the true nomad spirit."

  True, necessarily. But how would this Galactic know? "In your position, I would not be satisfied," Alp said.

  "I have proffered you my trust. Why do you not accept it?"

  Alp had already wrestled with this problem and come to his necessary conclusion. To accept trust was to return it—and that added a dimension to the problem. The Uga of history he would not have trusted—but the Uga of the Game was of different stuff. "I will tell you my story. Trust me then, if you can."

  And he summarized his situation as honestly as he could. Uga listened at first with obvious reservation, then with intensifying interest.

  "...and so I came here, using my knowledge of these ten years to impress you," Alp concluded. "But very soon the Game will pass my time, and my usefulness will expire. I might have conspired with that girl Kokachin to extend it, but she—"

  "She only played a part," Uga reminded him.

  "Yes, of course." But still that something nagged at him. Pointless infatuation with a Galactic child who was out of the Game anyway.

  "I believe you," Uga said. "There are mysteries about you that only such origin explains. Such as your acceptance of my leadership despite your obviously superior qualities. You—"

  "Why should I not accept it?" Alp asked, puzzled. "All my life I have served inferior men, most notably the Khagan himself. In the framework of the Game, I must obey the Game-chiefs, even as I did historically. At such time as I am a full chief, I will expect the same service to me."

  "That's what I mean. You knew my men were out to ambush and enslave you, and you escaped that, yet you hold no rancor. A Galactic would not feel that way; he would scheme for revenge, as I shall scheme against the Emperor and against my own Khagan."

  "You acted as any Uigur would," Alp said. "You will conspire against the T'ang but not against your own, despite what you say in the heat of betrayal. I schemed to enter the service of a capable leader, but on my own terms. Why let new players go to waste?"

  "Thus you are a true Uigur, standing out amid the false ones. I could not fully trust a Galactic, sad as that commentary may be."

  Alp agreed privately; something had been lost in the centuries, or perhaps it was merely the inevitable decadence of civilization. "There may soon be a Galactic playing the part of Alp," Alp said. "He will die suddenly, though he won't know it. Would you trust him?"

  "Unlikely! And I think you'll be better off if you resist the morbid temptation to meet that player. You may not much mind my rendition of the historical Uga, but it could infuriate you to see yourself misplayed."

  "Yes. I shall stay away from him—and from his wife." Uga refrained diplomatically from commenting, and in a moment Alp changed the subject. "Now you know I am not a Galactic. Before, you did not know. Why, then, did you proffer your trust?"

  "Look at your sword," Uga said.

  Alp drew it out. This was the blade Uga had provided for him, not the one he had taken from the T'ang guard.

  There was still nothing unusual about it.

  "You would not be equipped to appreciate this," Uga said. "In your world, every weapon is unique, and you know it by the feel. Here they are mass produced, each identical to the other, and not made of metal at all. You would not necessarily know which one you carried."

  "I know you changed the one the Machine issued me," Alp said. "But yours seemed as good, so I made no issue."

  Uga laughed. "So it was Uigur writing on that handle! I am illiterate, as are most successful Galactics, but I saw those little scratches almost by accident and I wondered, Pei-li told me it was not Galactic writing. Either it was accidental, random abrasion—or you were literate in some unknown script. I remembered your finesse with that sword, and I pondered... but the whole thing seemed too far-fetched to entertain seriously. We have time travel, but it is prohibitively expensive unless the object fetched is returned to its origin soon—and you weren't."

  "Now you know why!" Alp said. "I speak and write Uigur; I cannot read Galactic."

  "That figures—now. Those helmets teach only what the common citizen needs to know. Incidentally, don't depend on that instant education too much; it fades more rapidly than real knowledge, and only lasts a week or so.

  You hang on to what you need by using it, like the language, but the rest passes."

  "But why did you exchange my sword?"

  "A routine precaution—the same kind you take when you mark your weapons. I had no special reason to trust you, especially when your fighting skill was so evident. Note the color of the light-edge as you hold up the blade."

  Alp noted. "Pure white, like fresh mare's milk. Pretty—though not as pretty as a true blade."

  "Now tell me a lie—and watch that light."

  "I enjoyed your personal concubine thrice while you slept,
" Alp said.

  The sword-beam flashed red as he spoke.

  "You never lied to me," Uga said. "The blade was your monitor."

  Alp looked at the sword, keeping his face neutral despite the fury he felt. Why hadn't he been alert for that?

  "Don't feel bad," Uga said benignly. "You could hardly anticipate every wrinkle of a technology fifteen centuries after your time!"

  But this was a wrinkle that had been current in the stories of magic Alp had known as a youth! He should have anticipated its reality in this universe of magic. "Is it infallible?" he asked. "Some men can lie with a straight face, so that no one knows what is in their minds."

  "Test it and see."

  "I enjoyed your concubine only once," Alp said. The light changed. "I didn't enjoy her—she is old and ugly."

  Still the light was red. "Like your wife." It flickered. "I enjoyed my concubine." This time the light went white. "She is husky and stupid." White. "A stupid woman makes the best wife." It flickered again.

  "Half truth," Uga said. "Stupid women make good nomad concubines but tend to bear stupid children. Conflict of interests there."

  "The child Kokachin was not stupid..." Alp said, and the sword was white.

  "So you see, your straight face cannot fool the monitor," Uga said. "It is based on principles you would not understand. It is keyed to your brain waves, not the muscles of your face and body. If you can tell right from wrong

  —if you know you speak falsely, it knows. If you lie without intent to harm, to spare someone's feelings—we call that 'white lying'—it shows pink. And if you intend to kill by treachery, it turns black."

  Alp put away the sword, noting how its light showed through small holes in the scabbard. Uga might not be a true Uigur, but he was admirably cunning! "Pink for a white lie," Alp muttered. "And white for a pink lie?"

  "Now I have revealed the secret of my power," Uga said. "How I can recruit strangers yet avoid betrayal, and how I know when the Khagan plots against me—if I have a chance to substitute the weapons of his envoys. Even the Game Machine does not know what I have done with these weapons—or if it does, it has not taken steps to prevent me. I am a laser-medic in life, and rather skilled... I charge you not to betray me, as I shall not betray you."