Steppe

  "I shall not betray you," Alp said, not looking at the swordlight. "That is inherent in the oath of fealty I made you."

  "But that was before I exchanged your weapon. I was unable then to verify—"

  "I do not lie at the behest of a weapon!" Alp said angrily. "I lie only when dealing with enemies, as is proper."

  Uga shook his head, smiling. "That Uigur code of honor—how I admire it! But don't depend on it among Galactics. They are not made of the same stuff as you." He paused reflectively. "But all this is mere diversion. What is on your mind?"

  "I must do well in the Game. Well enough to be able to enter another part when this one ends. And another after that, until—"

  "Until the Game ends and you can enter another?" Uga frowned. "This is perilous. Your identity would be subject to thorough scrutiny at Game's end, and you would not be allowed to continue to the next. If you really want to survive beyond Steppe, your better bet is to purchase a Galactic pardon, so that you cannot be sent back."

  "A pardon? For what?"

  "For your origin. For entering our framework illegally. Since it was not entirely by your own choice, you should have some legal basis for your plea. But with enough money you can ensure success. Our governing council is forthright about such things."

  "Graft?"

  "Naturally not!" Uga said with another smile. "Merely a monetary facilitation. We are civilized!"

  "How much?"

  "Much, I'm afraid. Perhaps half a million Galactic points."

  "I would have to be Attila!" Alp exclaimed, appalled.

  "Perhaps you can be. With foreknowledge—of course Attila is past, but there must be other conquerors coming." He looked at Alp shrewdly. "Surely you have something in mind."

  "I can not foresee events beyond my own time," Alp said. "But I think I might learn these—if I could leave the Game for a while, undetected."

  "Leave the Game? Without a stake for re-entry?"

  " I leave. The part remains. When I return, with new information—"

  Uga was thoughtful. "You are an aggressive thinker—a man of my stripe, I flatter myself. You wish to maintain your part, so there is no record of your absence and the mundane police will not be alerted."

  "I also wish to play this part out to the end, for it seems to have good potential—especially if I achieve the knowledge I need."

  "How do you plan to sneak out of the Game? The Machine is a regular mother hen; it keeps close watch."

  "I think it would be better if you did not know. My attempt may fail, and if you are implicated—"

  "I am already implicated! The police would have everything from your head, believe me! Even if you died before capture, they would analyze the chemistry of your brain and read off pertinent memories on a computer printout. Besides which: how can I help if I do not know?"

  "I require no help. Just an understanding of my motive, and patience."

  Uga nodded. "Spoken like a true—oh, never mind that! You have sworn service to me within the environs of the Game, and you have no proper existence outside it. So your profit is my profit, until my part terminates naturally. If you should come anywhere close to achieving an Attila, my association with you should reward me greatly. Apart from the fact that I do have a certain moral responsibility for your welfare, so long as you are my man. Suppose I send you on an isolated mission of indeterminate length, to another region of space, perhaps bearing a report to the Khagan—"

  Alp shook his head negatively.

  "To some foreign court, then. You could visit the fabulous Byzantine—"

  Alp shook his head again.

  "No," Uga decided. "I need you nearer to me. A mission to another section of this planet, which happens to be your own Earth, one of the springboards of humanity. Unsurprising, considering that it was a timesnatch that brought you here, not a spacesnatch! A secret mission—no company."

  "I may be gone two Days—or forever," Alp warned.

  "Two years—or indeterminate," Uga said, unconsciously modifying the statement. "I wonder—purely hypothetically—how a man without identity or economic resources or even any lasting knowledge of Galactic society might succeed in obtaining information made available to no other person—even those who have made it their avocation to outsmart the Game Machine? There would seem to be prohibitive obstacles."

  Alp realized that he would have to trust Uga a little further. The man was not questioning his motive or his integrity, but his ability—and had accurately identified the weakest aspect of his scheme. "He might locate the demons—the men who brought him to this universe—and use their time machine to fetch a document from more recent history—before the Games were instituted. Such a document could reveal the historical future."

  "Clever, very clever," Uga said appreciatively. "But not clever enough. I might tick off several excellent reasons why this would not work."

  Alp stared at him gravely. "What reasons?"

  "First, it might take many days or weeks to locate such people, assuming they remain on the planet. And longer to convince them. And yet longer to arrange financing for such a mission into the past. Time snatches are costly under the best conditions, and subject to many limitations both legal and paradoxical, and payment is required in advance. Even prominent archaeological ventures have difficulty raising the fees. I fear the Game would be over before the information was obtained."

  Alp had been primarily concerned with the first problem: escaping the Game secretly. He had planned to work out the other stages of his project extemporaneously. Now he saw that forthright Uigur scheming had no place in this complex galaxy.

  "Still, there might be a way to avoid that hurdle," Uga continued after a pause. "The four men do not really need to be located. They expended their resources—mostly on bribes for key officials, I suspect—and are out of the Game. They intended you no favor, and you owe them nothing, any more than does a white rat who escapes the scalpel. All that is really required is the time machine—and all that is ultimately required for this is sufficient Galactic assets. As it happens, I have sufficient."

  "Then you hardly need success in the Game," Alp pointed out.

  "You don't comprehend the motivations of affluence," Uga said. "I do need that success—as much in my way as you do in your way! The man who has wealth without success is not complete. I am a very capable technician with useful connections in the field, but not at all a hero. Only the Game offers that notoriety I crave. And you, perhaps, offer the means to it."

  So Uga wanted to be cut in—and was making a fair offer. "You mentioned more than one objection to the plan."

  "The document would be bound by the normal limitations of paradox," Uga said. "It would have to be completely lost to history, so that its absence would make no conceivable difference, even to some later archaeologist who might excavate the grounds and discover it. In short, one that was destroyed soon after loss. Such a document would be extremely difficult to locate, without special knowledge—" he paused. "But you have special knowledge, don't you! And since it should be feasible to snatch the document, photograph it, and return it within seconds, there would be no potential interference historically and it could remain for the archaeologists..." He trailed off, musing it out. "Still, the computers are all keyed to alert the Game Machine the moment anyone attempts researches of this nature, and the Game Machine is an extremely sharp artifact. So unless you know precisely where and when to look—"

  "I don't know those things," Alp admitted. "But I am certain of this: the document we need will be written in Uigur script. Uigurs are the only educated nomads extant, and there are no likely prospects to succeed our place.

  Other powers may come and go—but they will employ Uigur scholars, rather than training their own. And I am literate in Uigur."

  "You're right!" Uga exclaimed. "The Game Machine would keep track of all translations into Galactic, and of all serious scholars of Steppe history and language. But you are not a part of our society; there is no record o
f your capabilities. The Machine can hardly have allowed for a literate Uigur national! No library research, no translation...

  if we could locate even one native paper, just enough to suggest the politics of the future..."

  "What are your other objections?" Alp asked.

  "I don't see how you plan to escape from the Game. Or to return to it, undetected. The Machine keeps most careful track, and all players are numbered."

  "We need dead men. Two or more. The Game patrol will locate them and pick them up and identify them and pass them down into the regular world. But if a substitution is made just after identification—"

  "Ah! Riding the dead! That could work—if only because nobody ever tries to sneak out of the Game, and so the Machine won't be alert for that. But there are still complications. What happens to those dead men when they wake and find themselves still in the Game? The paralysis lasts only a few hours. And what about the hard part: getting back?"

  "Choose men you can trust to keep silent. Perhaps the same who will fill our Games-roles during our absence.

  The Machine will not check them while they live. When the time comes to re-enter, pay the fees and enter as new characters—minor parts. Your own recruiting net will bring us in. Then change places with the two listed dead—"

  "And they will be as well off as they ever were, in new parts!" Uga cried. "While there is no record of our temporary absence! Beautiful! By the time the error in their identities is discovered, twenty Years may have passed, and it will be impossible to unravel. They themselves won't know the complete story. Pei-li will have to know, so he can cover for us in the Game; that's all."

  Alp didn't like cutting another person in but saw no help for it. Someone did have to cover. "But we shall have to find a way to remove our own identity tattoos," he said. "At least temporarily. Otherwise the Machine will see—"

  "Skin graft. Elementary."

  Alp smiled. "You say you are no hero, yet there is surely Uigur blood in you! Now you are answering the objections!"

  "I daresay there is Uigur blood in every man of the galaxy, technically! There was a great deal of interbreeding once massive interplanetary colonization began, with the multilight drive. I know I have Chinese ancestry—and there was Steppe blood in that, certainly! And after observing the similarity with which our minds work..."

  "Perhaps we will both be Khagans," Alp said.

  "But let us never war against each other!"

  Alp smiled agreement. But he knew that whatever parts they took in future, the Game would be followed.

  There could be no lasting personal loyalties...

  Part Two — MONGOL

  Chapter 12

  REVELATIONS

  The document was almost illegible, hardly more than a charred fragment. The photograph reproduced every smudge, discoloration and tear with marvelous fidelity, but still the chore was difficult.

  "It is Uigur script," Alp said. "But not the same as the style I know... more evolved, I think. And so many passages blotted out..."

  "But you can read it!" Uga cried eagerly. "There must be some hint—"

  Alp read, painfully: "...taken from the manuscript of the five Uigur envoys... followed camel tracks across the desert for three days... race of ox-footed men..." He looked up sharply. "I recognize this! My grandfather was in the retinue of the exploration party that went north and west to gain information about the territories surrounding the empire. They came to a land of summer snows where men hunted on snow-shoes—but it was hard to make this plain to the folks back home who hadn't seen such footwear, so they described it as... what a foulup!"

  "Not a foulup!" Uga said. "Mythology in the making! This document must date from after the Uigur time, so that the author misread the comparison and took it literally. Maybe that's how all myths begin! But if this is a page of mythology—"

  Then their effort had been for nothing. Rather than admit that, Alp went back to the reading. "...a tribe of great shaggy dogs with human wives, descended from the union of a princess with a dog come from heaven. The women gave birth to human females and canine males..."

  "This is potent stuff!" Uga said. "Did your grandfather explain that one?"

  "He said the men were dark brown and of mongrel visage, covered with hair," Alp said. "The women were catlike in shape and doglike in manners. Those people hunted with dog packs and had a canine totem; they had a legend that their first dog was hatched from the egg of an aged vulture."

  "Amazing!" Uga said. "Mythology feeding on mythology! But still, if there is no actual history—"

  Alp looked ahead. "Here is the compiler: This summary of Khitan folklore was prepared the summer of the Year of the Dragon on order of Jenghiz Qan, Lord of the Sons of Light among the Mongols and Master of the World, by Tata-tunga the Uigur."

  "When would that be?" Uga asked. "What year?"

  "The cycle of animals goes twelve years," Alp said. "Surely the Khagan can't be a Mongol!" He had a longstanding contempt for all the tribes of the Mongols.

  "We must go where history leads," Uga said more philosophically. "Who are the Khitans? They must have power too, if their folklore is being recorded."

  "The Khitans? A minor tribe of the Mongol family."

  "I think we have the information we need!" Uga said. "The Khitans can't be minor for much longer! This Jenghiz Qan who rules them—even if the title is exaggerated, it points the direction of history. We have to get Khitan parts, and watch for the birth of a baby named Jenghiz—and keep an eye out for the Uigur scholar Tata-tunga too, for he will lead us to Jenghiz! You and I and Pei-li—three chances to land what may be a really major part!"

  Alp nodded regretfully. "We must seek the Mongol."

  In 840 the savage Turk Kirghiz threw off Uigur's control and invaded his territory. Uigur was chopped into dwarf-size, and he fled south, his glory gone. In 847 he lost his new head in battle, again.

  "Where is the Khagan?" the others asked as Alp and his battered party returned.

  "Khagan Uga is dead," Alp said grimly. "We must retreat again." In the future the literate, educated dwarf Uigur would have to be content to serve other giants by handling their written work. His days of empire were done.

  But the new Khagan, distrusting Alp's philosophy and his affiliation to Uga, had him assassinated shortly thereafter. Alp did not even know what killed him. One moment he was leading a patrol near the shrinking border; the next there was a fierce pain in his back... and then he was reviving in a Galactic chamber, feeling the prickle of stun-recovery all over.

  "Your Dramatic Balance for the role stands at 610 Points," the voice of the Machine said. "From this is subtracted 100 Points advance against prior admission fee. Positive balance of 510 Points."

  Alp was quick to reorient. It had only been seventeen days, objectively, since he left the entry booth. Even in Game terms, he had not survived very far beyond his own historical time. But because his help had enabled Uga to become Khagan after the Kirghiz invasion, Alp had made a decent score. "That means I can take another part!" he exclaimed.

  "You have five days grace period in which to make selection without leaving the Game. Entry fee is payable before selection and is not refundable."

  Alp understood that much. After five days he would be booted out into the galaxy—where the police waited.

  Certainly he wasn't going to change his mind after paying the new fee! But it would be smart to use those free days to rest and reorient, so as to enter the new part in a suitable frame of mind. Seventeen days—yet it seemed like so much longer!

  "Your Audience Quotient for the prior part is now available," the Machine announced.

  "Let's have it, then," Alp said, not knowing what the term meant, but eager for relevant information.

  "Average Daily Spread: 574-92. Peak Spread: 1,029-395. Overall graph—"

  "Wait!" Alp cried. "I don't understand that! What do the figures mean?"

  "The figures mean that your performance was successful."


  "I mean what do they stand for? This 'Daily Spread'—where does it spread from, where does it go? I think I need the beginner's indoctrination."

  The Game Machine obliged: "The Game is both a participant and a spectator sport, aside from its basic purpose: the instruction of history in a nonliterate society. The ratio of spectators to participants is approximately 1,000 to one. However, at any given moment only two or three students are watching any given player, on the average, because of the time required by other Galactic pursuits. In the course of a typical day approximately one hundred viewers will survey that part, however briefly. Accordingly, the standard spread comprises the survey figure together with the steady viewing figure: 100-2.5. For popular parts this rises—"

  "Wait!" Alp cried again. "Do you mean people have been watching me?"

  "Correct."

  "They can tune in on me—the way I call another player on the screen? Only I can't see them?"

  "Correct."

  "Every moment of the whole part—two-and-a-half people were watching me, listening to me?"

  "Incorrect. That is the standard spread. Your personal figures differ, as shown by your Audience Quotient."

  Alp pondered this. He had had no idea he was being watched! Other players must have known the system, however, and been restrained by it. Perhaps his ignorance had even contributed to his success.

  No, that wasn't right. Uga and Pei-li would never have gone along with the search for the document... "If the Galactics know about this, why—?"

  "They do not know when participating. That aspect is blocked from their awareness for the duration of each part. This is to prevent players from being unduly influenced by the knowledge and playing incorrectly."

  That made sense. Uga had been as ignorant as Alp, despite his seeming knowledge. "Would you give me my own figures again, please? With a running explanation, even if I am going to forget it all the moment I enter a new part!"