Robot Adept

by Piers Anthony

  It did. Bane’s return smacked into the net. He had countered for topspin, and sent the ball wrong.

  Now for the real gamble. Mach had not repeated shots since his experimentation early in the game; Bane should be expecting a different serve. Mach used the same one, spinning the paddle again. This time Bane, more cautious, did manage to return it—but his volley was unaggressive. Mach played it aggressively, gained the initiative, and forced the rally to its conclusion. He made the point, and won the game, 21-19.

  But he knew he would never catch Bane that way again. This ploy had been viable only at the end of the game, only for two points. If he ever tried that serve again, Bane would know what to do with it, and that, combined with error-free play, would suffice. Robots did learn from experience, and learned well.

  “Good game,” Mach said.

  Bane nodded. “Until tomorrow.”

  But tomorrow was freestyle. Mach would have the magic paddle. This had been the key game, setting up for the sure win tomorrow.

  Bane faded out, along with the far side of the table. Mach turned to Fleta, who seemed to materialize almost in his arms. “I took him on skill,” he said, well satisfied.

  “Don’t get cocky,” Translucent said. “He’s as good as you are, and you won’t take him again this way.”

  “I won’t need to,” Mach said.

  But the Adept did not look confident.

  Chapter 16

  Decision

  Bane shook his head. “He learned tricks he never knew before! I’m in a position to know. I could have finished the match by being smarter in the Chase, and now one more loss can finish it the other way. I know not we’er I have really been trying.”

  “You tried,” Agape said. “You were ahead, but then he used those peculiar serves.”

  “I know not who could have taught him those,” he said. “I played the game all my life, but ne’er could match my father, and knew of none other could. Stile would not have trained him, and—” Then a thought caught up. “The renegade animal heads! They played not with others, but there were stories of an elephant head who were marvelously dexterous with his trunk! That could be it!”

  “That, and the natural skill of your human body,” she agreed.

  “Aye, it be a good body,” he said with a certain resigned pride. “This machine body makes errors not, but also can handle complex surprises not. He caught me often enough with shots I could calculate not in time. He knew my limits, as he should. It were his body longer than mine.”

  “But you can adjust.”

  “Aye. He can catch me once or twice with a new shot, but thereafter I be attuned to the device, and it be useless. I will be stronger for the next game, and stronger still for the third. In only a month, he cannot have mastered enough new things to compensate for that.”

  She changed the subject. “Let’s go look at Nepe.” She meant their child, who did not yet exist. But there was daily progress in the construction of the robot body, to be like that of a human baby, and the development of the particular programming required to enable that body to interface harmoniously with a partial Moebite, while being closely patterned after that of his body. Agape herself was gaining mass, eating voraciously, preparing for the time of fission. If Bane won the contest, and the two of them had to separate, they would delay long enough to get Nepe started. That, at least, they intended to salvage from victory.

  Next day Bane was ready. This was freestyle, and he had prepared diligently. The key was in the paddle. Technology was able to produce a wide variety of sizes, substances, weights and surfaces, and he had tested them as thoroughly as he could. He now had a paddle that was virtually magical in it propensities. The touch of finger or thumb on the controls near the joining of blade and handle could change the hardness of the rubber (it wasn’t rubber, but tradition called it that) all the way from diamond to marshmallow, and the adhesion from glass to glue. The paddle could hold the ball so that it would not drop off, or be so slippery that the ball bounced away with its spin unaffected. It could completely damp out both the force and spin of an incoming ball, or put on devastating force and spin of its own. Because the nature of the surface was exactly what he specified it to be, without changing the appearance, the other player would have little notion what was coming. He could make an obvious gesture, applying phenomenal spin, but set the paddle on null so that none of that spin was imparted, and the other player would miss by compensating for nonexisting spin. Such paddles had been illegal for centuries for tournament play, but popular for trick play.

  Mach had never used one, preferring to hone his skill within tournament regulations. Adaptation to such a paddle could spoil a serious player for tournaments, because his reflexes were wrong. Only the mediocre players tried to shift back and forth between types; the top ones settled on legal variants and perfected their technique with these. Indeed, a top player could defeat any of the special-paddle players, because surface was only part of the nature of the game. Skill and training and consistency counted for more.

  That was one reason that Bane had not played his best in the first game: he had adapted to the specialized paddle for the freestyle, and so not been in perfect tune for the standard paddle. He had invoked a different program for the other, so that he did play well, but he could have played better had he put all of his energy into perfecting his technique with it. Instead he had settled for the level of skill Mach had developed, and put his energy into the special mode. He expected to win this second game, because he knew that neither Mach’s prior experience nor that of his own body prepared them for the type of play and deception this paddle offered. A good player with a conventional paddle could handle a mediocre one with a special paddle—but he was now a good player with a special paddle. That made it a new ball game.

  Indeed, he had practiced against some of the ranking players of Proton, in special matches. They had used their legal paddles, and regarded it as an intriguing challenge to meet the special one. A number of them were clearly superior to Mach, as he had played before, but the paddle added considerably to Bane’s effectiveness. He had taken them, in the early games, then lost again as they learned how to compensate, but all admitted that he was a more formidable player this way. They doubted that any player on the planet could take him in the first game, this way; the difference was too striking. It was hardly possible to learn in the course of a single game what he had spent a month mastering, and it was not easy to do in several games.

  So Bane was confident. Mach, attuned to the conventional mode of the first game, would find himself up against a totally different creature in the second. He would compensate—but hardly before he had lost the game.

  Yet as they stepped up to their ends of the composite image table, Mach seemed oddly confident. Had he devised a similar paddle, and practiced against it? That seemed unlikely, because the tricks he had learned with the conventional paddle should have taken most of his training time.

  They rallied, as before, and things seemed normal. Mach had a different paddle, but of course so did Bane. He did not try any special shots, preferring to save them for the game. Soon they were ready, and Mach caught the ball and hid his fists under the table.

  Bane guessed right, and was right; he had the serve. Now was time for the surprises.

  He started with a fierce crosscourt topspin, the rubber softened and rendered tacky so that it imparted far more spin to the ball than would ordinarily have been the case. Mach, judging by the prior surface, would fail to compensate sufficiently, and the ball would fly well beyond the end of the table.

  Mach returned it, and the ball did loop up, but the force was gone, and it plunked down in the center of the table. Obviously he had been caught by surprise, but had a lucky shot. Table tennis was a game of skill, but luck played its part, as it did in every game to some extent. That was part of the excitement: the invocation of chance.

  No problem. Bane smashed it down the center, an easy put-away shot. The first point was his.


  Except that the ball looped up giddily, and somehow managed to catch Bane’s side of the table again. Was the frame translation mechanism malfunctioning? No, the arc was true; Mach had just somehow managed to aim it right, obviously with no certainty on his part. Sometimes it happened.

  Bane made sure it would not happen again. He thumbed his paddle to maximum force, producing a surface that had all the thrusting power of a trampoline, and smashed the ball down with such velocity that Mach would have to retreat far back from the table to have any hope of returning it.

  But Mach remained up close—and the ball, crazily, came back, in another shaky but fair return. It seemed impossible, but there it was. How could it have happened?

  Bane, shaken by this freak series, tried a trick shot. He wound up as if for the hardest slam yet, then dinked the ball down just over the net with a heavy backspin that damped it almost to a standstill.

  Mach, though, was ready. The tip of his paddle caught the ball and nipped it to the side, forcing Bane to dive for the return—and then, of course, Mach slammed the setup to the other side, winning the point. Love-one.

  But Bane knew that freak shots could not be depended on. Mach had been extraordinarily lucky in his returns, then pounced on the opportunity that offered when Bane changed the pace. Had Mach been playing well back from the table, in anticipation of a slam, he would never have caught up to the dink shot.

  He served again, this time putting on backspin so heavy that though the ball started fast, it slowed dramatically and failed to clear the table for the second bounce on the far side. Bane returned it without even trying to counter the spin; as a result, the ball sailed up in an invitation for another smash.

  Bane of course accepted the invitation, and slammed it off Mach’s backhand corner. But Mach took it on his backhand without effort, and again it looped back.

  Bane slammed it off Mach’s forehand corner. Yet again Mach intercepted it in what should have been a return that careered wildly, but again the ball simply looped back to strike at the center of Bane’s table.

  This was crazy! Mach wasn’t even trying to play offensively; he was simply making fluke returns! What was he up to? No one could play that way for long without losing the point; human reflexes were not swift enough or good enough to handle slammed balls up close.

  This time Bane softened his rubber and sliced, so that the ball curved visibly in the air before striking the table. The sidespin did not have much effect on the bounce, but would be very strong against the opposing paddle. The shot was hard enough so that Mach would not have much time to analyze or compensate.

  But Mach didn’t try. He simply poked his paddle at the ball—and the ball looped back in another of those high, amateurish returns.

  This time Bane had been watching that paddle closely. The angle had not even been correct. By rights the ball should have flown off the table, a lost point. Yet it had flown fair, to the center of the table. It was like magic.

  Magic! Suddenly Bane caught on. Mach had gotten hold of a magic paddle! That possibility had never occurred to him. There had been no magic paddles in Phaze, because there was no point to them; why use magic to foul up a game of skill? But evidently someone had crafted one, perhaps simply for the challenge of it, and now Mach had it.

  Bane tried to slam the ball again, but his realization about the paddle distracted him, and he missed the table. Love-two.

  Obviously the paddle was enchanted so that any shot it made was fair. If no effort was made to guide it, the ball returned in neutral fashion: a high arc to the center of the table. If Mach made a more aggressive shot, then it went where he sent it—but wouldn’t miss if he sent it wrong. Thus he could try for the most difficult shots with the certainty of making them. Or not try at all, and still get the ball back. He could not miss.

  How was he, Bane, to win the game—when his opponent could not miss a shot? All his preparation with the special paddle had been nullified in a single stroke! Only in Phaze would magic work—but Mach was playing in Phaze. Since the validity of a shot was determined at the point of the ball’s contact with the paddle, it didn’t matter that there was no magic on Bane’s end of the table; the ball was correctly guided there.

  If they had set it up to exchange courts at the halfway point of each game—but in this special situation that wasn’t feasible. So Mach would have the magic throughout the game.

  Bane had thought he would win this game readily. Now, suddenly, he faced defeat and loss of the entire contest, because he had overlooked this possibility.

  He glanced at the audience. They were watching, in Proton and in Phaze, but would not speak to him in the midst of the game. What advice could anyone give him, anyway? It could not remove the enchantment on Mach’s paddle!

  He was behind by two points, a trifling amount, yet he felt like resigning, to spare himself the humiliation that was coming. Could he win even a single point?

  But battered pride kept him going. He would play his best regardless, so that everyone would know it. He would not give up just because the game had become hopeless.

  He tossed up the ball for the third serve, and tried for a horrendous slice.

  And missed the ball entirely. That was the danger in trying too hard; the angle was so sharp and the speed of the paddle so great that the tiniest mis judgment could become devastating.

  Love-three. When the server made his pass at the ball, that was the serve. He had missed his serve and forfeited the point. Some brave try that had been!

  Missed the ball entirely…

  That was not supposed to happen to a robot; it was an unforced error. But the body was governed by Bane’s mind, and he had overridden it to try his own extreme technique. By going beyond the body’s parameters, he had enabled it to err. Yesterday Mach had used trick shots that caused the computer brain to miscalculate; this time he had done it to himself. But that was of lesser significance.

  Suddenly he realized how he could give himself a fighting chance. This game was not yet over!

  He served again, making the paddle surface hard and fast, applying minimal spin, just enough to help control the ball. Spin made limited difference now, because the magic paddle nullified it; the balls Mach returned were spinless. But speed and placement counted, because Mach had to get the paddle to the ball. He now needed spin only to help control his shots.

  Mach returned it with that familiar loping shot that was the paddle’s default. Ready for this, Bane smashed it back. Mach’s second return was higher, a perfect setup.

  Bane decided to test the limit of the magic. He set his paddle for maximum hardness, and smashed the ball down as hard as his metal arm could do it. The ball flattened significantly against his paddle, then rebounded with such force that when it caught the edge of the table it broke, with half of it dropping down the side of the table while the other half dragged after.

  But Mach’s paddle was there, jabbing at it. And the tip of the paddle caught the crushed remnant and hooked it over the net so that it plopped in the center on Bane’s side.

  The point did not count; the broken ball had to be replaced. But another type of point had been made: the magic paddle could return anything at all, even a demolished ball. As long as it touched it.

  Bane served again, the same way. Mach returned the same way. A very similar shot offered, and Bane wound up for the same smash. But this time he bent his wrist sharply back and slammed the ball off the opposite side of the table.

  Mach, caught by surprise, did not even try for the ball. The point was Bane’s. One-three.

  The magic paddle could not return what it did not touch. As far as it was concerned, the ball was out of play. It was up to Mach to get it there in time.

  And up to Bane to see that Mach could not get it there in time.

  The remainder of the game was grueling. The robot body that made no unforced errors, and the magic paddle that never missed its shot. Bane played every shot for maximum motion on the opponent’s part, gett
ing Mach off balance, putting the ball where he did not expect it, so that his living-body reaction was strained, and errors occurred. Mach had been a machine all his life and still tended to depend on the automatic reliability of it; but now he was living flesh, and the flesh was fallible. He could not always get to the ball, and each time he failed, Bane won the point.

  But Bane’s body was healthy, and the magic paddle made returns easy. He did not readily miss the ball. So the rallies were long and hard, and only when Mach tired did Bane score. That was the final key, however: Bane’s body did not tire. He was able to keep the pace indefinitely.

  So inevitably, the final point was his. Bane had beaten the magic paddle, and won the game. The score was tied, one game apiece.

  “I think some thought you were not trying hard to win,” Agape said when they were private, after the grueling game. “That doubt is gone.”

  “It be strange,” Bane said. “When it looked hopeless, and I thought there was no point in continuing, that was when I had to try hardest to win.”

  “Tomorrow will decide it,” she said.

  “Tomorrow will decide it,” he agreed. “He won the game I thought he would lose, because the flesh can play not as reliably as a machine—but the flesh managed to strain the limits o’ the machine through innovative play. He lost the game methought he would win, because o’ the magic paddle—but the machine managed to strain the limits o’ the flesh. Tomorrow—I think no one can know the outcome o’ that game.”

  “No one can know,” she agreed.

  “But an I win, and we must separate—”

  “There will still be Nepe,” she said. “We can surely delay that long.”

  “Aye. But an Mach return to this body—”

  “Where else?” she asked with a wry smile.

  “It would please me if thou didst play Fleta for him, again. I oppose him, but I hate him not, and his love for the filly be true.”