He returned it with a high looping sidespin shot, the kind that could utterly befuddle a neophyte but would be a lost point against an experienced player. Sure enough. Bane compensated for the spin and slammed it off the corner. Three-love. A lost point, but confirmation of the reaction. It was not possible to put ultimate spin on a ball with the standard paddle surface, but in a later game it would be another matter.
However, he could not afford to get too far behind. He played to win on the fourth point. As anticipated, Bane served the ball backhand, to Mach’s forehand, and because he was ready for it, he slammed it right back where it had come from. It was a beautiful shot, and it caught Bane by surprise; the paddle was late, and the ball went flying to the side, out of play. Three - one.
Bane’s fifth serve was a drop shot, as Mach had thought reasonably likely. He dropped it back, and gained the initiative, which in due course won him the point. Three - two.
Now it was Mach’s serve. He tested Bane’s reactions on different types, and verified that Bane’s skill was basically Mach’s own—before he had come to Proton. He was thoroughly familiar with that style of play, by no coincidence, and knew its strengths and weaknesses. A defensive game would never prevail, because the robot made no unforced errors, and would outlast any other opponent. But the right kind of offense, initiated at the right occasion, could force errors. Mach was about to find out whether what he had learned from Eli the elephant head was the right kind.
It was, but not by much. Mach found that by making wild alterations in his play he could cause Bane to lose track momentarily and become vulnerable—but that same wildness made Mach’s own shots unreliable. He missed more than he should have, by taking risks, playing low-percentage shots. As a result, the score seesawed. He caught up at 9-9, fell behind to 13-10 (the server’s score was always given first), went ahead at 16-17, and tied again at 19-19.
It was make-or-break time. Mach, as the robot, would not have gambled; Mach, as the living creature, did. It was his serve, and he had no better occasion to seize the initiative. He used the Eli special, thinking of his right arm as a flexible trunk, using it to put on the backspin that looked like a topspin. He spun the paddle; both sides were the same, for this game, but the spin helped mask the particular angle and motion as it contacted the ball. If it fooled Bane the way it had himself—
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.