Warrior’s Honor
by Uncle River
Illustration by Dell Harris
Smooth-browed in full flush of youth, Xenon, the mighty hunter, stood proud and tall before King Filander’s throne of mastodon tusks. Last moon, the Kronx had raided his Plune people. Now the Plune would have vengeance.
“You would join our raiding party?” asked King Filander. He shifted his gristly buttocks—mastodon tusks made a seat more impressive than comfortable.
“I will,” Xenon replied. His bow of mastodon-hide-wrapped yerry wood stood as tall as he and nearly as thick as his sinewy wrist. No one else could string that bow, let alone draw it.
“Very well,” said the king, broad chest still hard under skin a bit loose from forty years of weather. “You’ve proven yourself a hunter. We’ll see if you make a warrior.”
Xenon felt the mingled confidence and doubt of the other Plune warriors. He knew none was stronger than he. Most had hunted with him. Xenon it was who had taken the great beast, twice his height with legs thick as a mighty man’s chest, on whose tusks King Filander now sat. Surely the warriors and the king could not doubt Xenon’s courage.
The raiding party set out for the Kronx village. Spikey perrius bushes studded rugged hillsides. Xenon felt strong sun through pollution-free prehistoric skies on his broad, bronze shoulders. Rocks gleamed purple and orange.
It was a robust life the Plune and Kronx and other tribes of their world lived. King Filander trotted up and down the steep hillsides right along with his warriors; most, like Xenon, half his age, but two gray and stringy and half again as old. It was a world where you were strong or dead and not much in between.
The raiding party was a large one: Thirty men loped up and down the hard, vital hills. Ravens skrawked. Pteranodons swooped. Xenon smelled fragrant pine in the sunshine and the stink of a skunk-bear.
Then the Plune raiding party crested the ridge above the Kronx village. They crouched behind mica-sparkling gray and tan boulders, undetected, so it seemed, by Kronx lookouts.
Kronx women worked skins by the doors of their lodges, or ground the sweet, nourishing pulp from fibrous sendor roots. Naked children scampered here and there in the bright sunshine.
Half a dozen Kronx warriors stood to one side of the village, palavering. Did they gloat at last moon’s raid? Did they parley preparing the next? Well, the Plune had a surprise in store for them.
Silently, Xenon pulled down one end of his bow, the other resting against his instep. His beefy arm flexed with smooth, young power as the wood bowed to allow Xenon to slip the mastodon gut string onto his bow. Xenon plucked an arrow, fletched with bright orange fli feathers, from the otter hide quiver that hung behind his hard left shoulder nearly to his right knee. He nocked the arrow and drew his bow. Xenon felt the strain across his chest. Vitality coursed through his body. He held the bow as steady as the boulder he peered around. He knew no other Plune warrior could hold that bow at full draw without hands shivering from the strain.
Xenon took careful aim. He let go. His arrow arced through the blazing blue sky. The point struck a Kronx warrior right in the chest. The shaft penetrated. The enemy fell, clutching his breast. The arrow had pierced all the way through. Only the feathered end stood out over the Kronx warrior’s heart. Nearly as long as the Kronx warrior was tall, the arrow’s point stopped his fall when it struck the ground. He teetered, then tipped slowly to the right and toppled.
Xenon raised his arms above his head, bow in his left hand, another arrow in the other, ready to draw and shoot again. His fellow Plune raiders stood to both sides on the rugged ridge. Xenon knew all his companions had seen how true his arrow flew. But instead of the exultation he expected, Xenon felt shame!
Xenon felt abject mortification. He had been overcome by intoxication of the hunt. How could a would-be Plune warrior act in such cowardice as to kill another human being at a distance, where the other warrior did not know he was there, could not fight back, where he, Xenon, did not have to look his adversary in the eyes?
“It worked!” Jack Sproul emerged from the gameworld filled with all the triumph his game surrogate could not feel. Gameworlds had grown in sophistication by increments, of course. Rock-strewn hills… or mastodon tusk throne, skrawk of raven: Sight and sound reached a convincing level of verisimilitude first. The feel of flexing arms drawing a bow, the scent of skunk-bear, the knowledge of creatures and things in the gameworld that didn’t exist in the player’s physical reality, were more recent. Now, Jack had achieved a new level of gameworld reality. The world conveyed its own emotional context. Xenon felt shame because the culture of that gameworld would react so.
The game psychology was still a little rough, a little simplistic. Jack would work on that. Why didn’t Xenon remember that he should know better? Why didn’t King Filander tell him the moral rules? Jack felt certain it made sense in context. He had the beginnings of why: A young man intoxicated with his own physical abilities. A primitive society where it had not occurred to people to articulate their own standards. Jack could refine the game later. He had achieved the breakthrough: Context conveyed relevant emotions which could even take an individual player’s character by surprise. Xenon felt shame at the cowardice of killing another warrior he had not had to look in the eyes, rather than the triumph he expected. Jack, in the gameworld, felt Xenon’s emotions, and Xenon’s surprise.
The mechanism derived from basic studies of the psychology of delinquency: People whose behavior society called delinquent tended to perceive expressions of those around them as disgust or otherwise disapproving, while less-alienated people experienced the same expressions as neutral or even approving. Everyone responded to nonverbal cues. Further study illuminated how self-image and context combined… not to determine response, but to shade it in one direction or another.
This led to investigation of the archaic concept of omens and portents: A cloud passes in front of the Sun at a crucial moment. Birds burst into song. Individual sensitivity to feedback varied. But argument over “truth” or superstition in no way affected psychological effectiveness of synchronous juxtaposition of events. Emotionally relevant feedback, subtle or blatant, could be built into the game.
Xenon did not need to be aware that when he released his arrow the temperature dropped a couple degrees, that the Sun shone slightly less bright, that a Kronx baby whimpered just as his arrow struck. He did not even need to notice the stiffened stance nor the disapproving expressions of his fellow Plune warriors. Better they should be in his peripheral vision than in his face. Better a slightly stale aroma intrude his nostrils than a blast of decaying corpses.
Jack e-mailed Sheila Grijalva, his agent and dear friend: “I’ve done it! Let’s celebrate.” Jack didn’t say what he’d done. Sheila knew Jack was working on emotions of context. Neither of them was about to let some cyberthief steal Jack’s breakthrough.
Sheila e-mailed Jack back an hour later: “That’s great. How about the Rimrock tonight at seven?”
Jack confirmed, then called the Rimrock Cafe to make reservations. Though called a cafe, the Rimrock was actually a quite-classy restaurant. Elegant decor. Excellent kitchen. Not cheap… but not extravagant either. Jack and Sheila both knew Jack’s achievement might really take off, might bring fame and fortune. They’d celebrate that when and if it happened.
But they did have something to celebrate now, and Jack knew it, as he dressed for dinner… which meant just clean new jeans, polished boots, and a dress shirt. A faster-paced reality had infected Jack’s world the past few years, but this was still informal, small town New Mexico. Funny thing, too, the reality of gameworlds these days: Some players lived vicariously in cyberspace, their bodies the color and consistency of dead fish. Others, Jack Sproul among them, reacted the opposite way. After feeling Xenon’s smooth muscles drawing that bow, Jack couldn’t live in too blobby a body himself.