They ran the grids through again—and arrived again at tool-assisted mental, and at enclosing. The basic strategies were immutable.
Stile exchanged glances with Snack. Both knew what they had to do.
This time it came up Go—the ancient Chinese game of enclosing. It was perhaps the oldest of all games in the human sphere, dating back several thousand years. It was one of the simplest in basic concept: the placing of colored stones to mark off territory, the player enclosing the most territory winning. Yet in execution it was also one of the most sophisticated of games. The more skilled player almost invariably won.
The problem was, Stile was not certain which of them was the more skilled in Go. He had never played this particular game with this particular man, and could not at the moment remember any games of Go he and Snack had played against common opponents. This was certainly not Stile’s strongest game—but he doubted it was Snack’s strongest either.
They moved to the board-game annex, as this match would take too long for the grid-premises; others had to use that equipment. The audience followed, taking seats; they could tune in on replicas of the game at each place, but preferred to observe it physically. Sheen had a front seat, and looked nervous: probably an affectation, considering her wire nerves.
Stile would have preferred a Game leading to a quick decision, for he was conscious of Neysa and Kurrelgyre in the other frame, locked in potion-hardened cages. But he had to meet his commitment here, first, whatever it took.
They sat on opposite sides of the board, each with a bowl of polished stones. Snack gravely picked up one stone of each color, shook them together in his joined hands, and offered two fists for Stile. Stile touched the left. The hand opened to reveal a black pebble.
Stile took that stone and laid it on the board. Black, by convention, had the first move. With 361 intersections to choose from—for the stones were placed on the lines in Go, not in the squares—he had no problem. A one-stone advantage was not much, but in a game as precise as this it helped.
Snack settled down to play. The game was by the clock, because this was a challenge for access to the Tourney; probably few games of Go would be played, but time was limited to keep the Tourney moving well. This was another help to Stile; given unlimited time to ponder, Snack could probably beat him. Under time pressure Stile generally did well. That was one reason he was a top Gamesman.
They took turns laying down stones, forming strategic patterns on the board. The object was to enclose as much space as possible, as with an army controlling territory, and to capture as many of the opponent’s stones as possible, as with prisoners of war. Territory was the primary thing, but it was often acquired by wiping out enemy representatives. Stile pictured each white pebble as a hostile soldier, implacable, menacing; and each black pebble as a Defender of the Faith, upright and righteous. But it was not at all certain that right would prevail He had to dispose his troops advantageously, and in the heat of battle the advantage was not easy to discern.
A stone/man was captured when all his avenues of freedom were curtailed. If enemy forces blocked him off on three sides, he had only one freedom remaining; if not buttressed by another of his kind, forming a chain, he could lose his freedom and be lost. But two men could be surrounded too, or ten enclosed; numbers were no certain security here. Rather, position was most important. There were devices to protect territory, such as “eyes” or divisions that prevented enclosure by the other side, but these took stones that might be more profitably utilized elsewhere. Judgment was vital.
Snack proceeded well in the early stages. Then the complexity of interaction increased, and time ran short, and Stile applied the notorious Stile stare to unnerve his opponent. It was a concentrated glare, an almost tangible aura of hate; every time Snack glanced up he encountered that implacable force. At first Snack shrugged it off, knowing that this was all part of the game, but in time the unremitting intensity of it wore him down, until he began to make mistakes. Trifling errors at first, but these upset him all out of proportion, causing his concentration to suffer. He misread a seki situation, giving away several stones, failed to make an eye to protect a vulnerable territory, and used stones wastefully.
Even before the game’s conclusion, it was obvious that Stile had it. Snack, shaken, resigned without going through the scoring procedure. Rung Seven was Stile’s.
Stile eased up on the glare—and Snack shook his head, feeling foolish. He understood how poorly he had played in the ambience of that malevolence—now that the pressure was off. At his top form he might reasonably have beaten Stile, but he had been far below his standard. Stile himself was sorry, but he was above all a competitor, and he had needed this Rung. All his malignance, the product of a lifetime’s reaction to the slight of his size, came out in concentrated form during competition of this nature, and it was a major key to his success. Stile was more highly motivated than most people, inherently, and he drove harder, and he never showed mercy in the Game.
The holder of Rung Six was a contrast. His name was Hulk, after an obscure comic character of a prior century he was thought to resemble, and he was a huge, powerful man. Hulk was not only ready but eager to meet the challenge. He was a specialist in the physical games, but was not stupid. This was his last year of tenure, so he was trying to move into qualifying position; unfortunately his last challenge to Rung Five had been turned back on a Game of chance, and he could not rechallenge until the rung-order shifted, or until he had successfully answered a challenge to his own Rung. Stile was that challenge. The audience, aware of this, had swelled to respectable size; both Stile and Hulk were popular Gamesmen, and they represented the extremes of physical appearance, adding to that novelty. The giant and the midget, locked in combat!
Stile got the numbered face of the prime grid, this time. For once he had the opening break! He could steer the selection away from Hulk’s specialty of the physical.
But Stile hesitated. Two things influenced him. First, the element of surprise: why should he do what his opponent expected, which was to choose the MENTAL column? Hulk was pretty canny, though he tried to conceal this, just as Stile tried to obscure his physical abilities. Any mistake an opponent might make in estimating the capacities of a player was good news for that player. Hulk would choose the NAKED row, putting it into the box of straight mental games, where surely he had some specialties in reserve. Second, it would be a prime challenge and an exhilarating experience to take Hulk in his region of strength—a considerable show for the watching masses.
No, Stile told himself. This was merely his foolishness, a reaction to the countless times he had been disparagingly called a pygmy. He had a thing about large men, a need to put them down, to prove he was better than they, and to do it physically. He knew this was fatuous; large men were no more responsible for their size than Stile was for his own. Yet it was an incubus, a constant imperative that would never yield to logic. He wanted to humble this giant, to grind him down ignominiously before the world. He had to.
Thus it came up 1A—PHYSICAL NAKED. The audience made a soft “oooh” of surprise and expectation. In the muted distance came someone’s call: “Stile’s going after Hulk in 1A!” and a responding cry of amazement.
Hulk looked up, and they exchanged a fleeting smile over the unit; both of them liked a good audience. In fact, Stile realized, he was more like Hulk than unlike him, in certain fundamental respects. It was push-pull; Stile both liked and disliked, envied and resented the other man, wanting to be like him while wanting to prove he didn’t need to be like him.
But had he, in his silly imperative, thrown away any advantage he might have had? Hulk’s physical prowess was no empty reputation. Stile had made the grand play—and might now pay the consequence. Loss—and termination of employment, when he most needed the support of an understanding employer. Stile began to feel the weakness of uncertainty.
They played the next grid. This, he realized suddenly, was the same one he had come to with Sheen
, when he met her in her guise of a woman. Of a living woman. That Dust Slide—he remembered that with a certain fondness. So much had happened since then! He had suffered knee injury, threats against his life, discovered the frame of Phaze, befriended a lady unicorn and gentleman werewolf, and was now making his move to enter the Tourney—two years before his time. A lifetime of experience in about ten days!
The subgrid’s top facet listed SEPARATE—INACTIVE—COMBAT—COOPERATIVE, and this was the one Stile had. He was tempted to go for COMBAT, but his internal need to prove himself did not extend to such idiocy. He could hold his own in most martial arts—but he remembered the problem he had had trying to throw the goon, in the fantasy frame, and Hulk was the wrestling champion of the over-age-thirty men. A good big man could indeed beat a good small man, other things being equal. Stile selected SEPARATE.
Hulk’s options were for the surfaces: FLAT—VARIABLE—DISCONTINUITY—LIQUID. Hulk was a powerful swimmer—but Stile was an expert diver, and these were in the same section. Stile’s gymnastic abilities gave him the advantage on discontinuous surfaces too; he could do tricks on the trapeze or parallel bars the larger man could never match. Hulk’s best bet was to opt for VARIABLE, which included mountain climbing and sliding. A speed-hike up a mountain slope with a twenty-kilogram pack could finish Stile, since there were no allowances for sex or size in the Game. Of course Stile would never allow himself to be trapped like that, but Hulk could make him sweat to avoid it.
But Hulk selected FLAT. There was a murmur of surprise from the audience. Had Hulk expected Stile to go for another combination, or had he simply miscalculated? Probably the latter; Stile had a special touch with the grid. This, too, was part of his Game expertise.
Now they assembled the final grid. They were in the category of races, jumps, tumbling, and calisthenics. Stile placed Marathon in the center of the nine-square grid, trying to jar his opponent. Excessive development of muscle in the upper section was a liability in an endurance run, because it had to be carried along uselessly while the legs and heart did most of the work. Hulk, in effect, was carrying that twenty-kilo pack.
Hulk, undaunted, came back with the standing broad jump, another specialty of his. He had a lot of mass, but once he got it aloft it carried a long way. They filled in the other boxes with trampoline flips, pushups, twenty-kilometer run, hundred-meter dash, precision backflips, running broad jump, and handstand race.
They had formed the grid artfully to prevent any vertical or horizontal three-in-a-row lines, so there was no obvious advantage to be obtained here. Since Stile had made the extra placement, Hulk had choice of facets. They made their selections, and it came up 2B, dead center: Marathon.
Stile relaxed. Victory! But Hulk did not seem discouraged. Strange.
“Concede?” Stile inquired, per protocol.
“Declined.”
So Hulk actually intended to race. He was simply not a distance runner; Stile was. What gave the man his confidence? There was no way he could fake Stile out; this was a clear mismatch. As far as Stile knew, Hulk had never completed a marathon race. The audience, too, was marveling. Hulk should have conceded. Did he know something others didn’t, or was he bluffing?
Well, what would be, would be. Hulk would keep the pace for a while, then inevitably fall behind, and when Stile got a certain distance ahead there would be a mandatory concession. Maybe Hulk preferred to go down that way—or maybe he hoped Stile would suffer a cramp or pull a muscle on the way. Accidents did happen on occasion, so the outcome of a Game was never quite certain until actually played through. Stile’s knee injury was now generally known; perhaps Hulk overestimated its effect.
They proceeded to the track. Sheen paced Stile nervously; was she affecting an emotion she did not feel, the better to conceal her nature, or did she suspect some threat to his welfare here? He couldn’t ask. The established track wound through assorted other exercise areas, passing from one to another to make a huge circuit. Other runners were on it, and a number of walkers; they would clear out to let the marathoners pass, of course. Stile and Hulk, as rung contenders before the Tourney, had priority.
The audience dispersed; there was really no way to watch this race physically except by matching the pace. Interested people would view it on intermittent viewscreen pickup, or obtain transport to checkpoints along the route.
They came to the starting line and checked in with the robot official. “Be advised that a portion of this track is closed for repair,” the robot said. He was a desk model, similar to the female at the Dust Slide; his nether portion was the solid block of the metal desk. “There is a detour, and the finish line is advanced accordingly to keep the distance constant.”
“Let me put in an order for my drinks along the way,” Hulk said. “I have developed my own formula.”
Formula? Stile checked with Sheen. “He’s up to something,” she murmured. “There’s no formula he can use that will give him the endurance he needs, without tripping the illegal-drug alarm.”
“He isn’t going to cheat, and he can’t outrun me,” Stile said. “If he can win this one, he deserves it. Will you be at the checkpoints to give me my own drinks? Standard fructose mix is what I run on; maybe Hulk needs something special to bolster his mass, but I don’t, and I don’t expect to have to finish this course anyway.”
“I will run with you,” she said.
“And show the world your nature? No living woman as soft and shapely as you could keep the pace; you know that.”
“True,” she agreed reluctantly. “I will be at the checkpoints. My friends will keep watch too.” She leaned forward to kiss him fleetingly, exactly like a concerned girl friend—and wasn’t she just that?
They lined up at the mark, and the robot gave them their starting signal. They were off, running side by side. Stile set the pace at about fifteen kilometers per hour, warming up, and Hulk matched him. The first hour of a marathon hardly counted; the race would be decided in the later stages, as personal resources and willpower gave out. They were not out after any record; this was purely a two-man matter, and the chances were that one of them would concede when he saw that he could not win.
Two kilometers spacing was the requirement for forced concession. This was to prevent one person slowing to a walk, forcing the other to go the full distance at speed to win. But it was unlikely even to come to that; Stile doubted that Hulk could go any major fraction of this distance at speed without destroying himself. Once Hulk realized that his bluff had failed, he would yield gracefully.
Soon Stile warmed up. His limbs loosened, his breathing and respiration developed invigorating force, and his mind seemed to sharpen. He liked this sort of exercise. He began to push the pace. Hulk did not have to match him, but probably would, for psychological effect. Once Stile got safely out in front, nothing the big man could do would have much impact.
Yet Hulk was running easily beside him, breathing no harder than Stile. Had the man been practicing, extending his endurance? How good was he, now?
Along the route were the refreshment stations, for liquid was vital for distance running. Sheen stood at the first, holding out a squeeze bottle to Stile, smiling. He was not yet thirsty, but accepted it, knowing that a hot human body could excrete water through the skin faster than the human digestive system could replace it. Running, for all its joy, was no casual exercise. Not at this velocity and this distance.
Hulk accepted his bottle from the standard station robot. No doubt it was a variant of the normal formula, containing some readily assimilable sugars in fermented form, restoring energy as well as fluid; why he had made a point of the distinction of his particular mix Stile wasn’t sure. Maybe it was psychological for himself as well as his opponent—the notion that some trace element or herb lent extra strength.
With any modern formula, it was possible to reduce or even avoid the nefarious “wall” or point at which the body’s reserves were exhausted. Ancient marathon runners had had to force their bodies
to consume their own tissues to keep going, and this was unhealthy. Today’s careful runners would make it without such debilitation—if they were in proper condition. But the psychology of it remained a major factor, and anything that psyched up a person to better performance was worth it—if it really worked. Yet Hulk was not a man to cater to any fakelore or superstition; he was supremely practical.
After they were clear of the station, and had disposed of their empty bottles in hoppers set for that purpose along the way, Hulk inquired: “She is yours?”
“Perhaps I am hers,” Stile said. They were talking about Sheen, of course.
“Trade her to me; I will give you the Rung.”
Stile laughed. Then it occurred to him that Hulk just might be serious. Could he have entered this no-win contest because he had seen Sheen with Stile, and coveted her, and hoped for an avenue to her acquaintance? Hulk was, like Stile, a bit diffident about the women he liked, in contrast to the ones that threw themselves upon him. He could not just walk up to Sheen and say, “Hello, I like your looks, I would like to take you away from Stile.” He had to clear it with Stile first. This was another quality in him that Stile respected, and it interfered with his hate-his-opponent concentration. “I can not trade her. She is an independent sort. I must take the Rung to keep her.”
“Then we had better race.” This time Hulk stepped up the pace.
Now it occurred to Stile that Hulk did not actually covet Stile’s girl; Hulk did have all the women any normal man would want, even if they tended to be the superficial muscle-gawking types. So his expressed interest was most likely a matter of courtesy. Either he was trying to make Stile feel at ease—which seemed a pointless strategy—or he was trying to deplete his urge to win. One thing Stile was sure of: however honest and polite Hulk might be, he wanted to win this race. Somehow.