Juxtaposition (9 page)

In the morning Freezetooth was back, and his icicles positively scintillated. No need to ask how his evening had worked out! He insisted that his close friend the Adept stay for a proper feast that evening.

It occurred to Stile that this hospitality could be useful.
 
“Do thou remain here while I perform a necessary chore in Proton,” he told the Lady. “I must attend the final Round of the Tourney, but should be back by noon.”

“I know, my love. Is it selfish of me to hope that thou dost lose that Game and find thyself confined to Phaze?”

He kissed her. “Yes, it is selfish. Sheen depends on me.”

“Ah, yes—I forget the Lady Sheen. Methinks I shall consider her options whilst thou art gone.” Stile wasn’t certain what that would lead to. The Lady Blue could cross the curtain, but Sheen could not function in Phaze.

“Until noon,” Stile said, then spelled himself to his usual curtain crossing.

Stile’s opponent for the finals was a serf woman two years younger than he: Rue, a twenty-year-tenure veteran of the Game. Like himself, she had not qualified at the top of her age ladder; but also like himself, she was the best of her decade. She was one of the half-dozen serf players Stile was not eager to meet in the Tourney. He thought he could beat her, but he wasn’t sure.

Rue had luck as well as skill, for she had lost no Rounds.
 
That meant that a single victory for her would bring her the prize, while one for Stile would merely bring him even.
 
To beat Rue twice in succession—that would be difficult.
 
They played the grid. Stile got the letters. Rue was good at all manner of tool and machine games, being in superb health; he was well skilled in these areas, too, and could take her in most tool games, but would be at a disadvantage in machine-assisted games. She would expect him to go for TOOL or ANIMAL, so instead he went for A.
 
NAKED. If she went for 4. ARTS, as he expected, this would foul her up.

But she had done the unexpected too, going for 3.
 
CHANCE. With two chances to his one, the advantage would be with her on the straight gamble—if that was the way she wanted to play it. As evidently she did.
 
They played the subgrid, and finished with a very simple guessing game; each had to pick a number, and if the total of the two numbers was even. Stile won. Even, in this coding, was male; odd was female. This game was so simple it would be played on the grid. Each would enter his/her number, the total flashing on both screens only when both were entered.

Would she choose her own code, an odd number? People tended to, unconsciously, feeling more at home with their own. If she chose odd and he chose even, she would win.
 
Obviously he should choose odd, to cancel her odd. But, as obviously, she would anticipate that and choose even.
 
Then the result would be. odd, and she would still win. It seemed she stood to win regardless.

It came back to the subjective. Given no advantage between alternatives, a person normally selected what pleased him emotionally. Rue, in doubt, should go for odd. Therefore Stile overruled his preference for even and chose the number of letters in his name: five. He entered this on the grid and locked it; no way to change his mind now» Rue had not yet made up her mind. Now the onus was hers, and they both knew it, and the broadcast audience knew it. She could win or lose by her decision; Stile was passive. The pressure was on her.

“Ten seconds until forfeit,” the voice of the Game Computer announced.

Rue grimaced and punched in her number. She was pretty enough, with auburn hair, an extremely fit body, and only a few age creases forming on face and neck. She was thirty-three years old, her youth waning. If she won this one, she would be eligible for rejuvenation, and Stile suspected she desired that more than the actual wealth of Citizenship.

The total showed eight. Rue had chosen the letters of her own name. Even—and Stile had won.

Stile kept his face impassive. He had been lucky—but was keenly aware of the fickleness of that mistress. Rue blanched a little, but knew her chances remained even.
 
Now they were tied, with thirteen victories and one loss each.

There was no break between Rounds this time, since there were no complexities about scheduling. They played the grid again immediately.

This time Stile got the numbers. He certainly was not going for CHANCE, though it had just salvaged his drive.
 
It had not won him anything beyond that, for as a finalist he had already achieved the prize of life tenure as a serf.
 
The only real step forward he could make was to Citizen ship, and now at last it was within his means. One single win—

He selected 4. ARTS, knowing that she would be playing to avoid his strong points elsewhere. The arts cut across other skills, and Rue was noted for her intellectual velocity and proficiency with machine-assisted games. Ma chine art would be a tossup, but he was willing to fight it out there.

But she surprised him again, choosing A. NAKED. So it was 1A, Naked Arts. Stile did not like this; he had had a very bad time in this box in his critical match with the Red Adept, and had pulled it out only by means of a desperation ploy.

They played the subgrids, and finished, to his abrupt delight, with EXTEMPORANEOUS POETRY. Stile had always fancied himself a poet; he had a ready flair for rhyme and meter that had served him in excellent stead in Phaze. But true poetry was more than this—and now he would be able to do something significant when and where it counted.

The Game Computer printed a random list of a dozen words. “Thirty minutes to incorporate these terms into poems,” it announced. “Highest point scores given for the use of one key word per line, in order, in the terminal position, rhymed. Technical facility fifty percent; content fifty percent. A panel of judges, including one male Citizen, one female Citizen, male serf, female serf, and the Game Computer, will decide the rating of each effort on the basis of zero to one hundred. The higher composite score prevails. Proceed.”

This was more restrictive than Stile liked, but he remained well satisfied. It was not that he thought he had an easy victory, he knew that Rue, too, had facility with words, perhaps greater than his own. She was an extremely quick-witted woman—which was of course one reason she had made it to the Tourney finals. She could cobble together a poem as readily as he could. But at least this particular contest would be decided on skill, not luck.
 
This was a fair encounter. If he won or if he lost, it would be because he had established his level. That was all he could ask.

Stile considered the words. They were: BITCH, CUBE, FLAME, SIR, SILENCE, LOVE, HORN, CHEAT, ROACH, CIVIL, FLUTE, EARTH. An anomalous bunch indeed! None of them rhymed with each other, so there were no free rides there. The only way to get a key term at the end of a rhyming line was to alternate with filler lines.
 
“My female dog is a wonderful bitch; whenever she scratches she has an itch.” That sort of thing would hardly win the Tourney; it was literal doggerel. It might be better to alternate terminal key words with mid-line key words, sacrificing the preferred terminal spot for the sake of the also-preferred, one-key-word-per-line arrangement. The Computer had not made it easy; the contestants had to choose between sacrifices. “My female dog is a wonderful bitch; she stands on a cube and does a twitch.” That would gamer a better technical score, but nothing extra on content.

He glanced at Rue. She was frowning, evidently displeased by the first term. Stile half smiled; he would have been similarly put out if the term had been RUNT. He was a runt and she was a bitch—but that was the kind of mischief random selection could do.

Because this was Naked Arts, they could use no implements, make no written notes. No rhyming dictionaries.
 
They had to do it all in their heads, punching only the finished poems into the grid for judgment. If either had trouble with memory, he or she could place individual lines as they were worked out. But then those lines would be final, no changes allowed. Since both Stile and Rue were experienced Game players, both could hold the developing poems in memory until the time for presentation.
 
No, the only problem was wrestling these awkward words into the most artistic and meaningful whole.
 
Stile wrestled a while, but was not satisfied. He could make rhymes and meter, certainly—but where was the meaning? One ignored the content portion of the poem at one’s peril. Yet it seemed impossible to fit these unruly words into anything serious; the problem of rhyming and positioning turned his efforts to frivolous tangents, as with the antics of his female dog. What could a person do seriously with words like bitch, cube, and flame?
 
Time was passing. Rue was hard at work; her expression and concentration suggested she had developed a strategy of creation and was happily ironing out the wrinkles. She would probably come up with something very clever. He had to come up with something even more clever—or more significant. Sir, silence, love—what a headache!

He brought himself back to basics. There were really two types of poetry: the ornamental and the consequential. Ornaments were rhyme, meter, alliteration, pattern, humor, assonance, and technical cleverness. They were stressed in light verse, parody, the libretto for popular music, and such. Serious poetry de-emphasized such things, or dispensed with them altogether. Thus some people were unable even to recognize serious poetry, because it didn’t necessarily rhyme. But ultimately any poetic appeal was to the deeper emotions, and the use of symbolism enabled it to evoke complex ramifications in the most compact presentation. As with Kipling’s Recessional: “Far called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nine veh and Tyre!” Presented to Queen Victoria some centuries back, this poem did not find instant favor, for it signaled the decline of the Earth-wide British Empire. But what imagery was evoked by the names of those two ancient cities, foremost in their times, finally brought to ruin by the armies of Babylonia and Alexander the Great, drunkard though the latter might have been. Kipling’s verse was superficially pretty; it rhymed nicely. But its real impact was its content, the somber warning for an over extended empire. All too soon it had been London-town under the siege of weapons unknown in the time of Tyre, as the Germans sent their bombers and rockets over. How well Kipling had understood!

With that memory. Stile saw his way. Rhyme, meter, and the rest of the prettiness were encumbrances; he had to dispense with them all and concentrate on meaning and emotion. He would lose some technical points, but gain where it counted. Win or lose, he would do his best, his way.

Stile considered the first word—bitch. He knew of a noble bitch—the old female werewolf who had guided Clef to the Platinum Demesnes, sacrificing her life in the process. Stile could do worse than remember her in this poem! Cube—there was one cube that was fresh in his experience, and that was the doubling cube of his recent back gammon game, which had enabled him to pull out a last moment win.

Flame—well, it wasn’t the most serious thing, but he had just enabled the chief snow-demon to have a liaison with his literal flame. That might not have any meaning to the Tourney judges, but this poem was not really for them but for Stile himself—his evocation of himself. The frame of Phaze was vitally important to him, and the flame related to that and to the notion of romance, which brought him to the Lady Blue. Ah, yes.

Sir—that was easy. This very poem was Stile’s final effort to be called sir: to become a Citizen of Proton, and have similar stature and power in Proton as he did in Phaze as the Blue Adept.

But the remaining terms—they did not seem to relate.
 
Now he was emotionally committed to this course, and had to use them in it—which meant he would have to improvise. That would be troublesome.

What was there to do except use the words as keys, perhaps as some psychic revelation that had to be clothed with syntax to become meaningful? If the first four terms brought him from the recent past to the present, the next eight might be taken as signals of the future. At least he would assume as much for the sake of the poem—insights to himself, now and to come. If the insights proved false, then this was a work of fiction; if true, of prediction. It was a worthy game, and he would take it seriously.
 
Stile bent to it with a will, and the lines fell into their places. No rhyme, no meter, no other ornamentation; just a series of statements like those of the Oracle, clarifying the significance of each key term. He found that there was not a great amount of mystery to it; the statements were mostly common sense, modified by what he already knew, and the whole was an affirmation of man’s resignation to fate.

Suddenly time was up. Rue and Stile typed in their poems. Now it was up to the panel of judges.
 
In the interim, those judges had assembled. Each one sat in a separate booth facing a central holograph. They could view the holo and converse with each other at the same time. The Game Computer was represented by a booth containing a humanoid robot, its outer surface transparent, so that its wires, hydraulics, and electronic components showed. The thing was at first eerie, like an animated cross section of the human body, but soon the eye accepted it for what it was: an animation of a simplified representation of the far more complicated Computer.
 

“Display one poem,” the Computer-figure said. “The serf Rue will commence her reading.”