CHAPTER 9 - Music
It was Round Six of the Tourney. Barely one fifth of the original entrants remained. The concentration of the skilled and the lucky increased. The audience for individual Games was larger, and would grow larger yet, as the numbers of contestants dwindled further and each Round be-came more important.
His opponent was another Citizen. This was not unusual at this stage; the Citizens tended to be the best players, and suffered elimination reluctantly. This one was old, obviously not in prime physical vigor—but any Citizen was dangerous, in and out of the Tourney.
Stile resolved to put it into the PHYSICAL column if he had the chance, not risking this man’s accumulated knowledge and experience.
He had the chance. They were in 2B, Tool-Assisted PHYSICAL GAMES. Stile’s area of strength. Yet the Citizen did not seem alarmed. Did he have a secret? They played the subgrids and came up with the Ice Climb. This was a frozen waterfall about fifteen meters high that had to be mounted by use of spikes and pitons from the base. Safety ropes suspended from above pre-vented it from being dangerous, but the climb itself was arduous. Stile did not see how this old man could handle it.
Stile was naked; all he had to do was put on the spiked shoes, gloves, and safety line. He did not need insulative clothing; the ice was frozen by elements beneath, while the air of the dome was warm. A naked man could handle it well enough, since his own exertion heated him. The voluminous robes of the Citizen would interfere with his climbing. Slowly he undressed. Stile was amazed. Under his concealing cloak the Citizen had a body of considerable gristle and muscle. The man was older than Stile—perhaps much older because of possible rejuvenation—but his torso resembled that of a man in his mid-forties, well developed. Stile still should have the edge, but much less of one than he had thought. They donned their gear, and approached the waterfall. It gleamed prettily, like translucent quartz. Stile had the right channel, the Citizen the left. The first to touch an electronically keyed marker at the top would win. The first to fall would lose. Theoretically one person could swing across on his safety rope and interfere with the other, but he would already have lost. Throwing pitons at each other meant immediate forfeiture. Cheating and fouling never occurred in Games.
Now the Citizen faced the ice and stared into it, unmoving. It was time for the match to begin, but Citizens could not be rushed. Stile had to wait.
The man remained for several minutes in silence. What was he up to? Stile, alert for some significant factor, was alarmed by this behavior. There had to be meaning in it. Why should a person delay a match by remaining trance-like?
Trance! That was it! The Citizen was indulging in self-hypnosis, or a yoga exercise, putting himself into a mental state that would allow him to draw without normal restraint on the full resources of his body. This was the sort of thing that lent strength to madmen and to the mothers of threatened children. Stile never used it, preferring to live a fully healthy life, saving his ultimate resources for some genuine life-and-death need. But the Citizen was evidently under no such constraint.
This could be trouble! No wonder the man had made it this far in the Tourney. He had suckered opponents into 2challenging him on the physical plane, then expended his inner resources to defeat them. Stile had fallen neatly into the trap.
But Stile, because of his light weight and physical fitness and indefatigable training in all aspects of the Game, was an excellent ice climber. Or had been, before the injury to his knees. Since he could place his pitons to avoid severe flexation of his knees, that should not hamper him much. Very few people could scale the falls faster than he could. He might win anyway. Trance-strength was fine, but the body reserves had to be there to be drawn on, and a rejuvenated Citizen might not have large reserves. Stile did mild limbering exercises, toning up his muscles. He could throw himself into a light trance at will, of course, but refused to. Not even for this. At last the Citizen came out of it. “I am ready,” he said.
They donned the safety belts. The lines would keep pace with the ascent, rising but not falling again. Stile felt his heartbeat and respiratory rate increase with the incipience of this effort.
The starting gong sounded. Both went to work, hammering the first piton. There were little tricks to this Game; the ice could vary from day to day because of ambient conditions. Sometimes it was a trifle soft, which made insertion easier but less secure; today it was a trifle hard, which posed the risk of cracking. Since each piton had to be set as rapidly as possible, judgment was important. If a contestant took too long, making a piton unnecessarily firm for its brief use, he lost time that might mean loss of the match; if he proceeded carelessly, he would fall, and lose the match. Discrimination, as much as physical strength and endurance, was critical.
The Citizen worked faster than Stile. He was on his first piton and working on the next ahead of Stile. He was pushing the limit, hitting too hard, but the ice was holding. Stile was close behind, but losing headway because he was playing it safer. Ice was funny stuff; sometimes it tolerated violation. Sometimes it did not.
They moved on up. Steadily Stile lost position—yet he did not dare hit his pitons harder. All he could do was marvel at the luck of the Citizen, and hope that the law of averages—
It happened. Halfway up, the ice cracked under the Citizen’s piton. The man had only to put it in a new spot and hammer more carefully—but he would lose just enough time to bring Stile even. The law of averages had come through at last.
But the Citizen, in his trance, was not alert to this. Automatically he put his weight on the piton—and it gave way and fell out. The Citizen swung from the rope, disqualified.
Stile did not even have to complete the climb. He only had to proceed one centimeter higher than the point the Citizen had reached. His caution, his alertness, and his reliance on the odds had brought him easy victory. Somehow it hadn’t seemed easy, though.
There was no fake address this time. Sheen took care of him, questioning him about his latest adventures in Phaze, and let him sleep. She concurred with the Lady Blue; she didn’t like the notion of him bracing the Red Adept in the Red Demesnes. “She’s a mean one; I could tell that from the holo. She’ll cut your throat with a brilliant smile. But I’m only a logical machine,” she complained. “I can’t stop an illogical manbrained flesh creature from being insanely foolish.”
“Right,” Stile agreed complacently. “Even clownish.” She always made reference to her inanimate status when upset.
But first he had to handle Round Seven. This turned out to be against another serf of about his own age. He was Clef, a tall thin man named for a symbol on written music, who evidently had qualified for the Tourney only because the top players of his ladder had not wanted to. Stile knew all the top serf-players of the current ladders, but did not recognize Clef. Therefore this man was no skilled Games-man, though he could have spot-skills.
They chatted while waiting for the grid. “Whoever wins this Round gets an extra year’s tenure,” Stile said. “Or more, depending on which Round he finally reaches.”
“Yes, it is my best hope to achieve Round Eight,” Clef agreed. “I have no chance to win the Tourney itself, unlike you.”