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 garner 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 Recessionaclass="underline" "Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh 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 overextended 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 backgammon 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."
Rue looked at the printed poem in her grid screen and began to read. A holograph of her formed above the central table, where all the judges could see it plainly. It looked as if she were standing there, a woman on a pedestal, and her eyes made contact with those of whatever judge she happened to face.
"My poem is entitled Cruel Lover," she announced. Then she read, flouncing prettily and smiling or frowning to emphasize the meaning appropriately. As she read each line, it appeared on a simulated screen over her head, until the full poem was printed.