From his neck to his feet, he was encased by her, and it was the most comfortable feeling he could remember. His body, in Proton, was of metal and plastic; it did not matter, for now it felt Alive. Every part of him except his face was in her, and now she crept around his head and across that too, stopping only at the eyes, mouth and nose.
“In this body, I need not to breathe,” he reminded her. “Complete it.”
She closed the remaining gaps. Now he was cocooned by her substance, and it was like floating in warm water, only better, because she pulsed gently against every part of him, as if he had a heartbeat. He drifted in that wonderful alien embrace, and it seemed like an eternity. Truly, he was in her, and if it could only be for an hour, it was a phenomenal hour.
In the second game of the round, Bane was the Prey. He did not know what animal he would become; that was a surprise to both players. How Trool and the Oracle had managed to come to an understanding of such details without either Bane or Mach knowing was hard to guess, since they were the conduits for the information. Perhaps they had code phrases that had meaning only for computers and trolls.
He stepped through the curtain. He was on a broad plain, with a rocky escarpment to the north, that descended from a mesa. He was a monkey. He started running immediately, knowing that whatever form Mach took would be able to destroy the monkey.
Sure enough, in five seconds a panther appeared behind him. He ran straight ahead, giving the big cat no chance to gain on him by cutting comers. But he watched the escarpment. Some of it was clifflike, and some was a jagged slope. From this distance he could not be certain, but he suspected there would be caves. If he could reach a cave, next time around…
What form would he be in? What would lose to a monkey, but overcome a panther? He could not come up with an answer at the moment, but he decided to make for the caves next time, and if his form could take advantage of them, he would do so. He did not slow or swerve to get a closer look; he wanted to give his opponent no hint of whatever strategy he might have in mind. But he considered options. Go directly to the escarpment, circle it, and pop into a deep cave? Climb to the mesa? If he climbed, he might just lose time, but if there were a good cave entrance that could not be seen from below…
He reached the shore of a wide river and plunged in. The river flowed toward the north, curving in a broad meander toward the escarpment and disappearing behind it, but it should be possible simply to swim across it and enter the medium of air quickly. He still had his five-second lead.
He was a sting ray. He swerved to swim downriver, wanting to explore the section that brushed the escarpment. He hoped the Predator would assume the Prey was swimming straight across, and lose a second or two.
No such luck. A walrus appeared upriver, and immediately reoriented and stroked down. But at least he had not lost any time.
He veered to the left, angling up. The walrus matched him, cutting the corner. Then he veered right and down, deep. As a ploy it was no good; the walrus merely matched the maneuver, cutting the corner again, picking up a bit of time.
Then Bane saw what he was looking for: a weedshrouded cave, underwater in the right bank. It could be blind, but it could also lead to the mesa, or somewhere amidst the escarpment.
He swerved back to the left, as if trying once more to shake the pursuit. Once more, it didn’t work. This time he carried across to the left bank, and angled up and out, sailing into the air.
He was a four-winged insect—a dragonfly. He zoomed over a great field of flowers, but they did not tempt him; dragonflies were predators in their milieu, not pollen eaters.
Behind him, by about four seconds, a bat sailed up out of the river. He could not fight that! He flew straight, maintaining his lead, until he plunged through the horizon, completing the first lap.
He landed on the plain as a skunk. So that was what would balk the panther! But why not the monkey?
He angled for the mesa. The ground soon became rocky. Behind him the monkey appeared and pursued.
When the monkey encountered the stony section, it paused just long enough to scoop up a stone. Bane discovered this when that stone came flying past his head. That was how the monkey stopped the skunk—by catching it from a distance! Those stones were heavy and sharp; his skunk body was vulnerable. He needed more than four seconds’ distance, to get out of range. Meanwhile, he would have to dodge, which would cost him time. The chase was heating up!
He reached the foot of the escarpment and scooted up. Monkeys were better climbers than skunks were, but he had scouted this terrain from a distance the first time through, and was on the gentlest part of the slope. He found a series of ledges that ascended along the south face of it, working up toward the mesa-top.
He encountered one gravel-strewn section, and scraped with his four feet, sending gravel and pebbles sliding down into the face of his pursuer. That gained him a second or so, and he made it to the top with above five seconds’ leeway.
He ran directly toward the river, watching for openings. There were none; the mesa was grassy and even. Soon he came to the brink, and scrambled over it, sliding and tumbling down the steep slope.
Then, down near the river, he spied it: a rock-blocked cave entrance. His skunk body was small enough to wedge in between the rocks, and he squeezed inside before the monkey caught up.
He didn’t pause; he followed the cave down into darkness. Then he found water. He slid into it quietly, and became an eel. Good enough: the walrus could crush the sting-ray, the sting-ray could sting the eel with its tail, and the eel could shock the walrus. There was the endless circle.
If his strategy worked, the Predator would not realize that the cave went through to the water, and would waste time either pulling away the rocks that blocked it, or waiting for the skunk to emerge, or throwing stones down into it. There was always a way for the Predator to get through, so there could be no impasse, but that way was not always obvious. Bane had gambled that the cave connected to the one he had spied below the water level of the river, and had won.
He swam across the river. There was no pursuit. It had worked! He had gained enough time to ensure completion of the course without being caught.
Unless the monkey waited, and devised a trap for him. That was within the rules; it was possible for Prey to nab Predator if the Prey had time to set a clever snare that injured or delayed the Predator so that it could not complete the course.
He emerged from the river and became a mosquito. Now how could a mosquito put away a bat? By stinging it, and giving it some lethal disease. Far-fetched, perhaps, but viable for the purpose of the game. All these animal sets were only analogies for the root game: scissors/paper/stone. Scissors cut paper, paper wrapped stone, stone crushed scissors, making the circle. No doubt many current games derived from similarly obscure originals. A mosquito stinging a bat was as realistic as paper demolishing a stone by wrapping it.
He flew swiftly—more swiftly than any genuine mosquito could have—across the field of flowers, and came back to the land medium. Now he was the panther. He had lapped his opponent, and that made him the Predator. It did not give him the victory automatically, but it certainly gave him the advantage.
But, wary of a trap, he walked to the foot of the escarpment, and climbed it as carefully and quietly as he could. There was no sign of any trap. Perhaps it had been set in the lower plain, where he might be expected to run; by choosing this route, he might have foiled it.
He came to the cave entrance. The obscuring stones had been pulled aside, so that a creature the size of a monkey could enter it. Apparently Mach had decided it was a blind cave, and gone down to catch the Prey. Indeed, that would have been the correct decision, had the cave not gone through to the river! It would have been smarter for Mach to go directly to the water, and watch there to see whether any new fish appeared; indeed, he could have lain in ambush, for the Prey could win only by completing the full course, and that meant crossing the river at some point.