If a player finds, when the opponent’s concealed points are entered in the field, he can enclose no valid triangle, he shall at once enter all his own concealed points, after which play shall proceed normally.
All triangles must have sides at least 2 units long, i.e. two adjacent coordinates cannot serve as apices of the same triangle, though they may serve as apices of two triangles of the same or different colors. No coordinate may serve as the apex of more than one triangle. No triangle may enclose a point enclosed by another triangle. A coordinate claimed by the opponent which lies on a horizontal or vertical line between apices of a proposed triangle shall be deemed included and renders the triangle invalid. A coordinate claimed by the opponent which lies on a true diagonal (45°) between apices of a proposed triangle shall be deemed excluded.
Scores shall be calculated in terms of coordinate points enclosed by valid triangles. An approved device shall be employed such that as each triangle is validly enclosed its apices may be entered into the memory store of the device and upon entry of the third apex the device shall unambiguously display the number of points enclosed. It shall be the responsibility of the player to keep accurate record of his cumulative score, which he shall not conceal from the opponent, except in matches played for stake money or on which there has been wagering or by mutual agreement of the players, when the cumulative score may be kept by a referee or electronically or mechanically, but in such cases there shall be no grounds for appeal by either player against the score shown at the conclusion or at any stage of the game.
It is customary but not obligatory for any game in which one player’s score exceeds that of the other by 100 points to be regarded as lost and won.
METONYMIA
According to the instrument display the metabolic level of the subject remained satisfactory; however, his voice was weakening and his reaction times were slowing. It was becoming necessary to update him from regressed mode at ever-shorter intervals. Very probably this was due to the low-stimulus environment, excessively low for someone whose ability to tolerate rapid and extreme change had been graphically documented over the past several weeks. Accordingly Freeman indented for some equipment to ameliorate the situation: a large projection-type three-vee screen, an electrotoner and a personifactor which would give the illusion of one, two or three other people watching.
Waiting for the new machinery to be delivered, though, he perforce had to continue in the former manner, conversing with the subject in present time.
“You’re a good fencing player, I believe.”
“Care for a game to break the monotony?” A ghost of old defiance tinted the words.
“I’m a poor player myself; it would be a mismatch. But why did fencing appeal to you rather than, say, go, or even chess?”
“Chess has been automated,” was the prompt reply. “How long is it since a world champion has done without computer assistance?”
“I see. Yes, I understand nobody has yet written a competent fencing program. Did you try it? You had adequate capacity.”
“Oh, using a program to play Chess is work. Games are for fun. I guess I could have spoiled fencing, if I’d spent a year or two on the job. I didn’t want to.”
“You wanted to retain it as a nondeterminate analogy of your own predicament, because of its overtones of captivity, enclosure, secure ground and the like—is that it?”
“Think of it in any way you choose. I say the hell with it. One of the worst things wrong with people like you is inability to enjoy themselves. You don’t like the idea that there are processes that can’t be analyzed. You’re the lineal descendant, on the sociological side of the tree, of the researchers who pithed cats and dogs because even their personalities were too complex for comfort. Which is fine for studying synapse formation but no damned good for studying cats.”
“You’re a holist.”
“I might have guessed that sooner or later you’d turn that word into an insult.”
“On the contrary. Having studied, as you rightly say, the separate components of the nervous system, we finally feel we’re equipped to attack their interaction. We declined to accept personality as a datum. Your attitude resembles that of a man content to gaze at a river without being interested in the springs and the watershed and the seasonal variations in rainfall and the silt it’s carrying along.”
“I notice you make no mention of fish in the river. Nor of taking a drink from it.”
“Will watching from the bank inform you why there are no fish this year?”
“Will counting the liters-per-minute tell you why it’s beautiful?”
Freeman sighed. “Always we reach the same sort of deadlock, don’t we? I regard your attitude as complementary to mine. You on the other hand deny that mine has any validity. Impasse.”
“Wrong. Or at best only half right. Your problem’s this: you want to file my attitude as a subcategory of yours, and it doesn’t work because the whole can’t be included in the part.”
GAME FOR ANYTHING
Venturing out on the streets of Lap-of-the-Gods, he felt a little like someone raised in an inhibited family braving a naturist beach, but the sensation did not last long. This was a surprisingly attractive little town. The architecture was miscellaneous because it had been thrown together in a hurry, yet the urgency had resulted in a basic unity enhanced now by reddish evening sunlight.
The sidewalks were crowded, the roadways not. The only vehicles they saw were bicycles and electric buses. There were many trees, bushes and flowering shrubs. Most of the people seemed to care little about dress; they wore uninspiring garments in blue, buff and tan, and some were shabby. But they smiled a lot and said hello to someone—even to himself and Kate, strangers—every half-dozen paces.
Shortly they came across a restaurant modeled on a Greek taverna, with tables on a terrace under a roof made of vines trained along poles and wires. Three or four games of fencing were in progress, each watched by a group of intent kibitzers.
“That’s an idea,” he muttered to Kate, halting. “Maybe I could pick up a bit of credit if they play for money.”
“Are you a good player? Sorry. Stupid question. But I’m told competition here is stiff.”
“But they’re playing manually. Look!”
“Does that have to make them poor players?”
He gazed at her for a long moment. Eventually he said, “Know something? I think you’re good for me.”
“So I should hope,” she answered tartly, and pulled the same face he’d seen at their first meeting, wrinkling her nose and raising her upper lip so her front teeth showed like a rabbit’s. “Moreover I knew you liked me before you knew it, which is kind of rare and to be treasured. Come on, let’s add fencing hustler to your list of occupations.”
They found a table where they could watch the play while eating pizza and sipping a rough local wine, and about the time they finished their meal one of the nearest players realized he had just allowed his opponent to notch up the coveted hundred-point margin with a single slender triangle running almost the full width of the field. Swearing at his own incompetence, he resigned and strode away fuming.