Piers Anthony - Phaze Doubt

Nepe used her foot to scuff a line in the dirt. She made a second line, and a third. “We have no Game Computer,” she said. “But we can place choices, and play the grid. One grid. Agreed?”

The Hectare agreed. It remained a bug-eyed monster, but its responses were so sure and just that she was coming to respect it despite her antipathy to its person and all it stood for. Actions did indeed count more than appearance!

“Is a grid of nine enough?” she asked as she made the cross lines.

Four tentacles extended. “Four on a side?” she asked.

A downturn. “A four-box grid?” she asked, surprised. “Two placements by each?”

The tentacle turned up.

“Okay. That’s fair. We can place our choices slantwise, and then choose our columns. Is there an even way to do that?”

The tentacle turned up again. Nepe didn’t know what the Hectare had in mind, but was coming to trust it. “I choose the game of marbles,” she said, and used her finger to write the word in one corner.

The Hectare extended a tentacle, reaching the ground readily. The tentacles looked short, but stretched. It wrote LASER MARKSMANSHIP in a box.

She would be lost if she had to compete in that! She knew how to do it, and surely the monster would lend her a weapon, but she knew that all Hectare were perfect shots with such weapons. Suddenly she doubted that her childish game of marbles was a good choice; those tentacles could probably also shoot little glass spheres with perfect accuracy.

She thought a moment, then came up with something that might be impossible for the monster: “Hopscotch,” she said, and wrote it in her other box.

Unperturbed, the Hectare wrote POKER in the final box. Was it good at card games, or did it merely enjoy the challenge? Now she was uncertain. A true gameoholic might want a good game more than a victory.

The box was now complete: HOPSCOTCH and POKER on one row, LASER MARKSMANSHIP and MARBLES on the other.

“How can we choose columns?” she asked.

Tentacles pointed to Alien and Sirel. “Face away and throw one of two fingers!” Nepe exclaimed, seeing it. She used the numbers 1 and 2 to mark both the horizontal and vertical columns. “I will take the horizontals, the one if they throw odd, the two if they throw even. You will take the verticals and the same numbers, in your turn. Agreed?”

The tentacle turned up. The Hectare evidently wasn’t fussy about the details as long as the choosing was impartial.

“Do it,” Nepe said. “This is random, but it always is, really.”

The two faced away. “Now!” Nepe cried.

Both lifted hands. Sirel had one finger extended, Alien two. “Odd,” Nepe announced. “I choose the number one line. Now throw for the Hectare.”

The two threw fingers again. This time Sirel lifted two, and Alien one. “Odd,” Nepe said. “So it is column one for the Hectare.”

Nepe looked at the grid. Box 1-1 was HOPSCOTCH. She had won her choice!

But she couldn’t relax. “Do you know how to play?” she asked the Hectare.

The tentacle extended, first turning up, then down.

“You mean you know generally, but not the variants?”

The tentacle turned up.

“Then here is the way I play it, and if you don’t like this variant, we’ll try another. Since we both play by the same rules, it will be fair once we agree.”

She used the flat of her foot to wipe the dirt smooth, then carefully scuffed the diagram. “This is called Heaven and Earth Hopscotch,” she said. “But there’s Hell in it too. I’ll mark everything so it’s clear what I’m talking about.”

In due course she had it complete: twelve boxes in a column marked HEAVEN, HELL, EARTH, and numbered 1 through 9.

HEAVEN

HELL

9

7

8

6

4

5

3

2

1

EARTH

Then she glanced at the Hectare. “Can you hop? You have to hop from box to box. One foot, like this.” She lifted her left foot and hopped on her right.

The monster considered. Its feet were short, thickened tentacles, with wartlike excrescences that evidently served for traction. They also resembled caterpillar treads, in a way. It hardly seemed that such a creature could hop!

Then it separated its foot tentacle treads into two segments, shifted its mass, hoisted up one segment, and heaved itself up. Its torso rippled grotesquely and the “foot” came up, then landed to the side. The body tilted as if about to fall, until the other foot came down to catch it.

to catch it.

“That’s it,” Nepe agreed, impressed. “Only in the game you have to stay on one foot when you land, except in some places. Let me show you.”

The tentacle extended, and tilted down.

“You don’t want to play?” she asked, concerned. If the BEM changed its mind now, her chance would be gone. The tentacle made its rotary motion.

“Turn around?” she asked blankly.

It turned around.

“Something else? That turning motion means neither yes nor no?”

It turned up.

She was getting better at interpreting the signals. “You are playing, but not the way I said?”

The tentacle whirled.

Well, she had thought she was getting better! What was the creature getting at?

“Maybe it wants to go ahead and play now,” Sirel suggested.

The tentacle pointed to Sirel, tilted up.

“You mean I should take my turn, and you’ll learn from that?” Nepe asked. “If I explain as I do it?”

The tentacle turned up.

This must be one smart monster! It figured to catch on to the whole set of rules, with one example. That was a chilling signal of its confidence!

Nepe addressed the diagram. “Oops, I forgot the markers! We need one for each of us.” She looked around. “A stone, or chip of wood, or a bag of sand—maybe those balls of moss.” She went to fetch a selection. “Something that you can throw accurately, so it doesn’t bounce or slide away, because if it winds up outside the box or on a fine, you lose your turn.” She laid the objects out in a line. “Choose one.”

The tentacle pointed to her.

“Okay, I’ll choose first.” She picked up a bit of bark with moss covering it, as though it had sprouted hair.

The Hectare picked up a bit of twisted root, whose rootlets resembled tentacles.

She cleared away the other fragments, then addressed the diagram again. She stepped into the EARTH square. “This is where you start. You have to stand inside it. Then you toss your marker into Block One.” She did so, dropping it into the center of the right side. “Then you hop there, pick it up, and hop back.” She did so. “Only in Earth—or later in Heaven—can you stand on both feet and rest. That’s the basic game, but it gets more difficult as it goes.”

She stood again in the EARTH square and threw her marker into Block Two. Then she hopped to it, picked up the marker, and hopped back. “You keep going until you make a mistake; then it’s the other player’s turn.”

She played to Block Three, then to Block Four, the first of the paired blocks. “Once you pass these two, you can put both feet down as you pass,” she said. “But only in Blocks Four and Five, and in Seven and Eight, and only when you’re traveling past them. When your marker’s there, you have to hop as usual.”

She played on, concentrating harder as the tosses got longer. When she aimed for Block Nine, her marker bounced into HELL. “Hell!” she exclaimed. “That means not only does my turn end, I have to start over from the beginning next time. If I had missed anywhere else, I could have picked up next time where I left off.” She walked around the diagram, picked up her marker, and set it in a corner of EARTH, showing her place in the game. “Your turn, Hectare.”