“You are bloody buggering insane, have you ever even done this before?”
He hadn’t, but the phrase I’ll keep her was ringing over and over again in Kit’s head like a gong and making it impossible for him to feel anything but a deep, cold anger. “First time for everything,” Kit said. “So are you going to hold the force field or not?”
Ronan stepped back a couple of paces, shaking his head. “Clear back, people,” was all he said.
Murmuring, the people who’d been in the center of the room started backing away. Penn walked out into the space they’d left and Kit followed, wishing Penn would change his mind. But it plainly wasn’t going to happen.
In the center of the empty space, they turned to face each other, and Kit swallowed. He’d been the one to offer the challenge phrase, so it was Penn’s right to pick the manner in which the duel would be conducted. “What’s the paradigm?” Kit said
Penn was grinning. “Elemental,” he said. “Pick two elements, stay inside them. No sliding out; changing into a nonelected element disqualifies you immediately. Best four falls out of seven. Leaving the agreed space is an instant forfeit. Winner’s the one who forces the other out of an element or makes it impossible for them to change between the two. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Kit said.
“Pick your two,” said Penn.
“Earth and water,” Kit said.
“So passive-aggressive,” Penn said. “Perfect. Air and fire for me.”
Kit rolled his eyes. “If the ground suits,” he said, “shut up and get on with it.” He shifted his gaze to Ronan. “Got the field sorted?” he said.
Ronan had his eyes closed as he consulted his Knowledge-based version of the manual. Now he flipped his hands open in a “Not my problem now, you idiots . . .” gesture, and the faint shimmer of a hemispherical force field domed up around them.
Penn vanished, or seemed to.
Kit closed his eyes and whispered the words he needed, dissolving.
The principle behind the kind of shape change you used for this sort of duel was uncomfortably simple. You dissociated your consciousness from your body’s matter, and used that as raw material to mimic other kinds, states and masses of matter. Key to coming back to your own form after such a bout was making sure that you had your own bodily structure and elemental construction locked down correctly before you shifted out.
That was a simple business for someone who was used to working with the Mason’s Word, and there were few spells Kit knew better. Or maybe one, he thought. Save that for later . . . Before the force field was even up, he’d had the coded matrix for his own body’s structure laid out in his mind, and he’d saved all the pertinent data to it. It was fail-safed as welclass="underline" should he be incapacitated, his mind would find its way back to his reconstituted body automatically.
Okay, Kit thought. Let’s start out basic. He’d been immaterial for a few moments, and already the space inside the force field was being buffeted by a ferocious wind meant to keep him from coalescing. Don’t think so, Kit thought, and pulled up into the forefront of his mind the structure of a large granite boulder—
All around him he could feel the wind changing tack, blowing at him with force and pressure impossible except in places like Venus. And here came the heat, too. Between the wind and the fire, flakes and granules of sand were being eroded swiftly off the structure of his granite. The air inside the force field went thick and gritty with his own substance that was being stolen from him. If this went on for more than a minute or so there wouldn’t be much of him left—
He shifted elements, letting go of the hard lattices of stone and letting all his atoms slide into liquid state, into water, completely filling the body of the force field. Wind can’t blow if there’s nowhere to blow to—
He heard a screech of frustration, much dulled by the weight of the water. Okay, let’s see what you’ve got next—
Terrible actinic light erupted inside Kit, blinding him and stabbing him with pain. It was plasma, burning the water in the middle of the dome, combusting it away to hydrogen and oxygen. Gas started to fill the upper part of the dome, and Kit could feel Penn starting to pressurize it, meaning to break the force field and push Kit’s water form out past its boundaries to make it forfeit.
Nope, Kit thought, no way, and shifted elements again, back to earth this time in the form of the extraordinarily energy-resistant green metal that the Martians had used. It flowed gleaming green in the space and solidified into the shape of one of the Martians’ giant scorpion-pets, a heavily-clawed and armed sathak.
Instantly fire flowed around him, but the sathak-constructs that Kit was mimicking were impervious to that. It’s so perfect, Kit thought. He wants to go big and flashy. He thinks water and earth are weak because they’re not violent and showy—
Kit, Nita yelled at him, what the hell are you doing?!
Who was it who said he needed some slapping down? Kit said. The temperature of the fire was increasing, but he could resist it for the moment.
Not like this!!
Are you kidding? Just like this! This is the first time he’s fully engaged with anything since we’ve met. He’s always held something back so he can concentrate on playing Most Alpha Guy On The Block. Not now, though!
Then Kit realized he’d better start paying attention again, as Penn had switched tactics and was now blasting his metal scorpion with pure oxygen and sulfide gases. Between them Kit was being simultaneously bathed in acid and rusted away in huge unnerving flakes. Okay, not good, Kit thought, what’s a good response—?
You shouldn’t be doing this! Nita was shouting at him. You’re enjoying it way too much!
I absolutely am enjoying it. Incredibly. And you would be too if you’d heard the kind of things he was saying about you. In fact you’d be helping!
She didn’t answer, just stood there fuming. Fuming, Kit thought, there’s a good idea. Let’s get volatile. Sodium? Naah, too quiet.
Magnesium—
Kit’s scorpion slumped into a dusty pile of silvery metal grains. The acids and the pure oxygen hit it and its surface began instantly to bubble. Kit felt the instant shock of alarm go through Penn as he tried to change into something less reactive, but too late, the magnesium ignited—
The explosion that followed was tremendous and deafening, even inside the force field. For a moment things were quiet: then came a scream of rage, followed by the force field being filled entirely by a ravening ball of compressed plasma, pure star-core.
Kit screamed with the burn of it. But he still had an answer as his magnesium atoms started to burn away. Just enough left, and don’t forget the gravity damper—
A second later the inside of the force field was completely coated with the thinnest imaginable skin of collapsed matter, so dense and dead black it could hardly be seen. Because there’s more than one kind of star-core, little boy!
Inside the shell Kit could hear Penn raging and screaming in plasma form, but there was nothing he could do: he was trapped. Very slowly Kit began to collapse the skin of hyperdense matter around him, and inside it the plasma started to burn lower under the increased pressure. Penn was choking as Kit slowly put his fire out.