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.
“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.”
The Hectare stepped into the EARTH box, hefted its marker on a tentacle, and flipped it into Block One. It lifted its left foot-tentacle-tread, and hopped lumberingly into the box. It extended the tentacle to pick up the marker. Then it hopped back to EARTH, not turning; to it, any direction was forward.
Nepe quickly saw that the creature had unerring aim, but was relatively clumsy on the hopping. She, in contrast, might miss her throw but never her hop. It seemed to be an even game, so far.
The Hectare proceeded smoothly through Block Five, then lost coordination as it tried to put down both treads on the way to Block Six. It had gotten balanced for one, and the attempt to put down two, then return to one was too much; it recovered balance, but one tread nudged over a line.
The Hectare left the marker, stepped out of the diagram, and waited for Nepe to resume her turn. She had not challenged the error; it had acted on its own. She had to respect the creature for being a fair player. Lysander had said that honor was a BEM specialty; evidently it was.
She went quickly through the opening squares, and concentrated intently as she reached the Nine. This time her marker landed in the center. She hopped to it, picked it up, and returned to EARTH.
“This is just the first and easiest course,” she said. “Now I must toss my marker into HEAVEN, go there, and use it as the base to play the squares in reverse order.”
She tossed her marker, having less trouble with the larger square. Then she hopped to it. When she was in HEAVEN, she picked up her marker and tossed it into Block Nine. She continued to play in that direction.