They went to the prescribed chamber, following the line of the floor. Citizen Purple was there, glowering at Agape. “See—she doesn’t even try to conceal it any more!” Purple exclaimed. “She’s got the unicorn button!”
“Aye,” Agape said.
“Hearing as to the validity of the qualification of Fleta for the Tourney is now in progress,” the voice of the Game Computer said. “Challenger will present specifics.”
“It was supposed to be Agape of Moeba,” Purple said. “I want to verify the record of her qualification. What name is it under?”
“Record of subject’s first qualification game displayed,” the Game Computer said. A screen on the wall lighted. On it was printed:
PLAYER ONE: SHOCK OF KOLO
PLAYER TWO: FLETA OF UNI
The Citizen gaped. “She registered as a unicorn?”
“Transcript of dialogue at console,” the Game Computer said. On the screen appeared:
“HI! I’M SHOCK. MY HAIR, YOU KNOW.”
“HI. I’M FLETA.”
“WELCOME TO THE LEFTOVER LADDER. I’M SECOND FROM THE BOTTOM. I LOVE THE GAME, BUT I’M NO GOOD AT IT, SO I’M EASY TO BEAT.”
“LADDER?”
“OH, YOU NEW HERE? FROM ANOTHER WORLD?”
“NEW. FROM ANOTHER WORLD.”
“SAY, THAT’S GREAT! I’M A KOLOFORM MYSELF. WELL, I MEAN MY FOLKS CAME FROM KOLO, SO IT’S MY BLOOD. I WAS BORN HERE, BUT I CAN ONLY STAY TILL I’M TWENTY-ONE, NEXT YEAR, YOU KNOW. THEN I’M EITHER A SERF, OR I HAVE TO GO TO KOLO. WHAT’RE YOU?”
“A UNICORN.”
So that was it! Fleta had indeed registered as Fleta the Unicorn. Mach knew what had happened: she had automatically given her correct identity when talking with the other player, and the Game Computer had picked that up and made it official. She had proceeded to qualify for the Tourney under that identity. She was legitimately entered.
Citizen Purple hesitated, and Mach was sure he was going to demand to see the tapes of their chamber. But evidently the man changed his mind, knowing that they were on to his ploy and that nothing in those tapes would prove she was not Fleta. Certainly the tapes from before the exchange would not; then she had indeed been Fleta. The Citizen had challenged her as being an impostor for Agape, assuming that she would have been registered as Agape or under a phony name. Had he been able to requisition the records before making the formal challenge, he would have discovered his error, but all qualification records were sealed during a Tourney, to prevent cheating.
Citizen Purple strode out without further comment. He had lost—again. But Mach knew that they would have to maintain the pretense that she was Fleta until she was safely out of the Tourney and offplanet, lest she be disqualified for not being Fleta the Unicorn. The message of the self-willed machines had been timely!
That afternoon her next match came up. This was for Round Five, relatively rarefied territory for the Tourney. Fleta had done amazingly well, turning out to be a natural games-creature; Agape would not be able to match that level.
But he had, in the guise of a few private caresses, advised her: she could afford to lose, now, but she had to play in the manner of Fleta. A win in the manner of Agape would lead to the pouncing of the Citizens, and disqualification would put her into their hands. A loss in the manner of Fleta would enable her to be deported to Moeba safely. For the Tourney she was Fleta, but legally she remained Agape.
Mach could not join her at the console, of course. He watched her from their chamber, on the screen, as he had when Fleta played.
Her opponent was someone he knew: a man in his twenties who was a veteran player. His name was Sharp, and he was especially skilled at physical combat with sharp things: swords, knives, needles. He was not as good at intellectual things, and that was fortunate, because if Agape had the numbers she would put it into the mental category. If she had the letters, she would go for Machine-Assisted, avoiding the chance of direct physical competition. That was the strategy they thought Fleta would go for, avoiding animals because others would be expecting her to go for animals.
Evidently she did get the numbers, because the first selection on the grid was 2B, Tool-Assisted Mental.
The second grid was 5G, Separate and Generaclass="underline" obviously she had had the numbers again, and chose to keep the two of them apart, as an uncertain unicorn would. This category contained such things as origami (paper-folding), crosswords, cryptograms and other noninteractive paper games. The assisting tools were pencil or paper or both, nominally; actually it was all done on the console screen.
The final determination was Cryptogram: the interpretation of a set of symbols that represented a quotation in English. Mach didn’t like this; Agape could handle it, but Fleta would have real trouble. Unicorns had no literary education to draw upon, and indeed, it was sheer luck that Fleta was even literate; xnost did not go to that extreme when adapting to the human form. The danger was that Agape would play too well, and reveal her nonunicorn nature.
RULES: the screen said, for the contestants and for the private viewers, such as Mach. EACH NUMBER STANDS FOR ONE LETTER OF THE ALPHABET. SPACING AND PUNCTUATION ARE NORMAL. TO PLACE LETTERS, TOUCH NUMBER AND LETTER SIMULTANEOUSLY; TO MAKE CORRECTION, TOUCH AGAIN. A FULL LIST OF QUOTATION AUTHORS IS AVAILABLE, OR AN AUTHOR MAY BE REQUESTED BY DESCRIPTION. CONTESTANTS WILL WORK INDEPENDENTLY ON IDENTICAL QUOTATIONS. WINNER IS FIRST TO COMPLETE QUOTATION AND AUTHOR CORRECTLY. PLAY COMMENCES WHEN BOTH PLAYERS SIGNIFY READINESS BY TOUCHING “READY” SQUARE.
In a moment, the screens appeared on Mach’s screen: Agape’s on the left. Sharp’s on the right. The players would not know who was doing better, but the watchers could see it plainly. There was a row of letters across the top, and other directives at the bottom. Each screen looked like this:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
123456!-4758-975830’94
(11)(12)-32(13)26(14)-(15)4-4729-758(16):
(18)2332(15)1-(18)5(16)09(18)5(16)47
LETTERS NUMBERED FROM 1 TO (18) AUTHORS: LIST DESCRIPTION
Mach was experienced as a gamesman, and would have been happy to tackle this challenge. He would have started by touching AUTHORS and DESCRIPTION and requesting a selection of authors with first names of seven letters and last names of ten; that could have given him an immediate break, though the computer tried to foil that approach by having a number of authors for every such combination, sometimes too many to make it feasible. But neither contestant tried that.
Sharp knew some of the basics. He counted, and discovered that there were eight 7’s, more than any other letter. He knew that E was the most common letter used in English, so he filled in E’s above the 7’s. That gave him a quick start, but Mach wasn’t sure; in short quotations like this, distribution could be atypical, and Mach noticed that five of those 7’s were preceded by 4’s. Why were so many locked together like that? It was certainly possible, but not usual.
Agape, trying to think like a unicorn, was having more trouble. She did not count letters, she just pondered the whole, biting her lip. (He assumed that last detail; she was not shown on the screen.)
Sharp, buoyed by his success with E, pondered the doubled 12’s near the end. He tried MESS for the last word, but that gave him -SS- for the third one from the end, and he didn’t like that. So he changed the last to TELL, and that gave him -LL- for the other. He struggled with that, and was in the process of coming to the conclusion that he could not make it with that E; but he obviously did not want to give it up.