Then, just as she was about to reach the top of the facet so that she could step onto a more promising new channel above, Troubot flexed a metal arm and lofted a water bomb. His aim was good, of course; the bomb landed just above her, and the water coursed down across her feet. Friction diminished abruptly. She screamed as she lost her footing and slid down to the base of the mountain, in exactly the fashion the audi ence had hoped for.
Troubot did not wait to watch; he was not a living human male and would have had no gratification from the sight. He had merely taken the opportunity to test the efficacy of the 3 water so that he could estimate the coefficient of friction be fore and after. He believed she was on the wrong path, but wasn’t sure, so this would set her back while he tried an alternate route himself.
He found a facet that started steep, but curved to diminish the angle above. He started up this one, his wheels barely holding at the base. Yes, this seemed more promising; above the facet was a channel that curved upward around the moun tain. He rolled up this.
Splat! A water bomb struck his body. It burst, and the water cascaded down around his wheels. Traction was gone; he slipped helplessly, and in a moment was at the bottom. The mountain had a soft curtain or buffer at the base, to absorb the shock of landings, so that players would not be hurt by their involuntary slides. But he had lost his progress. Tsetse had retaliated.
Troubot realized that neither of them would be able to make progress if things continued like this; one could always re main at the base and bring down the other. But they were hardly likely to cooperate. So he rolled around the mountain, looking for a third route of ascent; he would have to let the woman try her own at the same time. If she got ahead of him, near the top, he would throw another bomb and stop her, while she would be unable to carry bombs aloft and still use her hands effectively for climbing.
She did not follow; evidently she was satisfied to return to her first path and follow it farther up, while he tried his new one. He was certainly ready for that, because he believed the odds were against either of the others being the right one. He found a new route, and moved up it. This was the best one yet; it slanted slightly to the side, but took him two thirds of the way up toward the peak. If it went all the way—
It did not, exactly. It abruptly became vertical, and he could not ascend farther. Would he have to go all the way back down, while Tsetse continued on up? No, he saw a gentle ledge to the right that sloped toward her original route. He maneuvered very carefully, and managed to get fairly on it. He rounded the curve of the mountain—and there was Tsetse coming up toward him.
He picked up a bomb from his hopper, but hesitated. If they met on this path, there was evidently no future in it for either of them. What was the point in washing her off it? Better to leave her here, where she could go nowhere. But she seemed to have a similar notion. She clambered to the side, and down the mountain. Her feet skidded, but it didn’t matter; she was going down anyway. Before he could do it himself, she was down and around, going for the first path he had tried.
He pondered. He could go down and around himself, and loft a bomb at her, stopping her progress. But she would do it back to him the moment he tried. Meanwhile, he was al ready well up on the mountain, now; if he could find a way to intercept that other path, and get on it ahead of her, he could win.
He tried, but the mountain was implacable: he could not get to the other path. He could only see her head come into sight as she reached the point he had before she bombed him. She seemed on the way to victory.
But he didn’t have to be at ground level to stop her! He threw his bomb in a high arc over the curve of the mountain. It came down neatly on her head. “Oh!” she sputtered, but she did not lose her footing. His aim had been good, but she had moved, so that the bomb had hit her instead of the path before her.
He lofted another. This time she lifted her hand and caught it. It broke, but did not dislodge her. The water needed to strike her feet, or the path upslope, to be effective; her head or hand dissipated its effect too much. If he threw another, she might manage to catch it unbroken, and hurl it back at him. He decided to wait for her to resume her climb, so that he could score on the path while her hands were occupied in climbing. But she waited, watching him. She might not be the smartest of women, but she was canny enough for this! It was a standoff. But as he waited, another thought came to him. The first path had not gone anywhere, and neither had the third. It seemed likely that none of the paths that started at the base went all the way up. More likely, the final path would begin somewhere farther up. The player who figured this out first, and got to it, should be the winner.
But where could such a path be? He had been balked by the vertical tilt of the third path, and managed to cross to this one. The mountain was not large enough for many more sites.
He retraced his route. This time he saw it: another slight ledge piking up on the other side of the vertical path. It looked as if it did not go anywhere—but that could be deceptive. He moved slowly and carefully, and managed to cross to that other ledge. Then he heard something: there was Tsetse, well up toward the peak, on the other side; all he saw was her right shoulder. Her path did go all the way up, and he had wasted time trying for this other one. But he still had a chance. He brought out another water bomb. He threw it up, not at Tsetse, but at the peak of the mountain itself. The bomb came down on the point and broke; its water flowed down mostly on Tsetse’s side. She made an exclamation of horror; then she slid down. But the slope immediately below her was not steep, and the amount of water had been slight; she managed to recover after only a meter or two.
Meanwhile, Troubot found that his new path did move on up. It was a better path than it seemed from below; the cur vature of the mountain tended to conceal it. He followed it up, and soon realized that it, too, reached the top. Tsetse was climbing again. Troubot threw another bomb, and rendered her path slippery again. She had to wait for it to clear before proceeding, and meanwhile he continued his ascent. She apparently had no bombs of her own. His deci sion to load up on them seemed to spell a critical advantage for him.
Then, as he was almost close enough to touch the peak and win, she moved. She did have a bomb; now it was looping toward him.
Its aim was good; it was going to splatter on the path just above him. He could not reach it in time. He did not try. Instead, he hurled a bomb of his own, not at Tsetse, but at the other bomb.
The two bombs met in air, and exploded. But his had been thrown later and harder, and its force carried the spray of water away from the path. Some water fell, but not enough to dislodge him. He paused to be sure the path was not too wet, then proceeded on up.
Tsetse, peering around the slope, saw this, and scrambled toward the peak herself. Troubot lobbed another bomb at her, and washed her back down to the lesser slope again. Before she could recover, he made it the rest of the way and clapped his metal arm on the top of the peak.
A gong sounded. He had won!
Tsetse, below, looked so forlorn that he knew he would have felt terrible remorse, had he been a living man of her species. But as it was, what he felt was more like joy.
13 - Clip
It was a long trek to the Ogre Demesnes, but Clip was glad for it, because it gave him time to think. He had to represent the Adept Stile against the ogres, and he was not at all sure his unicorns could win this siege. These days of travel with the Herd allowed him many hours to ponder strategies. In the evenings and nights the Herd grazed, sleeping afoot. Clip intended to do the same, but this evening he summoned his sister and niece for a conference in human form. “My mind be taut with doubt,” he confessed. “It be easy for others to say a ‘corn can beat an ogre, being faster, smarter and more versatile, but that be illusion. In single fair combat it be either’s win.”