Stile and Tulip got to work. The challenge was to fashion a chain of words linked alternately by synonyms and homonyms, converting “Flesh” to “Spirit” by readily definable stages. Both length and time counted; within five minutes, the shortest viable chain would win. Beyond that time limit, the first person to establish any viable chain of any length would win. So it behooved them each to take up most of that five minutes to seek the shortest possible chain. To settle on a given chain too quickly would be to invite the opponent to come up with a shorter one within the time limit and win; to take too long beyond the time limit invited loss to a longer but sooner-announced chain. The point of decision could be tricky.
Flesh, Stile thought. Synonyms would be Body, Meat, Fatten—there would be others, but these sufficed. If he explored every single avenue, he would not complete any one chain in time. Selectivity—there was the key to this challenge.
Now try Meat, as the best prospect for homonyms:
Meet as in proper. Meet as in a competitive event. Mete as in measure. Try the competition-event for synonyms: Contest, Race, Competition. Then Race, jumping to the homonym, meaning subspecies, and the synonym Color, and on to Hue—was this leading to Spirit? Not rapidly. Better try an alternate, and return to this if necessary. His first job was to establish a viable chain, any chain, within five minutes. That would be an automatic win if Tulip failed to find one.
Of course, if they both came up with the same chain, the first to announce it would win. So if he found a good one, he should announce it regardless of time. But he was not worried about that; he had pretty good judgment on word-chains.
He glanced covertly at Tulip. She was chewing on her lip, making little gestures with her left hand, as though shaping a slippery sequence. Was she making faster progress? He didn’t think so, as she really wasn’t that bright, but it was possible. Then she caught him looking, and made a suggestive motion with her hip. He had to turn his eyes away, lest she bring his thoughts right back to Flesh and cost him the Game. That was what she was trying to do, the flirt. Maybe that was how she had gotten this far.
Try Meet as in proper. Synonym Fit, homonym Fit as in the contour of clothing. Yes, then Suit, and its homonym Suit as in satisfy, or the synonym Please. Homonym Pleas, as in several requests. Synonym—was he returning to Fit, as in a fit plea for favor? If so, this was a dead-end, a waste of time, like a loop in the maze-puzzle he had fallen into in another Game with another woman. Too much time had passed; he couldn’t afford that! This simple game became confusingly tricky under the pressure of competition. No, no loop here; define it as a wish, as desire. And Desire as a homonym, meaning the urgency to possess, achieve, prevail—he certainly had that!—which was a possible synonym for team spirit—
Spirit! There it was! And jump to homonym Spirit as in Soul, and his chain was complete.
Unless that Desire link was faulty. Pleas—Desire—
Spirit. The Computer might reject that as inexact. Better to work out a tighter chain.
But four minutes were passed. Not enough time to figure out a new chain. Tulip looked as if she were on the verge of completing her own chain. Stile decided to go with this one. “Chain!” he announced.
“Damn!” Tulip muttered.
“Present,” the Computer said.
Stile presented it, trying to conceal his nervousness about the Desire connection. But the Computer did not challenge it; it was fairly liberal on the adaptations of language.
Still, Tulip had another minute to produce a shorter chain, or a better one of the same length. Stile waited nervously.
But she seemed to have given up. The time expired without her entry. Stile had won, more or less by default. “It would have been different in NAKED/PHYSICAL,” Tulip said tearfully. She had choked at the crisis-point in this Game, and now suffered the reaction.
“That’s why I avoided it,” Stile said, though he would have put it into some subcategory like foot-racing and probably beaten her anyway. She really hadn’t lost much; with her appearance, she should do well enough in the wider human galaxy. But it had the mild distaste of an unjustified victory.
The separations between Rounds were diminishing.
