Unicorn Point by Piers Anthony Page A

into an impossible word.
    Of course the watching Citizens would be sure that this was a pre-arranged game—and they would be correct. Blue and Sheen had played exactly as they had agreed to play, before he left the suite. They were playing “long-distance” to ensure that the Citizens could tap into the game.   The crossword grid was eighty-one squares: nine on a side.   Blue had the first move, and represented the horizontal, so he wrote in the word ASTERISKS across the top.   Sheen started with the first S and filled in SNOW, verti cally, setting a solid end-block below.   Blue pondered, then put in VOID, the 0 overlapping hers.   He had to build on her word, because he was allowed no vertical words himself. Thus it was truly interactive.   She countered with VOICES, extending down from his V.   The words seemed to come naturally, but they were also sug gestive. What message would a cryptography expert see in them? How could a child of four interpret such a sequence?   What would he be trying to tell her, that was so important for her to know? Surely there were some very nice headaches being sown here!
    He took off from her 0 and made OWED.
    She formed KING descending from his K in ASTERISKS.
    He filled in FUN, to her new N.
    She made FORMS descending from his F.
    He made MORE crossing her R.
    She called out a pre-existing word by marking in a + above it: I. E. The game was getting tight.
    He filled in NO below the ER in ASTERISKS.
    U
    E
    AS     T     E     R     I
    +N     +     N     0     +
    V0     I     D     +     F
    0w     E     D     +     0
    I+     +     M     0     R
    c                     M
    E                     S
    S                     +
    +                    
    Sheen was abruptly left with an impossible word: the RO did not count against her, because he had formed it complete, giving her no chance to improve on it. But how could she make anything legitimate from the vertical letters ENDDM?   “End DM,” she said, appearing on the screen, behind the grid, so that the letters crossed her face.  
    “What does DM stand for?”
    “Dumb Machine.”
    Blue laughed. “Sorry, I don’t know any dumb machines, certainly not you. You lose.”
    She sighed. “I think the game was fixed.”
    “You have a suspicious inanimate mind.”
    “What is the penalty?”
    “You have to ask, woman? The usual, of course.”
    “Oh, no sir, not the usual!” she protested with mock affright. They had played this charade before, and always enjoyed it.
    “The usual,” he repeated grimly. “Get your torso over here.”
    “There? In public?” she asked, appalled.  
    “The very best place. What good is a victory if not publicly savored?”
    “You are a monster, sir.”
    “To be sure. Do not keep me waiting, or it will go hard with you, serf.”
    “I hear and obey with alacrity, sir,” she said, fading.
    Blue touched the screen again.
    WHAT IS YOUR WILL, CITIZEN BLUE?
    ‘ ‘This game was but a prelude to another. Reserve a jelly vat for my use.”
    DONE, CITIZEN BLUE.
    “Audience is permitted for this game.”
    VERIFY: AUDIENCE PERMITTED? That was as close as the Game Machine ever came to astonishment.  
    “Yes.” Normally Citizens conducted their affairs with paranoid privacy unless they had reason to chastise a serf in public; Blue’s wife was a serf, but he was not given to doing that to her. His permission for an audience was of course a requirement for one; serfs would be rounded up for the event.   Actually this would be no punishment for the serfs; Blue knew himself to be by far the most popular Citizen of Proton, because of his steadfast efforts to mitigate the lot of serfs and his open marriage to a machine. Every group supported him, except the Contrary Citizens. That one exception, of course, more than counterbalanced the rest; had he not been set up with the