“I think you might have overdone the kicking,” Schmidt said, handing Harry his refilled water bottle.
“You’re not the one whose kidneys were mashed into paté in the first round,” Harry said. “I was just giving him what he gave me. He was still breathing at the end of the round. He’s fine. And now the contest is closer, which is what you wanted.” He drank.
A door opened on the side of the gymnasium and a forklift-like contraption drove in, carrying what appeared to be a large kiddie pool full of water. The pool was set down near Harry; the forklift then retreated, to reappear a minute later with another pool, which it set down near Harry’s Korban competitor.
Harry looked over at Schmidt, who shrugged. “For the water combat round?” He ventured.
“What are we going to do, splash each other?” Harry asked.
“Look,” Schmidt said, and pointed. The Korban competitor, now somewhat recovered, had stepped into his pool. The judge, standing again in the middle of the gym, motioned at Harry to step into his pool. Harry looked at Schmidt, who shrugged again. “Don’t ask me,” he said.
Harry sighed and stepped into his own pool; the water, very warm, came up to his mid-thigh. Harry fought back the temptation to sit down in it and have a nice soak. He looked over again to Schmidt. “Now what do I do?” he asked.
Schmidt didn’t respond. Harry waved his hand in front of Schmidt. “Hart. Hello?” he said.
Schmidt looked over to Harry. “You’re going to want to turn around, Harry,” he said.
Harry turned around, and looked at his Korban competitor, who was suddenly about a foot taller than he had been, and growing.
What the hell? Harry thought. And then he saw it. The level of the water in the Korban’s pool was almost slowly falling; as it did, the scales and plates on the Korban were shifting, sliding against each other and separating out. Harry watched as the scales on the Korban’s midsection appeared to stretch apart and the join, as the plates that used to be underneath locked into place with the plates that used to be above, expanded by the water flooding into the Korban’s body from the pool. Harry eyes shifted from the Korban’s midsection to its hands, where its digits were expanding by rotating the overlapping scales, locking them together into a previously unknown dance of Fibonacci sequences.
Harry’s mind thought of several things at once.
First, he marveled at the absolutely stunning physiology of the Korbans on display here; the scales and plates covering their bodies were not simply integumentary but had to be structural as well, holding the shape of the Korban body in both states; Harry doubted there was an internal skeleton, at least as it was understood in a human body, and the earlier puffing and expanding suggested that the Korbans’ structural system used both air and water to do certain and specific things; this species was clearly the anatomical find of the decade.
Second, he shuddered at the thought of whatever evolutionary pressure had caused the Korban—or its distant amphiboid ancestors—to develop such a dramatic defense mechanism. Whatever was out there in the early seas of this planet, it had to have been pretty damn terrifying.
Third, as the Korban forced water into its body, growing to a size now a square of the size and some terrifying cube of the mass of Harry’s own dimensions, he realized he was about to get his ass well and truly kicked.
Harry wheeled on Schmidt. “You can’t tell me you didn’t know about this,” he said.
“I swear to you, Harry,” Schmidt said. “This is new to me.”
“How can you miss something like this?” Harry said. “What the hell do you people do all day?”
“We’re diplomats, Harry, not xenobiologists,” Schmidt said. “Don’t you think I would have told you?”
The judge’s horn sounded. The towering Korban stepped out of his pool with a hammering thud.
“Oh, shit,” Harry said. He splashed as he tried to get out of his own pool.
“I have no advice for you,” Schmidt said.
“No kidding,” Harry said.
“Oh, God, here he comes,” Schmidt said, and then stumbled off the floor. Harry looked up just in time to see an immense fist of flesh, water and fluid dynamics pummel into his midsection and send him flying across the room. Some part of Harry’s brain remarked on the mass and acceleration required to lift him like that, even as another part of Harry’s brain remarked that at least a couple of ribs had just gone with that punch.
The crowd roared its approval.