“I won’t play your game,” I said.
“In that case, you lose by forfeit,” it replied, shoulder muscles beginning to tighten.
“Hold on,” I said, raising my hand. “Give me a minute or two to recover and I’ll probably feel differently:”
It settled back and said, “Okay. That would make it more official. Take five. Let me know when you’re ready.”
I climbed to my feet and began swinging my arms and stretching. While I was about it, I surveyed the area quickly. We occupied a sandy arroyo, punctuated here and there with orange, gray, and blue rocks. The stony wall whose ledge the sphinx occupied rose steeply before me to a height of perhaps twenty-five feet; another wall of the same height lay at about that distance to my rear. The wash rose steeply to my right, ran off in a more level fashion to my left. A few spiky green shrubs inhabited rifts and crevices. The hour seemed verging upon dusk. The sky was a weak yellow with no sun in sight. I heard a distant wind but did not feel it. The place was cool but not chill.
I spotted a rock the size of a small dumbbell on the ground nearby. Two ambling paces-as I continued swinging my arms and stretching-and it lay beside my right foot.
The sphinx cleared its throat. “Are you ready?” it asked.
“No,” I said. “But I’m sure that won’t stop you.”
“You’re right.”
I felt an uncontrollable desire to yawn and did so.
“You seem to lack something of the proper spirit,” it observed. “But here it is: I rise in flame from the earth. The wind assails me and waters lash me. Soon I will oversee all things.”
I waited. Perhaps a minute passed.
“Well?” the sphinx finally said.
“Well what?”
“Have you the answer?”
“To what?”
“The riddle, of course!”
“I was waiting. There was no question, only a series of statements. I can’t answer a question if I don’t know what it is.”
“It’s a time-honored format. The interrogative is implied by the context. Obviously, the question is, ‘What am I?”’
“It could just as easily be, ‘Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?’ But okay. What is it? The phoenix, of course, nested upon the earth; rising in flames above it, passing through the air, the clouds, to a great height-“
“Wrong.”
It smiled and began to slit.
“Hold on,” I said. “It is not wrong. It fits. It may not be the answer you want, but it is an answer that meets the requirements.”
It shook its head.
“I am the final authority on these answers. I do the defining.”
“Then you cheat.”
“I do not!”
“I drink off half the contents of a flask. Does that make it half full or half empty?”
“Either. Both.”
“Exactly. Same thing. If more than one answer fits, you have to buy them all. It’s like waves and particles.”
“I don’t like that approach,” it stated. “It would open all sorts of doors to ambiguity. It could spoil the riddling business.”
“Not my fault,” I said, clenching and unclenching my hands.
“But you do raise an interesting point.”
I nodded vigorously.
“But there should only be one correct answer.”
I shrugged.
“We inhabit a less than ideal world,” I suggested.
“Hm.”
“We could just call it a tie,” I offered. “Nobody wins, nobody loses.”
“I find that esthetically displeasing.”
“It works okay in lots of other games.”
“Also, I’ve grown a bit hungry.”
“The truth surfaces.”
“But I am not unfair. I serve the truth, in my fashion. Your mention of a tie raises the possibility of a solution.”
“Good. I’m glad you see things-‘
“That being a tie breaker. Ask me your riddle.”
“This is silly,” I said. “I don’t have any riddles.”
“Then you’d better come up with one fast. Because it’s the only way out of our deadlock-that, or I judge you the loser.”
I swung my arms and did a few deep kneebends. My body felt as if it were afire. It also felt stronger.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Just a second.”
What the hell . . .
“What’s green and red and goes round and round and round?”