The Game-Players of Titan (24 page)

Was it a bluff? Pete Garden turned toward Joe Schilling, and now Bill Calumine leaned over to confer. The others of the group, too, bent closer, murmuring.

Joe Schilling said, “I’d call it.”

Up and down the table the members of Pretty Blue Fox hesitantly voted. The vote ran in favor of calling the move as a bluff. But it was close.

“Bluff,” Joe Schilling stated, aloud.

The vug’s card at once flipped over. It was a nine.

“It’s fair,” Mary Anne said in a leaden voice. “I’m sorry, but it is; no Psi-force that I could detect was exerted on it.”

The vug said, “Prepare your payment, please.” And again
it laughed, or seemed to laugh; Pete could not be certain which.

In any case it was a violent and quick defeat for Pretty Blue Fox. The vuggish side had won $70,000 from the bank for having landed on the square and an additional $70,000 from the group’s funds due to the inaccurate call of bluff. $140,000 in all. Dazed, Pete sat back, trying to keep himself composed, at least externally. For the sake of the others in the group he had to.

“Again,” the vug said, “I ask your party to concede.”

“No, no,” Joe Schilling said, as Jack Blau shakily counted out the group’s funds and passed them over.

“This is a calamity,” Bill Calumine stated quietly.

“Haven’t you survived such losses in The Game before?” Joe Schilling asked him, scowling.

“Have you?” Calumine retorted.

“Yes,” Schilling said.

“But not in the end,” Calumine said. “In the end, Schilling, you didn’t survive; in the end you were defeated. Exactly as you’re losing for us, now, here at this table.”

Schilling said nothing. But his face was pale.

“Let’s continue,” Pete said.

Calumine said bitterly, “It was your idea to bring this jinx here; we never would have had this bad luck without him. As spinner—”

“But you’re not our spinner any longer,” Mrs. Angst spoke up in a low voice.

“Play,” Stuart Marks snapped.

Another card was drawn, passed unread to Dave Mutreaux; he sat with it face down before him and then, slowly, he moved their piece ahead eleven places. The square read:
Pet cat uncovers valuable old stamp album in attic. You win
$3,000.

The vug said, “Bluff.”

Dave Mutreaux, after a pause, turned over the card. It was an eleven; the vug had lost and therefore had to pay. It
was not a huge sum but it proved something to Pete that made him tremble. The vug could be wrong, too.

The phenothiazine-crippling was working effectively.

The group had a chance.

Now the vug drew a card, examined it, and its piece moved ahead nine spaces.
Error in old tax return. Assessed by Federal Government for
$80,000.

The vug shuddered convulsively. And a faint, barely audible moan seemed to escape from it.

This, Pete knew at once, could be a bluff. If it was, and they did not call it, the vug—instead of losing that sum—collected it. All it had to do was turn over its card, show that it had not drawn a nine.

The vote of Pretty Blue Fox, member by member, was taken.

It was in favor of not calling the move as a bluff.

“We decline to call,” Joe Schilling stated.

Reluctantly, with agonized slowness, the vug paid from its pile of money $80,000 to the bank. It had not been a bluff, and Pete gasped with relief. The vug had now lost back over half of what it had won on its great previous move. It was in no sense whatsoever an infallible player.

And, like Pretty Blue Fox, the vug could not conceal its dismay at a major setback. It was not human, but it was alive and it had goals and desires and anxieties. It was mortal.

Pete felt sorry for it.

“You’re wasting your affect,” the vug said tartly to him, “if you pity me. I still hold the edge over you, Terran.”

“For now,” Pete agreed. “But you’re involved in a declining process. The process of losing.”

Pretty Blue Fox drew another card, which, as before, was passed to Dave Mutreaux. He sat, this time, for an interval that seemed forever.

“Call it!” Bill Calumine blurted, at last.

Mutreaux murmured, “Three.”

The Terran piece was moved by Joe Schilling. And Pete
read:
Mud slide endangers house foundations. Fee to construction firm:
$14,000.

The vug did not stir. And then, suddenly, it stated, “I—do not call.”

Dave Mutreaux glanced at Pete. He reached out and turned over the card. It was not a three. It was a four.

The group had won—not lost—$14,000. The vug had failed to call the bluff.

“Astonishing,” the vug said, presently, “that such a handicapping of your ability would actually enable you to win. That you could profit by it.” It savagely drew a card, then shoved its piece ahead seven squares.
Postman injured on your front walk. Protracted lawsuit settled out of court for the sum of
$300,000.

Good god in heaven, Pete thought. It was a sum so staggering that The Game certainly hinged on it. He scrutinized the vug, as everyone else in Pretty Blue Fox was doing, trying to discover some indication. Was it bluffing or was it not?

If we had one single telepath, he thought bitterly. If only—

But they could never have had Patricia, and Hawthorne was dead. And, had they possessed a telepath, the vug authority would undoubtedly have summoned up some system of neutralizing it, just as they had neutralized its telepathic factor; that was obvious. Both sides had played The Game too long to be snared as simply as that; both were prepared.

If we lose, Pete said to himself, I will kill myself before I let myself fall into the hands of the Titanians. He reached into his pocket, wondering what he had there. Only a couple of methamphetamines, perhaps left over from his
luck-binge.
How long ago had it been? One day? Two? It seemed like months ago, now. Another world away.

Methamphetamine hydrochloride.

On his binge it had made him temporarily into an involuntary telepath; a meager one, but to a decisive degree.
Methamphetamine was a thalamic stimulator; its effect was precisely the opposite from that of the phenothiazines.

He thought,
Yes!

Without water he managed—gagging—to gulp down the two small pink methamphetamine tablets.

“Wait,” he said hoarsely to the group. “Listen; I want to make the decision on this play. Wait!” They would wait at least ten minutes, he knew, for the methamphetamine to take effect.

The vug said, “There is cheating on your side. One member of your group has ingested drug-stimulants.”

At once, Joe Schilling said, “You previously accepted the phenothiazine class; in principle you accepted the use of medication in this Game.”

“But I am not prepared to deal with a telepathic faculty emanating from your side,” the vug protested. “I scanned your group initially and saw none in evidence. And no plan to obtain such a faculty.”

Joe Schilling said, “That appears to have been an acute error on your part.” He turned to watch Pete; all the members of Pretty Blue Fox were watching Pete now. “Well?” Joe asked him, tensely.

Pete Garden sat waiting, fists clenched, for the drug to take effect.

Five minutes passed. No one spoke. The only sound was Joe Schilling drawing on his cigar.

“Pete,” Bill Calumine said abruptly, “we can’t wait any longer. We can’t stand the strain.”

“That’s true,” Joe Schilling said. His face was wet and florid, shiny with perspiration; now, his cigar had gone out, too. “Make your decision. Even if it’s the wrong one.”

Mary Anne said, “Pete! The vug is attempting to shift the value of its card!”

“Then it was a bluff,” Pete said, instantly. It had to be, or the vug would have left the value strictly alone. To the vug he said,
“We call your bluff.”
The vug did not stir. And then, at last, it turned over the card.

The card was a six.

It had been a bluff.

Pete said, “It gave itself away. And,” he was shaking wildly, “the amphetamines didn’t help me and the vug can tell that; it can read my mind, so I’m happy to say it aloud. It turned out to be a bluff on our part, on my part. I didn’t have enough of the amphetamines and there wasn’t any alcohol to speak of in my system. I was not successfully developing a telepathic faculty in my system; I wouldn’t have been able to call it. But I had no way of knowing that.”

The vug, palpitating and a dark slate color, now, bill by bill paid over the sum of $300,000 to Pretty Blue Fox.

The group was extremely close to winning The Game. They knew it and the vug opposing them knew it. It did not have to be said.

Joe Schilling murmured, “If it hadn’t lost its nerve—” With trembling fingers he managed to relight his cigar. “It would at least have had a fifty-fifty chance. First it got greedy and then it got scared.” He smiled at the members of the group on both sides of him. “A bad combination, in Bluff.” His voice was low, intense. “It was the combination in me, many years ago, that helped wipe me out. In my final play against Bindman Lucky Luckman.”

The vug said, “It seems to me that I have, for all intents and purposes, lost this Game against you Terrans.”

“You don’t intend to continue?” Joe Schilling demanded, removing his cigar from his lips and scrutinizing the vug; he had himself completely under control. His face was hard.

To him, the vug said, “Yes, I intend to continue.”

Everything burst in Pete Garden’s face; the board dissolved and he felt dreadful pain and at the same time he knew what had happened. The vug had given up, and in its agony it intended to destroy them along with it. It was continuing—but
in another dimension. Another context entirely.

And they were here with it, on Titan. On its world, not their own.

Their luck had been bad in that respect.

Decisively so.

Mary Anne’s voice reached him, coolly and placidly. “It’s attempting to manipulate reality, Pete. Using the faculty by which it brought us to Titan. Shall I do what I can?”

“Yes,” he agreed. He could not see her; he lay in darkness, in a darkened pool which was not the presence of matter around him but its absence. Where are the others? he wondered. Scattered, everywhere. Perhaps over millions of miles of vacant, meaningless space. And—over millennia.

There was silence.

“Mary,” he said aloud.

No answer.

“Mary!” he shouted in desperation, scratching at the darkness. “Are you gone, too?” He listened. There was no response.

And then he heard something, or rather felt it. In the darkness, some living entity was probing in his direction. Some sensory extension of it, a device feeling its way; it was aware of him. Curious about him in a dim, limited, but shrewd, way.

Something even older than the vug against which they had played.

He thought, It’s something that lives here between the worlds. Between the layers of reality which make up our experience, ours and the vugs’. Get away from me, he thought. He tried to scramble, to move rapidly or at least repel it.

The creature, interested even more now, came closer.

“Joe Schilling,” he called. “Help me!”

“I
am
Joe Schilling,” the creature said. And it made its way toward him urgently, now, unwinding and extending itself greedily. “Greed and fear,” it said. “A bad combination.”

“The hell you’re Joe Schilling,” he said in terror; he slapped at it, twisting, trying to roll away.

“But greed alone,” the thing continued, “is not so bad; it’s the prime motivating pressure of the self-system. Psychologically speaking.”

Pete Garden shut his eyes. “God in heaven,” he said. It was Joe Schilling. What had the vugs done to him?

What had he and Joe become, out here in the darkness?

Or had the vugs done this? Was it, instead, just showing them this?

He bent forward, found his foot, began feverishly to unlace his shoe; he took off the shoe and, reaching back, clouted the thing, Joe Schilling, as hard as he could with it.

“Hmmm,” the thing said. “I’ll have to mull this over.” And it withdrew.

Panting, he waited for it to return.

He knew that it would.

Joe Schilling, floundering in the immense vacuity, rolled, seemed to fall, caught himself, choked on the smoke of his cigar and struggled to breathe. “Pete!” he said loudly. He listened. There was no direction, no up or down. No here. No sense of what was him and not him. No division into the I and the not-I.

Silence.

“Pete Garden,” he said again, and this time he sensed something, sensed it but did not actually hear it. “Is that you?” he demanded.

“Yes, it’s me,” the answer came. And it was Pete.

Yet, it was not.

“What’s going on?” Joe said. “What’s the damn thing doing to us? It’s cheating away a mile a minute, isn’t it? But we’ll get back to Earth; I have faith we’ll find our way back. After all, we won The Game, didn’t we? And we were positive we weren’t going to be able to do that.” Again he listened.

Pete said, “Come closer.”

“No,” Schilling said. “For some darn reason I—don’t trust you. Anyhow, how can I come closer? I’m just rolling around here, right? You, too?”

“Come closer,” the voice repeated, monotonously.

No, Joe Schilling said to himself.

He did not trust the voice; he felt frightened. “Get away,” he said and, paralyzed, listened. It had not gone away.

In the darkness, Freya Gaines thought, It’s betrayed us; we won and got nothing. That bastard organism—we never should have trusted it or put any faith in Pete’s idea of playing it.

I hate him, she said to herself. It’s his and Joe’s fault.

I’d kill them, both of them, she thought, furiously. I’d crunch them to death. She reached out, groping with both hands in the darkness. I’d kill anyone, right now.

I want to kill!

Mary Anne McClain said to Pete, “Listen, Pete; it’s deprived us of all our modes of apprehending reality. It’s
us
that it’s
changed. I’m sure of it. Can you hear me?” She cocked her head, strained to hear.

There was nothing. No answer.

It’s atomized us, she thought. As if we’re each of us in an extreme psychosis, isolated from everyone else and every familiar attribute in our method of perceiving time and space. This is frightened, hating isolation, she realized. It must be that. What else can it be?