The Player of Games (20 page)

Nobody
has ever come back from being so far behind! It was quite brilliant!' 'All the same,' Gurgeh said, suddenly feeling very tired, 'I don't want to be distracted. I have to concentrate. I have to rest.' 'Well,' Pequil said, looking crestfallen, 'I see your point, but I warn you; you're making a mistake. People will want to hear what you've got to say, and our press always gives the people what they want, no matter what the difficulties. They'll just make it up. You'd be better off saying something yourself.' Gurgeh shook his head, looked out at the traffic on the boulevard. 'If people want to lie about me that's a matter for their consciences. At least I don't have to talk to them. I really could not care less what they say.' Pequil looked at Gurgeh with an expression of astonishment, but said nothing. Flere-Imsaho made a chuckling noise over its constant hum.
Gurgeh talked it over with the ship. The
Limiting Factor
said that the game could probably have been won more elegantly, but what Gurgeh had done did represent one end of the spectrum of unlikely possibilities it had been going to sketch out the previous night. It congratulated him. He had played better than it had thought possible. It also asked him why he hadn't listened after it had told him it could see a way out. 'All I wanted to know was that there
was
a way out.' (Again the delay, the weight of time while his beamed words lanced beneath the matter-dimpled surface that was real space.) 'But I could have helped you,' said the ship. 'I thought it was a bad sign when you refused my aid. I began to think you had given up in your mind, if not on the board.' 'I didn't want help, ship.' He played with the Orbital bracelet, wondering absently if it portrayed any particular world, and if so, which. 'I wanted hope.' 'I see,' the ship said, eventually.
'I wouldn't accept it,' the drone said. 'You wouldn't accept what?' Gurgeh asked, looking up from a holo-displayed board. 'Za's invitation.' The tiny machine floated closer; it had discarded its bulky disguise now they were back inside the module. Gurgeh looked coldly at it. 'I didn't notice it was addressed to you too.' Shohobohaum Za had sent a message congratulating Gurgeh and inviting him out for an evening's entertainment. 'Well, it wasn't; but I'm supposed to monitor everything-' 'Are you really?' Gurgeh turned back to the holospread before him. 'Well you can stay here and monitor whatever you like while I go out on the town with Shohobohaum Za tonight.' 'You'll regret it,' the drone told him. 'You've been very sensible, staying in and not getting involved, but you'll suffer for it if you do start gallivanting.' ' "Gallivanting"?' Gurgeh stared at the drone, realising only then how difficult it was to look something up and down when it was just a few centimetres high. 'What are you, drone; my mother?' 'I'm just trying to be sensible about this,' the machine said, voice rising. 'You're in a strange society, you're not the most worldly-wise of people, and Za certainly isn't my idea of-' 'You opinionated box of junk!' Gurgeh said loudly, rising and switching off the holoscreen. The drone jumped in mid-air; it backed off hastily. 'Now, now, Jernau Gurgeh…' 'Don't you "Now, now" me, you patronising adding machine. If I want to take an evening off, I will. And quite frankly the thought of some human company for a change is looking more attractive all the time.' He jabbed a finger at the machine. '
Don't
read any more of my mail, and
don't
bother about escorting Za and me this evening.' He walked quickly past it, heading for his cabin. 'Now, I'm going to take a shower; why don't you go watch some birds?' The man left the module's lounge. The little drone hovered steadily in mid-air for a while. 'Oops,' it said to itself, eventually, then, with a shrug-like wobble, swooped away, fields vaguely rosy.
'Have some of this,' Za said. The car swept along the city streets beneath the erubescent skies of dusk. Gurgeh took the flask and drank. 'Not quite
grif
,' Za told him, 'but it does the job.' He took the flask back while Gurgeh coughed a little. 'Did you let that
grif
get to you at the ball?' 'No,' Gurgeh admitted. 'I bypassed it; wanted a clear head.' 'Aw
heck
,' Za said, looking downcast. 'You mean I could have had more?' He shrugged, brightened, tapped Gurgeh on the elbow. 'Hey; I never said; congratulations. On winning the game.' 'Thanks.' 'That showed them. Wow, did you give them a shock.' Za shook his head in admiration; his long brown hair swung across his loose tunic top like heavy smoke. 'I had you filed as a prime-time loser, J-G, but you're some kind of showman.' He winked one bright green eye at Gurgeh, and grinned. Gurgeh looked uncertainly at Za's beaming face for a moment, then burst out laughing. He took the flask from Za's hand and put it to his lips. 'To the showmen,' he said, and drank. 'Amen to that, my maestro.'
The Hole had been on the outskirts of the city once, but now it was just another part of one more urban district. The Hole was a set of vast artificial caverns burrowed out of the chalk centuries ago to store natural gas in; the gas had long since run out, the city ran on other forms of energy, and the set of huge, linked caves had been colonised, first by Groasnachek's poor, then (by a slow process of osmosis and displacement, as though - gas or human - nothing ever really changed) by its criminals and outlaws, and finally, though not completely, by its effectively ghettoised aliens and their supporting cast of locals. Gurgeh and Za's car drove into what had once been a massive above-ground gas-storage cylinder; it had become the housing for a pair of spiralling ramps taking cars and other vehicles down into and up out of the Hole. In the centre of the still mostly empty, ringingly echoing cylinder, a cluster of variously sized lifts slid up and down inside ramshackle frameworks of girders, tubing and beams. The outer and inner surfaces of the ancient gasometer sparkled slatily under rainbow lights and the flickeringly unreal, grotesquely oversize images of advertising holos. People milled about the surface level of the cavernous tower, and the air was full of shouting, screaming, haggling voices and the sound of labouring engines. Gurgeh watched the crowds and the stalls and stands slide by as the car dipped and started its long descent. A strange, half-sweet, half-acrid smell seeped through the car's conditioning, like a sweaty breath from the place. They quit the car in a long, low, crowded tunnel where the air was heavy with fumes and shouts. The gallery was choked with multifariously shaped and sized vehicles which rumbled and hissed and edged about amongst the swarmingly varied people like massive, clumsy animals wading in an insect sea. Za took Gurgeh by the hand as their car trundled towards the ascending ramp. They went bustling through the buffeting crowds of Azadians and other humanoids towards a dimily-glowing tunnel mouth. 'What d'you think so far?' Za shouted back to Gurgeh. 'Crowded, isn't it?' 'You should see it on a holiday!' Gurgeh looked round at the people. He felt ghostlike, invisible. Until now he'd been the centre of attention; a freak, stared and gawped and peered at, and kept entirely at arm's length. Now suddenly nobody gave a damn, hardly sparing him a second glance. They bumped into him, jostled him, shoved past him, brushed against him, all quite careless. And so varied, even in this sickly, sea-green tunnel light. So many different types of people mixed in with the Azadians he was becoming used to seeing; a few aliens that looked vaguely familiar from his memory of pan-human types, but mostly quite wildly different; he lost count of the variations in limbs, height, bulk, physiognomy and sensory apparatus he was confronted with during that short walk. They went down the warm tunnel and into a huge, brightly lit cavern, at least eighty metres tall and half as broad again; lengthwise, its cream-coloured walls stretched away in both directions for half a kilometre or more, ending in great side-lit arches leading to further galleries. Its flat floor was chock-a-block with shack-like buildings and tents, partitions and covered walkways, stalls and kiosks and small squares with dribbling fountains and gaily striped awnings. Lamps danced from wires strung on thin poles, and overhead brighter lights burned, high in the vaulted roof; a colour between ivory and pewter. Structures of stepped buildings and wall- or roof-hung gantries lined the sides of the gallery, and whole areas of grimy grey wall were punctured by the irregular holes of windows, balconies, terraces and doors. Lifts and pulleys creaked and rattled, taking people to higher levels, or lowering them to the bustling floor. 'This way,' Za said. They wove their way through the narrow streets of the gallery surface until they came to the far wall, climbed some broad but rickety wooden steps, and approached a heavy wooden door guarded by a metal portcullis and a pair of lumberingly large figures; one Azadian male and another whose species Gurgeh couldn't identify. Za waved and, without either guard appearing to do anything, the portcullis rose, the door swung ponderously open, and he and Za left the echoing cave behind for the relative quietness of a dim, wood-lined, heavily carpeted tunnel. The cavern light closed off behind them; a hazy, cerise glow came through an arched ceiling of wafer-thin plaster. The polished wooden walls looked thick, were char-dark, and felt warm. Muffled music came from ahead. Another door; a desk set into an alcove where two apices eyed them both sullenly, then consented to smile at Za, who passed over a small hide pouch to them. The door opened. He and Gurgeh went through to the light and music and noise beyond. It was a jumble of a space; impossible to decide whether it was one confusingly subdivided, chaotically split-levelled hall, or a profusion of smaller rooms and galleries all knocked into one. The place was packed, and loud with high-pitched atonal music. It could have been on fire, judging from the thick haze of smoke filling it, but the fumes smelled sweet, almost perfumed. Za guided Gurgeh through crowds to a wooden cupola raised a metre off a small covered walkway and looking out from the rear on to a sort of staggered stage beneath. The stage was surrounded by similar circular boxes as well as various stepped areas of seats and benches, all of which were crowded, mostly with Azadians. On the small, roughly circular stage below, some dwarfish alien - only vaguely pan-human - was wrestling, or perhaps copulating, with an Azadian female in a quivering tub full of gently steaming red mud, all seemingly held in a low-G field. The spectators shouted and clapped and threw drinks. 'Oh good,' Za said, sitting down. 'The fun's started.' 'Are they fucking or fighting?' Gurgeh said, leaning over the rail and peering down at the struggling, heaving bodies of the alien and the female. Za shrugged. 'Does it matter?' A waitress, an Azadian female wearing only a little cloth around her waist, took Za's drink order. The woman's puff-balled hair appeared to be on fire, surrounded by a flickering hologram of yellow-blue flames. Gurgeh turned away from the stage. The audience behind him yelled appreciatively as the woman threw the alien off and jumped on top of him, throwing him under the steaming mud. 'You come here often?' he asked Za. The tall male laughed loudly. 'No.' The great green eyes flashed. 'But I leave quite a lot.' 'This where you relax?' Za shook his head emphatically. 'Absolutely not. Common misconception that; that fun is relaxing. If it is, you're not doing it right. That's what the Hole's for; fun. Fun and games. Cools down a bit during the day, but it can get pretty wild, too. The drink festivals are usually the worst. Shouldn't be any trouble tonight though. Fairly quiet.' The crowd shrieked; the woman was holding the dwarfish alien's face under the mud; it struggled desperately. Gurgeh turned round to watch. The alien's movements weakened slowly as the naked, mud-slicked woman forced its head into the bubbling red liquid. Gurgeh glanced at Za. 'So they were fighting.' Za shrugged again. 'We may never know.' He looked down too, as the woman forced the now limp alien's body further into the ochre mud. 'Has she killed it?' Gurgeh asked. He had to raise his voice as the crowd screamed, stamping feet and beating fists on tables. 'Na,' Shohobohaum Za said, shaking his head. 'The little guy's a Uhnyrchal.' Za nodded down, as the woman used one hand to keep the alien's head submerged, and raised the other in triumph in the air, glaring bright-eyed at the baying audience. 'See that little black thing sticking up?' Gurgeh looked. There was a little black bulb poking up through the surface of the red mud. 'Yes.' 'That's his dick.' Gurgeh looked suspiciously at the other man. 'How exactly is that going to help him?' 'The Uhnyrchal can breathe through their dicks,' Za said. 'That guy's fine; he'll be fighting in another club tomorrow night; maybe even later this evening.' Za watched the waitress place their drinks on the table. He leant forward to whisper something to her; she nodded and walked off. 'Try glanding
Expand
with this stuff,' Za suggested. Gurgeh nodded. They both drank. 'Wonder why the Culture's never genofixed that,' Za said, staring into his glass. 'What?' 'Being able to breathe through your dick.' Gurgeh thought. 'Sneezing at certain moments could be messy.' Za laughed. 'There might be compensations.' The audience behind them went 'Oooo'. Za and Gurgeh turned round to see the victorious woman pulling her opponent's body up out of the mud by its penis; the alien being's head and feet were still under the glutinous, slowly slopping liquid. 'Ouch,' Za muttered, drinking. Somebody in the crowd tossed the woman a dagger; she caught it, stooped, and sliced off the alien genitals. She brandished the dripping flesh aloft while the crowd went wild with delight and the alien sank slowly beneath the cloying red liquid, the woman's foot on its chest. The mud gradually turned black where the blood oozed, and a few bubbles surfaced. Za sat back, looking mystified. 'Must have been some sub-species I haven't heard of.' The low-G mud-tub was trundled away, the woman still shaking her trophy at the baying crowd. Shohobohaum Za rose to greet a party of four dramatically beautiful and stunningly dressed Azadian females who were approaching the cupola. Gurgeh had glanded the body-drug Za had suggested, and was just beginning to feel the effects of both that and the liquor. The women looked, he thought, quite the equals of any he'd seen the night of the welcoming ball, and much more friendly.