“That’s him,” Eleanor grated between her white teeth, eyes flashing. She grabbed fiercely at Benteley’s arm. “That’s Pellig. _Look at him._”
Pellig said nothing. His hair was straw-yellow, moist and limply combed. His features were uncertain, almost nondescript. He was a colorless, silent person almost lost from sight as the rolling giant beside him propelled him among the alertly-watching couples. After a moment the two of them were swallowed up by satin slacks and floor length gowns, and the buzz of animated conversation around Benteley resumed.
“They’ll be over here later,” Eleanor said. She shivered. “He gives me the creeps. Well?” She smiled up quickly at Benteley, still holding on tight to his arm. “What do you think of him?”
“I didn’t get any impression.” Off in the distance Verrick was surrounded by a group of people. Herb Moore’s enthusiastic voice lifted above the uniform blur of sound: he was expounding again. Annoyed, Benteley pulled a few steps away.
“Where are you going?” Eleanor asked.
“Home.” The word slipped out involuntarily.
“Where do you mean?” Eleanor smiled wryly. “I can’t teep you any more, darling. I gave all that up.” She lifted her flaming crimson hair to show the two dead circles above her ears, lead-gray spots that marred the smooth whiteness of her skin.
“I can’t understand you,” Benteley said. “An ability you were born with, a unique gift.”
“You sound like Wakeman. If I had stayed with the Corps I would have had to use my ability against Reese. So what else could I do but leave?” There was tight agony in her eyes. “You know, it’s really gone. It’s like being blinded. I screamed and cried a long time afterward. I couldn’t face it. I broke down completely.”
“How are you now?”
She gestured shakily. “I’ll live. Anyhow, I can’t get it back. So forget it, darling. Drink your drink and relax.” She clinked glasses with him. “It’s called _methane gale_. I suppose Callisto has a methane atmosphere.”
“Have you ever been to one of the colony planets?” Benteley asked. He sipped at the amber liquid; it was strong stuff. “Have you ever seen one of the work-camps, or one of the squatters’ colonies after a police patrol has finished with it?”
“No,” Eleanor said simply. “I’ve never been off Earth. I was born in San Francisco nineteen years ago. All tele-paths come from there, remember? During the Final War
the big research installations at Livermore were hit by a Soviet missile. Those who survived were badly bathed. We’re all descendants of one family, Earl and Verna Phillips. The whole Corps is related. I was trained for it all the time I was growing up: my destiny.”
A vague blur of music had started up at one end of the chamber. A music robot, creating random combinations of sound, harmonic colors and shades that flitted agilely, too subtle to pin down. Some couples started dancing listlessly. A group of men had gathered together and were arguing in loud, angry tones. Snatches of words carried to Benteley.
“Out of the lab in June, they say.”
“Would you make a cat wear trousers? It’s inhuman.”
“Plow into something at that velocity? Personally, I’ll stick to plain old sub-C.”
Near the double doors a few people were seeking out their wraps and wandering away, dull-faced, vacant-eyed, mouths slack with fatigue and boredom.
“It gets like this,” Eleanor said. “The women wander off to the powder room. The men start arguing some point.”
“What does Verrick do?”
“You’re hearing it now.”
Verrick’s deep tones rolled out over everybody else’s; he was dominating the argument. People nearby gradually stopped talking and began filtering over to listen. A tight knot of men formed, grim-faced and serious, as Verrick and Moore waved louder and hotter.
“Our problems are of our own making,” Verrick asserted. “They’re not real, like problems of supply and labor surplus.”
“How do you figure?” Moore demanded.
“This whole system is artificial. This M-game was invented by a couple of mathematicians during the early phase of the Second World War.”
“You mean discovered. They saw that social situations are analogues of strategy games, like poker. A system that works in a poker game will work in a social situation, like business or war.”
“What’s the difference between a game of chance and a strategy game?” Laura Davis asked, from where she and Al stood.
Annoyed, Moore answered, “Everything. In a game of chance no conscious deception is involved; in a poker game every player has a deliberate strategy of bluff, false leads, putting out misleading verbal reports and visual horse-play to confuse the other players as to his real position and intentions. He has a pattern of misrepresentation by which he traps them into acting foolishly.”
“You mean like saying he has a good hand when he hasn’t?”
Moore ignored her and turned back to Verrick. “You want to deny society operates like a strategy game? Minimax was a brilliant hypothesis. It gave us a rational scientific method to crack any strategy and transform the strategy game into a chance game, where the regular statistical methods of the exact sciences function.”
“All the same,” Verrick rumbled, “this damn bottle throws a man out for no reason and elevates an ass, a crackpot, picked at random, without regard to his ability or class.”
“Sure,” Moore exclaimed, wildly excited. “Our whole system is built on Minimax. The bottle forces everybody to play a Minimax game or be squashed; we’re forced to give up deception and adopt a rational procedure.”
“There’s nothing rational in this random twitching,” Verrick answered angrily. “How can random machinery be rational?”
“The random factor is a function of an overall rational pattern. In the face of random twitches, no one can have a strategy. It forces everybody to adopt a randomized method: best analysis of the statistical possibilities of certain events plus the pessimistic assumption that any plans will be found out in advance. Assuming you’re found out in advance frees you of the danger of being discovered. If you act randomly your opponent can find out nothing about you because even you don’t know what you’re going to do.”
“So we’re all a bunch of superstitious fools,” Verrick complained. “Everybody’s trying to read signs and harbingers. Everybody’s trying to explain two-headed calves and flocks of white crows. We’re all dependent on random chance; we’re losing control because we can’t plan.”
“How can you plan with teeps around? Teeps perfectly fulfill the pessimistic expectations of Minimax: they find out every strategy. They discover you as soon as you begin playing.”
Verrick pointed to his great barrel chest. “There are no sissy-kissing charms hanging around my neck. No rose petals and ox dung and boiled owl spit. I play a game of skill, not chance and maybe not strategy, when you pin me down. I never did go by a lot of theoretical abstractions. I go by rule of thumb.” He displayed his thumb. “I do what each situation demands. That’s skill. I’ve got it.”
“Skill is a function of chance. It’s an intuitive best-use of chance situations. You’re so god damn old you’ve been in enough situations to know in advance the pragmatic—”
“What about Pellig? That’s strategy, isn’t it?”
“Strategy involves deception and with Pellig nobody is going to be deceived.”
“Absurd,” Verrick growled. “You’ve been knocking yourself out keeping the Corps from knowing about Pellig.”
“That was your idea.” Moore flushed angrily. “I said then and I say now: let them all know because there’s nothing they can do. If I had my way I’d announce it over tv tomorrow.”
“You god damn fool,” Verrick rasped. “You certainly wouldl”
“Pellig is unbeatable.” Moore was furious at being humiliated in front of everybody. “We’ve combined the essence of Minimax. Taking the bottle twitch as my starting point, I’ve evolved a—”
“Shut up, Moore,” Verrick muttered, turning his back. “You talk too much.” He moved a few steps away; people hurriedly stepped aside for him. “This random stuff has got to go. You can’t plan anything with it hanging over your head.”
“That’s why we have it!” Moore shouted after him.
“Then drop it. Get rid of it.”
“Minimax isn’t something you turn on and off. It’s like gravity; it’s a law, a pragmatic law.”
Benteley had moved over to listen. “You believe in natural law?” he demanded. “An 8-8 like you?”
“Who’s this fellow?” Moore snarled, glaring furiously at Benteley. “What’s the idea of butting into our conversation?”
Verrick swelled another foot taller. “This is Ted Benteley. Class 8-8, same as you. We just now took him on.”
Moore blanched. “8-8! We don’t need any more 8-8’s!” His face glowed an ugly yellow. “Benteley? You’re someone Oiseau-Lyre tossed out. A derelict.”
“That’s right,” Benteley said evenly, “And I came directly here.”
“Why?”
“I’m interested in what you’re doing.”
“What I’m doing is none of your business!”
“All right,” Verrick said hoarsely to Moore. “Shut up or get out of here. Benteley’s working with you from now on, whether you like it or not.”