To himself Jerome Luckman thought, These people are going to pay for their attitude. I came here legally “and decently; I did my part and they wouldn’t have that.
His turn to draw a card came; he drew, and it was a seventeen. My luck’s showing up already, he said to himself. He lit a delicado cigarette, leaned back in his chair and watched as the others drew.
It’s a good thing Dave Mutreaux refused to come here, Luckman realized. The pre-cog was right; they did have the EEG machine to try out as a ploy; they would have had him dead to rights.
“Evidently you go first, Luckman,” Calumine said. “With your seventeen you’re high man.” He seemed resigned, as did the others.
“The Luckman luck,” Luckman said to them as he reached for the round metal spinner.
Watching Pete out of the comer of her eye, Freya Gaines thought, He and she had a fight outside there; Carol, when she came back in, looked as if she had been crying. Too bad, Freya said to herself with relish.
They won’t be able to play as partners, she knew. Carol won’t be able to put up with Pete’s melancholy, his hypochondria. And in her he’s simply not going to find a woman who’ll put up with him. I know he’ll turn back to me in a relationship outside The Game. He’ll have to, or crack up emotionally.
It was her turn to play. This initial round was played without the element of bluff; the visible spinner was used, not the cards. Freya spun, obtained a four. Damn, she thought as she moved her piece four spaces ahead on the board. That brought her to a sadly-familiar square: Excise tax. Pay $500.
She paid, silently; Janice Remington, the banker, accepted the bills. How tense I am, Freya thought, Everyone here is, including Luckman himself.
Which of us, she wondered, will be the first to call Luckman on a bluff? Who’ll have the courage. And if they chal-
lenge him, will they succeed? Will they be right? She herself shrank from it. Not me, she said to herself.
Pete would, she decided. He’ll be the first; he really hates the man.
It was Pete’s turn now; he spun a seven and began moving his piece. His face was expressionless.
VI
BEING SOMEWHAT poor, Joe Schilling owned an ancient, cantankerous, moody, auto-auto which he called Max. Unfortunately he could not afford a newer one.
As usual, today Max balked at the instructions given it “No,” it said. “I’m not going, to fly out to the Coast. You can walk.”
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you,” Joe Schilling told it.
“What business do you have out on the Coast anyhow?” Max demanded in its surly fashion. Its motor had started, however. “I need repair-work done,” it complained, “before I undertake such a long trip. Why can’t you maintain me properly? Everybody else keeps up their cars.”
“You’re not worth keeping up,” Joe Schilling said, and got into the auto-auto, seated himself at the tiller, then remembered that he had forgotten his parrot, Eeore. “Damn it,” he said, “don’t leave without me; I have to go back for something.” He got out of the car and strode back to the record shop, key in hand.
The car made no comment as he returned with the parrot; it seemed resigned, now, or perhaps the articulation circuit had collapsed.
“Are you still there?” Schilling asked the car.
“Of course I am. Can’t you see me?”
“Take me to San Rafael, California,” Schilling said. The time was early morning; he would probably be able to catch Pete Garden at his pro-tem apartment.
Pete had called late last night to report on the first encounter with Lucky Luckman. The moment he heard Pete’s
gloomy tone of voice Joe Schilling had known the result of The Game; Luckman had won.
“The problem now,” Pete said, “is that he’s got two California title deeds, so he doesn’t have to risk Berkeley any more. He can put up the other one.”
“You should have had me right from the start,” Schilling said.
After a pause Pete said, “Well, I’ve got a little problem. Carol Holt Garden, my new wife, she rates herself a fine Bluff-player.”
“Is she?”
“She’s good,” Pete said. “But-”
“But you still lost. I’ll start out for the Coast tomorrow morning.” And now here he was, as promised, starting out with two suitcases of personal articles and his parrot Eeore, ready to play against Luckman.
Wives, Schilling thought. More of a problem than an asset. The economic aspect of our lives should never have been melded hopelessly with the sexual; it makes things too complex. Blame that on the Titanians and their desire to solve our difficulties with one neat solution covering all. What they’ve actually done is gotten us entangled even more thoroughly.
Pete hadn’t said any more about Carol.
But marriage had always been primarily an economic entity, Schilling reflected as he steered his auto-auto up into the early-morning New Mexico sky. The vugs hadn’t invented that; they had merely intensified an already existing condition. Marriage had to do with the transmission of property, of lines of inheritance. And of cooperation in career-lines as well. All this emerged explicitly in The Game and dominated conditions; The Game merely dealt openly with what had been there implicitly before.
The car radio came on then, and a male voice addressed Schilling. “This is Kitchener; I’m told you’re leaving my bind. Why?”
“Business on the West Coast.” It irritated him that -the Bindman of the area should burst into the situation and meddle. But that was Colonel Kitchener, a fussy, elderly,
spinster-type retired officer who nosed into everybody’s business.
“I didn’t give you permission,” Kitchener complained. – “You and Max,” Schilling said.
“Pardon?” Kitchener berated him, “Maybe I just won’t want to let you back into my bind, Schilling. I happen to know you’re going to Carmel to play The Game, and if you’re as good as all that—”
“As good as all what?” Schilling broke in. “That’s to be demonstrated, as yet.”
“If you’re good enough to play at all,” Kitchener said, “you ought to be playing for me.” It was obvious that most of the story had leaked out. Schilling sighed. That was one difficulty with such a diminished world-population; the planet had become like one extensive small town, with everyone knowing everyone else’s business. “Maybe you could practice in my group,” “Kitchener offered. “And then play against Luckman when you’re back in shape. After all, you won’t do your friends any good coming in cold as you are. Don’t you agree?”
“I may be cold,” Schilling said, “but I’m not that cold.”
“First you denied being good and now you deny being bad,” Kitchener said. “You’re confusing me, Schilling. I’ll permit you to go, but I hope if you do show your old talent you’ll bring some of it to our table, out of a sense of loyalty to your own Bindman. Good day.”
“Good day, Kitch,” Schilling said, and broke the circuit. Well, his trip to the Coast had already earned him two enemies, his auto-auto and Colonel Kitchener. A bad harbinger, Schilling decided. Most unlucky. The car, he could afford to have antagonistic to his enterprise, but not a man as powerful as Kitchener. After all, the Colonel was right; if he did have any talents at The Game they should be used to support his own Bindman, not someone else.
All at once Max spoke up. “You see what you got yourself into?” it said accusingly.
“I realize I should have checked with my Bindman and gotten his approval,” Schilling agreed.
“You hoped to sneak out of New Mexico unnoticed,” Max said.
It was true; Schilling nodded. Yes, it was decidedly a bad beginning.
Waking in the still-unfamiliar apartment in San Rafael, Peter Garden jumped in surprise at the sight of the tousled head of brown hair beside him, the bare, smooth shoulders, so eternally inviting—and then remembered who she was and what had happened the evening before. He got out of bed without waking her, went into the kitchen in his pajamas to search for a package of cigarettes.
A second California deed had been lost and Joe Schilling was on his way from New Mexico; that’s how things stood, he recalled. And he now had a wife who— How exactly did he evaluate Carol Holt Garden? It would be good to know precisely where he stood in relation to her before Joe Schilling put in his appearance . . . and that could be any time, now.
He lit a cigarette, put the tea kettle on the burner. As the tea kettle started to thank him he said, “Be quiet. My wife’s asleep.”
The tea kettle obediently warmed in silence.
He liked Carol; she was pretty and, to say the least, great guns in bed. It was as simple as that. She was not terribly pretty and many of his wives had been as good in bed and better and he did not like her inordinately; everything about his feelings was commensurate with reality. Her feelings, however, were excessive. To Carol this new marriage challenged her sense of identity by way of her prestige. As a woman, a wife, as a Game-player. That was a lot.