We have been waiting a long time for you, a vug thought-propagated to him. Please don’t keep us waiting any longer.
He did not know what to do. And what was the stake? What deed had he put up? He looked around but he saw nothing, no pot or hopper.
A bluffing game in which telepaths participate for stakes which do not exist, Joe Schilling realized. What a travesty. How can I get out of this? Is there a way out? He did not even know that much.
This, the Platonic ultimate template of The Game, a reproduction of which had been impressed on Terra for Terrans to play; he understood. And yet it did not help him to understand because he still could not get out of it. He picked up his piece and began to advance it, square by square. Twelve squares ahead. He read the inscription. Gold rush on your land! You win $50,000,000 in royalties from two producing mines!
No need to bluff, Joe Schilling said to himself. What a square; the best he had ever heard of. No such square existed on the boards of Earth.
He placed his piece on that square and sat back.
Would anyone challenge him? Accuse him of bluffing?
He waited. There was no motion, no indication of life from the near-infinite row of vugs. Well? he thought. I’m ready. Go ahead.
It is a bluff, a voice declared.
He could not make out which vug had challenged him; they seemed to have expressed themselves in unison. Had their telepathic ability become faulty at this critical moment? he wondered. Or had the talent been deliberately suspended for the purposes of playing The Game? “You’re wrong,” he said, and turned over his card. “Here it is.” He glanced down.
It was no longer a twelve.
It was an eleven.
You are a bad bluffer, Mr. Schilling, the corporate group of vugs thought. Is this how you generally play?
“I’m under tension,” Joe Schilling said. “I misread the
card.” He was furious and badly frightened. “There’s some kind of cheating going on,” he said. “Anyhow, what’s the stakes in this?”
The vugs answered, In this Game, Detroit.
“I don’t see the deed,” Joe Schilling said, looking up and down the table.
Look again, the vugs said.
In the center of the table he saw what appeared to be a glass ball, the size of a paperweight. Something complex and shiny and alive flickered within the globe and he bent to scrutinize it. A city, in miniature. Buildings and streets, houses, factories . . .
it was Detroit.
We want that next, the vugs told him.
Reaching out, Joe Schilling moved his piece back one square. “I really landed on that,” he said.
The Game exploded.
“I cheated,” Joe Schilling said. “Now it’s impossible to play. Do you grant that? I’ve wrecked The Game.”
Something hit him over the head and he fell, dropped instantly, into the engulfing grayness of unconsciousness.
XIV
THE NEXT HE knew Joseph Schilling stood on a desert, and feeling the reassuring tug of Terra’s gravity once more. The sun, blinding him, spilled down in gold-hot familiar torrents and he squinted, trying to see, holding up his hand to ward off its rays.
“Don’t stop,” a voice said.
He opened his eyes and saw, walking beside him across the uneven sand, Doctor Philipson; the elderly, sprightly little doctor was smiling.
“Keep moving,” Doctor Philipson said in a pleasant, conventional tone of voice, “or we’ll die out here. And you wouldn’t like that.”
“Explain it to me,” Joe Schilling said. But he kept on
walking. Doctor Philipson remained beside him, walking with easy, long strides.
“You certainly broke up The Game.” Doctor Philipson chuckled. “It never occurred to them that you’d cheat.”
“They cheated first. They changed the value of the card!”
“To them, that’s legitimate, a basic move in The Game. It’s a favorite play by the Titanian Game-players to exert their extra-sensory faculties on the card; it’s supposed to be a contest between the sides; the one who’s drawn the card struggles to keep its value constant, you see? By yielding to the altered value you lost, but by moving your piece in conformity to it you thwarted them.”
“What happened to the stake?”
“Detroit?” Doctor Philipson laughed. “It remains a stake, unclaimed. You see, the Titanian Game-players believe in following the rules. You may not believe that but it’s true. Their rules, yes; but rules nonetheless. Now I, don’t know what they’ll do; they’ve been waiting to play against you in particular for a long time, but I’m sure they won’t try again after what just happened. It must have been psychically unnerving for them; it’ll be a great while before they recover.”
“What faction do they represent? The extremists?”
“Oh no; the Titanian Game-players are exceptionally moderate in their political thinking.”
“What about you?” Schilling said.
Doctor Philipson said, “I admit to being an extremist. That’s why I’m here on Terra.” In the blinding mid-day sunlight his heat-needle sparkled as it rose and fell with his long strides. “We’re almost there, Mr. Schilling. One more hill and you’ll see it. It’s built low to the ground, attracts little attention.”
“Are all the vugs here on Earth extremists?”
“No,” Doctor Philipson said.
“What about E. B. Black, the detective?”
Doctor Philipson said nothing.
“Not of your party,” Schilling decided.
There was no answer; Philipson was not going to say.
“I should have trusted it when I had the chance,” Schilling said.
“Perhaps so,” Doctor Philipson said, nodding.
Ahead, Schilling saw a Spanish-style building with tile roof and pale adobe walls, contained by an ornamental railing of black iron. The Dig Inn Motel, the neon sign-turned off and inert—read.
“Is Laird Sharp here?” Schilling asked.
“Sharp is on Titan,” Doctor Philipson said. “Perhaps I will bring him back, but certainly not at this time.” Doctor Philipson, briefly, scowled. “An agile-brained creature, that Sharp. I must admit I don’t care for him.” With a white linen handkerchief he mopped his red and perspiring fore-head, slowing down a little now, as they came up onto the flagstone path of the motel. “And as for your cheating, I didn’t much care for that either.” He seemed tense and irritable, now. Schilling wondered why.
The door of the motel office was open, and Doctor Philip-son went toward it, peering into the darkness within. “Roth-man?” he said, in a hesitant, questioning voice.
A figure appeared, a woman. It was Patrician McClain.
“Sorry I’m late,” Doctor Philipson began. “But this man here and a companion showed up at the—”
Patricia McClain said, “She’s out of control. Alien couldn’t help. Get away.” She ran past Doctor Philipson and Joe Schilling, across the parking lot toward a car parked there. Then all at once she was gone. Doctor Philipson grunted, cursed, stepped back from the motel door as swiftly as if he had been seared.
High in the mid-day sky Joe Schilling saw a dot, rising and then disappearing toward invisibility. On and on it rushed, away from Earth, away from the ground until finally he could no longer see it. His head ached from the glare and the effort of seeing, and he turned to Doctor Philipson “My god, was that—” he started to say.
“Look,” Doctor Philipson said. He pointed, with his heat-needle, at the motel office, and Joe Schilling looked inside; he could not see at first and then by degrees his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom.
On the floor lay twisted bodies of men and women, tangled together like multi-armed monsters, as if they had been shaken and then dropped there, discarded, the remains jammed together, forced into an impossible fusion. Mary Anne
McClain sat on the floor in the corner, curled up, her face buried in her hands. Pete Garden and a well-dressed middle-aged man whom Schilling did not know stood together, silently, their faces blank.
“Rothman,” Doctor Philipson choked, staring at one of the shattered bodies. He turned toward Pete Garden. “When?” he said.
“She just now did it,” Pete murmured.
“You’re lucky,” the well-dressed middle-aged man said to Doctor Philipson. “If you had been here she would have killed you, too. You’re fortunate; you missed your appointment.”
Doctor Philipson, shaking, lifted his heat-needle and pointed it unsteadily at Mary Anne McClain.
“Don’t,” Pete Garden said. “They tried that. At the end.”
“Mutreaux,” Doctor Philipson said, “why didn’t she—”
“He’s a Terran,” Pete Garden said. “The only one of you who was. So she didn’t touch him.”
“The best thing,” the well-dressed man, Mutreaux, said, “is for none of us to do anything. Move as little as possible-that’s the safest.” He kept his eyes fixed on the huddled shape of Mary Anne McClain. “She didn’t even miss her father,” Mutreaux said. “But Patricia got away; I don’t know what happened to her.”
“The girl got her, too,” Doctor Philipson said. “We watched; we didn’t understand, then.” He tossed the heat-needle away; it rolled across the floor and came to rest against the far wall. His face was gray. “Does she understand what she’s done?”