Pete Garden said, “She knows. She understands the dangerousness of her talent and she doesn’t want to use it again.” To Joe Schilling he said, “They couldn’t seem to manage her; they had partial control but it kept slipping away. I watched the struggle. It’s been going on here in this room for the last few hours. Even when their last member came.” He pointed to a squashed, crumpled body, a man with glasses and light hair. “Don, they called him. They thought he’d turn the tide, but Mutreaux threw his talent in with hers. It all happened in a second; one minute they were sitting in their chairs, the next she just simply began
flinging them around like rag dolls.” He added, “It wasn’t pleasant. But,” he shrugged, “anyhow, that’s what happened.”
Doctor Philipson said, “A dreadful loss.” He glanced at Mary Anne with hatred. “Poltergeist,” he said. “Unmanageable. We knew but because of Patricia and Alien we accepted her as she was. Well, we’ll have to begin all over again, from the start. Of course I have nothing personally to fear from her; I can return to my primary nexus, Titan, whenever I wish. Presumably, her talent doesn’t extend that far, and if it does there’s not much we can do. I’ll take the chance. I have to.”
“I think she can freeze you here, if she wants to,” Mutreaux said. “Mary Anne,” he said sharply. In the corner the girl raised her head; her cheeks, Joe Schilling saw, were tear-stained. “Do you have any objection if this last one returns to Titan?”
“I don’t know,” she said listlessly.
Joe Schilling said, “They’ve got Sharp there.”
“I see,” Mutreaux said. “Well, that makes a difference.” To Mary Anne he said, “Don’t let Philipson go.”
“All right,” she murmured, nodding.
Doctor Philipson shrugged. “A good point. Well, it’s agreeable to me. Sharp can return here, I’ll go to Titan.” His tone was calm but, Schilling saw, the man’s eyes were opaque with shock and tension.
“Arrange for it now,” Mutreaux said.
“Of course,” Doctor Philipson said. “I don’t want to be around this girl; that must be obvious even to you. And I can hardly say I envy you and your people, depending on a crude, erratic power of this sort; it’s apt to rebound or be turned deliberately against you any moment.” He added, “Sharp is now back from Titan. At my clinic in Idaho.”
“Can that be verified?” Mutreaux said to Joe Schilling.
“Place a call to your car, there,” Doctor Philipson said. “He should be in it or close by it, by now.”
Going outdoors, Joe Schilling found a parked car. “Whose are you?” he asked it, opening its door.
“Mr. and Mrs. McClain’s,” the Rushmore Effect stated. “I want to use your vidphone.” Seated within the sun-
scorched interior of the car, Joe Schilling placed a call to his own car at Doctor Philipson’s clinic in the outskirts of Pocatello, Idaho.
“What the hell do you want now?” the voice of Max, his car, answered after a wait.
“Is Laird Sharp there?” Joe Schilling asked.
“Who cares.”
“Listen,” Schilling began, but all at once Laird Sharp’s features formed on the small vidscreen. “You’re okay?” Schilling asked him.
Sharp curtly nodded. “Did you see the Titanian Game-players, Joe? How many were there? I couldn’t seem to count them.”
“I not only saw them, I conned them,” Joe Schilling said. “So they right away bumped me back here. Take Max—you know, my car—and fly back to San Francisco; I’ll meet you there.” To the old, sullen car he said, “Max, you cooperate with Laird Sharp, goddam it.”
“All right!” Max said irritably. “I’m cooperating!”
Joe Schilling returned to the motel room.
“I previewed your narration about the attorney,” Mutreaux said. “We let Philipson go.”
Schilling looked around. It was so. There was no sign of Doctor E. G. Philipson.
“It’s not over,” Pete Garden said. “Philipson is back on Titan, Hawthorne is dead.”
“But their organization,” Mutreaux said. “It’s abolished. Mary Anne and I are the only ones remaining. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her destroy Rothman; he was the pivot of the organization’s power.” He now bent down beside Rothman’s body, touching it.
“What’s the wisest thing to do now?” Joe Schilling said to Pete. “We can’t pursue them to Titan, can we?” He did not want to face the Game-players of Titan again. And yet—
Pete said, “We’d better bring in E. B. Black. It’s the only thing I can think of at this point that might help. Otherwise, we’re finished.”
“We can trust Black, can we?” Mutreaux said.
Schilling said, “Doctor Philipson implied that we could.” He hesitated. “Yes, I vote we take the chance.”
“So do I,” Pete said, and Mutreaux, after a pause, brusquely nodded. “What about you, Mary?” Pete turned to the girl, who still sat curled up in a rigid, stricken ball.
“I don’t know,” she said, finally. “I don’t know who to believe in or trust any more; I don’t even know about myself.”
“It’s got to be done,” Joe Schilling said to Pete. “In my opinion, anyhow. He or it is looking for you; he’s with Carol. If he’s not reliable—” Schilling broke off and scowled.
“Then he’s got Carol,” Pete agreed, stonily.
“Yes.” Schilling nodded.
Pete said, “Call him. From here.”
Together, they went outside to the McClains’ parked car. Joe Schilling placed the call to the apartment in San Rafael. If we’re making a mistake, Joe Schilling thought, it probably means Carol’s death and the death of their baby. I wonder which it is? he asked himself. A boy or a girl? They have those tests now; they can tell after the third week. Pete, of course, would accept either. He smiled a little.
Pete said tensely, “I’ve got him.” On the screen the image of a vug formed, and Joe Schilling reflected that it looked— to him at least—like any other vug. This is what Doctor Philipson really looks like, he knew. What Pete saw. And he thought he was hallucinating.
“Where are you, Mr. Garden?” the vug’s query came to them from the speaker. “I see you have Mr. Schilling there with you. What do you require from the Coast police authority? We are ready to dispatch a ship when and where you tell us.”
“We’re coming back,” Pete said. “We don’t need any ship. How is Carol?”
“Mrs. Garden is anxiously concerned, but physically in satisfactory condition.”
“There are nine dead vugs here,” Joe Schilling said.
E. B. Black said instantly, “Of the Wa Pei Nan? The extremist party?”
“Yes,” Schilling said. “One returned to Titan; he had been here as Doctor E. G. Philipson of Pocatello, Idaho. You
know, the well-known psychiatrist. We urge you to take his clinic at once; there could be others entrenched there.”
“We will shortly do that,” E. B. Black promised. “Are the killers of my colleague, Wade Hawthorne, among the dead?”
“Yes,” Joe Schilling said.
“A relief,” E. B. Black said. “Give us your location and we will send someone out to undertake whatever dispositionary chores are necessary.”
Pete gave him the information.
“That’s that,” Schilling said, as the screen faded. He did not know how to feel. Had they done the right thing? We will know before very long, he said to himself. Together, they walked back to the motel room, neither of them saying anything.
“If they get us,” Pete said, pausing at the door of the room, “I still say we did the best we could. You can’t know everything. This is all—” He gestured. “Blurred and twisting, people and things merging back and forth into each other. Maybe I haven’t recovered from last night.”
Joe Schilling said, “Pete, 1 saw the Game-players of Titan. It was enough.”
“What should we do?” Pete said.
“Get Pretty Blue Fox back into being.”
“And then what?”
Joe Schilling said, “Play.”
“Against?”
“The Titanian Game-players,” Joe Schilling said. “We have to; they’re not going to give us any choice.”
Together, they re-entered the motel room.
As they flew back to San Francisco, Mary Anne said faintly, “I don’t feel their control over me as strongly as I did. It’s waned.”
Mutreaux glanced at her. “Let’s hope so.” He looked utterly tired. “I preview,” he said to Pete Garden, “your efforts to get your group restored. Want to know the outcome?”
“Yes,” Pete said.
“The police will grant it. By tonight you’ll be a legal Game-playing body again, as before. You will meet at your
condominium apartment in Carmel and plan your strategy. At this point there is a division into parallel futures. They hinge in a disputed fact. Whether your group permits you to bring Mary Anne McClain in as a new Game-playing Bindman.”
“What are the two futures branching from that?” Pete asked.
“I can see the one without her very clearly. Let’s simply say it’s not good. The other—it’s blurred because Mary is a variable and can’t be previewed within causal frameworks; she introduces the acausal principle of synchronicity.” Mutreaux was silent a moment. “I think, on the basis of what I preview, I would advise you to make the attempt to bring her into the group. Even though it’s illegal.”