The Game-Players of Titan by Philip K. Dick

“That’s right,” Joe Schilling said, nodding. “It’s strictly against the bylaws of Bluff-playing entities. No Psi of any description can be admitted. But our antagonists aren’t non-Psi humans; they’re Titans and telepaths. I see her value. With her in our group the telepath factor is balanced. Otherwise, they hold an absolute advantage.” He recalled the alteration in the card which he had drawn, its change from twelve to eleven. We couldn’t win against that, he realized. And even with Mary—

“I should be admitted, too, if possible,” Mutreaux said. “Although, again, legally I’m also admissible. Pretty Blue Fox must be made to comprehend the issues involved, what the stakes are this time. It’s not just an exchange of property deeds, not a competition among Bindmen to see who’s top man. It’s our old struggle with an enemy, renewed after all these years. If it ever ceased in the first place.”

“It never did cease,” Mary Anne spoke up. “We knew that, the people in our organization. Whether we were vugs or Terrans; we agreed on that.”

“What can you see us obtaining from E. B. Black and the police power?” Pete asked Mutreaux.

“I preview a meeting between the Area Commissioner, U. S. Cummings, and E. B. Black. But I can’t seem to foresee the outcome. There is something which U. S. Cummings is involved in that introduces another variable. I wonder. U. S. Cummings may be an extremist. What is it called?”

“The Wa Pei Nan,” Joe Schilling said. “That’s what E. B. Black called it.” He had never heard the words before the vug detective had said them; he rolled them around in his mind, trying to get the flavor of them. But they were impenetrable, shut tight to him. He gave up. He could not imagine what such a party was like or how it felt to belong to it.

I can’t empathize with them, he realized. And that’s bad because if we can’t put ourselves in their places we can’t predict what they’re going to do. Even with the use of our pre-cog.

He did not feel very confident. However, he did not tell that to the people in the car with him.

Soon, he thought, we—the augmented Game-playing group Pretty Blue Fox—will make our first move against the Titanians. We’ll have, perhaps, the help of Mutreaux and Mary Anne McClain; will that be enough? Mutreaux can’t see, and no one can count on Mary Anne, as Doctor Philip-son pointed out. And yet he was glad they had her. Without Mary Anne, he thought caustically, Pete and I would be back there at that motel, in the middle of the Nevada Desert. Sitting in on Titanian strategy.

I’ll be glad to contribute title deeds to both of you,” Pete said to Mary Anne and Dave Mutreaux. “Mary, you can have San Rafael. Mutreaux, you can have San Anselmo. Those will bring you to the table. I hope.”

No one spoke; no one felt optimistic enough to.

“How do you bluff?” Pete said, “against telepaths?”

It was a good question. It was, in fact, the question on which everything depended.

And none of them could answer it. They can’t alter the values of the cards we draw, Schilling said to himself, because we’ve got Mary Anne to exert a contra-pressure stabilizing them as we hold them. But—

“If we can develop a strategy,” Pete said, “we’ll need the collective minds of everyone in Pretty Blue Fox. Among all of us there must be an idea we can use.”

“You think so?” Schilling said.

“It’s got to be,” Pete said, harshly.

XV

AT TEN O’CLOCK that night they met in the group condominium apartment in Carmel. First came Silvanus Angst, this time—for perhaps the first time in his life—sober and silent, but as always carrying a paper bag containing a fifth of whiskey. He set it on the sideboard and turned to Pete and Carol Garden who followed him.

“I just can’t see letting Psis in,” Angst murmured. “I mean, you’re talking about something that’ll make Game-playing impossible forever.”

Bill Calumine said drily, “Wait until everyone’s here.” His tone, to Angst, was unfriendly. “I want to meet the two of them,” he said to Pete, “before I decide. The girl and the pre-cog, who, I understand, is on Jerome Luckman’s staff back in New York.” Although now voted out as spinner, Calumine automatically assumed the position of authority. And perhaps it was well he did, Pete reflected.

“That’s right,” Pete murmured absently. At the sideboard he looked to see what Silvanus Angst had brought. Canadian whiskey, this time, and very good. Pete got himself a glass, held it under the ice machine.

“Thank you sir,” the ice machine piped.

Pete mixed himself a drink, his back to the room as it slowly, steadily, filled with people. Their murmuring voices came to him.

“And not just one Psi but two!”

“Yes, but the issue involved; it’s patriotic.”

“So what. Game-playing ends when Psis comes in.”

“It can be with the proviso that they terminate as Bindmen as soon as this fracas with the—what’re they called? The Woo Poo Non? Something like that, according to the Chronicle this evening. Anyhow, the vug firebrands. You know. The ones we thought we beat.”

“You saw that article? The homeopape system at the Chronicle inferred that it’s been these Woo Poo Noners who’ve kept our goddam birthrate down.”

“Implied.”

“Pardon?”

“You said ‘inferred.’ That’s grammatically unsound.”

“Anyhow, my point is, without quibbling, is that it’s our duty to let these two Psi-people into Pretty Blue Fox. That vug detective, that E. B. Black, told us that it was to our national advantage to—”

“You believe him? A vug?”

“He’s a good vug. Didn’t you grasp that point?” Stuart Marks tapped Pete urgently on the shoulder. “That was the whole point you were trying to make to us, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Pete said. He really didn’t, now. He was worn-out. Let me drink my drink in peace, the thought, and turned his back once more on the roomful of arguing men and women. He wished Joe Schilling would arrive.

“Let them in this once, I say. It’s for our own protection; we’re not playing against each other, we’re all on the same side in this, playing against the vug-bugs. And they can read our minds so they automatically win unless we can come up with something new. And anything new would have to be derived from the two Psi-people, right? Because where else is it going to come from? Straight ozone?”

“We can’t play against vugs. They’ll just laugh at us. Look, they got six of us right here in this room to gang together and kill Jerome Luckman; if they can do that—”

“Not me. I wasn’t one of the six.”

“But it could have been. They just didn’t happen to choose you.”

“Anyhow, if you read the article in the homeopape you know the vugs mean business. They slaughtered Luckman and that detective Hawthorne and kidnapped Pete Garden and then—”

“But newspapers exaggerate.”

“Aw, there’s no use talking to you.” Jack Blau stalked away; he appeared beside Pete and said, “When are they getting here? These two Psi-people.”

Pete said, “Any time now.”

Coming up, slipping her smooth, bare arm through his, Carol said, “What are you drinking, darling?”

“Canadian whiskey.”

“Everyone’s been congratulating me,” Carol said. “About the baby. Except of course Freya. And I think even she would, except—”

“Except she can’t stand the idea,” Pete said.

“Do you actually think it’s been the vugs—or at least a segment of them—who’ve been keeping our birthrate down?”

“Yes,” Pete said.

“So if we win, our birthrate might go up.”

He nodded.

“And our cities would have something in them besides a billion Rushmore circuits all saying, ‘Yes sir, no sir.'” Carol squeezed his arm.

Pete said, “And if we don’t win, there pretty soon won’t be any births on our planet at all. And the race will die out.”

“Oh.” She nodded wanly.

“It’s a big responsibility,” Freya Garden Gaines said, from behind him. “To hear you tell it, anyhow.”

Pet shrugged.

“And Joe was on Titan, too? You both were?”

“Joe and I and Laird Sharp,” Pete said.

“Instantly.”

“Yes.”

“Quaint,” Freya said.

Pete said, “Get away.”

“I’m not going to vote to admit the two Psi-people,” Freya said. “I can tell you that now, Pete.”

“You’re an idiot, Mrs. Gaines,” Laid Sharp said; he had been standing nearby, listening. “I can tell you that, at least. Anyhow, I think you’ll be outvoted.”

“You’re fighting against a tradition,” Freya said. “People don’t lightly and easily set aside one hundred years.”

“Not even to save their species?” Laird Sharp asked her.

“No one’s seen these Game-playing Titans except Joe Schilling and you,” Freya said. “Even Pete doesn’t claim to have seen them.”

“They exist,” Sharp said quietly. “And you’d better believe it. Because soon you’re going to see them, too.”

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