“I don’t,” Pete said shortly, as he filled a glass with water at the tap. “The ethical house making up these spansules was told that the range would vary between instantaneous full-action to any sequence of partial action to no action whatsoever. In addition, it was told to make up several spansules, one varying from another.” He added, “And I’ve picked a spansule at random. Physically it’s identical in appearance to the others.” He held out the spansule and the glass of water to Mutreaux.
Somberly, Mutreaux swallowed the spansule.
“I will tell you one thing,” Mutreaux said, “for your own information. Several years ago, as an experiment, I tried a phenothiazine derivative. It had a colossal effect on my pre-cognitive ability.” He smiled fleetingly at Pete. “As I told
you before we went over to Pat McClain’s this idea of yours is an adequate solution to our problems, as nearly as I can foresee. Congratulations.”
“Do you say that,” Pete asked, “as someone genuinely with us, or merely as someone forced to play on this side of the table?”
“I don’t know,” Mutreaux said. “I’m in transition, Pete. Time will tell.” Turning, he walked back into the living room without another word. Back to the great Game-board and the two opposing parties.
The vug Bill Calumine rose to its feet and announced, “I suggest our side roll first and then your side.” It took the spinner and spun with expert vigor.
The pointer stopped at nine.
“All right,” Bill Calumine said, also rising and facing his simulacrum; he, too, rolled. For him the pointer slowed as it came close to twelve, then started to pass on toward one.
To Mary Anne, Pete said, “Are you resisting any efforts on their part at psycho-kinesis?”
“Yes,” she said, concentrating on the barely-moving pointer.
The pointer stopped on one.
“It’s fair,” Mary Anne said, in a scarcely audible voice.
“You Titanians initiate play, then,” Pete conceded. He managed to suppress his discouragement; he kept it out of his voice.
“Good,” his simulacrum said. It regarded him, grinning mockingly. “Then we will transport the field of interaction from Terra to Titan.” It added, “We trust that you Terrans will not object.”
“What?” Joe Schilling said. “Wait!” But the transforming activity had begun; it was already too late.
The room trembled and became hazed over. And the simulacra seated opposite them had, Pete thought, begun to attain a disrupted, oblique quality. As if, he thought, their physical shapes no longer functioned adequately, as if, like archaic, malformed exoskeletons, they were now in the process of being discarded.
His simulacrum, seated directly across from him, all at once lurched hideously. Its head lolled and its eyes became
glazed, empty of light, filmed over with a destructive membrane. The simulacrum shivered, and then, up its side, a long rent appeared.
The same process was occurring in the other simulacra. The Pete Garden simulacrum quivered, vibrated, and then, from the head-to-foot rent, something tentative popped quaveringly.
Out of the rent squeezed the protoplasmic organism within. The vug, in authentic shape, no longer requiring the artificial hull, was emerging. Forcing its way out into the gray-yellow light of the weakened sun.
Out of each discarded human husk a vug emerged, and the husks teetered and one by one, as if blown by an impalpable wind, writhed and then danced away, weightless, already without color. Bits and flakes of the discarded husks blew in the air; particles drifted across the Game-board, and Pete Garden, horrified, hurriedly brushed them away.
The Titanian Game-players had appeared in their actual shapes, at last. The business of The Game had begun in earnest. The fraud of the simulated Terran appearance had been abolished; it was no longer needed because The Game was no longer being played on Earth.
They were now on Titan.
In as calm a voice as possible, Pete Garden said, “All our plays will be made by David Mutreaux. Although we will, in turn, draw the cards and perform the other chores of The Game.”
The vugs, opposite them, seemed to thought-propagate a derisive, meaningless laughter. Why? Pete wondered. It was as if, once the simulacra shapes had been discarded, communication between the two races had at once suffered an impairment.
“Joe,” he said to Joe Schilling, “if it’s all right with Bill Calumine, I’d like you to move our pieces.”
“Okay,” Joe Schilling said, nodding.
Tendrils of gray smoke, cold and damp, sifted onto the Game-table and the vug shapes opposite them dimmed into an irregular obscurity. Even physically, the Titanians had retreated, as if desiring as little contact with the Terrans as
possible. And it was not out of animosity; it seemed to be a spontaneous withdrawal.
Maybe, Pete thought, we were doomed to this encounter from the very start. It was the absolutely-determined outcome of the initial meeting of our two cultures. He felt hollow and grim. More determined than ever to win The Game before them.
“Draw a card,” the vugs declared, and their propagations seemed to merge, as if there was in actuality only one vug against whom the group played. One massive, inert organism opposing them, ancient and slow in its actions, but infinitely determined.
And wise.
Pete Garden hated it. And feared it.
Mary Anne said aloud, “They are beginning to exert influence on the deck of cards!”
“All right,” Pete said. “Keep your attention as fully formed as you can.” He himself felt overwhelmingly tired. Have we lost already? he wondered. It felt like it. It felt as if they had been playing for an endless time now. And yet they had barely begun.
Reaching out, Bill Calumine drew a card.
“Don’t look at it,” Pete warned.
“I understand,” Bill Calumine said irritably. He slid the card, unexamined, to Dave Mutreaux.
Mutreaux, in the flickering half-light, sat with the card face down before him, his face wrinkled with concentration.
“Seven squares,” he said, then.
Joe Schilling, on a signal from Calumine, moved their piece ahead seven squares. The square on which it came to rest read: Rise in fuel costs. Pay bill to utility company of $50.
Raising his head, Joe Schilling faced the Titanian authority squatting opposite them on the far side of the board.
There was no call. The Titanians had decided to allow the move to pass; they did not believe it to consist of a bluff.
All at once Dave Mutreaux turned to Pete Garden and
said, “We’ve lost. That is, we’re going to lose; I preview it absolutely, it’s there in every alternative future.”
Pete Garden stared at him.
“But your ability,” Joe Schilling pointed out. “Have you forgotten? It’s now highly impaired. A new experience for you; you’re disoriented. Isn’t that it?”
Mutreaux said haltingly, “But it does not feel impaired.”
The vug authority facing them said, “Do you wish to withdraw from The Game?”
“Not at this point,” Pete answered, and Bill Calumine, white and stricken, reflexively nodded in agreement.
What is this? Pete asked himself. What’s going on? Has Dave Mutreaux, despite the threat from Mary Anne, betrayed us?
Mutreaux said, “I spoke aloud because they—” He indicated the vug opponent. “They can read my mind anyhow.”
That was true; Pete nodded, his mind laboring furiously. What can we salvage here? he asked himself. He tried to control his plunging panic, his intuition of defeat.
Joe Schilling, lighting a cigar, leaned back and said, “I think we’d better go on.” He did not appear worried. And yet of course he was. But Joe Schilling, Pete realized, was a great Game-player; he would not show his emotions or capitulate in any way. Joe would go on to the end, and the rest of them would, too. Because they had to. It was as simple as that.
“If we win,” Pete said to the vug opponent, “we obtain control of Titan. You have as much to lose. You have as much at stake as we do.”
The vug drew itself up, shivered, replied, “Play.”
“It’s your turn to draw a card,” Joe Schilling reminded it.
“True.” Admonished, the vug now drew a card. It paused, and then on the board its piece, advanced one, two, three . . . nine squares in all.
The square read: Planetoid rich in archeological treasures, discovered by your scouts. Win $70,000.
Was it a bluff? Pete Garden turned toward Joe Schilling, and now Bill Calumine leaned over to confer. The others of the group, too, bent closer, murmuring.
Joe Schilling said, “I’d call it.”
Up and down the table the members of Pretty Blue Fox hesitantly voted. The vote ran in favor of calling the move as a bluff. But it was close.
“Bluff,” Joe Schilling stated, aloud.
The vug’s card at once flipped over. It was a nine.
“It’s fair,” Mary Anne said in a leaden voice. “I’m sorry, but it is; no Psi-force that I could detect was exerted on it.”
The vug said, “Prepare your payment, please.” And again it laughed, or seemed to laugh; Pete could not be certain which.