To him, the vug said, “Yes, I intend to continue.”
Everything burst in Pete Garden’s face; the board dissolved and he felt dreadful pain and at the same time he knew what had happened. The vug had given up, and in its agony it intended to destroy them, along with it. It was continuing—but in another dimension. Another context entirely.
And they were here with it, on Titan. On its world, not their own.
Their luck had been bad in that respect. Decisively so.
XVII
MARY ANNE’S VOICE reached him, coolly and placidly. “It’s attempting to manipulate reality, Pete. Using the faculty by which it brought us to Titan. Shall I do what I can?”
“Yes,” he grated. He could not see her; he lay in darkness, in a darkened pool which was not the presence of matter around him but its absence. Where are the others? he wondered. Scattered, everywhere. Perhaps over millions of miles of vacant, meaningless space. And—over millenniums.
There was silence.
“Mary,” he said aloud.
No answer.
“Mary!” he shouted in desperation, scratching at the darkness. “Are you gone, too?” He listened. There was no response.
And then he heard something, or rather felt it. In the darkness, some living entity was probing in his direction. Some sensory extension of it, a device feeling its way; it was aware of him. Curious about him in a dim, limited, but shrewd, way.
Something even older than the vug against which they had played.
He thought, It’s something that lives here between the worlds. Between the layers of reality which make up our experience, ours and the vugs’. Get away from me, he thought. He tried to scramble, to move rapidly or at least repel it.
The creature, interested even more now, came closer.
“Joe Schilling,” he called. “Help me!”
“I am Joe Schilling,” the creature said. And it made its
way toward him urgently, now, unwinding and extending itself greedily. “Greed and fear,” it said. “A bad combination.”
“The hell you’re Joe Schilling,” he said in terror; he slapped at it, twisting, trying to roll away.
“But greed alone,” the thing continued, “is not so bad; it’s the prime motivating pressure of the self-system. Psychologically speaking.”
Pete Garden shut his eyes. “God in heaven,” he said. It was Joe Schilling. What had the vugs done to him?
What had he and Joe become, out here in the darkness?
Or had the vugs done this? Was it, instead, just showing them this?
He bent forward, found his foot, began feverishly to unlace his shoe; he took off the shoe and, reaching back, clouted the thing, Joe Schilling, as hard as he could with it.
“Hmmm,” the thing said. “I’ll have to mull this over.” And it withdrew.
Panting, he waited for it to return.
He knew that it would.
Joe Schilling, floundering in the immense vacuity, rolled, seemed to fall, caught himself, choked on the smoke of his cigar and struggled to breathe. “Pete!” he said loudly. He listened. There was no direction, no up or down. No here. No sense of what was him and not him. No division into the I and the not-I.
Silence.
“Pete Garden,” he said again, and this time he sensed something, sensed it but did not actually hear it. “Is that you?” he demanded.
“Yes, it’s me,” the answer came. And it was Pete.
Yet, it was not.
“What’s going on?” Joe said. “What’s the damn thing doing to us? It’s cheating away a mile a minute, isn’t it? But we’ll get back to Earth; I have faith we’ll find our way back. After all, we won The Game, didn’t we? And we were positive we weren’t going to be able to do that.” Again he listened.
Pete said, “Come closer.”
“No,” Schilling said. “For some darn reason I—don’t trust you. Anyhow, how can I come closer? I’m just rolling around here, right? You, too?”
“Come closer,” the voice repeated, monotonously.
No, Joe Schilling said to himself.
He did not trust the voice; he felt frightened. “Get away,” he said, and, paralyzed, listened.
It had not gone away.
In the darkness, Freya Gaines thought. It’s betrayed us; we won and got nothing. That bastard organism—we never should have trusted it or put any faith in Pete’s idea of playing it.
I hate him, she said to herself. It’s his and Joe’s fault.
I’d kill them, both of them, she thought, furiously. I’d crunch them to death. She reached out, groping with both hands in the darkness. I’d kill anyone, right now.
I want to kill!
Mary Anne McClain said to Pete, “Listen, Pete; it’s deprived us of all our modes of apprehending reality. It’s MS that it’s changed. I’m sure of it. Can you hear me?” She cocked her head, strained to hear.
There was nothing. No answer.
It’s atomized us, she thought. As if we’re each of us in an extreme psychosis, isolated from everyone else and every familiar attribute in our method of perceiving time and space. This is frightened, hating isolation, she realized. It must be that. What else can it be?
It can’t be real. And yet-Perhaps this is fundamental reality, beneath the conscious “layers of the psyche; maybe this is the way we really are. They’re showing us this, killing us with the truth about ourselves. Their telepathic faculty and their ability to mold and reform minds, to infuse them; she retreated from the thought.
And then, below her, she saw something that lived.
Stunted, alien creatures, warped by enormous forces into miserably malformed, distorted shapes. Crushed down until they were blinded and tiny. She peered at them; the waning
light of a huge, dying sun lit and relit the scene and then, even as she watched, it faded into dark red and at last utter blackness snuffed it out once more.
Faintly luminous, like organisms inhabitating a vast depth, the stunted creatures continued to live, after a fashion. But it was not pleasant.
She recognized them.
That’s us. Terrans, as the vugs see us. Close to the sun, subject to immense gravitational forces. She shut her eyes.
I understand, she thought. No wonder they want to fight us; to them we’re an old, waning race that’s had its period, that must be compelled to abandon the scene.
And then, the vugs. A glowing creature, weightless, drifted far above, beyond the range of the crushing pressures, the blunted, dying creatures. On a little moon, far from the great, ancient sun.
You want to show us this, she realized. This is how reality appears to you, and it’s just as real as our own view.
But—no more so.
Do you grasp that? she asked the glowing weightless presence that was the spiraling Titanian. That our view of the situation is equally true? Yours can’t replace ours. Or can it? Is that what you want?
She waited for the answer, her eyes squeezed shut with fear.
“Ideally,” a thought came to her drily, “both views can be made to coincide. However, in practicality, that does not work.”
Opening her eyes she saw a blob, a mound of sagging, gelatinous protoplasm—ludicrously, with its name stitched to its front, in red thread. E. B. Black.
“What?” she demanded, and looked around.
E. B. Black thought-radiated to her, “There are difficulties. We have not resolved them ourselves; hence, the contradictions within our culture.” It added, “I’ve prevailed over the Game-players whom your group was pitted against. You’re here on Terra, in your family’s apartment in San Rafael where I am currently conducting my criminal investigation.”
Light, and the force of gravity; both were acting on them. She sat up, warily. “I saw—”
“You saw the view which obsesses us. We can’t repudiate it.” The vug flowed closer to her, anxious to make its thoughts truly clear. “We’re aware that it’s partial, that it’s unfair to you Terrans because you have, as you say, an equal and opposite and as completely binding a view of us in return. However, we continue to perceive as you just now experienced.” It added, “It would have been unfair to leave you in that frame of reference any longer.”
Mary Anne said, “We won The Game. Against you.”
“Our citizens are aware of that. We repudiate punitive efforts by our distraught Game-players. Logically, having won, you must be returned to Terra. Anything else is unthinkable. Except of course to our extremists.”
“Your Game-players?”
“They will not be punished. They are too highly-placed in our culture. Be glad you’re here; be content, Miss McClain.” Its tone was harsh.
Mary Anne said, “And the other members of our group? Where are they now?” They were not here in San Rafael, obviously. “At Carmel?”
“Scattered,” E. B. Black said, irritably. She could not tell if it were angry at her, at the members of the group, or at its fellow vugs. The whole situation appeared to annoy it. “You’ll see them again, Miss McClain. Now, if I may return to my investigation . . .”