PLAYERS AT THE GAME OF PEOPLE by John Brunner

by Players At The Game Of People (v5. 5) (html)

  But she didn’t, and nobody at the hotel paid him special attention except for people working in the discothèque—which turned out to be an independent, subcontracted operation—who scowled at him or beamed according to which of his visits they remembered him from. And Jackson had simply failed to arrive for work today, so they had hired someone else. There was always a long waiting list for his kind of job. Come to that, there was a waiting list for any job. Perhaps he had been mugged or stabbed on the way home; perhaps he had been run over; perhaps he had contracted one of the countless epidemics permanently infesting any large city; at all events, he had not been seen or heard from. Computer investigation on the scale accessible to Godwin failed to trace him. He passed the information to Hamish and hoped for the best.

  Which was what he personally was not enjoying. The Global Hotel was luxurious on its own level, but compared to his home it was boring. To wake every morning in the same room with the same outlook was unbearably monotonous. Worse yet, he was waking from unrestful sleep; his dreams were haunted by the dust-and-ashes taste of his last “reward.” He was puzzled and hurt by what had happened, not during the experiences, but afterwards, during that immeasurable period when he had felt forgotten, abandoned, neglected, thrown aside. He suspected why and how that had come about, but he was mortally afraid of spelling it out to himself, and did whatever he could think of to avoid confronting his own conclusions.

  He regarded it as something of an achievement when finally he admitted to himself that it had not been indigestion which had taken him to Luke, but a terrible feeling like a vast bruise.

  Which Luke had not diagnosed or referred to. Or treated.

  Why?

  Frustrated, dispirited, anxious to an extent he had imagined would never be his lot again, he passed the time as best he could. Eventually idleness grew unbearable, and he decided to do something he had never done before: call on Bill Harvey and inquire after Gorse. Ordinarily he felt no more than a faint pang of curiosity about those he had recruited; now and then he realized he must have opposite numbers—a woman who recruited boys, a man and a woman who recruited gays—but the matter had always seemed so inconsequential until now that he had automatically dismissed it.

  Or else, perhaps, the illusive reality of the reward experience which followed an assignment masked any burgeoning interest.

  But he was in no state to reason out problems of that magnitude. He was growing more and more obsessed with the unprecedented anomaly which the fair woman represented. He had searched his memory over and over, attempting to locate some chance encounter, some situation, which could have given him the image around which might have developed his conviction that he recognized her, and that she was the adult counterpart of the little girl in his George Medal experience.

  But how could she be? He had checked up on what Bill had told him, and it was true: he had been given a decoration which did not yet exist. Had he been at home he would have ripped the medal from his cabinet of mementos and flung it in the dustbin along with its “authenticating” press cutting… except that their destruction would have had to be more thorough, medals being remarkable even to dustmen. The function of such souvenirs was to persuade him, even for a little while, that his remembered experiences were real so far as he was concerned. To have one which at every glance must inform him it was a snare and a deception—it was intolerable!

  Therefore he must find ways of not thinking about it. Possibly contact with someone as down-to-earth as Bill Harvey would be helpful in distracting him. Bill, after all, except for his enjoyment of tele recorded football matches and horse races, lived wholly in the present, as Godwin usually did—as he had imagined had become automatic with him. Reviewing the past had grown painful, or at least uncomfortable.

  And perhaps if Gorse were not doing anything else they might make love. He recalled her capacity for orgasm. It had been impressive.

  Not that any twice-tasted fruit could possess the same appeal.

  At the very moment he reached the front steps of Bill’s home, the door opened and Gorse came out. She was wearing the height of fashion: a wide-shouldered barathea blouse, a skirt slashed into irregular ribbons, boots stained camouflage green and brown. On what little could be seen of her face around immense dark glasses there was an expression of grim determination. For an instant Godwin feared she might have been called, in which case it would be pointless to address her, but halfway down the steps she seemed to start noticing the outside world, and as she came level with him she checked, removed the glasses, and said, “Oh, it is you.”

  Her face was not so much pale as gray; it was drawn, it was haggard. Even before she spoke again Godwin could guess what she was about to say.

  “Can’t stop—sorry. I have to go see somebody called Irma. Bill gave me the address.”

  “Just a second!”

  “I said I can’t stop!” Then, relenting: “Oh, very well. What is it?”

  “How do you feel about—well, you know?”

  “Oh!” Her red-rimmed eyes lit up. “Oh, it’s fantastic! It’s the kind of thing I’ve been looking for all my life without realizing! People who join secret societies like the Rosicrucians or the Freemasons or the Illuminati must be looking for exactly what you’ve given me! And not getting half such a bargain! You’re a darling, and thank you very much!” She pursed her lips and planted a sketch for a kiss on his cheek. “But I have to rush! And you of all people must understand why!”

  So that was going to be her justification to herself. Well, it was at least a variation on a theme…

  He watched her until she vanished around the corner in a flurry of ragged-robin skirts, and only then realized that Bill—tankard in hand as ever—was standing on the front doorstep, gazing thoughtfully his way.

  Godwin walked up to join him.

  “Glad she got the chance to go see Irma,” Bill said reflectively, ushering him inside. There were more luck charms than ever on display in the hallway, including a collection of new white bones hanging from red and yellow cords. “The way she’s been working ‘erself…! Same as with an ‘orse, y’know. Overtraining, they call it. Result: you get the peak performance day before the race, an’ your favorite comes in nowhere! Come in the parlor. Good to see yer. Fancy a jar?”

  “You know I don’t,” Godwin said as the parlor engulfed him: a dark place full of overstuffed Victorian furniture, bric-à-brac displays, velvet drapes tied back with thick gold cords, almost the only modern note being struck by the TV set and, its attached recorder. One entire wall was taken up by a bar whose display would not have disgraced a pub.

  “Well, I bloody know you didn’t come round to watch my tape of yesterday’s Prudential match!” Bill said tartly, dropping into an armchair and waving his guest to do the same. “What is it? Got under your skin, did she—the little one?”

  “I don’t think so,” Godwin said after a hesitation. “No, to be honest I came to ask you a question.”

  “So let’s be ‘earin’ from yer!”

  “Are you satisfied with what you’ve got?”

  The words were out before he could check them. It had been in his mind to ask a different question, but it seemed of secondary importance compared to what he had just said.

  Bill’s face darkened. “Wotcher mean?”

  “Well…” A helpless gesture. “Well, if they won’t let you in the betting shop any more, for example. Doesn’t it sort of spoil something in life for you?”

  Contemptuously: “If they won’t listen to me, let ‘em rot! Lord, between us we could’ve cleaned up… But they won’t, so the ‘ell with ‘em. Far’s I’m concerned, I’m livin’ the life of Riley, an’ if me mates don’t want a share, they don’t ‘ave to ‘ave one. What’s turned you so sour all of a sudden?”

  “I…” Godwin licked his lips. “Bill, what would you do if you thought somebody had sussed you out?”

  “Like for instance?”

  “Well, the police.”

  “Flex �
��em, wot else? I never ‘ad no trouble with the rozzers! Nor the buggers in the tax-office neither, though they was persistent for a while. ‘Ere! Y’know something?”

  He leaned forward earnestly, eying Godwin with disapproval.

  “I don’t like wot you’re implyin’! You run acrost somebody you can’t flex out?”

  “I was sort of tired when it happened, and I didn’t catch on until later,” Godwin said in a self-exonerating tone.

  “Hah! I still don’t like it! With that on yer back, yer didn’t ought a come ‘ere, did yer?”

  “I’ve done what I can. I put Hamish Kemp on it right away—”

  “ ‘Im?” Bill interrupted contemptuously. “Not much better’n a rozzer ‘imself, that one. Did ‘e do yer any good?”

  “Well… Well, not yet, to be frank.”

  “Hah! In that case, then, I think I shall trouble yer to be on yer way.” Bill drained his tankard, set it by, and rose to his feet again, making meaningful gestures in the direction of the door. “After the bother I’ve’ad with the new kid—”

  “Bother?” Godwin broke in sharply, also rising.

  “Oh, no more’n usual, I suppose,” Bill admitted with a dismissive shrug. “But you know ‘ow it is right at the beginnin’—gettin’ used, and that…”

  Godwin nodded. He knew only too well, when he troubled, or cared, to recall his own experience in that area. Which was seldom.

  “Don’t bother seeing me out,” he muttered. “I can find my own way.”

  He wished with all his heart and soul that that were true.

  Still there was no word from Hamish. Abruptly Godwin grew annoyed. The standardized perfection of his hotel, which was always flawed, got on his nerves. The food it served—so his body reported—was contaminated with artificial preservatives, and was likely to drive him back to Irma, at least, if not clear to Luke, within a matter of days. He felt uncomfortable and edgy, and that dismayingly echoed recollections from the past he had once imagined he was escaping forever.

  An uneasy, vague, intransigent suspicion that he had been betrayed began to haunt his dreams. Once it woke him screaming from a dry throat at five A.M.

  It was no use. He must go home. The hell with Hamish, who had so far let him down.

  As though to make a point, he reclaimed his car from Soho.

  But gray weather shrouded London; layers of cloud shed their impassive tears into a chill irregular breeze as a succession of low-pressure areas drifted in from the North Atlantic. Godwin, of course, had no need to care about the fact that the street people were being forced to revert to their winter habits even though the summer was barely half spent, dossing down by night under makeshift awnings of tarpaulin stolen from building sites, by day running after passers-by with torn plastic shopping bags over their heads. He woke morning after morning to the sight and sound of surf beating on a Bahamian beach, to the crisp clear air of the Alps, to all the complex shouts and stinks of an Egyptian market, or to wherever else he chose. He feasted daily on turtle soup and venison, on Whitstable natives and Maine lobster with drawn butter, on sweetbreads vol-au-vent and T-bone steak, on hearts of palm and grilled red snapper… and then, at first with a sense of defiance as though challenging his owner to compensate him for the disappointment—for the agony—involved in what should have been his latest reward, subsequently with no more than delight and gratitude, on dishes such as he had never dared imagine: strange delectable foods of improbable texture which uttered to the air fragrances no terrestrial kitchen might achieve. All these were washed down with Mumm and Krug and Saint-Émilion and Nuits-Saint-Georges and Tokaji and Mosel and eventually liquors requested at random, many of unlikely colors, glowing and sparkling, oily on the palate or chilling or burning, which combined with the incomprehensible new food so perfectly as to gratify his inmost yearnings and leave him lazily content.

  After which, when he stretched out on his enormous bed, a companion would present her(?)self, and there would be further gratification, often as remarkable as the food.

  Gradually he came to realize that there was no reason why he should have gone to Bill’s to inquire about the fate of Gorse; that there was no more reason why he should concern himself with her than with Patricia, or Elvira, or Kate, or Lucy, or Guinevere, or…

  The list was far too long for him to review.

  And yet something remained: an insoluble residue. He combated it as best he might; it proved resistant.

  It was a fact that for the first time ever he had felt impelled to inquire after one of his recruits. It was a fact that, for the first time ever, he had infringed the unspoken courtesies which obtained between… well, between himself and those who were like him. (He knew no more precise term.) It was a fact that instead of enjoying rest, refreshment, and reward from his latest payment for services rendered he had—

  Stop. Thinking back to that was unbearable, particularly to the (shy away!) timeless time when he had been abandoned.

  But…

  All right! So he had been in a pet! Was the way he had been treated justifiable, even in a pet?

  Like a stone in his shoe, that possessed the power to irk. Having nothing to do, nowhere to go, compelled to wait for Hamish’s report, he fretted ceaselessly as though he were an oyster doubtful about the advantages of becoming parent to a pearl.

  Without having the faintest idea whether one would emerge.

  All his sources of gratification wore away. Daily he inspected the street through rain-washed windows smeared with bird shit, expecting the blond woman to be there. At first he could turn away from frustration when she was not and seek solace in one of the strange, even weird, liquors and drugs which now were being furnished to him… and which, on the unconscious level, he was beginning to understand. One mealtime he set a forkful of food to his mouth just long enough to taste, and withdrew it, exclaiming to the air, “I know how that was done!”

  It was extraordinarily delicious. It drew on a cuisine he had never imagined. It had been—he was instinctively certain—dipped in liquid nitrogen before cooking. As if to mark some sort of achievement in his life, the partner who came to him that night extorted amazing pleasure from his body.

  Yet in the morning when he woke to carnival in Bahia his mouth was full of the taste of ashes. He was reminded of the hangovers he had once endured.

  And felt cheated. It should have been part of the bargain that there would be no more.

  He found himself beginning to wish he had a copy of his contract, well though he knew it could never have been written down.

  The phone rang. Weary of his outlook on the Piazza San Marco, Godwin reached for it, thankful for the least distraction.

  It said, “Hamish. Meet me at Whitestone Pond.”

  “You found out who she—” Godwin began eagerly, but the line went dead. For a moment he was annoyed; then he began hastily to dress.

  Lately he had not used the car, thinking it too conspicuous, but now he was in too great a hurry to consider the hell of public transport, the agonies of delay, the overcrowding and constant risk of breakdown. Ignoring speed limits whenever traffic allowed—and that meant most of the way, for although, as he realized with surprise, this was a Sunday morning, there were very few people out and about except the omnipresent trios of police, two men and a woman, charged with a different kind of duty than arresting drivers for speeding—he reached his destination in less than twenty minutes.

  Hamish was waiting for him on a corner where in the old days there had always been numerous speakers on Sunday morning, advocating political, social, or religious causes, who always attracted at least a dozen vaguely interested listeners. Today there were none, and the fact that the sky was once more gray and overcast did not suffice to explain the whole reason. But that was no concern of Godwin’s, or Hamish’s.

  Linking arms affectionately and leading the way toward the pub a few hundred yards away, Jack Straw’s Castle with its improbable crenellations, the detective said with warm en
thusiasm, “My dear God, I’m indescribably obliged to you! What a fascinating challenge you offered! I’ve quite neglected my tame discs since I last saw you. Every moment of my time has been devoted to unraveling your little mystery.”

  “Have you found her?”

  “Found? If you mean have I made face-to-face contact with the lady—scarcely, old man! But I know who she must be, and I can tell you where to look for her yourself.”

  He paused, relishing the recollection of his achievement—and it was one, as Godwin readily conceded; perhaps nobody else in the world could proceed to a sure conclusion on such flimsy evidence. That, though, was what Hamish had struck his bargain for, so it was not he who deserved praise for his success.

  “Come on!”—impatiently. “Out with it!”

  He unlinked his arm, for the few passers-by, bound like themselves for the pub as opening time approached, were giving them suspicious and hostile looks.

  “Very well,” Hamish sighed, glancing around to make sure they were not overheard. But they had passed the pond itself, a shallow artificial bowl where two or three bare-legged children were wading in pursuit of toy yachts under the bored supervision of parents or nannies, and the vacant near-countryside of Hampstead Heath stretched away on either hand.

  “Her name is Barbara Tupper, alias Simpkins. Age going on fifty, five feet five, slim build, naturally fair hair worn long, divorced, one child not by her ex-husband…”

  In a monotonous professional drone he reeled off item after item that he had learned about her, and with every phrase Godwin’s heart sank more.

  “I think you know her,” Hamish said suddenly, breaking off and staring keenly at him.

  “Yes.”

  Who, after all, was more likely to be on Gorse’s trail than her mother?

  “How?”

  But there was no chance for Godwin to answer, to explain that in fact he didn’t know her, had only recognized that she must be someone he had heard of.