PLAYERS AT THE GAME OF PEOPLE by John Brunner

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

Alarmed, it had spattered her forearm with its droppings.

  Godwin had to chuckle as he brought a tissue to wipe away the mess, but forbore to comment until, against her will, she yielded and returned to her chair.

  Cradling her glass in one upturned hand, she fixed him with steady gray eyes in which he could not help seeing the spirit of the little blond girl he so vividly remembered saving from an impossible doom.

  “I won’t say I’m starting to believe all this,” she said. “But I suspect I may not be believing it because I don’t want to… Let’s get back to basics. Who the hell are you? And this time I want a straight answer!”

  “Who did you think I was when you first saw me?”

  “You know damned well!” she flared. “The exact double of the man who saved my life when I was ten!”

  “Is that the only meeting you have to remember him by?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Godwin drew a deep breath.

  “It doesn’t say so in that press cutting of yours—so much like mine you think mine is a forgery, which it isn’t—but didn’t you go to the investiture at Buckingham Palace?”

  She nodded warily, as though braced for what might follow.

  “At that time when so many people were getting killed, especially RAF officers, it was obvious you might never see him again. You wanted to thank him from the bottom of your heart. You’d have liked to do it in words, probably, but you didn’t know enough. So you shocked him, and everybody.”

  She was sitting rock-still, except for her lips, which framed a single word: “How?”

  “You tongue-kissed him.”

  There was a dead pause. Finally she shook her head and took another gulp from her glass.

  “I don’t know what kind of confidence trick I’m being set up for, but if you want testimonials from me about your skill as a mind reader, you’ve got them, and I’d like to buy a share in the act. You could peel the quids off a mark easy as bananas— Say!” She suddenly sat upright. “Is that how you pay for this setup?”

  “I don’t pay for it.”

  “Ah, hell. Have it your way,” she sighed, slumping back in the chair. “But you’re good, I grant you. I don’t know where in the world you picked up that little tidbit, but it’s quite true. You can’t have got it off my granny, because I swear she’d have died rather than mention it. Shocked her to the soles of her black button boots, I did! Respectable little girls of ten weren’t supposed to know about that kind of thing. I’m not sure she did, to be honest. Pillar of respectability, she was, and glad of the chance to snatch me away from the wiles of that devil’s offspring, her daughter-in-law. I didn’t cry when she died a couple of years later, I tell you straight. Even if they did put me in a home… But how did you find out?” She brightened abruptly. “Oh, of course! I suppose Ransome survived, and let it slip somehow. Is he still alive?”

  But that wasn’t reasonable; it could be seen running aground in her head, on the reef of Godwin’s resemblance to her savior. Not allowing him time to answer, she plunged on. “At any rate I’ll take my Bible oath I never mentioned it to Dora.”

  “I didn’t learn about it from her.”

  “And that’s the only answer I’m going to get, hm?” Sour-faced of a sudden, she drained her glass and held it out. “Well, if I don’t get any better advantage out of meeting you, I might as well drink your liquor. I couldn’t afford stuff like this.”

  “Wasn’t your mother’s name Gallon?” Godwin said, taking the glass.

  “Oh, my God! Have you been researching me at Somerset House or something? Why? Is all this building up to a ransom demand? I can’t pay anything—that TV deal fell through and my agent’s a drunken fool and I’m practically broke after spending so much on tracing Dora!”

  “I want an answer,” Godwin murmured. Seeing that almost all the salt was gone from the rim of her glass, he dropped it in the waste-bucket beneath the bar, where it broke with a bright tinkling noise.

  “One glass, one drink?” she exclaimed as he reached for another. “My God, you must be rolling! I think that’s all that’s keeping me here, wanting to know what kind of a miracle worker you are, stuck in this dingy corner of a boring city. Are you the world’s most successful blackmailer or conman or kidnapper? Or did you just inherit thousands of millions of quid and decide to spend them all on yourself and never pay taxes?”

  “I never inherited anything,” he said, handing her the fresh drink. “I…”

  He checked. It had been so long since he talked to anyone about himself—so long, indeed, since he thought much about what he had once been—the words he called to mind felt rusty and uncomfortable. Yet there was a pressure in his head compelling him to utter them. He had lived a life of solitude for far too long; contacts with his own kind like Irma or Bill or Luke were at best acquaintanceships, while the meetings and mating she enjoyed (?) beyond his window were scarcely even to be dignified by that term.

  Even so, he would not have experienced this urge to talk had his life continued in its normal path. He was used to being punished for errors, like the one he had committed at the Global Hotel discotheque; he could well have become resigned to the loss of one of his rewards, had he been able to look forward to the next with any excitement; he might even have endured the death of Hamish, had it not been due—or presumably due—to his own actions. It had been long since he experienced anger; he had learned to regard it as dangerous, as self-defeating. Good behavior was invariably rewarded, just as bad behavior was. It all felt logical; it all felt right.

  Or more exactly: it had done…

  But like the worm in the apple, doubts were gnawing his mind now. He had boasted of being able to go anywhere he liked; in fact that wasn’t so. He could go anywhere he was sure of finding someone like himself—someone of his own kind: Wilf Burgess or Maud McConley or Dirk van Beelden or André Bankowski or whoever. There were places in Japan and Korea and Africa he had never ventured to, where he was not certain of meeting strangers who spoke English. What had felt like ultimate freedom had suddenly, appallingly and incredibly, turned into a set of arbitrary fetters. He was at a loss to know what to make of this novel and intolerable insight.

  So he prevaricated as he resumed his chair, gazing at Barbara.

  “Was your mother’s name Gallon?”

  “Oh, hell! If you didn’t know, why would you ask? Yes, goddammit! Yes! My grandmother hated my mother so much, as soon as she got the chance—as soon as that bloody flying bomb killed her—she had my name changed to hers. To Tupper! And I’ve always wished I’d found out what the name actually means soon enough to be able to mock her with it on her deathbed!” Venom inflamed her words; she was almost panting. “But I lived up to it!” she concluded, and poured half her new drink down her throat at one go.

  “But if she was your father’s mother—” Godwin said, briefly puzzled.

  “Second marriage” was the sullen reply. “She hated her first husband too—Ernie Gallon. Who got my poor dead father on her unwilling body; whose bad seed, as she called it, led her only son to marry a whore… But how the hell else was a woman to make ends meet in a slum district on a war widow’s pension?”

  “Your father was killed?”

  “Like a million others,” she said wearily. “But a lot less gloriously. He died in a prisoner-of-war camp. The kids I called brother and sister can’t have been his. What a bloody fool my mother was! Bringing extra kids into the world like that!”

  She briskened. “But I suppose Dora told you all that about her background. She always does. Calls me filthy names every chance she gets, and to everybody. Damned nearly got herself slung out of that expensive school I sent her to, until I managed to persuade the headmistress to call in a psychiatrist, very publicly, and get her interviewed about her fantasies. She was quiet after that… But we started out talking about you, remember?”

  Behind her brittle smartness was genuine hurt. Godwin finished his own first drink and went to make another; ha
ving used only half the salt around it, he retained the same glass, and knew she registered the fact. On her face could be read some such comment as “So the purse isn’t bottomless!”

  But neither of them mentioned it aloud. Instead he said, somewhat to his own surprise, looking into nowhere, “At twenty I was a hopeless drunk. I was an orphan. I’d never held a job more than a month. I’d been jailed over and over. I still dare not drink anywhere except in this room. Or out there”—waving at the window—“which amounts to the same thing.”

  She pondered that, seeming to conduct a debate with herself. A few words emerged: “Posthypnotic suggestion? Could be, I suppose… but no hypno could explain what I’m going through! Ah, the hell!”

  She looked him squarely in the face and her voice rose to a normal level.

  “Okay, I’ll take your story literally. What happened to—rescue you?”

  “I had a chance, and I grabbed it.” And he was on the point of explaining what it had been, and how it had all happened, when the words rising in his throat threatened to choke him. He had to say something else instead, and was inspired.

  “Same as Gorse did!”

  “Same as—?” She looked puzzled for a moment; then light dawned. “Oh! She’s decided to adopt that silly nickname they gave her at school, has she? Well, I’ve always known she hates being Dora Simpkins. I must say I never thought there was much to choose between Simpkins and Tupper, myself, which is why I’ve generally stuck to the one I was used to when it came to professional matters… Gorse, though! It’s not what you’d call an antidote to Simpkins, any more than Dora!”

  “She changed both parts. She’s called Gorse Plenty now.”

  “What?” On the verge of taking another swig of her drink Barbara began to chuckle. “Oh, that’s too much! Why Plenty?”

  “She—ah… She took advice.”

  “Did she? Never from me, not since she was about six! I wish I knew who had that much influence over her. You?”

  Godwin shook his head. “A friend.”

  “I’d certainly like to meet him. He could give me a few tips, by the sound of it. Was he the same person who told you how to grow madly rich?” With one hand she indicated their surroundings as she poured the rest of her drink down with the other.

  “No,” said Godwin stonily.

  “Do I get an introduction, since he knows her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, the hell with you, then,” she said, putting the glass aside. “At least I have something to go on. There can’t be more than one person in London—maybe in the world—called Gorse Plenty. Thanks for the drink. And the magic. Now let me out.”

  “I already told you,” Godwin said patiently. “There was a detective who could have found her. He found out who you were on the slimmest of evidence. That’s how I knew to call you Barbara, even though I would have automatically called you Greer. But—”

  On the verge of rising, she sat back again very sharply, staring at him.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said he died today! Messily and horribly and publicly! It’s probably going to be in all tomorrow’s papers. No way it could make the TV news tonight. Much too disgusting.”

  “I’m not talking about that!” she exploded, folding her fingers into fists. “You just mentioned a name!”

  “You mean Greer?”

  “How did you know?”

  There followed a blank pause. At last Godwin said, “But when I rescued you, that’s what your mother called you. And people were calling her Mrs. Gallon, and I remember think ‘ga-Greer ga-Gallon’—that’s a clumsy name for such a lovely child!”

  “But you didn’t rescue me!” she almost screamed, leaping to her feet and standing over him with balled fists threatening. “It was someone called Ransome and he must be old by now and you look about thirty-two and I’m fifty next birthday and I want to know how in God’s name you trespassed inside my head and found out about Greer Gallon!”

  Her composure failed her. A second later, she had to cover her eyes with her palms and was lost in helpless sobbing.

  For a while he stared at her in foolish puzzlement; then he remembered his manners and brought her a box of tissues, dropping on one knee beside her chair to proffer them. She gradually grew aware of his presence, and with muttered thanks took the box and blew her nose and dabbed her cheeks dry. Her eyes had reddened with astonishing rapidity.

  “I must look like a bloody fool,” she forced out. “But I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks, and I can’t eat properly, and—” She had to blow her nose a second time, and looked around for a wastebasket to dump the used tissues in. He brought her one, not rising to his feet, and settled encouragingly at her side with one elbow on the arm of her chair. He wanted some sort of explanation for what had happened; he wanted clues to her identity in his imaginary world, particularly since no other reward had yielded contact with reality; but most of all he wanted conversation with someone not party to his secret. That fact amazed him, but it was inescapable.

  He wanted someone’s opinion of him. An outsider’s.

  Why he should want it was too difficult a question for him to tackle for the moment. Instead of thinking about it, he said in a coaxing tone, “The last thing I wanted was to make you cry! I’m terribly sorry!”

  “You expect me to believe that?”—with a return of her former defiance. “Christ, when you’ve pushed all my buttons, including one I didn’t think anybody knew about—!”

  “Tell me about Greer, then,” he suggested quickly.

  “Oh…!” She finished wiping her eyes and cheeks, set the box of tissues aside, leaned back, and reached for her drink again, not looking at him. “Why should you have to ask? You have to know all about Greer Gallon if you know of her existence.”

  “But I’d like to know how I know about her.”

  She glanced at him, then away, folding both hands around her glass.

  “You sound as though you mean that.”

  “I do. I swear I do. I have no faintest notion why the name is in my memories. Why you’re in my memories. When you obviously can’t be.”

  “But…” She thought for a few seconds, her eyes switching to and from his face. “But if you’re so incredibly rich—”

  “I told you: I don’t pay for this!”

  “Who does?”

  “Nobody!”

  “Now that’s ridiculous!”

  “I don’t care what you think about it! I’m telling you!” He had sat back on his heels and was staring fiercely at her, and for a heartbeat their eyes locked. He had to blink first, and she sighed as she looked away.

  “Christ, I don’t understand you, I swear I don’t. Here you are in the most incredible home I ever saw, and you behave like a whining, sniveling victim. Have you heard your voice on tape lately? You sound like someone with a giant grudge against the world!”

  “Well, the hell with you!” he barked, twisting to his feet in a single smooth motion, thanks to Irma’s and Luke’s attentions. “Here I’m only trying to persuade you that your daughter got a terrific deal, the same as me, and you start bloody insulting me!”

  His recent brief exposure to the possibility of anger had reminded him how dreadfully tempting it was. But he reveled in the sensation for only a moment before repenting, because he far more desired to hear what she could tell him. Contrite, he caught her arm.

  “I’m sorry! But your daughter is okay, get me? Never mind what you think of me! Most of the time I’m not like this. I just never expected to see a real you.”

  “And I never expected to meet a real you. So we’re even.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Are we? You here, rolling in luxury with knobs and bells on—me down there, struggling to make ends meet from one book to the next, pretending I’m a grand success and making such a good job of it I can con the headmistress of the most expensive school in England into taking on my crazy Dora along with the scions—scionesses?—of the nobil
ity and gentry…” She gulped the last of her drink and set the glass carefully on the floor.

  Now at last she looked at him squarely, and her face took on the contours of indescribable regret.

  “I don’t know who the hell I’m talking to, but I don’t give a shit. I’m just glad I can talk to you. Because there’s something I’ve wanted to say for years. Years and years. I know only too damned well I am never going to make it as Greer, and it’s high time I admitted the fact. To Dora. To myself. You too, because you’re here. So if you’re still thinking about ransom money, you may go take a running jump and I hope the landing castrates you on barbed wire. You see before you one chrome-plated, copper-bottomed, genuine authenticated failure.”

  “But according to what Gorse told me—” Godwin began, and heard the girl’s grudging compliments in memory.

  “Oh, I know, I know!” Barbara interrupted. “Whenever she calls me a whore, she’s careful to make it plain that I’m a top-class one, not a streetwalker but a call girl with a phone of her own and a luxury apartment and a maid to trot out the whips and corsets! And the very smartest clientèle—to boot, as it were. To boots and saddles, to whores and away! Get me a Scotch, damn you, and turn off that fucking Cinerama show—sound effects and all!”

  He was uncertain whether it would be wise to comply; he compromised, and Bali faded in favor of a gray sky, a London panorama, and ordinary traffic noise. The location, of course, had to be one he knew; he felt Ambrose’s would be out of keeping, so he invoked Bill’s place, with malice aforethought. It might not come to anything, but on the other hand it might, so…

  But, for safety’s sake, he left the apartment as it was, only cooler.

  “Thought so,” she said with satisfaction, accepting her refilled glass. “It’s all show, isn’t it? All illusion! Like my life! Christ, when your own daughter builds a version of you in her head which magnifies all your failings and depreciates all your achievements, it’s time to call it quits. Isn’t it?”

  “Who ought Greer to have been?” Godwin said.

  She started. “My God, aren’t you the perceptive bastard! You know, I wasted a thousand quid once on a psychiatrist who did me no good at all, and he couldn’t have hit me on such a sore spot in a million years! I don’t care what you are or who you are, but it’s a bloody miracle I can talk the way I’m going to. So long as you listen I can forgive you anything, even stealing my dream and making a forgery out of it!”