PLAYERS AT THE GAME OF PEOPLE by John Brunner

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

  “What do you think the owners get out of it?”

  He spread his hands. “I don’t know. Maybe experiences they can’t have for themselves? It would fit. I think of them—when I do think of them, which isn’t often—as being like invisible angels with a hankering for the fleshpots. ‘In heaven is neither marriage nor giving in marriage’—nor getting stoned or drunk or sick from overeating. Like a guy from a big city going hunting, pretending he’s a wild barbarian like his ancestors, but knowing there’s a hot bath and a change of clothes and a bottle of wine waiting when he gets home.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, seeming completely caught up in his chain of reasoning.

  “You said angels. What about devils, though? I know you said they don’t have anything to do with it, but—”

  He cut her short.

  “Yes, of course you’re right. I don’t know how long this has been going on—thousands of years? Millions?—but it does fit. I don’t know much about that sort of thing, but I did read about that guy you mentioned. Uh—Forst?”

  “Faust?”

  “I suppose so. Well, he wanted to make wine come out of tables, and get laid by Helen of Troy, and all like that, and it’s pretty damn close to the way I live, isn’t it?”

  “Mm-hm”—with a nod. “So in the old days people would think they’d sold their soul to the powers of darkness, while nowadays they choose some alternative explanation.”

  “Mostly. I think Ambrose—remember I mentioned him?—I think he’d like to believe he’s sold his soul, but he’s too commonsensical. Wanting to become the best astrologer in the country, he asked for, and got, a full-scale computer. Souls and computers don’t seem to belong together, somehow.”

  He hesitated, gazing at her curiously.

  “You seem to have calmed down, I must say. Do you still think I did that?”

  “What?”

  “Sold my soul, and Gorse’s too. That’s what you were telling me a few minutes ago.”

  “So I was.” She had ceased her pacing and was leaning against the bar with one elbow on the counter. “And I was quite right, as you’ve just demonstrated.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t jump down my throat! You said yourself, in the old days that’s how people would have thought of it. The fact that the description changes doesn’t alter the event. Fire’s still fire, even if nowadays it’s oxygen and not phlogiston that makes it burn.”

  He shook his head foggily. “You lost me on that one.”

  “Never mind.” She stood up straight, gazing levelly at him. “This fact stands. It’s the worst fate I could possibly wish on anyone, and I would never in a million years wish it on my daughter, much though I sometimes hate her guts. Take me to where she is. Take me to where she can be expected to turn up eventually, if that’s the best you can do. I want to have a shot at saving her from your kind of damnation.”

  Angry, he leaped to his feet. “Stop talking nonsense! I’ve told you, she’s perfectly all right! Or she will be, soon as she gets the hang of what’s going on. Then she’ll live for much longer than—than you! How old do you think I am? You said thirty-two, and you were wrong.”

  “You’re around seventy, maybe seventy-five. I think seventy-five. You were too young for the First World War, you spent your childhood dreaming of what it would have been like if you’d been a hero of the trenches, you found out when the second one started that you didn’t have the makings of a hero because you weren’t allowed to. You were too precious, like a pampered Pekingese! You never did a brave thing in your life until today, when you started telling the truth to a stranger. Well?”

  Glaring, she advanced on him with one finger accusingly upraised. He could only stand agape with disbelief.

  “How—how?” he forced out at long last.

  “Christ, when were Deauville and Le Touquet ‘the best places’? I paid attention, which is what makes me a better writer than I can show in those damned romances I have to churn out! I told you I never put my name on any of them, didn’t I? But I bet you never read anything I did put my name to!” She was panting with the intensity of her feeling. “It didn’t make sense for you to be the age you look. How old, then—as old as Flight Lieutenant Ransome would have to be now?” She clawed the press cutting from her pocket and brandished it before him. “Oh, no—older than that, for sure! Not flying-bomb time, but Battle of Britain time, which adds four years. And then older still! I take it I got you pretty damn square in the belly, right?”

  “Yes, but…” He had to swallow, painfully. “Yes, but would you deprive Gorse of the chance to look—not just thirty-two, but nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, whatever she wants, when she’s seventy? Would you deprive her of the care and skill people like Irma and Luke and Hermann can provide? You don’t know these people! You don’t know how marvelous they are when they have the chance—”

  “What chance?” she cut in.

  “Well, I mean, obviously they can’t—” He was tripping over his tongue. “They can’t do what they do for everybody, just for a small group, but Gorse is in the group now and—”

  “And in hell.”

  “What do you mean?” he rasped, taking a pace toward her, clenching his fists.

  “Why, this is hell, nor are—you—out of it!” she said, but warily prepared to dodge if he should strike her.

  “If that’s a bloody quotation you can stuff it!” he roared.

  “Why? Because it isn’t true?” she countered defiantly. “I think it is! What was it like having to be thirty-two when the war was on, Godwin?” It was the first time she had addressed him by name. “And having to invent excuse after excuse for not being the hero you dreamed of when you were a child? Having to use this trick you call a flex on all the rozzers who asked for your identity card, all the redcaps who suspected you of being a deserter? And what’s it been like since, always running to stay in the same place—staying trendy, keeping up with the Bill Haley concerts and the Beatles and the Stones and Siouxsie and the Banshees, the discos and the casinos and the latest restaurants and the faddiest clothes and the smartest resorts?”

  “But I didn’t!” he exploded. “You don’t understand how it is!”

  “You mean it’s all done for you, automatically?”

  “Yes, yes! Open those wardrobes, I find the right clothes! Every time I lend myself I wake up with directions what to do!”

  “You poor devil,” she said softly. “You’re even worse off than I thought. You don’t even get to enjoy what little there is that’s fun in this sick world. Do you care about what’s happening to other people? Do you care about the beggars and the street sleepers, the kids who’ve never had a job and never will, the lost and the lonely and the mad?”

  “I was one! And I was fucking glad to be shut of it!”

  “Yes, that figures,” she said musingly. “That must be how they do it. They have to appeal to people who think their lives are such a mess they’d be better off under someone else’s control. No wonder there aren’t any successful politicians or businessmen in your circle of chums—no writers either, or artists, I’ll bet!”

  “Wilf Burgess—” Godwin began.

  “A musician who prefers to live in the past. Not one who wants to create a future. Second-hand, second-rate, the lot of them. It is hell, the sort of life you lead. It must be. With no one better than that bunch to be friends with!”

  She realized abruptly that she was still waving the press cutting in the air. Now she checked, and with a grave sense of ritual withdrew it from its protective plastic envelope.

  “Now I know for certain,” she said, “that whether or not you help me, I must stop at nothing to save my daughter.”

  “Wait!” he cried as he realized belatedly what she meant to do. It was like having part of his inmost being flayed. But she darted away from him, and theatrically tore the paper across, across again, across again, until it was too small to tear any more. Then she let the fragments flutter to the floor, and
stamped on them.

  “That’s exorcism,” she said. “I’ve rid myself of a demon who has haunted me since I was ten. Now I want to do the same for Dora. Save her from becoming a toy for these super beings of yours who now and then like to play at being people.”

  Reflex made him go down on his knees, seizing the scraps of paper and trying to gather them back into a whole. But as he looked at the crumpled bits he abruptly realized he could not see them, for his eyes were overflowing with tears. He was sobbing, with great painful gasps as though he had been expertly punched in the solar plexus.

  He let them fall and rose slowly to his feet again.

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll do as you ask. But I warn you: don’t judge by first impressions. The place where Gorse is living isn’t like this”—waving around the apartment—“when she’s not there. It’s more like… this.”

  With reckless defiance he deactivated the room.

  Torn curtains; the bed with its broken springs; the sink layered wit hold dirt and grease; the cobwebs dense in every corner; holes in the carpet; the paper hanging down in ragged tongues, the ceiling stained, the paintwork chipped, everything dusty, moldy, foul…

  She surveyed it calmly, instead of being shocked, and said after a while, “I do feel sorry for you, God. Fifty years in this kind of squalor. It never got this bad for me, even when Dora was a baby.”

  “But you’ve still got it wrong!” he raged. “This isn’t real—this is cover! This is camouflage! This is in case someone walks in when I’m not here!”

  She looked him straight in the face and shook her head.

  “No, this is real. It’s the rest which isn’t.”

  She walked to the door and it opened for her. From below came the inevitable sound of the landlady’s TV. There were the stairs down to the hall. There was the front door. Beyond was the dingy, rain-swept street.

  Confused, he could do nothing but follow her.

  It was with a kind of savage pleasure that he seated her in the Urraco at the garage where it awaited him. Something like this—solid, tactile—could not be denied. The thrum of its engine was comforting to his ears. He turned on a loud rock broadcast so as not to hear what his companion had to say, and accelerated fiercely along the empty streets which led toward Bill’s house.

  The rain had more or less blown over; the beggars and the scrawny children were back, as usual, hurling pleas and curses in equal measure. He ignored them; if they ran into his path he did not slow down, but made them jump to safety.

  What bloody business was it of hers how he chose to lead his life? He wasn’t her son! She was treating him as though— No, more as though he were her husband, or lover, with a share of responsibility for Gorse! It was her choice to be what she was—she was old enough to make up her own mind!

  Did I give the kid acid? Did! create the world where it was thought to be smart to fool with the stuff?

  So why had he been so open with Barbara? Why in heaven’s name had he jeopardized his future for the chance of talking to her openly?

  He gave her a sidelong glance, and a shiver ran down his spine.

  She was sitting utterly composed, so that almost all the lines had faded from her face. She had zipped her jacket as they left the house, and now its collar was turned up and hid her neck with its betraying traces of age. She had abandoned the plastic snood she had worn when she arrived, and her fair hair hung loose and untidy around her head.

  She looked incredibly like the child version of herself whom he remembered. And it dawned on him.

  Oh, my God. I’m in love with this bloody woman. I always have been. I never knew it. But there it was waiting for me. Like a trap. I was in love with her even before I knew she existed.

  And I don’t even like the bitch!

  Where had the day gone? It was dark. It was very dark—unseasonably so, as though another storm were brewing. Most of the streetlights were out, but that was usual; a few, chiefly at intersections, still glimmered and gave landmarks for navigation. He was too distracted by his inner thoughts to care particularly. Just so long as the car’s headlamps cast their long lances far enough ahead.

  A medley of confused resolutions burgeoned in his mind.

  Maybe she’s right. Maybe I have been living in a dream world. Well, shit—I know I have, so far as most people are concerned. But it was still better than dying in the gutter with a bottle of meths in my hand! Fleas and lice in my clothes, crusting scabs on my body, vomit staining my shirt, and piss and shit drying on my pants!

  His nausea grew physical; he had to steer his thoughts away to another subject. Or he tried to. Somehow he kept reverting to the same track, against his will.

  Sold my soul? I don’t believe in bloody souls! But… Oh, maybe she’s half right, at that. I have let it all be done for me. I wonder if it’s too late to try and be real again.

  Images tumbled up from his subconscious, random as a spouting geyser.

  Suppose I had been the guy who saved her life. Suppose I’d tracked her down, married her as soon as it was legal—about the age Gorse is now, not quite a child bride. Would that have done anything?

  No answer.

  Suppose I hadn’t come from my kind of background. Suppose at twenty I hadn’t already been a drunkard and—

  But the ways he had found to get himself the liquor were still too hideous in retrospect. He had to shy away again.

  Suppose I’d stuck with Eunice, who recruited me… Why is it so long since I thought about her? Is she still around? No reason why she shouldn’t be! We go on and on, after all. But I suppose it must be a question of not getting too attached. People like her, like me, are obliged to lead solitary lives. If we had entanglements in the everyday world, we might not answer promptly when we’re called.

  He realized the other thing he might have said to Barbara about his friends. Not only was no one among them a person of real influence; not a single one had children, either.

  A thought so bitter it was funny crossed his mind. He had to stifle a laugh as he swung the car into a long fast curve.

  At least we aren’t being bred by our owners. They take what mongrels chance throws up.

  For what purpose? His answer to Barbara, when she put a similar question, had been half right. He did think of the owners as being from some more refined sphere of existence, where the keen joys of being human were no longer available. From outer space? From some far-distant planet? From the future? There was no point in asking. Ambrose would have said one thing, Luke another, Irma would have spouted garbage about an astral plane…

  In any case it didn’t matter. If they were called, in this age, alien beings, that meant no more than the name given them when they were automatically assumed to be devils.

  Called…

  He wondered briefly whether the image he had of that process matched the way someone like Bill or Wilf thought about it. He had always visualized himself as like a dog: romping on a green hillside, delighted by the smells and the rabbit droppings and the cowpats and the dew, suddenly reminded of duty by a distant whistle.

  Called.

  He was yawning so hard his eyes were squeezing shut.

  Exactly at the moment when the horror seized him Barbara reached across to shut off the radio and said, “You didn’t tell me Dora had moved out of London!”

  What?

  Against another and even huger yawn he struggled to make sense of the world. Ahead, curving in the headlamps’ beam: not the familiar road to Bill’s place, not even a road in that approximate direction, but the wide gray concrete sweep of the West way, high as a church tower above the ground, almost empty of traffic—as nowadays it always was—and with the inner lane barricaded to await repairs—as it had been for the past two years.

  He tried to cry out, but the most he could manage was a whimper. Control of his body had been suddenly stolen from him, not coaxingly and in sleep as always before, but with a direct brusqueness that appalled him. Without warning, bar that need
to yawn, he found himself coexistent inside his own head with—

  A being?

  A personage?

  A creature?

  The concepts that sprang to mind were gray, translucent, vast, cool—as though he had been usurped from the throne of his awareness by something partway between a gigantic slug and a wisp of smoke.

  Also there was another overtone: long. But at first it made no sense.

  He registered that the car was racing faster and faster through the dark. Dimly he heard screams from beside him, from the corner of his eye saw white movements: Barbara’s hands as she clawed at his arm, then, finding it more rigid than stone, at the handle of the door. It would not open; this car had safety interlocks preventing doors being opened until the speedometer showed zero miles per hour. All part of human progress.

  Half a mile ahead a cluster of rare lights loomed: the next junction, where traffic for the southwest should turn left. There were flashing red lamps and a spotlight played on a Union Jack hanging limp from an improvised pole. It was a fascist checkpoint of the kind he had seen in the East End—how long ago? They would be stopping cars to make sure no coloreds were aboard; if they found any, they would drag them out and beat them up.

  “Slow down!” Barbara shrieked. “You crazy fool—you can’t crash their barricade!”

  It was a source of relief to him that that was all she thought he was doing. But in the same moment the implication of that concept long occurred to him, and had he been able he would have slapped his forehead with annoyance at his own stupidity.

  Long! Not in space, but in time! Of course! He ought to have worked that out about the owners years ago. From the viewpoint of a dog, say, must not a human seem effectively immortal? Scarcely changing, while his pet progressed from puppyhood to adulthood to old age, and more puppies came on to take their parents’ place…