God Game

by Andrew M. Greeley

Within the room created for Malvau and his mate by the portable screens, all the fabric, including his wife’s lingerie and his jockstrap, was his color of rich purple that was his official badge. This was something of an affectation on his part, since even the Duchess didn’t seem troubled by the need for consistency of her blue-green color scheme.

  The two of them hardly said a word to one another as they went through the ritual.

  I told myself that the nighttime ablutions of a middle-aged couple that I didn’t particularly like were none of my business and that their lack of sexual attraction to one another was hardly worth even a voyeur’s attention.

  Yet something fascinated me. As I look back on the night it was the strange, tormented face of Malvau. The mask of self-satisfied complacency had slipped away, to be replaced by sadness and infinite weariness. How come, I wondered. Had the verbal beating from the Duchess hit him harder than I had thought? She might be an upstart from an unimportant family, but she was still the Boss, an almost sacred person whose displeasure could hurt even such a distinguished aristocrat. Especially if, like most of those around her, he treasured a secret worship for the lovely, tragic Duchess.

  Like I’ve said, I was already in the ranks of the worshippers, so why not even our vain Malvau. Vanity does not protect you from pain, rather it makes it worse.

  His wife lifted herself out of the tub first and promptly enshrouded herself in the vast towel. I thought he looked at her with the faintest hint of admiration and regret.

  She lifted the patch of fabric that shielded their window. The light of their moons poured in. She extinguished the hand lanterns.

  “I didn’t tell you that you might turn off the light,” he complained.

  “I didn’t ask.” She tossed aside the towel and, briefly glowing in the silver light, wrapped the kilt around her loins, climbed into bed (a large, inflated cushion lying on the floor), and pulled the purple coverlet up to her neck.

  For a moment, however, as she belted her kilt, her heavy, conical breasts glowed in the light. Unseen by her, his face contorted in swift movement of desire and affection. Maybe not quite as high and firm as when she was a virgin brought to his bath and bed for the first time, but still unbearably attractive.

  Grace in other words. Elementary, temporary, ordinary grace. But still grace.

  Without any reflection, I jumped into the scene. I keyed his shift/function and typed, APOLOGIZE TO HER, YOU STUPID IDJIT.

  He stiffened in the tub, harsh and firm resistance.

  IT’S TIME TO STOP THE NONSENSE. YOU STILL LOVE HER. I SAID APOLOGIZE.

  I pressed the REPEAT key.

  Sheer agony for your noble lord. Had he ever apologized to anyone in his life? Yet, part of him wanted to humiliate himself to his wife. Otherwise he would have simply tuned me out.

  SHE’S A LOT MORE WOMAN THAN THOSE LITTLE WITCHES AT THE DUCHESS’S PAVILION. IT’S TIME TO WIN HER BACK. APOLOGIZE AND NOW.

  Slowly he climbed out of the tub, went through the ritual of drying himself, walked over to the window and lifted the patch higher so that the room was illumined by silver light, discarded the towel, and stood over his bed and his wife, hesitant and yet eager.

  DO IT, CLOWN!

  DO NOT KNOW CLOWN.

  IDJIT, DAMN FOOL.

  EXECUTING.

  With the elegant movement of a courtier he knelt next to his bed.

  “What foolishness is this?” She was scared stiff, so of course she turned nasty.

  “I … I am sorry, ’Rasia,” he stammered, pulling back the coverlet to seek encouragement from her torso.

  “Sorry?” she sneered. “For what?”

  REPEAT. EXECUTE.

  “For having been such an arrogant, insensitive husband all our life together.”

  Hey, I didn’t mean the whole life, I just meant today.

  “No woman at the palace would give herself to you today?” She turned away from him in disgust.

  KICK HER IN THE REAR END, I told the machine.

  EXECUTING.

  She jumped on the bed, as though someone had really kicked her. My damn machine was too literal.

  “I don’t deserve to be forgiven.” Once launched he could not stop. How many years must it have been pent up inside him?

  And how clever of the author to force it out whether ’Vau wanted it out or not.

  “You certainly don’t.”

  RESPOND TO HIM. I had to create a shift/function for her. In the meantime, the Compaq more or less on its own kicked her again.

  She listened silently as in a clear firm voice her husband described his faults and failures.

  THAT’S NO RESPONSE, I typed in. FORGIVE HIM, LOVE HIM. IT’S NOW OR NEVER, YOU BITCHY LITTLE FOOL.

  I held down the REPEAT button.

  “Torment yourself no more, my dearest one.” She cut off his sentence of self-accusation and drew his head against her belly. She didn’t want to do it, she resisted the words and the movement every inch of the way, but she was dealing with powers stronger than her own shallow, selfish flakiness. “I will love you always.”

  My power or power within her? Or both?

  Grace or desire or both? Or are they different?

  REWARD HIM.

  She glanced up at me, wondering how she should reward him.

  She knew the author was around. Or did she think it was the Lord Our God invading her boudoir? Or did she care?

  OVERWHELM HIM WITH PASSION.

  She nodded, smiled, and set to work.

  I keyed myself out of their privacy. An author may have to involve himself in the foreplay of his creatures, but under most circumstances he should leave their coupling carefully veiled. Anyway, I wanted out of their relationship, which my instincts said would get much worse before it got better.

  I was pleased with myself. I had given these two unappealing people a new chance in life. I had forced a new chance on them whether they wanted a new chance or not. That’s what authors do, they are supposed, pace Berney Geis, to ignite hope in their characters.

  Even if they don’t want hope or don’t know what to do with it.

  6

  The Feast of the Two Moons

  The night wasn’t finished. Caught up in the fever of the God Game, I intended to continue going around doing good.

  The most subtle of all temptations.

  I decided that I would look in on the high priest I called the Cardinal because of his red robes and ermine cape. He looked like a Cardinal from central casting, with a sharply cut, aristocratic face, long thin nose, thick wavy white hair—very much unlike the squat, ugly types who actually preside over the curial dicasteries. To my surprise, he was locked in a tête-à-tête with his counterpart from Lenrau’s priestly caste. There were others, two of them ancient, witchlike priestesses (the Other Person forgive me for it, but I coded them MOTHER SUPERIOR), huddled around a table in a dimly lit cave deep in the forest. There was a brazier burning incense, I guessed (remember, there was no smell in the story) in the corner, and a couple of sinister-looking snakes crawling around.

  No spiders or black cats.

  “There will be no peace,” the Cardinal said flatly.

  “The ilel may force it,” croaked one of the priestesses.

  “The ilel should be eliminated,” screeched the other.

  “We must restrain her,” the Cardinal said prudently (Cardinals are always prudent), “not eliminate her. Firstly, she may be dangerous, secondly, there might be a terrible reaction to her death. Counterproductive. Thirdly, it may not be necessary.”

  No remark that it would be evil. I said Cardinals were prudent, not necessarily virtuous.

  “Kill her!” The Mothers Superior, sounding like the witches in Macbeth, cackled in unison. “Kill her!”

  A couple of the snakes did a nifty little dance.

  “They are right.” One of the men leaned forward on the table. “Noble Lord, she could frustrate all our plans. Peace will only be restored when the warrior class destro
ys itself and we resume our ancient rule of the land. She must die as they must die, for the good of all, even for their own good.”

  “Kill her for her own good,” another cleric chimed in.

  All this time, I was pushing my ABORT PLANS button and holding down the REPEAT key.

  No impact. None whatever. I could force Malvau and N’Rasia into each other’s arms and bodies, but I couldn’t force these clowns to think twice about their plans to dispose of my Ranora. Conclusion: you can as an author shake those who are open to lust of one kind or another, but not those who are into power.

  No wonder the Other Person has so much trouble with the Curia Romana.

  So I told the Compaq, EXTINGUISH LIGHTS.

  Bamm! Total darkness.

  Cries, screeches, alarms.

  KILL SNAKES.

  The damn thing knew what a snake was. Of course, the parser knew about snakes from Adventure. There were three or four rapid explosive retorts and then a much louder blast.

  Then frightened silence.

  The light came back on.

  “What happened?” The Cardinal was pale and shaking.

  “The Lord Our God has struck us for planning to desecrate his ilel!” wailed one of the priests.

  “Nonsense.” The Cardinal began to regain his cool. I doubt that he worried much about the Lord Our God.

  “The snakes are gone, He’s taken our snakes.”

  “Demons!” screeched the Mothers Superior.

  “I said the ilel might be dangerous.” The Cardinal smoothed his robe. “Killing her would serve no useful purpose at this time. She cannot impose peace. Our true enemies, as always, are the warriors. If anyone is to be killed, it must be the Duke and Duchess. Together they could stand in the way of our return to power.”

  “Kill them! Kill them!” yelled the witches.

  “In due time, if necessary to restrain them,” the Cardinal said softly, “for their own good and for the good of the land, of course.”

  Not if I can help it, you bastards.

  The night, theirs as well as mine, wasn’t over yet.

  I looked in briefly at Malvau and N’Rasia. They were huddled close together, hands affectionately resting on each other, peacefully and complacently sleeping. Well, score one anyway.

  Then I reached for the SUSPEND GAME key, hesitated, and decided to have one last look around.

  SCAN FOR TROUBLEMAKERS, I told the program.

  EXECUTING.

  It began to move rapidly across the countryside, over the forests and the lakes, down the rivers, up the sides of the mountains. Near the top of one mountain it focused in on a large hut in a snow-covered meadow.

  What kind of troublemakers were messing around way up here?

  The interior of the hut looked like a low-budget set for a film based on The Guns of Navarone. A group of very young warriors, under the command of the Three Stooges, were working on what I can only describe as a piece of heavy artillery—a big cannon, surrounded by computerlike consoles and several large cranes. The warriors wore the star of Lenrau’s army.

  A number of fur-clad peasants were stumbling around carrying boxes and bags under the watchful eye of a warrior with a zap gun. Two men, apparently the leaders, were huddled over the largest console.

  “It is aimed at her pavilion, is it not?”

  “See how the lines intersect? Right at the whore’s bedroom.”

  “Send the peasants into the snow,” the first one barked, rubbing his gloved hands together. “If our, ah, experiment is successful, we may dispose of them later.”

  The poor people were herded out into the snow.

  “We will destroy her, and then the Lord Lenrau will sweep into their city, and we will take power away from the effete Kaila and his weakling friends. You may have the honor of pressing the button, my friend.”

  “First, let us make a final adjustment. It would not do to miss.” Someone spun a few wheels and the canon shifted ever so slightly.

  I wasn’t going to try to reason with these clowns.

  DESTROY CANON.

  DO NOT KNOW CANON.

  A spelling purist. CANNON. EXECUTE.

  EXECUTING.

  Did it ever.

  The roof of the shed vanished in a cloud of dust, the cannon collapsed on the floor, crashing through its supports, a ball of fire exploded high in the sky, a noise like thunder trailed after it, and then the walls of the shed fell in on the wreckage of the mechanism.

  FREE PEASANTS, I demanded.

  One of the peasants complied with my instruction by bashing the guard over the head with a tree branch. He grabbed the zap gun and the whole crowd of peasants took off for the woods.

  Inside the wreckage of the hut, the leaders were extricating themselves from the rubble.

  “We will have to build it again,” one of them said, his breath turning to mist on the cold night air.

  “Then we will rebuild it,” another replied calmly.

  You just do that, fellas. I’ll be back.

  A hundred yards down the mountain, I saw a white-clad figure on a white “horse.” Another plotter?

  I told the machine to IDENTIFY RIDER.

  G’RANNE. REPEAT G’RANNE.

  I heard you the first time.

  The ice maiden, in her element now, flipped the white scarf away from her face, rose-red now in the cold night air and pondered the rubble that Larry, Curly, and Moe had produced.

  She turned and rode back down the mountain. What sort of devious game was that one playing?

  Enough trouble for one night. I suspended the game.

  Ranora danced in my dreams that night. Not B’Mella nor the somewhat outsize but nonetheless attractive N’Rasia, but the teenaged imp with the peppermint-candy clothes and her witty little pipe.

  I think she said something like, “I’ll please my Master and darling Kaila—isn’t he totally cute?—and you too!”

  She played her triumphal Lenrau theme and her gentle Kaila theme and then something, well, amused and tolerant, which she seemed to be assigning to me.

  It was, of course, only a dream. And very different from my later dreams.

  I think it was different, anyway. My altered states were already becoming confused.

  The next morning I told myself that it was only a game, a storytelling game with a few extra fillips that writing an ordinary story didn’t have. Not quite so complete control of the material. Made it more interesting.

  But nothing real.

  So I picked up the adolescents, was reprimanded (by Michele) for being “grossly” late (five minutes), and headed for the lake. While Bobby and Lance skied double with the banana peels, Heidi watched them for the inevitable noisy collision. She was troubled because someone had asked her the day before “when the lifeguard would come” despite the fact that she was wearing her official whistle. Apparently he had never seen her daily confrontation with the hapless Joseph, a well-meaning and genial but maladroit young man who is always banished at the end of the confrontation. Michele sat across from me, looking reflective (a rare event) and humming a hauntingly familiar little tune.

  The melody which had been played for me on the pipes in my dreams the night before.

  “What’s that song, Michele?”

  “Hmmn … oh, I don’t know.” She hummed it again like she was listening to it for the first time. “That one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something I must have heard on the radio.”

  “It doesn’t sound like rock.”

  “Well, I’m not totally into rock.”

  I told myself then that it was all in my imagination, that Nathan’s God Game was taking possession of me as a story does when I’m deeply involved in it.

  After all, I had heard the tune in a dream, had I not? Not in the game.

  And Michele was not really like Ranora. As positive and as outspoken indeed, but a bit older, less exuberant than an early teen, brown hair instead of blond. She didn’t play any musical instrument
, much less a tin whistle. Equally bossy and definitive, seldom in error, never in doubt. Same stubborn jaw, but very different face (equally pretty, I add to protect my life).

  Cognates, not identities, to use words I came up with later.

  After skiing, I made a few phone calls and sat back to reflect on the game. I told myself that I was still in control, I could stop anytime I wanted to, I was not hooked on the plot or the characters. I could turn on the machine, press the TERMINATE GAME function key and that would be that.

  However, I had to find out about that tune.

  So on went the game.

  FIND ILEL, I ordered the program.

  It searched around in her usual haunts and finally found her strolling through the forest, where the birds seemed to be delighted by her imitations of their love calls, and occasionally singing in a language I did not understand.

  Did the ilels come from elsewhere? No one had mentioned her family. Did they come over the mountains occasionally and intrude in the lives of these peoples and then perhaps disappear again? What kind of thoughts raced through her pretty little head?

  At any rate she wasn’t playing the tune I had heard in my dream and on the ski boat.

  She came to a little lake, apparently her destination, felt it with her fingers, nodded approvingly, glanced around to see if anyone was watching, threw off her clothes with a couple of quick movements, and dove into the water.

  Her swimming stroke, a slightly off-key (like everything else in this world) variant of the Australian crawl, was strong and determined. This was not ministering to her master in the pool, this was serious exercise.

  I let her swim and went to the kitchen to prepare a ham and cheese sandwich on rye bread and a chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce. I don’t know what would have happened if someone had come into my house and seen a naked girl swimming across a weird-looking lake in the middle of an odd forest on my big screen. I guess I had come to expect that there were rules written elsewhere that said I was not to be disturbed and that I was not to consider calling anyone else to play the game/write the story while I was working on it.

  By the time I was finished with lunch she was out of the lake, lying on a slab of rock, her blond hair plastered against her head, greedily absorbing the warmth of the sun, looking quite chaste and virginal despite her nudity.