The Game-Players Of Titan

by Philip K. Dick

On his binge it had made him temporarily into an involuntary telepath; a meager one, bat to a decisive degree. Methamphetamine was a thalamic stimulator; its effect was precisely the opposite from that of the phenothiazines.

  He thought, Yes!

  Without water he managed—gagging—to gulp down the two small pink methamphetamine tablets.

  "Wait," he said hoarsely to the group. "Listen; I want to make the decision on this play. Wait!" They would wait at least ten minutes he knew for the methamphetamine to take effect.

  The vug said, "There is cheating on your side. One member of your group has ingested drug-stimulants."

  At once, Joe Schilling said, "You previously accepted the phenothiazine class; in principle you accepted the use of medication in this Game."

  "But I am not prepared to deal with a telepathic faculty emanating from your side," the vug protested. "I scanned your group initially and saw none in evidence. And no plan to obtain such a faculty."

  Joe Schilling said, "That appears to have been an acute error on your part." He turned to watch Pete; all the members of Pretty Blue Fox were watching Pete, now. "Well?" Joe asked him, tensely.

  Pete Garden sat waiting, fists clenched, for the drug to take effect.

  Five minutes passed. No one spoke. The only sound was Joe Schilling drawing on his cigar.

  "Pete," Bill Calumine said abruptly, "we can't wait any longer. We can't stand the strain."

  "That's true," Joe Schilling said. His face was wet and florid, shiny with perspiration; now his cigar had gone out, too. "Make your decision. Even if it's the wrong one."

  Mary Anne said, "Pete! The vug is attempting to shift the value of its card!"

  "Then it was a bluff," Pete said, instantly. It had to be, or

  the vug would have left the value strictly alone. To the vug he said, "We call your bluff."

  The vug did not stir. And then, at last, it turned over the card.

  The card was a six.

  It had been a bluff.

  Pete said, "It gave itself away. And," he was shaking wildly, "the amphetamines didn't help me and the vug can tell that it can read my mind, so I'm happy to say it aloud. It turned out to be a bluff on our part, on my part. I didn't have enough of the amphetamines and there wasn't any alcohol to speak of in my system. It was not successfully developing a telepathic faculty in my system; I wouldn't have been able to call it. But I had no way of knowing that."

  The vug, palpitating and a dark slate color, now, bill by bill paid over the sum of $300,000 to Pretty Blue Fox.

  The group was extremely close to winning The Game. They knew it and the vug opposing them knew it. It did not have to be said.

  Joe Schilling murmured, "If it hadn't lost its nerve—" With trembling fingers he managed to relight his cigar. "It would at least have had a fifty-fifty chance. First it got greedy and then it got scared." He smiled at the members of the group on both sides of him. "A bad combination, in Bluff." His voice was low, intense. "It was the combination in me, many years ago, that helped wipe me out. In my final play against Bindman Lucky Luckman."

  The vug said, "It seemed to me that I have, for all intents and purposes, lost this Game against you Terrans."

  "You don't intend to continue?" Joe Schilling demanded, removing his cigar from his lips and scrutinizing the vug; he had himself completely under control. His face was hard.

  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..."

  It moved toward her and she retreated, not wanting to come into bodily contact with it. E. B. Black reminded her too much of the other, the one against which they had played—played and won and then been cheated out of their victory.

  "Not cheated," E. B. Black contradicted. "Your victory has merely been—held back from you. It is still yours and you will obtain it." It added, "In time." There was a faint tinge of relish in its tone. E. B. Black was not particularly saddened by the plight of Pretty Blue Fox, the fact that its members were scattered, frightened and confused. In chaps.

  "May I go to Carmel?" she asked.

  "Of course. You may damn well go anywhere you wish,

  Miss McClain. But Joe Schilling is not in Carmel; you'll have to search elsewhere."

  "I will," she said. "I'll look until I find him. Pete Garden, too." Until the group is back together again, she thought. As it was before, when we sat across the board from the Titanian Game-players; as we were in Carmel, just a little while ago this evening.

  A little while—and a long way ago.

  Turning, she left the apartment. And did not look back.

  A voice, eager and querulous, prodded at Joe Schilling; he moved away from it—tried to, anyhow—but it crept after him.

  "Urn," it gibbered. "Uh, say, Mr. Schilling, you got a minute?" In the darkness he floated closer, always closer until it was right on him, throttling him; he was unable to breathe. "I'll just take a little of your time. Okay?" It paused. He said nothing. "Well," the voice resumed, "I'll tell you what I'd like. As long as you're here, visiting us and I mean, it's really a distinct honor, you know."

  Schilling said, "Get away from me." He pawed at it and it was as if his hands broke through webs, sticky, mislinked sections of webs. And accomplishing nothing.

  The voice bleated, "Uh, here's what we both wanted to ask, Es and I. I mean, you hardly ever get out to Portland, right? So by any chance do you have that Erna Berger recording of—what's it called? 'From Die Zauberflote you know."

  Breathing heavily, Joe Schilling said, "The Queen of the Night aria."

  "Yes! That's it!" Greedily, the voice crept over him, pressing him inexorably; it would never turn back now.

  "Da dum-dum DUM, da dee-dee da-da dum dum," another voice, a woman's, joined in; both voices clamored at him.

  "Yes, I have it," Joe Schilling said. "On Swiss HMV. Both of the Queen of the Night arias. Back to back."

  "Can we have them?" the voices chimed together.

  "Yes," he said.

  Light, gray and fragmented, fluttered before him; he

  managed to get to his feet. My record shop in New Mexico? he asked himself. No. The voices had said he was in Portland, Oregon. What am I doing here? he asked himself. Why did the vug set me down here? He looked around.

  He stood in the unfamiliar living room of an old house, on bare, soft wooden floors, facing a moth-scavenged old red and white couch on which sat two familiar figures, short, squat, with ill-cut hair, a man and woman leering at him with avidity.

  "You don't actually have the record with you, by any chance?" Es Sibley squawked. Beside her, Les Sibley's eyes glowed with eagerness; he could not sit still and he got to his feet to pace about the barren, echoing living room.

  In the corner a phonograph played, loudly, The Cherry Duet; Joe Schilling, for once in his life, wished he could stuff his fingers in his ears, could cut out all such sound. It was too screechy, too blaring; it made his head ache and he turned away, taking a deep, unsteady breath.

  "No," he said. "It's back at my shop." He wished like hell for a cup of hot black coffee or tea; for good ooh long tea.

  Es Sibley said, "You all right, Mr. Schilling?"

  He nodded. "I'm okay." He wondered about the rest of the group; had all of them been
dispersed, dropped like dry leaves to flutter over the plains of Earth? Evidently so. The Titanian could not quite give up.

  But at least the group was back. The Game was over.

  Schilling said, "Listen." He phrased his question carefully, word by word. "Is—my—car—outside?" He hoped so. Prayed so.

  "No," Les Sibley said. "We picked you up and brought you out here to Oregon; don't you remember?" Beside him Es giggled, showing her large, sturdy teeth. "He doesn't remember how he got here," Les said to her and they both laughed, now, together.

  "I want to call Max," Joe Schilling said. "I have to go. I'm sorry." He got totteringly to his feet. "Goodbye."

  "But the Erna Berger record!" Es Sibley protested, dismayed.

  "I'll mail it." He made his way step by step toward the

  front door; he had a vague memory—or sense—of its location. "I have to find a vidphone. Call Max."

  "You can call from here," Les Sibley said, guiding him toward the hall to the dining room. "And then maybe you can stay a little—"

  "No." Schilling found the vidphone and, snapping it on, dialed the number of his car.

  Presently Max's voice sounded. "Yeah?"

  "This is Joe Schilling. Come and get me."

  "Come and get your fat-assed self," the car said.

  Joe Schilling gave it the address. And then he made his way back down the hall to the living room once more. He reseated himself on the chair where he had been sitting and groped reflexively, hopefully, for a cigar or at least his pipe. The music, even more than before, filled his ears and made him cringe.

  He sat, hands clasped together, waiting. But, each minute, feeling a little better. A little more certain what had happened to them. How they had come out.

  Standing in the grove of eucalyptus trees, Pete Garden knew where he was; the vugs had released him and he was in Berkeley. In his old, original bind, which he had lost to Walt Remington who had turned it over to Pendleton Associates who had in turn sold it to Luckman who now was dead.

  On a rough-hewn bench, among the trees, directly ahead of him sat a silent, motionless girl. It was his wife.

  He said, "Carol. Are you all right?"

  She nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, Pete. I've been here a long time, going over things in my mind. You know, we're very fortunate to have had her on our side, that Mary Anne McClain, I mean."