Gurgeh turned to Mawhrin-Skel, to ask it to be his representative, but it said, "Jernau Gurgeh; I thought you might like Chamlis Amalk-ney to represent you."
"Is Chamlis here?"
"Arrived a while ago. Been avoiding me. I'll ask it."
Gurgeh's button terminal beeped. "Yes?" he said.
Chamlis's voice spoke from the button. "The fly-dropping just asked me to represent you in a Stricken adjudication. Do you want me to?"
"Yes, I'd like you to," Gurgeh said, watching Mawhrin-Skel's fields flicker white with anger in front of him.
"I'll be there in twenty seconds," Chamlis said, closing the channel.
"Twenty-one point two," Mawhrin-Skel said acidly, exactly twenty-one point two seconds later, as Chamlis appeared over the edge of the balcony, its casing dark against the cataract beyond. Chamlis turned its sensing band to the smaller machine.
"Thank you," Chamlis said warmly. "I had a bet on with myself that I'd have you counting the seconds to my arrival."
Mawhrin-Skel's fields blazed brightly, painfully white, lighting up the entire balcony for a second; people stopped talking and turned; the music hesitated. The tiny drone seemed almost literally to shake with dumb rage.
"Fuck you!" it screeched at last, and seemed to disappear, leaving only an after-image of sun-bright blindness behind it in the night. The coals blazed bright, a wind whipped at clothes and hair, several of the paper lanterns bucked and shook and fell from the arches overhead; leaves and nightflowers drifted down from the two arches immediately over where Mawhrin-Skel had been floating.
Chamlis Amalk-ney, red with happiness, tipped to look up into the dark sky, where a small hole appeared briefly in the cloud cover. "Oh dear," it said. "Do you think I said something to upset it?"
Gurgeh smiled and sat down at the game-set. "Did you plan that, Chamlis?"
Amalk-ney bowed in mid-air to the other drones, and to Boruelal. "Not exactly." It turned to face Olz Hap, sitting on the far side of the game-web from Gurgeh. "Ah… by way of contrast: a fair human."
The girl blushed, looked down. Boruelal made the introductions.
Stricken is played in a three-dimensional web stretched inside a metre cube. The traditional materials are taken from a certain animal on the planet of origin; cured tendon for the web, tusk ivory for the frame. The set Gurgeh and Olz Hap used was synthetic. They each put up their hinged screens, took the bags of hollow globes and coloured beads (nutshells and stones in the original) and selected the beads they wanted, locking them in the globes. The adjudicating drones ensured there was no possibility of anyone seeing which beads went into which shells. Then the man and the girl each took a handful of the little spheres and placed them in various places inside the web. The game had begun.
She was good. Gurgeh was impressed. Olz Hap was impetuous but canny, brave but not stupid. She was also very lucky. But there was luck and luck. Sometimes you could sniff it out, recognise things were going well and would probably continue to go well, and play to that. If things did keep going right, you profited extravagantly. If the luck didn't persist, well, you just played the percentages.
The girl had that sort of luck, that night. She made the right guesses about Gurgeh's pieces, capturing several strong beads in weak disguises; she anticipated moves he'd sealed in the Foretell shells; and she ignored the tempting traps and feints he set up.
Somehow he struggled on, coming up with desperate, improvised defences against each attack, but it was all too seat-of-the-pants, too extemporary and tactical. He wasn't being allowed the time to develop his pieces or plan a strategy. He was responding, following, replying.
He preferred to have the initiative.
It was some time before he realised just how audacious the girl was being. She was going for a Full Web; the simultaneous capture of every remaining point in the game-space. She wasn't just trying to win, she was trying to pull off a coup which only a handful of the game's greatest players had ever accomplished, and which nobody in the Culture — to Gurgeh's knowledge — had yet achieved. Gurgeh could hardly believe it, but it was what she was doing. She was sapping pieces but not obliterating them, then falling back; she was striking out through his own avenues of weakness, then holding there. She was inviting him to come back, of course, giving him a better chance of winning, and indeed of achieving the same momentous result, though with far less hope of doing so. But the self-confidence of it! The experience and even arrogance such a course implied!
He looked at the slight, calm-faced girl through the web of thin wires and little suspended spheres, and could not help but admire her ambition, her vaulting ability and self-belief. She was playing for the grand gesture, and to the gallery, not settling for a reasonable win, despite the fact that the reasonable win would be over a famous, respected game-player. And Boruelal had thought she might feel intimidated by him! Well, good for her.
Gurgeh sat forward, rubbing his beard, oblivious of the people now packing the balcony, silently watching the game.
He struggled back into it somehow. Partly luck, partly more skill than even he thought he possessed. The game was still poised for a Full Web victory, and she was still the most likely to achieve it, but at least his position looked less hopeless. Somebody brought him a glass of water and something to eat. He vaguely recalled being grateful.
The game went on. People came and went around him. The web held all his fortune; the little spheres, holding their secret treasures and threats, became like discrete parcels of life and death, single points of probability which could be guessed at but never known until they were challenged, opened, looked at. All reality seemed to hinge on those infinitesimal bundles of meaning.
He no longer knew what body-made drugs washed through him, nor could he guess what the girl was using. He had lost all sense of self and time.
The game drifted for a few moves, as they both lost concentration, then came alive again. He became aware, very slowly, very gradually, that he held some impossibly complex model of the contest in his head, unknowably dense, multifariously planed.
He looked at that model, twisted it.
The game changed.
He saw a way to win. The Full Web remained a possibility. His, now. It all depended. Another twist. Yes; he would win. Almost certainly. But that was no longer enough. The Full Web beckoned, tantalisingly, seductively, entrancingly…
"Gurgeh?" Boruelal shook him. He looked up. There was a hint of dawn over the mountains. Boruelal's face looked grey and sober. "Gurgeh; a break. It's been six hours. Do you agree? A break, yes?"
He looked through the web at the pale, waxen face of the young girl. He gazed round in a sort of daze. Most of the people had gone. The paper lanterns had disappeared, too; he fell vaguely sorry to have missed the little ritual of throwing the glowing lamps over the terrace edge and watching them drift down to the forest.
Boruelal shook him once more. "Gurgeh?"
"Yes; a break. Yes, of course," he croaked. He got up, stiff and sore, muscles protesting and joints creaking.
Chamlis had to stay with the game-set, to ensure the adjudication. Grey dawn spread across the sky. Somebody gave him some hot soup, which he sipped while he ate a few crackers and wandered through the quiet arcades for a while, where a few people slept or still sat and talked, or danced to quiet, recorded music. He leant on the balustrade above the kilometre drop, sipping and munching, dazed and vacant from the game, still playing and replaying it somewhere inside his head.
The lights of the towns and villages on the mist-strewn plain below, beyond the semi-circle of dark rain forest, looked pale and uncertain. Distant mountain tops shone pink and naked.
"Jernau Gurgeh?" a soft voice said.
He looked over the plain. The drone Mawhrin-Skel floated a metre from his face. "Mawhrin-Skel," he said quietly.
"Good morning."
"Good morning."
"How goes the game?"
"Fine, thank you. I think I'll win now… pretty sure in
fact. But there's just a chance I might win…" He felt himself smiling. "… famously."
"Really?" Mawhrin-Skel continued to float there, over the drop in front of him. It kept its voice soft, though there was nobody near by. Its fields were off. Its surface was an odd, mottled mixture of grey tones.
"Yes," Gurgeh said, and briefly explained about a Full Web victory. The drone seemed to understand. "So, you have won, but you could win the Full Web, which no one in the Culture has ever done save for exhibition purposes, to prove its possibility."
"That's right!" He nodded, looked over the light speckled plain. "That's right." He finished the crackers, brushed his hands slowly free of crumbs. He left the soup bowl balanced on the balustrade.
"Does it really," Mawhrin-Skel said thoughtfully, "matter who first wins a Full Web?"
"Hmm?" Gurgeh said.
Mawhrin-Skel drifted closer. "Does it really matter who first wins one? Somebody will, but does it count for much who does? It would appear to be a very unlikely eventuality in any given game… has it really much to do with skill?"
"Not beyond a certain point," Gurgeh admitted. "It requires a lucky genius."
"But that could be you."
"Maybe." Gurgeh smiled across the gulf of chill morning air. He drew his jacket closer about him. "It depends entirely on the disposition of certain coloured beads in certain metal spheres." He laughed. "A victory that would echo round the game-playing galaxy, and it depends on where a child placed…" his voice trailed off. He looked at the tiny drone again, frowning. "Sorry; getting a bit melodramatic." He shrugged, leant on the stone edge. "It would be… pleasant to win, but it's unlikely, I'm afraid. Somebody else will do it, some time."
"But it might as well be you," Mawhrin-Skel hissed, floating still closer.
Gurgeh had to draw away to focus on the device. "Well—"
"Why leave it to chance, Jernau Gurgeh?" Mawhrin-Skel said, pulling back a little. "Why abandon it to mere, stupid luck?"
"What are you talking about?" Gurgeh said slowly, eyes narrowing. The drug-trance was dissipating, the spell breaking. He felt keen, keyed-up; nervous and excited at once.
"I can tell you which beads are in which globes," Mawhrin-Skel said.
Gurgeh laughed gently. "Nonsense."
The drone floated closer. "I can. They didn't tear everything out of me when they turned me away from SC. I have more senses than cretins like Amalk-ney have even heard of." It closed in. "Let me use them; let me tell you what is where in your bead-game. Let me help you to the Full Web."
Gurgeh stood back from the balustrade, shaking his head. "You can't. The other drones—"
"— are weak simpletons, Gurgeh," Mawhrin-Skel insisted. "I have the measure of them, believe me. Trust me. Another SC machine, definitely not; a Contact drone, probably not… but this gang of obsoletes? I could find out where every bead that girl has placed is. Every single one!"
"You wouldn't need them all," Gurgeh said, looking troubled, waving his hand.
"Well then! Better yet! Let me do it! Just to prove to you! To myself!"
[]
"You're talking about cheating, Mawhrin-Skel," Gurgeh said, looking round the plaza. There was nobody near by. The paper lanterns and the stone ribs they hung from were invisible from where he stood.
"You're going to win; what difference does it make?"
"It's still cheating."
"You said yourself it's all luck. You've won—"
"Not definitely."
"Almost certainly; a thousand to one you don't."
"Probably longer odds than that," Gurgeh conceded.
"So the game is over. The girl can't lose any more than she has already. Let her be part of a game that will go down in history. Give her that!"
"It," Gurgeh said, slapping his hand on the stonework, "is," another slap, "still," slap, "cheating!"
"Keep your voice down," Mawhrin-Skel murmured. It backed away a little. It spoke so low he had to lean out over the drop to hear it. "It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority — a majority, mark you; not all — of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"
"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.
"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage."
The drone hung above the drop and the waking plain. Gurgeh watched the Orbital dawn come up, swinging from the edge of the world. "Take hold of your luck, Gurgeh. Accept what I'm offering you. Just this once let's both make our own chances. You already know you're one of the best in the Culture; I'm not trying to flatter you; you know that. But this win would seal that fame for ever."
"If it's possible…" Gurgeh said, then went silent. His jaw clenched. The drone sensed him trying to control himself the way he had done on the steps up to Hafflis's house, seven hours ago.
"If it isn't, at least have the courage to know," Mawhrin-Skel said, voice pitched at an extremity of pleading.
The man raised his eyes to the clear blue-pinks of dawn. The ruffled, misty plain looked like a vast and tousled bed. "You're crazy, drone. You could never do it."
"I know what I can do, Jernau Gurgeh," the drone said. It pulled away again, sat in the air, regarding him.
He thought of that morning, sitting on the train; the rush of that delicious fear. Like an omen, now.
Luck; simple chance.
He knew the drone was right. He knew it was wrong; but he knew it was right, too. It all depended on him.
He leant against the balustrade. Something in his pocket dug into his chest. He felt in, pulled out the hidden-piece wafer he'd taken as a memento after the disastrous Possession game. He turned the wafer over in his hands a few times. He looked at the drone, and suddenly felt very old and very child-like at the same time.
"If," he said slowly, "anything goes wrong, if you're found out — I'm dead. I'll kill myself. Brain death; complete and utter. No remains."
"Nothing is going to go wrong. For me, it is the simplest thing in the world to find out what's inside those shells."
"What if you are discovered, though? What if there is an SC drone around here somewhere, or the Hub is watching?"
The drone said nothing for a moment. "They'd have noticed by now. It is already done."
Gurgeh opened his mouth to speak, but the drone quickly floated closer, calmly continuing. "For my own sake, Gurgeh… for my own peace of mind. I wanted to know, too. I came back long ago; I've been watching for the past five hours, quite fascinated. I couldn't resist finding out if it was possible…. To be honest, I still don't know; the game is beyond me, just over-complicated for the way my poor target tracking mind is configured… but I had to try to find out. I had to. So, you see; the risk is run, Gurgeh; the deed is done. I can tell you what you need to know…. And I ask nothing in return; that's up to you. Maybe you can do something for me some day, but no obligation; believe me, please believe me. No obligation at all. I'm doing this because I want to see you — somebody; anybody — do it."
Gurgeh looked at the drone. His mouth was dry. He could hear somebody shouting in the distance. The terminal button on his jacket shoulder beeped. He drew breath to speak to it, but then heard his own voice say, "Yes?"
"Ready to resume, Jernau?" Chamlis said from the button.
And he heard his own voice say, "I'm on my way."
He stared at the drone as the terminal beeped of
f.
Mawhrin-Skel floated closer. "As I said, Jernau Gurgeh; I can fool these adding machines, no problem at all. Quickly now. Do you want to know or not? The Full Web; yes or no?"
Gurgeh glanced round in the direction of Hafflis's apartments. He turned back, leant out over the drop, towards the drone.
"All right," he said, whispering, "just the five prime points and the four verticals nearest topside centre. No more."
Mawhrin-Skel told him.
It was almost enough. The girl struggled brilliantly to the very end, and deprived him on the final move.
The Full Web fell apart, and he won by thirty-one points, two short of the Culture's existing record.
One of Estray Hafftis's house drones was dimly confused to discover, while cleaning up under the great stone table much later that morning, a crushed and shattered ceramic wafer with warped and twisted numbered dials set into its crazed and distorted surface.
It wasn't part of the house Possession set.
The machine's non-sentient, mechanistic, entirely predictable brain thought about it for a while, then finally decided to junk the mysterious remnant along with the rest of the debris.
When he woke up that afternoon, it was with the memory of defeat. It was some time before he recalled that he had in fact won the Stricken game. Victory had never been so bitter.
He breakfasted alone on the terrace, watching a fleet of sailboats cut down the narrow fjord, bright sails in a fresh breeze. His right hand hurt a little as he held his bowl and cup; he'd come close to drawing blood when he'd crushed the Possession wafer at the end of the Stricken game.
He dressed in a long coat, trous and short kilt, and went on a long walk, down to the shore of the fjord and then along it, towards the sea coast and the windswept dunes where Hassease lay, the house he'd been born in, where a few of his extended family still lived. He tramped along the coast path towards the house, through the blasted, twisted shapes of wind-misshapen trees. The grass made sighing noises around him, and seabirds cried. The breeze was cold and freshening under ragged clouds. Out to sea, beyond Hassease village, where the weather was coming from, he could see tall veils of rain under a dark front of storm-clouds. He drew his coat tighter about him and hurried towards the distant silhouette of the sprawling, ramshackle house, thinking he should have taken an underground car. The wind whipped up sand from the distant beach and threw it inland; he blinked, eyes watering.
The Player of Games c-2 Page 6
