Flere-Imsaho — over its huff by then and talking to him again — reckoned this reaction might be genuine and unprompted, but was more likely to be the result of imperial pressure. Certainly it thought the Church — which had doubtless been instructing the priest as well as financing the deals he'd been making with the other players — had been leant on by the Imperial Office. Whatever, on the third day the massed attacks against Gurgeh fell away and the game resumed a more normal course.
The game-hall was crowded with people. There were many more paying spectators, numerous invited guests had changed venue to come and see the alien play, and the press-agencies had sent extra reporters and cameras. The club players, under the stewardship of the Adjudicator, succeeded in keeping the crowd quiet, so Gurgeh didn't find the extra people caused any great distraction during the game. It was difficult to move around the hall during the breaks though; people were constantly accosting him, asking him questions, or just wanting to look at him.
Pequil was there most of the time, but seemed more taken up with going in front of the cameras himself than shielding Gurgeh from all the people wanting to talk to him. At least he helped to divert the attentions of the news-people and let Gurgeh concentrate on the game.
Over the next couple of days, Gurgeh noticed a subtle change in the way the priest was playing, and, to a lesser degree, in the game-style of another two players.
Gurgeh had taken three players right out of the game; another three had been taken by the priest, without much of a fight. The remaining two apices had established their own small enclaves on the board and were taking comparatively little part in the wider game. Gurgeh was playing well, if not at quite the pitch he had when he'd won on the Board of Origin. He ought to be defeating the priest and the other two fairly easily. He was, indeed, gradually prevailing, but very slowly. The priest was playing better than he had before, especially at the beginning of each session, which made Gurgeh think that the apex was getting some high-grade help during the breaks. The same applied to the other two players, though they were presumably being less extensively briefed.
When the end came, though, on the fifth day of the game, it was sudden, and the priest's play simply collapsed. The other two players resigned. More adulation followed, and the news-agencies began to run editorials worrying that somebody from Outside could do so well. Some of the more sensational releases even carried stories that the alien from the Culture was using some sort of supernatural sense or illegal technical device. They'd found out Flere-Imsaho's name and mentioned it as the possible source of Gurgeh's illicit skill.
"They're calling me a computer ," the drone wailed.
"And they're calling me a cheat," Gurgeh said, thoughtfully. "Life is cruel, as they keep saying here."
'Here they are correct."
The last game, on the Board of Becoming, the one Gurgeh felt most at home on, was a romp. The priest had filed a special objective plan with the Adjudicator before the game commenced, something he was entitled to do as the player with the second largest number of points. He was effectively playing for second place; although he would be out of the Main Series, he would have a chance to re-enter it if he won his next two games in the second series.
Gurgeh suspected this was a ruse, and played very cautiously at first, waiting for either the mass attack or some cunning individual set-piece. But the others seemed to be playing almost aimlessly, and even the priest seemed to be making the sort of slightly mechanical moves he'd been making in the first game. When Gurgeh made a few light, exploratory attacks, he found little opposition. He divided his forces in half and went on a full-scale raid into the territory of the priest, just for the sheer hell of it. The priest panicked and hardly made one good move after that; by the end of the session he was in danger of being wiped out.
After the break Gurgeh was attacked by all the others, while the priest struggled, pinned against one edge of the board. Gurgeh took the hint. He gave the priest room to manoeuvre and let him attack two of the weaker players to regain his position on the board. The game finished with Gurgeh established over most of the board and the others either eradicated or confined to small, strategically irrelevant areas. Gurgeh had no particular interest in fighting the game out to the bitter end, and anyway guessed that if he tried to do so the others would form a united opposition, no matter how obvious it was they were working together; Gurgeh was being offered victory, but he would suffer if he tried to be greedy, or vindictive. The status quo was agreed; the game ended. The priest came second on points, just. Pequil congratulated him again, outside the hall. He'd reached the second round of the Main Series; he was one of only twelve hundred First Winners and twice that number of Qualifiers. He would now play against one person in the second round. Again, the apex begged Gurgeh to give a news-conference, and again Gurgeh refused.
"But you must! What are you trying to do? If you don't say something soon you'll turn them against you; this enigmatic stuff won't do for ever you know. You're the underdog at the moment; don't lose that!"
"Pequil," Gurgeh said, fully aware he was insulting the apex by addressing him so, "I have no intention of speaking to anybody about my game, and what they choose to say or think about me is irrelevant. I am here to play the game and nothing else."
"You are our guest," Pequil said coldly.
"And you are my hosts." Gurgeh turned and walked away from the official, and the ride back in the car was completed in silence, save for Flere-Imsaho's humming, which occasionally sounded to Gurgeh as if it barely concealed a chuckling laugh.
"Now the trouble starts."
"Why do you say that, ship?" It was night. The rear doors of the module lay open. Gurgeh could hear the distant buzz of the police hoverplane stationed over the hotel to keep news-agency craft away; the smell of the city, warm and spicy and smoky, drifted in too. Gurgeh was studying a set-piece problem in a single game, and taking notes. This seemed to be the best way of talking to the Limiting Factor with the time-delay; talk, then switch off and consider the problem while the HS light flashed to and fro; then, when the reply came, switch back to speech mode; it was almost like having a real conversation.
"Because now you have to show your moral cards. It's the single game, so you have to define your first principles, register your philosophical premises. Therefore you'll have to give them some of the things you believe in. I believe this could prove troublesome."
"Ship," Gurgeh said, writing some notes on a scratch tablet as he studied the holo in front of him, "I'm not sure I have any beliefs."
"I think you do, Jernau Gurgeh, and the Imperial Game Bureau will want to know what they are, for the record; I'm afraid you'll have to think of something."
"Why should I? What does it matter? I can't win any posts or ranks, I'm not going to gain any power out of this, so what difference does it make what I believe in? I know they need to find out what people in power think, but I just want to play the game."
"Yes, but they will need to know for their statistics. Your views may not matter a jot in terms of the elective properties of the game, but they do need to keep a record of what sort of player wins what sort of match… besides which, they will be interested in what sort of extremist politics you give credence to."
Gurgeh looked at the screen camera. "Extremist politics? What are you talking about?"
"Jernau Gurgeh," the machine said, making a sighing noise, "a guilty system recognises no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody's either for it or against it, we're against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you amongst its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximise that effect, and some try to minimise it. You come from one of the latter and you're being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you might imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to hav
e the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it."
Gurgeh thought about this. "Can I lie?"
"I shall take it you mean, would you be advised to register false premises, rather than, are you capable of telling untruths." (Gurgeh shook his head.) "This would probably be the wisest course. Though you may find it difficult to come up with something acceptable to them which you didn't find morally repugnant yourself."
Gurgeh looked back to the holo display. "Oh, you'd be surprised," he muttered. "Anyway, if I'm lying about it, how can I find it repugnant?"
"An interesting point; if one assumes that one is not morally opposed to lying in the first place, especially when it is largely or significantly what we term self-interested rather than disinterested or compassionate lying, then—"
Gurgeh stopped listening and studied the holo. He really must look up some of his opponent's previous games, once he knew who it would be.
He heard the ship stop talking. "Tell you what, ship," he said. "Why don't you think about it? You seem more engrossed in the whole idea than I do, and I'm busy enough anyway, so why don't you work out a compromise between truth and expediency we'll all be happy with, hmm? I'll agree to whatever you suggest, probably."
"Very well, Jernau Gurgeh. I'll be happy to do that."
Gurgeh bade the ship goodnight. He completed his study of the single-game problem, then switched the screen off. He stood and stretched, yawning. He strolled out of the module, into the orange-brown darkness of the hotel roof-garden. He almost bumped into a large, uniformed male.
The guard saluted — a gesture Gurgeh never did know bow to reply to — and handed him a piece of paper. Gurgeh took it and thanked him; the guard went back to his station at the top of the roof-stairs.
Gurgeh walked back into the module, trying to read the note.
"Flere-Imsaho?" he called, uncertain whether the little machine was still around or not. It came floating through from another part of the module in its undisguised, quiet form, carrying a large, richly illustrated book on the avian fauna of Eä.
"Yes?"
"What does this say?" Gurgeh flourished the note.
The drone floated up to the piece of paper. "Minus the imperial embroidery, it says they'd like you to go to the palace tomorrow so they can add their congratulations. What it means is, they want to take a look at you."
"I suppose I have to go?"
"I would say so."
"Does it mention you?"
"No, but I'll come along anyway; they can only throw me out. What were you talking to the ship about?"
"It's going to register my Premises for me. It was also giving me a lecture on sociological conditioning."
"It means well," said the drone. "It just doesn't want to leave such a delicate task to someone like you."
"Just going out, were you, drone?" Gurgeh said, switching on the screen again and sitting down to watch it. He brought up the game-player's channel on the imperial waveband and flicked through to the draw for the single games in the second round. Still no decision; the draw was still being decided; expected any minute.
"Well," Flere-Imsaho said, "There is a very interesting species of nocturnal fish-hunter that inhabits an estuary just a hundred kilometres from here, and I was thinking—"
"Don't let me keep you," Gurgeh said, just as the draw started to come through on the imperial game-channel; the screen started to fill with numbers and names.
"Right. I'll say goodnight, then." The drone floated away.
Gurgeh waved without looking round. "Goodnight," he said. He didn't hear whether the drone replied or not.
He found his place in the draw; his name appeared on the screen beside that of Lo Wescekibold Ram, governing director of the Imperial Monopolies Board. He was ranked as Level Five Main, which meant he was one of the sixty best game-players in the Empire.
The following day was Pequil's day off. An imperial aircraft was sent for Gurgeh and landed beside the module. Gurgeh and Flere-Imsaho — which had been rather late returning from its estuarial expedition — were taken out over the city to the palace. They landed on the roof of an impressive set of office buildings overlooking one of the small parks set within the palace grounds, and were led down wide, richly carpeted stairs to a high-ceilinged office where a male servant asked Gurgeh if he wanted anything to eat or drink. Gurgeh said no, and he and the drone were left alone.
Flere-Imsaho drifted over to the tall windows. Gurgeh looked at some portrait paintings hanging on the walls. After a short while, a youngish apex entered the room. He was tall, dressed in a relatively unfussy and businesslike version of the uniform of the Imperial Bureaucracy.
"Mr Gurgeh; good day. I'm Lo Shav Olos."
"Hello," Gurgeh said. They exchanged polite nods, then the apex walked quickly to a large desk in front of the windows and set a bulky sheaf of papers down on it before sitting down.
Lo Shav Olos looked round at Flere-Imsaho, buzzing and hissing away near by. "And this must be your little machine."
"Its name is Flere-Imsaho. It helps me with your language."
"Of course." The apex gestured to an ornate seat on the other side of his desk. "Please; sit down."
Gurgeh sat, and Flere-Imsaho came to float near him. The male servant returned with a crystal goblet and placed it on the desk near Olos, who drank before saying, "Not that you must need much help, Mr Gurgeh." The young apex smiled. "Your Eächic is very good."
"Thank you."
"Let me add my personal congratulations to those of the Imperial Office, Mr Gurgeh. You have done far better than many of us expected you to do. I understand you were learning the game only for about a third of one of our Great Years."
"Yes, but I found Azad so interesting I did little else during that time. And it does share concepts with other games I've studied in the past."
"Nevertheless, you've beaten people who've been learning the game all their lives. The priest Lin Goforiev Tounse was expected to do well in these games."
"So I saw," Gurgeh smiled. "Perhaps I was lucky."
The apex gave a little laugh, and sat back in his chair. "Perhaps you were, Mr Gurgeh. I'm sorry to see your luck didn't extend to cover the draw for the next round. Lo Wescekibold Ram is a formidable player, and many expect him to better his previous performance."
"I hope I can give him a good game."
"So do we all." The apex drank from his goblet again, then got up and went to the windows behind him, looking out over the park. He scratched at the thick glass, as though there was a speck on it. "While not, strictly speaking, my province, I confess I'd be interested if you could tell me a little about your plans for the registration of Premises." He turned and looked at Gurgeh.
"I haven't decided quite how to express them yet," Gurgeh said. "I'll register them tomorrow, probably."
The apex nodded thoughtfully. He pulled at one sleeve of the imperial uniform. "I wonder if I might advise you to be… somewhat circumspect, Mr Gurgeh?" (Gurgeh asked the drone to translate "circumspect'. Olos waited, then continued.) "Of course you must register with the Bureau, but as you know, your participation in these games is in a purely honorary capacity, and so exactly what you say in your Premises has only… statistical value, shall we say?"
Gurgeh asked the drone to translate "capacity'.
"Garbleness, game-playeroid," Flere-Imsaho muttered darkly in Marain. "Twiddly-dee; you that word capacity beforely usedish Eächic in. Placey-wacey's buggy-wuggied. Stoppy-toppy deez guys spladdiblledey-dey-da more cluettes on da lingo offering, righty?"
Gurgeh suppressed a smile. Olos went on. "As a rule, contestants must be prepared to defend their views with arguments, should the Bureau find it necessary to challenge any of them, but I hope you will understand that this will hardly be likely to happen to you. The Imperial Bureau is not blind to the fact that the… values of y
our society may be quite different from our own. We have no wish to embarrass you by forcing you to reveal things the press and the majority of our citizens might find… offensive." He smiled. "Personally, off the record, I would imagine that you could be quite… oh, one might almost say «vague»… and nobody would be especially bothered."
""Especially"?" Gurgeh said innocently to the humming, crackling drone at his side.
"More gibberish biltrivnik ner plin ferds, you're quontstipilish trying nomonomo wertsishi my zozlik zibbidik dik fucking patience, Gurgeh."
Gurgeh coughed loudly. "Excuse me," he said to Olos. "Yes. I see. I'll bear that in mind when I draw up my Premises."
"I'm glad, Mr Gurgeh," Olos said, coming back to his chair and sitting again. "What I've said is my personal view, of course, and I have no links with the Imperial Bureau; this office is quite independent of that body. Nevertheless, one of the great strengths of the Empire is its cohesion, its… unity, and I doubt that I could be very wide of the mark in judging what the attitude of another imperial department might be." Lo Shav Olos smiled indulgently. "We really do all pull together."
"I understand," Gurgeh said;
"I'm sure you do. Tell me; are you looking forward to your trip to Echronedal?"
"Very much so, especially as the honour is extended so rarely to guest players."
"Indeed." Olos looked amused. "Few guests are ever allowed on to the Fire Planet. It is a holy place, as well as being itself a symbol of the everlasting nature of the Empire and the Game."
"My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it," Gurgeh purred, with the hint of a bow. Flere-Imsaho made a spluttering noise.
Olos smiled broadly. "I feel quite certain that having established yourself as being so proficient — indeed gifted — at our game, you will prove yourself to be more than worthy of your place in the game-castle on Echronedal. Now," the apex said, glancing at his desk-screen, "I see it is time for me to attend yet another doubtless insufferably tedious meeting of the Trade Council. I'd far prefer to continue our own exchange, Mr Gurgeh, but unhappily it must be curtailed in the interests of the efficiently regulated exchange of goods between our many worlds."
The Player of Games c-2 Page 20
