"I fully understand," Gurgeh said, standing at the same time as the apex.
"I'm pleased to have met you, Mr Gurgeh," Olos smiled.
"And I you."
"Let me wish you luck in your game against Lo Wescekibold Ram," the apex said as he walked to the door with Gurgeh. "I'm afraid you will need it. I'm sure it will be an interesting game."
"I hope so," Gurgeh said. They left the room. Olos offered his hand; Gurgeh clasped it, allowing himself to look a little surprised.
"Good day, Mr Gurgeh."
"Goodbye."
Then Gurgeh and Flere-Imsaho were escorted back to the aircraft on the roof while Lo Shav Olos strode off down another corridor to his meeting.
"You asshole, Gurgeh!" The drone said in Marain as soon as they were back in the module. "First you ask me two words you already know, and then you use both of them and the—"
Gurgeh was shaking his head by this time, and interrupted. "You really don't understand very much about game-playing, do you drone?"
"I know when people are playing the fool."
"Better than playing a household pet, machine."
The machine made a noise like an indrawn breath, then seemed to hesitate and said, "Well, anyway… at least you don't have to worry about your Premises now." It gave a rather forced-sounding chuckle. "They're as frightened of you telling the truth as you are!"
Gurgeh's game against Lo Wescekibold Ram attracted great attention. The press, fascinated by this odd alien who refused to speak to them, sent their most acerbic reporters, and the camera operators best able to catch any fleeting facial expression which would make the subject look ugly, stupid or cruel (and preferably all three at once). Gurgeh's off-world physiognomy was regarded as a challenge by some camera people, and as a large fish in a small barrel by others.
Numerous paying game-fans had traded tickets for other games so they could watch this one, and the guests" gallery could have been filled many times over, even though the venue had been changed from the original hall Gurgeh had played in before to a large marquee erected in a park only a couple of kilometres from both the Grand Hotel and the Imperial Palace. The marquee held three times as many people as the old hall, and was still crowded.
Pequil had arrived as usual in the Alien Affairs Bureau car in the morning, and taken Gurgeh to the park. The apex no longer tried to put himself in front of the cameras, but busily hurried them out of the way to clear a path for Gurgeh.
Gurgeh was introduced to Lo Wescekibold Ram. He was a short, bulky apex with a more rugged face than Gurgeh had expected and a military bearing.
Ram played quick, incisive lesser games, and they finished two on the first day, ending about even. Gurgeh only realised how hard he'd been concentrating that evening when he fell asleep watching the screen. He slept for almost six hours.
The next day they played another two of the lesser games, but the play extended, by agreement, into the evening session; Gurgeh felt the apex was testing him, trying to wear him out, or at least see what the limits of his endurance were; they would be playing all six of the lesser games before the three main boards, and Gurgeh already knew he was under much more strain playing Ram alone than he'd been competing against nine others.
After a great struggle, almost to midnight, Gurgeh finished fractionally ahead. He slept seven hours and woke up just in time to get ready for the next day's play. He forced himself awake, glanding the Culture's favourite breakfast drug, Snap, and was a little disappointed to see Ram looked just as fresh and energetic as he felt.
That game became another war of attrition, dragging through the afternoon, and Ram didn't suggest playing into the evening. Gurgeh spent a couple of hours discussing the game with the ship during the evening, then, to wash it from his mind, watched the Empire's broadcast channels for a while.
There were adventure programmes and quizzes and comedies, news-stations and documentaries. He looked for reports on his own game. He was mentioned, but the day's rather dull play didn't merit much space. He could see that the agencies were becoming less and less well-disposed to him, and he wondered if they now regretted standing up for him when he'd been ganged up on during the first match.
Over the next five days the news-stations became even less happy with "Alien Gurgey" (Eächic was phonetically less subtle than Marain, so his name was always going to be spelled incorrectly). He finished the lesser games about level with Ram, then beat him on the Board of Origin after being well down at one stage, and lost on the Board of Form only by the most slender of margins.
The news-agencies at once decided that Gurgeh was a menace to the Empire and the common good, and began a campaign to have him thrown off Eä. They claimed he was in telepathic touch with the Limiting Factor, or with the robot called Flere-Imsaho, that he used all manner of disgusting drugs which were kept in the vice den and drug emporium he lived in on the roof of the Grand Hotel, then — as though just discovering the fact — that he could make the drugs inside his own body (which was true) using glands ripped out of little children in appalling and fatal operations (which was not). The effect of these drugs seemed to be to turn him into either a super-computer or an alien sex-maniac (even both, in some reports).
One agency discovered Gurgeh's Premises, which the ship had drawn up and registered with the Games Bureau. These were held to be typically shifty and mealy-mouthed Culture double-talk; a recipe for anarchy and revolution. The agencies adopted hushed and reverent tones as they appealed loyally to the Emperor to "do something" about the Culture, and blamed the Admiralty for having known about this gang of slimy perverts for decades without, apparently, showing them who was boss, or just crushing them completely (one daring agency even went so far as to claim the Admiralty wasn't totally certain where the Culture's home planet was). They offered up prayers that Lo Wescekibold Ram would wipe the Alien Gurgey off the Board of Becoming as decisively as the Navy would one day dispose of the corrupt and socialistic Culture. They urged Ram to use the physical option if he had to; that would show what the namby-pamby Alien was made of (perhaps literally!).
"Is all this serious?" Gurgeh said, turning, amused, from the screen to the drone.
"Deadly serious," Flere-Imsaho told him.
Gurgeh laughed and shook his head. He thought the common people must be remarkably stupid if they believed all this nonsense.
Ater four days of the game on the Board of Becoming, Gurgeh was poised to win. He saw Ram talking worriedly with some of his advisors afterwards, and half expected the apex to offer his resignation then, after the afternoon session. But Ram decided to fight on; they agreed to forgo the evening session and resume the next morning.
The big tent ruffled slightly in a warm breeze as Flere-Imsaho joined Gurgeh at the exit. Pequil supervised the way being cleared through the crowds outside to where the car was waiting. The crowd was composed mostly of people who just wanted to see the alien, though there were a few demonstrating noisily against Gurgeh, and an even smaller number who were cheering him. Ram and his advisors left the tent first.
"I think I see Shohobohaum Za in the crowd," the drone said as they waited at the exit. Ram's entourage was still cluttering the far end of the ribbon of path held clear by the two lines of policemen.
Gurgeh glanced at the machine, then down the line of arm-linked police. He was still tensed from the game, bloodstream suffused with multifarious chemicals. As happened every now and again, everything he saw around him seemed to be part of the game; the way people stood like pieces, grouped according to who could take or affect whom; the way the pattern on the marquee was like a simple grid-area on the board, and the poles like planted power-sources waiting to replenish some exhausted minor piece and supporting a crux-point in the game; the way the people and police stood like the suddenly closed jaws of some nightmarish pincer-movement… all was the game, everything was seen in its light, translated into the combative imagery of its language, evaluated in the context its structure imposed upon the mind.
>
"Za?" Gurgeh said. He looked in the direction the drone's field was pointing, but couldn't see the man.
The last of Ram's group cleared the pavement where the official cars waited. Pequil gestured for Gurgeh to proceed. They walked between the lines of uniformed males. Cameras pointed, questions were shouted. Some ragged chanting began and Gurgeh saw a banner waving over the heads of the crowd; "GO HOME ALIEN'.
"Seems I'm not too popular," he said.
"You aren't," Flere-Imsaho told him.
In two steps (Gurgeh realised in a distant, game-sense way even as he was speaking and the drone was replying), he was going to be adjacent to… it took one more step to analyse the problem… something bad, something jarring and discordant… there was something… different; wrong about the three-group he was about to pass on his left; like unplaced ghost-pieces hiding in forest territory…. He had no idea exactly what was wrong with the group, but he knew immediately — as the protagonising structures of the game-sense claimed precedence in his thoughts — that he wasn't going to risk putting a piece in there.
… Another half-step…
… to realise that the piece he didn't want to risk was himself.
He saw the three-group start to move and split up. He turned and ducked automatically; it was the obvious replying move of a threatened piece with too much momentum to stop or bound back from such an attacking force.
There were several loud bangs. The three-group of people burst towards him through the arms of two policemen, like a composite piece suddenly fragmenting. He converted his ducking motion into a dive and roll which he realised with some delight was the almost perfect physical equivalent to a trip-piece tying up a light-attacker. He felt a pair of legs thud into his side, not hard, then there was a weight on top of him and more loud noises. Something else fell on top of his legs.
It was like waking up.
He'd been attacked. There had been flashes, explosions, people launching themselves at him.
He struggled under the warm, animal weight on top of him, the one he'd tripped up. People were shouting; police moved quickly. He saw Pequil lying on the ground. Za was there too, standing looking rather confused. Somebody was screaming. No sign of Flere-Imsaho. Something warm was seeping into the hose he wore on his legs.
He struggled out from under the body lying on top of him, suddenly revolted by the thought that the person — apex or male, he couldn't tell — might be dead. Shohobohaum Za and a policeman helped him up. There was a lot of shouting still; people were moving or being moved back, clearing a space around whatever had happened; bodies lay on the ground, some covered in bright red-orange blood. Gurgeh got dizzily to his feet.
"All right, game-player?" Za asked, grinning.
"Yes, I think so," Gurgeh nodded. There was blood on his legs, but it was the wrong colour to be his.
Flere-Imsaho descended from the sky. "Jernau Gurgeh! Are you all right?"
"Yes." Gurgeh looked around. "What happened?" he asked Shohobohaum Za. "Did you see what happened?" The police had drawn their guns and were clustered around the area; the people were moving away, the press-cameras were being forced back by shouting police. Five policemen were pinning somebody down on the grass. Two apices in civilian clothes lay on the path; the one Gurgeh had tripped was covered in blood. A policeman stood over each body; another two were tending to Pequil.
"Those three attacked you," Za said, eyes flicking around as he nodded at the two bodies and the figure under the pile of police. Gurgeh could hear somebody sobbing loudly, in what was left of the crowd. Reporters were still shouting questions.
Za guided Gurgeh over to where Pequil lay, while Flere-Imsaho fussed and hummed overhead. Pequil lay on his back, eyes open, blinking, while a policeman cut away the blood-soaked sleeve of his uniform jacket. "Old Pequil here got in the way of a bullet," Za said. "You all right, Pequil?" he shouted jovially.
Pequil smiled weakly and nodded.
"Meanwhile," Za said, putting his arm round Gurgeh's shoulders and looking round all the time, gaze darting everywhere, "your brave and resourceful drone here exceeded the speed of sound to get about twenty metres out of the way, upwards."
"I was merely gaining height the better to ascertain wh—"
"You dropped," Za told Gurgeh, still without looking at him, "and rolled; I thought they'd got you, actually. I managed to knock one of these bods on the head and I think the police burnt the other one." Za's gaze settled momentarily on the knot of people beyond the cordon of police, where the sobbing was coming from. "Somebody in the crowd got hit too; the bullets meant for you."
Gurgeh looked down at one of the dead apices; his head lay at right-angles to his body, across his shoulder; it would have looked wrong on almost any humanoid. "Yeah, that's the one I hit," Za said, glancing briefly at the apex. "Bit too hard I think."
"I repeat," Flere-Imsaho said, moving round in front of Gurgeh and Za, "I was merely gaining height in order to—"
"Yes, we're glad you're safe, drone," Za said, waving the buzzing bulk of the machine away like a large and cumbersome insect and guiding Gurgeh forward to where an apex in police uniform was gesturing towards the cars. Whooping noises sounded in the sky and the surrounding streets.
"Ah, here's the boys," Za said, as a wailing noise dopplered its way over the park, and a large orange-red airvan rushed out of the sky to land in a storm of dust on the grass near by; the marquee fabric flapped and banged and rippled in the blast of air. More heavily armed police jumped out of the van.
There was some confusion about whether they ought to go to the cars or not; finally they were taken back into the marquee and statements were taken from them and some other witnesses; two cameras were confiscated from protesting news-people.
Outside, the two dead bodies and the wounded attacker were loaded on to the airvan. An air-ambulance arrived for Pequil, who was lightly wounded in the arm.
As Gurgeh, Za and the drone finally left the marquee to be taken back to the hotel in a police aircraft, a groundcar-ambulance was pulling in through the park gates to pick up the two males and a female also injured in the attack.
"Nice little module," Shohobohaum Za said, throwing himself into a formseat. Gurgeh sat down too. The noise of the departing policecraft echoed through the interior. Flere-Imsaho went quiet as soon as they got in and disappeared through to another part of the module.
Gurgeh ordered a drink from the module and asked Za if he would like anything. "Module," Za said, sprawling out over the seat and looking thoughtful, "I'd like a double standard measure of staol and chilled Shungusteriaung warp-wing liver wine bottoming a mouth of white Eflyre-Spin cruchen-spirit in a slush of medium cascalo, topped with roasted weirdberries and served in a number three strength Tipprawlic osmosis-bowl, or your best approximation thereof."
"Male or female warp-wing?" the module said.
"In this place?" Za laughed. "Hell; both."
"It will take some minutes."
"That is perfectly all right." Za rubbed his hands together and then looked at Gurgeh. "So, you survived; well done."
Gurgeh looked uncertain for an instant, then said, "Yes. Thanks."
"Think comparatively little of it." Za flapped one hand. "Quite enjoyed myself, actually. Just sorry I killed the guy."
"I wish I could take such a magnanimous view," Gurgeh said. "He was trying to kill me. And with bullets." Gurgeh found the idea of being hit by a bullet particularly horrible.
"Well," Za shrugged, "I'm not sure it makes much difference whether you're killed by a projectile or a CREW; you're just as dead. Anyway, I still feel sorry for those guys. Poor bastards were probably just doing their jobs."
"Their jobs?" Gurgeh said, mystified.
Za yawned and nodded, stretching out in the folds of the accommodating formseat. "Yeah; they'll be imperial secret police or Bureau Nine or something like that." He yawned again. "Oh, the story'll be they're disaffected civilians… though they might try to hang it on the revs…
but that'd be a bit unlikely…" Za grinned, shrugged. "Na; they might try it anyway; just for a laugh."
Gurgeh thought. "No," he said finally. "I don't understand. You said these people were police. How—"
"Secret police, Jernau."
"…. But how can you have a secret policeman? I thought one of the points of having a uniform for the police was so that they could be easily identified and act as a deterrent."
"Good grief," Za said, covering his face with his hands. He put them down and gazed at Gurgeh. He took a deep breath. "Right… well; the secret police are people who go about listening to what people say when they aren't being deterred by the sight of a uniform. Then if the person hasn't actually said anything illegal, but has said something they think is dangerous to the security of the Empire, they kidnap them and interrogate them and — as a rule — kill them. Sometimes they send them to a penal colony but usually they incinerate them or throw them down an old mineshaft; the atmosphere here's rich with revolutionary fervour, Jernau Gurgeh, and there are some rich seams of loose tongues beneath the city streets. They do other things as well, these secret police. What happened to you today was one of those other things."
Za sat back and made an expansive, shrugging gesture. "Or, on the other hand, I suppose it isn't impossible they really were revs, or disaffected citizens. Except that they moved all wrong…. But that's what secret police do, take it from me. Ah!"
A tray approached bearing a large bowl in a holder; vapour rose dramatically from the frothing, multi-coloured surface of the liquid. Za took the bowl.
"To the Empire!" he shouted, and drained it in one go. He slammed the bowl back on to the tray. "Haaa!" he exclaimed, sniffing and coughing and wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his tunic. He blinked at Gurgeh.
The Player of Games c-2 Page 21
