The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Shear interrupted, his mouth full of wine and crumbs which exploded into a little shower upon his black dress. "We do not like being called 'magicians,' Huld. The ignorant Gamesmen may do so, but we expect more courtesy from you. We respect your warnings, but if this Peter is dead, surely."

  "You fools, don't you understand? He isn't dead. I don't care what your Gifter said or pretended. Peter is not dead Manacle now, chilly as winter. "I do not appreciate being called a fool. As a direct descendent, unto the thirtieth generation, of the original Searchers, as fifth in a direct line to win the title of Dean, I am not one to be lightly called fool. We bear with you, Huld, though you are a mere Gamesman, because you have been useful. We do not bear with insult, however."

  I heard Huld's teeth grind together. To be called a "mere Gamesman" would have been enough. To hear the scorn in Manacle's voice was more than enough.

  "You bear with me, Dean Manacle, because I am the only one who can warn you of what the Council plots against you, what the Council intends. Without me, you are at the mercy of that strange people, not a tender mercy, Manacle. Now, where are they? Where are the Wizard and the Seer?"

  Manacle drew himself up with a trembling hauteur, pompously waving the hovering servitor away. "They are in the laboratories, Huld. I will take you there tonight, after the meeting. You may see for yourself. I will tell you then what the Committee has decided about your request, your request to have access to our defenders. I do not think they will be sympathetic, Huld. They believe that the Council and the Committee are effective counterweights to one another. They believe it is so we keep the world in balance."

  "Until the Council grows tired of balance." It was said very quietly, but with enormous menace. With that utterance the room became perfectly still. One of the little girls whimpered, the sound falling into quiet as a pebble into a pool, the ripples spreading ever wider to rebound from the walls, an astonishment of sound. Manacle stared at Huld with eyes grown suddenly wary.

  "Why would they wish to destroy the historic balance?" he quavered.

  "Why would they not? They grow proud, powerful. They long for new things. Why else would they have created this 'Peter,' this new Talent? For what other purpose than to change the balance?"

  One of the magicians who had stood silent during this exchange, one taller than most, with a face the color of ash, said, "Do you know this to be true?"

  "Professor Quench, I know it almost surely. The likelihood disturbs me greatly. And it should disturb you."

  "We must know," said Quench in a voice of lava, flowing, hardening, roughening the room with its splash and flow. "We must know, Manacle. We must know, Shear. Likely isn't good enough. We must know."

  Manacle dithered, shifted his feet, picked at an invisible spot of lint. "The Committee of the Faculty," he offered, "the subject is to be brought before the Committee when it meets tonight."

  Quench stared him long in the face, then nodded. "See that it is," he said, walking out of the room, voice splattering behind him. "See that it is. I will be there."

  Manacle now very much on his dignity, feeling diminished by ashy Quench and burning Huld, flutters at Shear. "Take the consecrated monsters away, Shear. This has quite disordered my day. If we are to have questions raised like this, out of order, before the Committee has had a chance to consider, well. I have much to prepare." He bustled away in the direction Quench had gone. Shear herded the girls away, and my last glimpse of Huld was of his fiery eyes watching Manacle to the end of sight. We went, Mavin and I, quiet as bunwits, down the carpeted hallway and into the place designated. There were pallets there for sleeping, and spigots for a kind of gruel, and a pool for bathing. There was nothing of interest save the tall, barred door which led into Manacle's quarters. Once Shear had gone, it would be no trick to shape a finger into a key, to go out and lock the door behind us.

  So we did. "What will he think when he finds two of us gone?" I whispered to Mavin.

  "He will think the two remaining ate the two who are missing," she snarled at me. "Don't be a fool, boy. Leave the door open as though Shear forgot to lock it. Then he may wonder where his breeders are, but he will not suspect a spy in his own place."

  Shamefaced, I went back to unlock the door. Inside the room the two little girls had settled upon one of the pallets and were engaged in a game of a curious kind. I turned my face away, flushing. Evidently they were not totally mindless. They had been trained to do at least one thing. "What now?" I asked Mavin.

  "Now I need to think," she rasped. I could not understand her anger until she spoke again. "What is he up to, that fustigarvomit? What does he mean saying you were created by the Council? I know better than he how you were created, and it was in the usual way. No Council had part in it save the counsel between man and woman. He seeks to trick these magicians in some way for some reason. What is the reason?

  "Who are these people, these magicians who do not like to be called magicians? They say they are 'faculty' of a 'college.' Well, I know what a college is. It is only another word for school. Windlow had a college. So did Mertyn. What are faculty except schoolmasters. Hmm? Except these seem strangely preoccupied with signs and rituals, speaking often of signtists and Searchers. Is this some kind of religion? Manacle claims himself descended from original Searchers. Well enough. Searchers after what? They hold Gamesmen in contempt. There are no women among them. They seem to admit only four kinds of beings: themselves, monsters, Gamesmen, and pawns."

  "Tallmen," I offered.

  "Only a lesser kind of monster, or perhaps I should say a superior kind of monster. What is this Council that Huld uses to frighten them with, as a nursemaid uses night-bogie to frighten naughty children?"

  "Himaggery spoke of a Council. I thought he said it was a group of very powerful Gamesmen-I think he said Gamesmen. They search out heresy .."

  "Some such group has been rumored, yes. But is it that group which Huld speaks of? And meantime we know nothing about Himaggery and Windlow except that they are 'in the laboratories.' Where are the 'laboratories'? What are they? We are rattling around in here like seeds in a dry gourd, making a slithering noise with no sense. Come, son, set a plan for us."

  To hear Mavin say this in such noise and frustration amused me. There was no time to be amused, no time to treasure that moment, but I stored it away to gloat over later. Of such moments are adulthood made. I almost said "manhood," but thought better of that. "We must not be misled by the puzzle," I told her. "Whatever the Council is, whatever this place may be, whatever the history of the place or its reasons for existence-none of these are more important than Himaggery and Windlow. Manacle will meet Huld after tonight's meeting. So we will go to the meeting and hear what is said. After that we will follow Manacle to his meeting with Huld, and Didir must protect me as best she can. If we are inconspicuous, we will likely pass unnoticed."

  When I said the word, inconspicuous, it made me think of Chance, and for a moment I was overcome with a terrible homesickness for him, for Schooltown, for the known and familiar and sure. I gasped, but Mavin had not noticed.

  "I will be inconspicuous," she growled. "And I will be patient, but this place itches me."

  It itched me, too, as I tried to find the place of the meeting. No mind I sought through knew of the meeting or where it might be held. "An exclusive group," murmured Mavin, when I told her this. "Do you suppose the room is never cleaned?"

  This took me a moment to puzzle out. Then I understood that the room would undoubtedly be cleaned by someone, a pawn. I began to search among pawnish minds, Didir dipping here and there as we moved above the place. On the sixth or seventh try, we found a mind which had once known of the place. We went to it. All of this had taken so much time that we were there only a moment before the magicians began to arrive, only time to find a dark corner in a kind of balcony over the main room where two additional chair-like shapes would go unnoticed. The place was under a duct which brought in heat, and Mavin settled into it with a tired
sigh.

  "One more shift and I would have started to eat myself," she confessed. "I cannot store as you do, my son."

  I realized with some guilt that Shattnir had gone on storing power for me at every opportunity. It had begun to feel as natural as breathing. I let power bleed between us. "Take from me," I whispered to her. "I feel we will not move from this place for some time."

  One wall of the place below was made up of hundreds of tiny windows, blank and black, except that on one or two a light crawled wormlike and green. One end of the long table had a slanted surface with buttons and knobs on it. There had been many surfaces like that in this place, controls for the contrivances of the magicians. Both the windows and the control surface looked dusty, unused. A side wall held rows of portraits, face after face, mushroom pale above black garb, gold plates identifying each in letters too small for me to read. The last portrait in the bottom row was of Manacle, however, which told us enough. The tops of the higher frames were black with dust. The carpet of the place was worn through in spots. At each chair was set an empty bottle and a drinking glass, a pad of yellowed paper and a writing implement. At one place the writing implement had been shifted in position, and I could see a pale pattern of it where it had once lain upon the paper. Whoever might once have cleaned the place had not done so recently, perhaps not for years. Dust lay upon everything in a thick, gray film.

  Quench came in to sit at the place where the writing implement had been moved. He moved it back onto its shadow, carefully, centering it upon its image before settling into the chair, arms folded across his wide torso. The lines of his boxlike hat seemed to continue downward through his head, obdurately square.

  Others entered. There were whispers, mumbling conversations. I risked a questing thought to get pictures of long, half ruined corridors, tumbled portals far to the north and south, ramified networks of dusty catacombs, buried in decay. One of those who entered had white tabs at his throat. Others bowed toward him, murmured "Rector." Time passed. Some fifty were assembled before Manacle entered. Well, now we would learn what we would learn.

  "Evening, gentlemen. Evening. Glad to see everyone is here so promptly. Well, we have a considerable agenda this evening. Let's call the meeting to order and get started. Will the Rector give the invocation."

  The tab-fronted one rose, stared upward and intoned, "Oh, Lord, we your children have pursued your purposes for thirty generations upon this planet. For a thousand years we have been faithful to your commandments. We have watched the monsters in this place, have kept ourselves separated from them, have kept your sacred ordinances to research and record everything that the monsters do. Now, as we approach the holy season of Contact With Home, be with us as we consider grave matters which are brought before us. Let us be mindful of your ordinances as we consecrate monsters to our use in order that your will may be continued unto future generations. Keep us safe from the vile seducements of Gamesmen and the connivances of the Council. We ask this as faithful sons. Amen."

  During this pronouncement, the others in the room had peered restlessly about themselves as though someone else were expected to enter, but no one did. There was a brief silence when the man finished speaking. Manacle sat in his chair with head forward, as though he were asleep. Quench cleared his throat with a hacking noise, and Dean Manacle jerked upright.

  "Hmmm," he mumbled. "We will move to the minutes of the last meeting." He rose and pushed one of the buttons on the table before him, saying as he did so, "I am Manacle of Monsters, son of Scythe of Sinners, Dean of the Executive Committee of the Faculty of the College of Searchers. Will Central Control please read the minutes of the last meeting." He tilted his head to one side and seemed to be counting. Around the room the others stared at their fingers or murmured to one another, bored. When a slow count of fifty had passed, Manacle went on, "Since Central Control does not think it necessary to read the minutes of the last meeting, may I have a motion to approve them as unread."

  "So move," said Quench. He did not move, however, which was confusing. Again, I knew it must be ritual.

  "Seconded," said an anonymous voice from the end of the long table.

  "It has been moved by Professor Quench, seconded by Professor Musclejaw, that we approve the minutes of the last meeting as unread. All those in favor. A chorus of grunts and snarls greeted this. "Opposed? Hearing none the motion is passed." There was a pause while Dean Manacle collected himself and shuffled through the papers before him. "We shall move to subcommittee reports .. the subcommittee on portal repair."

  "Nonsense," said Quench.

  "I beg your pardon." Manacle looked up, bristling. "The agenda calls for. .

  "Nonsense. The agenda calls for nonsense. Stupidity. Obtuseness. Obfuscation. Let's talk about the Council. Let's talk about this Gamesman, Huld, who wants access to the defenders!"

  Grunts of surprise, voices raised in anger. "The defenders? We don't allow access to the defenders! What did he say?"

  "We will have the report on portal repair," Manacle shouted. "And the report on the problems at the monster labs, and on the food stocks brought in by Gifters. These are important matters, Quench. Vital matters.

  "How vital?" boomed Quench. "If the Council is planning to destroy us all, how vital is it that the monster labs shall or shall not meet quota? If we are all killed, how important that the northern portal cannot be repaired, as we know it cannot, as the southern portal could not in its time. If there are none left to have appetite, how vital is it that the Gifters bring in their full cargoes of grain and meat? Vital? Manacle, you're a fool and your father before you was a fool."

  I had not seen until then the little hammer which Manacle picked up from before him. He whapped it upon the table, raising a cloud of dust at which several members began to sneeze and wipe their eyes. If this was meant to restore order, it failed its purpose. A trembling oldster was shouting at Quench who was bellowing in reply. Elsewhere in the room confusion multiplied as small groups and individuals rose in gesticulating argument. Manacle thrashed with his little hammer, voices rose, until at last Quench shouted down all who would have opposed him.

  "Sit down, you blasted idiots. Now you all listen to me for a while. If you choose to do nothing after I've spoken, well, it will be no less than you've done about anything for fifty years. I will speak. I'm a full professor, entitled to my position, and I will be heard, though I am a doddering Emeritus."

  "Most of you in this room recall the meeting a generation ago when Dean Scythe admitted to this Committee that the techs could not repair the portal machines, or the air machines, or most of the others, so far as that goes. You recall that we had before us at that time a suggestion, made by me, that we set some of our brighter young men to studying the old machines and the old books in order to learn about them. You recall that my suggestion was met with typical revulsion and obstinate lack of understanding. No, you all said, we wouldn't deny our sons their chance at earning their degrees by asking them to be mere techs." Quench spat the word at them bitterly. "Oh, no. Every one of us had been assistant, associate, tutor, lecturer, assistant professor-all of it. Each of you wanted the same for his boys."

  So, old Scythe suggested we pick some Gamesmen and bring them in to learn about the machines, that we give some Gamesmen the old books, that we turn our future over to the Gamesmen because we were too proud to be techs. So we brought some of em in. There was that fellow Nitch, came and went for a decade. Where is he now? Gone to use what he learned for his own profit, I have no doubt. And there were others. Fixed a few things, but not for long. Now there's this fellow Huld, threatening us with the Council. Telling us the Council is going to destroy us-the Council we've cooperated with for hundreds of years by taking up dangerous Gamesmen and putting them away when the Council told us to. Now here's Huld telling us the Council is creating Gamesmen with dangerous new talents. Here's Huld saying he will protect us if we only give him access to the defenders. And idiot Manacle has half told him we'd do it. And,
while all that's going on, Manacle wants us to sit here talking about repairing the north portal which has been in ruins for five generations. Outrageous piftie!" He subsided into seething silence, picked up the writing implement before him and broke it in two. There was a horrified gasp from others in the room.

  "You broke the pencil." Manacle trembled. "They've been here since my great-grandfather's time, and you broke one.

  "Piffle," repeated Quench. The angry silence was not broken until an old voice quavered in treble confusion.

  "Excuse me, but what are you suggesting, Professor Quench? Are you saying we should not listen to Huld? Or should listen to Huld? Do we now distrust our colleagues of the Council.

  "I'm suggesting," said Quench, "that we do now what we should have done generations ago. Get some of the young assistants and associates out of the watching labs. Let them put their 'search' aside for the moment. There's nothing new in it anyway. Hasn't been anything new in it for ten generations. We can create monsters until we're sick of it and watch them till we're bored to death, and there'll be nothing new in it. Why, a year's watch doesn't produce a footnote. No, let's create a degree in machinery, for College's sake. Create a degree in repair. Let the young men 'search' in the old books. Stop depending upon these Gamesmen.

  "Heresy," thundered the Rector. "Professor Quench. you speak heresy of the most pernicious sort. Our forefathers made a sacred covenant with Home to search and record information about monsters. To think of creating a degree in some other discipline."

  "Oh, monster offal," snarled Quench. "You pray that we be kept safe from the vile seducements of the Gamesmen, and then you fall right into their vile seducements yourself."

  "Holy Scripture.

  "Holy Scripture be shat upon. You read it your way, Rector, and I'll read it mine. When we're all dead, what will be the sense of Holy Scripture? You know what I think of your sacred covenants? They don't make sense!"