The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

"Sir, you question the very basis of our history, the foundations of our faith."

  "I question your data, Rector." There was a shocked intake of breath. This was evidently a serious charge, though I could not tell why. "I question whether our forefathers ever agreed to do what you say they did. In any case, it's susceptible of proof. Ask Home."

  The shocked silence extended, built, was broken at last by Manacle. "Ask Home? What do you mean, sir?"

  "I mean, ask Home. Two days now, isn't it? Aren't we getting the blues assembled for the ceremony? Getting ready for the rigamarole? Going to send the Signal? Right? Signal says we're all spandy-dandy, doing well, following the sacred covenants, right? This time let's tell them we've got some religious questions and would appreciate clarification of the scriptures." Vie glared at the open mouths around the table. I dare you. And, while we're at it, it might be a good idea to find out if the defenders still work. Lord knows the portals don't."

  "The defenders are self-repairing," said Manacle. "If the Council were to strike at us for any reason, it would be at their peril. I would release the defenders in a moment, Quench, and they would work as they did a thousand years ago. Depend upon it.

  "I don't depend upon it," he replied. "I depend upon rust and decay, spoilation and corrosion, that's what I depend upon. And on my memory. I remember that we need food and fuel from outside. There are Gamesmen out there who would limit our access to those, and the Council has helped us with that by identifying the rogues and removing them, sending them in to us to be made into blues. In return, we supply drugs to make them live long. Balance, Manacle. Balance. Mutual advantage. Why would they change all that? I think this Gamesman of yours may he full of vile seducements, all right, and the evil intentions may not come from the Council

  The Rector, sneering, said, "Does our respected Professor Emeritus postulate a fifth force? Some mythological concept?"

  "Maybe," replied Quench, with a sneer of his own. "Have you heard of Wizards, Rector? Not your field, hmmm'? Haven't heard of Immutables, either, I suppose? Not your field. No, I thought not. Well, an aged Emeritus can prowl around outside a little, as I have done. No, no, don't look horrified-I said I can prowl around out there without compromising my academic dignity, even if it isn't my field. There may he a fifth force, Rector. And I'd like to move we find out."

  "You're out of order." Manacle hammered, raising another cloud of dust with every blow. "The Agenda says.."

  "Get your head out of your backside, Manacle! I move we get some of the young men working on the old books, if they have wits enough."

  "Is there a second? Motion dies for lack of a second," gabbled Manacle, his voice a shriek which cut through the babble around him. "I will appoint a subcommittee to study the matter which the Gamesman Huld has warned us of. Is there further business to be brought before this committee--hearing none this meeting is adjourned." He collapsed momentarily into his chair, lips moving in and out like a fish's.

  "Piffle," shouted Quench. "There's no hope for you."

  Mavin and I did not move. There seemed little hope for us either. We had understood hardly a word of what had been said, and below us in the meeting room, Manacle rose and fled through the door as though to escape Quench's words.

  10

  The Labs

  "Don't let Manacle out of our sight," Mavin whispered as we slithered out of our chair shapes and into the guise of ubiquitous, invisible Tallmen. Her warning came late, for we had already lost sight of him, and it was only the sound of his voice echoing back from a twisting corridor which led us in the right direction. He had been joined by Shear, who was receiving a Manacle harangue with obsequious little cries of outrage and acclaim.

  "You know why he does it!" asserted Manacle, beating Shear upon the shoulder to emphasize his point. "That Quench! He does it because he never begot a son on his breeders, not one. Only monsters. Dozens of them. Why, the pits are full of his get, but not one boy to carry on the academic tradition. Why should he care whether our boys get their professorships? Not him! 'Get the boys out of the monster labs. Create a degree in machinery,' " he mimicked viciously. "Emeritus or not, he ought to be stripped of his membership on the Committee. He ought to be driven off the Faculty.

  "He has some followers," Shear said nervously. "Some who believe he may be right."

  "Right? The man's a fool. Wants us to turn out the only person who's capable of helping us. Wants us to send Huld away empty-handed. Scared to death Huld will learn something that will endanger us. Poof. I could give Huld the keys to the defenders this minute, and it wouldn't hurt us as much as making an enemy of him. Well, I have no intention of sending Huld away in a fury. Quench can blather all he likes, but I think we need the man, and I'll tell him how highly we regard him when we meet him…

  "You're meeting Huld?" Shear stared guiltily about, afraid he might be seen. His eyes slid across Mavin and me, but we did not exist in his vision. "Do you think that's wise?"

  "1 wouldn't do it otherwise," snarled Manacle. "I've had enough, Shear, now don't you start on me. Just trot along here to the labs where I'm meeting Huld and we'll have a talk. My son, Flogshoulder, is supervisor of the transformation labs this term. We'll have privacy, and you can watch them make the blues. That always amuses you.

  "Yes. But should Huld see that? I mean, it's private .. part of the ritual.

  "Oh, poof. I know it's part of the ritual, but what does Huld care about that? He knows, in any case. What's he going to do? Steal the bodies?"

  I stole a glance at Mavin to find her watching me, puzzlement meeting puzzlement. "What are blues?" I whispered. She crossed her eyes at me in answer.

  It was not far to the anteroom where Huld waited, a glossy, much used area beside a high transparent wall. We stared at the place beyond that wall, a lofty area of tall glittering machines, lights which spun and danced, wormcrawls of green light upon a hundred black screens. Green-clad figures moved in this exotic milieu with strange devices in their hands or clamped upon their heads, or both. Manacle greeted Huld, took him by the arm, and tapped upon the glass wall to attract the attention of one of those inside. That one bowed and came to slide a portion of the wall aside.

  "Dean Manacle," he said.

  "Now, now, no formality, my boy. You've met our good friend, Huld? Huld, my son, Tutor Flogshoulder. He is supervisor of the term here in the transformation labs. You wanted to see the cargo for yourself? Well, Flogshoulder will be glad to take us through and explain the process. If it's convenient, my dear boy."

  The dear boy, who suffered from an unfortunate superfluity of teeth, gaped, then covered this gaucherie with a self-conscious giggle. "Oh, it's quite convenient, Father. Most interesting for guests, too. Just come through here. Don't mind the techs, they haven't the wits of a bunwit and don't understand anything but machines. He led the way into the polished room, Mavin and I following. I believed they would stop us, see us, forbid us entry. They did not. Across the room a pair of Tallmen pushed brooms along the aisles, as invisible as we.

  At the first sight of Huld, I had gone deep into myself and now was letting Didir guide me by small promptings from within as the words of those in the room flowed through and away. The sight of the two bodies upon the chill dark slab at the center of the place almost broke my composure. Mavin's was destroyed. I saw her stumble and turn pale before catching herself, to continue the endless recitation of some nonsense rhyme. The bodies were Windlow and Himaggery, cold and gray as when I had seen Windlow at the Blot. I let Didir tune my eyes to their keenest and watched, to see the slow, slow rise of chests over the shallowest of breaths. They were alive, alive but laid out like meat on that dark slab.

  Huld approached the slab and hung over the bodies like some predatory bird, his nose stabbing at them beakwise, peering and peering until he was satisfied and returned to Manacle's side.

  "So, you have two of them," he said. "If you had the boy, I would have cheered you, Manacle. As it is, you have only delayed the time of ruin,
not forestalled it."

  "Oh, come, come, my dear fellow. The situation is not that grave.

  "Grave enough. If you are not to perish with all your colleagues, measures must be taken. Still, having these two is better than nothing. What do you do with them now?"

  "We're getting ready for the ceremony, dear fellow. We'll use these to make blues and bodies for the occasion, two bunwits with one arrow, so they say. That will remove the threat of these two, permanently, just as it has removed the threat of thousands in the past, and it will give us trade goods for the Gifters. Would you like to see the process?"

  I do not know why Mavin and I did not act then. Surely we did not understand what was to occur, or we did not realize it would happen at once. Perhaps we had concentrated so on being unseen and unnoticed that we had not allowed for the need for sudden intervention. In any ease, we did nothing. Flogshoulder gestured imperiously at one of the greenclad "techs." That man leaned forward to move along, silver lever. At that the dark slab rotated, dropped, and moved beneath a contorted mass of metal and glass with wires and tubes protruding from it which had been making a low humming sound. The hum ascended into a scream; lights flickered; there was a smell of burning and a cloud of acrid smoke. One of the techs coughed, shouted, pumped a piece of equipment to produce a puff of bad smelling mist. The fire went out; the scream dropped into a hum once more; the slab twisted and returned to its former position.

  Himaggery and Windlow were still there, still there, but I knew before Manacle reached forward to tap old Windlow's arm what sound I would hear-the sound of ice, faintly ringing, bell-like, metallic, dead. Beside each frozen skull rested a Gamespiece, tiny, blue. I looked upon them with my Shifter's eyes, eyes which can be those of a hawk to see the beetle upon the grass from a league's height. These "blues" were no crude carvings, no anonymous, featureless gamespieces. These were Himaggery and Windlow in small, each in his appropriate guise, and even the moth wing mask of the Seer could not hide the glitter of Windlow's eyes. If this thing did not weep, I was blind. I started to move forward, but Mavin caught my arm to hold me. If Huld had been alert and Reading at that moment, we would have been discovered. Huld, however, was listening with avid attention to Manacle. If Huld thought the information important, then I did also.

  "The contrivance," said Manacle in a pompous, didactic tone which reminded me a little of Gamesmaster Gervaise, was used by our forefathers when we came to this place. Evidently the length of the journey, or the time it took, did not allow persons to travel while awake and alive in the ordinary way. No, the fleshy part was preserved, as you see, for storage. They can be kept forever, these bodies, or so the techs say. However, when resurrected, these bodies would have no memory, no intelligence-all of that is wiped clean by the process, so we are told. So a record was made. A record containing all thought and memory, and this record was embodied in the form you see. Blues. That is what we call them. We make a few hundred each year to use in the Calling Home ceremony. Then we give them to the Gifters to use in trade.

  "I have seen them," said Huld. "Kept in cold chests. Why are they kept cold?"

  "Well-I am not certain. Perhaps one of the techs would know. The techs make the gameboards. after all, don't they Flogshoulder"

  "I will ask a tech. Father. It is not something which interests me. Hardly in our field, you know." He went away to return in a moment with an old, pleat-faced man with tired eyes. "Tech, why are the blues kept in cold chests? And are the gameboards made here? You have a word for it, I think. Micro-micro something?"

  "Microcircuitry. Supervisor. The gameboards are made with microcircuitry. To make the Gamespieces move. They are kept cold because they are supposed to last longer that way. The manuals say they break down very rapidly if they get warm."

  "There are manuals?" Huld, greedy-voiced. Too greedy-voiced, for Manacle gave him a sharp look before taking him by the arm to guide him away. "So. Interesting, isn't it, Huld? And now you need worry about those two no more. Their bodies will be stored in the caves, used in the ceremony, then put into the caves once more and forever. Their blues will go into some Trader's wagon to be given to some Gamesmaster as a giftie. I sometimes wonder if they feel anything, those bodies. They seem very dead."

  Huld, pretending a disinterest I knew he did not feel, "How are the bodies and the blues joined together again?"

  "Oh, my dear fellow. Who knows? I wouldn't know. We haven't done that in a thousand years. There may be a book about it somewhere, but I doubt the machinery to do it even works. Why would one care?" They went out the way they had come, still chatting, leaving Mavin and me behind, hidden among the sighing machines. When they had put a little distance between them and us, I hissed at her.

  "One of us must go after them. One must stay here to see where they put Windlow and Himaggery. Which?"

  She thrust me away. "You must go after Huld. I have no Didir to protect my mind, and I cannot keep up this rhyming and jiggy song forever. You go. I will stay. I will meet you in that place they held the meeting, soon as may be. Go!" And I went.

  I went in a fever of impatience and anger, anger at myself, at

  Huld, at the silly, fatuous Manacle and his idiot son. If we were to save Himaggery and Windlow now, we would have to restore them to wholeness, put their two halves together, body and spirit, and who knew how to do that? The books? What books and where? I was reaching the end of my ability to slink and sly about, the limit of my self-control. It was Didir and Dora who saved me, who soothed me into sleep like a fretful child and held me there, barely ticking, while they followed Huld, Manacle, Shear and toothy Flogshoulder deeper into the labyrinth while Huld sought information.

  "These books, Manacle. The ones which tell about rejoining the bodies. Have you seen them? Read them? What did they say about .. the blues?"

  "I don't recall seeing anything about them in books. But then, I recall what my father said about them. A pattern, he said. The pattern of a personality. Yes. That was well put. The pattern of a personality. In ancient times, of course, the pattern was reunited with the body when both had reached their destination. It is this process we reenact during the ceremony. We don't really do it, of course. Some of the younger men act the part of bodies, and we use the blues symbolically. It's only a ritual, but very impressive for all that. But then I've told you all this before."

  "Why don't you actually do it?" Huld asked. Didir could detect an avidity in this question though the tone of voice was deliberately casual. "That would be even more impressive."

  "Why, ah … I'm not sure," began Manacle, only to be interrupted by his unfortunate son.

  "Because no one knows how, the techs say. The manuals aren't there, not where they belong. Of course, all techs are fools, as we all know, but that's what they say."

  "Do they think the books were lost?" Huld, pursuing. "Or destroyed, perhaps? Or taken away?"

  Flogshoulder put on a thoughtful face, marred by the obvious vacancy within his skull. "I should know. Truly I should. I've heard them talking about it often enough. They say Quench asked for the same books, and they've been looking for them.

  "Quench." Manacle turned red, blustering. "Quench!"

  "Yes, Father. Quench thinks it was Nitch took the books, that's it. You remember Nitch? The books have been gone since he went."

  "Went?" asked Huld softly, so softly. "Went?"

  "Away. He went away. At least, I think he went away. Didn't he go away, Father?"

  Manacle nodded angrily, muttering and counting under his breath as he walked along. "Quench, thirteen fourteen. Damn Quench. Fifteen. Mind his own business, keep to his place. Sixteen. He and Nitch two of a kind, ungrateful wretches. Seventeen. Ah, this is it. The seventeenth door from the corner, on the right. You wanted to see the defenders, Huld. Well, here we are. I'll just find the key here, somewhere, among all these little ones I think. Gracious, haven't looked in here almost since my investiture. Yes. This one."

  The door swung wide. They went through it,
leaving it open behind them. I faded into the wall surface, unseen, unheeded. The room was empty save for one of those control surfaces which abounded in the place, this one with a large red lever and five covered keyholes, all bearing legends in archaic letters of a kind I had seen only once before-in that old book which Windlow had so coveted, the one I had found with the Gamesmen of Barish.

  "They are self-repairing," said Manacle in a self-important tone. "Requiring no maintenance, no techs, for which we may rejoice. Should we need to activate them, I have only to turn these keys in those holes, five of them. At one time each key was kept by a separate member of the faculty, but upon my investiture, I brought them all together in the interest of efficiency. There are times when ritual must give way to convenience, don't you agree? So, I have only to insert them thus, and thus, and thus, here, and here, turning each one, so. Now, if any of us were to move the lever, the defenders would be activated at once. We will not do that, of course. There is no need. However, I will leave the keys here and turned, just in case. No point in wasting time later, if your warnings, dear Huld, were to prove accurate and immediate."

  "What-ah, what form do the defenders take?" This in Huld's sweetest voice. Peter, who had been Huld's captive in the dungeons of Bannerwell, did not trust that voice.

  "I do not recall ever having heard what form the defenders take. What is that phrase in the ritual, Flogshoulder? You have learned it more recently than I-gracious, I have not thought of that in fifty years. Something about 'Defense of the home, to hold inviolate-' "

  "No, Father. It goes, 'Should they gain power to the extent that the base is threatened, in order that Home be held inviolate the defenders shall be activated that the signtists and searchers be held in glorious memory."

  "That's not how I learned it," objected Shear. "I learned it when I was only a boy, before I could read. It went, 'Should their power and extent again threaten the base, the defenders will assure that Home is inviolate through the selfless action of signtists and searchers held forever in glorious memory."