“I see,” Sharp said.
“And any other human who has luck stands to be wiped out, if the war party has its way. Now listen. Some humans know this or suspect this. There’s an organization, based on the prolific McClains of California; perhaps you’ve heard of them, Patricia and Allen McClain. They have three children. Therefore their lives are acutely in danger. Pete Garden has demonstrated the ability to be fertile and that puts him and his pregnant wife also in automatic jeopardy, and I so warned him. And I warned him that he was facing a situation about which he could do little. I firmly believe that. And—” Doctor Philipson’s voice was steady. “I think the organization formed around the McClains is futile if not dangerous. It has probably already been penetrated by the Titanian authority, here, which is quite effective at that sort of business. Their telepathic faculty works to their advantage; it’s almost impossible to keep anything—such as the existence of a secret, militant, patriotic organization—secret from them for long.”
Schilling said, “Are you in touch with the moderates? Through your vug patients, here?”
Hesitating, Doctor Philipson said, “To some extent. In the most general way I’ve discussed the situation with them; it’s come up during therapy.”
Schilling said to Laird Sharp, “I think we’ve found out what we came for. We know where Pete is, who kidnapped him and killed Hawthorne. The McClain organization, whatever it’s called. Wherever it is.”
With an expression of keen wariness, Laird Sharp said, “Doctor, your explanation is extremely interesting. There’s another interesting matter, however, that has not as yet been raised.”
“Oh?” Doctor Philipson said.
Sharp said, “Pete Garden thought you were a vug.”
“I realize that,” Doctor Philipson said. “To some extent I can explain that. On an unconscious intuitive level, Garden perceived the dangerous situation. His perceptions, however, were disordered, a mixture of involuntary telepathy and projection, his own anxiety plus—”
“Are you a vug?” Laird Sharp asked.
“Of course not,” Doctor Philipson said brusquely.
To the Rushmore Effect of the car in which they were seated, Laird Sharp said, “Is Doctor Philipson a vug?”
“Doctor Philipson is a vug,” the auto-auto mech replied. “That is correct.”
And it was Doctor Philipson’s own car.
“Doctor,” Joe Schilling said, “do you have any reaction to that?” He held his gun, an ancient but efficient .32 revolver, pointed at Doctor Philipson. “I’d like your comment, please.”
“Obviously it’s a false statement by the circuit,” Doctor Philipson said. “But I admit there is more I haven’t told you. The organization of Psi-persons around the McClains, I’m a part of that.”
“You’re a Psi?” Schilling said.
“Correct,” Doctor Philipson said, nodding. “And the girl with Pete Garden last night is also a member, Mary Anne McClain. She and I conferred briefly as to policy regarding Garden. It was she who arranged for me to see Garden; at such a late hour at night I normally—”
“What is your Psionic talent?” Sharp said, breaking in. Now he also held a gun pointed at the doctor; it was a small .22 pistol.
Doctor Philipson glanced at him and then at Joseph Schilling. He said, “An unusual one. It will surprise you when I tell you. Basically it’s related to Mary Anne’s, a form of psycho-kinesis. But it is rather specialized, compared with hers. I form one end of a two-way underground system between Terra and Titan. Titanians come here, and on occasion, certain Terrans are transmitted to Titan. This procedure is an improvement on the standard spacecraft method because there is no time lapse.” He smiled at Joe Schilling and Laird Sharp. “May I show you?” He leaned forward.
“My god,” Sharp said. “Kill him.”
“Do you see?” Doctor Philipson’s voice came to them but they could not make him out; an extinguishing curtain had blotted the fixed images of the objects around them, had blotted them into waste. Junk, like a billion golf balls, cascaded brightly, replacing the familiar reality of substantial forms. It was, Joe Schilling thought, like a fundamental breakdown of the act of perception itself. In spite of himself, his determination, he felt fear.
“I’ll shoot him,” Laird Sharp’s voice came, and then the racket of a gun fired several times in quick succession. “Did I get him? Joe, did I—” Sharp’s voice faded. Now there was only silence.
Joe Schilling said, “I’m scared, Sharp. What is this?” He did not understand and he reached out, groping in the stream of atom-like sub-particles that surged everywhere. Is this the understructure of the universe itself? he wondered. The world outside of space and time, beyond the modes of cognition?
He saw now a great plain, on which vugs, unmoving, rested at fixed spaces. Or was it that they moved incredibly slowly? There was an anguish to their situation; the vugs strained, but the category of time did not move and the vugs remained where they were. Is it forever? Joe Schilling wondered. There were many of the vugs; he could not see the termination of the horizontal surface, could not even imagine it.
This is Titan, a voice said inside his head.
Weightless, Joe Schilling drifted down, wanting desperately to stabilize himself but not knowing how. Dammit, he thought, this is all wrong; I shouldn’t be here, doing this. “Help,” he said aloud. “Get me out of this. Are you there some place, Laird Sharp? What’s happening to us?”
No one answered.
More rapidly now he fell. Nothing stopped him in the usual sense and yet all at once he was there; he experienced it.
Around him formed the hollowness of a chamber, a vast enclosure of some nebulous sort, and across from him, facing him across a table, were vugs. He counted twenty of them and then gave up; the vugs were everywhere in front of him, silent and motionless but somehow doing something. They were ceaselessly busy and at first he could not imagine what they were doing. And then, all at once, he understood.
Play, the vugs thought-propagated.
The board was so enormous that it petrified him. Its sides, its two ends, faded, disappeared into the understructure of the reality in which he sat. And yet, directly before him, he made out cards, clear-cut and separable. The vugs waited; he was supposed to draw a card.
It was his turn.
Thank god, Joe Schilling said to himself, that I’m able to play, that I know how. It would not matter to them if I didn’t; this Game has been going on too long for that to matter. How long? No knowing. Perhaps the vugs themselves did not know, Or remember.
The card he drew read twelve.
And now, he thought, the sequence which is the heart of The Game. The moment in which I bluff or do not bluff, in which I advance my piece either twelve or null-twelve. But they can read my thoughts, he realized. How can I play The Game with them, then? It’s not fair! And yet he had to play anyhow.
That’s the situation we’re in, he said to himself. And we can’t extricate ourselves, any of us. And even great Game-players, such as Jerome Luckman, can die at it. Die trying to succeed.
We have been waiting a long time for you, a vug thought-propagated to him. Please don’t keep us waiting any longer.
He did not know what to do. And what was the stake? What deed had he put up? He looked around but he saw nothing, no pot or hopper.
A bluffing game in which telepaths participate for stakes which do not exist, Joe Schilling realized. What a travesty. How can I get out of this? Is there a way out? He did not even know that much.
This, the Platonic ultimate template of The Game, a reproduction of which had been impressed on Terra for Terrans to play; he understood. And yet it did not help him to understand because he still could not get out of it. He picked up his piece and began to advance it, square by square. Twelve squares ahead. He read the inscription. Gold rush on your land! You win $50,000,000 in royalties from two producing mines!
No need to bluff, Joe Schilling said to himself. What a square; t
he best he had ever heard of. No such square existed on the boards of Earth.
He placed his piece on that square and sat back.
Would anyone challenge him? Accuse him of bluffing?
He waited. There was no motion, no indication of life from the near-infinite row of vugs. Well? he thought. I’m ready. Go ahead.
It is a bluff a voice declared.
He could not make out which vug had challenged him; they seemed to have expressed themselves in unison. Had their telepathic ability become faulty at this critical moment? he wondered. Or had the talent been deliberately suspended for purposes of playing The Game? “You’re wrong,” he said, and turned over his card. “Here it is.” He glanced down.
It was no longer a twelve.
It was an eleven.
You are a bad bluffer, Mr. Schilling, the corporate group of vugs thought. Is this how you generally play?
“I’m under tension,” Joe Schilling said. “I misread the card.” He was furious and badly frightened. “There’s some kind of cheating going on,” he said. “Anyhow, what’s the stakes in this?”
The vugs answered, In this Game, Detroit.
“I don’t see the deed,” Joe Schilling said, looking up and down the table.
Look again, the vugs said.
In the center of the table he saw what appeared to be a glass ball, the size of a paperweight. Something complex and shiny and alive flickered within the globe and he bent to scrutinize it. A city, in miniature. Buildings and streets, houses, factories …
It was Detroit.
We want that next, the vugs told him.
Reaching out, Joe Schilling moved his piece back one square. “I really landed on that,” he said.
The Game exploded.
“I cheated,” Joe Schilling said. “Now it’s impossible to play. Do you grant that? I’ve wrecked The Game.”
Something hit him over the head and he fell, dropped instantly, into the engulfing grayness of unconsciousness.
14
The next he knew Joseph Schilling stood on a desert, feeling the reassuring tug of Terra’s gravity once more. The sun, blinding him, spilled down in gold-hot familiar torrents and he squinted, trying to see, holding up his hand to ward off its rays.”
Don’t stop,” a voice said.
He opened his eyes and saw, walking beside him across the uneven sand, Doctor Philipson; the elderly, sprightly little doctor was smiling.
“Keep moving,” Doctor Philipson said in a pleasant, conventional tone of voice, “or we’ll die out here. And you wouldn’t like that.”
“Explain it to me,” Joe Schilling said. But he kept on walking. Doctor Philipson remained beside him, walking with easy, long strides.
“You certainly broke up The Game,” Doctor Philipson chuckled. “It never occurred to them that you’d cheat.”
“They cheated first. They changed the value of the card!”
“To them, that’s legitimate, a basic move in The Game. It’s a favorite play by the Titanian Game-players to exert their extra-sensory faculties on the card; it’s supposed to be a contest between the sides; the one who’s drawn the card struggles to keep its value constant, you see? By yielding to the altered value you lost, but by moving your piece in conformity to it you thwarted them.”
“What happened to the stake?”
“Detroit?” Doctor Philipson laughed. “It remains a stake, unclaimed. You see, the Titanian Game-players believe in following the rules. You may not believe that but it’s true. Their rules, yes; but rules nonetheless. Now I don’t know what they’ll do; they’ve been waiting to play against you in particular for a long time, but I’m sure they won’t try again after what just happened. It must have been psychically unnerving for them; it’ll be a great while before they recover.”
“What faction do they represent? The extremists?”
“Oh no; the Titanian Game-players are exceptionally moderate in their political thinking.”
“What about you?” Schilling said.
Doctor Philipson said, “I admit to being an extremist. That’s why I’m here on Terra.” In the blinding mid-day sunlight his heat-needle sparkled as it rose and fell with his long strides. “We’re almost there, Mr. Schilling. One more hill and you’ll see it. It’s built low to the ground, attracts little attention.”
“Are all the vugs here on Earth extremists?”
“No,” Doctor Philipson said.
“What about E.B. Black, the detective?”
Doctor Philipson said nothing.
“Not of your party,” Schilling decided.
There was no answer; Philipson was not going to say.
“I should have trusted it when I had the chance,” Schilling said.
“Perhaps so,” Doctor Philipson said, nodding.
Ahead, Schilling saw a Spanish-style building with tile roof and pale adobe walls, contained by an ornamental railing of black iron. The Dig Inn Motel, the neon sign—turned off and inert—read.
“Is Laird Sharp here?” Schilling asked.
“Sharp is on Titan,” Doctor Philipson said. “Perhaps I will bring him back, but certainly not at this time.” Doctor Philipson, briefly, scowled. “An agile-brained creature, that Sharp. I must admit I don’t care for him.” With a white linen handkerchief he mopped his red and perspiring forehead, slowing down a little now, as they came up onto the flagstone path of the motel. “And as for your cheating, I didn’t much care for that either.” He seemed tense and irritable, now. Schilling wondered why.
The door of the motel office was open, and Doctor Philipson went toward it, peering into the darkness within. “Rothman?” he said, in a hesitant, questioning voice.
A figure appeared, a woman. It was Patricia McClain.
“Sorry I’m late,” Doctor Philipson began. “But this man here and a companion showed up at the—”
Patricia McClain said, “She’s out of control. Allen couldn’t help. Get away.” She ran past Doctor Philipson and Joe Schilling, across the parking lot toward a car parked there. Then all at once she was gone. Doctor Philipson grunted, cursed, stepped back from the motel door as swiftly as if he had been seared.
High in the mid-day sky Joe Schilling saw a dot, rising and then disappearing toward invisibility. On and on it rushed, away from Earth, away from the ground until finally he could no longer see it. His head ached from the glare and the effort of seeing, and he turned to Doctor Philipson. “My god, was that—” he started to say.
“Look,” Doctor Philipson said. He pointed, with his heat-needle, at the motel office, and Joe Schilling looked inside; he could not see at first and then by degrees his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom.
On the floor lay twisted bodies of men and women, tangled together like multi-armed monsters, as if they had been shaken and then dropped there, discarded, the remains jammed together, forced into an impossible fusion. Mary Anne McClain sat on the floor in the corner, curled up, her face buried in her hands. Pete Garden and a well-dressed middle-aged man whom Schilling did not know stood together, silently, their faces blank.
“Rothman,” Doctor Philipson choked, staring at one of the shattered bodies. He turned toward Pete Garden. “When?” he said.
“She just now did it,” Pete Garden murmured.
“You’re lucky,” the well-dressed middle-aged man said to Doctor Philipson. “If you had been here she would have killed you, too. You’re fortunate; you missed your appointment.”
Doctor Philipson, shaking, lifted his heat-needle and pointed it unsteadily at Mary Anne McClain.
“Don’t,” Pete Garden said. “They tried that. At the end.”
“Mutreaux,” Doctor Philipson said, “why didn’t she—”
“He’s a Terran,” Pete Garden said. “The only one of you who was. So she didn’t touch him.”
“The best thing,” the well-dressed man, Mutreaux, said, “is for none of us to do anything. Move as little as possible; that’s the safest.” He kept his eyes fixed on
the huddled shape of Mary Anne McClain. “She didn’t even miss her father,” Mutreaux said. “But Patricia got away; I don’t know what happened to her.”
“The girl got her, too,” Doctor Philipson said. “We watched; we didn’t understand, then.” He tossed the heat-needle away; it rolled across the floor and came to rest against the far wall. His face was gray. “Does she understand what she’s done?”
Pete Garden said, “She knows. She understands the dangerousness of her talent and she doesn’t want to use it again.” To Joe Schilling he said, “They couldn’t seem to manage her; they had partial control but it kept slipping away. I watched the struggle. It’s been going on here in this room for the last few hours. Even when their last member came.” He pointed to a squashed, crumpled body, a man with glasses and light hair. “Don, they called him. They thought he’d turn the tide, but Mutreaux threw his talent in with hers. It all happened in a second; one minute they were sitting on their chairs, the next she just simply began flinging them around like rag dolls.” He added, “It wasn’t pleasant. But,” he shrugged, “anyhow, that’s what happened.”
Doctor Philipson said, “A dreadful loss.” He glanced at Mary Anne with hatred. “Poltergeist,” he said. “Unmanageable. We knew but because of Patricia and Allen we accepted her as she was. Well, we’ll have to begin all over again, from the start. Of course I have nothing personally to fear from her; I can return to my primary nexus, Titan, whenever I wish. Presumably, her talent doesn’t extend that far, and if it does there’s not much we can do. I’ll take the chance, I have to.”
“I think she can freeze you here, if she wants to,” Mutreaux said. “Mary Anne,” he said sharply. In the corner the girl raised her head; her cheeks, Joe Schilling saw, were tear-stained. “Do you have any objection if this last one returns to Titan?”
“I don’t know,” she said listlessly.
Joe Schilling said, “They’ve got Sharp there.”
“I see,” Mutreaux said. “Well, that makes a difference.” To Mary Anne he said, “Don’t let Philipson go.”