The Game-Players of Titan

  Pete said, “But I’m right. That’s how we could play against the Titanian telepaths and win.”

  “Yes,” Patricia said, and nodded.

  “He’s worked it out now, has he?” Mutreaux asked her.

  “He has,” she said. “I feel sorry for you, Pete, because you’ve got it and it’s too late in coming. Your people would have a lot of fun, wouldn’t they? Preparing the grains of medication within the spansule, using all kinds of complex tablets and formulae to work out the rate of release. It could be random, too, if you want it that way, or at a fixed but so elaborate rate that—”

  To Mutreaux, Pete said, “How can you sit there and know you’re betraying us? You’re not a Titanian national; you’re a Terran.”

  Calmly, Mutreaux said, “Psychic dynamisms are real, Pete, as real as any other kind of force. I foresaw my meeting with Nats Katz; I foresaw what was going to happen, but I couldn’t prevent it. Remember, I didn’t seek him out, he found me.”

  “Why didn’t you warn us?” Pete said. “When you were still on our side of the board.”

  “You would have killed me,” Mutreaux said. “I previewed that particular alternative future. In several, I did tell you. And—” He shrugged. “I don’t blame you; what other course would you have? My going over to Titan determines the outcome of The Game. Our acquiring you proves that.”

  “He wishes,” Patricia said, “that you had left the Emphytal in his medicine cabinet; he wishes he had taken them. Poor Pete, always a potential suicide, aren’t you? Always, as far as you’re concerned, that’s the ultimate way out. The one solution to everything.”

  Mutreaux said restlessly, “Doctor Philipson should have been here by now. Are you certain the arrangements were understood? Could the moderates have sequestered his services? Legally, they hold the—”

  “Doctor Philipson would never yield to the cowards in our midst,” Patricia said. “You’re familiar with his attitude.” Her voice was sharp, laden with dread and concern.

  “But he’s not here,” Mutreaux said. “Something’s wrong.”

  They looked at each other, silently.

  “What do you preview?” Patricia demanded.

  “Nothing,” Mutreaux said. His face, now, was pale.

  “Why not?”

  “If I could preview, I could preview, period,” Mutreaux said bitingly. “Isn’t that obvious? I don’t know and I wish I did.” He got to his feet and went over to the window to look out. For a moment he had forgotten Pete; he held the heat-needle slackly, squinting to see in the evening darkness that lay outside. His back was to Pete, and Pete jumped toward him.

  “Dave!” Patricia barked, dropping her armload of books.

  Mutreaux turned, and a bolt from the heat-needle zoomed past Pete; he felt the peripheral effects from it, the dehydrating envelope that surrounded the laser beam itself, the narrow, effective beam that was so useful both in close quarters and at a distance.

  Raising his arms, Pete struck the man with both elbows, in the unprotected throat.

  The heat-needle rolled away from both of them across the floor. Patricia McClain, sobbing, scrambled after it. “Why? Why couldn’t you predict this?” She clutched at the small cylinder, frantically.

  His face sickly and dark, Mutreaux shut his eyes and dwindled into physical collapse, pawing at himself, inhaling raucously, no longer concerned with anything else beyond the massive, difficult effort to live.

  “I’m killing you, Pete,” Patricia McClain gasped, backing away from him, holding the heat-needle waveringly pointed at him. Sweat, he saw, stood out on her upper lip; her mouth quivered violently and tears filled her eyes. “I can read your mind,” she said huskily, “and I know, Pete, I know what you’ll do if I don’t. You’ve got to have Dave Mutreaux back on your side of the board to win and you can’t have him back; he’s ours.”

  Throwing himself away from her he tumbled out of the path of the laser, snatching at anything. His fingers closed over a book and he hurled it; the book fluttered open and dropped at Patricia McClain’s feet, harmlessly.

  Panting, Patricia backed away, still. “Dave will recover,” she whispered. “If you had killed him perhaps it wouldn’t matter so much, because then you couldn’t get him for your side and we wouldn’t—”

  She broke off. Swiftly turning her head she listened, not breathing.

  “The door,” she said.

  The knob turned.

  Patricia raised the heat-needle. Slowly, her arm bent and twisted, inch by inch, until the muzzle of the heat-needle was pointing at her face. She stared down at it, unable to take her eyes from it. She said, “Please don’t, okay? I gave birth to you. Please—”

  Her fingers, against her will, moved the stud. The laser beam flicked on.

  Pete looked away.

  When he looked back at last the door of the apartment stood open. Mary Anne, framed in the outline of darkness, walked in, slowly, hands deep in the pockets of her long coat. Her face was expressionless. She said to Pete, “Dave Mutreaux is alive, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.” He did not look at the heap which had been Patricia McClain; he averted his eyes from it and said, “We need him so leave him alone, Mary.” His heart labored slowly, horribly.

  “I realize that,” Mary Anne said.

  “How did you know about—this?”

  Mary Anne said, after an interval, “When I got to the condominium apartment in Carmel, with Joe Schilling I saw Nats and of course I understood. I knew that Nats was the organization’s overall superior. He outranked even Rothman.”

  “What did you do there?” Pete said.

  Joe Schilling, his face puffy with tension, entered the apartment and went up to Mary Anne; he put his hand on her shoulder but she jerked away, going alone over to the corner to stand and watch. “When she came in,” Schilling said, “Katz was fixing himself a drink. She—” He hesitated.

  Mary Anne said tonelessly, “I moved the glass which he held. I made it go five inches, that’s all. He was—holding it at chest level.”

  “The glass is inside him,” Schilling said. “It very simply cut his heart, or part of his heart, out of his circulatory system. There was a good deal of blood, because the glass didn’t go in all the way.” He was silent then; neither he nor Mary Anne spoke.

  On the floor, Dave Mutreaux, gargling, struggled, his face blue, trying to get air into his lungs. He had stopped stroking his throat now, and his eyes were open. But he did not seem able to see.

  “What about him?” Schilling said.

  Pete said, “With Patricia dead and Nats Katz dead, and Philipson—” He understood, now, why Doctor Philipson had failed to appear. “He knew you would be here,” he said to Mary Anne. “So he was afraid to leave Titan. Philipson saved himself, at their expense.”

  “I guess so,” Mary Anne murmured.

  Joe Schilling said, “I can hardly blame him.”

  Bending down, Pete said to Mutreaux, “Will you be all right?”

  Mutely, Dave Mutreaux nodded.

  Pete said to him, “You must show up at the Game-board. On our side. You know why; you know what I intend to do.”

  Staring at him, Mutreaux nodded.

  “I can manage him,” Mary Anne said, walking over to watch. “He’s too much afraid of me to do anything more for them. Aren’t you?” she said to Mutreaux in the same inert, neutral tone. And prodded him with her toe.

  Mutreaux, dully, managed to nod.

  “Be glad you’re alive,” Schilling said to him.

  “He is,” Mary Anne said. To Pete she said, “Will you do something about my mother, please?”

  “Sure,” Pete said. He glanced at Joe Schilling. “Why don’t you go downstairs and wait in the car?” he said to Mary Anne. “We’ll call E.B. Black; we don’t need you for a while.”

  “Thank you,” Mary Anne said. Turning, she walked slowly out of the apartment; Pete and Joe Schilling watched her until she was gone.

  “Because of her,” Joe
Schilling said, “we’re going to win, there at the board.”

  Pete nodded. Because of her and because Mutreaux was still alive. Alive—and no longer in a position to act for the Titanian authority.

  “We’re lucky,” Joe Schilling said. “Someone had left the door of the con-apt open; she saw Katz before he could see her. She was standing outside and he couldn’t make her out until too late. I think he had counted on Mutreaux’ pre-cog faculty, forgetting or not understanding that she’s a variable as far as that faculty is concerned. He was as unprotected by Mutreaux’ talent as if Mutreaux had never existed.”

  And so are we, Pete thought to himself. That unprotected.

  But he could not bother to worry about that now. The Game against the Titanians lay directly ahead; he did not need to be a pre-cog to see that. Everything else would have to wait.

  Joe Schilling said, “I have confidence in her. I’m not concerned about what she might do, Pete.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Pete said. He bent down beside the body of Patricia McClain. This was Mary’s mother, he realized. And Mary Anne did this to her. And yet we have to depend on Mary Anne; Joe is right. We have no choice.

  16

  To Mutreaux, Pete Garden said, “This is what you have to face and accept. As we play, Mary Anne McClain will be at the board beside you at all times. If we lose, Mary will kill you.”

  Mutreaux said woodenly, “I know. It was obvious as soon as Pat died that my life now depends on our winning.” He sat massaging his throat and drinking hot tea. “And more indirectly, so do your lives, too.”

  “That’s so,” Joe Schilling said.

  “It should begin any time,” Mary Anne said, “if I understand them, anyhow. They should begin to arrive on Terra within the next half hour.” She had seated herself at the far end of the kitchen of the McClain apartment; in the living room the amorphous shape of E.B. Black could be made out through the open door, consulting with human members of the West Coast police agency. At least six people were active in the living room now. And more were arriving.

  “We’ve got to start for Carmel,” Pete said. By vidphone he had arranged with his psychiatrist, Doctor Macy at Salt Lake City, for the phenothiazine spansules to be prepared; the spansules would be flown to Carmel from one of the pharmaceutical houses in San Francisco direct to the condominium apartment, to be received by Bill Calumine acting for the group, as he always did.

  “How long does it take for the phenothiazine to begin acting?” Joe Schilling asked Pete.

  “Once he’s taken it into his system it should take effect immediately,” Pete said. “Assuming Mutreaux hasn’t been taking any up to now.” And, since it acted to blunt his Psi-talent, that was highly unlikely.

  The four of them, checked out by E.B. Black, left San Rafael for Carmel in Joe Schilling’s ill-tempered old car, Pete’s following directly behind them, empty. On the trip almost nothing was said. Mary Anne stared blankly out the window. Dave Mutreaux sat slumped inertly, occasionally touching his injured throat. Joe Schilling and Pete sat together in the front seat.

  This may be the final time we make this trip, Pete realized.

  They reached Carmel reasonably quickly. Pete parked the car, shut off the motor and the creaky Rushmore circuit, and the four of them got out.

  Standing in the dark, waiting for them, he saw a group of people.

  Something about them chilled him. There were four of them, three men and a woman. Getting a flashlight from the glove compartment of his own car, which had come to a halt at the curb behind Max, he shone the light on the soundless, waiting group.

  After a long pause Joe Schilling muttered, “I see.”

  “That’s right,” Dave Mutreaux said. “That’s exactly how it will be played. I hope for all our sakes you can go on.”

  “Hell,” Pete said shortly, “we can.”

  The four noiseless figures waiting for them were Titanian simulacra.

  Of themselves. A vug Peter Garden, a vug Joe Schilling, a vug Dave Mutreaux, and, slightly behind the others, a vug Mary Anne McClain. The last was not as effective, not as substantial, as the others. Mary Anne was a problem for the Titanians. Even in this regard.

  To the four simulacra, Pete said, “And if we lose?”

  His counterpart, the vug Peter Garden, said in precisely the same tone, “If and when you lose, Mr. Garden, your presence is no longer required in The Game and I replace you. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Cannibalism,” Joe Schilling said gratingly.

  “No,” the vug Joe Schilling contradicted. “Cannibalism occurs when a member of a species feeds on other members of that species. We are not of the same species as you.” The vug Joe Schilling smiled, and it was the smile familiar from years back to Pete Garden; it was a superb imitation.

  The group upstairs in the apartment, Pete thought, the others of Pretty Blue Fox, have simulacra appeared for them, too?

  “Correct,” the vug Peter Garden answered. “So shall we proceed on up? The Game should begin at once; there is no reason for further delay.” It started toward the stairs, knowing the way.

  That was the terrible part, the part which sickened Pete Garden: the alacrity of the vug as it ascended the stairs. Its certitude, as if it had made this climb a thousand times before.

  It was already at home, here on Terra, in the midst of their customary lives. Shuddering, he watched the other three simulacra follow equally rapidly. And then he and his companions started into reluctant motion.

  Above them the door opened; the vug Peter Garden entered the con-apt of the Game-playing group Pretty Blue Fox.

  “Hello!” it greeted those within the room.

  Stuart Marks—or was it the simulacrum of Stuart Marks?—regarded it with horror and then stammered, “I guess everybody’s here, now.” He—or it—stepped out onto the porch and peered down. “Hi.”

  “Greetings,” Pete Garden said, laconically.

  They faced one another across the table, the Titanian simulacra on one side, Pretty Blue Fox plus Dave Mutreaux and Mary Anne McClain on the other.

  “Cigar?” Joe Schilling said to Pete.

  “No thanks,” Pete murmured.

  Across from them the vug simulacrum of Joe Schilling turned to Pete Garden beside it and said, “Cigar?”

  “No thanks,” the vug Pete Garden answered.

  Pete Garden said to Bill Calumine, “Did the shipment arrive from the San Francisco pharmaceutical house? We’ve got to have it before we can begin. I hope no one intends to dispute that.”

  The vug Pete Garden said, “A noteworthy idea you have fastened onto, in this erratic crippling of your pre-cog’s sensory apparatus. You are absolutely correct; it will go a great distance toward evening our relative strengths.” It grinned at the group Pretty Blue Fox, up and down the Game table. “We have no objection to waiting until your medication arrives; anything else would be unfair.”

  Answering it, Pete Garden said, “I believe you’ve got to wait; we obviously won’t begin to play until then. So don’t make it appear that you’re doing us a big favor.” His voice shook, slightly.

  Leaning over, Bill Calumine said, “Sorry. It’s already there, in the kitchen.”

  Rising from his chair, Pete Garden went with Dave Mutreaux into the kitchen of the condominium apartment. In the center of the kitchen table, with trays of half-melted ice, lemons, bottles of mixer, glasses and bitters, he saw a package wrapped in brown paper, sealed with tape.

  “Just think,” Mutreaux said meditatively, as Pete unwrapped the package, “if this doesn’t work, what happened to Patricia and the others in the organization, there in Nevada, will happen to me.” He seemed relatively calm, however. “I don’t sense the ominous disregard of all order and legality in these moderates,” he said, “that I do in the Wa Pei Nan, with Doctor Philipson and those like him. Or rather, like it.” He scrutinized Pete as Pete took a phenothiazine spansule from the bottle. “If you know the time-phasing of the granules
within,” he said, “the vugs will be able to—”

  “I don’t,” Pete said shortly, as he filled a glass with water at the tap. “The ethical house making up these spansules was told that the range could vary between instantaneous full action to any sequence of partial action to no action whatsoever. In addition, it was told to make up several spansules, one varying from another.” He added, “And I’ve picked a spansule at random. Physically it’s identical in appearance to the others.” He held out the spansule and the glass of water to Mutreaux.

  Somberly, Mutreaux swallowed the spansule.

  “I will tell you one thing,” Mutreaux said, “for your own information. Several years ago, as an experiment, I tried a phenothiazine derivative. It had a colossal effect on my precognitive ability.” He smiled fleetingly at Pete. “As I told you before we went over to Pat McClain’s, this idea of yours is an adequate solution to our problems, as nearly as I can foresee. Congratulations.”

  “Do you say that,” Pete asked, “as someone genuinely with us, or merely as someone forced to play on this side of the table?”

  “I don’t know,” Mutreaux said. “I’m in transition, Pete. Time will tell.” Turning, he walked back into the living room without another word. Back to the great Game-board and the two opposing parties.

  The vug Bill Calumine rose to its feet and announced, “I suggest our side roll first and then your side.” It took the spinner and spun with expert vigor.

  The pointer stopped at nine.

  “All right,” Bill Calumine said, also rising and facing his simulacrum; he, too, rolled. For him the pointer slowed as it came close to twelve, then started to pass on toward one.

  To Mary Anne, Pete said, “Are you resisting any efforts on their part at psycho-kinesis?”

  “Yes,” she said, concentrating on the barely-moving pointer. The pointer stopped on one.

  “It’s fair,” Mary Anne said, in a scarcely audible voice.

  “You Titanians initiate play, then,” Pete conceded. He managed to suppress his discouragement; he kept it out of his voice.

  “Good,” his simulacrum said. It regarded him, grinning mockingly. “Then we will transport the field of interaction from Terra to Titan.” It added, “We trust that you Terrans will not object.”