Players at the Game of People (15 page)

"Welcome," he said, and his voice was resonant and thrilling. He made
no offer to shake hands, but stood stock-still with his total attention
fixed on Godwin while the latter undressed. There were hooks, hangers,
and a rail on the back of the door.
"You ate something inadvisable," the healer said at length. "Not only was
the food of poor quality and rather stale, it was heavily contaminated
with chemical adulterants. Lie down. It's as well you came to me now
rather than later -- I feel the urge to retire from the world and meditate.
But I think there may be time to put you right. Close your eyes."
He laid both hands on Godwin's abdomen and began to murmur under his breath.
The queasiness, which had become acute by now, dissipated; a painful bubble
of wind passed a resistant sphincter; what little goodness and nourishment
there was in Godwin's meal entered his system while the remainder was
securely locked up until it was time for it to be expelled.
"There," Luke said after five or six minutes. "You may dress again now.
But be careful, God. You ought to know by this time that, living the way
we do, we risk allowing our natural defense mechanisms to atrophy." The
last word concluded in a yawn, for which, with a chuckle, he apologized
as soon as he could.
"Even though that was relatively quickly dealt with," he added, "I find
the process extremely tiring. You'll excuse me if I simply take your place
on the couch and ask you to see yourself out?"
"Of course," Godwin muttered, zipping up his trousers and silently wondering
why everybody except himself seemed unable or unwilling to accept the truth
but must always disguise it by some such term as meditation or communion
with the infinite or seeking astral guidance. They must know what was
going on! After all, they invariably recognized the term when he referred
to being called . . .
But he had more urgent matters to consider, such as moving the car.
He took his leave of Luke and headed homeward.
He was half hoping the fair woman would be watching the house again.
It would simplify matters if he let her find him; after Luke's treatment
he was sufficiently recovered to use the flex on her, and if he got the
chance that would be an end of the matter.
However, there was no one in the street exhibiting more than casual
curiosity when he climbed into the Urraco. He started up and drove a
quarter of a mile, keeping an eye on his mirror, but no one was following.
Now: where to go? After the infuriating disappointment of his last reward,
he felt the need for some sort of relaxation, but he didn't want to go
abroad again on the same passport, even though on his last trip no one
had asked to see it.
Just as he was dutifully parking the car in the Lex garage in Soho, as
Hamish had instructed, inspiration dawned. He snapped his fingers.
Of course -- the Global Hotel. The chance of the Arab princes still being
there was vanishingly small; in any case, if they or the discothèque
staff took exception to his presence, he was fit enough to use the flex
again. And a suitable bribe would surely persuade Jackson the commissionaire
to relate whatever he knew about the fair woman, so the data could be
relayed to Hamish.
And conceivably the woman herself might turn up.
But she didn't, and nobody at the hotel paid him special attention
except for people working in the discothèque -- which turned out to be
an independent, subcontracted operation -- who scowled at him or beamed
according to which of his visits they remembered him from. And Jackson
had simpiy failed to arrive for work today, so they had hired someone
else. There was always a long waiting list for his kind of job. Come to
that, there was a waiting list for any job. Perhaps he had been mugged
or stabbed on the way home; perhaps he had been run over; perhaps he
had contracted one of the countless epidemics permanently infesting any
large city; at all events, he had not been seen or heard from. Computer
investigation on the scale accessible to Godwin failed to trace him. He
passed the information to Hamish and hoped for the best.
Which was what he personally was not enjoying. The Global Hotel was
luxurious on its own level, but compared to his home it was boring. To
wake every morning in the same room with the same outlook was unbearably
monotonous. Worse yet, he was waking from unrestful sleep; his dreams
were haunted by the dust-and-ashes taste of his last "reward." He was
puzzled and hurt by what had happened, not during the experiences, but
afterwards, during that immeasurable period when he had felt forgotten,
abandoned, neglected, thrown aside. He suspected why and how that had
come about, but he was mortally afraid of spelling it out to himself, and
did whatever he could think of to avoid confronting his own conclusions.
He regarded it as something of an achievement when finally he admitted
to himself that it had not been indigestion which had taken him to Luke,
but a terrible feeling like a vast bruise.
Which Luke had not diagnosed or referred to. Or treated.
Why?
Frustrated, dispirited, anxious to an extent he had imagined would never
be his lot again, he passed the time as best he could. Eventually idleness
grew unbearable, and he decided to do something he had never done before:
call on Bill Harvey and inquire after Gorse. Ordinarily he felt no more
than a faint pang of curiosity about those he had recruited; now and then
he realized he must have opposite numbers -- a woman who recruited boys,
a man and a woman who recruited gays -- but the matter had always seemed
so inconsequential until now that he had automatically dismissed it.
Or else, perhaps, the illusive reality of the reward experience which
followed an assignment masked any burgeoning interest.
But he was in no state to reason out problems of that magnitude. He was
growing more and more obsessed with the unprecedented anomaly which
the fair woman represented. He had searched his memory over and over,
attempting to locate some chance encounter, some situation, which could
have given him the image around which might have developed his conviction
that he recognized her, and that she was the adult counterpart of the
little girl in his George Medal experience.
But how could she be? He had checked up on what Bill had told him, and it
was true: he had been given a decoration which did not yet exist. Had he
been at home he would have ripped the medal from his cabinet of mementos
and flung it in the dustbin along with its "authenticating" press cutting
. . . except that their destruction would have had to be more thorough,
medals being remarkable even to dustmen. The function of such souvenirs
was to persuade him, even for a little while, that his remembered
experiences were real so far as he was concerned. To have one which
at every glance must inform him it was a snare and a deception --
it was intolerable!
Therefore he must find ways of not thinking about it. Possibly contact with
someone as down-to-earth as Bill Harvey would be helpful in distracting him.
Bill, after all, except for his enjoyment of telerecorded football matches
and horse races, lived wholly in the present, as Godwin usually did --
as he had imagined had become automatic with him. Reviewing the past
had grown painful, or at least uncomfortable.
And perhaps if Gorse were not doing anything else they might make love.
He recalled her capacity for orgasm. It had been impressive.
Not that any twice-tasted fruit could possess the same appeal.
At the very moment he reached the front steps of Bill's home, the door
opened and Gorse came out. She was wearing the height of fashion: a
wide-shouldered barathea blouse, a skirt slashed into irregular ribbons,
boots stained camouflage green and brown. On what little could be seen
of her face around immense dark glasses there was an expression of grim
determination. For an instant Godwin feared she might have been called,
in which case it would be pointless to address her, but halfway down
the steps she seemed to start noticing the outside world, and as she
came level with him she checked, removed the glasses, and said, "Oh,
it
is
you."
Her face was not so much pale as gray; it was drawn, it was haggard.
Even before she spoke again Godwin could guess what she was about to say.
"Can't stop -- sorry. I have to go see somebody called Irma. Bill gave me
the address."
"Just a second!"
"I said I can't stop!" Then, relenting: "Oh, very well. What is it?"
"How do you feel about -- well, you know?"
"Oh!" Her red-rimmed eyes lit up. "Oh, it's fantastic! It's the kind of
thing I've been looking for all my life without realizing! People who join
secret societies like the Rosicrucians or the Freemasons or the Illuminati
must be looking for exactly what you've given me! And not getting half
such a bargain! You're a darling, and thank you very much!" She pursed
her lips and planted a sketch for a kiss on his cheek. "But I have to
rush! And you of all people must understand why!"
So that was going to be her justification to herself. Well, it was at
least a variation on a theme . . .
He watched her until she vanished around the corner in a flurry of
ragged-robin skirts, and only then realized that Bill -- tankard in
hand as ever -- was standing on the front doorstep, gazing thoughtfully
his way.
Godwin walked up to join him.
"Glad she got the chance to go see Irma," Bill said reflectively,
ushering him inside. There were more luck charms than ever on display
in the hallway, including a collection of new white bones hanging from
red and yellow cords. "The way she's been working 'erself . . . ! Same
as with an 'orse, y'know. Overtraining, they call it. Result: you get
the peak performance day before the race, an' your favorite comes in
nowhere! Come in the parlor. Good to see yer. Fancy a jar?"
"You know I don't," Godwin said as the parlor engulfed him: a dark place
full of overstuffed Victorian furniture, bric-ŕ-brac displays, velvet
drapes tied back with thick gold cords, almost the only modern note
being struck by the TV set and, its attached recorder. One entire wall
was taken up by a bar whose display would not have disgraced a pub.
"Well, I bloody know you didn't come round to watch my tape of yesterday's
Prudential match!" Bill said tartly, dropping into an armchair and waving
his guest to do the same. "What is it? Got under your skin, did she --
the little one?"
"I don't think so," Godwin said after a hesitation. "No, to be honest
I came to ask you a question."
"So let's be 'earin' from yer!"
"Are you satisfied with what you've got?"
The words were out before he could check them. It had been in his mind to
ask a different question, but it seemed of secondary importance compared
to what he had just said.
Bill's face darkened. "Wotcher mean?"
"Well . . ." A helpless gesture. "Well, if they won't let you in the
betting shop any more, for example. Doesn't it sort of spoil something
in life for you?"
Contemptuously: "If they won't listen to me, let 'em rot! Lord, between us
we could've cleaned up . . . But they won't, so the 'ell with 'em. Far's
I'm concerned, I'm livin' the life of Riley, an' if me mates don't want
a share, they don't 'ave to 'ave one. What's turned
you
so sour all of
a sudden?"
"I . . ." Godwin licked his lips. "Bill, what would you do if you thought
somebody had sussed you out?"
"Like for instance?"
"Well, the police."
"Flex 'em, wot else? I never 'ad no trouble with the rozzers! Nor the
buggers in the tax-office neither, though they was persistent for a while.
'Ere! Y'know something?"
He leaned forward earnestly, eying Godwin with disapproval.
"I don't like wot you're implyin'! You run acrost somebody you can't
flex out?"
"I was sort of tired when it happened, and I didn't catch on until later,"
Godwin said in a self-exonerating tone.
"Hah! I still don't like it! With that on yer back, yer didn't oughta come
'ere, did yer?"
"I've done what I can. I put Hamish Kemp on it right away -- "
"'Im?" Bill interrupted contemptuously. "Not much better'n a rozzer
'imself, that one. Did 'e do yer any good?"
"Well . . . Well, not yet, to be frank."
"Hah! In that case, then, I think I shall trouble yer to be on yer way."
Bill drained his tankard, set it by, and rose to his feet again, making
meaningful gestures in the direction of the door. "After the bother I've
'ad with the new kid -- "
"Bother?" Godwin broke in sharply, also rising.
"Oh, no more'n usual, I suppose," Bill admitted with
a dismissive shrug. "But you know 'ow it is right at the
beginnin' -- gettin' used, and that . . ."
Godwin nodded. He knew only too well, when he troubled, or cared, to recall
his own experience in that area. Which was seldom.
"Don't bother seeing me out," he muttered. "I can find my own way."
He wished with all his heart and soul that that were true.
Still there was no word from Hamish. Abruptly Godwin grew annoyed.
The standardized perfection of his hotel, which was always flawed,
got on his nerves. The food it served -- so his body reported -- was
contaminated with artificial preservatives, and was likely to drive him
back to Irma, at least, if not clear to Luke, within a matter of days.
He felt uncomfortable and edgy, and that dismayingly echoed recollections
from the past he had once imagined he was escaping forever.
An uneasy, vague, intransigent suspicion that he had been betrayed began to
haunt his dreams. Once it woke him screaming from a dry throat at five a.m.
It was no use. He must go home. The hell with Hamish, who had so far
let him down.
As though to make a point, he reclaimed his car from Soho.
But gray weather shrouded London; layers of cloud shed their impassive
tears into a chill irregular breeze as a succession of low-pressure areas
drifted in from the North Atlantic. Godwin, of course, had no need to
care about the fact that the street people were being forced to revert
to their winter habits even though the summer was barely half spent,
dossing down by night under makeshift awnings of tarpaulin stolen from
building sites, by day running after passers-by with torn plastic shopping
bags over their heads. He woke morning after morning to the sight and
sound of surf beating on a Bahamian beach, to the crisp clear air of the
Alps, to all the complex shouts and stinks of an Egyptian market, or to
wherever else he chose. He feasted daily on turtle soup and venison, on
Whitstable natives and Maine lobster with drawn butter, on sweetbreads
vol-au-vent and T-bone steak, on hearts of palm and grilled red snapper
. . . and then, at first with a sense of defiance as though challenging
his owner to compensate him for the disappointment -- for the agony --
involved in what should have been his latest reward, subsequently with
no more than delight and gratitude, on dishes such as he had never dared
imagine: strange delectable foods of improbable texture which uttered to
the air fragrances no terrestrial kitchen might achieve. All these were
washed down with Mumm and Krug and Saint-Èmilion and Nuits-Saint-Georges
and Tokaji and Mosel and eventually liquors requested at random, many of
unlikely colors, glowing and sparkling, oily on the palate or chilling or
burning, which combined with the incomprehensible new food so perfectly
as to gratify his inmost yearnings and leave him lazily content.