The Player of Games (6 page)

Cargo Cult
was indeed here in Tronze this evening and looking forward to meeting him, he was in no mood to suffer fools gladly. Not that the unlucky young male was necessarily a complete idiot; all he'd done was sketch out what had been, after all, not a bad idea for a game; but Gurgeh had fallen on him like an avalanche. The conversation - if you could call it that - had become a game. The object was to keep talking; not to talk continuously, which any idiot could do, but to pause only when the young man was not signalling - through bodily or facial language, or actually starting to speak - that he wanted to cut in. Instead, Gurgeh would stop unexpectedly in the middle of a point, or after having just said something mildly insulting, but while still giving the impression he was going to keep talking. Also, Gurgeh was quoting almost verbatim from one of his own more famous papers on game-theory; an added insult, as the young man probably knew the text as well as he did. 'To imply,' Gurgeh continued, as the young man's mouth started to open again, 'that one can remove the element of luck, chance, happenstance in life by-' 'Jernau Gurgeh, not interrupting anything, am I?' Mawhrin-Skel said. 'Nothing of note,' Gurgeh said, turning to face the small machine. 'How are you, Mawhrin-Skel? Been up to any fresh mischief?' 'Nothing of note,' the tiny drone echoed, as the young man Gurgeh had been talking to sidled off. Gurgeh sat in a creeper-covered pergola positioned close to one edge of the plaza, near the observation platforms which reached out over the broad curtain of the falls, where spray rose from the rapids lying between the lip of the lake and the vertical drop to the forest a kilometre below. The roaring falls provided a background wash of white noise. 'I've found your young adversary,' the small drone announced. It extended one softly glowing blue field and plucked a nightflower from a growing vine. 'Hmm?' Gurgeh said. 'Oh, the young, ah… Stricken player?' 'That's right,' Mawhrin-Skel said evenly, 'the young, ah… Stricken player.' It folded some of the nightflower's petals back, straining them on the plucked stem. 'I heard she was here,' Gurgeh said. 'She's at Hafflis's table. Shall we go and meet her?' 'Why not?' Gurgeh stood; the machine floated away. 'Nervous?' Mawhrin-Skel asked as they headed through the crowds towards one of the raised terraces level with the lake, where Hafflis's apartments were. 'Nervous?' Gurgeh said. 'Of a child?' Mawhrin-Skel floated silently for a moment or two as Gurgeh climbed some steps - Gurgeh nodded and said hello to a few people then the machine came close to him and said quietly, as it slowly stripped the petals from the dying blossom, 'Want me to tell you your heart rate, skin receptivity level, pheromone signature, neuron function-state…?' Its voice trailed off as Gurgeh came to a halt, half-way up the flight of broad steps. He turned to face the drone, looking through half-hooded eyes at the tiny machine. Music drifted over the lake, and the air was full of the nightflowers' musky scent. The lighting set into the stone balustrades lit the game-player's face from underneath. People flooding down the steps from the terrace above, laughing and joking, parted round the man like waters round a rock, and - Mawhrin-Skel noticed - went oddly quiet as they did so. After a few seconds, as Gurgeh stood there, silent, breathing evenly, the little drone made a shuckling noise. 'Not bad,' it said. 'Not bad at all. I can't tell just yet what you're glanding, but that's a very impressive degree of control. Everything parameter-centred, near as damn. Except your neuron function-state; that's even less like normal than usual, but then your average civilian drone probably couldn't spot that. Well done.' 'Don't let me detain you, Mawhrin-Skel,' Gurgeh said coldly. 'I'm sure you can find something else to amuse you besides watching me play a game.' He continued up the broad steps. 'Nothing currently on this Orbital is capable of detaining me, dear Mr Gurgeh,' the drone said matter-of-factly, tearing the last of the petals from the nightflower. It dropped the husk in the water channel which ran along the top of the balustrade.
'Gurgeh, good to see you. Come; sit down.' Estray Hafflis's party of thirty or so people sat round a huge, rectangular stone table set on a balcony jutting out over the falls and covered by stone arches strung with nightflower vines and softly shining paper lanterns; there were music-players at one end, sitting on the edge of the great slab with drums and strings and air instruments; they were laughing and playing mostly for themselves, each trying to play too fast for the others to follow. Set into the centre of the table was a long narrow pit full of glowing coals; a kind of miniaturised bucket-line trundled above the fire, carrying little meat and vegetable pieces from one end of the table to the other; they were skewered on to the line at one end by one of Haftlis's children, and removed at the other end, wrapped in edible paper and thrown with a fair degree of accuracy to anybody who wanted them, by Hafflis's youngest, who was only six. Hafflis was unusual in having had seven children; normally people bore one and fathered one. The Culture frowned on such profligacy, but Hafflis just liked being pregnant. He was in a male stage at the moment, however, having changed a few years earlier. He and Gurgeh exchanged pleasantries, then Hafflis showed the game-player to a seat beside Professor Boruelal, who was grinning happily and swaying in her seat. She wore a long black and white robe, and when she saw Gurgeh kissed him noisily on the lips. She attempted to kiss Mawhrin-Skel too, but it flicked away. She laughed, and speared a half-done piece of meat from the line over the centre of the table with a long fork. 'Gurgeh! Meet the lovely Olz Hap! Olz; Jernau Gurgeh. Come on; shake hands!' Gurgeh sat down, taking the small, pale hand of the frightened-looking girl on Boruelal's right. She was wearing something dark and shapeless, and was in her early teens, at most. He smiled with a slight frown, glancing at the professor, trying to share the joke of her inebria with the young blonde girl, but Olz Hap was looking at his hand, not his face. She let her hand be touched but then withdrew it almost immediately. She sat on her hands and stared at her plate. Boruelal breathed deeply, seeming to gather herself together. She took a drink from a tall glass in front of her. 'Well,' she said, looking at Gurgeh as though he'd only just appeared. 'How are you, Jernau?' 'Well enough.' He watched Mawhrin-Skel manoeuvre itself beside Olz Hap, floating over the table beside her plate, fields all formal blue and green friendliness. 'Good evening,' he heard the drone say in its most avuncular voice. The girl brought her head up to look at the machine, and Gurgeh listened to their conversation at the same time as he and Boruelal talked. 'Hello.' 'Well enough to play a game of Stricken?' 'Mawhrin-Skel's the name. Olz Hap, am I right?' 'I think so, Professor. Are you well enough to invigilate?' 'Yes. How do you do.' 'Fuck me, no; drunk as a desert spring. Have to get somebody else. Suppose I could come down in time but… naa…' 'Oh, ah, shake fields with me, eh? That's very sweet of you; so few people bother. How nice to meet you. We've all heard so much.' 'How about the young lady herself?' 'Oh. Oh dear.' 'What?' 'What's wrong? Have I said something wrong?' 'Is she ready to play?' 'No, it's just-' 'Play what?' 'Ah; you're shy. You needn't be. Nobody'll force you to play. Least of all Gurgeh, believe me.' 'The game, Boruelal.' 'Well, I-' 'What, do you mean now?' 'I wouldn't worry, if I were you. Really.' 'Now; or any time.' 'Well
I
don't know. Let's ask her! Hey, kid…' 'Bor-' Gurgeh began, but the professor had already turned to the girl. 'Olz; want to play this game, then?' The young girl looked straight at Gurgeh. Her eyes were bright in the glare of the line of fire running down the centre of the table. 'If Mr Gurgeh would like to, yes.' Mawhrin-Skel's fields glowed red with pleasure, momentarily brighter than the coals. 'Oh
good
,' it said. 'A fight.'
Hafflis had loaned his own ancient Stricken set out; it took a few minutes for a supply drone to bring one from a town store. They set it up at one end of the balcony, by the edge overlooking the roaring white falls. Professor Boruelal fumbled with her terminal and put in a request for some adjudicating drones to oversee the match; Stricken was susceptible to high-tech cheating, and a serious game required that steps be taken to ensure nothing underhand went on. A drone visiting from Chiark Hub volunteered, as did a Manufactury drone from the shipyard under the massif. One of the university's own machines would represent Olz Hap. Gurgeh turned to Mawhrin-Skel, to ask it to be his representative, but it said, 'Jernau Gurgeh; I thought you might like Chamlis Amalk-ney to represent you.' 'Is Chamlis here?' 'Arrived a while ago. Been avoiding me. I'll ask it.' Gurgeh's button terminal beeped. 'Yes?' he said. Chamlis's voice spoke from the button. 'The fly-dropping just asked me to represent you in a Stricken adjudication. Do you want me to?' 'Yes, I'd like you to,' Gurgeh said, watching Mawhrin-Skel's fields flicker white with anger in front of him. 'I'll be there in twenty seconds,' Chamlis said, closing the channel. 'Twenty-one point two,' Mawhrin-Skel said acidly, exactly twenty-one point two seconds later, as Chamlis appeared over the edge of the balcony, its casing dark against the cataract beyond. Chamlis turned its sensing band to the smaller machine. 'Thank you,' Chamlis said warmly. 'I had a bet on with myself that I'd have you counting the seconds to my arrival.' Mawhrin-Skel's fields blazed brightly, painfully white, lighting up the entire balcony for a second; people stopped talking and turned; the music hesitated. The tiny drone seemed almost literally to shake with dumb rage. 'Fuck you!' it screeched at last, and seemed to disappear, leaving only an after-image of sun-bright blindness behind it in the night. The coals blazed bright, a wind whipped at clothes and hair, several of the paper lanterns bucked and shook and fell from the arches overhead; leaves and nightflowers drifted down from the two arches immediately over where Mawhrin-Skel had been floating. Chamlis Amalk-ney, red with happiness, tipped to look up into the dark sky, where a small hole appeared briefly in the cloud cover. 'Oh dear,' it said. 'Do you think I said something to upset it?' Gurgeh smiled and sat down at the game-set. 'Did you plan that, Chamlis?' Amalk-ney bowed in mid-air to the other drones, and to Boruelal. 'Not exactly.' It turned to face Olz Hap, sitting on the far side of the game-web from Gurgeh. 'Ah… by way of contrast: a fair human.' The girl blushed, looked down. Boruelal made the introductions. Stricken is played in a three-dimensional web stretched inside a metre cube. The traditional materials are taken from a certain animal on the planet of origin; cured tendon for the web, tusk ivory for the frame. The set Gurgeh and Olz Hap used was synthetic. They each put up their hinged screens, took the bags of hollow globes and coloured beads (nutshells and stones in the original) and selected the beads they wanted, locking them in the globes. The adjudicating drones ensured there was no possibility of anyone seeing which beads went into which shells. Then the man and the girl each took a handful of the little spheres and placed them in various places inside the web. The game had begun.
She was good. Gurgeh was impressed. Olz Hap was impetuous but canny, brave but not stupid. She was also very lucky. But there was luck and luck. Sometimes you could sniff it out, recognise things were going well and would probably continue to go well, and play to that. If things did keep going right, you profited extravagantly. If the luck didn't persist, well, you just played the percentages. The girl had that sort of luck, that night. She made the right guesses about Gurgeh's pieces, capturing several strong beads in weak disguises; she anticipated moves he'd sealed in the Foretell shells; and she ignored the tempting traps and feints he set up. Somehow he struggled on, coming up with desperate, improvised defences against each attack, but it was all too seat-of-the-pants, too extemporary and tactical. He wasn't being allowed the time to develop his pieces or plan a strategy. He was responding, following, replying. He preferred to have the initiative. It was some time before he realised just how audacious the girl was being. She was going for a Full Web; the simultaneous capture of every remaining point in the game-space. She wasn't just trying to win, she was trying to pull off a coup which only a handful of the game's greatest players had ever accomplished, and which nobody in the Culture - to Gurgeh's knowledge - had yet achieved. Gurgeh could hardly believe it, but it was what she was doing. She was sapping pieces but not obliterating them, then falling back; she was striking out through his own avenues of weakness, then holding there. She was inviting him to come back, of course, giving him a better chance of winning, and indeed of achieving the same momentous result, though with far less hope of doing so. But the self-confidence of it! The experience and even arrogance such a course implied! He looked at the slight, calm-faced girl through the web of thin wires and little suspended spheres, and could not help but admire her ambition, her vaulting ability and self-belief. She was playing for the grand gesture, and to the gallery, not settling for a reasonable win, despite the fact that the reasonable win would be over a famous, respected game-player. And Boruelal had thought she might feel intimidated by him! Well, good for her. Gurgeh sat forward, rubbing his beard, oblivious of the people now packing the balcony, silently watching the game. He struggled back into it somehow. Partly luck, partly more skill than even he thought he possessed. The game was still poised for a Full Web victory, and she was still the most likely to achieve it, but at least his position looked less hopeless. Somebody brought him a glass of water and something to eat. He vaguely recalled being grateful. The game went on. People came and went around him. The web held all his fortune; the little spheres, holding their secret treasures and threats, became like discrete parcels of life and death, single points of probability which could be guessed at but never known until they were challenged, opened, looked at. All reality seemed to hinge on those infinitesimal bundles of meaning. He no longer knew what body-made drugs washed through him, nor could he guess what the girl was using. He had lost all sense of self and time. The game drifted for a few moves, as they both lost concentration, then came alive again. He became aware, very slowly, very gradually, that he held some impossibly complex model of the contest in his head, unknowably dense, multifariously planed. He looked at that model, twisted it. The game changed. He saw a way to win. The Full Web remained a possibility. His, now. It all depended. Another