The Game-Players Of Titan

VI

BEING SOMEWHAT poor, Joe Schilling owned an ancient, cantankerous, moody, auto-auto which he called Max. Unfortunately he could not afford a newer one.

As usual, today Max balked at the instructions given it "No," it said. "I'm not going, to fly out to the Coast. You can walk."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you," Joe Schilling told it.

"What business do you have out on the Coast anyhow?" Max demanded in its surly fashion. Its motor had started, however. "I need repair-work done," it complained, "before I undertake such a long trip. Why can't you maintain me properly? Everybody else keeps up their cars."

"You're not worth keeping up," Joe Schilling said, and got into the auto-auto, seated himself at the tiller, then remembered that he had forgotten his parrot, Eeore. "Damn it," he said, "don't leave without me; I have to go back for something." He got out of the car and strode back to the record shop, key in hand.

The car made no comment as he returned with the parrot; it seemed resigned, now, or perhaps the articulation circuit had collapsed.

"Are you still there?" Schilling asked the car.

"Of course I am. Can't you see me?"

"Take me to San Rafael, California," Schilling said. The time was early morning; he would probably be able to catch Pete Garden at his pro-tem apartment.

Pete had called late last night to report on the first encounter with Lucky Luckman. The moment he heard Pete's

gloomy tone of voice Joe Schilling had known the result of The Game; Luckman had won.

"The problem now," Pete said, "is that he's got two California title deeds, so he doesn't have to risk Berkeley any more. He can put up the other one."

"You should have had me right from the start," Schilling said.

After a pause Pete said, "Well, I've got a little problem. Carol Holt Garden, my new wife, she rates herself a fine Bluff-player."

"Is she?"

"She's good," Pete said. "But-"

"But you still lost. I'll start out for the Coast tomorrow morning." And now here he was, as promised, starting out with two suitcases of personal articles and his parrot Eeore, ready to play against Luckman.

Wives, Schilling thought. More of a problem than an asset. The economic aspect of our lives should never have been melded hopelessly with the sexual; it makes things too complex. Blame that on the Titanians and their desire to solve our difficulties with one neat solution covering all. What they've actually done is gotten us entangled even more thoroughly.

Pete hadn't said any more about Carol.

But marriage had always been primarily an economic entity, Schilling reflected as he steered his auto-auto up into the early-morning New Mexico sky. The vugs hadn't invented that; they had merely intensified an already existing condition. Marriage had to do with the transmission of property, of lines of inheritance. And of cooperation in career-lines as well. All this emerged explicitly in The Game and dominated conditions; The Game merely dealt openly with what had been there implicitly before.

The car radio came on then, and a male voice addressed Schilling. "This is Kitchener; I'm told you're leaving my bind. Why?"

"Business on the West Coast." It irritated him that -the Bindman of the area should burst into the situation and meddle. But that was Colonel Kitchener, a fussy, elderly,

spinster-type retired officer who nosed into everybody's business.

"I didn't give you permission," Kitchener complained. - "You and Max," Schilling said.

"Pardon?" Kitchener berated him, "Maybe I just won't want to let you back into my bind, Schilling. I happen to know you're going to Carmel to play The Game, and if you're as good as all that—"

"As good as all what?" Schilling broke in. "That's to be demonstrated, as yet."

"If you're good enough to play at all," Kitchener said, "you ought to be playing for me." It was obvious that most of the story had leaked out. Schilling sighed. That was one difficulty with such a diminished world-population; the planet had become like one extensive small town, with everyone knowing everyone else's business. "Maybe you could practice in my group," "Kitchener offered. "And then play against Luckman when you're back in shape. After all, you won't do your friends any good coming in cold as you are. Don't you agree?"

"I may be cold," Schilling said, "but I'm not that cold."

"First you denied being good and now you deny being bad," Kitchener said. "You're confusing me, Schilling. I'll permit you to go, but I hope if you do show your old talent you'll bring some of it to our table, out of a sense of loyalty to your own Bindman. Good day."

"Good day, Kitch," Schilling said, and broke the circuit. Well, his trip to the Coast had already earned him two enemies, his auto-auto and Colonel Kitchener. A bad harbinger, Schilling decided. Most unlucky. The car, he could afford to have antagonistic to his enterprise, but not a man as powerful as Kitchener. After all, the Colonel was right; if he did have any talents at The Game they should be used to support his own Bindman, not someone else.

All at once Max spoke up. "You see what you got yourself into?" it said accusingly.

"I realize I should have checked with my Bindman and gotten his approval," Schilling agreed.

"You hoped to sneak out of New Mexico unnoticed," Max said.

It was true; Schilling nodded. Yes, it was decidedly a bad beginning.

Waking in the still-unfamiliar apartment in San Rafael, Peter Garden jumped in surprise at the sight of the tousled head of brown hair beside him, the bare, smooth shoulders, so eternally inviting—and then remembered who she was and what had happened the evening before. He got out of bed without waking her, went into the kitchen in his pajamas to search for a package of cigarettes.

A second California deed had been lost and Joe Schilling was on his way from New Mexico; that's how things stood, he recalled. And he now had a wife who— How exactly did he evaluate Carol Holt Garden? It would be good to know precisely where he stood in relation to her before Joe Schilling put in his appearance... and that could be any time, now.

He lit a cigarette, put the tea kettle on the burner. As the tea kettle started to thank him he said, "Be quiet. My wife's asleep."

The tea kettle obediently warmed in silence.

He liked Carol; she was pretty and, to say the least, great guns in bed. It was as simple as that. She was not terribly pretty and many of his wives had been as good in bed and better and he did not like her inordinately; everything about his feelings was commensurate with reality. Her feelings, however, were excessive. To Carol this new marriage challenged her sense of identity by way of her prestige. As a woman, a wife, as a Game-player. That was a lot.

Outside the apartment, on the street below, the two McClain children played quietly; he heard their tense, muted voices. Going to the kitchen window he looked out and saw them, the boy Kelly, the girl Jessica, involved in some sort of knife game. Absorbed, they were oblivious to anything else, to him, to the vacant, auto-maintained city around them.

I wonder how their mother is, Pete said to himself. Patricia McClain, whose story I know ...

Returning to the bedroom he got his clothes, carried them to the kitchen and silently dressed, not waking up Carol.

"I'm ready," the tea kettle said, all at once.

He took it from the burner, started to make instant coffee, and then changed his mind. Let's see if Mrs. McClain will fix breakfast for the Bindman, he said to himself.

Before the full-length mirror in the apartment's bathroom he stared at himself, concluded that he looked," while not stunning, at least adequate. And then, noiselessly, he set off, out of the apartment and down the stairs to the ground floor.

"Hi, kids," he said to Kelly and Jessica.

"Hi, Mr. Bindman," they murmured, absorbed.

"Where can I find your mother?" he asked them.

They both pointed.

Pete, taking a deep breath of sweet early-morning air, walked that way with fast strides, feeling hungry in several ways—deep and intricate ways.

His auto-auto, Max, landed at the curb before the apartment building in San Rafael, and Joe Schilling stiffly slid across the seat, opened the door manually and stepped out.

He rang the proper buzzer and an answering buzz unlocked the massive front door. Carefully locked to bar intruders who no longer exist, he said to himself as he climbed the carpeted stairs to the fourth floor.

The apartment door stood open but it was not Pete Garden waiting for him; it was a young woman with disorderly brown hair and a sleepy expression. "Who are you?" she said.

"A friend of Pete's," Joe Schilling said, "Are you Carol?"

She nodded, drew her robe around her self-consciously. "Pete's not here. I just got up and he's gone. I don't know where."

"Can I come in?" Schilling asked. "And wait?"

"If you like. I'm going to have breakfast." She padded away from the door and Schilling followed; he found her once more, in the kitchen of the apartment, cooking bacon on the range.

The tea kettle announced, "Mr. Garden was here but he left."

"Did he say where he was going?" Schilling asked it.

"He looked out the window and then left." The Rushmore

Effect built into the tea kettle did not amount to much; the tea kettle was little help.

Schilling seated himself at the kitchen table. "How are you and Pete getting along?"

"Oh, we had a dreadful first evening," Carol said. "We lost. Pete was so morose about it ... he didn't say one word all the way home here from Carmel, and even after we got here he hardly said anything to me, as if he thought it was my fault." She turned sadly toward Joe Schilling. "I just don't know how we're going to go on; Pete seems almost—suicidal."

"He's always been that way," Schilling said. "Don't blame yourself."

"Oh," Carol said, nodding. "Well, thanks for letting me know."

"Could I have a cup of coffee?"

"Certainly," she said, putting the tea kettle back on. "Are you by any chance the friend he vidphoned last night after The Game?"

"Yes," Schilling said. He felt embarrassed; he had come here to replace this woman at the Game table. How much did she know of Pete's intentions? In many ways, Schilling thought, Pete's a heel when it comes to women.

Carol said, "I know what you're here for, Mr. Schilling."

"Umm," Schilling said, cautiously.

"I'm not going to step aside," she said, as she spooned ground coffee into the mid-part of the aluminum pot. "Your history of playing isn't a good one. I believe I can do better than you."

"Hmm," Schilling said, nodding.

After that he drank his coffee and she ate breakfast in awkward, strained silence, both of them waiting for Pete Garden to return.

Patricia McClain was dust-mopping the living room of her apartment; she glanced up, saw Pete, and then she smiled a slow, secretive smile. "The Bindman cometh," she said, and continued dust-mopping.

"Hello," Pete said, self-consciously.

"I can read your mind, Mr. Garden. You know quite a

bit about me, from having discussed me with Joseph Schilling. So you met Mary Anne, my oldest daughter. And you find her 'stunningly attractive,' as Schilling put it ... as well as much like me." Pat McClain glanced up at him; her dark eyes sparkled. "Don't you think Mary Anne is a little young for you? You're one hundred and forty or thereabouts and she's eighteen."

Pete said, "Since the Hynes Gland operations—"

"Never mind," Patricia said. "I agree. And you're also thinking that the real difference between me and my daughter is that I'm embittered and she's still fresh and feminine. This, coming from a man who steadily contemplates, ruminates about, suicide."

"I can't help it," Pete said. "Clinically, it's obsessive thinking; it's involuntary. I wish I could get rid of it. Doctor Macy told me that decades ago. I've taken every pill there is ... it goes away for a time and then returns." He entered the McClain apartment. "Had breakfast?"

"Yes," Patricia said. "And you can't eat here; it isn't proper and I don't care to fix it for you. I'll tell you truthfully, Mr. Garden; I don't wish to get involved with you emotionally. In fact the idea of it repels me."

"Why?" he said, as evenly as possible.

"Because I don't like you."

"And why's that?" he said, not retreating either physically or psychologically.

"Because you're able to play The Game and I'm not," Patricia said. "And because you have a wife, a new one, and yet you're here, not there. I don't like your treatment of her."

"Being a telepath is quite a help," Pete said, "when it comes to making evaluations of other people's vices and weaknesses."

"It is."

"Can I help it," Pete said, "if I'm attracted to you and not to Carol?"

"You can't help what you feel, but you could avoid doing what you're doing; I'm perfectly aware of your reason for being here, Mr. Garden. But don't forget I'm married, too. And I take my marriage seriously, which you do not. But

of course you don't; you have a new wife every few weeks or so. Every time there's a severe set-back at The Game." Her disgust was manifest; her lips were tightly compressed and her black eyes flashed.

He wondered what she had been like before discovery of her Psionic talent had barred her from The Game.

"Much like I am now," Patricia said.

"I doubt that," he said. He thought about her daughter. I wonder if she'll be this way in time, he speculated. I suppose it depends on whether she has her mother's telepathic talent or not, and if so—

"Mary Anne doesn't have it," Patricia said. "None of the children do; we've looked into it already."

Then she won't wind up like you have, he thought.

"Perhaps not," Patricia said, soberly. All at once she said, "I won't let you stay here, Mr. Garden, but you can drive me into San Francisco if you wish. I have shopping to do there. And we can stop at a restaurant and have breakfast, if you care to."

He started to agree and then he remembered Joe Schilling. "I can't. Because of business."

"Strategy talks about The Game."

"Yes." Obviously, he couldn't deny it.

"You put that first, before anything else. Even with your so-called 'deep feelings' toward me."

"I asked Joe Schilling to come here. I have to be around to greet him." That seemed self-evident to him. Apparently it did not seem so to her, however, but there was nothing he could do about that. Her cynicism was too deeply embedded for him to affect it in any way.

"Don't judge me," Patricia McClain said. "You may be right, but—" She moved away from him, holding her hand up to her forehead, as if physically suffering. "I still can't stand it, Mr. Garden."

"Sorry," he said. "I'll leave, Pat."

"I tell you what," she said. "I'll meet you this afternoon at one-thirty, in downtown San Francisco. At Market and Third. We can have lunch together. Do you think you can slip away from your wife and your Game-playing friend for that?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then it's agreed," Patricia said. And she went on dust-mopping.

Pete said, "Tell me why you changed your mind about seeing me. What did you pick up in my mind? It must have been fairly important."

"I'd rather not say," Patricia answered.

"Please."

"The telepathic faculty has one basic drawback. You may not know this. It tends to pick up too much; it's too sensitive to marginal or merely latent thoughts in people, what the old psychologists called the 'unconscious mind.' There's a relationship between the telepathic faculty and paranoia; the latter is the involuntary reception of other people's suppressed hostile and aggressive thoughts."

"What did you read in my unconscious, Pat?"

"I—read a syndrome of potential action. If I were a pre-cog I could tell you more. You may do it; you may not. But—" She glanced up at him. "It's a violent act, and it has to do with death."

"Death," he echoed.

"Perhaps," Patricia said, "you'll attempt suicide. I don't know; it's inchoate, still. It has to do with death—and with Jerome Luckman."

"And it's so bad that it would make you reverse yourself in your decision not to have anything to do with me."

Patricia said, "It would be wrong of me, after picking up such a syndrome, to simply abandon you."

"Thanks," he said, tartly.

"I don't want it on my conscience. I'd hate to hear on Nats Katz' program tomorrow or the day after that you'd taken that overdose of Emphytal that you're obsessively preoccupied with." She smiled at him, but it was a colorless smile, devoid of joy.

"I'll see you at one-thirty," Pete said. "At Third and Market." Unless, he thought, the inchoate syndrome having to do with violence and death and Jerome Luckman becomes actual before then.

"It may," Patricia said somberly. "That's another quality of the unconscious, it stands outside of time. You can't tell,

in reading it, whether you're picking up something minutes away from actualization or days away or even years. It's all blurred together."

Wordlessly, Pete turned and strode out of the apartment, away from her.

The next he knew he was riding in his car, high over the desert.

He knew, instantly, that it was much later.

Snapping on the radio transmitter he said, "Give me a time signal."

The mechanical voice from the speaker said, "Six P.M. Mountain Standard Time, Mr. Garden."

Where am I? he asked himself. "Where is this?" he said to the car. "Nevada?" It looked like Nevada, barren and empty.

The car said, "Eastern Utah."

"When did I leave the Coast?"

"Two hours ago, Mr. Garden."

"What have I done during the last five hours?"

The car said, "At nine-thirty you drove from Marin County, California to Carmel, to the Game Room in the Carmel condominium apartment building."

"Whom did I seer

"I don't know."

"Continue," he said, breathing shallowly.

"You stayed there one hour. Then you came out and took off for Berkeley."

"Berkeley!" he said.

"You landed at the Claremont Hotel. You stayed there only a short time, only a few minutes. Then you took off for San Francisco. You landed at San Francisco State College and went into the administration building."

"You don't know what I did there, do you?"

"No, Mr. Garden. You were there an hour. Then you came out and took off once more. This time you landed at a parking lot in downtown San Francisco, at Fourth and Market; you parked me there and set out on foot"

"Going which way?"

"I didn't notice."

"Go ahead."

"You returned at two-fifteen, got back in, and directed me to fly in an East course. I have done so ever since."

"And we didn't land anywhere since San Francisco?"

"No, Mr. Garden. And by the way, I'm very short of fuel. We should come down at Salt Lake City, if possible."

"All right," he said. "Head that way."

"Thank you, Mr. Garden," the car said, and altered its course.

Pete sat for a time and then he switched on the transmitter and vidphoned his apartment in San Rafael.

On the small screen Carol Holt Garden's face appeared. "Oh hello," she said. "Where are you? Bill Calumine called; he's getting the group together early this evening to discuss strategy. He wants to be sure both you and I are there."

"Did Joe Schilling show up?"

"Yes. What do you mean? You came back to the apartment early this morning and sat out in your car talking to him; you talked out there so I wouldn't hear."

Pete said hoarsely, "What happened after that?"

"I don't understand your question."

"What did I do?" he demanded. "Did I go anywhere with Joe Schilling? Where is he now?"

"I don't know where he is now," Carol said. "What on earth is the matter with you? Don't you know what you did today? Do you always have periods of amnesia?"

Pete grated, "Just tell me what happened."

"You sat in the car talking to Joe Schilling and then he went off, I guess. Anyhow you came back upstairs alone and said to me— Just a second, I have something on the stove." She disappeared from the screen; he waited, counting the seconds, until at last she returned. "Sorry. Let's see. You came back upstairs—" Carol paused, meditating. "We talked. Then you went downstairs again, and that's the last I've seen of you, until you called just now."

"What did you and I talk about?"

"You told me that you wanted to play with Mr. Schilling as your partner tonight." Carol's voice was cold, withdrawn emotionally. "We, shall I say, discussed it. Argued about it,

actually. In the end—" She glared at him. "If you don't know—"

"I don't," he said.

Carol said, "There's no reason why I should tell you. Ask Joe, if you want to know; I'm sure you informed him."

"Where is he?"

"I have no idea," Carol said, and broke the connection. The tiny image of her on the vidscreen died.

I'm sure, he said to himself, that I arranged with Joe for him to play as my partner, tonight. But that's not the problem.

The problem—it was not what did I do? but why don't I remember? I may have done nothing at all; that is, nothing that was unusual or important. Although going to Berkeley... perhaps I wanted to pick up some of my things which I'd left, he decided.

But according to the Rushmore Effect of the car, he had not gone to his old apartment; he had gone to the Clare-mont, and that was where Lucky Luckman was staying.

Evidently he had seen—or had tried to see—Luckman.

He thought, I'd better get hold of Joe Schilling. Find him and talk to him. Tell him that for reasons unknown to me I'm missing almost an entire day. The shock of what Pat McClain said—could that explain it?

And evidently he had met Patricia in downtown San Francisco as they had agreed.

If so, what had they done?

What was his relationship with her, now? Perhaps he had been successful; perhaps, on the other hand, he had only antagonized her further. No way to tell. And the visit to San Francisco State College...

Evidently he had sought out Pat's daughter, Mary Anne.

Good lord. What a day to lose!

Using the car's transmitter he phoned Joe Schilling's record shop in New Mexico and got a Rushmore variety of answering device. "Mr. Schilling is not currently here. He and his parrot are on the Pacific Coast; you can contact him through Marin County Bindman Peter Garden at San Rafael."

Oh no you can't, Pete said to himself. And cut the connection with a wild swipe of his hand.

After a time he vidphoned Freya Garden Gaines.

"Oh, hello there, Peter," Freya said, looking pleased to hear from him. "Where are you? We're all supposed to get together at—"

"I'm hunting for Joe Schilling," he said. "You know where he is?"

"No. I haven't seen him. Did you bring him out to the Coast to play against Luckman?"

"If you hear from him," Pete said, "tell him to go to my apartment in San Rafael and stay there."

"Okay," Freya said. "Is something wrong?"

"Maybe so," he said, and rang off.

I wish to hell I knew, he said to himself.

To the car he said, "Do you have enough fuel to head directly back to San Rafael without stopping at Salt Lake City?"

"No, Mr. Garden," the car said.

"Get your damn fuel, then," he told it, "and then let's get back to California as fast as possible."

"All right, but there's no point in being angry at me; it was your instructions that brought us to this place."

He cursed at the car. And sat impatiently waiting as it nosed down toward deserted, vast Salt Lake City below.