What had he and Joe become, out here in the darkness?
Or had the vugs done this? Was it, instead, just showing them this?
He bent forward, found his foot, began feverishly to unlace his shoe; he took off the shoe and, reaching back, clouted the thing, Joe Schilling, as hard as he could with it.
“Hmmm,” the thing said. “I’ll have to mull this over.” And it withdrew.
Panting, he waited for it to return.
He knew that it would.
Joe Schilling, floundering in the immense vacuity, rolled, seemed to fall, caught himself, choked on the smoke of his cigar and struggled to breathe. “Pete!” he said loudly. He listened. There was no direction, no up or down. No here. No sense of what was him and not him. No division into the I and the not-I.
Silence.
“Pete Garden,” he said again, and this time he sensed something, sensed it but did not actually hear it. “Is that you?” he demanded.
“Yes, it’s me,” the answer came. And it was Pete.
Yet, it was not.
“What’s going on?” Joe said. “What’s the damn thing doing to us? It’s cheating away a mile a minute, isn’t it? But we’ll get back to Earth; I have faith we’ll find our way back. After all, we won The Game, didn’t we? And we were positive we weren’t going to be able to do that.” Again he listened.
Pete said, “Come closer.”
“No,” Schilling said. “For some darn reason I—don’t trust you. Anyhow, how can I come closer? I’m just rolling around here, right? You, too?”
“Come closer,” the voice repeated, monotonously.
No, Joe Schilling said to himself.
He did not trust the voice; he felt frightened. “Get away,” he said and, paralyzed, listened. It had not gone away.
In the darkness, Freya Gaines thought, It’s betrayed us; we won and got nothing. That bastard organism—we never should have trusted it or put any faith in Pete’s idea of playing it.
I hate him, she said to herself. It’s his and Joe’s fault.
I’d kill them, both of them, she thought, furiously. I’d crunch them to death. She reached out, groping with both hands in the darkness. I’d kill anyone, right now.
I want to kill!
Mary Anne McClain said to Pete, “Listen, Pete; it’s deprived us of all our modes of apprehending reality. It’s us that it’s changed. I’m sure of it. Can you hear me?” She cocked her head, strained to hear.
There was nothing. No answer.
It’s atomized us, she thought. As if we’re each of us in an extreme psychosis, isolated from everyone else and every familiar attribute in our method of perceiving time and space. This is frightened, hating isolation, she realized. It must be that. What else can it be?
It can’t be real. And yet—
Perhaps this is fundamental reality, beneath the conscious layer of the psyche; maybe this is the way we really are. They’re showing us this, killing us with the truth about ourselves. Their telepathic faculty and their ability to mold and reform minds, to infuse them; she retreated from the thought.
And then, below her, she saw something that lived.
Stunted, alien creatures, warped by enormous forces into miserably malformed, distorted shapes. Crushed down until they were blinded and tiny. She peered at them; the waning light of a huge, dying sun lit and relit the scene and then, even as she watched, it faded into dark red and at last utter blackness snuffed it out once more.
Faintly luminous, like organisms inhabiting a vast depth, the stunted creatures continued to live, after a fashion. But it was not pleasant.
She recognized them.
That’s us. Terrans, as the vugs see us. Close to the sun, subject to immense gravitational forces. She shut her eyes.
I understand, she thought. No wonder they want to fight us; to them we’re an old, waning race that’s had its period, that must be compelled to abandon the scene.
And then, the vugs. A glowing creature, weightless, drifted far above, beyond the range of the crushing pressures, the blunted, dying creatures. On a little moon, far from the great, ancient sun.
You want to show us this, she realized. This is how reality appears to you, and it’s just as real as our own view.
But—no more so.
Do you grasp that? she asked the glowing, weightless presence that was the spiraling Titanian. That our view of the situation is equally true? Yours can’t replace ours. Or can it? Is that what you want?
She waited for the answer, her eyes squeezed shut with fear.
“Ideally,” a thought came to her drily, “both views can be made to coincide. However, in practicality, that does not work.”
Opening her eyes she saw a blob, a mound of sagging, gelatinous protoplasm—ludicrously, with its name stitched to its front, in red thread. E.B. Black.
“What?” she demanded, and looked around.
E.B. Black thought-radiated to her, “There are difficulties. We have not resolved them ourselves; hence, the contradictions within our culture.” It added, “I’ve prevailed over the Game-players whom your group was pitted against. You’re here on Terra, in your family’s apartment in San Rafael where I am currently conducting my criminal investigation.”
Light, and the force of gravity; both were acting on her. She sat up, warily. “I saw—”
“You saw the view which obsesses us. We can’t repudiate it.” The vug flowed closer to her, anxious to make its thoughts truly clear. “We’re aware that it’s partial, that it’s unfair to you Terrans because you have, as you say, an equal and opposite and as completely binding a view of us in return. However, we continue to perceive as you just now experienced.” It added, “It would have been unfair to leave you in that frame of reference any longer.”
Mary Anne said, “We won The Game. Against you.”
“Our citizens are aware of that. We repudiate punitive efforts by our distraught Game-players. Logically, having won, you must be returned to Terra. Anything else is unthinkable. Except of course to our extremists.”
“Your Game-players?”
“They will not be punished. They are too highly-placed in our culture. Be glad you’re here; be content, Miss McClain.” Its tone was harsh.
Mary Anne said, “And the other members of our group? Where are they now?” They were not here in San Rafael, obviously. “At Carmel?”
“Scattered,” E.B. Black said, irritably. She could not tell if it were angry at her, at the members of the group, or at its fellow vugs. The whole situation appeared to annoy it. “You’ll see them again, Miss McClain. Now, if I may return to my investigation …”
It moved toward her and she retreated, not wanting to come into bodily contact with it. E.B. Black reminded her too much of the other, the one against which they had played—played and won and then been cheated out of their victory.
“Not cheated,” E.B. Black contradicted. “Your victory has merely been—held back from you. It is still yours and you will obtain it.” It added, “In time.” There was a faint tinge of relish in its tone. E.B. Black was not particularly saddened by the plight of Pretty Blue Fox, the fact that its members were scattered, frightened and confused. In chaos.
“May I go to Carmel?” she asked.
“Of course. You may damn well go anywhere you wish, Miss McClain. But Joe Schilling is not in Carmel; you’ll have to search elsewhere.”
“I will,” she said. “I’ll look until I find him. Pete Garden too.” Until the group is back together again, she thought. As it was before, when we sat across the board from the Titanian Game-players; as we were in Carmel, just a little while ago this evening.
A little while—and a long way ago.
Turning, she left the apartment. And did not look back.
• • •
A voice, eager and querulous, prodded at Joe Schilling; he moved away from it—tried to, anyhow—but it crept after him.
“Um,” it gibbered. “Uh, say, Mr. Schilling, you got a minute??
?? In the darkness he floated closer, always closer until it was right on him, throttling him; he was unable to breathe. “I’ll just take a little of your time. Okay?” It paused. He said nothing. “Well,” the voice resumed, “I’ll tell you what I’d like. As long as you’re here, visiting us and I mean, it’s really a distinct honor, you know.”
Schilling said, “Get away from me.” He pawed at it and it was as if his hands broke through webs, sticky, mislinked sections of webs. And accomplishing nothing.
The voice bleated, “Oh, here’s what we both wanted to ask, Es and I. I mean, you hardly ever get out to Portland, right? So by any chance do you have that Erna Berger recording of—what’s it called? From Die Zauberflöte you know.”
Breathing heavily, Joe Schilling said, “The Queen of the Night aria.”
“Yes! That’s it!” Greedily, the voice crept over him, pressing him inexorably; it would never turn back, now.
“Da dum-dum DUM, da dee-dee da-da dum dum,” another voice, a woman’s, joined in; both voices clamored at him.
“Yes, I have it,” Joe Schilling said. “On Swiss HMV. Both of the Queen of the Night arias. Back to back.”
“Can we have them?” the voices chimed together.
“Yes,” he said.
Light, gray and fragmented, fluttered before him; he managed to get to his feet. My record shop in New Mexico? he asked himself. No. The voices had said he was in Portland, Oregon. What am I doing here? he asked himself. Why did the vug set me down here? He looked around.
He stood in the unfamiliar living room of an old house, on bare, soft wooden floors, facing a moth-scavenged, old red and white couch on which sat two familiar figures, short, squat, with ill-cut hair, a man and woman leering at him with avidity.
“You don’t actually have the record with you, by any chance?” Es Sibley squawked. Beside her, Les Sibley’s eyes glowed with eagerness; he could not sit still and he got to his feet to pace about the barren, echoing living room.
In the corner, a phonograph played, loudly, The Cherry Duet; Joe Schilling, for once in his life, wished he could stuff his fingers in his ears, could cut out all such sound. It was too screechy, too blaring; it made his head ache and he turned away, taking a deep, unsteady breath.
“No,” he said. “It’s back at my shop.” He wished like hell for a cup of hot black coffee or tea; for good oolong tea.
Es Sibley said, “You all right, Mr. Schilling?”
He nodded. “I’m okay.” He wondered about the rest of the group; had all of them been dispersed, dropped like dry leaves to flutter over the plains of Earth? Evidently so. The Titanian could not quite give up.
But at least the group was back. The Game was over.
Schilling said, “Listen.” He phrased his question carefully, word by word. “Is—my—car—outside?” He hoped so. Prayed so.
“No,” Les Sibley said. “We picked you up and brought you out here to Oregon; don’t you remember?” Beside him Es giggled, showing her large, sturdy teeth. “He doesn’t remember how he got here,” Les said to her and they both laughed, now, together.
“I want to call Max,” Joe Schilling said. “I have to go. I’m sorry.” He got totteringly to his feet. “Goodbye.”
“But the Erna Berger record!” Es Sibley protested, dismayed.
“I’ll mail it.” He made his way step by step toward the front door; he had a vague memory—or sense—of its location. “I have to find a vidphone. Call Max.”
“You can call from here,” Les Sibley said, guiding him toward the hall to the dining room. “And then maybe you can stay a little—”
“No.” Schilling found the vidphone and, snapping it on, dialed the number of his car.
Presently Max’s voice sounded. “Yeah?”
“This is Joe Schilling. Come and get me.”
“Come and get your fat-assed self,” the car said.
Joe Schilling give it the address. And then he made his way back down the hall to the living room once more. He reseated himself on the chair where he had been sitting and groped reflexively, hopefully, for a cigar or at least his pipe. The music, even more than before, filled his ears and made him cringe.
He sat, hands clasped together, waiting. But, each minute, feeling a little better. A little more certain what had happened to them. How they had come out.
Standing in the grove of eucalyptus trees, Pete Garden knew where he was; the vugs had released him and he was in Berkeley. In his old, original bind, which he had lost to Walt Remington who had turned it over to Pendleton Associates who had in turn sold it to Luckman who now was dead.
On a rough-hewn bench, among the trees, directly ahead of him sat a silent, motionless girl. It was his wife.
He said, “Carol. Are you all right?”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, Pete. I’ve been here a long time, going over things in my mind. You know, we’re very fortunate to have had her on our side, that Mary Anne McClain, I mean.”
“Yes,” he agreed. He walked up to her, hesitated, and then seated himself beside her. He was glad, more so than he could say, to see her.
Carol said, “Have you any idea what she could have done to us, if she were malevolent? I’ll tell you, Pete; she could have whisked the baby out from inside me. Do you realize that?”
He had not; he was sorry, now, to even hear about it. “True,” he admitted, his heart becoming cold with fear again.
“Don’t be afraid,” Carol said. “She’s not going to do it. Any more than you go about running people down and killing them with your car. After all, you could do it. And as a Bindman you might even get away with it.” She smiled at him. “Mary Anne isn’t a danger to either of us. In many ways, Pete, she’s more sensible than we are. More reasonable and mature. I’ve had a lot of time to think this out, sitting here. It seems like years.”
He patted her on the shoulder, then bent and kissed her.
Carol said, “I hope you can win Berkeley back. I guess Dotty Luckman owns it, now. You should be able to. She’s not such a good player.”
“I guess Dotty could spare it,” Pete said. “She’s got all the East Coast titles that Lucky left her.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to keep Mary Anne in the group?”
“No,” he said.
“That’s a shame.” Carol looked around her, at the huge old eucalyptus grove. “It’s nice, here in Berkeley. I can see why you were so unhappy at losing it. And Luckman didn’t really enjoy it for itself; he just wanted it as a base for playing and winning.” She paused. “Pete, I wonder if the birth rate will return to normal, now. Since we beat them.”
“God help us,” he said, “if it doesn’t.”
“It will,” Carol said. “I know it will. I’m the first of many women. Call it a Psionic talent, pre-cognition on my part, but I’m positive of it. What’ll we call our child?”
“In my opinion, it depends on whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
Carol smiled. “Maybe it’ll be both.”
“Then,” he said. “Freya would be right, in her schizoid jibe when she said she hoped it was a baby, implying she wasn’t convinced of it.”
“I mean of course one of each. Twins. When was the last pair of twins born?”
He knew the answer by heart. “Forty-two years ago. In Cleveland. To a Mr. and Mrs. Toby Perata.”
“And we could be the next,” Carol said.
“It’s not likely.”
“But we won,” Carol said softly. “Remember?” “I remember,” Pete Garden said. And put his arms around his wife.
Stumbling in the darkness, over what appeared to be a curb, David Mutreaux reached the main street of the small Kansas country town in which he found himself. Ahead, he saw lights; he sighed with relief and hurried.
What he needed was a car; he did not even bother to call his own. God knew where it was and how long he would have to wait for its arrival, assuming he could contact it. Instead, he strode up the single main street of the town—Fernl
ey, it was called—until he came to a homeostatic car-rental agency.
There, he rented a car, drove it away at once and then parked at the curb and sat, by himself, getting his courage together.
To the Rushmore Effect of the car, Mutreaux said, “Listen, am I a vug or a Terran?”
“Let’s see,” the car said, “you’re a Mr. David Mutreaux of Kansas City.” Briskly, the Rushmore continued, “You are a Terran, Mr. Mutreaux. Does that answer your question?”
“Thank god,” Mutreaux said. “Yes, that answers my question.”
He started up the car then, and headed by air toward the West Coast and Carmel, California.
It’s safe for me to go back to them, he said to himself. Safe in regards to them, safe period. Because I’ve thrown off the Titanian authority. Doctor Philipson is on Titan, Nats Katz was destroyed by the psycho-kinetic girl Mary Anne McClain, and the organization—which was subverted from the start—has been obliterated. I have nothing to fear. In fact I helped win; I played my part well in The Game.
He previewed his reception. There they would be, the members of Pretty Blue Fox, trickling in one by one from the various points on Earth at which the Titanians had summarily deposited them. The group re-formed, everyone back together; they would open a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey and a bottle of Canadian whiskey—
As he piloted his car toward California he could taste it, hear the voices, see the members of the group, now.
The celebration. Of their victory. Everyone was there.
Or was it everyone? Almost everyone, anyhow. That was good enough for him.
Tramping across the sand, the wasteland which was the Nevada Desert, Freya Garden Gaines knew that it would be a long time before she got back to the condominium apartment in Carmel.
And anyway, she thought to herself, what did it matter? What did she have to look forward to? The thoughts she had had as she floundered in the intermediate regions into which the Titanian Game-players had hurled them … I don’t repudiate those thoughts, she said to herself with envenomed bitterness. Pete has his pregnant mare, his wife Carol; he’ll never notice me again as long as I live.
In her pocket she found a strip of rabbit-paper; getting it out, she removed the wrapper and bit it. With the light cast by her cigarette lighter she examined it and then crumpled it up and violently flung it away from her. Nothing, she realized. And it’ll always be like this for me. It’s Pete’s fault; if he made it with that Carol Holt creature he could have made it with me. God knows we tried it enough times; it must have been several thousand. Evidently he just didn’t want to succeed.