“I…” Gurgeh sighed, looked at his feet. “… yes.” He glanced at the circle of white face in front of him. “I’m sorry; I mean that it’s… almost over.” He heard his voice drop, and could not bear to look at Nicosar.
“Well,” the Emperor said quietly, “we shall see. I may have a surprise for you in the morning.”
Gurgeh was startled. The hazily pale face in front of him was too vague for the expression to be read, but could Nicosar be serious? Surely the apex could see his position was hopeless; had he seen something Gurgeh hadn’t? At once he started to worry. Had he been too certain? Nobody else had noticed anything, not even the ship; what if he was wrong? He wanted to see the board again, but even the imperfectly detailed image of it he still carried in his mind was accurate enough to show how their respective fortunes stood; Nicosar’s defeat was implicit, but certain. He was sure there was no way out for the Emperor; the game must be over.
“Tell me something, Gurgeh,” Nicosar said evenly. The white circle faced him again. “How long were you really learning the game for?”
“We told you the truth; two years. Intensively, but—”
“Don’t lie to me, Gurgeh. There’s no point anymore.”
“Nicosar; I wouldn’t lie to you.”
The moon-face shook slowly. “Whatever you want.” The Emperor was silent for a few moments. “You must be very proud of your Culture.”
He pronounced the last word with a distaste Gurgeh might have found comical if it hadn’t been so obviously sincere.
“Pride?” he said. “I don’t know. I didn’t make it; I just happened to be born into it, I—”
“Don’t be simple, Gurgeh. I mean the pride of being part of something. The pride of representing your people. Are you going to tell me you don’t feel that?”
“I… some, perhaps yes… but I’m not here as a champion, Nicosar. I’m not representing anything except myself. I’m here to play the game, that’s all.”
“That’s all,” Nicosar repeated quietly. “Well, I suppose we must say that you’ve played it well.” Gurgeh wished he could see the apex’s face. Had his voice quivered? Was that a tremor in his voice?
“Thank you. But half the credit for this game is yours… more than half, because you set—”
“I don’t want your praise!” Nicosar lashed out with one hand, striking Gurgeh across the mouth. The heavy rings raked the man’s cheek and lips.
Gurgeh rocked back, stunned, dizzy with shock. Nicosar jumped up and went to the parapet, hands like claws on the dark stone. Gurgeh touched his blooded face. His hand was trembling.
“You disgust me, Morat Gurgeh,” Nicosar said to the red glow in the west. “Your blind, insipid morality can’t even account for your own success here, and you treat this battle-game like some filthy dance. It is there to be fought and struggled against, and you’ve attempted to seduce it. You’ve perverted it; replaced our holy witnessing with your own foul pornography… you’ve soiled it… male.”
Gurgeh dabbed at the blood on his lips. He felt dizzy, head swimming. “That… that may be how you see it, Nicosar.” He swallowed some of the thick, salty blood. “I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to—”
“Fair?” the Emperor shouted, coming to stand over Gurgeh, blocking the view of the distant fire. “Why does anything have to be fair? Is life fair?” He reached down and took Gurgeh by the hair, shaking his head. “Is it? Is it?”
Gurgeh let the apex shake him. The Emperor let go of his hair after a moment, holding his hand as though he’d touched something dirty. Gurgeh cleared his throat. “No, life is not fair. Not intrinsically.”
The apex turned away in exasperation, clutching again at the curled stone top of the battlements. “It’s something we can try to make it, though,” Gurgeh continued. “A goal we can aim for. You can choose to do so, or not. We have. I’m sorry you find us so repulsive for that.”
“ ‘Repulsive’ is barely adequate for what I feel for your precious Culture, Gurgeh. I’m not sure I possess the words to explain to you what I feel for your… Culture. You know no glory, no pride, no worship. You have power; I’ve seen that; I know what you can do… but you’re still impotent. You always will be. The meek, the pathetic, the frightened and cowed… they can only last so long, no matter how terrible and awesome the machines they crawl around within. In the end you will fall; all your glittering machinery won’t save you. The strong survive. That’s what life teaches us, Gurgeh, that’s what the game shows us. Struggle to prevail; fight to prove worth. These are no hollow phrases; they are truth!”
Gurgeh watched the pale hands grasping the dark stone. What could he say to this apex? Were they to argue metaphysics, here, now, with the imperfect tool of language, when they’d spent the last ten days devising the most perfect image of their competing philosophies they were capable of expressing, probably in any form?
What, anyway, was he to say? That intelligence could surpass and excel the blind force of evolution, with its emphasis on mutation, struggle and death? That conscious cooperation was more efficient than feral competition? That Azad could be so much more than a mere battle, if it was used to articulate, to communicate, to define…? He’d done all that, said all that, and said it better than he ever could now.
“You have not won, Gurgeh,” Nicosar said quietly, voice harsh, almost croaking. “Your kind will never win.” He turned back, looking down at him. “You poor, pathetic male. You play, but you don’t understand any of this, do you?”
Gurgeh heard what sounded like genuine pity in the apex’s voice. “I think you’ve already decided that I don’t,” he told Nicosar.
The Emperor laughed, turning back to the distant reflection of the continent-wide fire still below the horizon. The sound died in a sort of cough. He waved one hand at Gurgeh. “Your sort never will understand. You’ll only be used.” He shook his head in the darkness. “Go back to your room, morat. I’ll see you in the morning.” The moon-face stared toward the horizon and the ruddy glare rubbed on the undersurface of the clouds. “The fire should be here by then.”
Gurgeh waited a moment. It was as though he’d already gone; he felt dismissed, forgotten. Even Nicosar’s last words had sounded as if they weren’t really meant for Gurgeh at all.
The man rose quietly and went back down through the dimly lit tower. The two guards stood impassively outside the door at the tower’s foot. Gurgeh looked up to the top of the tower, and saw Nicosar there on the battlements, flat pale face looking out toward the approaching fire, white hands clutching at cold stone. The man watched for a few seconds, then turned and left, going down through the corridors and halls where the imperial guards prowled, sending everybody to their rooms and locking the doors, watching all the stairs and elevators, and turning on all the lights so that the silent castle burned in the night, like some great stone ship on a darkly golden sea.
Flere-Imsaho was flicking through the broadcast channels when Gurgeh got back to his room. It asked him what all the fuss was about in the castle. He told it.
“Can’t be that bad,” the drone said, with a wobble-shrug. It looked back at the screen. “They aren’t playing martial music. No outgoing communications possible though. What happened to your mouth?”
“I fell.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Can we contact the ship?”
“Of course.”
“Tell it to power up. We might need it.”
“My, you’re getting cautious. All right.”
He went to bed, but lay awake, listening to the swelling roar of the wind.
At the top of the high tower, the apex watched the horizon for several hours, seemingly locked into the stone like a pale statue, or a small tree born of an errant seed. The wind from the east freshened, tugging at the stationary figure’s dark clothes and howling round the dark-bright castle, tearing through the canopy of swaying cinderbuds with a noise like the sea.
The dawn came up. It lit the clouds first, then touc
hed the edge of clear horizon in the east with gold. At the same time, in the black fastness of the west where the edge of the land glowed red, a sudden glint of bright, burning orange-yellow appeared, to waver and hesitate and disappear, then return, and brighten, and spread.
The figure on the tower drew back from that widening breach in the red-black sky, and—glancing briefly behind him, at the dawn—swayed uncertainly for a moment, as though caught between the rival currents of light flowing from each bright horizon.
Two guards came to the room. They unlocked the door and told Gurgeh he and the machine were required in the prow-hall. Gurgeh was dressed in his Azad robes. The guards told him it was the Emperor’s pleasure that they abandon the statutory robes for this morning’s play. Gurgeh looked at Flere-Imsaho, and went to change. He put on a fresh shirt, and the trous and light jacket he’d worn the previous night.
“So, I’m getting a chance to spectate at last; what a treat,” Flere-Imsaho said as they headed for the game-hall. Gurgeh said nothing. Guards were escorting groups of people from various parts of the castle. Outside, beyond already shuttered doors and windows, the wind howled.
Gurgeh hadn’t felt like breakfast. The ship had been in contact that morning, to congratulate him. It had finally seen. In fact, it thought there was a way out for Nicosar, but only to a draw. And no human brain could handle the play required. It had resumed its high-speed holding pattern, ready to come in the moment it sensed anything wrong. It watched through Flere-Imsaho’s eyes.
When they got to the castle’s prow-hall and the Board of Becoming, Nicosar was already there. The apex wore the uniform of the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Guard, a severe, subtly menacing set of clothes complete with ceremonial sword. Gurgeh felt quite dowdy in his old jacket. The prow-hall was almost full. People, escorted by the ubiquitous guards, were still filing into the tiered seats. Nicosar ignored Gurgeh; the apex was talking to an officer of the Guard.
“Hamin!” Gurgeh said, going over to where the old apex sat, in the front row of seats, his tiny, twisted body crumpled and hopeless between two burly guards. His face was shriveled and yellow. One of the guards put out his hand to stop Gurgeh coming any closer. He stood in front of the bench, squatting to look into the old rector’s wrinkled face. “Hamin; can you hear me?” He thought, again, absurdly, that the apex was dead, then the small eyes flickered, and one opened, yellow-red and sticky with crystalline secretions. The shrunken-looking head moved a little. “Gurgeh…”
The eye closed, the head nodded. Gurgeh felt a hand on his sleeve, and he was led to his seat at the edge of the board.
The prow-hall’s balcony windows were closed, the panes rattling in their metal frames, but the fire shutters had not been lowered. Outside, beneath a leaden sky, the tall cinder-buds shook in the gale, and the noise of the wind formed a bass background to the subdued conversations of the shuffling people still finding their places in the great hall.
“Shouldn’t they have put the shutters down?” Gurgeh asked the drone. He sat in the stoolseat. Flere-Imsaho floated, buzzing and crackling, behind him. The Adjudicator and his helpers were checking the positions of the pieces.
“Yes,” Flere-Imsaho said. “The fire’s less than two hours away. They can drop the shutters in the last few minutes if they have to, but they don’t usually wait that long. I’d watch it, Gurgeh. Legally, the Emperor isn’t allowed to call on the physical option at this stage, but there’s something funny going on. I can sense it.”
Gurgeh wanted to say something cutting about the drone’s senses, but his stomach was churning, and he felt something was wrong, too. He looked over at the bench where Hamin sat. The withered apex hadn’t moved. His eyes were still closed.
“Something else,” Flere-Imsaho said.
“What?”
“There’s some sort of extra gear up there, on the ceiling.”
Gurgeh glanced up without making it too obvious. The jumble of ECM and screening equipment looked much as it always had, but then he’d never inspected it very closely. “What sort of gear?” he asked.
“Gear that is worryingly opaque to my senses, which it shouldn’t be. And that Guards colonel’s wired with an optic-remote mike.”
“The officer talking to Nicosar?”
“Yes. Isn’t that against the rules?”
“Supposed to be.”
“Want to raise it with the Adjudicator?”
The Adjudicator was standing at the edge of the board, between two burly guards. He looked frightened and grim. When his gaze fell on Gurgeh, it seemed to go straight through him. “I have a feeling,” Gurgeh whispered, “it wouldn’t do any good.”
“Me too. Want me to get the ship to come in?”
“Can it get here before the fire?”
“Just.”
Gurgeh didn’t have to think too long. “Do it,” he said.
“Signal sent. You remember the drill with the implant?”
“Vividly.”
“Great,” Flere-Imsaho said sourly. “A high-speed displace from a hostile environment with some gray-area effector gear around. Just what I need.”
The hall was full, the doors were closed. The Adjudicator glanced resentfully over at the Guards colonel standing near Nicosar. The officer gave the briefest of nods. The Adjudicator announced the recommencement of the game.
Nicosar made a couple of inconsequential moves. Gurgeh couldn’t see what the Emperor was aiming at. He must be trying to do something, but what? It didn’t appear to have anything to do with winning the game. He tried to catch Nicosar’s eye, but the apex refused to look at him. Gurgeh rubbed his cut lip and cheek. I’m invisible, he thought.
The cinderbuds swayed and shook in the storm outside; their leaves had spread to their maximum extent, and—whipped by the gale—they looked indistinct and merged, like one huge dull yellow organism quivering and poised beyond the castle walls. Gurgeh could sense people in the hall moving restlessly, muttering to each other, glancing at the still unshuttered windows. The guards stayed at the hall’s exits, guns ready.
Nicosar made certain moves, placing element-cards in particular positions. Gurgeh still couldn’t see what the point of all this was. The noise of the storm beyond the shaking windows was enough to all but drown the voices of the people in the hall. The smell of the cinderbuds’ volatile saps and juices pervaded the air, and some dry shreds of their leaves had found their way in to the hall somehow, to soar and float and curl on currents of air inside the great hall.
High in the stone-dark sky beyond the windows, a burning orange glow lit up the clouds. Gurgeh began to sweat; he walked over the board, made some replying moves, attempting to draw Nicosar out. He heard somebody in the observers’ gallery crying out, and then being quieted. The guards stood silently, watchfully, at the doors and around the board. The Guards colonel Nicosar had been talking to earlier stood near the Emperor. As he went back to his stoolseat, Gurgeh thought he saw tears on the officer’s cheeks.
Nicosar had been sitting. Now he stood, and, taking four element-cards, strode to the center of the patterned terrain.
Gurgeh wanted to shout out or leap up; something; anything. But he felt rooted, transfixed. The guards in the room had tensed, the Emperor’s hands were visibly shaking. The storm outside whipped the cinderbuds like something conscious and spiteful; a spear of orange leapt ponderously above the tops of the plants, writhed briefly against the wall of darkness behind it, then sank slowly out of sight.
“Oh dear holy shit,” Flere-Imsaho whispered. “That’s only five minutes away.”
“What?” Gurgeh glanced at the machine.
“Five minutes,” the drone said, with a realistic gulp. “It ought to be nearly an hour off. It can’t have got here this quick. They’ve started a new fire-front.”
Gurgeh closed his eyes. He felt the tiny lump under his paper-dry tongue. “The ship?” he said, opening his eyes again.
The drone was silent for seconds. “… No chance,” it said
, voice flat, resigned.
Nicosar stooped. He placed a fire-card on a water-symbol already on the board, in a fold in the high terrain. The Guards colonel turned his head fractionally to one side, mouth moving, as though blowing some speck of dust off his uniform’s high collar.
Nicosar stood up, looking around, appeared to listen for something, but heard only the howling noise of the storm.
“I just registered an infrasound pulse,” Flere-Imsaho said. “That was an explosion, a klick to north. The viaduct.”
Gurgeh watched helplessly as Nicosar walked slowly to another position on the board and placed one card on another; fire on air. The Colonel talked into the mike near his shoulder again. The castle shook; a series of concussions shuddered through the hall.
The pieces on the board juddered; people stood up, started shouting. The glass panes cracked in their frames, crashing to the flagstones, letting the shrieking voice of the burning gale into the hall in a hail of fluttering leaves. A line of flames burst out over the tops of the trees, filling the base of the boiling black horizon with fire.
The next fire-card was placed; on earth. The castle seemed to shift under Gurgeh. The wind tore in through windows, rolling lighter pieces across the board like some absurd and unstoppable invasion; it whipped at the robes of the Adjudicator and his officials. People were piling out of the galleries, falling over each other to get to the exits, where the guards had drawn their guns.
The sky was full of fire.
Nicosar looked at Gurgeh as he placed the final fire-card, on the ghost-element, Life.
“This is looking worse and worse all—grrreeeeee!” Flere-Imsaho said, voice breaking, screeching. Gurgeh whirled round to see the bulky machine trembling in midair, surrounded by a bright aura of green fire.
The guards started shooting. The doors from the hall were thrown open and the people piled through, but in the hall the guards were suddenly all over the board itself, firing up into the galleries and benches, blasting laser-fire among the escaping crowds, felling the screaming, struggling apices, females and males in a storm of flickering light and shattering detonations.