A Game of Universe

A Game of Universe

Copyright © 1997 by Eric S. Nylund. All rights reserved.

Second Edition: March 2015

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96438

ISBN: 0-380-78541-2

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

To Joseph Campbell who led me to the lair of the Dragon of Not. To Joan Wrin who set my feet on the path to Mount Purgatorio. And to the Lady at the end of my journey—Syne.

1

C
heaters were burned here. It happened the last time we came to Golden City. Two bouncers stopped the floor show and dragged the guy onstage. Right there with spotlights reflecting off their metallic skins, and the genetically modified feather girls watching, they torched him. It might happen to me tonight. The gambler was cheating—and with borrowed money.

He made my head look up from his cards, and massaged the aching neck muscles we shared. A column covered with triangular tiles of silver and onyx stood to my right. Eight reflected faces regarded me. It was a face that had been altered so many times I didn’t recognize the long black hair, or the splash of freckles across a wide nose, or the green eyes dilated in the darkness. It was a face I did not command. There were others within me, parasites. No, to be fair, their existence was my doing. I had absorbed their souls.

You did not absorb their souls,
the persona I called the psychologist remarked.
Mysticism has little to do with what I have diagnosed as a self-induced multiple personality disorder; however, since you have duplicated eight neural matrices into a non-fragmentary hierarchy, I am uncertain precisely how to treat your condition.

Then don’t try,
I said.

I assure you it is no trouble. Your case intrigues me. It is yet another example of what barbarians believe to be magic, but in reality is an amazingly sophisticated piece of psychology.

Fantastic. But you’re in no position to write me up in
The Journal of Clinical Psychology.
You’re dead. Remember?

He ignored my comment and said,
Had you been taught proper mental control rather than this occultism, I am certain your mind would be coherent. But first, tell me how long it has been since you last possessed your body?

It had been seven days, but I said nothing. The psychologist became unbearably smug when he analyzed me. Instead, I returned to my vigil, and waited for an opportunity to seize my body back.

Normally, my ego had the strength to withstand my extra personas. There were times however, when their fascinations lent them the strength to wrest control from me.

My body stood from the velvet stool and stretched. We had been here for six hours, long enough for the smell of the place, sweat, exotic perfume, and expensive rum, to get under my skin.

Smoke drifted through the casino in ever-changing currents, around columns, over the Universe tables, churned by the spinning roulette spheres—vortices in midair—that were sucked in, then exhaled by the crowds of tourists determined to lose their money.

The gambler had my body tonight. His compulsion to wager, and cheat, gave him the stamina to stand up to the rest of us, and maintain his count of the one hundred twenty-eight-card Universe deck. No one knew what he was up to, yet.

Across the casino floor, the bone pit caught his attention. It was a high stakes game by the size of the crowd. The pitcher shook three dice in his hand. He heaved the cubes with all his strength, then watched them bounce at crazy angles through the uneven gravity field. One came up a blank and his face collapsed. The other two rolled into a jackpot orbit! Lights exploded and sirens wailed. The cocktail waitresses on either side kissed him.

My most recent persona, Omar, thought the gambler sufficiently distracted and extended his will. He had a vested interest at Golden City, too.

They struggled, ego grappled with ego, but the gambler’s addiction crushed Omar’s ambition. The gambler kept my body.

Omar, like me, was a muse, what some called a sorcerer—what the psychologist called a primitive. And like me, Omar killed for a living.

You should have taken my deal,
Omar said.

I think not. The Corporation sent me to check on your freelancing. If I accepted, they would have sent two operatives. One for you and one for me.

Destiny knocks but a single time. You pass up the contract of a lifetime. The man who owns this place will pay us a fortune. My offer of a sixty-forty split is still open.

Omar hadn’t quite figured out he was dead.
Who said I was passing it up?

What do you mean?
he demanded.

I have your invitation. I know the code. I’ll take your place.

That’s illegal.

So it is.

A week ago, I stole Omar’s mind for the mnemonic lore within. His ambitions caught me off guard. He had a freelancing job that would make him a rich man, or so he thought. He hijacked my body, brought it here, and went about his business. Practical man, that Omar.

He almost got away with it, too; a single mistake he made: strolling through the casino past the Universe tables. That’s when the gambler woke up and took control from
him.

A cocktail waitress came and left a frosty glass filled with a fluorescing yellow liquid and a pink paper umbrella for the gambler. He took a sip: tequila, slushy ice, lime, and the tang of sea salt. The gambler set it aside, squeezed the bridge of my nose, and pretended to be as stoned as the other tourists.

Omar struggled again for control, a futile gesture. The gambler squashed the attempt.
Just a few more hands,
he insisted.
I’m almost to the end of the deck.

He commanded my body to sit, rubbed his sweaty palms on the green felt of the table, then smiled apologetically at the dealer. Her glare told him to forget any ideas of drinks together later, which was a shame, for she had lovely brown eyes. She was a handsome girl with high cheekbones and fingers nimble enough to cheat the tourists. On the outer corner of either eye were triangle-cut sapphires, the mark of a full-apprentice card dealer. The gambler specifically sought a dealer of her rank, since a master-dealer would have immediately known what he was up to, and the junior apprentices were monitored too closely.

We had the table to ourselves.

There was one more nova in this deck, and that worried the gambler because he held two of them already. Two novas were a good hand, three nearly unbeatable, so he discarded both exploding stars, increased his bet by five, and told her, “Two, please.”

She flicked her wrist and a pair of magnetically repelled cards skimmed to his waiting fingers. He picked them up with great care: a fragment of the celestial dragon, all gold and ebony scales, and a brilliant quasar wearing a halo of silver (that card was hot to the touch). These he added to the remainder of his hand: an ice comet with diamond dust tail; a gas giant; and two moons, one volcanic, sulfurous yellow, the other covered with ivory clouds, lustrous like a pearl. The gambler did a quick count and determined the odds to be greatly in the house’s favor. Precisely what he wanted.

“When do you finish your shift?” he asked her. “There’s a game of nonlinear roulette tonight in the Fantastica Lounge. Maybe you and I could go as a team?”

“I’m sorry sir,” she replied, “but fraternization with our customers is prohibited. It compromises the integrity of the game.” She didn’t even flash him one of those fake smiles the staff had to give when propositioned. Then again, with a line like that, what did he expect?

Celeste whispered to me,
Shall I suggest a line to our clumsy friend so he can seduce her?
Celeste had been an imperial geisha to the Tun Mi Lung Empire, mistress-class, and a spy. There was a time when I cared for her. I wanted to believe her loyalty to her emperor had forced her hand when she tried to murder me. Not so. When I absorbed her soul I learned what she truly was: treachery and lust unsatisfied.

We have enough problems without an unscheduled orgy,
I warned her.
Be good.

“Is that your bet sir?” the dealer inquired.

“Yes,” the gambler answered. “I call.”

The dealer reversed the magnetic field of the table and our card plates turned over. She had a stellar cluster: two red giants and a white dwarf, plus three planets. It easily beat his incomplete system.

The end game tone sounded, and the winning cards came to life. Three stars blazed above the table; the red giants smoldered as embers would, lumbering about one another, while the white dwarf traced a figure-eight orbit between them—a lady dancing with her clumsy brothers. The image stayed just long enough for me to feel the suns’ warmth upon my face, then they collapsed back into cards.

The gambler sighed, pretending to be surprised at yet another loss. Now, if he counted correctly (never an absolute certainly with a deck of one hundred and twenty-eight cards), there were twenty-three left in the deck. Twelve of which were dragons, and two, the elusive head-biting-tail segments.

You have had enough opportunity,
Omar said.
Let me take over. The job I have will profit us more than this game.

Have patience,
the gambler told him.
The next hand is the one.

To win, the gambler needed the cooperation of our dealer. She did have the option to reshuffle and ruin everything. But would she? Maybe not. He had been careful to lose all evening, careful to look like one unlucky tourist among thousands. I had to admit he was good at it, too. He kept my face molded in the appropriate hopeful expression, and placed the minimum wager in the betting circle, a single, then pretended to count his pathetic stack of chips.

The dealer didn’t reshuffle, bless her heart.

Six card plates glided over the felt to him: three sections of the dragon; a head-eating-tail piece, all curved teeth and one eye; a supernova with explosions of white brilliance and ruby; and a vacuum, frigid empty black (and cold to the touch).

He pulled the supernova and vacuum from his hand and set them aside.

“Cards sir?” the dealer inquired.

“Yes, I’ll take—”

Wait!
the psychologist cried.
She suspects.

Impossible,
the gambler thought.
How could she?

Unknown. I predict, however, she shall use the table’s reader to view our discards. Exercise caution.

If she saw his discards, she might as well see his hand, for no one threw away a supernova on the first pass unless they were collecting dragons. She might even guess he had been counting cards.

The gambler frowned, this time for real, then added one of his dragons to the supernova and vacuum—there was no other way to fool her. Apprehension flooded my stomach, burning acid and adrenaline.

“Three cards,” he said.

“And the dealer takes…” She peered into the table’s reader, scanning the cards just as the psychologist predicted. She chewed on her lower lip, puzzled by the supernova and the dragon together, but she didn’t figure it out. “The dealer takes two,” she said, then collected his discards and tossed them down the disposal slot. “Bets before cards please.”

It was time. From his tuxedo vest, he removed an iridium chip the shape of the casino’s seal, a seven-pointed star. He set this fortune into the betting circle.

“One hundred thousand is my wager.”

Her brown eyes went wide and her eyebrows arched in surprise. It was too late though. Once she eliminated the discards from the table, the hand had to continue; it was a rule. Her wide eyes narrowed to slits, angry, then relaxed. She passed her hand over the comlink, summoning the pit boss, and said, “If you don’t mind sir, I must take a fifteen minute break. Casino regulations.”

“I understand completely,” the gambler said. Her replacement would be a master-dealer, one of the best in the joint. The game began for real.

The master-dealer came immediately, materializing from the shadows and smoke that filled this corner of the casino. His forehead was scarred by worry lines, the skin under his eyes ringed black, and when he saw the hundred thousand chip, he wrinkled his lipless mouth into a scowl. His insignia was a single diamond, about three carats worth, implanted in the outer corner of his left eye. Built into the jewel were thermal sensors that detected the blush response of a liar, a link to the casino’s computer to track the cards in a working deck, and other technologies I could only guess at to enhance his skills.

Our first dealer stepped aside and whispered to him. His glare never moved from me as she explained.

“Who are you?” he asked, neither demanding nor being polite.

We answered, “Germain,” and casually set my right hand on the table. About my wrist wound a copper band designed to scramble probes and divinations. It would counter his diamond.

He stared off into blank space for a moment—a quick scan for illegal devices on my body—and his frown deepened. He had detected nothing. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that this must be your last hand at the Golden City tonight, Mister Germain.”

“One game is all I have time for. I’m expected in the Turquoise Room soon.”

The master-dealer reappraised the gambler, then nodded. “The Turquoise Room, of course.”

Why did you speak?
Omar demanded.
Now everyone will know of our job.

Including the dealer and the casino manager,
the gambler replied.
If we are the owner’s guest, they may play this hand without stacking the deck. And odds are I’ll be able to keep my winnings. A rare event.

That’s how the gambler originally met his demise. He won too much, too many times, from the same source. Hit a jackpot once, and a casino chalks it off to good public relations. The tourists loved to see it—usually doubled the profits for the evening—but win over and over, or worse, win big without giving the casino a chance to recoup, and someone like me gets hired.

“I believe you owe me three cards?”

“So I do,” he admitted. With his index finger, he slid the top cards from the deck and pushed them to the gambler.

There was a minuscule wobble to the gliding cards when they came close to his right hand, the hand with the obscuring bracelet. The gambler hastily scooped them up: a crimson nebula and two more sections of the dragon. He thought,
Allowing the chance of the dealer to get dragons from the deck, and if my count is accurate, then three of the remaining six cards are dragons. Even money to make the wyrm.

The master-dealer looked at his hand, gave a sideways glance to the remaining cards in the deck, pondered a moment, then his mouth cracked into a ghoulish grin. “The dealer takes six,” he said.

Six cards finished the deck and took our dragons! He’d need a new deck to finish our hand. The gambler’s odds suddenly dropped from an even split, to less than one in seven (assuming this dealer didn’t try to deal off the bottom).