The Player of Games (32 page)

Must
not?' Gurgeh said. 'I thought I'd done all you wanted. What else can I do?' 'Refuse to play the Emperor.' Gurgeh looked into the old apex's pale grey eyes, each set in a web of fine lines. They gazed just as calmly back. 'What's the problem, Hamin? I'm not a threat any more.' Hamin smoothed the fine material at the cuff of his robe. 'You know, Jernau Gurgeh, I do hate obsessions. They're so… blinding, yes?' He smiled. 'I am becoming worried for my Emperor, Gurgeh. I know how much he wants to prove he is rightfully on the throne, that he is worthy of the post he's held the last two years. I believe he will do just that, but I know that what he really wants - what he always did want - is to play Molsce and win. That, of course, isn't possible any more. The Emperor is dead, long live the Emperor; he rises from the flames… but I think he sees old Molsce in you, Jernau Gurgeh, and it is you he feels he must play, you he must beat; the alien, the man from the Culture, the
morat
, player-of-games. I am not sure that would be a good idea. It is not necessary. You will lose anyway, I feel certain, but… as I say; obsessions disturb me. It would be best for all concerned if you let it be known as soon as possible you will retire after this game.' 'And deprive Nicosar of the chance to beat me?' Gurgeh looked surprised and amused. 'Yes. Better he still feels there's something still to prove. It will do him no harm.' 'I'll think about it,' Gurgeh said. Hamin studied him for a moment. 'I hope you understand how frank I've been with you, Jernau Gurgeh. It would be unfortunate if such honesty went unacknowledged, and unrewarded.' Gurgeh nodded. 'Yes, I don't doubt it would.' A male servant at the door announced the game was about to recommence. 'Excuse me, rector,' Gurgeh said, rising. The old apex's gaze followed him. 'Duty calls.' 'Obey,' Hamin said. Gurgeh stopped, looking down at the wizened old creature on the far side of the table. Then he turned and left. Hamin gazed at the blank table-screen in front of him, as if absorbed in some fascinating, invisible game that only he could see.
Gurgeh won on the Board of Origin and the Board of Form. The ferocious struggle between Traff and Yomonul continued; first one edged ahead, then the other. Traff went into the Board of Becoming with a very slight lead over the older apex. Gurgeh was so far ahead he was almost invulnerable, able to relax in his strongholds and spectate upon the total war around him before heading out to mop up whatever was left of the exhausted victor's forces. It seemed the only fair - not to mention expedient - thing to do; let the lads have their fun, then impose order later and tidy the toys back in the box. Still no substitute for a real game, though. 'Are you pleased or displeased, Mr Gurgeh?' Star Marshal Yomonul came up to Gurgeh and asked him the question during a pause in the game while Traff consulted with the Adjudicator on a point of order. Gurgeh had been standing thinking, staring at the board, and hadn't noticed the imprisoned apex approach. He looked up in surprise to see the star marshal in front of him, his lined face looking out, faintly amused, from its titanium and carbon cage. Neither soldier had paid him any attention until now. 'At being left out?' Gurgeh said. The apex moved one rod-braced arm to indicate the board. 'Yes; to be winning so easily. Do you seek the victory or the challenge?' The apex's skeletal mask moved with each action of the jaw. 'I'd prefer both,' Gurgeh admitted. 'I have thought of joining in; as a third force, or on one side or the other… but this looks too much like a personal war.' The elderly apex grinned; the head-cage nodded easily. 'It is,' he said. 'You're doing very well as you are. I wouldn't change now, if I were you.' 'What about you?' Gurgeh asked. 'You seem to be getting the worst of it at the moment.' Yomonul smiled; the face mask flexed even for that small gesture. 'I'm having the time of my life. And I still have a few surprises lined up for the youngster, and a few tricks. But I feel a little guilty at letting you through so easily. You'll embarrass us all if you play Nicosar and win.' Gurgeh expressed surprise. 'You think I could?' 'No.' The apex's gesture was the more emphatic for being contained and amplified in its dark cage. 'Nicosar plays at his best when he has to, and at his best he will beat you. So long as he isn't too ambitious. No; he'll beat you, because you'll threaten him, and he will respect that. But - ah…' The star marshal turned as Traff strode across the board, moved a couple of pieces, and then bowed with exaggerated courtesy to Yomonul. The star marshal looked back at Gurgeh. 'I see it is my turn. Excuse me.' He returned to the fray. Perhaps one of the tricks Yomonul had mentioned was making Traff think his conversation with Gurgeh had been to enlist the Culture man's aid; for some time afterwards the younger soldier acted as though he was expecting to have to fight on two fronts. It gave Yomonul an edge. He scraped in ahead of Traff. Gurgeh won the match and the chance to play Nicosar. Hamin tried to talk to him in the corridor outside the game-hall, immediately after his victory, but Gurgeh just smiled and walked past.
Cinderbuds swayed all around them; the light wind made shushing noises in the golden canopy. The court, the game-players and their retinues sat on a high, steeply raked wooden structure itself almost the size of a small castle. Before the stand, in a large clearing in the cinderbud forest, was a long, narrow run; a double fence of stout timbers five metres or more high. This formed the central section of a sort of open corral, shaped like an hourglass and open to the forest at both ends. Nicosar and the higher-placed players sat at the front of the high wooden platform with a good view of the wooden funnel. At the back of the stand there were awninged areas where food was being prepared. Smells of roasting meat drifted over the stand and out into the forest. 'That'll have them frothing at the mouth,' Star Marshal Yomonul said, leaning over to Gurgeh with a whirring of servoes. They were sitting side by side, on the front rank of the platform, a little along from the Emperor. Both held a large projectile rifle, fastened to a supporting tripod in front of them. 'What will?' Gurgeh asked. 'The smell.' Yomonul grinned, gesturing behind them to the fires and grills. 'Roasted meat. Wind's carrying it their way. It'll drive them crazy.' 'Oh, great,' muttered Flere-Imsaho from near Gurgeh's feet. It had already tried to persuade Gurgeh not to take part in the hunt. Gurgeh ignored the machine and nodded. 'Of course,' he said. He hefted the rifle stock. The ancient weapon was single shot; a sliding bolt had to be operated to reload it. Each gun had slightly different rifling patterns, so that when the bullets were removed from the bodies of the animals, the marks on them would allow a score to be kept and heads and pelts to be allocated. 'You sure you've used one of these before?' Yomonul asked, grinning at him. The apex was in a good mood. In a few tens of days he would be released from the exoskeleton. Meanwhile, the Emperor had allowed the prison regimen to be relaxed; Yomonul could socialise, drink, and eat whatever he liked. Gurgeh nodded. 'I've shot guns,' he said. He'd never used a projectile gun, but there had been that day, years ago now, with Yay, in the desert. 'Bet you've never shot anything
live
before,' the drone said. Yomonul tapped the machine's casing with one carbon-shod foot. 'Quiet, thing,' he said. Flere-Imsaho tipped slowly up so that its bevelled brown front pointed up at Gurgeh. '"
Thing
"?' it said indignantly, in a sort of whispered screech. Gurgeh winked and put his finger to his lips. He and Yomonul grinned at each other. The hunt, as it was called, started with a blare of trumpets and the distant howling of the troshae. A line of males appeared from the forest and ran alongside the wooden funnel, beating the timbers with rods. The first troshae appeared, shadows striping along its flanks as it entered the clearing and ran into the wooden funnel. The people around Gurgeh murmured in anticipation. 'A big one,' Yomonul said appreciatively as the golden-black striped beast loped six-legged down the run. Clicks all around the platform announced people preparing to fire. Gurgeh lifted the stock of the rifle. Fastened to its tripod, the rifle was easier to handle in the harsh gravity than it would have been otherwise, as well as being limited in its field of fire; something the Emperor's ever watchful guards no doubt found reassuring. The troshae sprinted down the run, paws blurring on the dusty ground; people fired at it, filling the air with muffled cracking noises and puffs of grey smoke. White wood splinters spun off the run's timbers; puffs of dust burst from the ground. Yomonul sighted and fired; a chorus of shots burst out around Gurgeh. The guns were silenced, but all the same Gurgeh felt his ears close up a little, deadening the racket. He fired. The recoil took him by surprise; his bullet must have gone way over the animal's head. He looked down into the run. The animal was screaming. It tried to leap up the fence on the far side of the run, but was brought down in a hail of fire. It limped on a little further, dragging three legs and leaving a trail of blood behind it. Gurgeh heard another muffled report by his side, and the carnivore's head jerked suddenly to one side; it collapsed. A great cheer went up. A gate in the run was opened and some males scurried in to drag the body away. Yomonul was on his feet beside Gurgeh, acknowledging the cheers. He sat down again quickly, exoskeleton motors whirring, as the next animal appeared out of the forest and raced between the wooden walls. After the fourth troshae, several came at once, and in the confusion one scrambled up the timbers of the run and over the top; it started to chase some of the males waiting outside the run. A guard, on the ground at the foot of the stand, brought the animal down with a single laser-shot. In the mid-morning, when a great pile of the striped bodies had accumulated in the middle of the run and there was a danger some animals would climb out over the bodies of their predecessors, the hunt was stopped while males used hooks and hawsers and a couple of small tractors to clear the warm, blood-spattered debris. Somebody on the far side of the Emperor shot one of the males while they were working. There were some tuts, and a few drunken cheers. The Emperor fined the offender and told them if they did it again they'd find themselves running with the troshae. Everybody laughed. 'You're not firing, Gurgeh,' Yomonul said. He reckoned he'd killed another three animals by then. Gurgeh had begun to find the hunt a little pointless, and almost stopped firing. He kept missing, anyway. 'I'm not very good at this,' he said. 'Practice!' Yomonul laughed, slapping him on the back. The servo-amplified blow from the elated Star Marshal almost knocked the wind out of Gurgeh. Yomonul claimed another kill. He gave an excited shout and kicked Flere-Imsaho. 'Fetch!' he laughed. The drone rose slowly and with dignity from the floor. 'Jernau Gurgeh,' it said. 'I'm not putting up with any more of this. I'm going back to the castle. Do you mind?' 'Not at all.' 'Thank you. Enjoy your marksmanship.' It floated down and to the side, disappearing round the edge of the stand. Yomonul had it in his sights most of the way. 'You just let it go?' he asked Gurgeh, laughing. 'Glad to be rid of it,' Gurgeh told him. They broke for lunch. Nicosar congratulated Yomonul, saying how well he'd shot. Gurgeh sat with Yomonul at lunch, too, and went down on one knee as Nicosar's palanquin was brought up to their part of the table. Yomonul told the Emperor the exoskeleton helped steady his aim. Nicosar said it was the Emperor's pleasure that the device be removed soon, after the formal end of the games. Nicosar glanced at Gurgeh, but said nothing else; the AG palanquin lifted itself; the imperial guards nudged it further down the line of waiting people. After lunch, people returned to their seats and the hunt went on. There were other animals to hunt, and the first part of the short afternoon was spent shooting them, but the troshae came back later on. So far, only seven of the two hundred or so troshae released from the forest pens into the run had made it all the way through the wooden funnel and out the far end to escape into the forest. Even they were wounded, and would anyway be caught by the Incandescence. The earth in the wooden funnel in front of the shooting platform was dark with auburn blood. Gurgeh shot as the animals pounded down the sodden run, but aimed to just miss them, watching for the spatter of muddy ground in front of their noses as they tore, wounded and howling and panting, in front of him. He found the whole hunt somewhat distasteful but could not deny that the infectious excitement of the Azadians had some effect on him. Yomonul was obviously enjoying himself. The apex leant over as a large female troshae came running out of the forest with two small cubs. 'You need more practice, Gurgey,' he said. 'Don't you do any hunting at home?' The female and her cubs ran towards the wooden funnel. 'Not much,' Gurgeh admitted. Yomonul grunted, aimed at long range and fired. One of the cubs dropped. The female skidded, stopped, went back to it. The other cub ran on hesitantly. It mewled as bullets hit it. Yomonul reloaded. 'I was surprised to see you here at all,' he said. The female, stung by a bullet in a rear leg, swung growling away from the dead cub and charged forward again, roaring, at the tottering, wounded cub. 'I wanted to show I wasn't squeamish,' Gurgeh said, watching the second cub's head jerk up and the beast fall at the feet of its mother. 'And I have hunted-' He was going to use the word 'Azad', which meant machine and animal; any organism or system, and he turned to Yomonul with a small smile to say this, but when he looked at the apex he could see there was something wrong. Yomonul was shaking. He sat clutching his gun, turned half towards Gurgeh, face quivering in its dark cage, skin white and covered in sweat, eyes bulging. Gurgeh went to put his hand on the strut of the Star Marshal's forearm, instinctively offering support. It was as though something broke inside the apex. Yomonul's gun swung right round, snapping the supporting tripod; the bulky silencer pointed straight at Gurgeh's forehead. Gurgeh had a fleeting, vivid impression of Yomonul's face; jaw clamped shut, blood trickling over his chin, eyes staring, a tic working furiously on the side of his face. Gurgeh ducked; the gun fired somewhere over his head and he heard a scream as he fell out of his seat, rolling past his own gun's tripod. Before he could get up, Gurgeh was kicked in the back. He turned over to see Yomonul above him, swaying crazily against the background of shocked, pale faces behind him. He was struggling with the rifle bolt, reloading. One foot lashed out again, thudding into Gurgeh's ribs; he jerked back, trying to absorb the blow, and fell over the front of the platform. He saw wooden slats whirling, cinderbuds revolving, then he struck, crashing into a male animal handler standing just before the run. They each thudded to the ground, winded. Gurgeh looked up and saw Yomonul on the platform, exoskeleton glinting dully in the sunlight, raising the rifle and sighting on him. Two apices came up behind Yomonul, arms out to grasp him. Without even glancing back, Yomonul swung his arms flashing round behind him; a hand smashed into the chest of one apex; the rifle slammed into the face of the other. Both collapsed; the carbon-ribbed arms darted back and Yomonul steadied the gun again, aiming at Gurgeh. Gurgeh was on his feet, diving away. The shot hit the still winded male lying behind him. Gurgeh stumbled for the wooden doors leading under the high platform; shouts came from the platform as Yomonul jumped down, landing between Gurgeh and the doors; the Star Marshal reloaded the gun as he hit the ground on his feet, the exoskeleton easily absorbing the shock of landing. Gurgeh almost fell as he turned, feet skidding on the blood-spattered earth. He pushed himself off the ground, to run between the edge of the wooden fence and the platform edge. A uniformed guard with a CREW rifle stood in his way, looking uncertainly up at the platform. Gurgeh went to run past him, ducking as he did so. Still a few metres in front of Gurgeh, the guard started to put one hand out and unhitch the laser from his shoulder. A look of almost comic surprise appeared on his flat face, an instant before one side of his chest burst open and he spun round into Gurgeh's path, knocking him over. Gurgeh rolled again, clattering over the dead guard. He sat up. Yomonul was ten metres away, running awkwardly towards him, reloading. The guard's rifle was at Gurgeh's feet. He reached out, grabbed it, aimed at Yomonul and fired. The Star Marshal ducked, but Gurgeh was still allowing for recoil after a morning shooting the projectile rifle. The laser-shot slammed into Yomonul's face; the apex's head blew apart. Yomonul didn't stop. He didn't even slow down; the running figure, head-cage almost empty, trailing strips of flesh and splintered bone behind it like pennants, neck spouting blood, speeded up; it ran faster towards him, and less awkwardly. It aimed the rifle straight at Gurgeh's head. Gurgeh froze, stunned. Too late, he started to sight the CREW gun again, and began struggling to get up. The headless exoskeleton was three metres away; he stared into the silencer's black mouth and he knew he was dead. But the bizarre figure hesitated, empty headshell jerking upwards, and the gun wavered. Something crashed into Gurgeh - from the back, he realised, surprised, as everything went dark; from the