The Game-Players Of Titan Part 18

"But their organization," Mutreaux said. "It's abolished. Mary Anne and I are the only ones remaining. I couldn't believe it when I saw her destroy Rothman; he was the pivot of the organization's power." He now bent down beside Rothman's body, touching it.

"What's the wisest thing to do now?" Joe Schilling said to Pete. "We can't pursue them to t.i.tan, can we?" He did not want to face the Game-players of t.i.tan again. And yet- Pete said, "We'd better bring in E.B. Black. It's the only thing I can think of at this point that might help. Otherwise, we're finished."

"We can trust Black, can we?" Mutreaux said.

Schilling said, "Doctor Philipson implied that we could." He hesitated. "Yes, I vote we take the chance."

"So do I," Pete said, and Mutreaux, after a pause, brusquely nodded. "What about you, Mary?" Pete turned to the girl, who still sat curled up in a rigid, stricken ball.

"I don't know," she said, finally. "I don't know who to believe in or trust anymore; I don't even know about myself."

"It's got to be done," Joe Schilling said to Pete. "In my opinion, anyhow. He or it is looking for you; he's with Carol. If he's not reliable-" Schilling broke off and scowled.

"Then he's got Carol," Pete agreed, stonily.

"Yes." Schilling nodded.

Pete said, "Call him. From here."

Together, they went outside to the McClains' parked car. Joe Schilling placed the call to the apartment in San Rafael. If we're making a mistake, Joe Schilling thought, it probably means Carol's death and the death of their baby. I wonder which it is? he asked himself. A boy or a girl? They have those tests now; they can tell after the third week. Pete, of course, would accept either. He smiled a little.

Pete said tensely, "I've got him." On the screen the image of a vug formed, and Joe Schilling reflected that it looked-to him at least-like any other vug. This is what Doctor Philipson really looks like, he knew. What Pete saw. And he thought he was hallucinating.

"Where are you, Mr. Garden?" the vug's query came to them from the speaker. "I see you have Mr. Schilling there with you. What do you require from the Coast police authority? We are ready to dispatch a ship when and where you tell us."

"We're coming back," Pete said. "We don't need any ship. How is Carol?"

"Mrs. Garden is anxiously concerned, but physically in satisfactory condition."

"There are nine dead vugs here," Joe Schilling said.

E.B. Black said instantly, "Of the Wa Pei Nan? The extremist party?"

"Yes," Schilling said. "One returned to t.i.tan; he had been here a Doctor E.R. Philipson of Pocatello, Idaho. You know, the well-known psychiatrist. We urge you to take his clinic at once; there could be others entrenched there."

"We will shortly do that," E.B. Black promised. "Are the killers of my colleague, Wade Hawthorne, among the dead?"

"Yes," Joe Schilling said.

"A relief," E.B. Black said. "Give us your location and we will send someone out to undertake whatever dispositional ch.o.r.es are necessary."

Pete gave him the information.

"That's that," Schilling said, as the screen faded. He did not know how to feel. Had they done the right thing? We will know before very long, he said to himself. Together, they walked back to the motel room, neither of them saying anything.

"If they get us," Pete said, pausing at the door of the room, "I still say we did the best we could. You can't know everything. This is all-" He gestured. "Blurred and twisting, people and things merging back and forth into each other. Maybe I haven't recovered from last night."

Joe Schilling said, "Pete, I saw the Game-players of t.i.tan. I saw the Game-players of t.i.tan. It was enough." It was enough."

"What should we do?" Pete said.

"Get Pretty Blue Fox back into being."

"And then what?"

Joe Schilling said, "Play."

"Against?"

"The t.i.tanian Game-players," Joe Schilling said. "We have to; they're not going to give us any choice."

Together, they re-entered the motel room.

As they flew back to San Francisco, Mary Anne said faintly, "I don't feel their control over me as strongly as I did. It's waned."

Mutreaux glanced at her. "Let's hope so." He looked utterly tired. "I preview," he said to Pete Garden, "your efforts to get your group restored. Want to know the outcome?"

"Yes," Pete said.

"The police will grant it. By tonight you'll be a legal Game-playing body again, as before. You will meet at your condominium apartment in Carmel and plan your strategy. At this point there is a division into parallel futures. They hinge on a disputed fact. Whether your group permits you to bring Mary Anne McClain in as a new Game-playing Bindman."

"What are the two futures branching from that?" Pete asked.

"I can see the one without her very clearly. Let's simply say it's not good. The other-it's blurred because Mary is a variable and can't be previewed within causal frameworks; she introduces the acausal principle of synchronicity." Mutreaux was silent a moment. "I think, on the basis of what I preview, I would advise you to make the attempt to bring her into the group. Even though it's illegal." Even though it's illegal."

"That's right," Joe Schilling said, nodding. "It's strictly against the bylaws of Bluff-playing ent.i.ties. No Psi of any description can be admitted. But our antagonists aren't non-Psi humans; they're t.i.tans and telepaths. I see her value. With her in our group the telepath factor is balanced. Otherwise, they hold an absolute advantage." He recalled the alteration in the card which he had drawn, its change from twelve to eleven. We couldn't win against that, he realized. And even with Mary- "I should be admitted, too, if possible," Mutreaux said. "Although, again, legally I'm also inadmissible. Pretty Blue Fox must be made to comprehend the issues involved, what the stakes are this time. It's not just an exchange of property deeds, not a compet.i.tion among Bindmen to see who's top man. It's our old struggle with an enemy, renewed after all these years. If it ever ceased in the first place."

"It never did cease," Mary Anne spoke up. "We knew that, the people in our organization. Whether we were vugs or Terrans; we agreed on that."

"What can you see us obtaining from E.B. Black and the police power?" Pete asked Mutreaux.

"I preview a meeting between the Area Commissioner, U.S. c.u.mmings, and E.B. Black. But I can't seem to foresee the outcome. There is something which U.S. c.u.mmings is involved in that introduces another variable. I wonder. U.S. c.u.mmings may be an extremist. What is it called?"

"The Wa Pei Nan," Joe Schilling said. "That's what E.B. Black called it." He had never heard the words before the vug detective had said them; he rolled them around in his mind, trying to get the flavor of them. But they were impenetrable, shut tight to him. He gave up. He could not imagine what such a party was like or how it felt to belong to it.

I can't empathize with them, he realized. And that's bad because if we can't put ourselves in their places we can't predict what they're going to do. Even with the use of our pre-cog.

He did not feel very confident. However, he did not tell that to the people in the car with him.

Soon, he thought, we-the augmented Game-playing group Pretty Blue Fox-will make our first move against the t.i.tanians. We'll have, perhaps, the help of Mutreaux and Mary Anne McClain; will that be enough? Mutreaux can't see, and no one can count on Mary Anne, as Doctor Philipson pointed out. And yet he was glad they had her. Without Mary Anne, he thought caustically, Pete and I would be back there at the motel, in the middle of the Nevada Desert. Sitting in on t.i.tanian strategy.

"I'll be glad to contribute t.i.tle deeds to both of you," Pete said to Mary Anne and Dave Mutreaux. "Mary, you can have San Rafael. Mutreaux, you can have San Anselmo. Those will bring you to the table. I hope."

No one spoke; no one felt optimistic enough to.

"How do you bluff," Pete said, Pete said, "against telepaths?" "against telepaths?"

It was a good question. It was, in fact, the question on which everything depended.

And none of them could answer it. They can't alter the values of the cards we draw, Schilling said to himself, because we've got Mary Anne to exert a contra-pressure stabilizing them as we hold them. But- "If we can develop a strategy," Pete said, "we'll need the collective minds of everyone in Pretty Blue Fox. Among all of us there must be an idea we can use."

"You think so?" Schilling said.

"It's got to be," Pete said, harshly.

15.

At ten o'clock that night they met in the group condominium apartment in Carmel. First came Silva.n.u.s Angst, this time-for perhaps the first time in his life-sober and silent, but as always carrying a paper bag containing a fifth of whiskey. He set it on the sideboard and turned to Pete and Carol Garden who followed him.

"I just can't see letting Psis in," Angst murmured. "I mean, you're talking about something that'll make Game-playing impossible forever."

Bill Calumine said drily, "Wait until everyone's here." His tone, to Angst, was unfriendly. "I want to meet the two of them," he said to Pete, "before I decide. The girl and the pre-cog, who, I understand, is on Jerome Luckman's staff back in New York." Although now voted out as spinner, Calumine automatically a.s.sumed the position of authority. And perhaps it was well he did, Pete reflected.

"That's right," Pete murmured absently. At the sideboard he looked to see what Silva.n.u.s Angst had brought. Canadian whiskey, this time, and very good. Pete got himself a gla.s.s, held it under the ice machine.

"Thank you sir," the ice machine piped.

Pete mixed himself a drink, his back to the room as it slowly, steadily, filled with people. Their murmuring voices came to him.

"And not just one Psi but two!"

"Yes, but the issue involved; it's patriotic."

"So what. Game-playing ends when Psis come in."

"It can be with the proviso that they terminate as Bindmen as soon as this fracas with the-what're they called? The Woo Poo Non? Something like that, according to the Chronicle Chronicle this evening. Anyhow, the vug firebrands. You know. The ones we thought we beat." this evening. Anyhow, the vug firebrands. You know. The ones we thought we beat."

"You saw that article? The homeopape system at the Chronicle Chronicle inferred that it's been these Woo Poo Noners who've kept our G.o.ddam birth rate down." inferred that it's been these Woo Poo Noners who've kept our G.o.ddam birth rate down."

"Implied."

"Pardon?"

"You said 'inferred.' That's grammatically unsound."

"Anyhow, my point is, without quibbling, that it's our duty duty to let these two Psi-people into Pretty Blue Fox. That vug detective, that E.B. Black, told us that it was to our national advantage to-" to let these two Psi-people into Pretty Blue Fox. That vug detective, that E.B. Black, told us that it was to our national advantage to-"

"You believe him? A vug?"

"He's a good vug. Didn't you grasp that point?" Stuart Marks tapped Pete urgently on the shoulder. "That was the whole point you were trying to make to us, wasn't it?"

"I don't know," Pete said. He really didn't, now. He was worn-out. Let me drink my drink in peace, he thought, and turned his back once more on the roomful of arguing men and women. He wished Joe Schilling would arrive.

"Let them in this once, I say. It's for our own protection; we're not playing against each other each other, we're all on the same side in this, playing against the vug-bugs. And they can read our minds so they automatically win unless we can come up with something new. And anything new would have to be derived from the two Psi-people, right? Because where else is it going to come from? Straight ozone?"

"We can't play against vugs. They'll just laugh at us. Look, they got six of us right here in this room to gang together and kill Jerome Luckman; if they can do that-"

"Not me. I wasn't one of the six."

"But it could have been. They just didn't happen to choose you."

"Anyhow, if you read the article in the homeopape you know the vugs mean business. They slaughtered Luckman and that detective Hawthorne and kidnapped Pete Garden and then-"

"But newspapers exaggerate."

"Aw, there's no use talking to you." Jack Blau stalked away; he appeared beside Pete and said, "When are they getting here? These two Psi-people."

Pete said, "Any time now."

Coming up, slipping her smooth, bare arm through his, Carol said, "What are you drinking, darling?"

"Canadian whiskey."

"Everyone's been congratulating me," Carol said. "About the baby. Except of course Freya. And I think even she would, except-"

"Except she can't stand the idea," Pete said.

"Do you actually think it's been the vugs-or at least a segment of them-who've been keeping our birth rate down?"

"Yes," Pete said.

"So if we win, our birth rate might go up." He nodded.

"And our cities would have something in them besides a billion Rushmore circuits all saying, 'Yes sir, no sir.'" Carol squeezed his arm.

Pete said, "And if we don't win, there pretty soon won't be any births on our planet at all. And the race will die out."

"Oh." She nodded wanly.

"It's a big responsibility," Freya Garden Gaines said, from behind him. "To hear you tell it, anyhow." Pete shrugged.

"And Joe was on t.i.tan, too? You both were?"

"Joe and I and Laird Sharp," Pete said.

"Instantly."

"Yes."

"Quaint," Freya said. Pete said, "Get away."