“Damn you, Earl! I-” He broke off as Dumarest closed his hand around his throat.
“Listen,” he said quietly. “I’m growing tired of playing this game. I don’t like the rules and I don’t like the mystery. All the illusion and deception, the smoke and mirrors. If I can’t persuade you to help me then I don’t want you to get in my way. If I can’t trust you then-” His hand tightened. “Which way is it going to be?”
“You’re crazy!” Chagal rubbed his throat as Dumarest loosened his grip and removed his hand. “Insane. Why the hell do you think I’d betray you?”
“If the price was right why wouldn’t you?”
“I can’t answer that. Could you?”
Dumarest could but made no attempt to elaborate. Instead he looked at the table, the wine and cakes, the fruit and meats, the pots of tisane, the chess board with its pieces. They were of jet and silver, oddly shaped yet the rank of each was clear.
“Which color did she choose?”
“Delise? Black. Why?”
“So you started the game.” Dumarest moved a piece at random. Followed it with another. “And, while playing, you talked. About what?”
“Things. Love, life, the universe. You, me, Nada. She is in love with you, Earl.”
“As Delise is with you?”
“No. Nada is genuine. To Delise I am just a temporary distraction.” The doctor was pragmatic. “Age, Earl, what do you expect. Any harlot can wear a smile and make pleasing compliments as can any woman bored and, maybe, instructed to do just that. But Nada is genuine.”
“As Delisa told you.” Dumarest moved another piece. “As she could have been instructed to do. Why should we believe her?”
“Why would she lie?”
“Why would anyone?” Dumarest answered his own question. “To obey orders. To get their own way. To amuse themselves. To hide something. To gain something. To avoid trouble. A better question would be why should they tell the truth? Why should anyone in this madhouse?”
Chagal said, slowly, “You’re getting at something, Earl. What?”
“Look at the board,” Dumarest gestured. “The pieces. Give them identities, names. Nada does this and Delise does that and you and I dance to the dictates of an unknown and unseen player. Or, perhaps, not unseen.”
“Shandaha?”
“Our host. Yes. Unless he too is a piece moved by an invisible player. A gamer who doesn’t realize he is a part of the game.”
“You think that possible?”
“In this place anything is possible. Time, for us, hasn’t passed at the same rate. For you days, perhaps, for me hours. One second facing Shandaha, the next in another place, alone, surrounded by illusion. Or, without warning, thrown back to relive my early life. And now this.” Dumarest rapped a piece hard against the surface of the board. “A clue as to what is going on.”
“A game of chess?”
“Which you opened. I knew a master once who claimed to know, within three moves, the character of his opponent. The opening told him all he needed to know. A calm, recognized, safe move meant one thing. A bold, unusual, adventurous one, another. He played on the knowledge, used it, manipulated his opponent-and always won.”
“Delise didn’t.”
“She wasn’t meant to. She just wanted you to start the play. To provide more information.” Dumarest saw the doctor’s blank expression and felt a sudden rush of irritation. “Damn it, man, haven’t you got it yet. The board wasn’t placed here to allow us to play-it was placed to give us a clue as to our real situation. We’re not in a snug refuge. A luxury hotel. An oasis of comfort in a hostile world. We’re in a prison. A trap-and we’ve got to find a way out before it snaps shut!”
The curved sheets of crystal were translucent, the view reduced to that of a nacreous blur which hid what lay outside.
If anything lay outside other than the hint of lush vegetation and warmth. Resting his palm against the crystal Dumarest felt no change of temperature. He searched for a door and found only a single panel leading to unfamiliar regions.
Watching him Chagal said, “If you are hoping to find another way out there isn’t one. Only that door. Delise came through it.”
“Did you?”
“I guess I must have done but I can’t remember. Can you?”
“I followed instructions,” said Dumarest. “Turned left when leaving Shandaha, turned right at a column tinted in the hues of the spectrum, turned-” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. “The route has probably changed by now. Perhaps it was never there.”
“Hypnotism,” said Chagal. “Is that what you think? That we were both hypnotized, conditioned to believe what we’ve been told. That, on a cue, you regress to relive your early life? As I did?”
“Yes.”
“It’s possible,” the doctor admitted. “But why do you think it happened? And why do you think we are in a prison?”
“Logic.”
“Just that?”
“Add experience,” said Dumarest dryly. “But let’s take logic first. How many people are resident in Shandaha’s domain? All we’ve seen are three; Nada, Delise and our host himself. Who maintains the place? Where are the servants? The cooks and guards and suppliers of food and wine? There has to be machinery so where are the maintenance engineers? Those who do the work. And where are those things which came for us. Those who, according to you, slaughtered the Kaldari? Did you actually see it happen?”
“No,” admitted Chagal. “I was told, but I think I heard it or what could have been it. Shots and screams and the smell and sound of burning.”
“Before you went down under the vapor?”
“I don’t know.”
“There is too much we don’t know. Too much that doesn’t make any real sense. That’s why I think we must be in a prison. Think of a cell,” Dumarest urged. “A box housed in a larger building. We see a couple of guards-Nada and Delise. The warden-Shandaha. In a prison as we know it that’s all we might be able to see. Especially if we were in confinement. Kept secluded while being interrogated.”
Chagal shook his head and reached for a flagon of wine.
He poured a stream of ruby fluid into a goblet and sipped then swallowed as if to wash away an unpleasant taste.
Dumarest said, “You find it hard to believe?”
“I think you could be reading into it more than there is to see. Shandaha could just be amusing himself. Joining with us to relive incidents from our past as he explained. Bored, he wants to expand his field of knowledge. I can’t see how you can think of it as interrogation.”
“Maybe we haven’t had the same experiences. With you did he always go through an initial ritual.”
“The sparkling liquid, the machine, the electrodes?” Chagal nodded. “Yes. To begin with. Then it just seemed to happen.”
“One second normal, the next up to your armpits in blood as you operated on some poor devil. Listening to his screams. Fighting to hold him down. Emergency field operations after a battle or during one. You rode with the Kaldari and it would have been a part of your duties. But did Shandaha ever question you as to your beliefs? Talk about God?”
“No.”
“Is he still riding your memories?”
Chagal shook his head. “No, Earl, not that I know of. Anyway, why should he? He’s taken all he wants. There’s nothing more he could gain.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain.” Dumarest touched the chessboard. “I don’t think you played a harmless game with
