Consider Phlebas

unit of any particular player, the more of the emotions they were experiencing affected you directly, too. A whole subculture of people hooked on such third-hand feelings had grown up in the few hundred years since Damage had become such a select but popular game: the moties.

There were other groups playing Damage. The Players of the Eve of Destruction were simply the most famous and the richest. The moties could get their emotional fix in lots of places throughout the galaxy, but only in a full game, only on the edge of annihilation, only with the very best players (plus a few hopefuls) could the most intense experiences be obtained. It was one of these unfortunates Horza had impersonated when he had discovered that an access pass could not be had for less than twice the amount of money he had made on the shuttle. Bribing a door guard had been a lot cheaper.

The real moties were packed tightly behind the fence separating them from the Lives. Sixteen clumps of sweating, nervous-looking people — like the game players, mostly male — they jostled and pressed forward, trying to get near to the table, near to the Players.

Horza watched them as the cards were dealt by the chief Ishlorsinami. Moties jumped up and down, trying to see what was happening, and security guards fitted with baffle helmets to keep out the emotor pulses patrolled the perimeter of the fence, tapping nerver prods on their thighs or palms and watching warily.

'… Sarble the Eye…' somebody near by said, and Horza turned to see. A cadaverous-looking human lying on a couch behind and to Horza's left was talking to another and pointing up to the terrace where the disturbance had occurred a few minutes earlier. Horza heard the words «Sarble» and «caught» a few more times from elsewhere around him as the news spread. He turned round to watch the game as the Players started to inspect their hands; the betting began. Horza thought it was a pity the reporter had been caught, but it might mean that the security guards relaxed a little, giving him a better chance of not being asked for his pass.

Horza was sitting a good fifty metres from the nearest player, a woman whose name he had heard mentioned but had forgotten. As the first hand progressed, only mild versions of what she was feeling and was being made to feel impinged upon his consciousness. Nevertheless, he didn't enjoy the sensation, and switched on the lounger's baffle field, using the small control set on one arm of the couch. Had he wanted, he could have cancelled the immediate effect of the player he just happened to be sitting behind and substituted the effects of any of the other emotor units on the table. The effect would have been nothing like as intense as what the moties or the Lives were experiencing, but it would certainly have given a good idea of what the Players were going through. Most of the other people around him were using their lounger's controls in that way, flicking from one player to another in an attempt to judge the overall state of the game. Horza would concentrate on Kraiklyn's broadcast emotions later, but for now he just wanted to settle in and get the general feel of the game.

Kraiklyn dropped out of the first hand early enough to be sure of avoiding losing a Life when it finished; with so few Lives of his own it was the wisest course unless he had a very strong hand. Horza watched the man carefully as he sat back in his seat and relaxed, his emotor unit dormant. Kraiklyn licked his lips and wiped his brow. Horza decided in the next hand he would eavesdrop on what Kraiklyn was going through, just to see what it was like.

The hand finished. Wilgre won. He waved, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd. Some moties had fainted already; at the other end of the ellipsoid, in its cage, the rogothuyr snarled. Five Players lost Lives; five seated humans, sitting hopeless and despairing as the effects of the emotor fields still resounded in them, went suddenly slack in their chairs as their helmets sent a neural blast through their skulls strong enough to stun the Lives sitting around them and to make the nearest moties, and the Player each Life belonged to, flinch. Ishlorsinami undid the restrainers on the dead humans' seats and carried them away down the access ramp. The remaining Lives gradually recovered, but they sat as listless as before. The Ishlorsinami claimed they always checked that each volunteering Life was genuine, and that the drugs they gave them simply stopped them from becoming hysterical, but it was rumoured that there were ways round the Ishlorsinami screening process, and that some people had succeeded in disposing of their enemies by drugging or hypnotising them and «volunteering» them for the game.

As the second hand began, and Horza switched on his couch monitor to experience Kraiklyn's emotions, the white-haired woman came back down the aisle and resumed her place in front of Horza, at the front of the terrace, draping herself tiredly over the piece of furniture as though she was bored.

Horza did not know enough about Damage as a card game to be able to follow exactly what was going on with the cards, either by reading the various emotions being passed round the table, or by analysing each hand after it was finished — as the first hand was already being analysed by the hooting tripeds near him — when the cards as they had been dealt and played were flashed up on the arena's internal broadcast circuits. But he tuned in to Kraiklyn's feelings just to see what they were like.

The captain of the Clear Air Turbulence was being hit from various directions. Some of the emotions were contradictory, which Horza guessed meant that there was no concerted effort being made on Kraiklyn; he was just taking most people's secondary armament. There was a considerable urge to like Wilgre — that attractive blue colour… and with those four little comical feet, he couldn't really be much of a threat… A bit of a clown, really, for all his money… The woman sitting on Kraiklyn's right, on the other hand, stripped to the waist, with no breasts, and a sheath for a ceremonial sword slung across her naked back: she was one to watch… But it was a laugh really… Nothing really matters; everything is just a joke; life is, the game is… one card's pretty much like another when you come to think about it… For all it matters might as well throw the lot in the air.… It was nearly his turn to play… First that flat-chested bitch… boy, did he have a card he was going to hit her with…

Horza switched off again, unsure whether he was hearing Kraiklyn's own thoughts about the woman, or ones somebody else was trying to get him to think about her.

He picked up Kraiklyn's thoughts later on in the hand, when the woman was out and sitting back and relaxing, her eyes closed. (Horza looked briefly at the white-haired woman on the couch down in front of him; she was watching the game apparently, but one leg was slung over the side of her lounger, swinging to and fro, as though her mind was somewhere else.) Kraiklyn was feeling good. First of all that slut next to him was out, and he was sure it was because of some of the cards he had played, but also there was a sort of inner exhilaration… Here he was, playing with the best players in the galaxy… the Players. Him. Him… (a sudden inhibitory thought blocked out a name he was about to think)… and he really wasn't doing that badly at all… He was keeping up… In fact this hand was looking pretty damn good… At last things were going right… He was going to win something… Too many things had… well, there was that… Think about the cards! (suddenly) Think about here and now! Yes, the cards… Let's see… I can hit that fat blue oaf with… Horza switched off again.

He was sweating. He hadn't fully realised the degree of feedback from the Player's mind that was involved. He had thought it was just the emotions beamed at them; he hadn't dreamed he would be so much in Kraiklyn's mind. Yet this was only a taste of what Kraiklyn himself was getting full blast, and the moties and Lives behind him. Real feedback, only just under control, only just stopping from becoming the emotional equivalent of a loudspeaker howl, building to destruction. Now the Changer realised the attraction of the game, and why people had been known to go mad when playing it.

Much as he disliked the experience, Horza felt new respect for the man he intended at least to remove and replace, and most likely to kill.

Kraiklyn had a sort of advantage in as much as the thoughts and emotions being beamed back at him were at least partly emanating from his own mind, whereas the Lives and the moties had to put up with extremely powerful blasts of what was entirely somebody else's way of feeling something. All the same, it had to take a considerable strength of character, or a vast amount of hard training, to be able to handle what Kraiklyn was obviously coping with. Horza switched back in again and thought, How do the moties stand it? And, Watch out; maybe this is how they started.

Kraiklyn lost the hand, two rounds of betting later. The half-blind albino, Neeporlax, was defeated, too, and the Suut raked in his winnings, his steel face glowing in the light reflected from the Aoish credits in front of him. Kraiklyn was slumped in his seat, feeling, Horza knew, like death. A pulse of a sort of resigned, almost grateful agony swept through Kraiklyn from behind as his first Life died, and Horza felt it, too. He and Kraiklyn both winced.

Horza switched off and looked at the time. Less than an hour had passed since he had bluffed his way past the guards at the outer doors of the arena. He had some food, on a low table by his couch, but he got up all the same and walked away from the table, up the terrace towards the nearest walkway, where food stalls and bars