The Player of Games

Boruelal shook him once more. 'Gurgeh?'

'Yes; a break. Yes, of course,' he croaked. He got up, stiff and sore, muscles protesting and joints creaking.

Chamlis had to stay with the game-set, to ensure the adjudication. Grey dawn spread across the sky. Somebody gave him some hot soup, which he sipped while he ate a few crackers and wandered through the quiet arcades for a while, where a few people slept or still sat and talked, or danced to quiet, recorded music. He leant on the balustrade above the kilometre drop, sipping and munching, dazed and vacant from the game, still playing and replaying it somewhere inside his head.

The lights of the towns and villages on the mist-strewn plain below, beyond the semi-circle of dark rain forest, looked pale and uncertain. Distant mountain tops shone pink and naked.

'Jernau Gurgeh?' a soft voice said.

He looked over the plain. The drone Mawhrin-Skel floated a metre from his face. 'Mawhrin-Skel,' he said quietly.

'Good morning.'

'Good morning.'

'How goes the game?'

'Fine, thank you. I think I'll win now… pretty sure in fact. But there's just a chance I might win…' He felt himself smiling. '… famously.'

'Really?' Mawhrin-Skel continued to float there, over the drop in front of him. It kept its voice soft, though there was nobody near by. Its fields were off. Its surface was an odd, mottled mixture of grey tones.

'Yes,' Gurgeh said, and briefly explained about a Full Web victory. The drone seemed to understand. 'So, you have won, but you could win the Full Web, which no one in the Culture has ever done save for exhibition purposes, to prove its possibility.'

'That's right!' He nodded, looked over the light speckled plain. 'That's right.' He finished the crackers, brushed his hands slowly free of crumbs. He left the soup bowl balanced on the balustrade.

'Does it really,' Mawhrin-Skel said thoughtfully, 'matter who first wins a Full Web?'

'Hmm?' Gurgeh said.

Mawhrin-Skel drifted closer. 'Does it really matter who first wins one? Somebody will, but does it count for much who does? It would appear to be a very unlikely eventuality in any given game… has it really much to do with skill?'

'Not beyond a certain point,' Gurgeh admitted. 'It requires a lucky genius.'

'But that could be you.'

'Maybe.' Gurgeh smiled across the gulf of chill morning air. He drew his jacket closer about him. 'It depends entirely on the disposition of certain coloured beads in certain metal spheres.' He laughed. 'A victory that would echo round the game-playing galaxy, and it depends on where a child placed…' his voice trailed off. He looked at the tiny drone again, frowning. 'Sorry; getting a bit melodramatic.' He shrugged, leant on the stone edge. 'It would be… pleasant to win, but it's unlikely, I'm afraid. Somebody else will do it, some time.'

'But it might as well be you,' Mawhrin-Skel hissed, floating still closer.

Gurgeh had to draw away to focus on the device. 'Well—'

'Why leave it to chance, Jernau Gurgeh?' Mawhrin-Skel said, pulling back a little. 'Why abandon it to mere, stupid luck?'

'What are you talking about?' Gurgeh said slowly, eyes narrowing. The drug-trance was dissipating, the spell breaking. He felt keen, keyed-up; nervous and excited at once.

'I can tell you which beads are in which globes,' Mawhrin-Skel said.

Gurgeh laughed gently. 'Nonsense.'

The drone floated closer. 'I can. They didn't tear everything out of me when they turned me away from SC. I have more senses than cretins like Amalk-ney have even heard of.' It closed in. 'Let me use them; let me tell you what is where in your bead-game. Let me help you to the Full Web.'

Gurgeh stood back from the balustrade, shaking his head. 'You can't. The other drones—'

'— are weak simpletons, Gurgeh,' Mawhrin-Skel insisted. 'I have the measure of them, believe me. Trust me. Another SC machine, definitely not; a Contact drone, probably not… but this gang of obsoletes? I could find out where every bead that girl has placed is. Every single one!'

'You wouldn't need them all,' Gurgeh said, looking troubled, waving his hand.

'Well then! Better yet! Let me do it! Just to prove to you! To myself!'

[]

'You're talking about cheating, Mawhrin-Skel,' Gurgeh said, looking round the plaza. There was nobody near by. The paper lanterns and the stone ribs they hung from were invisible from where he stood.

'You're going to win; what difference does it make?'

'It's still cheating.'

'You said yourself it's all luck. You've won—'

'Not definitely.'

'Almost certainly; a thousand to one you don't.'

'Probably longer odds than that,' Gurgeh conceded.

'So the game is over. The girl can't lose any more than she has already. Let her be part of a game that will go down in history. Give her that!'

'It,' Gurgeh said, slapping his hand on the stonework, 'is,' another slap, 'still,' slap, 'cheating!'

'Keep your voice down,' Mawhrin-Skel murmured. It backed away a little. It spoke so low he had to lean out over the drop to hear it. 'It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority — a majority, mark you; not all — of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?'

'No,' Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

'Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage.'

The drone hung above the drop and the waking plain. Gurgeh watched the Orbital dawn come up, swinging from the edge of the world. 'Take hold of your luck, Gurgeh. Accept what I'm offering you. Just this once let's both make our own chances. You already know you're one of the best in the Culture; I'm not trying to flatter you; you know that. But this win would seal that fame for ever.'

'If it's possible…' Gurgeh said, then went silent. His jaw clenched. The drone sensed him trying to control himself the way he had done on the steps up to Hafflis's house, seven hours ago.

'If it isn't, at least have the courage to know,' Mawhrin-Skel said, voice pitched at an extremity of pleading.

The man raised his eyes to the clear blue-pinks of dawn. The ruffled, misty plain looked like a vast and tousled bed. 'You're crazy, drone. You could never do it.'

'I know what I can do, Jernau Gurgeh,' the drone said. It pulled away again, sat in the air, regarding him.

He thought of that morning, sitting on the train; the rush of that delicious fear. Like an omen, now.

Luck; simple chance.

He knew the drone was right. He knew it was wrong; but he knew it was right, too. It all depended on him.

He leant against the balustrade. Something in his pocket dug into his chest. He felt in, pulled out the hidden- piece wafer he'd taken as a memento after the disastrous Possession game. He turned the wafer over in his hands a few times. He looked at the drone, and suddenly felt very old and very child-like at the same time.