The Player of Games

they had been witnessed by a Mind in a real-time link, would be accepted as genuine. His mood of renewed optimism started to sink away from him again.

Also, there was an SC Mind, that of the Limited Offensive Unit Gunboat Diplomat, which had supported Mawhrin-Skel's appeal against the decision which had removed the drone from Special Circumstances.

The feeling of dazed sickness started to fill him again.

He wasn't able to find out when Mawhrin-Skel and the LOU had last been in touch; that, again, counted as private information. Privacy; that brought a bitter laugh to his mouth, thinking of the privacy he'd had over the last few days and nights.

But he did discover that a drone like Mawhrin-Skel, even in civilianised form, was capable of sustaining a one-way real-time link with such a ship over millennia distances, so long as the ship was watching out for the signal and knew where to look. He could not find out there and then where the Gunboat Diplomat was in the galaxy — SC ships routinely kept their locations secret — but put in a request that the ship release its position to him.

From what he could tell from the information he'd discovered, Mawhrin-Skel's claim that the Mind had recorded their conversation would not hold up if the ship was more than about twenty millennia away; if it turned out, say, that the craft was on the other side of the galaxy, then the drone had definitely lied, and he would be safe.

He hoped the vessel was on the other side of the galaxy; he hoped it was a hundred thousand light years away or more, or it had gone crazy and run into a black hole or decided to head for another galaxy, or stumbled across a hostile alien ship powerful enough to blow it out of the skies… anything, so long as it wasn't near by and able to make that real-time link.

Otherwise, everything Mawhrin-Skel had said checked out. It could be done. He could be blackmailed. He sat in the couch, while the fire burned down and the Hub drones floated through the house humming and clicking to themselves, and he stared into the greying ashes, wishing that it was all unreal, wishing it hadn't happened, cursing himself for letting the little drone talk him into cheating. Why? he asked himself. Why did I do it? How could I have been so stupid? It had seemed a glamorous, enticingly dangerous thing at the time; a little crazy, but then, was he not different from other people? Was he not the great game-player and so allowed his eccentricities, granted the freedom to make his own rules? He hadn't wanted self-glorification, not really. And he had already won the game; he just wanted somebody in the Culture to have completed a Full Web; hadn't he? It wasn't like him to cheat; he had never done it before; he would never do it again… how could Mawhrin-Skel do this to him? Why had he done it? Why couldn't it just not have happened? Why didn't they have time-travel, why couldn't he go back and stop it happening? Ships that could circumnavigate the galaxy in a few years, and count every cell in your body from light years off, but he wasn't able to go back one miserable day and alter one tiny, stupid, idiotic, shameful decision…

He clenched his fists, trying to break the terminal he held in his right hand, but it wouldn't break. His hand hurt again.

He tried to think calmly. What if the worst did happen? The Culture was generally rather disdainful of individual fame, and therefore equally uninterested in scandal — there was, anyway, little that was scandalous — but Gurgeh had no doubt that if Mawhrin-Skel did release the recordings it claimed to have made, they would be propagated; people would know.

There were plenty of news and current affairs indices and networks in the multiplicity of communications which linked every Culture habitat, be it ship, rock, Orbital or planet. Somebody somewhere would be only too pleased to broadcast Mawhrin-Skel's recordings. Gurgeh knew of a couple of recently established games indices whose editors, writers and correspondents regarded him and most of the other well-known players and authorities as some sort of constricting, over-privileged hierarchy; they thought too much attention was paid to too few players, and sought to discredit what they called the old guard (which included him, much to his amusement). They would love what Mawhrin-Skel had on him. He could deny it all, once it was out, and some people would doubtless believe him despite the hardness of the evidence, but the other top players, and the responsible, well-established and authoritative indices, would know the truth of it, and that was what he would not be able to bear.

He would still be able to play, and he would still be allowed to publish, to register his papers as open for dissemination, and probably many of them would be taken up; not quite so often as before, perhaps, but he would not be frozen out completely. It would be worse than that; he would be treated with compassion, understanding, tolerance. But he would never be forgiven.

Could he come to terms with that, ever? Could he weather the storm of abuse and knowing looks, the gloating sympathy of his rivals? Would it all die down enough eventually, would a few years pass and it be sufficiently forgotten? He thought not. Not for him. It would always be there. He could not face down Mawhrin-Skel with that; publish and be damned. The drone had been right; it would destroy his reputation, destroy him.

He watched the logs in the wide grate glow duller red and then go soft and grey. He told Hub he was finished; it quietly returned the house to normal and left him alone with his thoughts.

He woke the next morning, and it was still the same universe; it had not been a nightmare and time had not gone backwards. 1I had all still happened.

He took the underground to Celleck, the village where Chamlis Amalk-ney lived by itself, in an old-fashioned and odd approximation of human domesticity, surrounded by wall paintings, antique furniture, inlaid walls, fish-tanks and insect vivaria.

'I'll find out all I can, Gurgeh,' Chamlis sighed, floating beside him, looking out to the square. 'But I can't guarantee that I can do it without whoever was behind your last visit from Contact finding out about it. They may think you're interested.'

'Maybe I am,' Gurgeh said. 'Maybe I do want to talk to them again, I don't know.'

'Well, I've sent the message to my friends, but—'

He had a sudden, paranoid idea. He turned to Chamlis urgently. 'These friends of yours are ships.'

'Yes,' Chamlis said. 'Both of them.'

'What are they called?'

'The Of Course I Still Love You and the Just Read The Instructions.'

'They're not warships?'

'With names like that? They're GCUs; what else?'

'Good,' Gurgeh said, relaxing a little, looking out to the square again. 'Good. That's all right.' He took a deep breath.

'Gurgeh, can't you — please — tell me what's wrong?' Chamlis's voice was soft, even sad. 'You know it'll go no further. Let me help. It hurts me to see you like this. If there's anything I can—'

'Nothing,' Gurgeh said, looking at the machine again. He shook his head. 'There's nothing, nothing else you can do. I'll let you know if there is.' He started across the room. Chamlis watched him. 'I have to go now. I'll see you again, Chamlis.'

He went down to the underground. He sat in the car, staring at the floor. On about the fourth request, he realised the car was talking to him, asking where he wanted to go. He told it.

He was staring at one of the wall-screens, watching the steady stars, when the terminal beeped.

'Gurgeh? Makil Stra-bey, yet again one more time once more.'

'What?' he snapped, annoyed at the Mind's glib chumminess.

'That ship just replied with the information you asked for.'

He frowned. 'What ship? What information?'

'The Gunboat Diplomat, our game-player. Its location.'

His heart pounded and his throat seemed to close up. 'Yes,' he said, struggling to get the word out. 'And?'

'Well, it didn't reply direct; it sent via its home GSV Youthful Indiscretion and got it to confirm its location.'