in a dark space full of the beating, pulsing music; light blazed to one side. Footsteps hammered up the stairs. Za turned and kicked down into the stairwell with one foot, producing an explosive yelp and a sudden clatter.
A thin blue beam freckled the darkness, lancing from the stairwell and bursting yellow flame and orange sparks somewhere overhead. Za dodged away. 'Fucking artillery indeed.' He nodded past Gurgeh towards the light. 'Exit stage centre, maestro.'
They ran out on to the stage, flooded with sunlight brilliance. A bulky male in the centre of the stage turned resentfully as they thundered out from the wings; the audience yelled abuse. Then the expression on the near- naked bruise artiste's face switched from vexation to stunned surprise.
Gurgeh almost fell; he did stop, dead still.
… to gaze, again, at his own face.
It was printed, twice life-size, in a bloody rainbow of contusions, on the torso of the dumbstruck performer. Gurgeh stared, expression mirroring the amazement on the tubby artiste's face.
'No time for art now, Jernau.' Za pulled him away, dragged him to the front of the stage and threw him off. He dived after him.
They landed on top of a group of protesting Azadian males, tumbling them to the ground. Za hauled Gurgeh to his feet, then nearly fell again as a blow struck the back of his head. He turned and lashed out with one foot, fending off another punch with one arm. Gurgeh felt himself twirled round; he found himself facing a large, angry male with blood on his face. The man drew his arm back, made a fist of his hand (so that Gurgeh thought;
The man seemed to move very slowly.
Gurgeh had time to think what to do.
He brought his knee up into the male's groin and heel-palmed his face. He shook the falling man's grip free, ducked a blow from another male, and saw Za elbow yet another Azadian in the face.
Then they were sprinting away again. Za roared and waved his hands as he ran for an exit. Gurgeh fought a strange urge to laugh at this, but the tactic seemed to work; people parted for them like water round the bows of a boat.
They sat in a small, open-ceilinged bar, deep in the maze-like clutter of the main gallery, under a solid sky of chalky pearl. Shohobohaum Za was dismantling the camera he'd discovered behind the false mirror, teasing its delicate components apart with a humming, toothpick-size instrument. Gurgeh dabbed at a graze on his cheek, incurred when Za had thrown him from the stage.
'Na, my fault, game-player. I should have known. Inclate's brother's in Security, and At-sen's got an expensive habit. Nice kids, but a bad combination, and not exactly what I asked for. Damn lucky for your ass one of my sweeties dropped a slice-jewel-card and wouldn't play anything else without it. Ah well; half a fuck's better than none at all.'
He prised another piece out of the camera body; there was a crackle and a little flash. Za poked dubiously at the smoking casing.
'How did you know where to find us?' Gurgeh asked. He felt like a fool, but less embarrassed than he'd have expected.
'Knowledge, guesswork and luck, game-player. There are places in that club you go when you want to roll somebody, other places where you can question them, or kill them, or hook them on something… or take their picture. I was just hoping it was lights-action time and not something worse.' He shook his head, peered at the camera. 'I should have known though. Ought to have guessed. Getting too damn trusting.'
Gurgeh shrugged, sipped at his hot liquor and studied the guttering candle on the counter in front of them. 'I was the one who was suckered. But who?' He looked at Za. 'Why?'
'The state, Gurgeh,' Za said, prodding at the camera again. 'Because they want to have something on you, just in case.'
'Just in case what?'
'Just in case you keep surprising them and winning games. It's insurance. You heard of that? No? Never mind. It's like gambling in reverse.' Za held the camera with one hand, straining at part of it with the thin instrument. A hatch popped open. Za looked happy, and extracted a coin-sized disk from the guts of the machine. He held it up to the light, where it glinted nacreously. 'Your holiday snaps,' Za told Gurgeh.
He adjusted something at the end of the toothpick, so that the little disk stuck to the instrument's point as though glued there, then held the tiny polychromatic coin over the candle flame until it sizzled and smoked and hissed, and finally fell in dull flakes on to the wax. 'Sorry you couldn't have that as a souvenir,' Za said.
Gurgeh shook his head. 'Something I'd rather forget.'
'Ah, never mind. I'll get those two bitches though,' Za grinned. 'They owe me one for free. Several, in fact.' Za looked happy at the thought.
'Is that all?' Gurgeh asked.
'Hey; they were just playing their parts. No malice involved. Worth a spanking at most.' Za waggled his eyebrows lasciviously.
Gurgeh sighed.
When they went back to the transit gallery to order their car, Za waved at some bulky, severely casual males and apices waiting in the lime-lit tunnel, and tossed one of them what was left of the camera. The apex caught it, and turned away along with the others.
The car arrived minutes later.
'And what time do you call this? Do you know how long I've been waiting for you? You've got a game to play tomorrow, you know. Just
'Machine.' Gurgeh yawned, throwing his jacket down on to a seat in the lounge. 'Go fuck yourself.'
The following morning, Flere-Imsaho wasn't talking to him. It joined him in the module lounge just as the call came through that Pequil had arrived with the car, but when Gurgeh said hello, it ignored him, and travelled down in the hotel elevator studiously humming and crackling even louder than usual. It was similarly uncommunicative in the car. Gurgeh decided he could live with this.
'Gurgee, you have hurt yourself.' Pequil looked with concern at the graze over Gurgeh's cheek.
'Yes,' Gurgeh smiled, stroking his beard. 'I cut myself shaving.'
It was attrition time on the Board of Form.
Gurgeh was up against the other nine players from the start, until it became too obvious that was what was happening. He'd used the advantage accrued on the previous board to set up a small, dense and almost impregnable enclave; he just sat in there for two days, letting the others beat up against it. Done properly, this would have broken him, but his opponents were trying not to look too concerted in their actions, so attacked a few at a time. They were anyway each fearful of weakening themselves over-much in case they were pounced upon by the others.
By the end of those two days, a couple of the news-agencies were saying it was unfair and discourteous to the stranger to gang up on him.
Flere-Imsaho — over its huff by then and talking to him again — reckoned this reaction might be genuine and unprompted, but was more likely to be the result of imperial pressure. Certainly it thought the Church — which had doubtless been instructing the priest as well as financing the deals he'd been making with the other players — had been leant on by the Imperial Office. Whatever, on the third day the massed attacks against Gurgeh fell away and the game resumed a more normal course.
The game-hall was crowded with people. There were many more paying spectators, numerous invited guests had changed venue to come and see the alien play, and the press-agencies had sent extra reporters and cameras. The club players, under the stewardship of the Adjudicator, succeeded in keeping the crowd quiet, so Gurgeh didn't find the extra people caused any great distraction during the game. It was difficult to move around the hall during the breaks though; people were constantly accosting him, asking him questions, or just wanting to look at
