Gurgeh came fifth out of seven on the Board of Form. He started play on the Board of Becoming with no hope of winning, but a remote chance of getting through as the Qualifier. He played an inspired game, towards the end. He was starting to feel quite thoroughly at home on the last of the three great boards, and enjoyed using the elemental symbolism the play incorporated instead of the die-matching used in the rest of each match. The Board of Becoming was the least well-played of the three great boards, Gurgeh felt, and one the Empire seemed to understand imperfectly, and pay too little attention to.
He made it. One of the admirals won, and he scraped in as Qualifier. The margin between him and the other admiral was one point; 5,523 against 5,522. Only a draw and play-off could have been closer, but when he thought about it later, he realised he hadn't for one moment entertained the slightest doubt he'd get through to the next round.
'You're coming perilously close to talking about destiny, Jernau Gurgeh,' Flere-Imsaho said when he tried to explain this. He was sitting in his room, hand on the table in front of him, while the drone removed the Orbital bracelet from his wrist; he couldn't get it over his hand any more and it was becoming too tight, thanks to his expanding muscles.
'Destiny,' Gurgeh said, looking thoughtful. He nodded. 'That's what it feels like, I suppose.'
'What next?' exclaimed the machine, using a field to cut the bracelet. Gurgeh had expected the bright little image to disappear, but it didn't. 'God? Ghosts? Time-travel?' The drone drew the bracelet off his wrist and reconnected the tiny Orbital so that it was a circle again.
Gurgeh smiled. 'The Empire.' He took the bracelet from the machine, got up easily and walked to the window, turning the Orbital over in his hands and looking out into the stony courtyard.
With his own game over, Gurgeh found time to watch Nicosar's match. The Emperor was playing in the prow-hall of the fortress; a great bowled room ribbed in grey stone and capable of seating over a thousand people. It was here the last game would be played, the game which would decide who became Emperor. The prow-hall lay at the far end of the castle, facing the direction the fire would come from. High windows, still unshuttered, looked out over the sea of yellow cinderbud heads outside.
Gurgeh sat in one of the observation galleries, watching the Emperor play. Nicosar played cautiously, gradually building up advantages, playing the game in a percentage-wary way, setting up profitable exchanges on the Board of Becoming, and orchestrating the moves of the other four players on his side. Gurgeh was impressed; Nicosar played a deceptive game. The slow, steady style he evinced here was only one side of him; every now and again there would come, just when it was needed, exactly when it would have the most devastating effect, a move of startling brilliance and audacity. Equally, the occasional fine move by an opponent was always at least matched, and usually bettered, by the Emperor.
Gurgeh felt some sympathy for those playing against Nicosar. Even playing badly was less demoralising than playing sporadically excellently but always being crushed.
'You're smiling, Jernau Gurgeh.' Gurgeh had been absorbed in the game and hadn't seen Hamin approach. The old apex sat down carefully beside him. Bulges under his robe showed he wore an AG harness to partially counteract Echronedal's gravity.
'Good evening, Hamin.'
'I have heard you qualified. Well done.'
'Thank you. Only unofficially, of course.'
'Ah yes. Officially you came fourth.'
'How unexpectedly generous.'
'We took into account your willingness to cooperate. You will still help us?'
'Of course. Just show me the camera.'
'Perhaps tomorrow.' Hamin nodded, looking down to where Nicosar stood, surveying his commanding position on the Board of Becoming. 'Your opponent for the single game will be Lo Tenyos Krowo; an excellent player, I warn you. Are you quite sure you don't want to drop out now?'
'Quite. Would you have me cause Bermoiya's mutilation only to give up now because the strain's getting too much?'
'I see your point, Gurgeh.' Hamin sighed, still watching the Emperor. He nodded. 'Yes, I see your point. And anyway; you only qualified. By the narrowest of margins. And Lo Tenyos Krowo is very, very good.' He nodded again. 'Yes; perhaps you have found your level, eh?' The wizened face turned to Gurgeh.
'Very possibly, rector.'
Hamin nodded absently and looked away again, at his Emperor.
On the following morning, Gurgeh recorded some faked game-board shots; the game he'd just played was set up again, and Gurgeh made some believable but uninspired moves, and one outright mistake. The part of his opponents was taken by Hamin and a couple of other senior Candsev College professors; Gurgeh was impressed by how well they were able to mimic the game-styles of the apices he'd been playing against.
As had, in effect, been foretold, Gurgeh finished fourth. He recorded an interview with the Imperial News Service expressing his sorrow at being knocked out of the Main Series and saying how grateful he was for having had the chance to play the game of Azad. The experience of a lifetime. He was eternally in the debt of the Azadian people. His respect for the Emperor-Regent's genius had increased immeasurably from its already high starting point. He looked forward to observing the rest of the games. He wished the Emperor, his Empire and all its people and subjects the very best for what would undoubtedly be a bright and prosperous future.
The news-team, and Hamin, seemed well pleased. 'You should have been an actor, Jernau Gurgeh,' Hamin told him.
Gurgeh assumed this was intended as a compliment.
He sat looking out over the forest of cinderbuds. The trees were sixty metres high or more. At their peak rate, the drone had told him, they grew at nearly a quarter-metre per day, sucking such vast quantities of water and matter from the ground that the soil dropped all around them, subsiding far enough to reveal the uppermost levels of their roots, which would burn in the Incandescence and take the full Great Year to regrow.
It was dusk, the short time in a short day when the rapidly spinning planet left the bright yellow dwarf dropping beyond the horizon. Gurgeh breathed deeply. There was no smell of burning. The air seemed quite clear, and a couple of planets in the Echronedal system shone in the sky. Nevertheless, Gurgeh knew there was sufficient dust in the atmosphere to forever block out most of the stars in the sky and leave the huge wheel that was the main galaxy blurred and indistinct; not remotely as breathtaking as it was when viewed from beyond the planet's hazed covering of gas.
He sat in a tiny garden near the top of the fortress, so that he could see over the summits of most of the cinderbuds. He was level with the fruit-bearing heads of the tallest trees. The fruit pods, each about the size of a curled-up child, were full of what was basically ethyl-alcohol. When the Incandescence arrived some would drop and some would stay hanging there; all would burn.
A shiver ran through Gurgeh when he thought about it. Approximately seventy days to go, they said. Anybody sitting where he was now when the fire-front arrived would be roasted alive, water-sprays or not. Radiated heat alone would cook you. The garden he was sitting in would go; the wooden bench he was sitting on would be taken inside, behind the thick stone and the metal and fireglass shutters. Gardens in the deeper courtyards would survive, though they would have to be dug out from some of the wind-blown ash. The people would be safe, in the drenched castle, or the deep shelters… unless they had been very foolish, and were caught outside. It had happened, he'd been told.
He saw Flere-Imsaho flying over the trees towards him. The machine had been given permission to fly off by itself, as long as it told the authorities where it was going and agreed to be fitted with a position monitor. Obviously there wasn't anything on Echronedal the Empire considered especially militarily sensitive. The drone hadn't been too happy with the conditions, but reckoned it would go mad cooped up in the castle, so had agreed. This had been its first expedition.
