The Player of Games

Flere-Imsaho watched the man grow even more intense and absorbed in the days between the second and final games. He hardly seemed to hear anything that was said to him; he had to be reminded to eat and sleep. The drone wouldn't have believed it, but twice it saw the man sitting with an expression of pain on his face, staring at nothing. Doing a remote ultrasound scan, the drone had discovered the man's bladder was full to bursting; he had to be told when to pee! He spent all day, every day, gazing intently at nothing, or feverishly studying replays of old games. And though he might have been briefly undrugged after his long sleep, immediately thereafter he started glanding again, and didn't stop. The drone used its Effector to monitor the man's brainwaves and found that even when he appeared to sleep, it wasn't really sleep; controlled lucid dreaming was what it seemed to be. His drug- glands were obviously working furiously all the time, and for the first time there were more tell-tale signs of intense drug-use on Gurgeh's body than there were on his opponent's.

How could he play in such a state? Had it been up to Flere-Imsaho, it would have stopped the man playing there and then. But it had its orders. It had a part to play, and it had played it, and all it could do now was wait and see what happened.

More people attended the start of the game on the Board of Becoming than had attended the previous two; the other game-players were still trying to work out what was going on in this strange, complicated, unfathomable game, and wanted to see what would happen on this final board, where the Emperor started with a considerable advantage, but on which the alien was known to be especially good.

Gurgeh dived back into the game, an amphibian into welcoming water. For a few moves he just gloried in the feeling of returning home to his element and the sheer joy of the contest, taking delight in a flexing of his strengths and powers, the readying tension of the pieces and places; then he curved out from that playing to the serious business of the building and the hunting, the making and linking and the destroying and cutting; the searching and destroying.

The board became both Culture and Empire again. The setting was made by them both; a glorious, beautiful, deadly killing field, unsurpassably fine and sweet and predatory and carved from Nicosar's beliefs and his together. Image of their minds; a hologram of pure coherence, burning like a standing wave of fire across the board, a perfect map of the landscapes of thought and faith within their heads.

He began the slow move that was defeat and victory together before he even knew it himself. Nothing so subtle, so complex, so beautiful had ever been seen on an Azad board. He believed that; he knew that. He would make it the truth.

The game went on.

Breaks, days, evenings, conversations, meals; they came and went in another dimension; a monochrome thing, a flat, grainy image. He was somewhere else entirely. Another dimension, another image. His skull was a blister with a board inside it, his outside self just another piece to be shuffled here and there.

He didn't talk to Nicosar, but they conversed, they carried out the most exquisitely textured exchange of mood and feeling through those pieces which they moved and were moved by; a song, a dance, a perfect poem. People filled the game-room every day now, engrossed in the fabulously perplexing work taking shape before them; trying to read that poem, see deeper into this moving picture, listen to this symphony, touch this living sculpture, and so understand it.

It goes on until it ends, Gurgeh thought to himself one day, and at the same time as the banality of the thought struck him, he saw that it was over. The climax had been reached. It was done, destroyed, could be no more. It was not finished, but it was over. A terrible sadness swamped him, took hold of him like a piece and made him sway and nearly fall, so that he had to walk to his stoolseat and pull himself on to it like an old man.

'Oh…' he heard himself say.

He looked at Nicosar, but the Emperor hadn't seen it yet. He was looking at element-cards, trying to work out a way to alter the terrain ahead of his next advance.

Gurgeh couldn't believe it. The game was over; couldn't anybody see that? He looked despairingly around the faces of the officials, the spectators, the observers and Adjudicators. What was wrong with them all? He looked back at the board, hoping desperately that he might have missed something, made some mistake that meant there was still something Nicosar could do, that the perfect dance might last a little longer. He could see nothing; it was done. He looked at the time shown on the point-board. It was nearly time to break for the day. It was a dark evening outside. He tried to remember what day it was. The fire was due very soon, wasn't it? Perhaps tonight, or tomorrow. Perhaps it had already been? No; even he would have noticed. The great high windows of the prow-hall were still unshuttered, looking out into the darkness where the huge cinderbuds waited, heavy with fruit.

Over over over. His — their — beautiful game over; dead. What had he done? He put his clenched hands over his mouth. Nicosar, you fool! The Emperor had fallen for it, taken the bait, entered the run and followed it to be torn apart near the high stand, storms of splinters before the fire.

Empires had fallen to barbarians before, and no doubt would again. Gurgeh knew all this from his childhood. Culture children were taught such things. The barbarians invade, and are taken over. Not always; some empires dissolve and cease, but many absorb; many take the barbarians in and end up conquering them. They make them live like the people they set out to take over. The architecture of the system channels them, beguiles them, seduces and transforms them, demanding from them what they could not before have given but slowly grow to offer. The empire survives, the barbarians survive, but the empire is no more and the barbarians are nowhere to be found.

The Culture had become the Empire, the Empire the barbarians. Nicosar looked triumphant, pieces everywhere, adapting and taking and changing and moving in for the kill. But it would be their own death-change; they could not survive as they were; wasn't that obvious? They would become Gurgeh's, or neutrals, their rebirth his to deliver. Over.

A prickling sensation began behind his nose and he sat back, overcome by the sadness of the game's ending, and waiting for tears.

None came. A suitable reprimand from his body, for using the elements so well, and water so much. He would drown Nicosar's attacks; the Emperor played with fire, and would be extinguished. No tears for him.

Something left Gurgeh, just ebbed away, burned out, relaxing its grip on him. The room was cool, filled with a spirit fragrance, and the rustling sound of the cinderbud canopy outside, beyond the tall, wide windows. People talked quietly in the galleries.

He looked around, and saw Hamin sitting in the college seats. The old apex looked shrunken and doll-like; a tiny withered husk of what he'd been, face lined and body misshapen. Gurgeh stared at him. Was this one of their ghosts? Had he been there all the time? Was he still alive? The unbearably old apex seemed to be staring fixedly at the centre of the board, and for one absurd instant Gurgeh thought the old creature was already dead and they'd brought his desiccated body into the prow-hall as some sort of trophy, a final ignominy.

Then the horn sounded for the end of the evening's play, and two imperial guards came and wheeled the dying apex away. The shrunken, grizzled head looked briefly in his direction.

Gurgeh felt as though he'd been somewhere far away, on a great journey he'd just returned from. He looked at Nicosar, consulting with a couple of his advisors as the Adjudicators noted the closing positions and the people in the galleries stood up and started chattering. Did he imagine that Nicosar looked concerned, even worried? Perhaps so. He felt suddenly very sorry for the Emperor, for all of them; for everybody.

He sighed, and it was like the last breath of some great storm that had passed through him. He stretched his arms and legs, stood again. He looked at the board. Yes; over. He'd done it. There was much left to do, a lot still to happen, but Nicosar would lose. He could choose how he lost; fall forward and be absorbed, fall back and be taken over, go berserk and raze everything… but his board-Empire was finished.

He met the Emperor's gaze for a moment. He could see from the expression there that Nicosar hadn't fully realised yet, but he knew the apex was reading him in return and could probably see the change in the man, sense the sense of victory… Gurgeh lowered his gaze from that hard sight, and turned away and walked out of the hall. There was no acclaim, there were no congratulations. Nobody else could see. Flere-Imsaho was its usual