The display halted, then flickered, showing various end-patterns in succession. Hyrlis shook his head and waved one arm. The great round map flicked back to its starting state again and there was much sighing and stretching amongst the uniformed advisers or generals clustered around him.
Holse nodded at the map. “All this, sir. Is it a game?”
Hyrlis smiled, still looking at the great glowing bubble of the display. “Yes,” he said. “It’s all a game.”
“Does it start from what you might call reality, though?” Holse asked, stepping close to the balcony’s edge, obviously fascinated, his face lit by the great glowing hemisphere. Ferbin said nothing. He had given up trying to get his servant to be more discreet.
“From what we call reality, as far as we know it, yes,” Hyrlis said. He turned to look at Holse. “Then we use it to try out possible dispositions, promising strategies and various tactics, looking for those that offer the best results, assuming the enemy acts and reacts as we predict.”
“And will they be doing the same thing as regards you?”
“Undoubtably.”
“Might you not simply play the game against each other then, sir?” Holse suggested cheerily. “Dispensing with all the actual slaughtering and maiming and destruction and desolating and such like? Like in the old days, when two great armies met and, counting themselves about equal, called up champions, one from each, their individual combat counting by earlier agreement as determining the whole result, so sending many a frightened soldier safely back to his farm and loved ones.”
Hyrlis laughed. The sound was obviously as startling and unusual to the generals and advisers on the balcony as it was to Ferbin and Holse. “I’d play if they would!” Hyrlis said. “And accept the verdict gladly regardless.” He smiled at Ferbin, then to Holse said, “But no matter whether we are all in a still greater game, this one here before us is at a cruder grain than that which it models. Entire battles, and sometimes therefore wars, can hinge on a jammed gun, a failed battery, a single shell being dud or an individual soldier suddenly turning and running, or throwing himself on a grenade.”
Hyrlis shook his head. “That cannot be fully modelled, not reliably, not consistently. That you need to play out in reality, or the most detailed simulation you have available, which is effectively the same thing.”
Holse smiled sadly. “Matter, eh, sir?”
“Matter.” Hyrlis nodded. “And anyway, where would be the fun in just playing a game? Our hosts could do that themselves. No. They need us to play out the greater result. Nothing else will do. We ought to feel privileged to be so valuable, so irreplaceable. We may all be mere particles, but we are each fundamental!”
Hyrlis sounded close to laughing again, then his tone and whole demeanour changed as he looked to one side, where no one was standing. “And don’t think yourselves any better,” he said quietly. Ferbin
“You’re obviously busy,” Ferbin said matter-of-factly to Hyrlis. “May we leave you now?”
Hyrlis smiled. “Yes, prince. Get to your own dreams, leave us with ours. By all means be gone.”
Ferbin and Holse turned to go.
“Holse!” Hyrlis called.
Choubris and Ferbin both turned to look back.
“Sir?” Holse said.
“Holse, if I offered you the chance to stay here and general for me, play this great game, would you take it? It would be for riches and for power, both here and now and elsewhere and elsewhen, in better, less blasted places than this sorry cinder. D’you take it, eh?”
Holse laughed. “Course not, sir! You fun me, sure you must!”
“Of course,” Hyrlis said, grinning. He looked at Ferbin, who was standing looking confused and angry at his servant’s side. “Your man is no fool, prince,” Hyrlis told him.
Ferbin stood up straight in the grinding, pulling gravity. “I did not think him so.”
Hyrlis nodded. “Naturally. Well, I too must travel very soon. If I don’t see you before you go, let me wish you both a good journey and a fair arrival.”
“Your wishes flatter us, sir,” Ferbin said, insincerely.
Hyrlis was indeed not there to see them off when they departed.
Over thirteen long days during which Ferbin and Holse were left to themselves by the ship and its crew and spent most of their time either sleeping or playing games, the star cruiser
A Morthanveld tramp ship with no name, just a long serial number they both forgot, picked them up from there on one of its semi-regular, semicircular routes and took them onwards to the great Morthanveld Nestworld of Syaung-un.
19. Dispatches
Oramen was standing by the window looking out over the city from his chambers in the palace in Pourl. The morning was bright and misty and Neguste, singing noisily but tunelessly, was next door, running him a bath when Fanthile rapped at the door. Neguste, who patently believed that volume was the ideal compensation for being tone-deaf, didn’t hear the door, so Oramen answered it himself.
He and Fanthile stood out on the apartment balcony while Oramen read a note the palace secretary had brought.
“Rasselle?” he said. “The Deldeyn capital?”
Fanthile nodded. “Your mother’s husband has been ordered there, as mayor. They will arrive during the next few days.”
Oramen let out a deep breath and looked first at Fanthile and then out at the city; canals glinted in the distance and banners of steam and smoke rose from a scattered forest of factory chimneys. “You know that tyl Loesp suggests I go to the Falls of the Hyeng-zhar?” he said, not looking at the palace secretary.
“I have heard, sir. They are a few days from Rasselle, I’m told.”
“I would be in charge of the excavations.” Oramen sighed. “Tyl Loesp believes it would help the bringing together of the people and institutions of the Ninth and the Eighth, that my presence there would help the effort to recruit more Sarl to the great project of the investigation of the mysterious ruins there. Also, it would give me a serious and proper purpose in life, so improving my reputation with the people.”
“You are the Prince Regent, sir,” the palace secretary said. “That might be thought reputation enough by some.”
“By some, perhaps, but these are changed days, Fanthile. Perhaps they are even the New Age that my father talked about, when feats of practical business matter more than those of arms.”
“There are reports that certain far dependencies dispute with various of tyl Loesp’s decrees, sir. Werreber already wants to form a new army to help instil some provincial discipline. The gentleman we speak of would be wise not to disband all the forces.”
Tyl Loesp’s clamorous triumph had been held just a few days earlier; parts of the city were still recovering. It had been a celebration on a scale and of an intensity Pourl had never seen before, certainly not under the late king. Tyl Loesp had provided for banquets in every street, a week’s free drink from every public house and a bounty for every inhabitant within the walls. Games, sports, competitions and concerts of every sort, all freely open to all, had taken place and a patchwork of small riots had broken out in various sections of the city, requiring quelling by constables and militia.
An enormous parade had been staged consisting of the victorious army all bright and polished, smiling and
