The Player of Games

shaming pulse of emotion he'd experienced as a result of being thought to cheat, not to mention the slight nervousness he felt because he'd heard the girl off the GSV Cargo Cult was indeed here in Tronze this evening and looking forward to meeting him, he was in no mood to suffer fools gladly.

Not that the unlucky young male was necessarily a complete idiot; all he'd done was sketch out what had been, after all, not a bad idea for a game; but Gurgeh had fallen on him like an avalanche. The conversation — if you could call it that — had become a game.

The object was to keep talking; not to talk continuously, which any idiot could do, but to pause only when the young man was not signalling — through bodily or facial language, or actually starting to speak — that he wanted to cut in. Instead, Gurgeh would stop unexpectedly in the middle of a point, or after having just said something mildly insulting, but while still giving the impression he was going to keep talking. Also, Gurgeh was quoting almost verbatim from one of his own more famous papers on game-theory; an added insult, as the young man probably knew the text as well as he did. 'To imply,' Gurgeh continued, as the young man's mouth started to open again, 'that one can remove the element of luck, chance, happenstance in life by—'

'Jernau Gurgeh, not interrupting anything, am I?' Mawhrin-Skel said.

'Nothing of note,' Gurgeh said, turning to face the small machine. 'How are you, Mawhrin-Skel? Been up to any fresh mischief?'

'Nothing of note,' the tiny drone echoed, as the young man Gurgeh had been talking to sidled off. Gurgeh sat in a creeper-covered pergola positioned close to one edge of the plaza, near the observation platforms which reached out over the broad curtain of the falls, where spray rose from the rapids lying between the lip of the lake and the vertical drop to the forest a kilometre below. The roaring falls provided a background wash of white noise.

'I've found your young adversary,' the small drone announced. It extended one softly glowing blue field and plucked a nightflower from a growing vine.

'Hmm?' Gurgeh said. 'Oh, the young, ah… Stricken player?'

'That's right,' Mawhrin-Skel said evenly, 'the young, ah… Stricken player.' It folded some of the nightflower's petals back, straining them on the plucked stem.

'I heard she was here,' Gurgeh said.

'She's at Hafflis's table. Shall we go and meet her?'

'Why not?' Gurgeh stood; the machine floated away.

'Nervous?' Mawhrin-Skel asked as they headed through the crowds towards one of the raised terraces level with the lake, where Hafflis's apartments were.

'Nervous?' Gurgeh said. 'Of a child?'

Mawhrin-Skel floated silently for a moment or two as Gurgeh climbed some steps — Gurgeh nodded and said hello to a few people then the machine came close to him and said quietly, as it slowly stripped the petals from the dying blossom, 'Want me to tell you your heart rate, skin receptivity level, pheromone signature, neuron function- state…?' Its voice trailed off as Gurgeh came to a halt, half-way up the flight of broad steps.

He turned to face the drone, looking through half-hooded eyes at the tiny machine. Music drifted over the lake, and the air was full of the nightflowers' musky scent. The lighting set into the stone balustrades lit the game- player's face from underneath. People flooding down the steps from the terrace above, laughing and joking, parted round the man like waters round a rock, and — Mawhrin-Skel noticed — went oddly quiet as they did so. After a few seconds, as Gurgeh stood there, silent, breathing evenly, the little drone made a shuckling noise.

'Not bad,' it said. 'Not bad at all. I can't tell just yet what you're glanding, but that's a very impressive degree of control. Everything parameter-centred, near as damn. Except your neuron function-state; that's even less like normal than usual, but then your average civilian drone probably couldn't spot that. Well done.'

'Don't let me detain you, Mawhrin-Skel,' Gurgeh said coldly. 'I'm sure you can find something else to amuse you besides watching me play a game.' He continued up the broad steps.

'Nothing currently on this Orbital is capable of detaining me, dear Mr Gurgeh,' the drone said matter-of-factly, tearing the last of the petals from the nightflower. It dropped the husk in the water channel which ran along the top of the balustrade.

'Gurgeh, good to see you. Come; sit down.'

Estray Hafflis's party of thirty or so people sat round a huge, rectangular stone table set on a balcony jutting out over the falls and covered by stone arches strung with nightflower vines and softly shining paper lanterns; there were music-players at one end, sitting on the edge of the great slab with drums and strings and air instruments; they were laughing and playing mostly for themselves, each trying to play too fast for the others to follow.

Set into the centre of the table was a long narrow pit full of glowing coals; a kind of miniaturised bucket-line trundled above the fire, carrying little meat and vegetable pieces from one end of the table to the other; they were skewered on to the line at one end by one of Haftlis's children, and removed at the other end, wrapped in edible paper and thrown with a fair degree of accuracy to anybody who wanted them, by Hafflis's youngest, who was only six. Hafflis was unusual in having had seven children; normally people bore one and fathered one. The Culture frowned on such profligacy, but Hafflis just liked being pregnant. He was in a male stage at the moment, however, having changed a few years earlier.

He and Gurgeh exchanged pleasantries, then Hafflis showed the game-player to a seat beside Professor Boruelal, who was grinning happily and swaying in her seat. She wore a long black and white robe, and when she saw Gurgeh kissed him noisily on the lips. She attempted to kiss Mawhrin-Skel too, but it flicked away.

She laughed, and speared a half-done piece of meat from the line over the centre of the table with a long fork. 'Gurgeh! Meet the lovely Olz Hap! Olz; Jernau Gurgeh. Come on; shake hands!'

Gurgeh sat down, taking the small, pale hand of the frightened-looking girl on Boruelal's right. She was wearing something dark and shapeless, and was in her early teens, at most. He smiled with a slight frown, glancing at the professor, trying to share the joke of her inebria with the young blonde girl, but Olz Hap was looking at his hand, not his face. She let her hand be touched but then withdrew it almost immediately. She sat on her hands and stared at her plate.

Boruelal breathed deeply, seeming to gather herself together. She took a drink from a tall glass in front of her.

'Well,' she said, looking at Gurgeh as though he'd only just appeared. 'How are you, Jernau?'

'Well enough.' He watched Mawhrin-Skel manoeuvre itself beside Olz Hap, floating over the table beside her plate, fields all formal blue and green friendliness.

'Good evening,' he heard the drone say in its most avuncular voice. The girl brought her head up to look at the machine, and Gurgeh listened to their conversation at the same time as he and Boruelal talked.

'Hello.'

'Well enough to play a game of Stricken?'

'Mawhrin-Skel's the name. Olz Hap, am I right?'

'I think so, Professor. Are you well enough to invigilate?'

'Yes. How do you do.'

'Fuck me, no; drunk as a desert spring. Have to get somebody else. Suppose I could come down in time but… naa…'

'Oh, ah, shake fields with me, eh? That's very sweet of you; so few people bother. How nice to meet you. We've all heard so much.'

'How about the young lady herself?'

'Oh. Oh dear.'

'What?'

'What's wrong? Have I said something wrong?'

'Is she ready to play?'

'No, it's just—'

'Play what?'

'Ah; you're shy. You needn't be. Nobody'll force you to play. Least of all Gurgeh, believe me.'

'The game, Boruelal.'

'Well, I—'

'What, do you mean now?'