"So do I," Pete said, and Mutreaux, after a pause, brusquely nodded. "What about you, Mary?" Pete turned to the girl, who still sat curled up in a rigid, stricken ball.
"I don't know," she said, finally. "I don't know who to believe in or trust any more; I don't even know about myself."
"It's got to be done," Joe Schilling said to Pete. "In my opinion, anyhow. He or it is looking for you; he's with Carol. If he's not reliable—" Schilling broke off and scowled.
"Then he's got Carol," Pete agreed, stonily.
"Yes." Schilling nodded.
Pete said, "Call him. From here."
Together, they went outside to the McClains' parked car. Joe Schilling placed the call to the apartment in San Rafael. If we're making a mistake, Joe Schilling thought, it probably means Carol's death and the death of their baby. I wonder which it is? he asked himself. A boy or a girl? They have those tests now; they can tell after the third week. Pete, of course, would accept either. He smiled a little.
Pete said tensely, "I've got him." On the screen the image of a vug formed, and Joe Schilling reflected that it looked— to him at least—like any other vug. This is what Doctor Philipson really looks like, he knew. What Pete saw. And he thought he was hallucinating.
"Where are you, Mr. Garden?" the vug's query came to them from the speaker. "I see you have Mr. Schilling there with you. What do you require from the Coast police authority? We are ready to dispatch a ship when and where you tell us."
"We're coming back," Pete said. "We don't need any ship. How is Carol?"
"Mrs. Garden is anxiously concerned, but physically in satisfactory condition."
"There are nine dead vugs here," Joe Schilling said.
E. B. Black said instantly, "Of the Wa Pei Nan? The extremist party?"
"Yes," Schilling said. "One returned to Titan; he had been here as Doctor E. G. Philipson of Pocatello, Idaho. You
know, the well-known psychiatrist. We urge you to take his clinic at once; there could be others entrenched there."
"We will shortly do that," E. B. Black promised. "Are the killers of my colleague, Wade Hawthorne, among the dead?"
"Yes," Joe Schilling said.
"A relief," E. B. Black said. "Give us your location and we will send someone out to undertake whatever dispositionary chores are necessary."
Pete gave him the information.
"That's that," Schilling said, as the screen faded. He did not know how to feel. Had they done the right thing? We will know before very long, he said to himself. Together, they walked back to the motel room, neither of them saying anything.
"If they get us," Pete said, pausing at the door of the room, "I still say we did the best we could. You can't know everything. This is all—" He gestured. "Blurred and twisting, people and things merging back and forth into each other. Maybe I haven't recovered from last night."
Joe Schilling said, "Pete, 1 saw the Game-players of Titan. It was enough."
"What should we do?" Pete said.
"Get Pretty Blue Fox back into being."
"And then what?"
Joe Schilling said, "Play."
"Against?"
"The Titanian Game-players," Joe Schilling said. "We have to; they're not going to give us any choice."
Together, they re-entered the motel room.
As they flew back to San Francisco, Mary Anne said faintly, "I don't feel their control over me as strongly as I did. It's waned."
Mutreaux glanced at her. "Let's hope so." He looked utterly tired. "I preview," he said to Pete Garden, "your efforts to get your group restored. Want to know the outcome?"
"Yes," Pete said.
"The police will grant it. By tonight you'll be a legal Game-playing body again, as before. You will meet at your
condominium apartment in Carmel and plan your strategy. At this point there is a division into parallel futures. They hinge in a disputed fact. Whether your group permits you to bring Mary Anne McClain in as a new Game-playing Bindman."
"What are the two futures branching from that?" Pete asked.
"I can see the one without her very clearly. Let's simply say it's not good. The other—it's blurred because Mary is a variable and can't be previewed within causal frameworks; she introduces the acausal principle of synchronicity." Mutreaux was silent a moment. "I think, on the basis of what I preview, I would advise you to make the attempt to bring her into the group. Even though it's illegal."
"That's right," Joe Schilling said, nodding. "It's strictly against the bylaws of Bluff-playing entities. No Psi of any description can be admitted. But our antagonists aren't non-Psi humans; they're Titans and telepaths. I see her value. With her in our group the telepath factor is balanced. Otherwise, they hold an absolute advantage." He recalled the alteration in the card which he had drawn, its change from twelve to eleven. We couldn't win against that, he realized. And even with Mary—
"I should be admitted, too, if possible," Mutreaux said. "Although, again, legally I'm also admissible. Pretty Blue Fox must be made to comprehend the issues involved, what the stakes are this time. It's not just an exchange of property deeds, not a competition among Bindmen to see who's top man. It's our old struggle with an enemy, renewed after all these years. If it ever ceased in the first place."
"It never did cease," Mary Anne spoke up. "We knew that, the people in our organization. Whether we were vugs or Terrans; we agreed on that."
"What can you see us obtaining from E. B. Black and the police power?" Pete asked Mutreaux.
"I preview a meeting between the Area Commissioner, U. S. Cummings, and E. B. Black. But I can't seem to foresee the outcome. There is something which U. S. Cummings is involved in that introduces another variable. I wonder. U. S. Cummings may be an extremist. What is it called?"
"The Wa Pei Nan," Joe Schilling said. "That's what E. B. Black called it." He had never heard the words before the vug detective had said them; he rolled them around in his mind, trying to get the flavor of them. But they were impenetrable, shut tight to him. He gave up. He could not imagine what such a party was like or how it felt to belong to it.
I can't empathize with them, he realized. And that's bad because if we can't put ourselves in their places we can't predict what they're going to do. Even with the use of our pre-cog.
He did not feel very confident. However, he did not tell that to the people in the car with him.
Soon, he thought, we—the augmented Game-playing group Pretty Blue Fox—will make our first move against the Titanians. We'll have, perhaps, the help of Mutreaux and Mary Anne McClain; will that be enough? Mutreaux can't see, and no one can count on Mary Anne, as Doctor Philip-son pointed out. And yet he was glad they had her. Without Mary Anne, he thought caustically, Pete and I would be back there at that motel, in the middle of the Nevada Desert. Sitting in on Titanian strategy.
I'll be glad to contribute title deeds to both of you," Pete said to Mary Anne and Dave Mutreaux. "Mary, you can have San Rafael. Mutreaux, you can have San Anselmo. Those will bring you to the table. I hope."
No one spoke; no one felt optimistic enough to.
"How do you bluff?" Pete said, "against telepaths?"
It was a good question. It was, in fact, the question on which everything depended.
And none of them could answer it. They can't alter the values of the cards we draw, Schilling said to himself, because we've got Mary Anne to exert a contra-pressure stabilizing them as we hold them. But—
"If we can develop a strategy," Pete said, "we'll need the collective minds of everyone in Pretty Blue Fox. Among all of us there must be an idea we can use."