"You think so?" Schilling said.
"It's got to be," Pete said, harshly.
XV
AT TEN O'CLOCK that night they met in the group condominium apartment in Carmel. First came Silvanus Angst, this time—for perhaps the first time in his life—sober and silent, but as always carrying a paper bag containing a fifth of whiskey. He set it on the sideboard and turned to Pete and Carol Garden who followed him.
"I just can't see letting Psis in," Angst murmured. "I mean, you're talking about something that'll make Game-playing impossible forever."
Bill Calumine said drily, "Wait until everyone's here." His tone, to Angst, was unfriendly. "I want to meet the two of them," he said to Pete, "before I decide. The girl and the pre-cog, who, I understand, is on Jerome Luckman's staff back in New York." Although now voted out as spinner, Calumine automatically assumed the position of authority. And perhaps it was well he did, Pete reflected.
"That's right," Pete murmured absently. At the sideboard he looked to see what Silvanus Angst had brought. Canadian whiskey, this time, and very good. Pete got himself a glass, held it under the ice machine.
"Thank you sir," the ice machine piped.
Pete mixed himself a drink, his back to the room as it slowly, steadily, filled with people. Their murmuring voices came to him.
"And not just one Psi but two!"
"Yes, but the issue involved; it's patriotic."
"So what. Game-playing ends when Psis comes in."
"It can be with the proviso that they terminate as Bindmen as soon as this fracas with the—what're they called? The Woo Poo Non? Something like that, according to the Chronicle this evening. Anyhow, the vug firebrands. You know. The ones we thought we beat."
"You saw that article? The homeopape system at the Chronicle inferred that it's been these Woo Poo Noners who've kept our goddam birthrate down."
"Implied."
"Pardon?"
"You said 'inferred.' That's grammatically unsound."
"Anyhow, my point is, without quibbling, is that it's our duty to let these two Psi-people into Pretty Blue Fox. That vug detective, that E. B. Black, told us that it was to our national advantage to—"
"You believe him? A vug?"
"He's a good vug. Didn't you grasp that point?" Stuart Marks tapped Pete urgently on the shoulder. "That was the whole point you were trying to make to us, wasn't it?"
"I don't know," Pete said. He really didn't, now. He was worn-out. Let me drink my drink in peace, the thought, and turned his back once more on the roomful of arguing men and women. He wished Joe Schilling would arrive.
"Let them in this once, I say. It's for our own protection; we're not playing against each other, we're all on the same side in this, playing against the vug-bugs. And they can read our minds so they automatically win unless we can come up with something new. And anything new would have to be derived from the two Psi-people, right? Because where else is it going to come from? Straight ozone?"
"We can't play against vugs. They'll just laugh at us. Look, they got six of us right here in this room to gang together and kill Jerome Luckman; if they can do that—"
"Not me. I wasn't one of the six."
"But it could have been. They just didn't happen to choose you."
"Anyhow, if you read the article in the homeopape you know the vugs mean business. They slaughtered Luckman and that detective Hawthorne and kidnapped Pete Garden and then—"
"But newspapers exaggerate."
"Aw, there's no use talking to you." Jack Blau stalked away; he appeared beside Pete and said, "When are they getting here? These two Psi-people."
Pete said, "Any time now."
Coming up, slipping her smooth, bare arm through his, Carol said, "What are you drinking, darling?"
"Canadian whiskey."
"Everyone's been congratulating me," Carol said. "About the baby. Except of course Freya. And I think even she would, except—"
"Except she can't stand the idea," Pete said.
"Do you actually think it's been the vugs—or at least a segment of them—who've been keeping our birthrate down?"
"Yes," Pete said.
"So if we win, our birthrate might go up."
He nodded.
"And our cities would have something in them besides a billion Rushmore circuits all saying, 'Yes sir, no sir.'" Carol squeezed his arm.
Pete said, "And if we don't win, there pretty soon won't be any births on our planet at all. And the race will die out."
"Oh." She nodded wanly.
"It's a big responsibility," Freya Garden Gaines said, from behind him. "To hear you tell it, anyhow."
Pet shrugged.
"And Joe was on Titan, too? You both were?"
"Joe and I and Laird Sharp," Pete said.
"Instantly."
"Yes."
"Quaint," Freya said.
Pete said, "Get away."
"I'm not going to vote to admit the two Psi-people," Freya said. "I can tell you that now, Pete."
"You're an idiot, Mrs. Gaines," Laid Sharp said; he had been standing nearby, listening. "I can tell you that, at least. Anyhow, I think you'll be outvoted."
"You're fighting against a tradition," Freya said. "People don't lightly and easily set aside one hundred years."
"Not even to save their species?" Laird Sharp asked her.
"No one's seen these Game-playing Titans except Joe Schilling and you," Freya said. "Even Pete doesn't claim to have seen them."
"They exist," Sharp said quietly. "And you'd better believe it. Because soon you're going to see them, too."
Carrying his glass, Pete walked through the apartment and outside, into the cool California evening air; he stood
by himself in the semi-darkness, his drink in his hand, waiting. He did not know for what. For Joe Schilling and Mary Anne to arrive? Perhaps that was it.
Or perhaps it was for something else, something even more meaningful to him than that. I'm waiting for The Game to begin, he said to himself. The last Game we Terrans may ever play.
He was waiting for the Titanian Game-players to arrive.
He thought, Patricia McClain is dead, but in a sense she never really existed; what I saw was a simulacrum, a fake. What I was in love with, if that's the proper word ... it wasn't there anyhow, so how can I really say I've lost it? You have to possess it first to lose it.
Anyhow we can't think about that, he decided. We've got other matters to worry about. Doctor Philipson said that the Game-players are moderates; it's an irony that what we ultimately have to defeat is not the fringe of extremists but the great center group itself. Maybe it's just as well; we're taking on the core of their civilization, vugs not like E. G. Philipson but more like E. B. Black. The reputable ones. The ones who play by the rules.
That's all we can count on, Pete realized, the fact that these players are law-abiding. If they weren't, if they were like Philipson and the McClains—
We would not be facing them across a Game-board. They would simply kill us, as they killed Luckman and Hawthorne, and that would be that.
A car descended, now, its headlights flashing; it came to rest at the curb, behind the other cars, and its lights switched off. The door opened and shut and a single figure, a man, came striding toward Pete.
Who was this? He strained to see, not recognizing him.
"Hi," the man said. "I dropped by. After I read the article in the homeopape. It looks interesting, here. No fnool, I say, buddy-friend. Correct?"