Above them the door opened; the vug Peter Garden entered the con-apt of the Game-playing group Pretty Blue Fox.
"Hello!" it greeted those within the room.
Stuart Marks—or was it the simulacrum of Stuart Marks?— regarded it with horror and then stammered, "I guess everybody's here, now." He—or it—stepped out onto the porch and peered down. "Hi."
"Greetings," Pete Garden said, laconically.
They faced one another across the table, the Titanian simulacra on one side, Pretty Blue Fox plus Dave Mutreaux and Mary Anne McClain on the other.
"Cigar?" Joe Schilling said to Pete.
"No thanks," Pete murmured.
Across from them the vug simulacrum of Joe Schilling turned to the Pete Garden beside it and said, "Cigar?"
"No thanks," the vug Pete Garden answered.
Pete Garden said to Bill Calumine, "Did the shipment arrive from the San Francisco pharmaceutical house? We've got to have it before we can begin. I hope no one intends to dispute that."
The vug Pete Garden said, "A noteworthy idea you have fastened onto, in this erratic crippling of your pre-cog's sen-
sory apparatus. You are absolutely correct; it will go a great distance toward evening our relative strengths." It grinned at the group Pretty Blue Fox, up and down the Game-table. "We have no objection to waiting until your medication arrives; anything else would be unfair."
Answering it, Pete Garden said, "I believe you've got to wait; we obviously won't begin to play until then. So don't make it appear that you're doing us a big favor." His voice shook, slightly.
Leaning over, Bill Calumine said, "Sorry. It's already there, in the kitchen."
Rising from his chair, Pete Garden went with Dave Mutreaux into the kitchen of the condominium apartment. In the center of the kitchen table, with trays of half-melted ice, lemons, bottles of mixer, glasses and bitters, he saw a package wrapped in brown paper, sealed with tape.
"Just think," Mutreaux said meditatively, as Pete unwrapped the package. "If this doesn't work, what happened to Patricia and the others in the organization, there in Nevada, will happen to me." He seemed relatively calm, however. "I don't sense the ominous disregard of all order and legality in these moderates," he said, "that I do in the Wa Pei Nan, with Doctor Philipson and those like him. Or rather, like it." He scrutinized Pete as Pete took a phenothiazine spansule from the bottle. "If you know the time-phasing of the granules within," he said, "the vugs will be able to—"
"I don't," Pete said shortly, as he filled a glass with water at the tap. "The ethical house making up these spansules was told that the range would vary between instantaneous full-action to any sequence of partial action to no action whatsoever. In addition, it was told to make up several spansules, one varying from another." He added, "And I've picked a spansule at random. Physically it's identical in appearance to the others." He held out the spansule and the glass of water to Mutreaux.
Somberly, Mutreaux swallowed the spansule.
"I will tell you one thing," Mutreaux said, "for your own information. Several years ago, as an experiment, I tried a phenothiazine derivative. It had a colossal effect on my pre-cognitive ability." He smiled fleetingly at Pete. "As I told
you before we went over to Pat McClain's this idea of yours is an adequate solution to our problems, as nearly as I can foresee. Congratulations."
"Do you say that," Pete asked, "as someone genuinely with us, or merely as someone forced to play on this side of the table?"
"I don't know," Mutreaux said. "I'm in transition, Pete. Time will tell." Turning, he walked back into the living room without another word. Back to the great Game-board and the two opposing parties.
The vug Bill Calumine rose to its feet and announced, "I suggest our side roll first and then your side." It took the spinner and spun with expert vigor.
The pointer stopped at nine.
"All right," Bill Calumine said, also rising and facing his simulacrum; he, too, rolled. For him the pointer slowed as it came close to twelve, then started to pass on toward one.
To Mary Anne, Pete said, "Are you resisting any efforts on their part at psycho-kinesis?"
"Yes," she said, concentrating on the barely-moving pointer.
The pointer stopped on one.
"It's fair," Mary Anne said, in a scarcely audible voice.
"You Titanians initiate play, then," Pete conceded. He managed to suppress his discouragement; he kept it out of his voice.
"Good," his simulacrum said. It regarded him, grinning mockingly. "Then we will transport the field of interaction from Terra to Titan." It added, "We trust that you Terrans will not object."
"What?" Joe Schilling said. "Wait!" But the transforming activity had begun; it was already too late.
The room trembled and became hazed over. And the simulacra seated opposite them had, Pete thought, begun to attain a disrupted, oblique quality. As if, he thought, their physical shapes no longer functioned adequately, as if, like archaic, malformed exoskeletons, they were now in the process of being discarded.
His simulacrum, seated directly across from him, all at once lurched hideously. Its head lolled and its eyes became
glazed, empty of light, filmed over with a destructive membrane. The simulacrum shivered, and then, up its side, a long rent appeared.
The same process was occurring in the other simulacra. The Pete Garden simulacrum quivered, vibrated, and then, from the head-to-foot rent, something tentative popped quaveringly.
Out of the rent squeezed the protoplasmic organism within. The vug, in authentic shape, no longer requiring the artificial hull, was emerging. Forcing its way out into the gray-yellow light of the weakened sun.
Out of each discarded human husk a vug emerged, and the husks teetered and one by one, as if blown by an impalpable wind, writhed and then danced away, weightless, already without color. Bits and flakes of the discarded husks blew in the air; particles drifted across the Game-board, and Pete Garden, horrified, hurriedly brushed them away.
The Titanian Game-players had appeared in their actual shapes, at last. The business of The Game had begun in earnest. The fraud of the simulated Terran appearance had been abolished; it was no longer needed because The Game was no longer being played on Earth.
They were now on Titan.
In as calm a voice as possible, Pete Garden said, "All our plays will be made by David Mutreaux. Although we will, in turn, draw the cards and perform the other chores of The Game."
The vugs, opposite them, seemed to thought-propagate a derisive, meaningless laughter. Why? Pete wondered. It was as if, once the simulacra shapes had been discarded, communication between the two races had at once suffered an impairment.
"Joe," he said to Joe Schilling, "if it's all right with Bill Calumine, I'd like you to move our pieces."
"Okay," Joe Schilling said, nodding.
Tendrils of gray smoke, cold and damp, sifted onto the Game-table and the vug shapes opposite them dimmed into an irregular obscurity. Even physically, the Titanians had retreated, as if desiring as little contact with the Terrans as
possible. And it was not out of animosity; it seemed to be a spontaneous withdrawal.
Maybe, Pete thought, we were doomed to this encounter from the very start. It was the absolutely-determined outcome of the initial meeting of our two cultures. He felt hollow and grim. More determined than ever to win The Game before them.
"Draw a card," the vugs declared, and their propagations seemed to merge, as if there was in actuality only one vug against whom the group played. One massive, inert organism opposing them, ancient and slow in its actions, but infinitely determined.