And wise.
Pete Garden hated it. And feared it.
Mary Anne said aloud, "They are beginning to exert influence on the deck of cards!"
"All right," Pete said. "Keep your attention as fully formed as you can." He himself felt overwhelmingly tired. Have we lost already? he wondered. It felt like it. It felt as if they had been playing for an endless time now. And yet they had barely begun.
Reaching out, Bill Calumine drew a card.
"Don't look at it," Pete warned.
"I understand," Bill Calumine said irritably. He slid the card, unexamined, to Dave Mutreaux.
Mutreaux, in the flickering half-light, sat with the card face down before him, his face wrinkled with concentration.
"Seven squares," he said, then.
Joe Schilling, on a signal from Calumine, moved their piece ahead seven squares. The square on which it came to rest read: Rise in fuel costs. Pay bill to utility company of $50.
Raising his head, Joe Schilling faced the Titanian authority squatting opposite them on the far side of the board.
There was no call. The Titanians had decided to allow the move to pass; they did not believe it to consist of a bluff.
All at once Dave Mutreaux turned to Pete Garden and
said, "We've lost. That is, we're going to lose; I preview it absolutely, it's there in every alternative future."
Pete Garden stared at him.
"But your ability," Joe Schilling pointed out. "Have you forgotten? It's now highly impaired. A new experience for you; you're disoriented. Isn't that it?"
Mutreaux said haltingly, "But it does not feel impaired."
The vug authority facing them said, "Do you wish to withdraw from The Game?"
"Not at this point," Pete answered, and Bill Calumine, white and stricken, reflexively nodded in agreement.
What is this? Pete asked himself. What's going on? Has Dave Mutreaux, despite the threat from Mary Anne, betrayed us?
Mutreaux said, "I spoke aloud because they—" He indicated the vug opponent. "They can read my mind anyhow."
That was true; Pete nodded, his mind laboring furiously. What can we salvage here? he asked himself. He tried to control his plunging panic, his intuition of defeat.
Joe Schilling, lighting a cigar, leaned back and said, "I think we'd better go on." He did not appear worried. And yet of course he was. But Joe Schilling, Pete realized, was a great Game-player; he would not show his emotions or capitulate in any way. Joe would go on to the end, and the rest of them would, too. Because they had to. It was as simple as that.
"If we win," Pete said to the vug opponent, "we obtain control of Titan. You have as much to lose. You have as much at stake as we do."
The vug drew itself up, shivered, replied, "Play."
"It's your turn to draw a card," Joe Schilling reminded it.
"True." Admonished, the vug now drew a card. It paused, and then on the board its piece, advanced one, two, three... nine squares in all.
The square read: Planetoid rich in archeological treasures, discovered by your scouts. Win $70,000.
Was it a bluff? Pete Garden turned toward Joe Schilling, and now Bill Calumine leaned over to confer. The others of the group, too, bent closer, murmuring.
Joe Schilling said, "I'd call it."
Up and down the table the members of Pretty Blue Fox hesitantly voted. The vote ran in favor of calling the move as a bluff. But it was close.
"Bluff," Joe Schilling stated, aloud.
The vug's card at once flipped over. It was a nine.
"It's fair," Mary Anne said in a leaden voice. "I'm sorry, but it is; no Psi-force that I could detect was exerted on it."
The vug said, "Prepare your payment, please." And again it laughed, or seemed to laugh; Pete could not be certain which.
In any case it was a violent and quick defeat for Pretty Blue Fox. The vuggish side had won $70,000 from the bank for having landed on the square and an additional $70,000 from the group's funds due to the inaccurate call of bluff. $140,000 in all. Dazed, Pete sat back, trying to keep himself composed, at least externally. For the sake of the others in the group he had to.
"Again," the vug said, "I ask your party to concede."
"No, no," Joe Schilling said, as Jack Blau shakily counted out the group's funds and passed them over.
"This is a calamity," Bill Calumine stated quietly.
"Haven't you survived such losses in The Game before?" Joe Schilling asked him, scowling.
"Have you?" Calumine retorted.
"Yes," Schilling said.
"But not in the end," Calumine said. "In the end, Schilling, you didn't survive; in the end you were defeated. Exactly as you're losing for us, now, here at this table."
Schilling said nothing. But his face was pale.
"Let's continue," Pete said.
Calumine said bitterly, "It was your idea to bring this jinx here; we never would have had this bad luck without him. As spinner—"
"But you're not our spinner any longer," Mrs. Angst spoke up in a low voice.
"Play," Stuart Marks snapped.
Another card was drawn, passed unread to Dave Mutreaux; he sat with it face down before him and then, slowly, he moved their piece ahead eleven places. The square read: Pet cat uncovers valuable old stamp album in attic. You win $3,000
The vug said, "Bluff."
Dave Mutreaux, after a pause, turned over the card. It was an eleven; the vug had lost and therefore had to pay. ' It was not a huge sum, but it proved something to Pete that made him tremble. The vug could be wrong, too.
The phenothiazine-crippling was working effectively.
The group had a chance.
Now the vug drew a card, examined it, and its piece moved ahead nine spaces. Error in old tax return. Assessed by Federal Government for $80,000.
The vug shuddered convulsively. And a faint, barely audible moan seemed to escape from it.
This, Pete knew at once, could be a bluff. If it was, and they did not call it, the vug—instead of losing that sum-collected it. All it had to do was turn over its card, show that it had not drawn a nine.
The vote of Pretty Blue Fox, member by member, was taken.
It was in favor of not calling the move as a bluff.
"We decline to call," Joe Schilling stated.
Reluctantly, with agonized slowness, the vug paid from its pile of money $80,000 to the bank. It had not been a bluff, and Pete gasped with relief. The vug had now lost back over half of what it had won on its great previous move. It was in no sense whatsoever an infallible player.
And, like Pretty Blue Fox, the vug could not conceal its dismay at a major setback. It was not human, but it was alive and it had goals and desires and anxieties. It was mortal.
Pete felt sorry for it.
"You're wasting your affect," the vug said tartly to him, "if you pity me. I still hold the edge over you, Terran."
"For now," Pete agreed. "But you're involved in a declining process. The process of losing."
Pretty Blue Fox drew another card, which, as before, was passed to Dave Mutreaux. He sat, this time, for an interval that seemed forever.
"Call it!" Bill Calumine blurted, at last
Mutreaux murmured, "Three."
The Terran piece was moved by Joe Schilling. And Pete read: Mud slide endangers house foundations. Fee to construction firm: $14,000.
The vug did not stir. And then, suddenly, it stated, "I— do not call."
Dave Mutreaux glanced at Pete. He reached out and turned over the card.