Panting, he waited for it to return.
He knew that it would.
Joe Schilling, floundering in the immense vacuity, rolled, seemed to fall, caught himself, choked on the smoke of his cigar and struggled to breathe. "Pete!" he said loudly. He listened. There was no direction, no up or down. No here. No sense of what was him and not him. No division into the I and the not-I.
Silence.
"Pete Garden," he said again, and this time he sensed something, sensed it but did not actually hear it. "Is that you?" he demanded.
"Yes, it's me," the answer came. And it was Pete.
Yet, it was not.
"What's going on?" Joe said. "What's the damn thing doing to us? It's cheating away a mile a minute, isn't it? But we'll get back to Earth; I have faith we'll find our way back. After all, we won The Game, didn't we? And we were positive we weren't going to be able to do that." Again he listened.
Pete said, "Come closer."
"No," Schilling said. "For some darn reason I—don't trust you. Anyhow, how can I come closer? I'm just rolling around here, right? You, too?"
"Come closer," the voice repeated, monotonously.
No, Joe Schilling said to himself.
He did not trust the voice; he felt frightened. "Get away," he said, and, paralyzed, listened.
It had not gone away.
In the darkness, Freya Gaines thought. It's betrayed us; we won and got nothing. That bastard organism—we never should have trusted it or put any faith in Pete's idea of playing it.
I hate him, she said to herself. It's his and Joe's fault.
I'd kill them, both of them, she thought, furiously. I'd crunch them to death. She reached out, groping with both hands in the darkness. I'd kill anyone, right now.
I want to kill!
Mary Anne McClain said to Pete, "Listen, Pete; it's deprived us of all our modes of apprehending reality. It's MS that it's changed. I'm sure of it. Can you hear me?" She cocked her head, strained to hear.
There was nothing. No answer.
It's atomized us, she thought. As if we're each of us in an extreme psychosis, isolated from everyone else and every familiar attribute in our method of perceiving time and space. This is frightened, hating isolation, she realized. It must be that. What else can it be?
It can't be real. And yet-Perhaps this is fundamental reality, beneath the conscious "layers of the psyche; maybe this is the way we really are. They're showing us this, killing us with the truth about ourselves. Their telepathic faculty and their ability to mold and reform minds, to infuse them; she retreated from the thought.
And then, below her, she saw something that lived.
Stunted, alien creatures, warped by enormous forces into miserably malformed, distorted shapes. Crushed down until they were blinded and tiny. She peered at them; the waning
light of a huge, dying sun lit and relit the scene and then, even as she watched, it faded into dark red and at last utter blackness snuffed it out once more.
Faintly luminous, like organisms inhabitating a vast depth, the stunted creatures continued to live, after a fashion. But it was not pleasant.
She recognized them.
That's us. Terrans, as the vugs see us. Close to the sun, subject to immense gravitational forces. She shut her eyes.
I understand, she thought. No wonder they want to fight us; to them we're an old, waning race that's had its period, that must be compelled to abandon the scene.
And then, the vugs. A glowing creature, weightless, drifted far above, beyond the range of the crushing pressures, the blunted, dying creatures. On a little moon, far from the great, ancient sun.
You want to show us this, she realized. This is how reality appears to you, and it's just as real as our own view.
But—no more so.
Do you grasp that? she asked the glowing weightless presence that was the spiraling Titanian. That our view of the situation is equally true? Yours can't replace ours. Or can it? Is that what you want?
She waited for the answer, her eyes squeezed shut with fear.
"Ideally," a thought came to her drily, "both views can be made to coincide. However, in practicality, that does not work."
Opening her eyes she saw a blob, a mound of sagging, gelatinous protoplasm—ludicrously, with its name stitched to its front, in red thread. E. B. Black.
"What?" she demanded, and looked around.
E. B. Black thought-radiated to her, "There are difficulties. We have not resolved them ourselves; hence, the contradictions within our culture." It added, "I've prevailed over the Game-players whom your group was pitted against. You're here on Terra, in your family's apartment in San Rafael where I am currently conducting my criminal investigation."
Light, and the force of gravity; both were acting on them. She sat up, warily. "I saw—"
"You saw the view which obsesses us. We can't repudiate it." The vug flowed closer to her, anxious to make its thoughts truly clear. "We're aware that it's partial, that it's unfair to you Terrans because you have, as you say, an equal and opposite and as completely binding a view of us in return. However, we continue to perceive as you just now experienced." It added, "It would have been unfair to leave you in that frame of reference any longer."
Mary Anne said, "We won The Game. Against you."
"Our citizens are aware of that. We repudiate punitive efforts by our distraught Game-players. Logically, having won, you must be returned to Terra. Anything else is unthinkable. Except of course to our extremists."
"Your Game-players?"
"They will not be punished. They are too highly-placed in our culture. Be glad you're here; be content, Miss McClain." Its tone was harsh.
Mary Anne said, "And the other members of our group? Where are they now?" They were not here in San Rafael, obviously. "At Carmel?"
"Scattered," E. B. Black said, irritably. She could not tell if it were angry at her, at the members of the group, or at its fellow vugs. The whole situation appeared to annoy it. "You'll see them again, Miss McClain. Now, if I may return to my investigation..."
It moved toward her and she retreated, not wanting to come into bodily contact with it. E. B. Black reminded her too much of the other, the one against which they had played—played and won and then been cheated out of their victory.
"Not cheated," E. B. Black contradicted. "Your victory has merely been—held back from you. It is still yours and you will obtain it." It added, "In time." There was a faint tinge of relish in its tone. E. B. Black was not particularly saddened by the plight of Pretty Blue Fox, the fact that its members were scattered, frightened and confused. In chaps.
"May I go to Carmel?" she asked.
"Of course. You may damn well go anywhere you wish,
Miss McClain. But Joe Schilling is not in Carmel; you'll have to search elsewhere."
"I will," she said. "I'll look until I find him. Pete Garden, too." Until the group is back together again, she thought. As it was before, when we sat across the board from the Titanian Game-players; as we were in Carmel, just a little while ago this evening.
A little while—and a long way ago.
Turning, she left the apartment. And did not look back.
A voice, eager and querulous, prodded at Joe Schilling; he moved away from it—tried to, anyhow—but it crept after him.
"Urn," it gibbered. "Uh, say, Mr. Schilling, you got a minute?" In the darkness he floated closer, always closer until it was right on him, throttling him; he was unable to breathe. "I'll just take a little of your time. Okay?" It paused. He said nothing. "Well," the voice resumed, "I'll tell you what I'd like. As long as you're here, visiting us and I mean, it's really a distinct honor, you know."