Gurgeh looked up in surprise. “You don’t?”
“Nup. Too dangerous. The Empire would disappear me and do the most thorough PM you ever seen. Want to find out what a Culturnik’s like inside, see?” Za closed his eyes. “Had to have almost everything taken out, and then… when I got here, let the Empire do all sorts of tests and take all sorts of samples… let them find out what they wanted without causing a diplomatic incident, disappearing an ambassador…”
“I see. I’m sorry.” Gurgeh didn’t know what else to say. He honestly hadn’t realised. “So all those drugs you were advising me to gland…”
“Guesswork, and memory,” Za said, eyes still shut. “Just trying to be friendly.”
Gurgeh felt embarrassed, almost ashamed.
Za’s head went back and he started to snore.
Then suddenly his eyes opened and he jumped up. “Well, must be toddling,” he said, making what looked like a supreme effort to pull himself together. He stood swaying in front of Gurgeh. “D’you think you could call me an air cab?”
Gurgeh did that. A few minutes later, after receiving clearance from Gurgeh via the guards on the roof, the machine arrived and took Shohobohaum Za away, singing.
Gurgeh sat for a little while as the evening wore on and the second sun set, then he finally dictated a letter to Chamlis Amalk-ney, thanking the old drone for the Orbital bracelet, which he still wore. He copied most of the letter to Yay, too, and told them both what had happened to him since he’d arrived. He didn’t bother to disguise the game he was playing or the Empire itself, and wondered how much of this truth would actually get through to his friends. Then he studied some problems on the screen and talked over the next day’s play with the ship.
He picked up Shohobohaum Za’s discarded bowl at one point, discovering there were still a few mouthfuls of drink left inside. He sniffed it, then shook his head, and told a tray to tidy the debris up.
Gurgeh finished Lo Wescekibold Ram off the next day with that the press described as ‘contempt’. Pequil was there, looking little the worse for wear save for a sling bandage on his arm. He said he was glad Gurgeh had escaped injury. Gurgeh told him how sorry he was Pequil had been hurt.
They went to and returned from the game-tent in an aircraft; the Imperial Office had decided Gurgeh was at too much risk travelling on the ground.
When he got back to the module again, Gurgeh discovered he was to have no interval between that game and the next; the Games Bureau had couriered a letter to say his next ten game would start the following morning.
“I’d have preferred a break,” Gurgeh confessed to the drone. He was having a float-shower, hanging in the middle of the AG chamber while the water sprayed from various directions and was sucked away through tiny holes all over the semi-spherical interior. Membrane plugs prevented the water from going into his nose, but speaking was still a little spluttery.
“No doubt you would,” Flere-Imsaho said in its squeaky voice. “But they’re trying to wear you out. And of course it means you’ll be playing against some of the best players, the ones who’ve also managed to finish their games quickly.”
“That had occurred to me,” Gurgeh said. He could only just see the drone through the spray and steam. He wondered what would happen if somehow the machine hadn’t been made quite perfectly and some water got into it. He turned lazily head over heels in the shifting currents of air and water.
“You could always appeal to the Bureau. I think it’s obvious you’re being discriminated against.”
“So do I. So do they. So what?”
“It might do some good to make an appeal.”
“You make it then.”
“Don’t be stupid; you know they ignore me.”
Gurgeh started humming to himself, eyes closed.
One of his opponents in the ten game was the same priest he’d beaten in the first one, Lin Goforiev Tounse; he’d won through his second-string games to rejoin the Main Series. Gurgeh looked at the priest when the apex entered the hall of the entertainment complex where they’d be playing, and smiled. It was an Azadian facial gesture he’d found himself practising occasionally, unconsciously, rather like a baby attempts to imitate the expressions on the faces of the adults around it. Suddenly it seemed like the right time to use it. He would never get it quite right, he knew — his face simply wasn’t built quite the same as an Azadian’s — but he could imitate the signal well enough for it to be unambiguous.
Translated or not, though, Gurgeh knew it was a smile that said, “Remember me? I’ve beaten you once and I’m looking forward to doing it again”; a smile of self-satisfaction, of victory, of superiority. The priest tried to smile back with the same signal, but it was unconvincing, and soon turned to a scowl. He looked away.
Gurgeh’s spirits soared. Elation filled him, burning bright inside. He had to force himself to calm down.
The other eight players had all, like Gurgeh, won their matches. Three were Admiralty or Navy men, one was an Army colonel, one a judge and the other three were bureaucrats. All were very good players.
At this third stage in the Main Series the contestants played a mini-tournament of one-against-one lesser games, and Gurgeh thought this would provide his best chance of surviving the match; on the main boards he was likely to face some sort of concerted action, but in the single games he had a chance of building up enough of an advantage to weather such storms.
He found himself taking great pleasure in beating Tounse, the priest. The apex swept his arm across the board after Gurgeh’s winning move, and stood up and started shouting and waving his fist at him, raving about drugs and heathens. Once, Gurgeh was aware, such a reaction would have brought him out in a cold sweat, or at the very least left him dreadfully embarrassed. But now he found himself just sitting back and smiling coldly.
Still, as the priest ranted at him, he thought the apex might be about to hit him, and his heart did beat a little faster… but Tounse stopped in mid-flow, looked round the hushed, shocked people in the room, seemed to realise where he was, and fled.
Gurgeh let out a breath, relaxed his face. The imperial Adjudicator came over and apologised on the priest’s behalf.
Flere-Imsaho was still popularly thought to be providing some sort of in-game aid to Gurgeh. The Bureau said that, to allay uninformed suspicions of this sort, they would like the machine to be held in the offices of an imperial computer company on the other side of the city during each session. The drone had protested noisily, but Gurgeh readily agreed.
He was still attracting large crowds to his games. A few came to glare and hiss, until they were escorted off the premises by game officials, but mostly they just wanted to see the play. The entertainment complex had facilities for diagrammatic representations of the main boards so that people outside the main hall could follow the proceedings, and some of Gurgeh’s sessions were even shown in live broadcasts, when they didn’t clash with the Emperor’s.
After the priest, Gurgeh played two of the bureaucrats and the colonel, winning all his games, though by a slender margin against the Army man. These games took a total of five days to play, and Gurgeh concentrated hard for all that time. He’d expected to feel worn-out at the end; he did feel slightly drained, but the primary sensation was one of jubilation. He’d done well enough to have at least a chance of beating the nine people the Empire had set against him, and far from appreciating the rest, he found he was actually impatient for the others to finish their minor games so that the contest on the main boards could begin.