The Game-Players Of Titan Part 20

"I care now," he said. "They've been playing The Game for a long time, so evidently they've found a way to incorporate their faculty or-"

Patricia said, "They hobble it, Pete."

"I see," he said. But he did not see. Hobble it how? And to what extent?

Patricia said, "Through drug-ingestion. The effect is similar to what the phenothiazine cla.s.s does to a Terran."

"Phenothiazines," Mutreaux said. "In big doses that's given to schizophrenics; in quant.i.ty it becomes an antipsychotic medication."

"It lessens the schizophrenic delusions," Patricia said, "because it obliterates the involuntary telepathic sense; it eradicates the paranoiac response to the picking up of subconscious hostilities in others. The t.i.tanians possess medication which acts along the same lines on them and the rules of The Game, as they practice it, require them to lose their talent or at least to abort it by some extent."

Mutreaux, glancing at his watch, said, "He should be here any time now, Patricia. Surely you're going to wait for him."

"Why?" she said, still gathering up articles here and there in the apartment. "I don't want to stay; I just want to get out. Before something else happens. Something more that has to do with her." her."

"We'll need all three of us to exert sufficient influence on Garden, here," Mutreaux pointed out.

"You get Nats Katz, then," Patricia said. "I'm telling you I'm not going to stay one minute longer than I have to!"

"But right now Katz is in Carmel," Mutreaux said, patiently. "And we want to have Garden thoroughly with us when we go there."

"I can't help," Patricia said, paying no attention to him; she could not seem to stop her headlong flight, her rus.h.i.+ng blindly. "Listen, Dave, honest to G.o.d, there's only one thing that matters to me; I don't want to undergo again what we went through in Nevada. You were there, you know what I'm talking about. And next time she won't spare you, because you're with us. I really advise you to get out, too; let E. R. Philipson handle this, since he's immune to her. But it's your life; you have to decide." She went on, then, and Mutreaux somberly seated himself, with the heat-needle, waiting for Doctor Philipson to show up.

To himself Pete thought, Hobble Hobble it. Hobble the Psionic talents on both sides, as Patricia said. It could be an agreement with them; we make use of the phenothiazines, they use whatever it is they're accustomed to. So they were cheating when they read my mind. And then he thought, And they'll cheat again. We can't trust them to hobble themselves. They seem to feel that their moral obligations end when they encounter us. it. Hobble the Psionic talents on both sides, as Patricia said. It could be an agreement with them; we make use of the phenothiazines, they use whatever it is they're accustomed to. So they were cheating when they read my mind. And then he thought, And they'll cheat again. We can't trust them to hobble themselves. They seem to feel that their moral obligations end when they encounter us.

"That's right," Patricia said, picking up his thoughts. "They're not going to hobble themselves when they play you, Pete. And you can't compel them to because in your own playing you don't recognize such a stipulation; you can't show them a legal basis on your side for demanding that."

"We can show them that we've never allowed Psionic talents at the board," he said.

"But you are now. Your group is voting that daughter of mine in and Dave Mutreaux in, right?" She smiled at him crookedly, heartlessly, her eyes l.u.s.terless and black. "So that's that, Pete Garden. Too bad. At least you made the try."

Bluffing, he thought. Telepaths. Hobbling through medication that acts as a thalamic suppressor, dulls the extrasensory area of the brain. It could be dulled to various degrees, damped to some extent but not entirely; gradations can be obtained, depending on the amount of medication. Ten milligrams of a phenothiazine would dampen it; sixty would obliterate it.

And then he thought, his mind careening, Suppose we didn't look at the cards we drew? There would be nothing in our minds for the t.i.tanians to read because we wouldn't know what number we'd obtained ...

To Mutreaux, Patricia said, "He's almost managed it, Dave. He forgets that he's not going to be playing on the Terran side, that he's going to belong to us by the time he seats himself at the Game-board." She brought out a little overnight bag, now, hurrying to fill it.

Pete thought, If we had Mutreaux, if we could regain him, we could win. Because I know how, finally.

"You know," Patricia said, "but how is it going to help you?"

Aloud, Pete said, "We could dampen his pre-cog faculty to an undetermined degree. So that it becomes unpredictable." Through the use of phenothiazine spansules, he realized, which act over a period of hours at a variable rate. Mutreaux himself would not know if he were bluffing or not, how accurate his guess was. He would draw a card, and, without looking at it, move our piece. If his pre-cog faculty were operating at maximum force at that instant his guess would be accurate; it would not be bluff. But if at that instant the medication had a greater rather than a lesser effect on him- It would be a bluff. And Mutreaux himself would not know. That could easily be arranged; someone else would prepare the phenothiazine spansule, fix the rate at which it would release its medication.

"But," Patricia said softly, "Dave isn't on your side of the Game table, Pete."

Pete said, "But I'm right. That's how we could play against the t.i.tanian telepaths and win."

"Yes," Patricia said, and nodded.

"He's worked it out now, has he?" Mutreaux asked her.

"He has," she said. "I feel sorry for you, Pete, because you've got it and it's too late in coming. Your people would have a lot of fun, wouldn't they? Preparing the grains of medication within the spansule, using all kinds of complex tablets and formulae to work out the rate of release. It could be random, too, if you want it that way, or at a fixed but so elaborate rate that-"

To Mutreaux, Pete said, "How can you sit there and know you're betraying us? You're not a t.i.tanian national; you're a Terran."

Calmly, Mutreaux said, "Psychic dynamisms are real, Pete, as real as any other kind of force. I foresaw my meeting with Nats Katz; I foresaw what was going to happen, but I couldn't prevent it. Remember, I didn't seek him out, he found me." me."

"Why didn't you warn us?" Pete said. "When you were still on our side of the board."

"You would have killed me," Mutreaux said. "I previewed that particular alternative future. In several, I did tell you. And-" He shrugged. "I don't blame you; what other course would you have? My going over to t.i.tan determines the outcome of The Game. Our acquiring you proves that."

"He wishes," Patricia said, "that you had left the Emphytal in his medicine cabinet; he wishes he had taken them. Poor Pete, always a potential suicide, aren't you? Always, as far as you're concerned, that's the ultimate way out. The one solution to everything."

Mutreaux said restlessly, "Doctor Philipson should have been here by now. Are you certain the arrangements were understood? Could the moderates have sequestered his services? Legally, they hold the-"

"Doctor Philipson would never yield to the cowards in our midst," Patricia said. "You're familiar with his att.i.tude." Her voice was sharp, laden with dread and concern.

"But he's not here," Mutreaux said. "Something's wrong." "Something's wrong."

They looked at each other, silently.

"What do you preview?" Patricia demanded.

"Nothing," Mutreaux said. His face, now, was pale.

"Why not?"

"If I could preview, I could preview, period," Mutreaux said bitingly. "Isn't that obvious? I don't know and I wish I did." He got to his feet and went over to the window to look out. For a moment he had forgotten Pete; he held the heat-needle slackly, squinting to see in the evening darkness that lay outside. His back was to Pete, and Pete jumped toward him.

"Dave!" Patricia barked, dropping her armload of books.

Mutreaux turned, and a bolt from the heat-needle zoomed past Pete; he felt the peripheral effects from it, the dehydrating envelope that surrounded the laser beam itself, the narrow, effective beam that was so useful both in close quarters and at a distance.

Raising his arms, Pete struck the man with both elbows, in the unprotected throat.

The heat-needle rolled away from both of them across the floor. Patricia McClain, sobbing, scrambled after it. "Why? Why couldn't you predict this?" She clutched at the small cylinder, frantically.

His face sickly and dark, Mutreaux shut his eyes and dwindled into physical collapse, pawing at himself, inhaling raucously, no longer concerned with anything else beyond the ma.s.sive, difficult effort to live.

"I'm killing you, Pete," Patricia McClain gasped, backing away from him, holding the heat-needle waveringly pointed at him. Sweat, he saw, stood out on her upper lip; her mouth quivered violently and tears filled her eyes. "I can read your mind," she said huskily, "and I know, Pete, I know what you'll do if I don't. You've got to have Dave Mutreaux back on your side of the board to win and you can't have him back; he's ours."

Throwing himself away from her he tumbled out of the path of the laser, s.n.a.t.c.hing at anything. His fingers closed over a book and he hurled it; the book fluttered open and dropped at Patricia McClain's feet, harmlessly.

Panting, Patricia backed away, still. "Dave will recover," she whispered. "If you had killed him perhaps it wouldn't matter so much, because then you couldn't get him for your side and we wouldn't-"

She broke off. Swiftly turning her head she listened, not breathing.

"The door," she said.

The k.n.o.b turned.

Patricia raised the heat-needle. Slowly, her arm bent and twisted, inch by inch, until the muzzle of the heat-needle was pointing at her face. She stared down at it, unable to take her eyes from it. She said, "Please don't, okay? I gave birth to you. Please-"

Her fingers, against her will, moved the stud. The laser beam flicked on.

Pete looked away.

When he looked back at last the door of the apartment stood open. Mary Anne, framed in the outline of darkness, walked in, slowly, hands deep in the pockets of her long coat. Her face was expressionless. She said to Pete, "Dave Mutreaux is alive, isn't he?"

"Yes." He did not look at the heap which had been Patricia McClain; he averted his eyes from it and said, "We need him so leave him alone, Mary." His heart labored slowly, horribly.

"I realize that," Mary Anne said.

"How did you know about-this?"

Mary Anne said, after an interval, "When I got to the condominium apartment in Carmel, with Joe Schilling I saw Nats and of course I understood. I knew that Nats was the organization's overall superior. He outranked even Rothman."

"What did you do there?" Pete said.

Joe Schilling, his face puffy with tension, entered the apartment and went up to Mary Anne; he put his hand on her shoulder but she jerked away, going alone over to the corner to stand and watch. "When she came in," Schilling said, "Katz was fixing himself a drink. She-" He hesitated.

Mary Anne said tonelessly, "I moved the gla.s.s which he held. I made it go five inches, that's all. He was-holding it at chest level."

"The gla.s.s is inside him," Schilling said. "It very simply cut his heart, or part of his heart, out of his circulatory system. There was a good deal of blood, because the gla.s.s didn't go in all the way." He was silent then; neither he nor Mary Anne spoke.

On the floor, Dave Mutreaux, gargling, struggled, his face blue, trying to get air into his lungs. He had stopped stroking his throat now, and his eyes were open. But he did not seem able to see.

"What about him?" Schilling said.

Pete said, "With Patricia dead and Nats Katz dead, and Philipson-" He understood, now, why Doctor Philipson had failed to appear. "He knew you would be here," he said to Mary Anne. "So he was afraid to leave t.i.tan. Philipson saved himself, at their expense."

"I guess so," Mary Anne murmured.

Joe Schilling said, "I can hardly blame him."

Bending down, Pete said to Mutreaux, "Will you be all right?"

Mutely, Dave Mutreaux nodded.

Pete said to him, "You must show up at the Game-board. On our side. You know why; you know what I intend to do."

Staring at him, Mutreaux nodded.

"I can manage him," Mary Anne said, walking over to watch. "He's too much afraid of me to do anything more for them. Aren't you?" she said to Mutreaux in the same inert, neutral tone. And prodded him with her toe.

Mutreaux, dully, managed to nod.

"Be glad you're alive," Schilling said to him.

"He is," Mary Anne said. To Pete she said, "Will you do something about my mother, please?"

"Sure," Pete said. He glanced at Joe Schilling. "Why don't you go downstairs and wait in the car?" he said to Mary Anne. "We'll call E.B. Black; we don't need you for a while."

"Thank you," Mary Anne said. Turning, she walked slowly out of the apartment; Pete and Joe Schilling watched her until she was gone.

"Because of her," Joe Schilling said, "we're going to win, there at the board."

Pete nodded. Because of her and because Mutreaux was still alive. Alive-and no longer in a position to act for the t.i.tanian authority.

"We're lucky," Joe Schilling said. "Someone had left the door of the con-apt open; she saw Katz before he could see her. She was standing outside and he couldn't make her out until too late. I think he had counted on Mutreaux' pre-cog faculty, forgetting or not understanding that she's a variable as far as that faculty is concerned. He was as unprotected by Mutreaux' talent as if Mutreaux had never existed."

And so are we, Pete thought to himself. That unprotected.

But he could not bother to worry about that now. The Game against the t.i.tanians lay directly ahead; he did not need to be a pre-cog to see that. Everything else would have to wait.

Joe Schilling said, "I have confidence in her. I'm not concerned about what she might do, Pete."

"Let's hope you're right," Pete said. He bent down beside the body of Patricia McClain. This was Mary's mother, he realized. And Mary Anne did this to her. And yet we have to depend on Mary Anne; Joe is right. We have no choice.

16.

To Mutreaux, Pete Garden said, "This is what you have to face and accept. As we play, Mary Anne McClain will be at the board beside you at all times. If we lose, Mary will kill you."

Mutreaux said woodenly, "I know. It was obvious as soon as Pat died that my life now depends on our winning." He sat ma.s.saging his throat and drinking hot tea. "And more indirectly, so do your lives, too."

"That's so," Joe Schilling said.

"It should begin any time," Mary Anne said, "if I understand them, anyhow. They should begin to arrive on Terra within the next half hour." She had seated herself at the far end of the kitchen of the McClain apartment; in the living room the amorphous shape of E.B. Black could be made out through the open door, consulting with human members of the West Coast police agency. At least six people were active in the living room now. And more were arriving.

"We've got to start for Carmel," Pete said. By vidphone he had arranged with his psychiatrist, Doctor Macy at Salt Lake City, for the phenothiazine spansules to be prepared; the spansules would be flown to Carmel from one of the pharmaceutical houses in San Francisco direct to the condominium apartment, to be received by Bill Calumine acting for the group, as he always did.

"How long does it take for the phenothiazine to begin acting?" Joe Schilling asked Pete.

"Once he's taken it into his system it should take effect immediately," Pete said. "a.s.suming Mutreaux hasn't been taking any up to now." And, since it acted to blunt his Psi-talent, that was highly unlikely.

The four of them, checked out by E.B. Black, left San Rafael for Carmel in Joe Schilling's ill-tempered old car, Pete's following directly behind them, empty. On the trip almost nothing was said. Mary Anne stared blankly out the window. Dave Mutreaux sat slumped inertly, occasionally touching his injured throat. Joe Schilling and Pete sat together in the front seat.

This may be the final time we make this trip, Pete realized.

They reached Carmel reasonably quickly. Pete parked the car, shut off the motor and the creaky Rushmore circuit, and the four of them got out.

Standing in the dark, waiting for them, he saw a group of people.