Players at the Game of People Read online

  At length he breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Lucky I just finished automating that part of the machinery!" he said in a loud and accusing tone. "Not for you nor anyone would I forgo the pleasure I derive from my sole hobby nowadays, pointless though it may seem to you and your kind! Have a chota peg?" he added, as by afterthought, and waved Godwin to one of the overstuffed chairs.

  Godwin shook his head, while -- seeming to have forgotten the offer -- Hamish served himself a generous four fingers of whisky and baptized the glass with a sprinkle of soda-water.

  Sitting down in turn, while the laboratory faded from view, Hamish said, "Now have you the least idea where that -- that disc you saw had been to?"

  Godwin shook his head, wondering how long this preamble would last. This wasn't the Hamish he remembered --

  Correction. It could be no one else.

  We register change.

  Conceivably he had made one of the stupidest mistakes of his entire life by coming here.

  But who else could he possibly have turned to?

  And Hamish was saying with a kind of triumph, "No more do I! But I shall know, tomorrow at the latest! I send out hundreds of them all the time, and some of them are smashed by storms and some go on such a huge and random trajectory they may not find their way home for years -- for decades! Some may come back in the far and distant future, because when I say they were driven down by storms that is, remember, only an assumption! My current record is one which went on flying for over eleven years, signaling in emergency mode for most of the time -- that makes them luminous, you understand! That one informed me precisely where it had visited! You appreciate they carry no instrumentation? They are simply what they are -- discs cast out into the wild blue yonder, to fly and home as chance decrees. And each that returns bears with it clues to where it wandered. By tonight I shall know whether that latest one to arrive has crossed the Arctic ice or the grainfields of Canada or the industrial Ruhr. Ah, you've no idea how fascinating, how endlessly fascinating it is to deduce from such tiny hints, such scraps of data, the entire course of an object which has traveled thousands upon thousands of miles."

  He sounded as though he were trying to convince himself as much as his listener. But when he had gulped down the last of his drink, he set the glass aside and at once became briskly businesslike.

  "Well! It doesn't take a detective to work out that you came here because something has gone wrong. Conceivably something to do with your last assignment? In which case, obviously, I can't intervene."

  "No, it isn't that. I want you to trace somebody for me. A woman."

  Hamish raised one bushy eyebrow. "A woman, eh? I had no idea you were so susceptible. I understood you were always well provided for."

  "You don't generally jump to conclusions," Godwin said cuttingly. "Shall I explain?"

  Hamish sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  When he had heard his visitor out, he gradually began to smile. By the time he finally reopened his eyes he was positively beaming.

  "This is a problem worthy of my mettle, indeed! You know of only two people that this woman knows: the commissionaire, who may have met her on a single occasion and never have heard mention of her name, and this policeman Roadstone -- perhaps. In the ordinary run of events we could simply ask him. But this is not ordinary. You have used the flex on him and his colleagues, and in consequence they are no longer even able to think about the matter. But you're quite right. You do need to trace her and, as it were, eliminate any threat."

  "I don't want to eliminate her. Why should I?"

  "I said eliminate any threat," Hamish corrected. "Use the flex on her too, perhaps. With the techniques that the forces of the ungodly have at their disposal nowadays, it would be fatal if even a breath of suspicion were to get about." He had no need to describe what kind of suspicion. Witch burnings might be out of date; witch hunts most definitely were not.

  "Still," he continued, hoisting himself ponderously to his feet, "we have resources of our own. Come into the laboratory and we'll work out a portrait of her."

  Godwin complied. Standing in front of a computer-controlled image-creation system, Hamish called up detail on a screen while Godwin corrected his approximations. He muttered as he worked.

  "Fair -- slim -- about how tall? Five six, seven? Hair not so far down the forehead, right . . . Nose not so long? How about that?"

  Within a matter of minutes there was a full-color picture on the screen which matched Godwin's recollection almost flawlessly. Relieved, and increasingly in a hurry to visit Luke, he nonetheless hesitated before turning away.

  "There's one thing still not right," he admitted reluctantly.

  Hamish chuckled. "I know," he said, and made some minute adjustments to the face. "What you were asking for was the face of a little girl, a mere child. That makes her look her age, doesn't it?"

  Godwin nodded, suppressing a shiver.

  "Fine!" Hamish tapped an instruction into the keyboard below the screen, and the image vanished. "We have something to work from, at any rate. There's a chance her picture may be on file -- I have over a million news photographs, to start with, and the machines are already sifting through them. But it's bound to be a slow job, I'm afraid. Now if you take my advice" -- ushering Godwin toward the door -- "you won't go home for the next few days. Find somewhere else to put up. The fact that she actually saw you coming out of the house is what disturbs me most. Incidentally, how about the car?"

  "Still where I left it. Did you expect me to drive here?"

  "No, but . . . Well, I'm sure you can detect whether or not you're being followed, particularly in light traffic. Put it in a popular garage -- the Soho Lex would do -- and make a detour through some large and busy department store with several exits. And do it as soon as possible."

  "I need to visit Luke first," Godwin said after a brief pause. Hamish threw up his hands.

  "Dear, oh dear! And I understood Irma took such good care of you! At least she always boasts that she does when I call on her. Well, as and when you can. And I'll contact you as soon as I have anything definite to report."

  "Have you any idea how long it might take?"

  "None whatever, my dear fellow -- none whatever! After all, on the information you've given me she may perfectly well be an Australian visitor in London for a couple of days."

  "Why should an Australian come with the police to find me?"

  "Perhaps she works for Melbourne CID and you're the going-double of a wanted drug smuggler! How should I know? Really, God, you do expect miracles, don't you? I grant, I'm often in a position to work one, but on something this flimsy -- no, I must have time. But I promise you, I shall get on with it straight away, and it will enjoy my undivided attention. That is, unless I unexpectedly find myself otherwise engaged, as it were."

  "Is that likely?"

  "Well, it has been quite some while, so there's rather a high probability. However, there's no need for you to worry about that."

  His tone meant "pry into that." Godwin, slightly embarrassed, shook hands and left. Hamish called after him, "Give my regards to Luke, won't you?"

  "Yes, of course. And thank you!"

  Dr. Luke Powers received his client in a room completely bare except for a couch draped in white, a green carpet on the floor, and on one wall a beautifully hand-lettered scroll with illuminated margins bearing the full text of the Hippocratic oath in the original Greek. He was a lean, ascetic man whose age might have been anything from thirty to fifty but almost certainly wasn't, with piercing gray eyes deep-set above a neatly trimmed brown beard.

  "Welcome," he said, and his voice was resonant and thrilling. He made no offer to shake hands, but stood stock-still with his total attention fixed on Godwin while the latter undressed. There were hooks, hangers, and a rail on the back of the door.

  "You ate something inadvisable," the healer said at length. "Not only was the food of poor quality and rather stale, it was heavily contaminated with
chemical adulterants. Lie down. It's as well you came to me now rather than later -- I feel the urge to retire from the world and meditate. But I think there may be time to put you right. Close your eyes."

  He laid both hands on Godwin's abdomen and began to murmur under his breath. The queasiness, which had become acute by now, dissipated; a painful bubble of wind passed a resistant sphincter; what little goodness and nourishment there was in Godwin's meal entered his system while the remainder was securely locked up until it was time for it to be expelled.

  "There," Luke said after five or six minutes. "You may dress again now. But be careful, God. You ought to know by this time that, living the way we do, we risk allowing our natural defense mechanisms to atrophy." The last word concluded in a yawn, for which, with a chuckle, he apologized as soon as he could.

  "Even though that was relatively quickly dealt with," he added, "I find the process extremely tiring. You'll excuse me if I simply take your place on the couch and ask you to see yourself out?"

  "Of course," Godwin muttered, zipping up his trousers and silently wondering why everybody except himself seemed unable or unwilling to accept the truth but must always disguise it by some such term as meditation or communion with the infinite or seeking astral guidance. They must know what was going on! After all, they invariably recognized the term when he referred to being called . . .

  But he had more urgent matters to consider, such as moving the car. He took his leave of Luke and headed homeward.

  He was half hoping the fair woman would be watching the house again. It would simplify matters if he let her find him; after Luke's treatment he was sufficiently recovered to use the flex on her, and if he got the chance that would be an end of the matter.

  However, there was no one in the street exhibiting more than casual curiosity when he climbed into the Urraco. He started up and drove a quarter of a mile, keeping an eye on his mirror, but no one was following.

  Now: where to go? After the infuriating disappointment of his last reward, he felt the need for some sort of relaxation, but he didn't want to go abroad again on the same passport, even though on his last trip no one had asked to see it.

  Just as he was dutifully parking the car in the Lex garage in Soho, as Hamish had instructed, inspiration dawned. He snapped his fingers. Of course -- the Global Hotel. The chance of the Arab princes still being there was vanishingly small; in any case, if they or the discothèque staff took exception to his presence, he was fit enough to use the flex again. And a suitable bribe would surely persuade Jackson the commissionaire to relate whatever he knew about the fair woman, so the data could be relayed to Hamish.

  And conceivably the woman herself might turn up.

  But she didn't, and nobody at the hotel paid him special attention except for people working in the discothèque -- which turned out to be an independent, subcontracted operation -- who scowled at him or beamed according to which of his visits they remembered him from. And Jackson had simpiy failed to arrive for work today, so they had hired someone else. There was always a long waiting list for his kind of job. Come to that, there was a waiting list for any job. Perhaps he had been mugged or stabbed on the way home; perhaps he had been run over; perhaps he had contracted one of the countless epidemics permanently infesting any large city; at all events, he had not been seen or heard from. Computer investigation on the scale accessible to Godwin failed to trace him. He passed the information to Hamish and hoped for the best.

  Which was what he personally was not enjoying. The Global Hotel was luxurious on its own level, but compared to his home it was boring. To wake every morning in the same room with the same outlook was unbearably monotonous. Worse yet, he was waking from unrestful sleep; his dreams were haunted by the dust-and-ashes taste of his last "reward." He was puzzled and hurt by what had happened, not during the experiences, but afterwards, during that immeasurable period when he had felt forgotten, abandoned, neglected, thrown aside. He suspected why and how that had come about, but he was mortally afraid of spelling it out to himself, and did whatever he could think of to avoid confronting his own conclusions.

  He regarded it as something of an achievement when finally he admitted to himself that it had not been indigestion which had taken him to Luke, but a terrible feeling like a vast bruise.

  Which Luke had not diagnosed or referred to. Or treated.

  Why?

  Frustrated, dispirited, anxious to an extent he had imagined would never be his lot again, he passed the time as best he could. Eventually idleness grew unbearable, and he decided to do something he had never done before: call on Bill Harvey and inquire after Gorse. Ordinarily he felt no more than a faint pang of curiosity about those he had recruited; now and then he realized he must have opposite numbers -- a woman who recruited boys, a man and a woman who recruited gays -- but the matter had always seemed so inconsequential until now that he had automatically dismissed it.

  Or else, perhaps, the illusive reality of the reward experience which followed an assignment masked any burgeoning interest.

  But he was in no state to reason out problems of that magnitude. He was growing more and more obsessed with the unprecedented anomaly which the fair woman represented. He had searched his memory over and over, attempting to locate some chance encounter, some situation, which could have given him the image around which might have developed his conviction that he recognized her, and that she was the adult counterpart of the little girl in his George Medal experience.

  But how could she be? He had checked up on what Bill had told him, and it was true: he had been given a decoration which did not yet exist. Had he been at home he would have ripped the medal from his cabinet of mementos and flung it in the dustbin along with its "authenticating" press cutting . . . except that their destruction would have had to be more thorough, medals being remarkable even to dustmen. The function of such souvenirs was to persuade him, even for a little while, that his remembered experiences were real so far as he was concerned. To have one which at every glance must inform him it was a snare and a deception -- it was intolerable!

  Therefore he must find ways of not thinking about it. Possibly contact with someone as down-to-earth as Bill Harvey would be helpful in distracting him. Bill, after all, except for his enjoyment of telerecorded football matches and horse races, lived wholly in the present, as Godwin usually did -- as he had imagined had become automatic with him. Reviewing the past had grown painful, or at least uncomfortable.

  And perhaps if Gorse were not doing anything else they might make love. He recalled her capacity for orgasm. It had been impressive.

  Not that any twice-tasted fruit could possess the same appeal.

  At the very moment he reached the front steps of Bill's home, the door opened and Gorse came out. She was wearing the height of fashion: a wide-shouldered barathea blouse, a skirt slashed into irregular ribbons, boots stained camouflage green and brown. On what little could be seen of her face around immense dark glasses there was an expression of grim determination. For an instant Godwin feared she might have been called, in which case it would be pointless to address her, but halfway down the steps she seemed to start noticing the outside world, and as she came level with him she checked, removed the glasses, and said, "Oh, it is you."

  Her face was not so much pale as gray; it was drawn, it was haggard. Even before she spoke again Godwin could guess what she was about to say.

  "Can't stop -- sorry. I have to go see somebody called Irma. Bill gave me the address."

  "Just a second!"

  "I said I can't stop!" Then, relenting: "Oh, very well. What is it?"

  "How do you feel about -- well, you know?"

  "Oh!" Her red-rimmed eyes lit up. "Oh, it's fantastic! It's the kind of thing I've been looking for all my life without realizing! People who join secret societies like the Rosicrucians or the Freemasons or the Illuminati must be looking for exactly what you've given me! And not getting half such a bargain! You're a darling, and thank you very mu
ch!" She pursed her lips and planted a sketch for a kiss on his cheek. "But I have to rush! And you of all people must understand why!"

  So that was going to be her justification to herself. Well, it was at least a variation on a theme . . .

  He watched her until she vanished around the corner in a flurry of ragged-robin skirts, and only then realized that Bill -- tankard in hand as ever -- was standing on the front doorstep, gazing thoughtfully his way.

  Godwin walked up to join him.

  "Glad she got the chance to go see Irma," Bill said reflectively, ushering him inside. There were more luck charms than ever on display in the hallway, including a collection of new white bones hanging from red and yellow cords. "The way she's been working 'erself . . . ! Same as with an 'orse, y'know. Overtraining, they call it. Result: you get the peak performance day before the race, an' your favorite comes in nowhere! Come in the parlor. Good to see yer. Fancy a jar?"