The Devil's Game Page 12

  I believed, Christ, I believed. I still do, in a way, I guess. There are some great passages there. He can write a wonderful sentence. “Baby,” and the beard tickled my cheek, “it’s going to be beautiful. I’m going to tell it like it is. And I don’t want to sound commercial, but they want the truth nowadays. Look at Tolkien. Look at Stranger. I’ve got a fortune here. Maybe a Nobel. And I’m already planning The Kingdom and the Power.”

  “But why the pen name?” I asked, and he explained how you need a name they’ll remember.

  (My gut rumbles; my stomach hurts. I never could stand to go hungry. My right foot is asleep. I’ve got to keep my neck muscles quiet.)

  I wonder. Am I in love with you yet, Dennis? We did have some way-out times. Was I ever in love with you, Dennis? I’d gotten tired of my own grubby room, grubby jobs, grubby groping around from one man to the next, tired till my bones were ready to dissolve.

  Shriek!

  I catch my breath, half twitch out of my seat. No, it was only a parrot. Ellis sees. He changes his own position a little. His glassed-in eyes defy me to do anything about it. Where’s Larry? He’s off again in his own satori or wherever it is he goes.

  I settle back. I wish I’d never moved. Now a million new aches and tingles and throbs are everywhere in me. My empty stomach belches acid into my throat. Air conditioning or no, sweat prickles my skin and I smell the harsh stink of it.

  “Hang tough,” Larry told me from his sick bed yesterday evening. “It’s for the rest of your life, girl.”

  He calls himself a boat bum, but he’s too modest. He was an engineer till he found out there’s more to life than commuting and office politics and the military-industrial complex. He’s been a sailor, a carpenter, a machinist, all kinds of things. A universal man, sort of. Even nowadays, down on his luck, just another Point Richmond character, he pays his own freight. I could live with somebody like that. He’s no Dennis, but—

  A sudden pain in my chest. A wave of dizziness. Am I having a heart attack? No, can’t be, no, Jesus, not yet, not this day! … Somehow it passes. I’m only agonizingly hungry. What time is it?

  (“I did two more paragraphs today,” Dennis said when I got back from my job that supported us. “Look. Here. Aren’t they beautiful?” I was too dragged out to appreciate them. He’d still be asleep when I left for work. At least, however, days like that he had his two paragraphs. Mostly he was off gathering inspiration, or helping organize a protest march, or down to Los Angeles for a week because he’d been offered a ride. A lot of times he would stay home and put in a lot of work, and very proudly show me the result. And, yes, those were real elegant letters to the Barb or our Congressman; now and then they’d be real lovely or funny little poems, but who’d pay for them, who’d pay for them?

  (After I asked that too often, he began calling me a prostitute. At last I left. Official divorces cost money.)

  I’ve had it. Had it up to here, with hunger (it hurts, it hurts, I’m getting dizzy again), with squalor, with dependence, with the whole shit scene. Larry’s right: get away, make a clean break. Not that I want to be on his permanent cruise, I think….

  Not that he wants me, either. Or does he? What am I to him? A tool that offered itself? Well, he has had the decency not to say, “I love you.” I’ve really had it up to here with charming men.

  O Jesus, I’m sick of being used!

  Noonday simmers outside. Or afternoon? Where’s the sun? I want a smoke in the worst way. Why hasn’t Matt, anyhow, stirred? He just sits there like a cancer.

  What about Heavener, where he squats? I always used to like spiders; they control pests without disturbing the ecology; now I see why so many people do have a horror of them. We’re flies in his web—I’ve got to eat. Don’t the rest of them? Do they ever eat? Are they human? Has Heavener rung in a set of robots on me? Is everybody in the world a robot, and I the only conscious being? It buzzes in my ears. Darknesses come and go. Daddy, help, help.

  I can’t stand it. Fuck the whole scene. Let me eat and rest and cry a lot. I guess Larry’ll comfort me if he ever comes out of that satori he’s in, I can’t try anything else, not today, they’ve beaten me, the bastards, the bastards, I rise and curse them and

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  INTERVAL FOUR

  “Should you be here in my room?” she wondered. “Taking care of me like this? I mean, isn’t it giving away our secret?”

  “When you came out of your faint and went into your hysterics,” he replied grimly, “you blew that.”

  Gayle sank back upon her pillow. “I’m sorry, darling, I’m sorry.”

  “What’s done is done,” Larry said. “Now listen. It’s not much past sundown; you have the whole night and you’ve had some sleep. We—you’ll call a new game, I’ve been thinking and—”

  “No. No. I can’t.”

  He stood over her, fists on hips, and glared. “What is this farce? Of course you can!”

  “No!” She huddled away from him. Her chamber was curtained and closed off. Assorted clothes and feminine paraphernalia lay strewn about on floor and bureau top. There was a smell of lilac-scented talcum powder.

  “No,” she begged, “I can’t, I simply can’t. I’ve got to rest and … Would you bring me another sandwich, Larry?”

  “Can’t you even holler for a maid, you chickenhead?” He turned to go.

  She caught his wrist. “Larry, darling,” wavered out through the tears and hiccoughy sobs, “Larry, I love you, don’t leave me, I need you. W-w-we’re both in the running still. Aren’t we? We can still cooperate—”

  He yanked loose from her. “I’m going down to dinner,” he said. “Somewhere along the line I’ve got a storm to ride out, and the sooner the better. I’ll tell ’em to bring you a tray.”

  “Will you come here tonight? I want you, Larry, I love you, need you.”

  He made no reply, but left her weeping loudly into her pillow.

  In the hall below, his footsteps thudded. When he entered the dining room, he saw the rest at table. Through the French doors that gave on the patio, he saw leaf masses black and motionless under a crooked moon and a sky where the very stars felt hot. Again he took Gayle’s usual seat on Haverner’s right.

  “Good evening,” his host greeted. “Is Miss Thayer indisposed?”

  Larry nodded. “Could her food be taken to her?”

  “Yis, sir,” said the woman who put his lemon soup before him.

  “I suppose she won’t call any further game,” Ellis said. “Yeah, ask Larry Rance, he knows,” Matt put in. He thrust his face partly across the table to get a straight look at its head. “Mr. Haverner, sir, that bitch let out she’s in cahoots with this here son of a bitch Rance. Isn’t that against the rules? Isn’t it? They cheated, they’re out. Right, sir?” Larry flushed. “I gave her a suggestion or two.”

  “That’s not all you gave her.”

  “Jealous, Matt?” Orestes scoffed.

  “Shit, no! But fair’s fair, and Mr. Haverner—” Matt broke off. His forefinger stabbed at Byron and Julia. “How ’bout them two, while we’re at it? They’ve been pretty damn close. What’re they cooking up to squeeze everybody else out?”

  “As I understand the rules,” Ellis said in a tone clipped and calm, “they don’t set any restrictions on what we do between events. This has to include exchanging of ideas, information, and moral support”—he quirked a smile—“or immoral support, if anybody wants to be that foolish. But the leader each time around has to operate strictly on his own.”

  “That is correct,” Haverner said. “I saw no violation in today’s game.”

  Matt sank back. His eyes roved the table,
found no comfort. Now it was Orestes who smiled, an oddly gentle curve of the full lips. “Actually,” he said, “I feel pity for the … collusionists. If nothing more formidable comes out of such plots, why should we mind?”

  Larry bit his lip.

  Conversation around the board became desultory. Immediately after supper, Larry ostentatiously returned to Gayle’s room. His lovemaking that night was fierce and frequent.

  Haverner nodded, a slow metronome movement, there amidst his electronics and beside his rolltop desk. “Yes,” he rustled, “a most interesting idea, Mrs. Petrie. I shall be happy to plan and arrange the details.”

  “Thank you, … sir,” Julia said, barely audible.

  “Mind you, this is not favoritism.” He wagged a finger. “I will make this as fair as I possibly can, which is to say as hard on you, especially allowing for your background and knowledge of psychiatric nursing and the advantage it confers—as hard on you as on your rivals. That will be as hard as intensive study of the dossiers and intensive observation of the group itself enable me to devise.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Remember, you are last on the list, Mrs. Petrie. If you are eliminated before your turn, I’ll regret missing what could be the most fascinating struggle of the lot. But I will not intervene to save you.”

  She wet her lips. “Mr. Haverner, … supposing I do fail—my daughter—you’d never notice the cost.”

  The mummy head shook, back and forth, back and forth. “No, no, Mrs. Petrie. What incentive would you have, if you knew your wish would be granted regardless? To be blunt, from a standpoint of racial fitness you ought not to save your child. You should breed others instead, since your chromosomes are evidently first class. This one regrettable genetic accident is taking far too much of your potential reproductive time, not to speak of resources that could be better spent on more promising human material.”

  Julia sprang to her feet. Her fingers bent like claws. “Oh, my God! How can—”

  “Quiet, please,” Haverner interrupted imperturbably. While she stood and gulped for air: “I wasn’t condemning you. It was only an obiter dictum of mine. In candor, I expect Homo sapiens will have a shorter course than the dinosaurs did—I give him another hundred years at absolute maximum—and whether or not I’m wrong about this, his future is no concern of mine. By all means, try to keep that child alive if you want.

  “In fact,” he continued, seeing her partly soothed, “let me give you some advice. Again, it’s no favoritism, because what I’ll say is obvious, but often the obvious is the hardest to see. You are in a cutthroat situation, Mrs. Petrie. I do not believe any partnerships consisting of more than two persons can form—three, perhaps, under extraordinary circumstances— and all combinations will be unstable. This is one basis on which the players have been chosen. I am testing certain theories of mine by checking the predictions they make against practice.

  “Well, you have studied psychology yourself, have worked among professionals. You should be able to estimate the personality factors and project how hatred will arise to add its dynamic to the original greed.

  “Play ruthless, Mrs. Petrie. Do others before they do you. It’s your only chance of lasting till the end.

  “And now, if you will excuse an old man, I bid you a very good night.”

  When she was gone, Haverner called softly, “Are you here, Samael?”

  A buzz snapped his attention around. Muttering a curse, he climbed painfully to his feet and hobbled over to the unit that had signaled. It was for written messages, but no mere teletype. Though it would print out if desired, it could also display on a screen, make a record in the molecules of a disc, and decode according to any of the numerous ciphers for which its computer was programmed. Haverner punched for display. Words formed on the screen.

  YES, OF COURSE I FOLLOWED THE INTERVIEW. THAT WOMAN HAS DEPTHS OF FIENDISHNESS IN HER THAT SHE HERSELF CANNOT HAVE SUSPECTED UNTIL NOW.

  He settled into the chair before the console. “You approve her plan, then?”

  CERTAINLY.

  Haverner rubbed his chin; the wattles beneath it swayed. “I really don’t know anything about such matters. Never went in for it myself, you remember, and always despised those who did. Can you inform me about it in detail—just what stuff would work best, for instance?”

  YOU HAVE AMPLE MEANS FOR HAVING ANY FACT THAT YOU MAY WANT.

  Haverner narrowed his eyes. “So you don’t know either.”

  THAT IS A LOGICAL NON SEQUITUR. I COULD SIMPLY WISH TO OBSERVE YOUR RESEARCH FACILITIES IN ACTION.

  “Or you could not exist, Samael, except in a hidden part of my own brain, and be unwilling to admit it,” Haverner said slowly.

  IF MY WORDS TONIGHT COME FROM OUTSIDE YOURSELF, THEY ARE BEING RECORDED. YOU CAN PLAY THEM BACK. YOU CAN HAVE A PRINTOUT MADE. DO YOU WISH TO ? THINK ABOUT IT, SUNDERLAND HAVERNER.

  The screen blanked.

  The man sat alone for minutes, until with a savage gesture he pressed a button labeled ERASE. If there had been anything on the disc currently in circuit, it was gone. He would never know if there had been.

  Thunderheads massed during the following day until they loomed blue-black and enormous above the Crag. More and more, clouds tom off from those heights blew over the sky, but scant breeze touched the ground to relieve steam-bath heat. The North Americans took shelter behind the cooling machinery in the house. Their tempers were frayed, and after a couple of spats they tended to avoid contact.

  Larry and Gayle did stay together, mostly upstairs. She told him that everything they did or said was surely eavesdropped on, doubtless visually as well. Devices could easily be concealed in the molding around the high ceiling. He grinned and answered, “So if that’s how he gets his kicks, maybe he’ll learn something new. Or would you really rather go out in the saw grass?”

  Byron took some books to his own room and remained there. Ellis, likewise secluded, worked with symbols on paper. Matt watched television till he drank himself to sleep on a sofa.

  Julia, unable to rest, wandered out after lunch—a buffet which did not require people to eat in company—and found Orestes in a porch swing on the veranda, reading. “Hi,” she said tentatively.

  “Salud,” he answered, lowering the volume onto his lap. “I am surprised that you venture forth.” The air clung to the skin. It smelled of rankness and wetness. Thunder muttered. “I was going for a walk, but—mind if I join you?”

  “Do.” His pleasure seemed unfeigned. She wore sandals, a halter, and exiguous shorts. He could get by with the last of these. The perspiration filming his lean dark frame did not appear to bother him, nor did it smell sour.

  She sat down on his left. “I thought tropical storms came fast and went fast,” she said.

  “As a rule, yes. A slow development is exceptional. I predict violent weather tonight and high winds continuing through tomorrow.”

  She touched the book he held. “Galatea, par Miquel de Cervantes Saavedra,” she read off the title. “Is that the Cervantes?”

  “Yes. A potboiler. But his potboilers are worth more than most writers’ masterpieces. I like to reread this occasionally, savoring the fine lines he could not help let … crop? … yes crop out, in the middle of the banalities.”

  She regarded him. “You really are a complicated man, aren’t you, Ores—Sr. Cruz?”

  “Orestes, if you wish.”

  “Julia, then. But how—excuse me, I don’t want to pry, but we are in the same boat and—well, I know you had a hard time, came from a background of grinding poverty and illiteracy. And nevertheless you read Cervantes, I suppose in the original, ah, sixteenth? seventeenth? century Spanish….”

  “That is not difficult. Spanish has changed less than English. I have had my trouble trying to read Shakespeare.”

  “But your English is almost flawless, Orestes. Accented, yes, but fluent, grammatical, large vocabulary. How did you do it?”

  “Persistence. It helps, by the way, to
read a great deal of inherently entertaining material. I learned much more English from paperback mysteries and science fiction than from any text, or any classics except Mark Twain and Jack London.”

  “But surely it didn’t just happen that way. You must have had a reason.”

  His affability was lost in sudden harshness. “Many Americans have acquired a good command of Russian,” he said. “What? I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “It is well to know the language of the enemy. Especially when one must deal with him daily. Your folk are everywhere in my country and her neighbors. I feel certain the Maccabees learned Greek!”

  If he expected her to be shocked, he was mistaken. She nodded and said, “Yes, that’s right, you are a Communist, aren’t you?”

  “You may label me as you desire.”

  She looked past him. “I know. There are Communists and Communists, same as there are Christians and Christians. And you were with the junta while it lasted, weren’t you?”

  “I had the rank of sergeant and was driver for Colonel Ybarra, yes.”

  “Too bad they lost out. I mean, well, I‘m not exactly familiar with happenings down here; I was a faraway suburban housewife with problems of my own, but before then we’d lived in the city and had intellectual friends and— Anyway, it seemed as if the colonels in Santa Ana were trying to reform things. Your country could’ve gone the route of, well, Mexico, couldn’t it have? Maybe it will yet.”

  “Not while your CIA exists—”

  Julia flushed and snapped, “Congress cut its balls off a few years ago, unfortunately for the Afghans and a good many million other people!”

  He ignored the interruption. “—Or Haverner, or a number of such monstrosities.” His tone became matter-of-fact. “To be frank, the way of the junta was a blind alley, the same as the way of Mexico. One gives the masses precisely enough to make them forget the need for demolishing the whole rotten structure.” His smile was rueful. “It is ghastly easy to be corrupted. Look at China.”

  “So you’re on the Soviet side? Well, I guess that figures, what with Cuba being in this part of the world. All right, look at the Gulag, for openers.”