The Devil's Game Read online

  Breakfast was ad libitum, toast with ham, eggs, or fried fish being brought in from the kitchen according to a guest’s order, sideboard loaded with ice-packed juices, fruits, cheeses, sausages, sweets, and pastries. A servant confided that Mr. Haverner’s morning meal was strictly Continental and was taken to him, together with assorted pills, in his bed. Thereafter Mr. Haverner went to his study for dictation, radiophone conferences, and planlaying.

  Anselmo Gomez and Evans York were always up betimes, which in the tropics means sunrise or earlier, but they ate with “de vidow Robinson, charvoman, sir” and her brood in one of the cottages. Thus Ellis Nordberg was first in the dining room. He had nearly completed a methodical refueling when Larry Rance sauntered in.

  “Good morning,” Ellis said.

  Larry considered him before repeating the formula.

  “I hope you slept well,” Ellis went on.

  “Sure.” Larry poured coffee for himself and chose a slice of papaya, pierced it with his fork here and there, squeezed lime juice onto it.

  “Even though you start our game tomorrow?”

  “Zen,” Larry said. “You’d be surprised how much better a few koans are than sleeping pills, if you know how to use them.”

  “What do you mean to have us do, if I may ask?”

  Larry sat down, giving Ellis a hard look. “What do you have in mind, come your turn?” He began to eat his papaya.

  Orestes Cruz had entered meanwhile. He stood regarding the two Americans until they were compelled to meet his eyes. “Yes,” he said, “this will be a long, long day for everyone. Correct?” Gaunt and awkward, his legs bore him to the sideboard, where he loaded cream into his coffee till his fingers, seen above the cup, appeared not chocolate brown but deeply black, the nails a startling pink.

  “Haverner’s forethought, of course,” he added after a bit. “Part of the torture.”

  A waitress interrupted, requesting his and Larry’s orders. When she had gone, Ellis wanted to know what he had meant.

  Orestes shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious? This is no scientific laboratory we are in, it is a torture chamber.” He spoke calmly.

  “Where we skin each other?” Ellis stroked his chin. “Test to destruction, actually? Hm.”

  “Typical fascism.” Orestes’s gaze brooded upon them. “I do not wish to destroy any of the players, personally. Including you, Mr. Nordberg. You are as much a victim in your way as I in mine. Please do not force me to destroy you.”

  “If you last that long,” Ellis said dryly.

  “Uh, Ore—Sr. Cruz,” Larry said in haste, “you speak damned good English. Makes me ashamed of my few words of pidgin Mexican Spanish. Where did you learn?”

  The Santa Anan seated himself, lit a powerful tawny cigarette, and answered, voice gradually growing slow and tender. “Well, there was a cobbler in our village. He let me sleep in his hut. You see, my foster mother, after my own abandoned me, she married a man who did not want me, another mouth to feed which did not even testify to his machismo. I must … scrounge? … yes, earn, beg, steal what I could. But Enrico Brunner, now, he had tramped the whole world before he ended up in our village. He had only one leg, but he had books. He thought he saw more in this boy than simply another caneworker. He made me learn reading and writing— and good English too. I already knew the Negro Creole English, but he made me acquire the real thing. For days on end, he would only talk proper English with me. He also wanted to keep me a Christian. That finally helped drive me away. I was sorry, but—” He shook himself, as if to cast off the hold of memory. “Well, when I arrived in Ciudad Vizcaya, age fifteen, I believe it must have been fifteen, ten years ago … I saw how right he had been about literacy and English.”

  “Did you read Marx in English?” Ellis asked, crookmouthed.

  Orestes ignored the tone, “No. But Lenin and others, yes.” Ellis visibly bristled. “Now hold on,” Larry said “Take it easy, Nordberg. We were starting to get friendly.”

  Pale, bespectacled eyes dwelt upon him. “Were we?” Ellis inquired. “Wouldn’t you like to win the whole stake? I’ll be frank; it’s hardly worth my while to try for less. And, ah, Sr. Cruz here, he’s playing a much bigger game, with the rule of the world for first prize.”

  “The liberation of the world,” Orestes snapped. Then, unexpectedly, he chuckled, and that was an unexpectedly mellow sound. “Words, words. I’m not going to waste this gorgeous morning on more of them. Captain York has two small nieces and a nephew. Last night, when he took me to the cottage where they live, I promised them ‘Sponyard’ fairy tales. Also I saw in the library a copy of Cervantes’s Galatea, which is good reading for the shade this afternoon. And first I think I shall have a piece of that excellent-looking melon.” He rose to get it.

  Ellis was still for half a minute before he bent his lips upward and said, “You’re both right, gentlemen, and I apologize. We can certainly try to keep this thing civilized. Melon reminds me, Larry—okay to call you that?—the coconut cake is superb. Be sure to save room for a slice.”

  “I don’t care for any kind of nut meat,” Larry replied. “This’ll change your mind. It sure will. Here, I’m through eating, let me fetch—”

  “No, God damn it!”

  The other two stared at Larry and each other. When the waitress returned, the rest of the meal proceeded in strained silence.

  Not long afterward, Larry spoke at length with Haverner’s intended referee, Anselmo Gomez. Finally they went down to the pier and took out one of the boats. They were gone till midday.

  Upon coming back, Larry asked about Julia Petrie and found that she had gotten a picnic lunch packed and had set off on a hike with Byron Shaddock. He indicated disappointment, and when Gayle Thayer sought his company told her that he felt like a siesta. In the cooler part of the afternoon, he left the house by the back door to go for a swim. By that time she was watching television. Much of the rest of her day went in writing letters.

  Ellis visited Haverner during the permissible hours. They spoke of this and that, nothing germane to the contest or even to the universe of finance. (Does a firecracker talk shop with a hydrogen bomb?) Later Ellis systematically scouted all territory within reasonable walking distance.

  Orestes spent the day much as he had said he would, except that toward evening he told his stories to the children— virtually every child of the estate’s prolific servants, no few of them towheaded as well as dark-skinned—following a fishing trip with Captain York. He sat against a huge old ceiba, or silk cotton tree, they in a half circle before him. Besides yarning, he strummed a borrowed guitar and sang.

  Matt Flagler, still nursing a hangover, drifted thither and watched for some while. His gaze was not on Orestes; it flickered among the women, the girls, and a couple of boys who were just turning twelve or thirteen. As last he grunted and went inside for the free drinks.

  While the first wine was poured at dinner, Haverner asked, “Do you care to make any announcement about tomorrow, Mr. Rance?”

  Larry’s head snapped up and he glanced around. He had arrived a bit late and so missed his seat by Julia, who now sat between Byron and, as it happened, Ellis. The hiking pair had explained how they waited out the heat of midday in a wood above the Iron Cliffs. They called the scenery magnificent but volunteered no further gossip. Larry himself had Orestes on his left, Gayle on his right. “I saved this for you,” she had whispered as he took the chair.

  “Well.” He flushed beneath the color laid on him by the sun, grinned in partly abashed fashion, tossed back his longish yellow hair. “Yeah, I’m the leadoff big bad wolf. To tell the truth, I, uh, I haven’t thought of anything fancy. I tried, but—well, I checked with Anselmo, who’s been given this kind of information about us, and he told me everybody’s a pretty good swimmer. So we’ll take a boat out tomorrow morning, I guess, and swim a couple miles from it to that Gehinnom rock.”

  “¡Santa Maria!” broke from Orestes. Matt spelled it out: ‘‘The sharks.”

/>   “And barracuda,” Byron added slowly. Then, faster, smiling: “They eat us, we eat them. Sometimes they poison us. I wonder if we ever poison them.”

  Larry kept his own grin in place, though it had no real life. “You can drop out right now if you want,” he reminded the group.

  “The surf … that’s probably more dangerous,” Julia said. Byron nodded; his movement looked eager.

  “Sorry ’bout that.” Larry didn’t quite meet her gaze. “We’ll have a boat close by, of course, ready to haul out whoever gets in trouble. I don’t want to kill anybody”—his glance touched Ellis—“after all.”

  “But I can’t!” Gayle wailed. She swung toward Haverner. “I, I, I protest! It’s, uh, uh, physically impossible for me. You said—”

  “Yeah, I’m no swimmer, I’m not in that kinda shape. What kinda shit is this?” Matt put in.

  Orestes tapped fork on glass. The clear small noise brought quiet as no gavel might have done. “I side with Mr. Rance,” he told them. “Any person who keeps his wits about him can stay afloat for kilometers. This is not a race, remember. The object, as I understand it, is simply to cover that distance and climb ashore. Save your energy, go slow, float and paddle. You can do it.”

  “The surf may rough you up,” Larry said, “but I checked it out today and it’s not too bad, if you don’t mind cuts and bruises, as long as the lifeboat’s standing by with a couple of strong swimmers, flotation collars, and such. In fact, we’ll have two boats, so one of them can stay near the slow people.”

  “I approve too,” Byron said, “Are we in competition or are we not? This doesn’t test bodily strength beyond anyone’s limitations. It tests nerve, self-control, endurance of exertion and discomfort and, maybe, pain. If you feel yourself sinking, you need only call for help and be taken aboard.”

  “And lose out.” Matt’s voice was high. Sweat stood forth on his blue cheeks.

  “Of course,” Orestes said.

  “The sharks, though,” Gayle whispered.

  “That’s the chance we take,” Ellis stated. “Larry right along with the rest of us.” He barked a scrap of laughter. “In fact, Larry, do you realize you’ve decreed a game which the leader can flunk?”

  “By God,” the blond man said, astounded, “I have.”

  “Want to cancel it, then?”

  “No … no.”

  “The odds favor us,” Byron observed. “No waters can be packed solid with predators, and any that may be nearby aren’t necessarily going to rush at every stray piece of long pig. The hazard’s just a, hm, a fillip.”

  “All right!” Julia snapped. “You needn’t emphasize—” Still shamefaced, Larry said, “Anselmo okayed the idea. And it seems like everybody’s willing. I hoped—frankly, I hoped one or two would refuse. Sure you don’t want to?” They sat mute in their various ways.

  “It is legitimate, Mr. Haverner?” Larry asked.

  “Indeed,” their host told them. Throughout the rest of that unpleasantly subdued meal, he appeared very satisfied.

  When alone in his bedroom, he did not retire immediately. Otherwise old-fashioned and austere, the chamber held a large television set with unusual capabilities. He settled down in an armchair before this and operated a hand-held remote-control unit. Cameras hidden throughout the mansion showed his guests merely proceeding quietly, piecemeal but within a short interval, to their separate quarters. What they did before turning out their lights varied, but none of it was spectacular.

  His satisfaction faded. Restless, he tuned in the pickups concealed at strategic points outside. Necessarily limited in numbers and scope, they had vouchsafed him only glimpses during the day. Simple microphones, though more numerous, had not enabled him to follow events anywhere nearly as closely as he had hoped. At this hour, of course, his instruments gave him back nothing but the island night.

  The darkling view in the screen blurred into the hint of a face. Sounds of breeze and sea, out of several speakers, modulated into low words: “You appear displeased, Sunderland Haverner.”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Why? You were quite fascinated when I proposed this experiment. You worked on the preparations with more energy than you had displayed in years.”

  “Yes. I thought—if ever people could be stripped bare of, of everything except their real selves—this would do it.”

  “While you peered.”

  “Damn it,” Haverner cried, “the tests we ran beforehand I could watch in person! And they were trivial compared to what’ll be going on in the next two weeks. But except for what the apparatus happens to detect, all I’ll get is second hand. It’s not fair!”

  “What else did you expect?”

  “More cooperation from you. You can glide everywhere, see and hear everything—” Haverner paused. “Can’t you?” Samael made no reply.

  Haverner curbed himself. “Tomorrow’s contest should be possible for me to follow along with pretty well,” he said, “and I daresay after it’s done, the subjects will be too exhausted to move around at random over the landscape. Later, however … Can’t you help me devise how to make them stay in range of observation? Most of the time, anyway?”

  “The object of the experiment is to let them interact freely,” Samael reminded, “not to cater to your voyeurism.” Haverner stared at the screen, as if eyes were there to meet his. “How free have I ever been, since you came?” he grated.

  “That is for you to decide,” Samael answered with undiminished good cheer.

  “I’ve thought about it a great deal. More and more as time went on.” Haverner leaned forward. “See here. What do we mean by freedom? It must include the freedom to choose between courses of action. But how can anybody pick a course he doesn’t know about? He may not realize it’s possible, or it may never have occurred to him, or … If we, you and I, if we can develop, oh, hints for me to drop, or ways to steer a conversation, that sort of thing—”

  “It could be interesting to try,” Samael conceded, “though you must admit that the probability of success in any given instance will be small. Humans maintain such complicated personalities, as long as circumstances permit.”

  Haverner sighed. “What do they do when they’re out of sight? I have to infer it from the views I get and otherwise from reports by Anselmo and the rest. At best, it’s all so abstract. ”

  “At your age, most of life is abstract.”

  “Yes,” said Haverner starkly. “That’s why I agreed to this in the first place.”

  LARRY RANCE

  Ten in the morning (who wants to get up too goddamn early, dawn’s a beautiful way to end a night, except at sea, of course, at sea) but the sun’s still low enough to turn the eastward waters molten. Light bounces off white sands on the left, under brushy bluffs, in a blaze that hurts my eyes. I should’ve allowed dark glasses. No, whoever isn’t as used to squinting across waves as I am will be handicapped. Good thing I didn’t wait longer before calling a start, though. I feel those rays lick around my torso, which hasn’t been out of a shirt during my home’s rainy winter, and down my bleached legs.

  Air and ground are warming fast, but coolness blows off the sea, smells of salt and kelp and distance. The breakers boom that we’re going to meet. A gull makes a thin jeering overhead. (Which would you rather be at your death, full fathom five, down in infinite peace and eternal stirring, or washed onto a man-empty beach for gulls and weather to clean your bones? … No matter now, me lad. You’ve got a lot of wandering to do first!)

  The path is gritty under my sandals. Boats rock at the pier ahead. From each juts a television camera on a well-secured tripod. The crews stand alert. I daresay one member of either has been trained to use the foreign apparatus and record whatever happens this day. They are four slim Islandmen for the first boat, three for the second. Its fourth hand will doubtless be Anselmo Gomez, who catpaces alongside me and asks with his disinterested (uninterested?) politeness, “ ’Ave you further eenstructions before we leave. Meester Rance?�
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  “No. Uh, no, thanks.” My heart stutters. Damnation, it shouldn’t. Don’t get excited; don’t wear yourself out fighting yourself; leave that to your opponents. Nice theory, hey? “Unless you, uh, have a suggestion?”

  “No, sir, I theenk we said everytheeng yesterday.” Does that amber-brown face ever show an emotion? When he’s off duty in a cantina, maybe, or with a woman? Or is he entirely an arm of Sunderland Haverner, who, let’s admit it between us, scares the piss out of me?

  What fun it sounded like, when his agents and I first talked! A chance, at least, to visit the Caribbean again, expenses paid, a chance, maybe, to win Morgana le Fay. But now, I don’t know. Haverner’s got to have quite a few screws loose to dream of something like this. And the power he’s got … !

  What do the others think? What’s this begun doing to them? Stand by on the pier, let them pass you, going aboard, and watch, watch.

  Nobody’s spoken a word among us our whole way down from the house.

  Ellis Nordberg’s locked his face as much as Anselmo; it gives him a prim look. Bathing trunks show he hasn’t too bad a body for a middle-aged desk jockey. No doubt he invests an exact number of minutes per day in exercises, and the routine leaves him free to think about his operations meanwhile. However, his arms and legs are skinny; he does have a pot; could be I’ll eliminate him.

  Matt Flagler—Judas priest, the man’s a walking rug, isn’t he?—doesn’t seem in’ a lot better shape, and hangover-shaky to boot. He gives me the same kind of stare I’ve seen in the eyes of muzzled dogs that want nothing except to bite. A grin and a V sign to him…. He slouches on past.

  Orestes Cruz. He has a jerky, arm-swinging gait, but if the muscles under that chocolate skin are ropy, it’s the best and toughest nylon rope to be gotten. He surprises me by a grin of his own. As he passes, I see his back is crisscrossed with narrow scars, not completely healed.