ellipsoid, in its cage, the rogothuyr snarled. Five Players lost Lives; five seated humans, sitting hopeless and
despairing as the effects of the
emotor fields still resounded in them, went suddenly slack in their chairs as their helmets
sent a neural blast through their skulls strong enough
to stun the Lives sitting around them and to make the nearest moties,
and the Player each Life belonged to, flinch.
Ishlorsinami undid the restrainers on the dead humans’ seats and carried them away down the access ramp. The remaining Lives
gradually
recovered, but they sat as listless as before. The Ishlorsinami claimed they always checked that each volunteering
Life was genuine, and that
the drugs they gave them simply stopped them from becoming hysterical, but it was rumored that
there were ways round the Ishlorsinami
screening process, and that some people had succeeded in disposing of their enemies
by drugging or hypnotizing them and “volunteering"
them for the game.
As the second hand began, and Horza switched on his couch monitor to experience Kraiklyn’s emotions, the white-haired woman
came
back down the aisle and resumed her place in front of Horza, at the front of the terrace, draping herself tiredly over
the piece of furniture as
though she was bored.
Horza did not know enough about Damage as a card game to be able to follow exactly what was going on with the cards, either
by reading
the various emotions being passed round the table, or by analyzing each hand after it was finished—as the first
hand was already being
analyzed by the hooting tripeds near him—when the cards as they had been dealt and played were flashed
up on the arena’s internal broadcast
circuits. But he tuned in to Kraiklyn’s feelings just to see what they were like.
The captain of the
Clear Air Turbulence
was being hit from various directions. Some of the emotions were contradictory, which Horza
guessed meant that there was
no concerted effort being made on Kraiklyn; he was just taking most people’s secondary armament. There was
a considerable
urge to like Wilgre—that attractive blue color… and with those four little comical feet, he couldn’t really be much of a threat….
A
bit of a clown, really, for all his money… The woman sitting on Kraiklyn’s right, on the other hand, stripped to the waist,
with no breasts, and a
sheath for a ceremonial sword slung across her naked back: she was one to watch…. But it was a laugh
really….
Nothing really matters;
everything is just a joke; life is, the game is… one card’s pretty much like another when you come
to think about it…. For all it matters might
as well throw the lot in the air….
It was nearly his turn to play…. First that flat-chested bitch… boy, did he have a card he was going to hit
her
with….
Horza switched off again, unsure whether he was hearing Kraiklyn’s own thoughts about the woman, or ones somebody else was
trying to
get him to think about her.
He picked up Kraiklyn’s thoughts later on in the hand, when the woman was out and sitting back and relaxing, her eyes closed.
(Horza
looked briefly at the white-haired woman on the couch down in front of him; she was watching the game apparently, but
one leg was slung over
the side of her lounger, swinging to and fro, as though her mind was somewhere else.) Kraiklyn was
feeling good. First of all that slut next to him
was out, and he was sure it was because of some of the cards he had played,
but also there was a sort of inner exhilaration…. Here he was,
playing with the best players in the galaxy… the
Players.
Him. Him… (a sudden inhibitory thought blocked out a name he was about to think)…
and he really wasn’t doing that badly at
all…. He was keeping up…. In fact this hand was looking pretty damn good…. At last things were going
right…. He was going
to win something…. Too many things had… well, there was that…
Think about the cards!
(suddenly)
Think about here
and now! Yes, the cards… Let’s see… I can hit that fat blue oaf with
… Horza switched off again.
He was sweating. He hadn’t fully realized the degree of feedback from the Player’s mind that was involved. He had thought
it was just the
emotions beamed at them; he hadn’t dreamed he would be so much
in
Kraiklyn’s mind. Yet this was only a taste of what Kraiklyn himself was
getting full blast, and the moties and Lives behind
him. Real feedback, only just under control, only just stopping from becoming the emotional
equivalent of a loudspeaker howl,
building to destruction. Now the Changer realized the attraction of the game, and why people had been
known to go mad when
playing it.
Much as he disliked the experience, Horza felt new respect for the man he intended at least to remove and replace, and most
likely to kill.
Kraiklyn had a sort of advantage in as much as the thoughts and emotions being beamed back at him were at least partly emanating
from
his own mind, whereas the Lives and the moties had to put up with extremely powerful blasts of what was entirely somebody
else’s way of
feeling something. All the same, it had to take a considerable strength of character, or a vast amount of hard
training, to be able to handle what
Kraiklyn was obviously coping with. Horza switched back in again and thought,
How do the moties stand it.
And,
Watch out; maybe this is how
they started.
Kraiklyn lost the hand, two rounds of betting later. The half-blind albino, Neeporlax, was defeated, too, and the Suut raked
in his winnings, his
steel face glowing in the light reflected from the Aoish credits in front of him. Kraiklyn was slumped
in his seat, feeling, Horza knew, like death.
A pulse of a sort of resigned, almost grateful agony swept through Kraiklyn
from behind as his first Life died, and Horza felt it, too. He and
Kraiklyn both winced.
Horza switched off and looked at the time. Less than an hour had passed since he had bluffed his way past the guards at the
outer doors of
the arena. He had some food, on a low table by his couch, but he got up all the same and walked away from the
table, up the terrace toward the
nearest walkway, where food stalls and bars waited.
Security guards were checking passes. Horza saw them moving from person to person on the terrace. He kept his face to the
front but
flicked his eyes from side to side, watching the guards as they moved. One was almost directly in his path, bending
to ask an old-looking
female, who was lying on an airbed which blew perfumed fumes round her thin, exposed legs. She was sitting
watching the game with a big
smile on her face, and she took a while to notice the guard. Horza walked a little faster so
that, when the guard straightened, he would be past
her.
The old lady flashed her pass and turned quickly back to the game. The guard put out an arm in front of Horza.
“May I see your pass, sir."
Horza stopped and looked into the face of the young, burly woman. He looked back down to the couch he had been on.
“I’m sorry, I think I left it down there. I’ll be back in a second; can I show it to you then. I’m in a bit of a hurry." He
shifted his weight from one
foot to the other and bent a little at the waist. “I got wrapped up in the last hand there. Too
much to drink before the game started; always the
same; never learn. All right." He put out his hands, looked a little sheepish,
and made as if to clap the guard on her shoulders. He shifted his
weight again. The guard looked down to where Horza had indicated
he had left his pass.
“For now, sir. I’ll look at it later. But you really shouldn’t go leaving it lying about. Don’t do it again."
“Right! Right! Thank you!" Horza laughed and went off at a quick walk, onto the circular walkway and then to a toilet, just
in case he was
being watched. He washed his face and hands, listened to a drunk woman singing somewhere in the echoing room,
then left by another exit
and walked round to another terrace, where he got something else to eat and had a drink. He bribed
his way into a different terrace again, this
one even more expensive than the one he had been on originally, because it was
next to the one which held Wilgre’s concubines. A soft wall of
shining black material had been erected at the rear and sides
of their terrace to keep out the nearer eyes, but their body scent wafted strongly
over the terrace Horza now found himself
on. Genofixed before conception not only to be stunningly attractive to a wide variety of humanoid
males, the females in the
harem also had highly accentuated aphrodisiac pheromones. Before Horza knew what was happening he had an
erection and had
started to sweat again. Most of the men and women around him were in a state of obvious sexual arousal, and those not