7

A Game of Damage

“Damage—the game banned everywhere. Tonight, in that unprepossessing building across the square under the dome, they’ll gather:

the

Players of the Eve of Destruction… the most select group of rich psychotics in the human galaxy, here to play the game

that is to real life what

soap opera is to high tragedy.

“This is the bi-port city of Evanauth, Vavatch Orbital, the very same Vavatch Orbital that in about eleven standard hours

from now is due to

be blasted into its component atoms as the Idiran-Culture war in this part of the galaxy, near the Glittercliff

and Sullen Gulf, reaches a new high

in standing-by-your-principles-regardless and a new low in common sense. It’s that imminent

destruction that’s attracted these scatological

vultures here, not the famous Megaships or the azure-blue technological miracles

of the Circlesea. No, these people are here because the

whole Orbital is doomed to be blown away shortly, and they think it’s

kind of amusing to play Damage—an ordinary card game with a few

embellishments to make it attractive to the mentally disturbed—in

places on the verge of annihilation.

“They’ve played on worlds about to suffer massive comet or meteorite strikes, in volcanic calderas about to blow, in cities

due for nuclear

bombardment in ritualistic wars, in asteroids heading for the center of stars, in front of moving cliffs of

ice or lava, inside mysterious alien

spacecraft discovered empty and deserted and set on courses aiming them into black holes,

in vast palaces about to be sacked by android

mobs, and just about everywhere you can think of you’d rather

not

want to be immediately after the Players leave. It might seem like a strange

sort of way to get your kicks, but it takes

all sorts to make a galaxy, I guess.

“So here they’ve come, these hyper-rich deadbeats, in their rented ships or their own cruisers. Right now they’re sobering

up and coming

down, going through plastic surgery or behavior therapy—or both—to make them acceptable in what passes for normal

society, even in these

rarefied circles, after months spent in whatever expensive and unlikely debauchery or perversion particularly

appeals to them or happens to be

in fashion at the moment. At the same time, they or their minions are scraping together their

Aoish credits—all actual; no notes—and scouting

hospitals, asylums and freeze-stores for new Lives.

“Here, too, have come the hangers-on—the Damage groupies, the fortune seekers, the past failures at the game desperate for

another try

if they can only raise the money and the Lives… and Damage’s very own special sort of human debris: the moties,

victims of the game’s

emotional fall-out; mind-junkies who only exist to lap at the crumbs of ecstasy and anguish falling

from the lips of their heroes, the Players of the

Game.

“Nobody knows exactly how all these different groups hear about the game or even how they all get here in time, but the word

goes out to

those who really need to or want to hear about it, and like ghouls they come, ready for the game and the destruction.

“Originally Damage was played on such occasions because only during the breakdown of law and morality, and the confusion and

chaos

normally surrounding Final Events, could the game be carried out in anything remotely resembling part of the civilized

galaxy; which, believe it

or not, the Players like to think they’re part of. Now the subsequent nova, world-busting or other

cataclysm is seen as some sort of metaphysical

symbol for the mortality of all things, and as the Lives involved in a Full

Game are all volunteers, a lot of places—like good old pleasure-

oriented, permissive Vavatch—let the game take place with

official blessing from the authorities. Some people say it’s not the game it used to

be, even that it’s become something of

a media event, but

I

say it’s still a game for the mad and the bad; the rich and the uncaring, but not the

careless; the unhinged… but well connected.

People still die in Damage, and not just the Lives, either, or the Players.

“It’s been called the most decadent game in history. About all you can say in the game’s defense is that it, rather than reality,

occupies the

warped minds of some of the galaxy’s more twisted people; gods know what they would get up to if it wasn’t there.

And if the game does any

good apart from reminding us—as if we needed reminding—how crazy the bipedal, oxygen-breathing carboniform

can become, it does

occasionally remove one of the Players and frighten the rest for a while. In these arguably insane times,

any

lessening or attenuation of

madness is maybe something to be grateful for.

“I’ll be filing another report again some time during the course of the game, from within the auditorium if I can get in there.

But in the

meantime, goodbye and take care. This is Sarble the Eye, Evanauth City, Vavatch."

The image on the wrist screen of a man standing in sunlight on a plaza faded; the half-masked, youngish face disappearing.

Horza put his terminal screen back onto his cuff. The time display winked slowly with the countdown to Vavatch’s destruction.

Sarble the Eye, one of the most famous of the humanoid galaxy’s freelance reporters, and also one of the most successful at

getting into

places he wasn’t supposed to, would now probably be trying to enter the games hall—if he hadn’t got in already;

the broadcast Horza had just

watched had been recorded that afternoon. Doubtless Sarble would be in disguise, so Horza was

glad he’d bribed his way in before the

reporter’s broadcast went out and the security guards round the hall got even more

wary; it had been hard enough as it was.

Horza, in his new guise as Kraiklyn, had posed as a motie—one of the emotional junkies who followed the erratic, secretive

progress of the

major game series round the more tawdry fringes of civilization, having discovered that all but the most expensive

reserved places had been

sold out the day before. The five Aoish credit Tenths he had started out with that morning were now

reduced to three; though he also had some

money keyed into a couple of credit cards he’d bought. That currency would shrink

in real value, though, as the destruction time drew nearer.

Horza took a deep, satisfying breath and looked around the big arena. He had climbed as high as he could up the banked steps,

slopes

and platforms, using the interval before the game began to get an overview of the whole thing.

The dome of the arena was transparent, showing stars and the bright shining line that was the Orbital’s far side, now in daylight.

The lights

of shuttles coming and going—mostly going—traced lines across the still points. Beneath the dome cover hung a smoky

haze, lit with the