couldn’t see any of their distinctive tiered

head-dresses or bleeding-eye symbols.

Kraiklyn had only managed to find three Lives; it didn’t look as though he would be staying all that long in the game.

The white-haired woman in the reserved seat near the front of the terrace got up, stretched and walked up the terrace, between

the couches

and loungers, a bored expression on her face. Just as she drew level with Horza’s couch, a commotion erupted on

a terrace behind them. The

woman stopped and looked. Horza turned round. Even through the quietfield he could hear a man shouting;

what looked like a fight had broken

out. A couple of security guards were trying to restrain two people rolling about on the

floor. The crowd on the terrace had made a circle about

the disturbance and were looking on, dividing their attention between

the preparations for the Damage game and the fisticuffs on the terrace

beside them. Eventually the two people on the floor

were brought to their feet, but instead of both being restrained, only one was—a youngish

man who looked vaguely familiar

to Horza, though he appeared to have been disguising himself with a blond wig which was now slipping off his

head.

The other person who had been fighting, another man, produced some sort of card from his clothes and showed it to the young

man, who

was still shouting. Then the two uniformed guards and the man who had brandished the card led the young man away.

The man with the card

took something small from behind one of the young man’s ears as he was frog-marched off to an access

tunnel. The young woman with the long

white hair crossed her arms and walked on up the terrace. The circle of people on the

terrace above closed again, like a hole in cloud.

Horza watched the woman weave her way through more couches until she left the terrace and he lost sight of her. He looked

up. The dueling

animals still spun and leapt; their white blood seemed to glow as it matted their shaggy hides. They snarled

silently and scythed at each other

with their long forelimbs, but their acrobatics and their aiming had deteriorated; they

were starting to look tired and clumsy. Horza looked back

to the game table; they were all ready, and the game was about to

begin.

Damage was just a fancy card game: partly skill, partly luck and partly bluff. What made it interesting was not just the high

sums involved, or

even the fact that whenever a player lost a life he lost a Life—a living, breathing human being—but the

use of complicated consciousness-

altering two-way electronic fields around the game table.

With the cards in his or her hand, a player could alter the emotions of another player, or sometimes of several others. Fear,

hate, despair,

hope, love, camaraderie, doubt, elation, paranoia; virtually every emotional state the human brain was capable

of experiencing could be

beamed at another player or used for oneself. From far enough away, or in a field shield close in,

the game could look like a pastime for the

deranged or the simple-minded. A player with an obviously strong hand might suddenly

throw it in; somebody with nothing at all might gamble

all the credits they had; people broke down weeping or started laughing

uncontrollably; they might moan with love at a player known to be their

worst enemy or claw at their restraining straps to

free themselves for a murdering attack on their best friend.

Or they could kill themselves. Damage players never did get free from their chairs (should they ever do so, an Ishlorsinami

would shoot

them with a heavy stun gun) but they could destroy themselves. Each game console, from which the emotor units

radiated the relevant

emotions, on which the cards were played and where the players could see the time and the number of

Lives they each had left, contained a

small hollow button, inside which a needle filled with poison lay ready to inject any

stabbing finger which pushed it.

Damage was one of those games in which it was unwise to make too many enemies. Only the very strong-willed indeed could defeat

the

urge to suicide implanted in their brains by a concerted attack of half a table of players.

At the finish of each hand of cards, when the money which had been gambled was taken by the player with the most card points,

all the

other players who had stayed with the betting lost a Life. When they had none left they were out of the game, as they

would be if they ran out of

money. The rules said the game ended when only one player had any Lives left, though in practice

it finished when the remaining contestants

agreed that if they stayed any longer they were likely to lose their own Lives

to whatever disaster was about to ensue. It could get very

interesting at the end of a game when the moment of destruction

was very close, the hand had gone on for some time, a great deal of money

had been gambled on that one hand, and one or several

players would not agree to call it a day; then the sophisticates really were separated

from the simians, and it became even

more a game of nerve. Quite a few of the best Damage players of the past had perished trying to out-

dare and out-stay each

other in such circumstances.

From a spectator’s point of view, Damage’s special attraction was that the closer you stood to the emotor unit of any particular

player, the

more of the emotions they were experiencing affected you directly, too. A whole subculture of people hooked on

such thirdhand feelings had

grown up in the few hundred years since Damage had become such a select but popular game: the

moties.

There were other groups playing Damage. The Players of the Eve of Destruction were simply the most famous and the richest.

The moties

could get their emotional fix in lots of places throughout the galaxy, but only in a full game, only on the edge

of annihilation, only with the very best

players (plus a few hopefuls) could the most intense experiences be obtained. It

was one of these unfortunates Horza had impersonated when

he had discovered that an access pass could not be had for less

than twice the amount of money he had made on the shuttle. Bribing a door

guard had been a lot cheaper.

The real moties were packed tightly behind the fence separating them from the Lives. Sixteen clumps of sweating, nervous-looking

people

—like the game players, mostly male—they jostled and pressed forward, trying to get near to the table, near to the Players.

Horza watched them as the cards were dealt by the chief Ishlorsinami. Moties jumped up and down, trying to see what was happening,

and

security guards fitted with baffle helmets to keep out the emotor pulses patrolled the perimeter of the fence, tapping

nerver prods on their thighs

or palms and watching warily.

“… Sarble the Eye…" somebody nearby said, and Horza turned to see. A cadaverous-looking human lying on a couch behind and

to

Horza’s left was talking to another and pointing up to the terrace where the disturbance had occurred a few minutes earlier.

Horza heard the

words “Sarble" and “caught" a few more times from elsewhere around him as the news spread. He turned round

to watch the game as the

Players started to inspect their hands; the betting began. Horza thought it was a pity the reporter

had been caught, but it might mean that the

security guards relaxed a little, giving him a better chance of not being asked

for his pass.

Horza was sitting a good fifty meters from the nearest player, a woman whose name he had heard mentioned but had forgotten.

As the first

hand progressed, only mild versions of what she was feeling and was being made to feel impinged upon his consciousness.

Nevertheless, he

didn’t enjoy the sensation, and switched on the lounger’s baffle field, using the small control set on one

arm of the couch. Had he wanted, he

could have canceled the immediate effect of the player he just happened to be sitting

behind and substituted the effects of any of the other

emotor units on the table. The effect would have been nothing like

as intense as what the moties or the Lives were experiencing, but it would

certainly have given a good idea of what the Players

were going through. Most of the other people around him were using their lounger’s

controls in that way, flicking from one

player to another in an attempt to judge the overall state of the game. Horza would concentrate on

Kraiklyn’s broadcast emotions

later, but for now he just wanted to settle in and get the general feel of the game.

Kraiklyn dropped out of the first hand early enough to be sure of avoiding losing a Life when it finished; with so few Lives

of his own it was

the wisest course unless he had a very strong hand. Horza watched the man carefully as he sat back in his

seat and relaxed, his emotor unit

dormant. Kraiklyn licked his lips and wiped his brow. Horza decided in the next hand he

would eavesdrop on what Kraiklyn was going through,

just to see what it was like.

The hand finished. Wilgre won. He waved, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd. Some moties had fainted already; at the other

end of the