The Game-Players Of Titan

XI

HE AWOKE—and saw, standing by the bed, two figures, a man and a woman. "Be quiet," Pat McClain said softly, indicating Carol. The man beside her held the heat-needle pointed steadily at Pete. He was a man Pete had never seen before in his life.

The man said, "If you make trouble we'll kill her." The heat-needle, now, was aimed at Carol. "Do you understand?"

The clock on the bedside table read nine-thirty; bright, pale, morning sunlight spilled into the bedroom from the windows.

"Okay," Pete said. "I understand." Patricia McClain said, "Get up and get dressed." "Where?" Pete said, sliding from the bed. "Here in front of the two of you?"

Glancing at the man, Patricia said, "In the kitchen." The two of them followed after him, from the bedroom to the kitchen; Patricia shut the door. "You stay with him while he dresses," she said to the man. "I'll watch his wife."

Bringing out a second heat-needle, she returned stealthily to the bedroom. "He won't make any trouble if Carol's in danger; I can pick that up from his mind. It's acutely pronounced."

As the unfamiliar man held the heat-needle on him, Pete dressed.

"So your wife's had luck," the man said. "Congratulations."

Glancing at him, Pete said, "Are you Pat's husband?"

"That's right," the man said. "Alien McClain. I'm glad to meet you at last, Mr. Garden." He smiled a thin, brief smile. "Pat's told me so much about you."

Presently the three of them were walking down the corridor of the apartment building, toward the elevator.

"Did you daughter get home all right last night?" Pete said.

"Yes," Patricia said. "Very late, however. What I scanned in her mind was interesting, to say the least. Fortunately she didn't go to sleep right away; she lay thinking. And so I got it all."

Alien McClain said, "Carol won't wake up for another hour. So there's no immediate problem of her reporting Him missing. Not until almost eleven."

"How do you know she won't wake up?" Pete said.

Alien said nothing.

"You're a pre-cog?" Pete asked.

There was no answer. But it was obviously so.

"And," Alien McClain said to his wife—he jerked his head at Pete—"Mr. Garden, here, won't try to escape. At least, most of the parallel possibilities indicate that. Five out of six futures. A good statistic, I think." At the elevator he pressed the button.

Pete said to Patricia, "Yesterday you were concerned about my safety. Now this." He gestured at the two heat-needles. "Why the change?"

"Because in the meantime you were out with my daughter," Patricia said. "I wish you hadn't been. I told you that she was too young for you; I warned you away from her."

"However," Pete pointed out, "as you read in my mind at the time, I found Mary Anne to be stunningly attractive."

The elevator came; the doors slid open.

In the elevator stood the detective Wade Hawthorne. He gaped at them, then fumbled inside his coat.

Alien McClain said, "Being a pre-cog helps. You can never be surprised." With his heat-needle he shot Hawthorne in the head. Hawthorne crashed back against the far wall of the elevator, then fell sloppily and lay sprawled face-first on the floor of the elevator.

"Get in," Patricia McClain said to Pete. He got in and so did the McClains; with the body of Wade Hawthorne they descended to the ground floor.

Pete said to the Rushmore unit of the elevator, "They're kidnapping me and they've killed a detective. Get help."

"Cancel that last request," Patricia McClain said to the elevator. "We don't need any help, thank you."

"All right, miss," the Rushmore Effect said, obediently.

The elevator doors opened; the McClains followed behind Pete, through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk.

To Pete, Patricia McClain said, "Do you know why Hawthorne was in that elevator, riding up to your floor? I'll tell you. To arrest you."

"No," Pete said. "He told me on the vidphone last night that they'd gotten Luckman's murderer, a man back East."

The McClains glanced at each other but said nothing.

"You killed an innocent man," Pete said.

"Not Hawthorne," Patricia said. "Hardly innocent. I wish we could have gotten that E. B. Black at the same time but it wasn't along. Well, maybe later on."

"That damn Mary Anne," Alien McClain said as they got into the car parked at the curb; it was not Pete's car. Evidently the McClains had come in it. "Somebody ought to wring her neck." He started the car and it spun upward into the morning haze. "That age is amazing. When you're eighteen you believe you know everything, you possess absolute certitude. And then when you're one hundred and fifty you know you don't."

"You don't even know you don't," Patricia said. "You just have a queasy intimation that you don't." She sat in the back seat, behind Pete, still holding the heat-needle pointed at him.

"I'll make a deal with you," Pete said. "I want to be

sure Carol and the baby are all right. Whatever you want me to do—"

Patricia interrupted, "You've already made that deal; Carol and the baby are all right. So don't worry about them. Anyhow, the last thing we would want to do is hurt them."

"That's right," Alien said, nodding. "It would defeat everything we stand for, so to speak." He smiled at Pete. "How does it feel to have luck?"

"You ought to know," Pete said. "You've got more children than any other man in California."

"Yes," Alien McClain agreed, "but it's been over eighteen years since that first time, many years indeed. You really went out and tied one on last night, didn't you? Mary Anne said you were in a trance. Absolutely blind."

Pete said nothing, Gazing down at the ground below, he tried to make out the direction of the car's motion. It seemed to be heading inland, toward the hot central valley-region of California and the Sierras beyond. The utterly desolated Sierras, where no one lived.

"Tell us a little more about Doctor Philipson," Patricia said to him. "I catch some ill-formed thoughts. You called him last night after you got home?"

"Yes."

To her husband, Patricia said, "Pete called him up and asked him if he—Doctor Philipson—was a vug."

Grinning, Alien McClain said, "What did he say?"

"He said that he was not a vug," Patricia said. "And then Pete called Joe Schilling and told him the news; you know, that we're entirely surrounded by them, and Joe Schilling suggested he call Hawthorne. Which he did. And, that's why Hawthorne came over this morning."

"I'll tell you who you should have called, instead of Wade Hawthorne," McClain said to Pete. "Your attorney, Laird Sharp."

"Too late now," Patricia said. "But he'll probably run into Sharp somewhere along the line anyhow. You can talk to him then, Pete. Tell him the whole story, how we're an island of humans swamped in a sea of non-terrestrials." She laughed, and so did her husband.

"I think we're scaring him," McClain said.

"No," Patricia said. "I'm scanning him and he's not scared, at least not like he was last night." To Pete she said, "That was an ordeal for you, wasn't it, that trip home with Mary Anne? I'll bet you never get over it as long as you live." To her husband she said, "His two frames of reference kept switching back and forth; first he'd see Mary Anne as a girl, as an attractive eighteen-year-old Terran, and then he'd peek over, out of the comer of his eye—"

"Shut up!" Pete said savagely.

Patricia continued, "And there it would be. The amorphous mass of cytoplasm, spinning its web of illusion, to mix a metaphor. Poor Peter Garden. It sort of takes the romance out of life, doesn't it, Pete? First you couldn't find a bar that would serve Mary Anne and then—"

"Stop it," her husband said. "That's really enough; he's gone through enough already. This rivalry of yours with Mary Anne, it's bad for both of you. You shouldn't be competing with your own daughter."

"Okay," Pat said, and was silent as she lit a cigarette.

Below them, the Sierras passed slowly. Pete watched them drop behind.

"Better call him," Patricia said to Alien,

"Right." Her husband clicked on the radio transmitter. "This is Dark Horse Ferry," he said into the microphone. "Calling Sea Green Lamb. Come in, Sea Green Lamb. Come in, Dave."

A voice from the radio said, "This is Dave Mutreaux. I'm at the Dig Inn Motel in Sparks, waiting for you."

"Okay, Dave; we'll be right there. Another five minutes." Alien McClain switched his transmitter off. "All set," he said to Patricia. "I can preview it; there won't be any gaffs."

"Splendid," Patricia said.

"By the way," Alien McClain said to Pete, "Mary Anne will be there; she came direct, in her own car. And several Other people, one of whom you know. It'll be interesting for you, I think. They're all Psis. Mary Anne, by the way, is not a telepath, as her mother is. Despite what she told you. That was irresponsible of her. A good deal of what she told you was hogwash. For instance, when she said—"

"Enough," Patricia said, firmly.

McClain shrugged. "He'll know in another half hour; I can preview that."

"It just makes me nervous, that's all. I'd rather wait until we're at the Dig Inn." To Pete, she said, "By the way, you would have been better off if you had listened to her and kissed her goodnight, as she asked you to."

"Why?" Pete said.

"Then you would have known what she was." She added, "Anyhow how many opportunities do you get in-your lifetime to kiss stunningly-beautiful girls?" Her voice, as before, was bitter.

"You're eating your heart out for nothing," Alien McClain told her. "Christ, I'm sorry to see you do it, Pat."

Pat said, "And I'm going to do it again later on with Jessica, when she's older."

"I know," McClain said, nodding. "I can preview that even without my talent." He looked morose.

On the flat sand outside the Dig Inn Motel the car landed. With the heat-needle the McClains ushered Pete Garden out and toward the, single-story Spanish style adobe building.

A long-limbed man, well-dressed, middle-aged, strode toward them from the motel, his hand extended. "Hi, McClain. Hi, Pat." He glanced at Pete. "Mr. Garden, the one-time owner of Berkeley, California. You know, Garden, I darn near came to Carmel to play in your group. But, sorry to say, you scared me off with your EEG machine." He chuckled. "I'm David Mutreaux, formerly on Jerome Luck-man's staff." He held out his hand to Pete, but Pete did not accept it. "That's right," Mutreaux drawled, "you don't understand the situation. Yet I'm a little muddled about what's happened and what's shortly to come. Old age, I suppose." He led the way up the flagstone path, to the open doorway of the motel office. "Mary Anne got in a few minutes ago. She's taking a swim in the pool."

Hands in her pockets, Pat walked over to the swimming pool and stood watching her daughter. "If you could read my mind," she said, to no one in particular, "you'd

see envy." She turned away from the pool. "You know, Pete, when I first met you I lost some of that. You're one of the most innocent people I've ever known. You helped me purge myself of my shadow-side, as Jung—and Joe Schilling —call it. How is Joe, by the way? I enjoyed seeing him again last night. How'd he feel being awakened at five-thirty in the morning?"

"He congratulated me," Pete said shortly, "On my luck."

"Oh yes," Mutreaux said in a jolly tone of voice; he slapped Pete good-naturedly on the back. "Lots of best wishes on the pregnancy."

Pat said, "That was an awful remark your ex-wife made that to Carol about 'hoping it was a baby.' And that daughter of mine, she relished it; I suppose she derives that cruel streak from me. But don't blame Mary Anne too much for what she said last night, Pete, because most of what you experienced was not Mary's fault; it was in your mind. Hallucinated. Joe Schilling was right in what he told you; the amphetamines were responsible. You had an authentic psychoptic occlusion."

"Did I?" Pete said.

She met his gaze. "Yes, you did."

"I doubt it," Pete said.

"Let's go inside," Alien McClain said. He cupped his hands and shouted, "Mary Anne, get out of that pool!"

Splashing, the girl approached the rim of the pool. "Go to hell."

McClain knelt down. "We have business; get inside! You're still my child."

In the air above the surface of the pool a ball of shiny water formed, whipped toward him, broke over his head, splattering him; he jumped back, cursing.

"I thought you were such a great pre-cog," Mary Anne called, laughing. "I thought you couldn't be taken by surprise." She caught hold of the ladder, hoisted herself lithely from the pool. The mid-morning Nevada sun sparkled from her moist, smooth body as she ran and picked up a white terry cloth bath towel. "Hello, Pete Garden," she said, as she ran by him. "Nice to see you again when you're not sick to your stomach; you were actually a dark green color, like

old moldy moss." Her white teeth glinted as again she laughed.

Alien McClain, brushing drops of water from his face and hair, walked over to Pete. "It's now eleven o'clock," he said. "I'd like you to call Carol and say you're all right. However, I can look ahead and see you won't, or at least probably won't."

"That's right," Pete said. "I won't."

McClain shrugged. "Well, I can't see what she'll do; possibly she'll call the police, possibly not. Time will tell." They walked toward the motel building, McClain still shaking himself dry. "An interesting element about Psionic abilities is that some tend to invalidate others. For instance, my daughter's psycho-kinesis; as she aptly demonstrated, I can't predict it. Pauli's synchronicity comes in, an acausal connective event that throws someone like me entirely off."

To Dave Mutreaux, Patricia said, "Did Sid Mosk actually confess to having killed Luckman?"

"Yes," Mutreaux answered. "Rothman put pressure on him, to take pressure off Pretty Blue Fox; the police out in California were probing a little too deeply, we felt."

"But they'll know after a while that it's spurious," Patricia said. "That vug E. B. Black will get into his mind telepathically."

"It won't matter then," Mutreaux said. "I hope."

Inside the motel office an air-conditioner roared; the room was dark and cool, and seated here and there Pete saw a number of individuals talking together in muted tones. It looked, for an instant, as if he had stumbled onto a Game-playing group here in the middle of the morning, but of course it was not. He had no illusions about that. These were not Bindmen.

He seated himself, warily, wondering what they were saying. Some of them sat utterly silent, staring straight ahead as if preoccupied. Telepaths, perhaps, communicating with one another. They seemed to be in the majority. The others—he could only guess. Pre-cogs, like McClain, psycho-kinesists, like the girl Mary Anne. And Rothman, whoever he was. Was Rothman here? He had a feeling,

deep and intuitive, that Rothman was very much here, and in control.

From a side room, Mary Anne appeared, now wearing a T shirt and blue cotton shorts and sandals and no bra; her breasts were high-pointed, small. She seated herself beside Pete, vigorously rubbing her hair with a towel to dry it. "What a bunch of jerks," she said quietly to Pete. "I mean, don't you agree? They—my mother and dad—made me come here." She frowned. "Who's that?" Another man had entered the room and looked around him. "I don't know him. Probably from the East Coast, like that Mutreaux."

"You're not a vug," Pete said to her. "After all."

"No, I'm not. I never said I was; you asked me what I was and I told you, 'you can see,' and you could. It was true. See, Peter Garden, you were an involuntary telepath; you were psychotic, because of those pills and the drinking, and you picked up my marginal thoughts, all my anxieties. What they used to call the subconscious. Didn't my mother ever warn you about that? She ought to know."

"I see," Pete said. Yes, she had.

"And before me you picked up that psychiatrist's subconscious fears, too. We're all afraid of the vugs. It's natural. They're our enemies; we fought a war with them and didn't win and now they're here. See?" She dug him in the ribs with her sharp elbow. "Don't look so stupid; are you listening or not?"

Pete said, "I am."

"Well, you gape like a guppy. I knew last night you were hallucinating like mad along a paranoid line, having to do with hostile, menacing conspiracies of alien creatures. It interfered with your perceptions, but fundamentally you were right. I actually was feeling those fears, thinking those thoughts. Psychotics live in a world like that all the time. Anyhow, your interval of being a telepath was unfortunate because it happened around me and I know about this." She gestured at the group of people in the motel room. "See? So from then on you were dangerous. And you had to go right away and call the police; we got you just in time."

Did he believe her? He studied her thin, heart-shaped

face; he could not tell. If telepathic talent it had been, it certainly had deserted him now.

"See," Mary Anne said quietly, swiftly, "everyone has the potentiality for Psionic talent. In severe illness and in deep psychic regression—" She broke off. "Anyhow, Peter Garden, you were psychotic and drunk and on amphetamines and hallucinating, hut basically you perceived the reality that confronts us, the situation this group knows about and is trying to deal with. You see?" She smiled at him, her eyes bright. "Now you know."

He did not see; he did not want to see.

Petrified, he drew away from her.

"You don't want to know," Mary Anne said thoughtfully.

"That's right," he said.

"But you do know," she said. "Already. It's too late not to." She added, in her pitiless tone, "and this time you're not sick and drunk and hallucinating; your perceptions are not distorted. So you have to face it head-on. Poor Peter Garden. Were you happier last night?"

"No," he said.

"You're not going to kill yourself about this, are you? Because that wouldn't help. You see, we're an organization, Pete. And you have to join, even though you're non-P, not a Psi; we'll have to take you in anyway or kill you. Naturally, no one wants to kill you. What would happen to Carol? Would you leave her for Freya to torment?"

"No," he said, "not if I could help it."

"You know, the Rushmore Effect of your car told you I wasn't a vug; I don't understand why you didn't listen to it; they're never wrong." She sighed. "Not if they're working properly, anyhow. Haven't been tampered with. That's how you can always sort out the vugs: ask a Rushmore. See?" Again she smiled at him, cheerfully. "So things aren't really so bad. It's not the end of the world or anything like that; we just have a little problem of knowing who our friends are. They have the same problem, too; they get a little mixed up at times."

"Who killed Luckman?" Pete asked. "Did you?"

"No," Mary Anne said. "The last thing we'd do is kill a

man who's had so much luck, so many offspring; that's the whole point." She frowned at him.

"But last night," he said slowly, "I asked you if your people had done it. And you said—" He paused, trying to think clearly, trying to sort out the confusion of those events. "I know what you said. 'I forget,' you said. And—you said our baby is next; you called it a thing, you said it was not a baby."

For a long time Mary Anne stared at him. "No," she whispered, stricken and pale. "I didn't say that; I know I didn't."

"I heard you," he insisted. "I remember that; it's a mess, but honest to god, I have that part clear."

Mary Anne said, "Then they've gotten to me." Her words were scarcely audible; he had to bend toward her to hear. She continued to stare at him.

Opening the door of the sun-drenched kitchen, Carol Holt Garden said, "Pete—are you in there?" She peered in.

He was not in the kitchen. Bright, yellow and warm, it was empty.

Going to the window she looked out at the street below. Pete's car and hers, at the curb; he had not gone in his car then.

Tying the cord of her robe she hurried out of the apartment and down the hall to the elevator. I'll ask it, she decided. The elevator will know whether he went out, whether anyone was with him and if so who. She pressed the button, waited.

The elevator arrived; the doors slid back.

On the floor of the elevator lay a man, dead. It was Hawthorne.

She screamed.

"The lady said no help was necessary," the Rushmore circuit of the elevator said, apologetically.

With difficulty Carol said, "What lady?"

"The dark-haired lady." It did not elaborate.

"Did Mr. Garden go with them?" Carol asked.

"They came up without him but returned with him from his apartment, Mrs. Garden. The man, not Mr. Garden, killed

this person here. Mr. Garden then said, 'They've kidnapped me and they've killed a detective. Get help.'"

"What did you do?"

The elevator said. "The dark-haired lady said, 'Cancel the last request. We don't need any help. Thank you.' So I did nothing." The elevator was silent a moment. "Did I do wrong?" it inquired.

Carol whispered, "Very wrong. You should have gotten help, as he said."

"Can I do anything now?" the elevator asked.

"Call the San Francisco Police Department and tell them to send someone here. Tell them what happened." She added, "That man and woman kidnapped Mr. Garden and you didn't do anything."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Garden," the elevator apologized.

Turning, she made her way step by step back to the apartment; in the kitchen she seated herself unsteadily at the table. Those stupid, maddening Rushmore circuits, she thought; they seem so intelligent and they actually aren't. All it takes is something unusual, something unexpected. But what did I do? Not much better, I slept while they came and got Pete, the man and woman. It sounds like Pat McClain, she thought. Dark-haired. But how do I know?

The vidphone rang.

She did not have the energy to answer it.

Trimming his red beard, Joe Schilling sat by his vidphone, waiting for an answer. Strange, he thought. Maybe they're still asleep. It's only ten-thirty. But—

He did not think so.

Hurriedly, he finished trimming his beard; he put on his coat and strode from his apartment and downstairs to Max, his car.

"Take me to the Gardens' apartment," he instructed as he slid in.

"Up yours," the car said.

"It's curtains for you if you don't take me there," Schilling said.

The car, reluctantly, started up and drove down the street, making the trip the hard way, by surface. Schilling im-

patiently watched the buildings and maintenance equipment pass, one by one, until at last they reached San Rafael.

"Satisfied?" the car Max said, as it pulled to a bucking, clumsy halt before the Gardens' apartment building.

Pete's car and Carol's car were both parked at the curb, he noticed as he got out. And so were two police cars.

By elevator he ascended to their floor, rushed down the hall. The door to the Gardens' apartment was open. He stepped inside.

A vug met him.

"Mr. Schilling." Its thought-propagation was questioning in tone.

"Where are Pete and Carol?" he demanded. And then he saw, past the vug, Carol Garden seated at the kitchen table, her face waxen. "Is Pete okay?" he said to her, pushing past the vug.

The vug said, "I am E. B. Black; probably you remember me, Mr. Schilling. Be calm. I catch from your thoughts a complete innocence of this, so I will not bother to interrogate you."

Raising her head, Carol said starkly to Schilling, "Wade Hawthorne, the detective, has been murdered and Pete's gone. A man and woman came and got him, according to the elevator. They killed Hawthorne. I think it was Pat McClain; the police checked at her apartment and nobody's there. And their car is gone."

"But—do you know why they would take Pete?" Schilling asked her.

"No, I don't know why they would take Pete; I don't even know who 'they' are, really."

With a pseudopodium, the vug E. B. Black held something small; it extended it toward Joe Schilling. "Mr. Garden wrote this interesting inscription," the vug said. " 'We are entirely surrounded by vugs.' That, however, is not so, as Mr. Garden's disappearance testifies to. Last night Mr. Garden called my ex-colleague Mr. Hawthorne and told him that he knew who had killed Mr. Luckman. At that time we imagined we had the killer and so we were not interested. Now we have learned we were in error. Mr. Garden did not say who had killed Mr. Luckman, unfortunately, because my ex-col-

leagues refused to listen." The vug was silent a moment. "Mr. Hawthorne has paid for his foolishness rather fully."

Carol said, "E. B. Black thinks that whoever killed Luckman came and got Pete and ran into Hawthorne in the elevator on their way out."

"But it doesn't know who that is," Schilling said.

"Correct," E. B. Black said. "From Mrs. Garden I have managed to learn a great deal, however. For instance, I have learned whom Mr. Garden saw last night. A psychiatrist in Pocatello, Idaho, first of all. Also Mary Anne McClain; we have not been able to locate her, however. Mr. Garden was drunk and confused. He told Mrs. Garden that the murder of Mr. Luckman had been committed by six members of Pretty Blue Fox, the six with defective memories. This would include himself. Do you have any comment on that, Mr. Schilling?"

"No," Joe Schilling murmured.

"We hope to get back Mr. Garden alive," E. B. Black said. It did not sound very confident.