Ren slept on, half covered by a sheet. Her black hair spilled across the top of the bed. Gurgeh sat at his occasional desk near the balcony windows, looking out at the night. The rain had passed, the clouds thinned and separated, and now the light of the stars and the four Plates on the far, balancing side of the Chiark Orbital - three million kilometres away and with their inner faces in daylight - cast a silvery sheen on the passing clouds and made the dark fjord waters glitter. He turned on the deskpad, pressed its calibrated margin a few times until he found the relevant publications, then read for a while; papers on game-theory by other respected players, reviews of some of their games, analyses of new games and promising players. He opened the windows later and stepped out on to the circular balcony, shivering a little as the cool night air touched his nakedness. He'd taken his pocket terminal with him, and braved the cold for a while, talking to the dark trees and the silent fjord, dictating a new paper on old games. When he went back in, Ren Myglan was still asleep, but breathing quickly and erratically. Intrigued, he went over to her and crouched down by the side of the bed, looking intently at her face as it twitched and contorted in her sleep. Her breath laboured in her throat and down her delicate nose, and her nostrils flared. Gurgeh squatted like that for some minutes, with an odd expression on his face, somewhere between a sneer and a sad smile, wondering - with a sense of vague frustration, even regret - what sort of nightmares the young woman must be having, to make her quiver and pant and whimper so.
The next two days passed relatively uneventfully. He spent most of the time reading papers by other players and theorists, and finished a paper of his own which he'd started the night Ren Myglan stayed. Ren had left during breakfast the next morning, after an argument; he liked to work during breakfast, she'd wanted to talk. He'd suspected she was just tetchy after not sleeping well. He caught up on some correspondence. Mostly it was in the form of requests; to visit other worlds, take part in great tournaments, write papers, comment on new games, become a teacher/lecturer/ professor in various educational establishments, be a guest on any one of several GSVs, take on such-and-such a child prodigy… it was a long list. He turned them all down. It gave him a rather pleasant feeling. There was a communication from a GCU which claimed to have discovered a world on which there was a game based on the precise topography of individual snowflakes; a game which, for that reason, was never played on the same board twice. Gurgeh had never heard of such a game, and could find no mention of it in the usually up-to-date files Contact collated for people like him. He suspected the game was a fake - GCUs were notoriously mischievous - but sent a considered and germain (if also rather ironic) reply, because the joke, if it was a joke, appealed to him. He watched a gliding competition over the mountains and cliffs on the far side of the fjord. He turned on the house holoscreen and watched a recently made entertainment he'd heard people talking about. It concerned a planet whose intelligent inhabitants were sentient glaciers and their iceberg children. He had expected to despise its preposterousness, but found it quite amusing. He sketched out a glacier game, based on what sort of minerals could be gouged from rocks, what mountains destroyed, rivers dammed, landscapes created and bays blocked if - as in the entertainment - glaciers could liquefy and re-freeze parts of themselves at will. The game was diverting enough, but contained nothing original; he abandoned it after an hour or so. He spent much of the next day swimming in Ikroh's basement pool; when doing the backstroke, he dictated as well, his pocket terminal tracking up and down the pool with him, just overhead. In the late afternoon a woman and her young daughter came riding through the forest and stopped off at Ikroh. Neither of them showed any sign of having heard of him; they just happened to be passing. He invited them to stay for a drink, and made them a late lunch; they tethered their tall, panting mounts in the shade at the side of the house, where the drones gave them water. He advised the woman on the most scenic route to take when she and her daughter resumed their journey, and gave the child a piece from a highly ornamented Bataos set she'd admired. He took dinner on the terrace, the terminal screen open and showing the pages of an ancient barbarian treatise on games. The book - a millennium old when the civilisation had been Contacted, two thousand years earlier - was limited in its appreciation, of course, but Gurgeh never ceased to be fascinated by the way a society's games revealed so much about its ethos, its philosophy, its very soul. Besides, barbarian societies had always intrigued him, even before their games had. The book was interesting. He rested his eyes watching the sun going down, then went back to it as the darkness deepened. The house drones brought him drinks, a heavier jacket, a light snack, as he requested them. He told the house to refuse all incoming calls. The terrace lights gradually brightened. Chiark's farside shone whitely overhead, coating everything in silver; stars twinkled in a cloudless sky. Gurgeh read on. The terminal beeped. He looked severely at the camera eye set in one corner of the screen. 'House,' he said, 'are you going deaf?' 'Please forgive the over-ride,' a rather officious and unapologetic voice Gurgeh did not recognise said from the screen. 'Am I talking to Chiark-Gevantsa Jernau Morat Gurgeh dam Hassease?' Gurgeh stared dubiously at the screen eye. He hadn't heard his full name pronounced for years. 'Yes.' 'My name is Loash Armasco-Iap Wu-Handrahen Xato Koum.' Gurgeh raised one eyebrow. 'Well, that should be easy enough to remember.' 'Might I interrupt you, sir?' 'You already have. What do you want?' 'To talk with you. Despite my over-ride, this does not constitute an emergency, but I can only talk to you directly this evening. I am here representing the Contact Section, at the request of Dastaveb Chamlis Amalk-ney Ep-Handra Thedreiskre Ostlehoorp. May I approach you?' 'Providing you can stay off the full names, yes,' Gurgeh said. 'I shall be there directly.' Gurgeh snapped the screen shut. He tapped the pen-like terminal on the edge of the wooden table and looked out over the dark fjord, watching the dim lights of the few houses on the far shore. He heard a roaring noise in the sky, and looked up to see a farside-lit vapour-trail overhead, steeply angled and pointing to the slope uphill from Ikroh. There was a muffled bang over the forest above the house, and a noise like a sudden gust of wind, then, zooming round the side of the house, came a small drone, its fields bright blue and striped yellow. It drifted over towards Gurgeh. The machine was about the same size as Mawhrin-Skel; it could, Gurgeh thought, have sat comfortably in the rectangular sandwich plate on the table. Its gunmetal casing looked a little more complicated and knobbly than Mawhrin-Skel's. 'Good evening,' Gurgeh said as the small machine cleared the terrace wall. It settled down on the table, by the sandwich plate. 'Good evening, Morat Gurgeh.' 'Contact, eh?' Gurgeh said, putting his terminal into a pocket in his robe. 'That was quick. I was only talking to Chamlis the night before last.' 'I happened to be in the volume,' the machine explained in its clipped voice, 'in transit - between the GCU
Flexible Demeanour
and the GSV
Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence
, aboard the (D)ROU
Zealot.
As the nearest Contact operative, I was the obvious choice to visit you. However, as I say, I can only stay for a short time.' 'Oh, what a pity,' Gurgeh said. 'Yes; you have such a charming Orbital here. Perhaps some other time.' 'Well, I hope it hasn't been a wasted journey for you, Loash…. I wasn't really expecting an audience with a Contact operative. My friend Chamlis just thought Contact might… I don't know; have something interesting which wasn't in general circulation. I expected nothing at all, or just information. Might I ask just what you're doing here?' He leant forward, putting both elbows on the table, leaning over the small machine. There was one sandwich left on the plate just in front of the drone. Gurgeh took it and ate, munching and looking at the machine. 'Certainly. I am here to ascertain just how open to suggestions you are. Contact might be able to find you something which would interest you.' 'A game?' 'I have been given to understand it is connected with a game.' 'That does not mean you have to play one with me,' Gurgeh said, brushing his hands free of crumbs over the plate. A few crumbs flew towards the drone, as he'd hoped they might, but it fielded each one, flicking them neatly to the centre of the plate in front of it. 'All I know, sir, is that Contact
might
have found something to interest you. I believe it to be connected with a game. I am instructed to discover how willing you might be to travel. I therefore assume the game - if such it is - is to be played in a location besides Chiark.' 'Travel?' Gurgeh said. He sat back. 'Where? How far? How long?' 'I don't know, exactly.' 'Well, try approximately.' 'I would not like to guess. How long would you be prepared to spend away from home?' Gurgeh's eyes narrowed. The longest he'd spent away from Chiark had been when he'd gone on a cruise once, thirty years earlier. He hadn't enjoyed it especially. He'd gone more because it was the done thing to travel at that age than because he'd wanted to. The different stellar systems had been spectacular, but you could see just as good a view on a holoscreen, and he still didn't really understand what people saw in actually having been in any particular system. He'd planned to spend a few years on that cruise, but gave up after one. Gurgeh rubbed his beard. 'Perhaps half a year or so; it's hard to say without knowing the details. Say that, though; say half a year… not that I can see it's necessary. Local colour rarely adds that much to a game.' 'Normally, true.' The machine paused. 'I understand this might be rather a complicated game; it might take a while to learn. It is likely you would have to devote yourself to it for some time.' 'I'm sure I'll manage,' Gurgeh said. The longest it had taken him to learn any game had been three days; he hadn't forgotten any rule of any game in all his life, nor ever had to learn one twice. 'Very well,' the small drone said suddenly, 'on that basis, I shall report back. Farewell, Morat Gurgeh.' It started to accelerate into the sky. Gurgeh looked up at it, mouth open. He resisted the urge to jump up. 'Is that it?' he said. The small machine stopped a couple of metres up. 'That's all I'm allowed to talk about. I've asked you what I was supposed to ask you. Now I report back. Why, is there anything else you would like to know I might be able to help you with?' 'Yes,' Gurgeh said, annoyed now. 'Do I get to hear anything else about whatever and wherever it is you're talking about?' The machine seemed to waver in the air. Its fields hadn't changed since its arrival. Eventually, it said, 'Jernau Gurgeh?' There was a long moment when they were both silent. Gurgeh stared at the machine, then stood up, put both hands on his hips and his head to one side and shouted, 'Yes?' '…. Probably not,' the drone snapped, and instantly rose straight up, fields flicking off. He heard the roaring noise and saw the vapour-trail form; it was a single tiny cloud at first because he was right underneath it, then it lengthened slowly for a few seconds, before suddenly ceasing to grow. He shook his head. He took out the pocket terminal. 'House,' he said. 'Raise that drone.' He continued to stare into the sky. 'Which drone, Jernau?' the house said. 'Chamlis?' He stared at the terminal. 'No! That little scumbag from Contact; Loash Armasco-Iap Wu-Handrahen Xato Koum, that's who! The one that was just here!' 'Just here?' the house said, in its Puzzled voice. Gurgeh sagged. He sat down. 'You didn't see or hear anything just now?' 'Nothing but silence for the last eleven minutes, Gurgeh, since you told me to hold all calls. There have been two of those since, but-' 'Never mind,' Gurgeh sighed. 'Get me Hub.' 'Hub here; Makil Stra-bey Mind subsection. Jernau Gurgeh; what can we do for you?' Gurgeh was still looking at the sky overhead, partly because that was where the Contact drone had gone (the thin vapour-trail was starting to expand and drift), and partly because people tended to look in the direction of the Hub when they were talking to it. He noticed the extra star just before it started to move. The light-point was near the trailing end of the little drone's farside-lit contrail. He frowned. Almost immediately, it moved; only moderately fast at first, then too quickly for the eye to anticipate. It disappeared. He was silent for a moment, then said, 'Hub, has a Contact ship just left here?' 'Doing so even as we speak, Gurgeh. The (Demilitarised) Rapid Offensive Unit-'
'-Zealot
,' Gurgeh said. 'Ho-ho! It was
you
, was it? We thought it was going to take
months
to work that one out. You've just seen a Private visit, game-player Gurgeh; Contact business; not for us to know.
Wow
, were we inquisitive though.
Very
glamorous, Jernau, if we may say so. That ship crash-stopped from at least forty kilolights and swerved twenty years… just for a five-minute chat with you, it would seem. That is
serious
energy usage… especially as it's accelerating away just as fast. Look at that kid go… oh, sorry; you can't. Well, take it from us; we're impressed. Care to tell a humble Hub Mind subsection what it was all about?' 'Any chance of contacting the ship?' Gurgeh said, ignoring the question. 'Dragging away like that? Business end pointed straight back at a mere civilian machine like ourselves…?' The Hub Mind sounded amused. 'Yeah… we suppose so.' 'I want a drone on it called Loash Armasco-Iap Wu-Handrahen Xato Koum.' 'Holy shit, Gurgeh, what
are
you tangling with here? Handrahen? Xato? That's equiv-tech espionage-level SC nomenclature. Heavy messing…. Shit…. We'll try…. Just a moment.' Gurgeh waited in silence for a few seconds. 'Nothing,' the voice from the terminal said. 'Gurgeh, this is Hub Entire speaking here; not a subsection; all of me. That ship's acknowledging but it's claiming there is no drone of that name or anything like it aboard.' Gurgeh slumped back in the seat. His neck was stiff. He looked down from the stars, down at the table. 'You don't say,' he said. 'Shall I try again?' 'Think it'll do any good?' 'No.' 'Then don't.' 'Gurgeh. This disturbs me. What is going on?' 'I wish,' Gurgeh said, 'I knew.' He looked up at the stars again. The little drone's ghostly vapour-trail had almost disappeared. 'Get me Chamlis Amalk-ney, will you?' 'On line … Jernau?' 'What, Hub?' 'Be careful.' 'Oh. Thanks. Thanks a lot.'