Annotations ¶
Schilling said, “Whoever did it, for whatever motives,” his voice was harsh, “putting it in Carol Holt Garden’s car was a vicious and brutal act. Wholly inexcusable.”
Freya smiled. “We can condone the murder but not putting the body in Mrs. Garden’s car. An odd era we’re living in.”
“You know I’m right,” Schilling said to her.
Freya shrugged.
“Let me ask you point blank,” Laird Sharp said, across the table to Pete. “Did you kill Jerome Lucky Luckman?”
Pete said, “I don’t know.” He explained why.
Scowling, Laird Sharp said, “Six persons, you say. Name of god; what’s going on, here? So you could have killed him. You or any one of you or several or even all.” He fingered a sugar cube. “I’ll tell you a piece of bad news. The Widow Luckman, Dotty, is putting great pressure on the police to break this case. That means they’re going to try for a conviction as soon as possible, and it’ll be before a military court … it’s that damn Concordat; we’ve never gotten out from under it.”
“I realize that,” Pete said. He felt tired.
“I mean my wife. Betty, that was her name. Betty Jo. She and I met at Joe Schilling’s rare record shop. Betty Jo had breasts as firm and ripe as melons. Or was her name Mary Anne?”
“Her name was not Mary Anne,” Doctor E.R. Philipson said, “because now you’re speaking of the eighteen-year-old daughter of Pat and Allen McClain and she has never been your wife. I am not qualified to describe her breasts. Or her mother’s. In any case you scarcely know her; all you know about her in fact is that she devoutly listens to Nats Katz whom you can’t stand. You and she have nothing in common.”
“You lying son of a bitch,” Pete said.
“Oh no. I’m not lying. I’m facing reality and that’s exactly what you’ve failed to do; that’s why you’re here. You’re involved in an intricate, sustained illusion-system of massive proportion. You and half of your Game-playing friends. Do you want to escape from it?”
“No,” Pete said. “I mean yes. Yes or no; what does it matter?” He felt sick at his stomach. “Can I leave now?” he said. “I think I’ve spent all my money.”
The vug sighed. “This is a stalemate. I think I will make the decision for both of us. Do I have twenty-five dollars’ worth of help left that I can give you? It depends on what you want. You are in a situation of insidiously-growing difficulty. It will probably kill you shortly, just as it killed Mr. Luckman. Be especially careful for your pregnant wife; she is excruciatingly fragile at this point.”
“I will. I will.”
Doctor E.R. Philipson said, “Your best bet, Garden, is to bend with the forces of the times. There’s little hope that you can achieve much, really; you’re one person and you do, in some respects, properly see the situation. But physically you’re powerless. Who can you go to? E.B. Black? Mr. Hawthorne? You could try. They might help you; they might not. Now, as to the time-segment missing from your memory.”
“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.
We have been waiting a long time for you, a vug thought-propagated to him. Please don’t keep us waiting any longer.
He did not know what to do. And what was the stake? What deed had he put up? He looked around but he saw nothing, no pot or hopper.
A bluffing game in which telepaths participate for stakes which do not exist, Joe Schilling realized. What a travesty. How can I get out of this? Is there a way out? He did not even know that much.
“You certainly broke up The Game,” Doctor Philipson chuckled. “It never occurred to them that you’d cheat.”
“They cheated first. They changed the value of the card!”
“To them, that’s legitimate, a basic move in The Game. It’s a favorite play by the Titanian Game-players to exert their extra-sensory faculties on the card; it’s supposed to be a contest between the sides; the one who’s drawn the card struggles to keep its value constant, you see? By yielding to the altered value you lost, but by moving your piece in conformity to it you thwarted them.”
it’s an irony that what we ultimately have to defeat is not the fringe of extremists but the great center group itself. Maybe it’s just as well; we’re taking on the core of their civilization, vugs not like E.R. Philipson but more like E.B. Black. The reputable ones. The ones who play by the rules.
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