[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
'Does pain hurt? Is a supernova bright?'
Gurgeh stretched, smirking. 'Nicosar's taking it impersonally,' he said, getting up and padding to the
window. He stepped out on to the balcony. Flere-Imsaho tutted and threw a robe around him.
'If you're going to start talking in riddles again& '
'What riddles?' Gurgeh drank in the mild air. He flexed his arms and shoulders again. 'Isn't this a fine
old castle, drone?' he said, leaning on the stone rail and taking another deep breath. 'They know how to
build castles, don't they?'
'I suppose they do, but Klaff wasn't built by the Empire. They took it off another humanoid species who
used to hold a ceremony similar to the one the Empire holds to crown the Emperor. But don't change the
subject. I asked you a question. Whatis that style? You've been very vague and strange the past few
days; I could see you were concentrating so I didn't press the point, but I and the ship would like to be
told.'
'Nicosar's taken on the part of the Empire; hence his style. I've had no choice but to become the
Culture, hence mine. It's that simple.'
'It doesn't look it.'
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
'Tough. Think of it as a sort of mutual rape.'
'I think you should straighten out, Jernau Gurgeh.'
'I'm-' Gurgeh started to say, then stopped to check. He frowned in exasperation. 'I'm perfectly straight,
you idiot! Now why don't you do something useful and order me some breakfast?'
'Yes, master,' Flere-Imsaho said sullenly, and dipped back inside the room. Gurgeh looked up into the
empty board of blue sky, his mind already racing with plans for the game on the Board of Becoming.
Flere-Imsaho watched the man grow even more intense and absorbed in the days between the second
and final games. He hardly seemed to hear anything that was said to him; he had to be reminded to eat
and sleep. The drone wouldn't have believed it, but twice it saw the man sitting with an expression of
pain on his face, staring at nothing. Doing a remote ultrasound scan, the drone had discovered the man's
bladder was full to bursting; he had to be told when to pee! He spent all day, every day, gazing intently
at nothing, or feverishly studying replays of old games. And though he might have been briefly undrugged
after his long sleep, immediately thereafter he started glanding again, and didn't stop. The drone used its
Effector to monitor the man's brainwaves and found that even when he appeared to sleep, it wasn't really
sleep; controlled lucid dreaming was what it seemed to be. His drug-glands were obviously working
furiously all the time, and for the first time there were more tell-tale signs of intense drug-use on Gurgeh's
body than there were on his opponent's.
How could he play in such a state? Had it been up to Flere-Imsaho, it would have stopped the man
playing there and then. But it had its orders. It had a part to play, and it had played it, and all it could do
now was wait and see what happened.
More people attended the start of the game on the Board of Becoming than had attended the previous
two; the other game-players were still trying to work out what was going on in this strange, complicated,
unfathomable game, and wanted to see what would happen on this final board, where the Emperor
started with a considerable advantage, but on which the alien was known to be especially good.
Gurgeh dived back into the game, an amphibian into welcoming water. For a few moves he just gloried
in the feeling of returning home to his element and the sheer joy of the contest, taking delight in a flexing of
his strengths and powers, the readying tension of the pieces and places; then he curved out from that
playing to the serious business of the building and the hunting, the making and linking and the destroying
and cutting; the searching and destroying.
The board became both Culture and Empire again. The setting was made by them both; a glorious,
beautiful, deadly killing field, unsurpassably fine and sweet and predatory and carved from Nicosar's
beliefs and his together. Image of their minds; a hologram of pure coherence, burning like a standing
wave of fire across the board, a perfect map of the landscapes of thought and faith within their heads.
He began the slow move that was defeat and victory together before he even knew it himself. Nothing
so subtle, so complex, so beautiful had ever been seen on an Azad board. He believed that; he knew
that. He would make it the truth.
The game went on.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Breaks, days, evenings, conversations, meals; they came and went in another dimension; a monochrome
thing, a flat, grainy image. Hewas somewhere else entirely. Another dimension, another image. His skull
was a blister with a board inside it, his outside self just another piece to be shuffled here and there.
He didn't talk to Nicosar, but they conversed, they carried out the most exquisitely textured exchange of
mood and feeling through those pieces which they moved and were moved by; a song, a dance, a perfect
poem. People filled the game-room every day now, engrossed in the fabulously perplexing work taking
shape before them; trying to read that poem, see deeper into this moving picture, listen to this symphony,
touch this living sculpture, and so understand it.
It goes on until it ends, Gurgeh thought to himself one day, and at the same time as the banality of the
thought struck him, he saw that it was over. The climax had been reached. It was done, destroyed,
could be no more. It was not finished, but it was over. A terrible sadness swamped him, took hold of
him like a piece and made him sway and nearly fall, so that he had to walk to his stoolseat and pull
himself on to it like an old man.
'Oh& ' he heard himself say.
He looked at Nicosar, but the Emperor hadn't seen it yet. He was looking at element-cards, trying to
work out a way to alter the terrain ahead of his next advance.
Gurgeh couldn't believe it. The game was over; couldn'tanybody see that? He looked despairingly
around the faces of the officials, the spectators, the observers and Adjudicators. What was wrong with
them all? He looked back at the board, hoping desperately that he might have missed something, made
some mistake that meant there was still something Nicosar could do, that the perfect dance might last a
little longer. He could see nothing; it was done. He looked at the time shown on the point-board. It was
nearly time to break for the day. It was a dark evening outside. He tried to remember what day it
was. The fire was due very soon, wasn't it? Perhaps tonight, or tomorrow. Perhaps it had already
been? No; even he would have noticed. The great high windows of the prow-hall were still unshuttered,
looking out into the darkness where the huge cinderbuds waited, heavy with fruit.
Over over over. His - their - beautiful game over; dead. What had he done? He put his clenched
hands over his mouth.Nicosar, you fool! The Emperor had fallen for it, taken the bait, entered the run
and followed it to be torn apart near the high stand, storms of splinters before the fire.
Empires had fallen to barbarians before, and no doubt would again. Gurgeh knew all this from his
childhood. Culture children were taught such things. The barbarians invade, and are taken over. Not
always; some empires dissolve and cease, but many absorb; many take the barbarians in and end up
conquering them. They make them live like the people they set out to take over. The architecture of the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]