The Game-Players of Titan (12 page)

Pete said, “We can go to the Blind Lemon in Berkeley. It’s almost two centuries old. Or should I stay out of Berkeley?” he asked Sharp.

“No reason to avoid it,” Sharp said. “You’re not going to run into Dotty Luckman at a bar; that’s certain. You don’t have a bad conscience about Berkeley, do you?”

“No,” Pete said.

“I have to go home,” Pat McClain said. “Goodbye.” She rose to her feet.

Accompanying her to her car, Pete said, “Thanks for coming.”

On the dark San Francisco sidewalk she stood by her car, stubbing her cigarette out with the toe of her slipper. “Pete,”
she said, “even if you did kill Luckman or helped kill him, I—still want to know you better. We were just beginning to become acquainted, this afternoon. I like you a lot.” She smiled at him. “What a mess this all is. You crazy Game-players; taking it so seriously. Willing, at least some of you, to kill a human being because of it. Maybe I am glad I had to leave it; maybe I’m better off.” She stood on tiptoe, kissed him. “I’ll see you. I’ll vidphone you when I can.”

He watched her car shoot rapidly into the night sky, its signal lights winking red, on and off.

What’s she mixed up in? he asked himself as he walked back into the restaurant. She’ll never tell me. Perhaps I can find out through her children. For some reason it seemed important for him to know.

“You don’t trust her,” Joe Schilling said to him, as he sat down once more at the table. “That’s too bad. I think she’s fundamentally an honest person, but god knows what she’s got herself involved in. You’re probably right to be suspicious.”

“I’m not suspicious,” Pete said. “I’m just concerned.”

Sharp said, “Psi-people are different from us. You can’t put your finger on exactly what it is—I mean, in addition to their talent. That girl …” He shook his head. “I was sure she was lying. How long has she been your mistress, Garden, did you say?”

“She’s not,” Pete said. At least he didn’t think so. A shame to forget something like that, not to be certain in that aspect of one’s life.

“I don’t know whether to wish you luck or not,” Laird Sharp said, thoughtfully.

“Wish me luck,” Pete said. “I can always use it in that area.”

“So to speak,” Schilling said, and smiled.

When he got home to his apartment in San Rafael, Pete Garden found Carol standing at the window, gazing sightlessly out. She barely greeted him; her voice was distant and muted.

“Sharp got me out on bail,” Pete said. “They’ve got me charged with—”

“I know.” Her arms folded, Carol nodded. “They were here. The two detectives, Hawthorne and Black. Mutt and Jeff, only I can’t figure out which is the easy-going one and which is supposed to be tough. They both seem tough.”

“What were they doing here?” he demanded.

“Searching the apartment. They had a warrant. Haw-thorne told me about Pat.”

After a pause, Pete said, “That’s a shame.”

“No, I think it’s very good. Now we know exactly where we stand, you and I, in relationship to each other. You don’t need me in The Game; Joe Schilling does that. And you don’t need me here, either. I’m going back to my own group. I’ve decided.” She pointed toward the bedroom of the apartment and he saw, on the bed, two suitcases. “Maybe you can help carry them downstairs to the car,” Carol said.

“I wish you’d stay,” he said.

“To be jeered at?”

“Nobody’s jeering at you.”

“Of course they are. Everybody in Pretty Blue Fox is, or will be. And it’ll be in the papers.”

“Maybe so,” he said. He hadn’t thought of that.

“If I hadn’t found Luckman’s body,” Carol said, “I wouldn’t know about Pat. And if I didn’t know about Pat I would have tried—and possibly succeeded—in being a good wife of yours. So you can blame whoever killed Luckman for destroying our marriage.”

“Maybe that’s why they did it,” he said. “Killed Luckman.”

“I doubt it. Our marriage is hardly that important. How many wives have you had, in all?”

“Eighteen.”

Carol nodded. “I’ve had fifteen husbands. That’s thirty-three combinations of male and female. And no
luck
, as they say, from any of them.”

“When did you last bite into a piece of rabbit-paper?”

Carol smiled thinly. “Oh, I do all the time. It wouldn’t show up from us, yet. It’s too early.”

“Not with the new West German kind,” Pete said. “I read about it. It records even an impregnation only an hour old.”

“Good grief,” Carol said. “Well, I don’t have any of the new kind; I didn’t even know it existed.”

“I know an all-night drugstore,” Pete said, “in Berkeley. Let’s fly over there and pick up a packet of the new rabbit-paper.”

“Why?”

“There’s always the chance, the possibility. And if we had
luck
, you wouldn’t want to dissolve our relationship.”

“All right,” Carol said. “You take my two suitcases down to the car and we’ll fly over to the all-night drugstore. And if I am pregnant, I’ll come back here with you. And if I’m not, then goodbye.”

“Okay,” he said. There wasn’t much else he could say; he couldn’t force her to remain.

“Do you want me to stay?” Carol asked, as he carried the two heavy suitcases downstairs to her car.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

He didn’t know why. “Well—” he began.

“Forget it,” Carol said, and got into her car. “You follow me in yours. I don’t feel like riding with you, Pete.”

Presently he was in the air over San Rafael, riding on the beam created by her tail lights. He felt melancholy. Damn those cops, he thought. Anything to split the members of the group apart, so they can be picked off one at a time. But it wasn’t the two police that he blamed; it was himself. If she hadn’t found out this way she would have run onto it by another.

I let my life become overly complex, he decided. Too much for me to keep straight and handle. Carol has certainly received a bad handful of cards since she came to Pretty Blue Fox. First Luckman arrives; then I bring Schilling in to take
her place at the Game table; then Luckman’s body turns up in her car; now this. No wonder she wants to leave.

Why should she stay? he asked himself. Give me one good reason.

He couldn’t.

They flew over the Bay and soon they were gliding down to land at the deserted parking lot of the drugstore. Carol, slightly ahead of him, stood waiting as he got out of his car and walked over to her.

“It’s a nice night,” she said. “So you used to live here. What a shame you lost it. Just think, Pete; if you hadn’t lost it I’d never have met you.”

“Yeah,” he said, as they ascended the ramp and entered the drugstore. That and so much else would never have come about.

The Rushmore Effect of the drugstore greeted them; they were its only customers. “Good evening, sir and madame. How may I assist you, please?” The obedient mechanical voice issued from a hundred speakers hidden throughout the great lit-up place. The entire structure had focused its attention on the two of them.

Carol said, “Do you know anything about a new instant rabbit-paper?”

“Yes madame,” the drugstore answered eagerly. “A recent scientific breakthrough, from A.G. Chemie at Bonn. I’ll get it for you.” From an orifice at the end of the glass counter a package tumbled; it slithered to a halt directly before them and Pete picked it up. “The same price as the old.”

He paid the drugstore and then he and Carol walked back out onto the dark, deserted parking lot.

“All for us,” Carol said. “This enormous place with a thousand lights on and that Rushmore circuit clamoring away. It’s like a drugstore for the dead. A spectral drugstore.”

“Hell,” Pete said, “it’s very much for the living. The only problem is, there just aren’t enough of the living.”

“Maybe there’s one more than there was,” Carol said; she removed a strip of rabbit-paper from the pack, unwrapped it, placed it between her even, white teeth and bit. “What color does it turn?” she asked, as she examined it. “Same as the old?”

“White for non,” Pete said, “green for positive.”

In the dim light of the parking lot it was hard to tell.

Carol opened her car door; the dome light switched on and she inspected the strip of rabbit-paper by it.

The paper was green.

Carol looked up at him and said, “I’m pregnant. We’ve had
luck.”
Her voice was bleak; her eyes filled with tears and she looked away. “I’ll be goddamned,” she said brokenly. “The first time I’ve ever been in all my whole life. And with a man who’s already—” She was silent, breathing with difficulty and staring fixedly past him into the night darkness.

“This calls for a celebration!” he said.

“It does?” She turned to face him.

“We got to go on the radio and broadcast it to the whole world!”

“Oh,” Carol said, nodding. “Yes, that’s right; that’s the custom. Won’t everyone be jealous of us? My!”

Crawling into her car, Pete snapped on the transmitter of the radio to the emergency all-wave broadcast position. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “You know what? This is Pete Garden of Pretty Blue Fox at Carmel, California. Carol Holt Garden and I have only been married a day or so, and tonight we made use of the new type of West German rabbit-paper—”

“I wish I were dead,” Carol said.

“You what?” He stared at her in disbelief. “You’re nuts! This is the most important event of our lives! We’ve added to the population. This makes up for Luckman’s death, it balances it out. Right?” He caught hold of her hand and compressed it until she moaned. “Say something into the mike, Mrs. Garden.”

Carol said, “I wish all of you the same
luck
I’ve had tonight.”

“You’re goddam right!” Pete shouted into the microphone. “Every single one of you listening to me!”

“So now we stay together,” Carol said softly.

“Yes,” Pete agreed. “That’s right; that’s what we decided.”

“And what about Patricia McClain?”

“The hell with everybody else in the world except you,” Pete said. “Except you and me and the baby.”

Carol smiled a little. “Okay. Let’s drive back.”

“Do you think you’re able to drive? We’ll leave your car here and both go back in mine and I’ll drive.” Quickly, he carried her suitcases to his own car, then took her by the arm and led her. “Just sit down and take it easy,” he said, seating her in his car and fastening the safety belt in place.

“Pete,” she said, “do you realize what this means in terms of The Game?” She had turned pale. “Every deed in the pot belongs to us, automatically. But—there is no Game right now! There aren’t any deeds in the pot, because of the police ban. But we must get something. We’ll have to look it up in the manual.”

“Okay,” he said, only half-listening to her; he was busy carefully guiding his car up into the sky.

“Pete,” she said,
“maybe you win back Berkeley.”

“Not a chance. There was at least one Game subsequent to that, the one we played last night.”

“True.” She nodded. “We’ll have to apply to the Rules Committee in the Jay Satellite for an interpretation, I guess.”

He frankly did not care about The Game at this moment. The idea of a child, a son or daughter … it obliterated everything else in his mind, all that had happened of late, everything connected with Luckman’s arrival and death and the banning of the group.

Luck
, he thought, this late in my life. One hundred and fifty years. After so many tries; after the failure of so many, many combinations.

With Carol beside him he drove his car back across the dark Bay to San Rafael and their apartment.

When they got there, and had gone upstairs, Pete headed at once for the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” Carol asked, following after him.

Pete said, “I’m going out on a whing-ding; I’m going to get drunker than I’ve ever before been in my life.” From the medicine cabinet he got down five Snoozex tablets and, after hesitating, a handful of methamphetamine tablets. “These will help,” he explained to Carol. “Goodbye.” He swallowed the pills, gulping them down all together, and then headed for the hall door. “It’s a custom.” He paused briefly at the door. “When you learn you’re going to have a child. I’ve read about it.” He saluted her gravely and then shut the door after him.

A moment later he was downstairs, back in his car, starting out alone in the dark night, searching for the nearest bar.

As the car shot upward into the sky, Pete thought, God knows where I’m going or when I’ll get back. I certainly don’t know—and don’t care.

“Wheeoo!” he shouted exultantly, as the car climbed.

The sound of his voice echoed back to him and he shouted again.

Roused from her sleep, Freya Gaines groped for the switch of the vidphone; groggily she found it and snapped it on.

“Lo,” she mumbled, wondering what time it was. She made out the luminous dial of the clock beside the bed. Three
A.M
. Good grief.

Carol Holt Garden’s features formed on the vidscreen. “Freya, have you seen Pete?” Carol’s voice was jerky, anxiety-stricken. “He went out and he still hasn’t come back; I can’t go to sleep.”

“No,” Freya said. “Of course I don’t know where he is. Did the police let him go?”

“He’s out on bail,” Carol said. “Do—you have any idea what places he might stop at? The bars are all closed, now; I was waiting for two o’clock thinking he’d show up no later than two-thirty. But—”

“Try the Blind Lemon in Berkeley,” Freya said, and started to cut the connection. Maybe he’s dead, she thought. Threw himself off one of the bridges or crashed his car—finally.

Carol said, “He’s celebrating.”

“Good god why?” Freya said.

“I’m pregnant.”

Fully awake, Freya said, “I see. Astonishing. Right away. You must be using that new rabbit-paper they’re selling.”

“Yes,” Carol said. “I bit a piece tonight and it turned green; that’s why Pete’s out. I wish he’d come back. He’s so emotional, first he’s depressed and suicidal and then—”

“You worry about your problems. I’ll worry about mine,” Freya cut in. “Congratulations, Carol. I hope it’s a baby.” And then she did break the connection; the image faded into darkness.