The Game-Players of Titan (14 page)

“Oh,” Mary Anne said, nodding. “Mistake noted.”

Pete said, “Is your mother part of this? Is that why she didn’t want the police to scan her?”

“Yep,” Mary Anne said.

“How many are in it?”

“Oh, thousands,” Mary Anne—or rather the vug—said. Despite what he saw he knew it to be a vug. “Just thousands and thousands. All over the planet.”

“But not everyone’s in on it,” Pete said. “Because you still have to hide from the authorities. I think I will tell Hawthorne.”

Mary Anne laughed.

Reaching into the glove compartment, Pete fumbled about.

“Mary Anne removed the gun,” the car informed him. “She was afraid if the police stopped you and they found it they’d put you back in jail.”

“That’s right,” Mary Anne said.

“You people killed Luckman. Why?”

She shrugged. “I forget. Sorry.”

“Who’s next?”

“The thing.”

“What thing?”

Mary Anne, her eyes sparkling, said, “The thing growing inside Carol. Bad luck, Mr. Garden; it’s not a baby.”

He shut his eyes.

The next he knew, they were over the Bay Area.

“Almost home,” Mary Anne said.

“And you’re just going to let me off?” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” He was sick, then, in the corner of the car, like an animal would be. Mary Anne said nothing after that and he said nothing either. What a terrible night this had been, he thought to himself. It should have been wonderful; my first
luck.
And instead—

And now he could not reasonably dwell on the theme of suicide, because the situation had become worse, was too bad for that to be a solution. My own problems are problems of perception, he realized. Of understanding and then accepting. What I have to remember is
that they’re not all in it.
The detective E.B. Black isn’t in it and Doctor Philipson; he or it isn’t in it either. I can get help from something, somewhere, sometime.

“Right you are,” Mary Anne said.

“Are you a telepath?” he said to her.

“I very much certainly darn right am.”

“But,” he said, “your mother said you weren’t.”

“My mother lied to you.”

Pete said, “Is Nats Katz the center of all this?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I thought so,” he said, and lay back against the seat, trying not to be sick again.

Mary Anne said, “Here we are.” The car dipped down, skimmed above the deserted pavement of a San Rafael street. “Give me a kiss,” she said, “before you get out.” She brought the car to a halt at the curb and looking up he saw his apartment building. The light was on in his window; Carol was still up, waiting for him, or else she had fallen asleep with the lights on.

“A kiss,” he echoed. “Really?”

“Yes really,” Mary Anne said, and leaned expectantly toward him.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, “of what you are, the thing that you are.”

“Oh how absurd,” Mary Anne said. “What’s the matter with you, Pete? You’re lost in dreams!”

“I am?”

“Yes,” she said, glaring at him in exasperation. “You took dope tonight and got drunk and you were terribly excited about Carol and also you were afraid because of the police. You’ve been hallucinating like mad for the last two hours. You thought that psychiatrist, Doctor Philipson, was a vug, and then you thought I was a vug.” To the car, Mary Anne said, “Am I a vug?”

“No, Mary Anne,” the Rushmore circuit of the car answered, for the second time.

“See?” she said.

“I still can’t do it,” he said. “Just let me out of the car.” He found the door handle, opened the door, stepped out on the curb, his legs shaking under him.

“Good night,” Mary Anne said, eyeing him.

“Good night.” He started toward the door of the apartment building.

The car said, after him, “You got me all dirty.”

“Too bad,” Pete said. He opened the apartment building door with his key and passed on inside; the door shut after him.

When he got upstairs he found Carol standing in the hall in a short, sheer yellow nightgown. “I heard the car drive up,” she said. “Thank god you’re back! I was so worried about you.” She folded her arms, self-consciously blushing. “I should be in my robe, I know.”

“Thanks for waiting up.” He passed on by her, went into the bathroom and washed his face and hands with cold water.

“Can I fix you something to eat or drink? It’s so late now.”

“Coffee,” he said, “would be fine.”

In the kitchen she fixed a pot of coffee for both of them.

“Do me a favor,” Pete said. “Call Pocatello information, the vidphone autocorp, and find out if there’s a Doctor E.R. Philipson listed.”

“All right.” Carol clicked on the vidphone. She talked for a time with a sequence of homeostatic circuits and then she rang off. “Yes.”

“I was seeing him,” Pete said. “It cost me one hundred and fifty dollars. Their rates are high. Could you tell from what the vidphone said if Philipson is a Terran?”

“They didn’t say. I got his number.” She pushed the pad toward him.

“I’ll call him and ask.” He clicked the vidphone back on.

“At five-thirty
in the morning?”

“Yes,” he said, dialing. A long time passed; the phone, at the other end, rang and rang. “‘Walkin’ the dog, see-bawh, see-bawh,’” Pete sang. “‘He have-um red whisker, he have-um green paw.’ Doctors expect this,” he said to Carol. There was a sharp click, then, and on the vidscreen a face, a wrinkled human face, formed. “Doctor Philipson?” Pete asked.

“Yes.” The doctor shook his head blearily, then scrutinized Pete. “Oh, it’s you.”

“You remember me?” Pete said.

“Of course I do. You’re the man Joe Schilling sent to me; I saw you for an hour earlier tonight.”

Joe Schilling, Pete said to himself. I didn’t know that. “You’re not a vug, are you?” Pete said to Doctor Philipson.

“Is that what you called me up to ask?”

“Yes,” Pete said. “It’s very important.”

“I am not a vug,” Doctor Philipson said, and hung up.

Pete shut off the vidphone. “I think I’ll go to bed,” he said to Carol. “I’m worn out. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said. “A little tired.”

“Let’s go to bed together,” he said to her.

Carol smiled. “All right. I’m certainly glad to have you back; do you always do things like this, go out on binges until five-thirty
A.M.?”

“No,” he said. And I’ll never do it again, he thought.

As he sat on the edge of the bed removing his clothes he found something, a match folder stuffed into his left shoe, beneath his instep. He set the shoe down, held the match folder under the lamp by the bed and examined it. Carol, beside him, had already gotten into bed and apparently had gone directly to sleep.

On the match folder, in his own hand, penciled words:

WE ARE ENTIRELY SURROUNDED
BY BUGS RUGS VUGS

That was my discovery tonight, he remembered. My bright, crowning achievement, and I was afraid I’d somehow forget it. I wonder when I wrote that? In the bar? On the way home? Probably when I first figured it out, when I was talking to Doctor Philipson.

“Carol,” he said, “I know who killed Luckman.”

“Who?” she said, still awake.

“We all did,” Pete said. “All six of us who’ve lost our memories. Janice Remington, Silvanus Angst and his wife, Clem Gaines, Bill Calumine’s wife and myself; we did it acting under the influence of the vugs.” He held out the match folder to her. “Read what I wrote, here. In case I didn’t remember; in case they tampered with my mind again.”

Sitting up, she took the match folder and studied it. “‘We are entirely surrounded by vugs.’ Excuse me—but I have to laugh.”

He glared at her grimly.

“That’s why you placed that call to the doctor in Idaho and asked him what you did; now I understand. But he isn’t a vug; you saw him yourself on the screen and heard him.”

“Yeah, that’s so,” he admitted.

“Who else is a vug? Or, as you started to write it—”

“Mary Anne McClain. She’s the worst of them all.

“Oh,” Carol said, nodding. “I see, Pete. That’s who you were with, tonight. I wondered. I knew it was someone. Some woman.”

Pete clicked on the vidphone by the bed. “I’m going to call Hawthorne and Black, those two cops. They’re not in on it.” As he dialed he said to Carol, “No wonder Pat McClain didn’t want to be scanned by the police.”

“Pete, don’t do it tonight.” She reached out and cut the circuit off.

“But they may get me tonight. Any time.””

Tomorrow.” Carol smiled at him coaxingly. “Please.”

“Can I call Joe Schilling, then?”

“If you want. I just don’t think you should talk to the police right now, the way you’re feeling. You’re in so much trouble with them already.”

He dialed information, got Joe Schilling’s new number in Marin County.

Presently Schilling’s hairy, ruddy face formed on the screen, fully alert. “Yes? What is it? Pete—listen, Carol called and told me the good news, about your
luck.
My god, that’s terrific!”

Pete said, “Did you send me to a Doctor Philipson in Pocatello?”

“Who?”

Pete repeated the name. Joe Schilling’s face screwed up in bafflement. “Okay,” Pete said. “Sorry I woke you. I didn’t think you did.”

“Wait a minute,” Schilling said. “Listen, about two years ago when you were at my shop in New Mexico we had a conversation—what was it about? It was something about the side effects of a methamphetamine hydrochloride. You were taking them then, and I warned you against them; there was an article in
Scientific American
by a psychiatrist in
Idaho; I think it was this Philipson you mentioned, and he said that the methamphetamines can precipitate a psychotic episode.”

“I have a dim memory,” Pete said.

“Your theory, your answer to the article, was that you were
also
taking a trifluoperazine, a dihydrochloride of some sort which you swore compensated for the side effects of the methamphetamines.”

Pete said, “I took a whole bunch of methamphetamine tablets, tonight. 7.5-milligram ones, too.”

“And you also drank?”

“Yes.”

“Oy
gewalt.
You remember what Philipson said in his article about a mixture of the methamphetamines and alcohol.”

“Vaguely.”

“They potentiate each other. Did you have a psychotic episode, tonight?”

“Not by a long shot. I had a moment of absolute truth. Here, I’ll read it to you.” To Carol, Pete said, “Hand me back that match folder.” She passed it to him and he read from it. “That was my revelation, Joe. My experience. There are vugs all around us.’”

Schilling was silent a moment and then he said, “About this Doctor Philipson in Idaho. Did you go to him? Is that why you ask?”

“I paid one hundred and fifty dollars to him tonight,” Pete said. “And in my opinion I got my money’s worth.”

After a pause, Schilling said, “I’m going to suggest something to you that’ll surprise you. Call that detective, Hawthorne.”

“That’s what I wanted to do,” Pete said. “But Carol won’t let me.”

“I want to talk to Carol,” Joe Schilling said.

Rising to a sitting position in the bed, Carol faced the vidscreen. “I’m right here, Joe. If you think Pete should call Hawthorne—”

“Carol, I’ve known your husband for years. He has suicidal depressions. Regularly. To be blunt, dear, he’s a manic-depressive; he has an affective psychosis, periodically. Tonight, because of the news about the baby, he’s gone into a manic phase and I for one don’t blame him. I know how it feels; it’s like being reborn. I want him to call Hawthorne for a very good reason. Hawthorne has had more to do with vugs than anyone else we know. There’s no use my talking to Pete; I don’t know a darn thing about vugs; maybe they’re all around us, for all I know. I’m not going to try to argue Pete out of it, especially at five-thirty in the morning. I suggest you follow the same course.”

“All right,” Carol said.

“Pete,” Joe Schilling said. “Remember this, when you talk to Hawthorne. Anything you say may turn up later on in the prosecutor’s case against you; Hawthorne is not a friend, pure and simple. So go cautiously. Right?”

“Yes,” Pete agreed. “But tell me what you think; was it the mixture of methamphetamines and alcohol?”

Joe Schilling said, sidestepping the question, “Tell me something. What did Doctor Philipson say?”

“He said a lot of things. He said, for one, that he thought this situation was going to kill me as it had Luckman. And for me to take special care of Carol. And he said—” He paused. “There’s little I can do to change matters.”

“Did he seem friendly?”

“Yes,” Pete said. “Even though he’s a vug.” He broke the connection, then, waited a moment and then dialed the police emergency number. One of the friendly ones, he said to himself. One who’s on our side, maybe.

It took the police switchboard twenty minutes to locate Hawthorne. During that time Pete drank coffee and felt more and more sober.

“Hawthorne?” he said at last, when the image formed. “Sorry to bother you so late at night. I can tell you who killed Luckman.”

Hawthorne said, “Mr. Garden, we know who killed Luckman. We’ve got a confession. That’s where I’ve been, at Carmel headquarters.” He looked drawn and weary.

“Who?” Pete demanded. “Which one of the group?”

“It was nobody in Pretty Blue Fox. We moved our investigations back to the East Coast, where Luckman started out. The confession is by a top employee of Luckman’s, a man named Sid Mosk. As yet we haven’t been able to establish the motive. We’re working on that.”

Pete clicked off the vidphone and sat in silence.

What now? he asked himself. What do I do?

“Come to bed,” Carol said, lying back down and covering herself up with the blankets.

Shutting off the lamp, Pete Garden went to bed.

It was a mistake.

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.