The Game-Players of Titan (4 page)

“I’ll stake you,” Pete said, suddenly, on impulse.

“You can’t afford to. I’m expensive, because I don’t start winning right away. It takes time for my skill-factor to overcome any chance runs … such as the celebrated one by which Luckman wiped me out.”

From the front of the store came the sounds of the superb tenor Gigli singing; Schilling paused a moment to listen. Across from the table his huge, dingy parrot Eeore shifted about in its cage, annoyed by the sharp, pure voice. Schilling gave the parrot a reproving glance.

“Thy Tiny Hand is Frozen;”
Schilling said. “The first of the two recordings Gigli made of that, and by far the better. Ever heard the latter of the two? From the complete opera and so bad as to be unbelievable. Wait.” He silenced himself, listening. “A superb record,” he said to Pete. “You should have it in your collection.”

“I don’t care for Gigli,” Pete said. “He sobs.”

“A convention,” Schilling said irritably. “He was an Italian; it’s traditional.”

“Schipa didn’t.”

“Schipa was self-taught,” Schilling said.

The tall, skinny youth had approached, carrying the
Gigli record. “I’d Mike to buy this, Mr. Schilling. H-how much?”

“One hundred and twenty-five dollars,” Schilling said. “Wow,” the youth said, dismally. But nevertheless he got out his wallet.

“Very few of these survived the war with the vugs,” Schilling explained, as he took the record and began wrapping it in heavy cardboard.

Two more customers entered the shop then, a man and woman, both of them short, squat. Schilling greeted them. “Good morning, Les. Es.” To Pete he said, “This is Mr. and Mrs. Sibley; like yourself vocal addicts. From Portland, Oregon.” He indicated Pete. “Bindman Peter Garden.”

Pete rose and shook hands with Les Sibley.

“Hi, Mr. Garden,” Les Sibley said, in the deferential tone used by a non-B with a B. “Where do you bind, sir?”

“Berkeley,” Pete said, and then remembered. “Formerly Berkeley, now Marin County, California.”

“How do you doo,” Es Sibley said, in an ultra-fawning manner which Pete found—and always had found—objectionable. She held out her hand and when he shook it he found it soft and damp. “I’ll bet you have a really fine collection; I mean, ours isn’t anything. Just a few Supervia records.”

“Supervia!” Pete said, interested. “What do you have?”

Joe Schilling said, “You can’t eliminate, Pete. It’s an unwritten agreement that my customers do not trade among themselves. If they do, I stop selling to them. Anyhow, you have all the Supervia records that Les and Es have, and a couple more besides.” He rang up the hundred and twenty-five dollars from the Gigli sale, and the tall, skinny youth departed.

“What do you consider the finest vocal recording ever made?” Es Sibley asked Pete. “Aksel Schitz singing
Every Valley,”
Pete said. “Amen to that,” Les said, nodding in agreement.
After the Sibleys had left, Pete paid for his Schipa record, had Joe Schilling wrap it extra-carefully, and then he took a deep breath and plunged into the issue at hand. “Joe, can you win Berkeley back for me?” If Joe Schilling said yes it was good enough for him.

After a pause, Joe Schilling said, “Possibly. If anybody can, I can. There is a ruling—little applied—that two persons of the same sex can play as Bluff partners. We could see if Luckman would accept that; we might have to put it to the vug Commissioner in your area for a ruling.”

“That would be a vug which calls itself U.S. Cummings,” Pete said. He had had a number of squabbles with that particular vug; he had found the creature to be particularly trying, in a nit-picking manner.

“The alternative,” Joe Schilling said thoughtfully, “would of course be to temporarily deed title to some of your remaining areas to me, but as I said before—”

“Aren’t you out of practice?” Pete said. “It’s been years since you played The Game.”

“Possibly,” Schilling conceded. “We’d soon find out, I hope, in time. I think—” He glanced toward the front of the store; another auto-auto had parked outside and a customer was entering.

It was a lovely red-headed girl, and both Pete and Joe temporarily forgot their conversation. The girl, evidently at a loss in the chaotic, littered store, wandered about aimlessly from stack to stack.

“I better go help her,” Joe Schilling said.

“Do you know her?” Pete asked.

“Never saw her before.” Pausing, Joe Schilling straightened his wrinkled, old-fashioned necktie, smoothed his vest. “Miss,” he said, walking toward the girl and smiling, “can I assist you?”

“Perhaps,” the red-headed girl said in a soft, shy voice. She seemed self-conscious; glancing about her, not meeting
Schilling’s intent gaze, she murmured, “Do you have any records by Nats Katz?”

“Good grief no,” Schilling said. He turned around and said to Pete, “My day’s ruined. A pretty girl comes in and asks for a Nats Katz record.” In chagrin, he walked back to Pete.

“Who’s Nats Katz?” Pete asked.

The girl, roused by amazement from her shyness, said, “You’ve never heard of Nats Katz?” Clearly, she could not believe it. “Why he’s on TV every night; he’s the greatest recording star of all time!”

Pete said, “Mr. Schilling here does not sell pops. Mr. Schilling sells only ancient classics.” He smiled at the girl. It was hard, with the Hynes Gland operation, to assess a person’s age, but it seemed to him that the red-headed girl was quite young, perhaps no more than nineteen. “You should excuse Mr. Schilling’s reaction,” Pete said to her. “He’s an old man and set in his habits.”

Schilling grated, “Come on, now. I just don’t like popular ballad-belters.”

“Everybody’s
heard of Nats,” the girl said, still indignant. “Even my mother and father, and they’re distinctly fnool. Nats’ last record,
Walkin’ the Dog
, has sold over five thousand copies. You’re both really strange people. You’re real fnools, for real.” Now she became shy again. “I guess I better go. So long.” She started toward the door of the shop.

“Wait,” Schilling said in an odd tone, starting after her. “Don’t I know you? Haven’t I seen a news-wire picture of you?”

“Maybe,” the girl said.

Schilling said, “You’re Mary Anne McClain.” He turned to Pete. “This is the third child of the woman you met today. It’s synchronicity, her coming in here; you recall Jung’s and Wolfgang Pauli’s theory of the acausal connective principle.” To the girl, Schilling said, “This man is Bindman for your area, Mary Anne. Meet Peter Garden.”

“Hi,” the girl said, unimpressed. “Well, I have to go.”
She disappeared out the door of the shop and got back into her car; Pete and Joe Schilling stood watching until the car took off and was gone.

“How old do you think she is?” Pete said.

“I know how old she is; I remember reading it. She’s eighteen. One of twenty-nine students at San Francisco State College, majoring in history. Mary Anne was the first child born in San Francisco in the past hundred years.” His tone, now, was somber. “God help the world,” he said, “if anything happens to her, any kind of an accident or illness.”

Both of them were silent.

“She reminds me a little of her mother,” Pete said.

Joe Schilling said, “She’s stunningly attractive.” He eyed Pete. “I suppose now you’ve changed your mind; you want to stake her instead of me.”

“She’s probably never had an opportunity to play The Game.”

“Meaning?”

“She wouldn’t make a good Bluff partner.”

“Right,” Joe said. “Not nearly as good as me. And don’t forget that. What’s your marital status, right now?”

“When I lost Berkeley, Freya and I split up. She’s now Mrs. Gaines. I’m looking for a wife.”

“But you’ve got to have one who can play,” Joe Schilling said. “A Bindman wife. Or you’ll lose Marin County just like you lost Berkeley and then what’ll you do? The world can’t use two rare-record shops.”

Pete said, “I’ve thought over and over again for years what I’d do if I were wiped out at the table. I’d become a farmer.”

Guffawing, Joe said, “Indeed. Now you say, ‘I was never so serious in all my life.’” Pete said, “I was never so serious in all my life.” “Where?”

“In the Sacramento Valley. I’d raise grapes for wine. I’ve already looked into it.” He had, in fact, discussed it with the
vug Commissioner, U.S. Cummings; the vug authority would undoubtedly support him with farm equipment and cuttings. It was the type of project which they approved of in principle.

“By god,” Schilling said, “I think you do mean it.”

“I’d charge you extra,” Pete said, “because you’re so rich from gouging record buyers all these years.”

“Ich bin ein armer Mensch,”
Schilling protested. “I’m poor.”

“Well, possibly we could trade. Wine for rare records.”

“Seriously,” Joe Schilling said, “if Luckman enters your group and you have to play against him, I’ll come into The Game as your partner.” He slapped Pete on the shoulder, encouragingly. “So don’t worry. Between the two of us we can take him. Of course, I’d expect you not to drink while you’re playing.” He eyed Pete keenly. “I heard about that; you were bagged when you put up Berkeley and lost it. You could hardly reel out of the conapt to your car when it was over.”

With dignity, Pete stated, “I drank
after
I lost. For consolation.”

“However it may have been, my ukase still stands. No drinking on your part, if we become partners; you have to swear off, and that includes any pills. I don’t want your wits dulled by tranquilizers, especially the phenothiazine class … I particularly distrust them, and I know you take them regularly.”

Pete said nothing; it was so. He shrugged, wandered about the store, poking at a stack of records here and there. He felt discouraged.

“And I’ll practice,” Joe Schilling said. “I’ll train, sincerely put myself in top shape.” He poured himself a fresh cup of oolong tea.

“Maybe I’m going to wind up a lush,” Pete said. And, with a possible life-span of two hundred and some years … it could be pretty dreadful.

“I don’t think so,” Joe Schilling said. “You’re too morose
to become an alcoholic. I’m more afraid of—” He hesitated.

“Go ahead and say it,” Pete said.

“Suicide.”

Pete slid an ancient HMV record from a stack and examined the label. He did not look directly at Schilling; he avoided meeting the man’s wise, blunt gaze.

“Would you be better off back with Freya?” Schilling inquired.

“Naw.” Pete gestured. “I can’t explain it, because on a rational basis we made a good pair. But something intangible didn’t work. In my opinion, that’s why she and I lost at the table; somehow we never could really pull together as a couple.” He recalled his wife before Freya, Janice Marks, now Janice Remington. They had cooperated successfully; at least it had seemed so to him. But of course they had not had any
luck.

As a matter of fact, Pete Garden had never had any
luck;
in all the world he had no progeny. The goddam Red Chinese, he said to himself … he wrote it off with the customary envenomed phrase. And yet—

“Schilling,” he said, “do you have any issue?”

“Yes,” Schilling said. “I thought everyone knew. A boy, eleven years old, in Florida. His mother was my—” He counted for a time. “My sixteenth wife. I only had two more wives before Luckman wiped me out.”

“How much issue has Luckman exactly? I’ve heard it placed at nine or ten.”

“About eleven, by now.”

“Christ!” Pete said.

“We should face the fact,” Joe Schilling said, “that Luckman, in many ways,
is the finest, most valuable human being alive today.
The most direct issue, the greatest success in Bluff; his amelioration of the status of the non-Bs in his area.”

“All right,” Pete said irritably. “Let’s drop it.” “And,” Schilling continued, unperturbed, “the vugs like
him.” He added, “As a matter of fact virtually everyone likes him. You’ve never met him, have you?” “No.”

“You’ll see what I mean,” Joe Schilling said, “when he gets out to the West Coast and joins Pretty Blue Fox.”

To the pre-cog Dave Mutreaux, Luckman said expansively, “I’m glad to see you got here.” It pleased him because it demonstrated the reality of the man’s talent. It was, so to speak, a
de facto
case for using Mutreaux.

The lanky, well-dressed, middle-aged Psi-man—he was in fact a minor Bindman in his own right, possessing the title to a meager county in Western Kansas—seated himself sprawlingly in the deep chair facing Luckman’s desk and drawled, “We’ve got to be careful, Mr. Luckman. Extremely careful. I’ve been severely limiting myself, trying to keep my talent out of sight. I can preview what you want me to do; fact is, I previewed it coming over here by auto-auto. Frankly I’m surprised that a man of your
luck
and stature would want to employ me.” A slow, insulting grin crossed the pre-cog’s features.

Luckman said, “I’m afraid when the players out on the Coast see me sitting in they won’t want to play. They’ll band together against me and conspire to keep their really valuable deeds in their safety deposit boxes instead of putting them out on the table. You see, David, they may not know it’s me who obtained the Berkeley deed, because I—”

“They know,” Mutreaux said, still grinning lazily.

“Oh.”

“The rumor’s already going around—I heard it on that crooner’s TV show, that Nats Katz. It’s big news, Luckman, that you’ve managed to buy into the West Coast. Real big news. ‘Watch Lucky Luckman’s smoke,’ Nats said; I recall his words.”

“Hmm,” Luckman said, disconcerted.

“I’ll tell you something else,” the pre-cog said. He crossed
his long legs, slouched down in the chair, his arms folded. “I can preview a spread of possible
this-evenings
, some of them with me out there in Carmel, California, sitting in at The Game with the Pretty Blue Fox folks, and some with you.” He chuckled. “And in a couple of the possible
this-evenings
, those folks are sending out for an EEG machine. Don’t ask me why. They don’t normally keep one handy, so it must be a hunch.”

“Bad luck,” Luckman said, grumblingly.

“If I go there and they give me an EEG,” Mutreaux said, “and find out I’m Psionic, you know what that means? I lose all the deeds I hold. See what I’m getting at, Luckman? Are you prepared to reimburse me, if that occurs?”