Players at the Game of People

by John Brunner

  "Explain this, then!" she shouted, thrusting the plastic-clad press cutting under his nose. "Go on! Explain!"

  "Get lost, you maniac!" Godwin barked. And had to dodge, at risk of losing his footing on the worn steps, as she shot her right arm out toward him. But she was not intending to hit him, only to catch hold and make him look at what she was clutching.

  "It's your face!" she cried. "And it's impossible -- it can't be true! But -- oh, damn you, why can't you understand? It is your face!"

  All of a sudden, despite the rain smears on the clear plastic, Godwin recognized a pattern on the paper: to the left, a column of text, to the right, a series of four photographs, a headline spanning both.

  And the world seemed to come to a petrified halt.

  At long last he said, hearing his voice gravelly and rough, "Where did you get that?"

  "I've kept it all my life. Do you recognize it?"

  "You think" -- he was calming now -- "one of those photos is of me?"

  "No, of course not. It's of somebody exactly like you called Flight Lieutenant Ransome who rescued me from my parents' home when a flying bomb landed on it in 1944. But I've not only carried this with me ever since. I've carried the clearest possible memory of the face of the man who rescued me. I've been in love with it -- not with him, with it. I can scarcely bear to look at you because you wear the face I remember. But I must. I have to, because so far as I can find out you were the last person to see my daughter alive."

  She dropped her hands to her sides and stood before him, a foot lower on the steps of the house, with rain pelting down on her head, like a penitent at the shrine of some strict but not unkindly water god.

  "Alive?" Godwin said after a while.

  "They think she must either have been murdered and very well hidden, or kidnapped out of the country. There's a big demand for European girls in the Arab countries, and -- so they tell me -- the wealthy men out there are now too sophisticated to worry about whether or not they're virgins. Just so long as they're good at what becomes their job . . . But I know Dora. I know she's never been a person to obey -- me, or anybody. So I think it's far more likely that she's dead."

  There was a dead pause, during which the noise of the motorbike finally faded into silence and Godwin compared -- point for point -- these features with his recollection of the little girl he had known as Greer.

  He had not been mistaken. Barring the effects of age, the correspondence was flawless.

  All at once an indescribable hunger filled him: a hunger for knowledge. How was this possible? Why? How could that press cutting match the one he owned so closely? How could this woman have recognized his face when it didn't belong to any Flight Lieutenant Ransome . . . ?

  Or did it?

  The notion that his very face might have been stolen was so horrifying that it tipped the balance, persuaded him to do something he had never dreamed of doing before. But he needed information as badly as though he were starved in some manner abstract yet essential -- as though there could be a vitamin deficiency of the mind.

  He had believed until now that he knew who he was. He had believed he knew who others thought he was. On the instant all these comfortable assumptions had been wiped away.

  He said gruffly, "No, Barbara. Your daughter isn't dead."

  "You know who I am?" She flinched away as though she had been struck.

  "Probably not. I'm damned sure I don't know who I am. But you'd better come inside out of the rain."

  Because he could have used the flex and had chosen not a delicious feeling of defiance pervaded Godwin now, growing fiercer with every tread of the staircase. He was almost giddy by the time he opened the door of his room and recklessly activated it, making a random choice and hitting on Dirk van Beelden's place. She followed him across the threshold into a huge apartment paneled with sleek polished woods and hung with colorful batik work, and gasped as she realized that from gray and rain-swept London she could look out on the brilliant sunshine of a Balinese village. The air was full of steamy tropical scents. A gamelan orchestra was rehearsing, getting the melody wrong, and repeatedly breaking into laughter.

  A parrot flew squawking out of a nearby treetop and made her jump.

  Pleased with her reaction, Godwin signaled open the door of a wardrobe to reveal rows of fluffy terrycloth robes and piles of polychrome towels.

  "Here!" he said, seizing one of each and tossing them toward her. "Dry off -- you must be even worse soaked than I am."

  She caught them neatly in midair and stood for a long second gazing at him while he peeled off his jacket and shirt and took a towel to dry his own hair. Then she said, "I've been dreaming of this moment for forty years."

  "What?" Disconcerted, he blinked at her.

  "To be alone in a room with the man of my dreams, ready to undress before him." Her tone was absolutely level, almost chilling in its impersonality. "But you aren't him. You aren't even like him, or anybody I ever met or dreamed of. How the hell do you account for this? "

  Her voice abruptly took on passion as she flung away the towel and robe and once again extended her scrap of newspaper.

  He accepted it and this time actually read it. Under the second of the four pictures on the right, a carefully posed portrait which as she had promised showed the face Godwin wore, the caption identified F/Lt. S.W. Ransome, G.M. The same name appeared in the text at the left, where details of Ransome's heroic action in saving a little girl from a house wrecked by a flying bomb were given in fulsome terms.

  Godwin studied it for a while, pondering. Then he handed it back and turned to his memento display, which -- alone of the contents of his home -- remained unchanged regardless of what else altered. He removed and mutely proffered his medal, and the nearly identical cutting from his pocket.

  Mechanically brushing aside her still water-heavy locks, she looked from one copy to the other. She said half hopefully, "Your father . . . ?"

  But it was a vain notion. She discarded it instantly, while he was still thinking with vague surprise: yes, of course, I must have had a father, I suppose.

  "You had it forged," she challenged now. "You saw the likeness and got a printer to imitate it and substitute your own name -- God knows why, since you're much too young for anyone to be taken in . . . Are you really called Godwin Harpinshield?"

  "Yes. But I didn't have it faked."

  "If you can say that with a straight face you must be out of your mind. I don't know what kind of crazy fantasy you've invented, but I don't want any part of it. I want to get out of here. Right away!"

  Godwin sighed and let his towel fall. "You may, of course. If you like. Back to the world where your daughter is given up for dead."

  The gamelan finally got it right and embarked on one of the complex, flowing, half-improvised, half-composed structures of sound which musicologists regard as the next most advanced form after the European symphony. Barbara waited a little before speaking again, seeming to find enjoyment in being distracted by the music.

  "You claim to know she isn't," she said finally.

  "Yes."

  "The police think she must be. They've been hunting her for weeks."

  "And?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Aren't they saying that the lead which brought them to me was a dead end?" Godwin parodied a grin; what trace of humor there was in it did not reach his eyes.

  "They said that about all of them. But there was something odd about the way they acted here -- I mean outside, talking to you. I was watching. You noticed me, didn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Well . . ." She shrugged. Rain was still trickling out of her hair, tracing down her forehead; with sudden irritation she whipped off her plastic snood and reclaimed the towel. Wiping her face, she concluded, "When I stopped believing them I decided to come back."

  "Because you don't want to believe she's dead."

  "Of course I don't!"

  "Where were you when she disappeared?"

 
"I was in Hollywood on business, trying to close a deal for a TV series. Dora was safe in school, or should have been. You were seen with her. Didn't you talk to her? Did you just use her and drop her? Or what?"

  "I talked a lot to her."

  "Where is she, then?"

  She had been drying herself one-handed; now she suddenly recollected that that was because her press cutting was in the other hand. Folding it with care, she tucked it into her hip pocket.

  "It wouldn't do any good if I told you. Nobody can find her unless she wants to be found. I already explained that."

  "Oh, stuff your nonsense! If she's alive, I'll find her. If I have to spend every penny on detectives I'll -- What's wrong with you all of a sudden?"

  For Godwin had turned perfectly pale, shut his eyes, and began to sway back and forth, head spinning with memories of the hideous scene he had witnessed by Whitestone Pond. He fully expected the pangs of punishment to gripe at him, but nothing worse than nausea eventuated; perhaps the owners thought that only a reminder was called for.

  He was able after a few seconds to recover his wits and say in a calm voice, "Until today there was a detective who could have found her. But he's dead, and there's no help for it . . . Come on, let's have a drink. I'm going to. I need one."

  She still hesitated a moment longer, then yielded and turned to the nearest chair. "All right," she muttered. "You know, sometimes I wish I didn't give a damn for my bloody daughter, but . . . Well, there it is, and I'm stuck with it. What have you got?"

  "Anything."

  "Then I'll have -- I'll have a margarita."

  In the cupboard which Godwin opened there were bottles of tequila and triple-sec, fresh limes, chilled glasses resting rim down in a bed of sea-salt. Without a word he proceeded to the mixing.

  She said after a little, "Suppose I'd asked for a sazerac. Or a gin sling. Or a planter's punch."

  "You'd have got it. Here." He brought her glass.

  "It's very good," she said grudgingly, having sipped.

  "Thank you." He dropped into a chair facing hers.

  "But who the hell are you? And what are you doing living here? I mean, this street is practically a slum, and -- hell, I don't know what this place must cost to run, but I never saw anything like it, not even in Beverly Hills! This artificial view of yours -- "

  "Artificial?"

  "Who are you trying to kid? It must be done with -- oh, I'm no expert, but . . . Film projectors! Tapes, bottled smells, a computer to run the whole shebang!"

  "Go to the window and lean out."

  She gazed at him dubiously. Then, with an air of determination, she did exactly that. Leaning over the sill, she bit her lip. Then she stretched as far as she could into the air beyond, as though expecting to find solidity, an end to the illusion. There was none.

  "There's a bamboo staircase outside," she said at last.

  "You can walk down it if you want. If you're sick of this year's gray cold summer let's go for a swim. This is Dirk van Beelden's place on the north coast of Bali. People here don't mind Europeans swimming nude. It's regarded as a forgivable eccentricity. They do the same themselves, but they prefer fresh water. Some of them are learning a taste for sea bathing, though. At any rate you won't need a costume."

  "I . . ." She shook her head dizzily. "Did you put something in my drink?"

  "Exactly what always goes into a margarita."

  "But -- but this whole thing is impossible!"

  "I disagree. You see, I'm used to it. As far as I'm concerned, this is simply the place where I live."

  "But Bali? In the middle of a dirty London suburb?"

  "Or Venice or Paris or Rio or Nassau or wherever takes my fancy. I have friends all round the world."

  "It's an illusion," she said positively. "It has to be. For one thing" -- with sudden triumph -- "Bali's on the opposite side of the Earth. It can't possibly be high noon there when it's daytime here!"

  "That's taken care of," Godwin sighed. "Walk down those stairs, you'll meet Dirk and swim from his beach and eat the rijstaajel and acquire sunburn, indigestion, and a hangover -- if that's what you'd regard as evidence." He spread his hands.

  Slowly, as though summoning all her courage, she made for the window again and seemed about to step onto the balcony when another parrot, screaming even louder, shot out of the overhanging tree, and she snatched back her hand with a cry.

  Alarmed, it had spattered her forearm with its droppings.

  Godwin had to chuckle as he brought a tissue to wipe away the mess, but forbore to comment until, against her will, she yielded and returned to her chair.

  Cradling her glass in one upturned hand, she fixed him with steady gray eyes in which he could not help seeing the spirit of the little blond girl he so vividly remembered saving from an impossible doom.

  "I won't say I'm starting to believe all this," she said. "But I suspect I may not be believing it because I don't want to . . . Let's get back to basics. Who the hell are you? And this time I want a straight answer!"

  "Who did you think I was when you first saw me?"

  "You know damned well!" she flared. "The exact double of the man who saved my life when I was ten!"

  "Is that the only meeting you have to remember him by?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Godwin drew a deep breath.

  "It doesn't say so in that press cutting of yours -- so much like mine you think mine is a forgery, which it isn't -- but didn't you go to the investiture at Buckingham Palace?"

  She nodded warily, as though braced for what might follow.

  "At that time when so many people were getting killed, especially RAF officers, it was obvious you might never see him again. You wanted to thank him from the bottom of your heart. You'd have liked to do it in words, probably, but you didn't know enough. So you shocked him, and everybody."

  She was sitting rock-still, except for her lips, which framed a single word: "How?"

  "You tongue-kissed him."

  There was a dead pause. Finally she shook her head and took another gulp from her glass.

  "I don't know what kind of confidence trick I'm being set up for, but if you want testimonials from me about your skill as a mind reader, you've got them, and I'd like to buy a share in the act. You could peel the quids off a mark easy as bananas -- Say!" She suddenly sat upright. "Is that how you pay for this setup?"

  "I don't pay for it."

  "Ah, hell. Have it your way," she sighed, slumping back in the chair. "But you're good, I grant you. I don't know where in the world you picked up that little tidbit, but it's quite true. You can't have got it off my granny, because I swear she'd have died rather than mention it. Shocked her to the soles of her black button boots, I did! Respectable little girls of ten weren't supposed to know about that kind of thing. I'm not sure she did, to be honest. Pillar of respectability, she was, and glad of the chance to snatch me away from the wiles of that devil's offspring, her daughter-in-law. I didn't cry when she died a couple of years later, I tell you straight. Even if they did put me in a home . . . But how did you find out?" She brightened abruptly. "Oh, of course! I suppose Ransome survived, and let it slip somehow. Is he still alive?"

  But that wasn't reasonable; it could be seen running aground in her head, on the reef of Godwin's resemblance to her savior. Not allowing him time to answer, she plunged on. "At any rate I'll take my Bible oath I never mentioned it to Dora."

  "I didn't learn about it from her."

  "And that's the only answer I'm going to get, hm?" Sour-faced of a sudden, she drained her glass and held it out. "Well, if I don't get any better advantage out of meeting you, I might as well drink your liquor. I couldn't afford stuff like this."

  "Wasn't your mother's name Gallon?" Godwin said, taking the glass.

  "Oh, my God! Have you been researching me at Somerset House or something? Why? Is all this building up to a ransom demand? I can't pay anything -- that TV deal fell through and my agent's a drunken fool and I'm practical
ly broke after spending so much on tracing Dora!"

  "I want an answer," Godwin murmured. Seeing that almost all the salt was gone from the rim of her glass, he dropped it in the waste-bucket beneath the bar, where it broke with a bright tinkling noise.

  "One glass, one drink?" she exclaimed as he reached for another. "My God, you must be rolling! I think that's all that's keeping me here, wanting to know what kind of a miracle worker you are, stuck in this dingy corner of a boring city. Are you the world's most successful blackmailer or con man or kidnapper? Or did you just inherit thousands of millions of quid and decide to spend them all on yourself and never pay taxes?"