The Devil's Game

by Poul Anderson

  To purchase land in Santa Ana, Hidalgo, or Caribbea—to name but three of several republics of that region—involved to this day certain complexities. During a long history, many rights, claims, customs, and usages have developed, some dating back to pre-Columbian ages, and they are attached to that piece of real estate whereon they evolved.

  When land changes owners, the buyer may include “the other rights” in the transaction if he chooses. As a rule he does not, because they would raise the price by, ordinarily, a twentieth. Thus someone else retains the lawfiil privilege of grazing sheep there, or driving cattle through, or seining for fish, or whatever tradition has created for the particular parcel.

  Should the buyer elect to include those rights, a licenciado is then briefed to acquire and/or extinguish them on his behalf. In short, he pays people to exercise them no more.

  Formerly the phrase “los otros derechos” was taken to mean, chiefly, a sum to dispose of ghostly claims if the land had belonged to the Church before the nineteenth-century expropriations. In every capital city of these republics, in a small and stuffy office, sits a clerical gentleman whose task is to wear a melancholy expression, take snuff, speak with an Italian accent, and note in a crumbling ledger the rare payments still made on this account by the pious.

  By customs always complex and frequently tedious, included among los otros derechos are what Yankees think of as “mineral rights.”

  The Company had never bought “other rights.” It simply and flatly forbade on its lands any practices it wished forbidden. Never mind native archaisms; one has armed guards patrolling anyway, doesn’t one? As for eccleciastical demands, tut-tut. Wall between church and state, no?

  Doubtless somebody in the legal department occasionally chanced to reflect upon the matter of mineral rights. But this was in the days when, say, a glue company thought only about making and selling glue, not about diversifying into, say, ribbons, dried puddings, book publishing, and inland marine insurance. Reflection was brief.

  Thus in theory los otros derechos to the Company’s lands remained available for purchase—cheap.

  Sunderland Haverner bought them—cheap.

  And so, not overnight, but in due course, the Company was forced to confront two exceedingly new thoughts, (a) It played billy-be-damned with operations when Haverner’s surveyors, protected by the full majesty of a law now cooperative with him, crossed fields newly cleared for planting, or when his prospectors started drilling for oil. (b) There is a lot of money to be made from oil. A hell of a lot of money.

  The Board ran in circles, and likewise the legal department, but neither grew too dizzy to understand that the handwriting was on the wall and was signed “Sunderland Haverner.” Quite a few Company officials retired that year who hadn’t been intending to.

  Under the terms of the agreement reached, Haverner became able to work virtually at will on Company, lands; to draw upon Company employees for labor; to house his own men in Company barracks or cottages, treat them in Company hospitals, educate them in Company schools; to travel on Company roads, Company trains, Company ships; to use Company materials as if they were his personal property. All this was done at Company expense. He kept half the profits.

  In time he found it convenient to make the Company his in name. By then it was a relatively minor interest.

  Through forty years he played with oil wells and oil refineries and oil outlets, mines, smelters, factories, timber plantations and similarly lucrative enterprises throughout the region—in regions elsewhere, too, though he seldom let his left-hand executives know what the right-hand ones were doing. He rode the Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Second Industrial Revolution, the crumbling of empires, the Vietnam War, the assassination of an American President and the self-destruction of his successors, the brief glory and decline of the dollar, the brief glory and decline of man beyond Earth, the age of sinking expectations—he rode those like a surfer on huge waves, the kind of combers that break the backs of men less adept. Aristotle once said that money cannot breed; but Aristotle is not listed on the Stock Exchange.

  Yet Sunderland Haverner was by no means a narrow man. Quite apart from his curious relationship with Samael, he had a mind inquisitive as well as acquisitive. In particular— more and more as he grew older, as his physical powers waned, as the progress of expanding his domain tended to become routine-he grew intrigued by psychology.

  His interest was not, at first, obsessive. He had too many different concerns. After a hard day’s work, he required relaxation more than stimulation. Generally he would retire to his bedroom of the moment at nine; at nine-thirty the little Indian girl of the moment knocked shyly on his door; at ten she shyly slipped away; at one minute after ten the light went out. Ordinarily, between nine and nine-thirty, he was reading a detective thriller. He preferred the kind that told of criminals who were not so much fiendishly clever as plain, down and out, rotten, stupid bad. Far more plausible.

  Nevertheless, he did maintain an awareness of the progress of psychological research. A particular incident, rather early on, triggered this in him.

  When the regional superintendent, he who had formerly tried to make everything clear to neophyte Sunderland Haverner, found himself confronting instant, compulsory retirement, years before his plans or his savings or his pride were ready for it, he took a massive Army revolver and put a bullet through his head. Blood and brains spattered partly onto the mirror by which he had aligned the barrel, partly over the starched shirt collar which always came high around his throat. When Haverner was informed of this, the bearers of the news felt he ought to be, if not conscience-stricken, at least discomfited.

  Instead, he frowned, sat thoughtful and uncommunicative for the next hour, and then ordered that his yacht be made ready for a cruise to the island of Tanoa. Some business there had been awaiting him for some time, and he might as well take care of it now.

  * * *

  He had no more patience with sail than he did with any other romanticism. Smoothly snoring Diesels bore him across the waters. He stood at the after rail alone in the dark and heard engines and waves surging and imagined he could make out a face in the wake that swirled moon-white behind.

  “I thought you would come,” he said.

  “What made you think that?” Occasionally, unpredictably, Samael did not behave like one who could read minds. Perhaps, in fact, Samael could not.

  “This problem I’ve got. Why did Goodhue kill himself? I can’t see any rhyme or reason to it.”

  “You are not his sort.”

  “No.” The end of Haverner’s cigarette waxed and waned, a red variable star beneath the thronging tropical stars, as he puffed. “That’s why you chose me, isn’t it, Samael? I’m the kind of instrument you need to … to make the things happen that you want. I often think you’re a scientist, performing experiments to try to learn what makes us humans tick.”

  “Well, I do suggest you order texts on psychology, bring your knowledge of it up to date, and thereafter follow along. For instance, subscribe to the principal journals in the field.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ll do that. I’ve gotten interested too.” Haverner twitched a smile nightward. “Even when the experiments include vivisection. ”

  “That may come later.”

  “Of course,” Haverner said, “you may not be a scientist. You may just be idly poking the anthill.”

  There was no response. He finished his cigarette and tossed it overboard. The wake engulfed the tiny glow in water and moonlight.

  Thus Haverner made himself somewhat of an authority on this newest science. It took years, considering the variety of demands on his attention. Also, the science itself was in a less than satisfactory state, and made less than satisfactory progress. When news of what the Nazis had been up to emerged around 1945, he wished that—if they were going to be so cruel anyway—they had carried out genuine research, rather than mere exercises in sadism.

  His studi
ousness increased with his advancing years. Less and less did the little Indian girls, or his empire, come at his behest; his need for the first, the need of the second for him, declined imperceptibly but inexorably. His mind, though, remained active as ever. The postwar upheaval in psychology, as in every other empirical discipline, dazzled him: feedback, psychotomimetic drugs, ethology, Olds pleasure center, computer analog, operant conditioning— Matters such as these claimed him until the rest of what he did was done almost casually.

  Meanwhile he had acquired that house on the Isle of Tanoa where William Walker once slept. By then he was so rich that nobody thereabouts believed how rich he was. Never mind what the Latins said, when you happened to meet one. “De Sponyard love to loy,” the Islandmen assured each other. “De Sponyard is a fool. A man have more den a t’ousand dollar, first t’ing, de Sponyard say he be a millionaire! … Oh, Mr. Sunderland, he be wery comfortable off, yis.”

  Perhaps their assurance trembled a bit when, aged, largely if not completely retired, spending most of his days here on Tanoa, Haverner began to import outsiders and put them through strange paces.

  Or perhaps not. Your Islandman has seen, or has heard of and accepted, many things beyond explaining. Masterman York, who has the sawmill, is known with certainty to be descended from a mermaid.

  On his mother’s side.

  She was a Philpotts.

  INTERVAL TWO

  This part of the world has no absolute distinction between seasons; but a comparatively dry one follows the “hurricane months,” August through October. A mid-January night is magical.

  Not everyone cared to savor it. In the living room, Matt Flagler watched a television program relayed from Panama, catering to the norteamericano, and sighed for that dear lost world of skyscrapers, pool halls, chrome and plastic taverns, automotive hordes, while he smoked and drank continuously. In its library arm, Ellis Nordberg went through reference works, now and then entering a suggestive detail about geography or people in his notebook. Distant in easy chairs—the room was big indeed—Orestes Cruz and Evans York talked. The former exerted himself to charm the latter, and may have succeeded. Eventually they left together.

  But Larry Rance settled down with a cigar and brandy in a porch swing on the veranda. To him came Gayle Thayer, who asked hesitantly if he wanted company. He made a moderately gallant response; she joined him and worked to strike up a conversation.

  When Julia Petrie and Byron Shaddock strolled out at the suggestion of the former, they overheard a fragment of this talk.

  “Richmond, Larry? Jesus, I’m from San Francisco! And we had to come all this way to meet!”

  “Well, I prob’ly wouldn’t’ve stayed a lot longer, so it’s just coincidence. To tell the truth, I’ve about decided I like Seattle better. I was making up my mind to go back there and see, when Haverner’s boys found me.”

  “You sound like a free soul. What do you do?”

  “For a living? Odd jobs, these days.”

  “Same. Waitress sometimes, only I never last long, my feet and that horrible greasy air, same reason I didn’t make it as a, you know, dancer. Or maybe I’m a cocktail waitress in a better class of place, but in a way that’s even worse. I’m really an artist. Or I’d like to try to be. Do you enjoy what you usually do?”

  “M-m-m, it’s not bad, mostly outdoor stuff, carpentering, running a back hoe, maintenance on yachts … those long beautiful craft that could fly to the South Seas, tied where they are year after year because the owners are busy making money—”

  The screen door closed behind the voices. They faded away as Julia’s and Byron’s feet scrunched gravel.

  “Oh!” Her hand caught his arm. “‘Wonderful—no, they haven’t got words for this.”

  The moon had not yet appeared to brighten that sharp, high westward blackness named the Crag. But stars blossomed beyond counting, crowding the sky till its own crystal dark seemed to come alive and, in some way that never touched the great peace, ring beneath their lightfall. They flaunted their colors, blue-white Rigel, golden Capella, ember Betelgeuse. The Milky Way cascaded among them, in knife-edge clarity, quietly and argently ablaze. A planet newly risen glowed so lamplike that it cast a glade over the sea, which reached in polished ebony and flickering pale streaks down past the foot of the steeply descending land.

  Trees blocked off most yellow windows, but there was ample illumination to bring the white pathway clearly forth, to tinge flowers and deepen the shadowiness within shrubs. And above the almost gleaming lawn there danced, flickered, blinked, and dazzled hundreds of enormous fireflies.

  The air was mild but rich with the scent of the blooms. An odor of harsher native growth, breeze-borne from as far as the rank Bog, only heightened that sweetness. The sighing among leaves blended into the hush-hush-hush of the surf.

  “I haven’t seen anything like this … since I was last home … to visit my parents, that is,” Julia breathed. “And that—Arizona—isn’t like this anyway. How low the Dipper is!”

  “Yes.” Byron pointed. “Look yonder. The Southern Cross.”

  “I’ve really seen it now. Cloudy in Vizcaya…. I’ve really seen the Southern Cross.”

  “And there, that bright one,” Byron added. “Alpha Centauri. The nearest sun to ours.”

  They walked awhile slowly, in silence.

  “You must have been hereabouts often before.” Julia finally said.

  “Never this precise place,” Byron answered. “But yes, of course I’ve toured. The skin diving off, oh, Martinique, is unbelievable.” He paused. “I’d like to know how it is here. I asked, but the majordomo—York, is that his name? Yes, York—he told me nobody’s tried, for fear of sharks and ’cuda.”

  “Would you? Carrying maybe a harpoon gun?”

  He gave her a surprised look. The dimness softened the cameo quality of her face. “What makes you ask?”

  “Curiosity, I guess. I’ve heard about you, read about you. Byron Shaddock, most eligible bachelor on the whole East Coast. Why have you come? You’ve got ample money.”

  “I said before, for me this is a sporting proposition. The kind I never could turn down.”

  “Right. I’ve read about your nearly getting killed, again and again, motorcycling, auto racing, skiing, surfing…. They call you a playboy. I wouldn’t. You’re terribly serious and strenuous, aren’t you, Byron?”

  They had halted. “Why do you ask?” he demanded, roughly this time.

  Julia dropped her lashes. “I won’t pretend to have been any secret worshiper of yours,” she said. “But it was interesting, when I happened on something in the paper or Newsweek. There’s not much to do when a person’s quit her job, moved from Manhattan to Long Island. New neighbors turn out to be boring and old friends aren’t readily reachable anymore. I read a lot.” She raised her eyes again. They caught the starlight. “Only, how old are you—twenty-seven, twenty-eight? And you’ve already had all this experience and excitement.”

  “Enough of me,” he said, as if counterattacking. “What about you, Julia? You mentioned Arizona. Born there?”

  She nodded. “Dad’s a professor at a small-town college in the Flagstaff area. But he met my mother while he was in grad school back east, and she’s always been a little homesick. So she took for granted I’d attend her alma mater, and that’s where I met my own husband.”

  “Curious that you came here and not he,” Byron remarked. Her lips tightened. “I was the one invited. I don’t know why. Evidently I fit whatever pattern that … that mad old man is trying to create.” Her tone sank. She stared back at the ground and dug a toe through the gravel. “Besides … well, our situation lately, it’s made for a difficult marriage. Scary though it is, this trip may well be a very good thing for Malcolm and me both.”

  “You are scared, then?”

  “Hell, yes. And making no bones about searching for help, any help, for my daughter.” Julia caught his hands. “I won’t give you sob story, Byron. But you said none of
us need to become enemies.”

  “N-no.” He disengaged himself with a tactful casualness and resumed strolling. She paced him. He kept fingers twined behind his back and eyes mostly aimed downward.

  Presently they came to the split-bamboo wall that, man-high, enclosed the acre of botanical garden. Its gate was shut, though not locked, for the night. Julia seized on the chance to restore a measure of coolness to the talk. “I must have a look in there. Remember, Larry Rance mentioned at dinner he’d gone in today? The most fascinating plants, flowers, cactuses especially. Cactuses ought to make a desert girl like me feel right at home.”

  “No doubt,” Byron said. “Frankly, I’ve never liked them much, or Joshua trees, or any of that kind of thing. Too alien. Like invaders from outer space. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a phobia about them, I recognize their value to the ecology and so forth. It’s just a slight creepy feeling.”

  After a moment he continued, “Here especially. This is such a strange affair to begin with. The weirdness of it is only starting to show. We’d better make no solid promises, none of us, before we know more.”

  Julia touched his shoulder. “All right, enough. I can see you don’t want to discuss it now. So let’s just be in the night. In all this beauty.”

  They hardly spoke further, but wandered about for a not uncompanionable hour. When they returned, a nondescript man—among other jobs, one of their stewards—accosted them on the veranda steps. “Please excuse, mistress, sir. You have been for a valk? I vas vorried you gone into de hills.”

  “Snakes?” Julia asked sharply, and Byron: “Scorpions?”

  “Not so bad, dose, special in de cool dark, sir,” the Islandman said. “But you be careful, dawn and dusk, please. Don’t be in de hills den. Bat caves dere, hold t’ousands dat come out, and some got de rabies. Bat vit’ rabies bites you, he bites in de face, and dat’s too close to de brain. No medicines help, no, sir.”