The Devil's Game

by Poul Anderson

  “Exaggerated. And a nation under siege cannot afford dissent, it must have unity. The Soviet Union has been under siege by the imperialists from its very founding. Oh, I grant you, security measures have sometimes been unnecessarily harsh.” A flicker of fury: “However, madame, you would know what harshness truly means if you had been born with a black or a brown skin.”

  After a silence, Orestes relaxed and smiled. “Well, well, let us not quarrel,” he said. “You are quite a well-informed and liberal woman, I believe, … Julia. What are your political views?”

  “Not liberal!” she laughed to show she too was anxious to avoid giving offense. “That is, not knee-jerk liberal, I hope. My husband and I—we’ve always tried to vote for the candidate, not the party. We’ve been registered Republicans—what else could you be in New York lately?—but I did vote Conservative last few times around. Does that make me the enemy?”

  “Not you,” he said, grave once more. “I hope with my entire heart you and I shall never have to shoot at each other, Julia. The enemy is the system that forces you to come down here to save your child’s life at the whim of a senile lunatic, because he in his spare time used the people and the land for no ends except his own.”

  “I don’t want to believe, on the other hand, that the future is the anthill you collectivists strive for,” she told him. “I’ll fight that as hard as I can.”

  “Suppose,” he said, “you could wave a … wand? … a magic wand, and bring true socialism to your United States overnight. Never mind if you consider it tyranny. Simply admit that it does provide universal medical care. Suppose that socialist government and nothing else could save your daughter. Suppose this, for argument’s sake. What would you do?”

  Her features writhed. She looked away from him. “I don’t know. Please, Orestes.”

  He patted her hand. “I am sorry, Julia. I did not wish to hurt you. But millions are being hurt around the world…. Well. Let us speak of matters more pleasant.”

  She exerted herself to win his liking.

  Matt Flagler woke, blinked, sat with head in hands, shouted, “Hey! Coffee here! Black!” When it came, accompanied by an unfriendly look from a maid who avoided his grope for her bottom, he took a noisy taste and said he wanted some bourbon to flavor it.

  Ellis Nordberg entered the living room as Matt was finishing. “Did you have a good nap?” he asked politely.

  “Yeah, okay, I guess. What time’s it? Sheest, half past five awready!”

  “It’s smart to stock up on sleep,” Ellis said. “Tomorrow Shaddock’s bound to put us to something strenuous. And dangerous, I suspect.”

  Matt peered at the slender white-suited figure which stood above him. “What’s your game, Nordberg?”

  “As for what my game will be, come my turn, no comment. But as for what I have in mind right now—would you care to join me in my room for a quiet talk?”

  “H’m. Bugged.”

  “Sure. So is this one. Haverner won’t blab.”

  Matt considered the other man awhile. “Okay. Why not?” He did not altogether keep his voice empty of interest.

  “We can use your room if you prefer,” Ellis said. “I don’t have a bottle in mine.”

  “Naw, yours will do. What kind of juicehead d’you think I am? I’m bored, that’s all, bored till I could climb on the ceiling. What a bunch’a pricks they are!” Carefully: “I guess not you, El—Ellis. I haven’t had a chance to get to know you, that’s all.”

  “Or I you.” They went side by side up the lovely staircase. Ellis’s quarters were predictably ordered and disciplined. (The chambermaid cleaned every morning, but otherwise did not venture to touch a guest’s arrangements.) He waved Matt to a chair, took one facing it, and extended the cigarette box. Through closed windows could be seen how the sky thickened. Occasional lightning winked. The trees sounded like surf.

  “Well.” Matt took a deep pull of smoke, crossed and uncrossed and recrossed his legs, sat back and traded look for look. “I don’t guess you invited me here for my Irish eyes.”

  “No. Not that I’m hostile. Neither do I have any definite offer in mind. I only thought we might do some mutual sounding out.”

  “Because we already got a team, maybe two, against us? Yeah. But you said you couldn’t be bothered with less than the whole million, which is small enough potatoes in business these days.”

  Ellis pinched forth a smile. “I was right,” he said. “You’re far from being the oafish simpleton you pretend…. Yes, I am after the entire sum. But I want it to invest, not spend, and the rewarding of service is an important investment.”

  “You mean,” Matt responded slowly, “if I help you win, taking a dive myself, you’ll give me a few peanuts? No, thanks. I’m hungry for that bread myself.”

  “Certainly. But imagine you are beaten. It could happen, you know. Afterward I might want an outside assistant.”

  “If you’re not scrubbed first.”

  “True. True. I suggest it could be to your advantage that I stay in the game, at least through most of it. Insurance for yourself? Maybe. It depends. I repeat, I make no promises, and I ask for none from you. What I do ask is for a better acquaintance with you. You know a fair amount of my history, I almost nothing of yours.”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “What harm can it do? And it may do good. Listen, suppose you wash out. Then, with no friends here, you’ll have nothing, and you did admit you’re out of a job. Well, it could be that I—whether I win or lose—I could have well-paid, interesting work for a man who’d taken this chance to prove himself to me.”

  “Go ahead,” Matt agreed after thinking. “Ask me what you want. I might or might not answer. But I won’t get mad.”

  “You’re a native Chicagoan, right?” (A nod.) “How old?”

  A reluctant: “Forty.”

  “I have an impression you’ve, ah, served time.”

  “Yeah.” Matt thought further. “Probation, reform school, three years and later five at Joliet.”

  “What for?”

  “Different. Numbers, armed robbery, but I was a punk kid then. Later I got smart. Drugs. And ask that sweet little Gayle Thayer chick if I wasn’t doing a public service.”

  “Nevertheless, you lost more than eight years.”

  “Not really. I got along, inside.”

  “And outside. You married into the … Family, correct? And when the States grew too hot for you—I won’t ask why—the Family found you a job managing a casino it owned in Vizcaya. The colonels got reform-happy and closed it down. You dared not go home; you had to scrape along as best you could, which was poorly if I know anything about these banana republics. When the old regime was restored, your influential father-in-law had died and you did not get your position back. That’s when Haverner’s people found you.”

  Matt squinted at the angular visage. “You’ve learned a lot, haven’t you?”

  “You spilled most of it the first evening. The rest is deduction. How are you with a gun, Matt?”

  “Damn good. You better believe. Not that I ever cooled anybody, never did that, but I’ve practiced, pistol, rifle, shotgun, Tommy gun, you name it. I like guns.”

  “M-hm. You interest me more and more.”

  With the clouds, twilight was gathering in the room. Matt’s cigarette end pulsed crimson.

  “We have—we could have—a common cause till the final playoff,” Ellis said. “Or, if you fail earlier, all the way. Not if I fail before you; that looks pretty clear, aside from a possibility that I might hire you afterward. But here, on this island, it could be worth my while to help you keep in play longer than you might otherwise be able, and the same for you as regards me.”

  “It could be.” The red coal quivered.

  “Your turn follows mine,” Ellis said. “If we each set tasks the other can perform … Do you see? What have you in mind?”

  “You go first, so you tell me first.”

  “I’m still developin
g my plan. Essentially, it involves solving problems. If I coached you—or got you off the hook if you did fail, like Rance did the Thayer slut—”

  “By God!” Matt’s palm slapped his knee. “Holy shit!”

  “I thought you’d like the idea.” Ellis doled out another smile, barely visible on the pale blur of his countenance. “Of course, I give you no promises yet. This is a very, very conditional offer. Show good faith of your own.”

  “M-m-m … well, okay. Maybe you can even help me, Ellis. I haven’t figured out the details. I thought—now don’t get me wrong, nothing queer about me, but this is for a million bucks and I’m a, you know, unprejudiced person—I thought I might set something that most of them would be bound to object to, more than a million bucks’ worth. Get me?”

  “For instance?”

  “Well, okay, let’s say everybody has to bugger everybody else. In public. I don’t think the men could do it.”

  Ellis recoiled a tiny bit, then laughed. “Nor could the women. I’m afraid that proposal would be ruled out on the grounds of physical impossibility.”

  “Well,” Matt said, taken aback, “it was just a sample idea, get me? I’m working on details.”

  “The basic notion is excellent,” Ellis said. “Something unbearably loathsome. But not to me, eh? I don’t go for that kind of stuff either; besides, it’s against my religion. But we might agree on something—coprophagy?—well, let’s discuss it further.”

  “What’d you say?” Matt didn’t pursue his question at once. His jaw thrust forth. “Suppose I do get an idea you can’t follow through on.”

  “That’s the chance I take,” Ellis answered. “I’ll hope I can talk you out of it. However, for the prize on hand—I don’t imagine there’s much you or I would not do.”

  Byron took supper in his room, sending down word that contestants could sleep late if they wished, since his game would not start till two hours after an early lunch. At that time they should be dressed for a hike. Somehow this provoked wild merriment around the table, a school-boy gallows humor shared by everyone except Haverner and Ellis.

  About ten in the evening the freakishly leisured storm finally broke over the Island. First the sky above that house where William Walker had slept was taken by absolute night, then the initial hot heavy drops landed, raising puffs of dust where they struck bare soil, then, after a preliminary monstrous sigh, the wind howled itself to full velocity and the rain came solid.

  Larry and Gayle were in his room. An outside observer could have seen him at an open window, watching the weather while she waited forlornly in bed. Matt played solitaire in the living room while Ellis read—or, rather, obviously reread—a translation of Beyond Good and Evil. They were careful not to speak. Orestes was visiting in the servants’ quarters.

  Byron came downstairs and, by way of a rear porch, onto the veranda. He stopped outside Haverner’s chamber, which was darkened and blinded. Light from the right-hand end of the house fell distant, a somehow bleached yellow, not important to the night that encompassed them. It quickly gulped down all light.

  Rain roared, smote and hissed off the ground, dashed itself against the screens. They smelled of wet iron. The wind brawled among trees, hooted over earth, wailed far out to sea. This was no chilly air, it was rushingly welcome after the sullen day, but one felt a deeper cold in it, that absolute zero of empty space which had whistled those energies out of the sun. The house creaked to the violence of the wind; there went a quiver through the veranda planks.

  A step, a hand on his arm, a voice: “You too.”

  He turned his head. She was silhouetted against the window-glow and the rain-spears it touched. “Julia.”

  “No other.” She smiled. “I thought you’d come here to watch.”

  “Awesome, isn’t it?” At close range, normal speech barely won through. Was that why she leaned her cheek against his shoulder?

  “Yes. Makes us realize how little we are—oh, damn the clichés.” Julia squeezed his arm. For evening she had changed to a low-cut lacy white dress. The skirt flapped around her knees and molded itself to her groin. “Why’ve you been hiding the whole day, Byron?”

  “I didn’t want to be pestered.” He stared straight before him.

  “I sympathize. Don’t worry, I won’t ask what you’ll make us do tomorrow.”

  “I—” He cleared his throat while maintaining his absorption in the storm. “Julia, I’m sorry we have to be in competition. If …” His words trailed off.

  “Yes?” She leaned as close as might be.

  “Never mind. Fair warning: I’ve never thrown a bout, and I don’t plan to start now.”

  “Of course. Same here.”

  “Afterward—”

  “We’ll go on being friends. You’ll come see us, Malcolm and me, at our place, won’t you?”

  His mouth drew taut. “And Kilby, don’t forget Kilby.”

  “I haven’t. Not for one second…. You’ll enjoy her, Byron. Don’t think of her as a—what’s that sticky-sentimental book I read as a kid?—Birds’ Christmas Carol. No, she’s loaded with life. Used to come stumping to me, arms out, laughing like a maniac, every day when I came home from work. Since the trouble hit her she’s been quieter, naturally; she’s frail; but she stays bright, she keeps her sense of humor. I was fixing her breakfast and asked her, jokingly, if she wanted a piece of fried plastic. And she looked at me like a judge and said in the most precise tone you can dream of, ‘Man has never eaten plastic.’ ”

  “You’ve told me quite a bit about her,” he said.

  “I hope I haven’t bored you with the subject.”

  “No.”

  A flaw of wind went whoo-oo.

  “All right.” She released him and stood a few inches aside. He could no longer decently avoid meeting her gaze. It was veiled anyway in the rainstormy night. “Why insult your intelligence?” she said. “I want to get you interested in the case so that, whatever happens—” Her lids dropped, her fingers twisted.

  “I don’t have that much money,” he said with extreme care. “Or, well, yes, I do, but it’s committed. Look, a peasant in India might think you were rich enough to do or buy anything you chose. But you know better. Well, believe me, it’s the same for people above your bracket. For instance, besides working on the board of the Helping Hand Foundation, I contribute—”

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes.” She looked back at him, and he saw the teeth in her smile. “Byron, dear, I am five years older than you. I know maybe a tad more about how complicated life can get. How scrambled and blurred our motives, our hopes always are. It’s plain I’m grabbing at whatever handhold I see for Kilby—but it’s for our standard of living too, Malcolm’s and mine. We don’t want to become paupers or wage slaves. Call it selfishness if you will. Only then all but the saints are selfish. You, Byron, you could raise an extra child—let’s say one of Orestes Cruz’s starveling cane worker children—for what a ski trip to Gstaad costs you. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes, … in a way, … though if you took my trust fund and split it among four billion people—”

  “Sure. Let me finish, though. I only wanted to remind you, you aren’t in any simple either-or situation yourself. So can’t you accept, never mind what happens, can’t you accept that I sincerely like you? As I like Orestes, in spite of our agreeing we might someday have to shoot at each other. You and I don’t even have an ideology separating us, Byron.”

  Rain flew on the wind and drummed. He was in her arms.

  “Byron,” she said after time and no time had gone by, “my dear, it’s been hard for Malcolm and me. Worry and sorrow and—oh, doubtless I’ve not been what I should be for him, forever thinking about Kilby the way I did, but—he stays away a lot of nights, pleading business. I think he’s found another woman. And half the few times when we do come together, he himself is too tired and anxious…. Byron—”

  “What’re you doing?” He tried to pull free. Her right hand stayed on his neck but her left
roved down under his belt.

  “We’re having a vacation from reality, aren’t we?” she said.

  He slapped her across the mouth. “Bitch!” he yelled.

  She stepped back. “Byron—” A hand went to the place which hurt.

  “Get me into bed! Su-ure. A more effective Larry Rance. You might even have fun, right? And it’s guaranteed pure because you’re saving your little girl. She-wolf Julia! Well, I say bitch and I say to hell with you!”

  He fled from her astonishment, inside and upstairs. The wind, the rain went ramping.

  BYRON SHADDOCK

  Today’s weather is more conventionally tropical-wet. The air blows hard, dances about, often makes a brief leap in strength. It plays with trees and bamboos and quickly bursting showers like a cat with a ball. Clouds race across heaven. Sometimes they cover it altogether in wild gray—then the water brawls down—and sometimes, tinged by sun and rainbows, they fly singly across its incredible blue.

  The sea is full of waves. Gunmetal, green, white, they tumble out yonder, rumble in onto the beach, explode, withdraw in a huge hollow roar for the next attack. (What a chance to repeat that test of Rance’s which he botched so miserably! But Haverner, via Anselmo, said no, it’s too rough now, most of us could absolutely not do it. A drowned person can no longer scuttle through your rat maze, eh, Haverner?) Several gulls are aloft, planing, gliding, veering, most beautiful of birds above this planet. How often have I wished to be, for a while, a gull!

  Inland, to my left, I see a vulture, who likewise rides the wind, though his sea is the gold-and-emerald raindrop-jeweled shouting jungle. The Crag was invisible when we left the house, obscured by vapors, but as we move north its dim bulk begins to emerge.

  The trail is muddy between stiff grasses and luxuriant shrubs. Water gurgles along it, for the blufftops over which it snakes are gradually turning into the Iron Cliffs. That southern scarp of the Bight looms ahead, black as a robber baron’s castle walls, but above stands a fragrance of cedar trees where Julia and I …