The Devil's Game

by Poul Anderson

  I don’t quite read Matt’s expression, his stance. (These people remain alien to me, as I to them, however many I’ve dealt with, begged from, run errands, shined shoes, and pimped for, all the while sharpening my command of their harsh language till at last I was the interpreter in that secret meeting between our Santa Anan Fidelito and the influential North American professor.) But he says, after the slightest pause, “Sure. I get you. Come on, Gayle.”

  They trudge upward and out of sight. Ellis straightens as if their absence from his nudity takes a weight off him. Byron demands salt tablets and plenty of iced lemonade. The rest second him. Anselmo sends their order on his walkie-talkie. A servant will bring it down. I hope he won’t be too much shocked by what he sees. They have a charming archaic morality, the Islandmen.

  Anselmo, the mainlander, is he more akin to me? I’d like to know. I move over and ask him for a cigarette. He obliges. “You may as well sit in the shade,” I remark in Spanish.

  (Light raves around us. Even to my horny soles, the sand is growing hot. I hear Larry advise Julia to sit down before it becomes impossible. They do so together. Scant sweat shows on her sleek skin. The air drinks it straight out of her, greedily as a child might suckle, or I her lover. Sand fleas hop; a fly bumbles gold and bottle-green; a small land crab scuttles in fear of my shadow. Gulls cruise, waiting, vultures of the shore. The sand is fine, gritty, scrunchy under my step. Not every shell, fishbone, kelp strand, dried polyp has been combed away by Haverner’s hirelings; not every whiff of life and clean decay has been abolished.)

  “That would be no courtesy when you cannot, Sr. Cruz,” Anselmo says.

  “Oh, nonsense!” I snort. “Come, take a bench inside by the door. I’ll sit outside and we’ll talk.”

  He spreads his hands, barely, and does. I settle my bottom, which is a little painful for a moment till temperatures equalize. I fold arms around shanks, rest chin on drawn-up knees, and take care to keep lids squinted and vision well away from the water. Seated above me under the roof, Anselmo says, “This is a most clever game you have called, Sr. Cruz.”

  “It’s one that nobody but I can win,” I answer in a fresh burst of glory. “Whichever of them is crazy enough to hold out till sundown may cause me a certain discomfort tomorrow, but he will die. None who stays more than two or three hours at most—at most, because the sun is low yet, the air screens off more of its rays than it will later—none who does that will be fit for anything. I’m surprised they didn’t concede to me on the spot.”

  “Sr. ’Averner would not be happy about that,” Anselmo drawls. “But he picked them well. Maybe he wants to compare how stubborn they are, if he allowed this challenge. Anyhow, they dance to the clink of his dollars.”

  “Like you?” I look straight at him; for I have nothing to fear in this end game of mine, and it may be that I can bring him out of his darkness. “Why are you his dog?”

  He is not insulted. “It pays well. The work is usually easy, often pleasurable.” For the first time ever, I see him smile. “It happens not a few times, the big Yankee men who come visit him on business, they bring along wives or daughters who discover they want to try something different. It’s fun to educate them, almost like having a virgin.”

  (Julia—how much does she know? I think she’d quickly and gladly learn what she does not. But I may be wrong. I’ve never lain with any of these colorless mistresses of the earth. My girls have been many, and most of them hot and sweet, but all were earth-dark. … To whom will I finally commit myself, when the revolution has come and I dare take a wife before the world to bear children I dare acknowledge for me to sing and tell stories to? The daughters of the fields are simple, the daughters of the city—the city that I know—are sluts. A Castilian then, tall, aloof, refined in Paris on the rent of her father’s tenants? A European? A free-souled Yankee lass, come down to help us with guitar slung over blue-denimed shoulders and straight yellow hair tumbled across it?)

  Julia and Larry have their backs to me. They talk: her fist beats the sand; he gestures widely. Byron prowls. Ellis dabs at the flush on his hide, the grains that cling to his scraggly-furred legs, the fleas around his feet. From time to time he glances aloft, no doubt longing for that lemonade. Will you not surrender soon, gringos? I’m hot and I prickle.

  “Have you no conscience?” I snap at Anselmo. “No thought for your mother, your sisters, the whole future of your family?”

  “When I am dead,” he answers coolly, “the universe ends. That is, we have only this life. If you’re a proper Communist, you must agree. Then why give away a minute?” In haste: “I’m not a coward, understand. I’m not afraid to die. In fact, I enjoy risking my neck. I’m never so alive, not even in a woman. My question is, Sr. Cruz, what can your holy cause, or holy Mother Church, or anything I haven’t already got here, what can it give me that makes it worth my while to lay my head on the block, or pass by one single pleasure?”

  “If you don’t know that,” I say in full solemnity, “you have never really lived, Anselmo.”

  (Not that Lenin ever appeared to me like Jesus to Paul. My conversion was slow, and was bitterly resisted.

  (For I had found my happiness, it seemed. In the redlight district of Ciudad Vizcaya there was always a place for a boy who could read and write and cipher, had excellent English as well as Spanish, knew when to speak or fight and when not to, was quick of eye and ear and fingers and wits. There was no snobbery, no race distinction except for the gringos we made sport and prey of, no toil except delightful hours when we spun our webs around the fat flies, no law except loyalty to one’s chief and brother huntsmen, no limit except one’s own daring, speed, skill, and luck. And oh, the songs, dances, laughter, music, marijuana, liquor, feasting, oh, the pungent sweat-slick girls!

  (It’s a pity, in la way, that Tío Rico had given me that example of compassion, that habit of studying and wondering.)

  “What happened to you in prison was a piece of real life I’m content to have foregone,” Anselmo says. “Be glad they didn’t beat you too much over the balls, interrogating. They would have in time, I suppose, if they didn’t simply shoot you the way they did your bosses of the junta.”

  “Not my immediate boss,” I answer. “General Ribera, Minister of War, yes. But I was driver and handyman for his aide-de-camp, Colonel Ybarra, and he escaped. To Venezuela, I believe. I’m happy about that. He’s a decent man in his fashion.”

  “Did you meet him first in a whorehouse?”

  “Yes, him and Ribera both, when I was playing piano downstairs before the junta seized power. He took a fancy to me—” I realize what I am saying and peer hard at him. “Why should I tell you this?”

  Anselmo spreads his palms. “You need not. I can read the old man’s dossier on you if I want to. I have already, though I don’t recall every detail. For instance, you were in the Party by that time, and not unimportant, either. But when Ybarra offered you a position, they told you to accept, keep your mouth shut and your nose clean, and wait for further orders.”

  Anger explodes in me. “By God, does Haverner have the CIA itself in his pocket?”

  I am certain it engineered the restoration of the reactionaries. Is not the thoroughness with which progressives were identified and—if you couldn’t escape—-jailed, proof enough? I had yielded this flesh and these bones to death, anonymous mortar in the walls of tomorrow, when that stunning “condition of probation” sent me here to Tanoa.

  “He has his connections,” Anselmo says. “Be glad he found you were suitable material for his experiment, after your dear Party wrote you off.”

  No, it didn’t. Yes, I am. Glad. A million gun-buying dollars’ worth of glad.

  Though be honest, Orestes, it is good merely being alive, in a cosmos of light and warmth, sun and stars, salt and breath, friends and songs and Cervantes and girls and wide-eyed small children.

  I love you, my people. The best thing in this day is that I am alive and thinking how much I love you.
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  Every last mongrel one of you … almost. True, you have exasperated me to fury, you on the land. You take your fate like oxen. Stone Age superstitions drone through your heads so loudly that you cannot hear, let alone understand, the truth. Someday, though, I shall take your toil-crooked hands in mine, and lead them from the machete haft to the controls of a reaping machine.

  And everything I remember from the village, everything that made me what in my marrow I truly am, will die. It must. But I shall always remember, and when I am alone weep a little for the dead ways which were my mother’s and my playmates’ and Tío Rico’s.

  “Well!” Byron says. “Here come the refreshments!”

  “You should take some yourself, Sr. Cruz,” Anselmo counsels.

  His tone is once again polite and impersonal as a jungle cat. Is that what he is … a creature still more archaic than peon labor, one-room palm-thatched huts, drunkenness at fiesta time, and Christ Jesus? What has Haverner brought back to dwell among us?

  “Thank you, you are right,” I say, and rise. Where my feet have not shielded it, the sand is scorching.

  I cross toward the others, who stand in their misery, their whole souls reaching for the servant who trots down the trail with his tray. Give up, I want to tell them; keep your health, your lives; return to what you were before, which is more than you can imagine, you who have not known my people. Yankee, go home, and I say this not in hatred but in love, because crash …

  INTERVAL SIX

  Part One

  The lank man cast arms wide apart and half spun, half lurched on the blazing ground. An instant later came the crack of the gun. His head burst. Gray and red gobs flew out of his bush of hair. He fell beneath the second delayed noise.

  Anselmo’s automatic had soared into his hand. He crouched at the entrance of the summerhouse, peering around its shelter. The bluff behind showed nothing except a glimpse of the brush on top. “¡Aquí!” he shouted. “ ’Ere, to me!”

  Get clear of the line of fire! Julia was first of the figures congealed in sunlight to comprehend. Larry pounded after her fleetness, then Byron. Ellis stood a moment longer before he trotted behind them.

  The Islandman servant had vanished up the path. His yells for help drifted faintly through the still heat. From tumbled tray and glassware, lemonade soaked into the sand. The blood that pooled around Orestes was drank more slowly. Amidst the whiteness, it looked as black as he did.

  Anselmo snapped a shot. The sound reverberated painfully from wooden ceiling and concrete floor. Julia and Larry gasped and shuddered in each other’s arms. Ellis clenched his fists. Byron, shivering but somehow alight, craned his neck past the Santa Anan.

  There was no response from above. After barking a few words into his walkie-talkie, Anselmo darted forth. Bent, bouncing zigzag, he fired thrice more. The green tangle that crowned the granite hardly moved. He lowered his weapon and stood erect.

  “I theenk the keeller ’as gone,” he said. What expression he had shown departed from him. “Come out eef you want.” Nonetheless he kept glance and pistol cocked as he approached the corpse. A gull, which had landed to inspect this possible meal and been frightened off by the racket, wheeled and mewed in indignation.

  Ellis started donning his clothes. The rest imitated him. No one uttered a word, nor did anyone look at anyone else.

  When Byron had finished buttoning his shirt, he was first to speak, his tone flat and seeming overly loud in the surf-deepened silence. “Don’t go see him Julia. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  “I majored in biology, remember.” Most of the hue had drained from her lips and irises, making them stand forth in the suntanned countenance. “It included a human dissection.”

  “But we knew this guy.” Larry strangled on the words. Breath whistled between his teeth.

  Ellis pinched his mouth together and strode to join Anselmo. Byron followed. Red and white flowed over him and he likewise breathed hard. Presently Julia more or less dragged Larry along.

  They surrounded the dead man. He sprawled on his back, covering the entry holes of the two bullets. One, emerging on the left side of his chest, had opened a crater in the flesh. Yellowish splinters of bone stuck forth. The next had gone straight through the cranium and left little of the upper face. An eyeball, shocked loose, lay amidst bloody mush; the other, still in place, stared out of the wreckage. His jaw was intact but fallen to show a tongue that was gray and already dry.

  Flies were gathering.

  “Oh, no, oh, no,” Larry moaned. “Oh, that’s bad.”

  Byron’s look flickered about. “Somebody wanted him murdered,” he said. “Specifically him, Orestes Cruz. That was a high-powered hunting rifle, with telescopic sights, I’ll bet.”

  “But we players were all here,” Ellis objected.

  “Conspiracy—”

  Julia clutched Larry’s hand, met their gazes and said, “Okay, let’s be honest. This, what’s happened, was our last hope. I’m sorry for Orestes. He was a better man than … most of us. But I’m not sorry my daughter has a chance to live. Don’t any of you tell me you don’t feel the same kind of relief.”

  “The game’s done!” Larry shouted. “It’s got to be!”

  “Does it?” Ellis replied quietly. When he turned his head, sunlight, reflected off the Polaroid clip-ons he wore above his glasses, made two blank circles.

  Anselmo pointed to the path. “ ’Ere comes ’elp Meester ’Averner sends.”

  Six chairs, drawn in an arc in the living room, confronted the chaise that held the old man. Behind him stood Captain York, somehow gone small in his nautical garb, not quite able to keep his mouth from twitching or his feet from shifting. Behind the visitors, arms folded, imperturbable, waited Anselmo.

  Haverner surveyed them. On the right sat Larry, next to him Julia, their fingers intertwined. Byron, legs crossed, his own fingers bridged, did not seem to notice how Gayle clung to his forearm. Matt, on her left, glowered now at her, now at the room in general. Ellis, stiff at the edge of his seat, hands on knees, had reclad himself in tropical suit and dark tie.

  Dimmed against noonday, the room felt cavernous. For a while only the air conditioner had voice. The coolness it gave did not stop sweat from standing forth on the skins of the six.

  Haverner made them wait before he creased his parchment visage in a smile, leaned his skull a little forward on the scrannel neck, and said, “Ah. A sad occasion. But urgent. We have decisions to make, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you are not too shaken to make them, and in realistic wise.”

  “What d’you mean?” Larry croaked. “What decision? Murder’s been done. What do we do except call the police”—he let go of Julia, half rose, twisted around and stabbed a forefinger at Matt—“and put the murderer in irons!”

  “Huh?” The Chicagoan was tense but controlled. He sat where he was and grinned into Larry’s trembling. “You mean me? Come off it, buster. What’d I want to do the nigger in for? I was washed out, remember?”

  “B-b-bribery—” The big man’s glare staggered among them, searching.

  “Where’d I get a gun? Anyway, I got a witness. Gayle here.”

  The woman whimpered and leaned against Byron. He pulled back to observe her. She released him, buried face in hands, and wept.

  “She’s rattled, naturally,” Matt said. He drew forth a pack of cigarettes, extracted one, tapped it on his thumbnail. “But she’ll bear me out. Her and me went back like we was told, and decided to take a stroll along the bluff-tops. It’s shady under the trees and we felt, you know, restless. First thing we heard about the killing was when one of the servants come running and found us, maybe a mile north of the beach.”

  “Is that true, Gayle?” Larry demanded. He strode past Julia and Byron to stand above her. “Look at me, damn you! Is that true?”

  “Larry, Larry—” She kept her gaze on the floor, which she probably could not see through the spurting tears, but groped blindly for him. “Larry, darling, help me.”
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br />   He struck her hands aside. “Answer me!” he roared. “Is that story true?”

  She raised her head long enough to scream, “Yes, you mother! Yes!” Matt offered his arms and she collapsed into them. Across her shoulder he gave Larry a smirk.

  The latter growled, or groaned, and returned to his seat. His fist smote his knee again and again.

  “I can corroborate that Mr. Flagler ordered no weapons from me,” Haverner said. “As for his baggage … Captain York, you have inquired of the butler and chambermaid, have you not?”

  “Yis, sir.” The Islandman could barely be heard. “No gun in anybody’s room, no, sir.”

  “You’ll swear to that?” Byron asked sharply.

  York drew strength from somewhere. “No, sir, not me Boible oat’, because I have not inspected for meself, sir. Not my vork. But I will svear I have known bot’ Benbow and Philpotts for many years. If dey had noticed a gun, dey vould have told me, yis, sir.”

  Byron nodded. Ellis declared, “Well, I’ll insist on a weapon for my own protection, when a killer is loose.” Larry jeered wildly, “Think you could hit a hippo’s ass at five paces, dad?” Matt gave him a stiff look, Gayle went on crying. Julia sat still.

  “We might bear in mind,” Haverner said, “Sr. Cruz did not come from nowhere. He was a political figure, associated not merely with the late junta, but with the Party, with backwoods guerrillas, city terrorists, connections to Cuba and the Tupamaros. The present government considered him dangerous. I had to apply a great deal of pressure as well as, ah, reimbursements, in order to have him sent here on probation. Were it not for me, he would surely have stood before a firing squad.”

  He paused. “And therefore?” Byron challenged.

  “It is possible that some, shall we say, overzealous officials decided he should be eliminated lest he get away from Tanoa as Bonaparte did from Elba. They would not wish to offend me by acting openly. But assassination is a well-developed technique in this region.”