Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  She took a lift to the top level to be with Pfeiffer.

  It was like walking into the foyer of a well-appointed home. The high walls were stucco and the floor was inlaid parquet. A small Dehaj rug was placed neatly before a desk, behind which beamed a man of about fifty dressed in camise and caftan.

  He had a flat face, a large nose that was wide, but had narrow nostrils, and close-set eyes roofed with bushy, brown eyebrows, the color his hair would have been, had he had any.

  Actually, the room was quite small, which made the rug look larger and gave the man a commanding position.

  “Do you wish to watch or participate, Monsieur Pfeiffer?” he asked, seeming to rise an inch from the chair as he spoke.

  “I wish to play,” Pfeiffer said, standing upon the rug as if he had to be positioned just right to make it fly.

  “And does your friend wish to watch?” the man asked, as Joan crossed the room to stand beside Pfeiffer. “Or will you give your permission for Miz Otur to become telepathically connected to you.” His voice didn’t rise as he asked the question.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “A psyconnection, sir. With a psyconductor”—a note of condescension crept into his voice.

  “I know what it is, and I don’t want it,” Pfeiffer snapped and then moved away from Joan. But a cerebral hook-in was, in fact, just what Joan had hoped for.

  “Oh, come on,” Joan said. “Let me in.”

  “Are you serious?” he asked, turning toward her. Caught by the intensity of his stare, she could only nod. “Then I’m sorry. I’m not a window for you to stare through.”

  That stung her, and she retorted, “Have you ever done it with your wife?” She immediately regretted her words.

  The man at the desk cleared his throat politely. “Excuse me, monsieur, but are you aware that only games organe are played in these rooms?”

  “Yes, that’s why I’ve come to your house.”

  “Then, you are perhaps not aware that all our games are conducted with psyconductors on this floor.”

  Pfeiffer, looking perplexed, said, “Perhaps you had better explain it to me.”

  “Of course, of course,” the man said, beaming, as if he had just won the battle and a fortune. “There are, of course, many ways to play, and, if you like, I can give you the address of a very nice house nearby where you can play a fair, safe game without hook-ins. Shall I make a reservation for you there?”

  “Not just yet,” Pfeiffer said, resting his hands, knuckles down, upon the flat-top Louis XVI desk.

  His feet seemed to be swallowed by the floral patterns of the rug, and Joan thought it an optical illusion, this effect of being caught before the desk of the casino captain. She felt the urge to grab Pfeiffer and take him out of this suffocating place.

  Instead, she walked over to him. Perhaps he would relent just a little and let her slide into his mind.

  “It is one of our house rules, however,” said the man at the desk, “that you and your opponent, or opponents, must be physically in the same room.

  “Why is that?” Joan asked, feeling Pfeiffer scowling at her for intruding.

  “Well,” he said, “it has never happened to us, of course, but cheating has occurred on a few long-distance transactions. Organs have been wrongly lost. So we don’t take any chances. None at all.” He looked at Pfeiffer as he spoke, obviously sizing him up, watching for reactions. But Pfeiffer had composed himself, and Joan knew that he had made up his mind.

  “Why must the game be played with psyconductors?” Pfeiffer asked.

  “That is the way we do it,” said the captain. Then, after an embarrassing pause, he said, “We have our own games and rules. And our games, we think, are the most interesting. And we make the games as safe as we can for all parties involved.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We—the house—will be observing you. Our gamesmaster will be telepathically hooked in, but, I assure you, you will not sense his presence in the least. If anything should go wrong, or look as if it might go wrong, then pfft, we intercede. Of course, we make no promises, and there have been cases where—”

  “But anything that could go wrong would be because of the cerebral hook-in.”

  “Perhaps this isn’t the game for you, sir.”

  “You must have enough privileged information on everyone who has ever played here to make book,” Pfeiffer said.

  “The hook-in doesn’t work that way at all. And besides, we are contract-bound to protect our clients.”

  “And yourselves.”

  “Most certainly.” The casino captain looked impatient.

  “If both players can read each other’s mind,” Pfeiffer said to the captain, “then there can be no blind cards.”

  “Aha, now you have it, monsieur.” At that, the tension between Pfeiffer and the desk captain seemed to dissolve. “And, indeed,” the captain continued, “we have a modified version of chemin de fer, which we call blind shemmy. All the cards are played facedown. It is a game of control (and, of course, chance), for you must block out certain thoughts from your mind, while, at the same time, tricking your opponent into revealing his cards. And that is why it would be advantageous for you to let your friend here connect with you.”

  Pfeiffer glanced toward Joan and said, “Please clarify that.”

  “Quite simply, while you are playing, your friend could help block your thoughts from your opponent with her own,” said the captain. “But it does take some practice. Perhaps, it would be better if you tried a hook-in in one of our other rooms, where the stakes are not quite so high.” Then the captain lowered his eyes, as if in deference, but in actuality he was looking at the CeeR screen of the terminal set into the antique desk.

  Joan could see Pfeiffer’s nostrils flare slightly. The poor sonofabitch is caught, she thought. “Come on, Carl, let’s get out of here now.”

  “Perhaps you should listen to Miss Otur,” the captain said, but the man must have known that he had Pfeiffer.

  “I wish to play blind shemmy,” Pfeiffer said, turning toward Joan, glaring at her. She caught her breath: If he lost, then she knew he would make certain that Joan lost something, too.

  “I have a game of nine in progress,” the captain said. “There are nine people playing and nine others playing interference. But you’ll have to wait for a space. It will be quite expensive, as the players are tired and will demand some of your points for themselves above the casino charge for the play.”

  “How long will I have to wait?”

  The captain shrugged, then said, “I have another man waiting, who is ahead of you. He would be willing to play a game of doubles. I would recommend you play him rather than wait. Like you, he is an amateur, but his wife, who will be connected with him, is not. Of course, if you wish to wait for the other …”

  Pfeiffer accepted, and while he and Joan gave their prints to the various forms, the captain explained that there was no statute of limitations on the contract signed by all parties, and that it would be honored even by those governments that disapprove of this particular form of gambling.

  Then the furry boy appeared like an apparition to take them to their room where they would be given time to practice and become acquainted.

  The boy’s member was slightly engorged, and Pfeiffer now became frightened. He suddenly thought of his mother and the obligatory hook-in service at her funeral. His skin crawled as he remembered her last filthy thoughts … .

  The furry boy led Joan and Pfeiffer into the game room, which smelled of oiled wood, spices, traditional tobacco, and perfume. There were no holos or decoration on the walls. Everything, with the exception of the felt top of the gaming table, cards, thick natural carpet, computer consoles, and cowls, was made of precious woods: oak, elm, cedar, teak, walnut, mahogany, redwood, ebony. The long, half-oval gaming table, which met the sliding partition wall, was made of satinwood, as were the two delicate, but uncomfortable, high-backed chairs placed side by side. On the table
before each chair was a psyconductor cowl, each one sheathed in a light, silvery mask.

  “We call them poker-faces,” the boy said to Pfeiffer, as he placed the cowl over Joan’s head. He explained how the psyconductor mechanism worked, then asked Pfeiffer if he wished him to stay.

  “Why should I want you to stay?” Pfeiffer asked, but the sexual tension between them was unmistakable.

  “I’m adept at games of chance. I can redirect your thoughts—without a psyconductor.” He looked at Joan and smiled.

  “Put the mechanism on my head and then please leave us,” Pfeiffer said.

  “Do you wish me to return when you’re finished?”

  “If you wish,” Pfeiffer replied stiffly, and Joan watched his discomfort. Without saying a word, she had won a small victory.

  The boy lowered the cowl over Pfeiffer’s head, made some unnecessary adjustments, and left reluctantly.

  “I’m not at all sure that I want to do this,” Pfeiffer mumbled, faltering.

  “Well,” Joan said, “we can easily call off the game. Our first connection is just practice—”

  “I don’t mean the game. I mean the psyconnection.”

  Joan remained silent. Dammit, she told herself. I should have looked away when Pfeiffer’s furry pet made a pass at him.

  “I was crazy to agree to such a thing in the first place.”

  “Shall I leave?” Joan asked. “It was you who insisted that I come along, remember?” She stood up, but did not judge the distance of the cowl/console connections accurately, and the cowl was pulled forward, bending the silvery mask.

  “I think you’re as nervous as I am,” Pfeiffer said appeasingly.

  “Make the connection, right now. Or let’s get out of here.” Joan was suddenly angry and frustrated. Do it, she thought to herself, and for once she was not passive. Certainly not passive. Damn him and his furry boy! She snapped the wooden toggle switch, activating both psyconductors, and was thrust into vertiginous light. It surrounded her, as if she could see in all directions at once. But she was simply seeing through Pfeiffer’s eyes. Seeing herself, small, even in his eyes, small.

  After the initial shock, she realized that the light was not brilliant; on the contrary, it was soft and diffused.

  But this was no connection at all: Pfeiffer was trying to close his mind to her. He appeared before her as a smooth, perfect, huge, sphere. It slowly rotated, a grim, gray planet, closed to her, forever closed … .

  “Are you happy now?” asked Pfeiffer, as if from somewhere deep inside the sphere. It was so smooth, seamless. He really doesn’t need me, she thought, and she felt as if she were flying above the surface of his closed mind, a winged thing looking for any discontinuity, any fault in his defenses. “So you see,” Pfeiffer said, exulting in imagined victory, “I don’t need you.” The words came wreathed in an image of a storm rolling angrily over the planet.

  She flew, in sudden panic, around his thoughts, like an insect circling a source of light. She was looking for any blister or crack, any anomaly in the smooth surface. He would gamble his body away without her, that she knew, unless she could break through his defenses, prove to him how vulnerable he really was.

  “So you couldn’t resist the furry boy, could you?” Joan asked, her thoughts like smooth sharks swimming through icy water. “Does he, then, remind you of yourself, or do I remind you of your mother?”

  His anger and exposed misery were like flares on the surface of the sun. In their place remained an eruption on Pfeiffer’s smooth protective surface. A crack in the cerebral egg.

  Joan dove toward the fissure, and then she was inside Pfeiffer—not the outside of his senses where he could verbalize a thought, see a face, but in the dark, prehistoric places where he dreamed, conceptualized, where he floated in and out of memory, where the eyeless creatures of his soul dwelled.

  It was a sliding, a slipping in, as if one had turned over inside oneself; and Joan was sliding, slipping on ice. She found herself in a dark world of grotesque and geometric shapes, an arctic world of huge icebergs floating on a fathomless sea.

  And for an instant, Joan sensed Pfeiffer’s terrible fear of the world.

  “Mindfucker!” Pfeiffer screamed, projecting the word in a hundred filthy, sickening images; and then he smashed through Joan’s defenses and rushed into the deep recesses of her mind. He found her soft places and took what he could.

  All that before the psyconnection was broken. Before the real game began. As if nothing had happened.

  A man and woman, wearing identical cowled masks, sat across from Joan and Pfeiffer. The partition wall had been slid back, revealing the oval shape of the gaming table and doubling the size of the woodpaneled room. The dealer and the gamesmaster sat on each side of the long table between the opponents. The dealer was a young man with an intense, roundish face and straight black hair cut at the shoulders; he was most likely in training to become a gamesmaster.

  The gamesmaster’s face was hidden by a black cowl; he would be hooked in to the game. He explained the rules, activated the psyconductors, and the game began. Joan and Pfeiffer were once again hooked in, but there was no contact, as yet, with the man and woman across the table.

  Pfeiffer cleared his mind, just as if he were before lasers or giving an interview. He had learned to cover his thoughts, for, somehow, he had always felt they could be seen, especially by those who wanted to hurt him politically and on the job.

  White thought, he called it, because it was similar to white noise.

  Pfeiffer could feel Joan circling around him like the wind. Although he couldn’t conceal everything, he could hide from her. He could use her, just as she could use him … had used him. They had reached an accord via mutual blackmail. Somehow, during their practice hook-in, Joan had forced herself into Pfeiffer’s mind; shocked, he attacked her.

  So now they knew each other better.

  They built a simple symbol structure: He was in the world, a perfect sphere without blemish, made by God’s own hands, a world as strong and divine as thought; and she was his atmosphere. She contained all the elements that could not exist on his featureless surface. She was the protective cloak of his world.

  They built a mnemonic in which to hide, yet they were still vulnerable to each other. But Pfeiffer guessed that Joan would remain passive—after all, she always had. She also had the well-developed conscience of a mystical liberal, and she was in love with him. He had seen that—or thought he had.

  She would not expose him to danger.

  Pfeiffer congratulated himself for being calm, which reinforced his calmness. Perhaps it was Joan’s presence. Perhaps it was the mnemonic. But perhaps not. He had the willpower; this was just another test. He had managed to survive all the others, he told himself.

  Joan rained on him, indicating her presence, and they practiced talking within geometric shapes as a protective device—it was literally raining geodesic cats and dogs.

  When the gamesmaster opened the psyconductor to all involved, Joan and Pfeiffer were ready.

  But they were not ready to find exact duplicates of themselves facing them across the table. The doppelgängers, of course, were not wearing cowls.

  “First, mesdames and messieurs, we draw the wager,” said the dealer, who was not hooked in. The gamesmaster’s thoughts were a neutral presence. “For each organ pledged, there will be three games consisting of three hands to a game,” continued the dealer. “In the event that a player wins twice in succession, the third hand or game will not be played.” His voice was an intrusion; it was harsh and cold and came from the outside where everything was hard and intractable.

  “How do they know what we look like?” Pfeiffer asked, shaken by the hallucination induced by his opponents.

  But before Joan could reply, he answered his own question. “They must be picking up subliminal stuff.”

  “The way we perceive ourselves,” Joan said. The doppelgängers became hard and ugly, as if they were being eroded by ti
me. And Joan’s double was becoming smaller, insignificant.

  “If we can’t cover up, we won’t have a chance.”

  “You can’t cover everything, but neither can they.” Joan said. “It cuts both ways.” She noticed a fissure in the otherwise perfect sphere below, and she became black fog, miasma, protective covering. Pfeiffer was afraid and vulnerable. But she had to give him credit: He was not hiding it from her, at least. That was a beginning … .

  “Did you pick up anything from them, an image, anything?” Pfeiffer asked.

  “We’ve been to busy with ourselves. We’ll just wait and be ready when they let something slip out.”

  “Which they will,” Pfeiffer said, suddenly confident again.

  From deep inside their interior, symbolized world, Joan and Pfeiffer could look into the external world of croupier, felt-top table, cards, wood-covered walls, and masked creatures. This room was simply a stage for the play of thought and image.

  Pfeiffer was well acquainted with this sensation of perceiving two worlds, two levels: inside and outside. He often awakened from a nightmare and found himself in his living room or library. He knew that he was wide awake, and yet he could still see the dream unfurl before him, watch the creatures of his nightmare stalk about the room—the interior beasts let loose into the familiar, comforting confines of his waking world. Those were always moments of terror, for surely he was near the edge then … and could fall.

  The dealer combined two decks of cards and placed them in a shoe, a box from which the cards could be slid out one by one. He discarded three cards: the traditional burning of the deck.

  Then he dealt a card to Pfeiffer and one to his opponent. Both cards landed faceup. A queen of hearts for Pfeiffer. A nine of hearts for his opponent.

  So Pfeiffer lost the right to call the wager.

  Just as the object of blackjack was to draw cards that add up to twenty-one, or as near to that figure as possible, the object of blind shemmy was to draw cards that add up to nine. Thus, face cards, which would normally be counted as ten, were counted as zero. Aces, normally counted as eleven, became one; and all other cards had their normal pip (or face) value, with the exception of tens, which, like aces, were counted as one.