The Game of X: A Novel of Upmanship Espionage

by Robert Sheckley

  “The following features present themselves to our attention,” Guesci said, metamorphosing smoothly into a brilliant instructor of tactics at military college. “We find ourselves on a square of land roughly 25 miles to a side, whose geographic homogeneity is maintained by the Venetian Lagoon to the south, the Alpine foothills to the north, the river Brenta to the west, and the Piave to the east. Within this operational area, moving northward from the Lagoon, Forster will guard the one arterial road which runs between Mestre and San Dona di Piave, plus the network of five secondary roads connecting the towns of Cazori, Compalto and Cercato. There is also a railroad, but this he can ignore since no train is due for another 30 hours. Thus, his arrangement has us hemmed in tightly between the Lagoon and the coastal highway. Viewed as a set piece, this scheme might seem irresistible.”

  “It does sound pretty good,” I said. “How do we get out of it?”

  Guesci had no intention of telling me just then. He continued to lead us across marsh and thin woods and stubbled fields, and he continued to explain the position.

  “So that is the problem with which I was confronted,” he said, sounding a little like C. Aubrey Smith in Four Feathers, only much sillier. “I considered the possibilities. It seemed to me that North-force would be stretched very thin along the Mestre– San Dona line. Accordingly, I contemplated finding a vulnerable salient, and risking everything on a surprise breakthrough.”

  “Good!” Karinovsky said. “I approve. And I suggest that we—”

  “But I rejected that scheme as quixotic,” Guesci continued. “I had to assume that Forster was in radio contact with Southforce, and that, as soon as our position was pinpointed, those men would be moved by fast automobile to prearranged positions above the coastal road. In short, I had to consider South-force as a highly mobile reserve. That left me with essentially the original position: men from the launch behind us, acting as beaters or as one arm of a pincer, moving to crush us against Forster’s reinforced line. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Marvellously clear,” I said. “You’ve thought out the situation beautifully.”

  Guesci beamed with pleasure. “Above all, I did not wish to underestimate the enemy.”

  “No one could accuse you of that,” I said. “You figured every aspect of the trap; unfortunately we are still in the middle of it.”

  “I realize that,” Guesci said, with an air of insufferable subtlety. “It is exactly what I planned. Consider: Forster lays a trap for us and expects us to try to avoid it, thus exposing ourselves to even greater risks. But we take an immediate initiative by stepping into the center of the snare—the one place he would never expect to find us!”

  “OK, so we’ve outsmarted him again. But what are we going to do?”

  “We shall escape.”

  “How?”

  “By proceeding to those haystacks in the field ahead.” Guesci shot back his cuff and frowned at his watch in a professional manner. “If I have calculated correctly we should be surrounded at that point, with men closing in from all sides.” He smirked. “But we will have perhaps a little surprise for them.”

  It was too much. I grabbed the little sadist and shook him until I could hear the coins jingle in his pocket. I shoved my wolfs muzzle into his startled face, bared my fangs, and said, “You quick-talking little son of a bitch, if you’ve got a way out of this I want to hear it now, immediately.”

  Guesci said, “Please do not crush my jacket.” I released him, and he brushed himself off. “Come this way,” he said. I had to admire him, even if he was going to get us all killed.

  We crossed the field and came to the three large haystacks. Guesci waved his hand negligently at the center stack.

  “Behold!”

  I stared. Guesci, grinning like a hyena, walked up to the stack and began to pull away armfuls of hay. A long dark shape was revealed underneath. He cleared away more hay. I looked, and was momentarily incapable of words.

  “Guesci,” I said at last, “I take back my unkind words. Maybe you are a genius.”

  Standing before us, bright with promise, strewn with loose hay like the freshly unpacked toy of a giant, was a high-wing monoplane. Its wingtips and tail were still obscured, but the shapely curve of its propeller spoke of freedom. I helped Guesci finish the clearing, then stood back in admiration.

  “Beautiful, is it not?” Guesci said. “While the mad dogs slink toward us over the ground, we soar deliciously away; we leave them howling and gnashing their teeth at the moon.”

  “The device is worthy of you, my friend,” I said, falling into Guesci’s style through sheer gratitude. “Our destination is San Stefano?”

  “Correct. There is no airport, but I have selected several areas as suitable for a light craft such as this. Colonel Baker and his men await us there. The trip should take no more than an hour.”

  There was a gray hint of dawn in the east, and I saw movement on two sides of the field. A dog barked; there was a sound of metal striking bone, and the dog was abruptly silent.

  “The pack is closing in,” Guesci said, smiling. “My dear friend, shall we make our departure?”

  “That,” I said giddily, “is a suggestion with which I am in accord. Karinovsky, are you all right?”

  “Well enough,” Karinovsky said. “I am merely standing here and bleeding to death while you two have your fun.”

  “We’ll fix you up in the plane,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We helped Karinovsky into the small cabin and strapped him securely into a seat. Dawn was coming up fast; crouching shapes were moving toward us across the field. I startéd to climb into the copilot’s seat, and found that Guesci was already there.

  “You’re in the wrong seat,” I told him.

  “No, I’m not,” he said.

  “Guesci,” I said, “this is no time for jokes. They’re coming. You’d better move over and get us out of here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Guesci asked, his voice going shrill. “I know nothing about aircraft! Nothing! You must get us out of here!”

  “Look,” I said, “You arranged this whole stupid plane thing!”

  “But I arranged it for you,” Guesci said, sounding on the verge of tears. “Mr. Nye, please, it is well-known that you are an expert in the operation of all types of aircraft. You are famous for it! In the name of God! Why else would I get a plane?”

  It had happened again. The famous and highly skilled Agent X—that damned super-specter, my dark alter ego—had risen again to haunt me, betray me, destroy me. Agent X—that compulsive player of bizarre and inhuman games, the killer within the law, madman by government approval—how I detested him, and how greatly he must have hated me. But now, my saturnine and certifiable twin had finally found a way to kill his deadliest adversary—myself.

  Guesci was tugging at my arm. He pulled me into the pilot’s seat, and I looked at the unfamiliar array of instruments. I was touched by a black moment of calm in which I realized that the fault was entirely my own. Agent X was no more than a label for an impulse; and Guesci—well, I should have known that a man who arranges escapes by scuba and hydroplane might reasonably be expected to have an airplane tucked away somewhere.

  “Nye!” Guesci said. “They’re coming! Take us out of here.”

  I smiled slowly, sadly. “Karinovsky,” I called out, “can you fly a plane?”

  “I do not think so,” Karinovsky said. “I have never tried.”

  I could count eight crouching men on the edges of the field. They were moving slowly, with extreme caution—but they were coming.

  20

  I had exaggerated slightly. My acquaintance with light aircraft was surely deficient, but not entirely lacking. For example, I had flown as a passenger upon several occasions. I had once been given the controls of a Piper Cub float plane; in level flight, I had performed a series of gently banked turns with credible skill. And finally, I had seen innumerable airplane movies.

  This, obviously, was in
sufficient experience for the job ahead of me. But I had even less experience in my only alternative course of action: crossing an open field at dawn under the guns of eight or more men. Necessity forced my choice; I toned to the instrument panel.

  I found the battery switch and toned it on. Just under the panel to my right was the fuel shutoff valve. I turned this on, and found the carburetor-heat control. It was marked “Pull for Hot.” I did so. Then I turned the mixture control to “Full-Rich.”

  “What are you doing?” Guesci asked.

  “I’m getting ready to fly us out of here.”

  “Oh.” Guesci thought for a moment. “But I thought you didn’t know how to fly.”

  “I don’t. But this seems as good a time to learn as any.”

  “I suppose it is,” Guesci said, laughing uncertainly. “But may I urgently request that you hurry?”

  I nodded. My feet were resting on two pedals, but I couldn’t remember what they were for. Brakes? No. Surely not two brake pedals. I pressed the right one and heard a soft creak from the rear of the plane. I leaned out the window and saw that the rudder had turned. Very well; pedals controlled rudder. I remembered that the stick in front of me operated the ailerons and elevators.

  Now what? There were instruments showing altitude, direction, elapsed time, oil temperature, fuel supply, oil pressure, and engine rpms. There was a bewildering array of switches and dials, many of them with printed instructions or warnings. I read these quickly, trying to remember what I had heard about takeoff procedure. It seemed to me—

  I became aware that Guesci was pounding me on the arm.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “They are firing at us!” Guesci said. “Can’t you hear it?”

  I could, now that he mentioned it. Forster’s men were still at a fair distance from us, but they were within pistol range. There was no more time to brood over the mysteries of flight. It was time now to do or die; or to do and die, as seemed more likely.

  “Here we go,” I said, and pressed the starter button.

  Nothing happened.

  I stabbed at the button repeatedly, got no reaction, and searched the instrument panel for a clue to the failure. I found something called the “Magneto Switch.” It had four positions–Off, L, R, Both. I switched it to “Both,” and pressed the starter button again.

  The engine coughed, complained, and came to life with a roar. I held the stick in what I hoped was a neutral position, rested my feet lightly on the pedals, and watched the tachometer and oil pressure climb. The plane trembled but did not move.

  I advanced the throttle, and the tachometer went to 2,400 rpm. Above that was a red-marked danger zone. The plane quivered like a willow in a windstorm, but did not move.

  Then I noticed the hand brake. I closed the throttle to an idle and released the brake.

  We began to roll, our speed increasing rapidly as I opened the throttle.

  I remembered that a plane was supposed to take off into the wind. But I didn’t know if there was any wind; and if there was, I didn’t know what I could do about it now. I also remembered that a plane had to be traveling quite rapidly before it would leave the ground. Therefore I slammed the throttle to the firewall, in a maneuver I had learned from Real Air Aces. (This would also have been the moment to cut in the afterburner, if I had had one.)

  We must have been doing 50 miles an hour over the ground, though the airspeed indicator showed 20. Alarmingly, the plane was beginning to swing to the right. I touched the right pedal, found that the swing was accentuated, and quickly pressed the left pedal. The plane straightened for a moment, then began to turn left. I compensated again.

  We were rushing along at 60 or so miles an hour. There was a low stone wall ahead, and trees beyond it. The plane was barely under my control. I was trying to work the pedals lightly, but I must have been over-compensating. We advanced in a series of long S-turns.

  The stone wall was coming up fast now. In the rear, Karinovsky was utterly silent. Guesci had begun to whimper, and buried his face in his arms. I resisted the impulse to do the same. I reached out to pull the throttle fully open, and found it already was fully open. So I pulled the stick back toward my lap as I had seen countless pilots do in countless movies.

  The plane left the ground and soared into the air, exactly as a plane is supposed to do. I hadn’t really believed it would happen; but I could see the ground falling away, and we were climbing into a cloudless dawn sky of faint blue. The engine had taken on a querulous note of strain, and the tachometer had fallen to 1,900 rpms. I eased the stick forward, letting the plane climb at a more gradual angle.

  Guesci was saying something to me, but I wasn’t listening. I was filled with the sensation of accomplishment. I had gotten this airplane into the air! I was by God flying!

  It was a moment of personal triumph, to be savored as long as possible. I decided not to concern myself just now with the interesting problem of how or in what condition I would get down to earth again. One thing at a time: that is the only motto for a soldier of fortune, especially if he is somewhat inclined toward hysteria.

  21

  The takeoff had been frightening, but exhilarating. As we soared gloriously into the blue, I had come to the conclusion that flying was not so terribly difficult after all; that it was, in fact, a skill that any reasonably bright man could perform by the concentrated application of his intellect. It seemed to me that the professionals had made a mystery cult out of this essentially simple operation for much too long; they had been guarding their livelihoods with calculated guile.

  There was an alternative possibility: that flying was in fact extremely difficult, but that I was just one of those seat-of-the-pants naturals who instinctively do everything right.

  Some moments later I had rejected both explanations. I knew that I had gotten the plane into the air through sheer luck, aided by the craft’s built-in tendency to do the right thing whenever possible.

  This insight came to me very suddenly, when the plane turned sharply to the left for no apparent reason.

  We were still climbing. The tachometer showed 2,300 rpms, the stick was back, and my feet were resting lightly on the rudder pedals. The airspeed indicator showed 50 miles per hour—dangerously close to the indicated stalling speed of 40. The altimeter gave me 500 feet; too close to the ground, but we were still gaining altitude.

  And then we were turning to the left for no reason whatsoever.

  I pushed down gently on the right rudder pedal. The plane straightened, but the airspeed fell to 45. The engine sounded unhappy. I tried to feed more gas, but the throttle was wide open. We skidded into a flat right turn and the engine stalled momentarily. In a panic I kicked the left pedal and pushed the stick forward. The plane’s nose dropped toward the horizon and the airspeed increased to 60; but the rpms edged up to the red line, and the plane turned hard to the left, and I suddenly needed four hands and at least two heads.

  I corrected the turn and pulled back gently on the stick. The rpms fell to a safe level as soon as the plane started to climb; but of course, the airspeed dropped again toward a stall. I moved the stick carefully, forward and then backward, until I found a point where rpms and airspeed were both in the black. The plane was climbing very shallowly. I had to keep using left rudder to keep a straight course, and this worried me. But for the moment everything was nicely balanced.

  “What happened?” Guesci asked, his voice trembling.

  “Bit of rough air,” I told him. No sense in alarming the passengers; there was no room on this plane for anyone’s panic but my own.

  “But you really do know how to fly, don’t you?” he asked. “I mean, you were joking earlier and you really do know how to fly, don’t you?” His whining voice irritated me.

  “You can see for yourself,” I said brusquely, correcting for a left turn and easing the stick forward to stop a stall and reducing engine speed somewhat to keep the tachometer out of the red and then correcting for a left
turn again.

  “You seem to be having trouble,” he said.

  “Look,” I told him, “it takes time to adjust to a crate like this after you’re used to a Mach 2 fighter.” I swear, I hardly knew what I was saying.

  Guesci nodded vehemently. He wanted to believe in my skill, despite a certain amount of evidence to the contrary. There are no atheists in foxholes, especially when the foxhole is a thousand or so feet above northern Italy.

  “You have had much experience with jet fighters?” he asked.

  “Mostly with Sabres and Banshees,” I said, correcting for a left turn and easing the stick forward to prevent a stall and reducing engine speed, etc. “Did I ever tell you about the time I had a flameout over Chosin Reservoir?”

  “No—Was it very bad?”

  “Well, I suppose it was kinda hairy,” I said, and bit my lip to keep from giggling. Then my attention was taken up by the plane, which needed correcting for a left turn and simultaneously easing of the stick forward to prevent a stall and then reducing engine speed, etc., etc. When I had completed this, I told Guesci to take care of Karinovsky. Then I sternly rid myself of all notions of frivolity and concentrated on the serious task of trying to outguess the airplane.

  We were doing 105 miles an hour, and somehow we had climbed to 3,000 feet. I closed the throttle to the indicated cruise-setting, and the airspeed dropped and held at 90. The compass had us traveling nearly southwest. It was full dawn now, and the gleaming, wrinkled hide of the Adriatic was below me. Tolmezzo, our destination, was in the Alps, which meant somewhere in the north. I moved the stick gently to the right.

  The plane responded by dipping her right wing. Her nose lifted at the same time, and her airspeed began to fall. I was sure that the damned engine was about to quit on me, and I pulled the stick abruptly back.

  It was the wrong move. The plane rolled, the engine coughed, like a wounded panther, and the nose came up alarmingly. I gave full power (slamming the throttle to the firewall) and corrected with left rudder and stick.