Read Players at the Game of People Online
Authors: John Brunner
Players at the Game of People (4 page)
It was not until nearly midnight -- by which time the place was crowded
and his table, in single occupation and with nothing on it but a
half-empty glass of Coke and a clean ashtray, formed the eye of a storm
of noise and shouting and feverish activity -- that the girl he was
expecting turned up.
Two young men, both apparently Arabs, both in impeccable dinner suits
incongruously combined with pale fawn headdresses bound with green silk
cords, entered ahead of two women: one plump and blond, about thirty,
and the other slim and brown-haired but with a streak of silver, very
much younger -- at most, eighteen. It was she who, glancing around,
spotted him and gave a nervous wave and smile behind her companions'
backs. She wore yellow satin pants, very tight, and a blue strapless top
held up by a ruched elastic insert. On the left of her neck, inexpertly
powdered over, there was a strawberry-colored bite mark. She looked tired
and ill at ease. But she smiled the instant she caught sight of Godwin,
and everything -- or almost everything -- became clear to him.
One table remained vacant, in a bad position well away from the
dance-floor, and the party was shown to it and at once supplied with
a bottle of whisky and a bowl of ice and a syphon of soda, along with
dishes of junk food of the kind Godwin had been resolutely refusing
since his arrival. Like alcohol, that was something he would only risk
in the security of home. He waited another couple of minutes until the
group settled down, then rose and approached them with his most leonine
strides. Thanks to Irma, his body tingled with vitality, and virtually
everyone in the place stared at him as he moved.
The girl started up from her chair in excitement, holding out her hand
to seize his as soon as he came in range.
"I'm so glad you're here!" she exclaimed. "Let me introduce my friends!
This is Rashad. This is Afif. This is Peggy. This is Godwin!"
He acknowledged them with a succession of cool nods, not letting go of
her hand. It was very clear from their expressions that neither Afif --
the older -- nor Rashad welcomed his intrusion. In fact both looked in
a thoroughly bad temper. He sensed storm warnings, but continued anyhow.
"Hello . . . I came over to ask if you'd like to dance with me."
Beautifully controlled, his voice lanced through the din.
"Yes, I'd love to! You will excuse me, won't you?" -- to Rashad,
who was clearly her partner for the evening, wherever it had begun.
"No," he said.
Startled, she stared at him, poised half out of her chair.
He pointed at the dance floor. Some quiet persuasion from the management
had removed from it the girls who were going topless and obliged them
to dress again, but two or three who were up there now were in shorts
and halters or strapless dresses slit to the thigh.
"No," he said again. "I have bought you for tonight. You have been paid for.
If you dance, you will dance with me or with my brother."
The brother nodded firm agreement. Blond Peggy looked a trifle alarmed,
but did her best to conceal her reaction.
Godwin planted the knuckles of both fists on the table and leaned
toward Rashad.
"I asked the lady if she'd like to dance with me and she said yes," he
stated in level tones. "She said yes. I don't care how you treat women
in the slave markets of wog-land, but in this country they are not for
buying and selling. They are people. Got that? Now let's go and dance,"
he concluded, turning to the girl again.
Rashad's hand flashed across the table and seized her by the wrist.
"You will do as you are told!" he hissed.
"Let go -- you're hurting!" she cried.
By now the attention of half the room was on them. Most of the dancers
had checked in mid-movement and were staring this way; eyes wide, lips
apart, they were visibly hungry for something out of the ordinary run
of events, and if it was violent they would be most pleased.
It was not going to turn out that way.
Three tall male members of the staff converged, two to take station either
side of Godwin, one to bend deferentially over the Arabs' table and say,
"Is this gentleman disturbing you?"
Rashad uttered an Arabic curse and made as though to spit. The deferential
one turned to Godwin.
"I believe the manager would like a word with you, sir. This way,
if you please."
After what Irma had done to him, Godwin was well aware he could have
broken all three of them into small pieces and scarcely been out of breath
at the end of it, but somehow this did not feel like the right response.
Shrugging, he let himself be led through a door set inconspicuously at
the end of the bar, and instantly he was in another world: one of hustle
and bustle, of deliveries and shouted orders, of dust and litter and
junk to be concealed from the gaze of the clientele. A few yards along a
dim-lit corridor, and they entered the manager's office: a shabby room
with functional furniture, an old-fashioned desk, telephones, filing
cabinets, a worn rug on a concrete floor.
The manager, a balding man of fifty-odd, didn't even glance up as he
spoke on Godwin's entrance.
"I don't know what your game is, chum, but I don't like it. I'm not even
sure you're you, and not your twin brother. Last night and the night
before, you come in here like the original big spender, you make with
the tips and the champagne, you generally make yourself welcome. Tonight
you don't eat, you don't drink, you don't dance, you sit there like a
bloody statue
and
, to crown it all, you make waves with Prince Afif
and Prince Rashad -- "
One of the phones on his desk buzzed; it was an internal one. He barked
at it, "Yes?" And listened.
"The hell you say," he said after a while. "That's exactly what we
don't need!"
Cradling the receiver, he stared directly at Godwin for the first time.
"They marched out!" he snapped. "Said this wasn't the way they expected
to be treated! I hope you're bloody satisfied!"
"What do you expect me to do if your rich chums behave like slave dealers?"
Godwin countered.
"I don't give a damn what you do so long as it doesn't fuck up my
operation!" He pulled himself to his feet; he overtopped Godwin by a
good three inches.
"I gather you have a room in the hotel. Go to it! Get some beddy-byes! And
don't come back in my disco, hear? Not until you're prepared to act
like a customer again instead of a specter at the bloody feast! Christ,
what do you expect me to do -- carry you because you spent so much here
already you ran out of money? It won't work on me, chummy, if that is
your game! I've had 'em all in here, and I keep the ones who can afford
it. And only those! Now you get lost, okay?" To one of the heavies he
added, "Show him back to the foyer. And I mean show him! Don't turn him
loose to 'lose his way' and sneak back into the disco!"
Meekly Godwin let himself be shown, knowing what was in store.
He just had time, eluding his escort, to vanish through the door marked
Gentlemen before the pangs of punishment descended. There was one
astonished young man in the toilet -- barely more than a boy -- who
summed up his condition in a single glance and hurried away . . . and
was wrong. Contrary to appearances, Godwin was not drunk enough to vomit,
though his paleness and unsteady gait combined to give that impression.
He was simply suffering, and resigned to the fact. He had, after all,
messed up his assignment . . . one of the sort he was good at.
In a bolted cubicle he struggled not to resist the pangs, recognizing
them as just. But repressing the moans called forth from him cost all
his energy, and when it was over he had to sit with head in hands for
a long while before he dared venture forth again.
He used the time well, though, and made plans.
Miraculously, it appeared that no one had remembered to get at Jackson.
Emerging cautiously into the hotel lobby, Godwin put on the boldest face
he could contrive, and strolled toward the entrance as though to glance
at the weather. The commissionaire leaped to attention.
"Going out, sir?"
"Not right away," Godwin said musingly, and contrived to slide a fiver
into the man's hand. "But . . . Well, you saw Prince Rashad and Prince
Afif leave some time ago with a couple of girls?"
"Oh, yes! With Peggy and Gorse. I called them a cab."
"Well, I'm going to be in the lounge bar for a while" -- with a jerk
of his head. "I'd like to know when they come back. I take it they will
come back? They have rooms here?"
"The Imperial Suite on the second floor," Jackson confided. He had made
the money vanish without so much as a rustle.
"Fine. I'll sit where I can see you reflected in that glass door,"
Godwin said, having rapidly checked several possibilities in his mind's
eye. "Give me a signal -- wave your arm up and down, or something --
as soon as you recognize them. Okay?"
"Will do," Jackson said, and Godwin headed for the lounge.
It was almost two hours before the signal came. Thirty cabs had drawn up
-- for want of any better way to pass the time, Godwin had kept score --
and this was the thirty-first. The lounge barman was reading a newspaper
and trying not to yawn; the lights were lowered in the foyer; outside,
the last of the beggars had quit for the night.
Godwin rose to his feet with electric rapidity and strode out through
the automatic doors so fast they would not have had time to open for
him. Jackson, though, was already treading on the sensor pad against the
arrival of the princes and their women. The taxi was drawing away. Godwin
shouted commandingly, "Hang on, driver! I want you!"
Obediently the woman -- for it was a woman at the wheel -- braked and
reversed.
The girl who had been identified by the peculiar name of Gorse was
red-eyed and looked as though she had been crying. Peggy was attempting
to comfort her. Both the brothers wore expressions of thundercloud rage
and were talking to one another in rapid Arabic, paying no more attention
to the girls than to make sure they were not trying to cut and run.
The moment they recognized Godwin, they halted in their tracks and
flinched away from him. He closed on them with his fists raised to elbow
height, wider apart than the width of his body, and the eyes of each
fixed, fascinated, on one fist.
"I told you," he said mildly. "I don't care what you get up to in
wog-land, but here we don't buy and sell women!"
And instead of punching, he kicked, leaping into the air like a ballet
dancer. He caught Rashad first just below the left kneecap and the man
crumpled with a yell; then he took Afif in the crotch and strode between
the pair of them with one hand poised to catch Gorse by the elbow. With
his other hand he hauled open the taxi's door, and seconds later they were
safely inside. Reflex made the driver start up the instant the door shut.
"Hey, I say!" she shouted over her shoulder. "I don't like what you
just done! You get right out of this cab again, now! Or else I'll call
a copper, understand?"
But before she could brake to a halt, Godwin said, "They were going to
sell her as a white slave!"
Prompt on cue, the girl crumpled against his shoulder and began to utter
huge gut-wrenching sobs.
Before the driver could say anything else Godwin gave her his address
and leaned back, stroking Gorse's soft dark hair with its incongruous
silver streak as though he were comforting a little child.
So far the whole episode had gone so smoothly he was already on the
verge of being bored.
When they were nearly at their destination Gorse sat up without warning
and said slowly and clearly, "Please stop. I think I'm going to be sick."
Godwin tapped on the glass partition behind the driver, who understood
instantly and pulled in at the curb. Deftly he opened the door and thrust
her head out just far enough, keeping his other arm around her to steady
her. She uttered a gush of liquid that made the air stink of gin.
Wiping her chin with a handkerchief, he sat her back and closed the door
again, and they completed their journey without further incident.
In his home street all but two of the lamps were out. She shivered
noticeably as he helped her to the ground, having already passed the cab
fare plus a generous tip to the driver. Slowly, through her alcoholic
fog, she registered the high-piled rubbish in the gutters, the derelict
cars, the dark faces of the houses where many windows had been broken
and mended, after a fashion, with cardboard or sheets of plastic.
"What have you brought me here for?" she demanded between a cry and a sob.
"It's where I live," he answered, taking her arm and guiding her roughly
up the steps of his home. She tried to rebel, tried to hang back -- but
a fresh bout of nausea overcame her, and this time instead of spurting
out, her vomit dribbled, staining the front of her clothes.
Godwin waited with forced patience until the spasm passed, then urged
her indoors. "You're not going anywhere in that state," he muttered. But
she scarcely paid attention. She was gesturing at herself, shuddering.
"I didn't mean to make such a mess of myself!" she wailed. "I'm so sorry,
I'm so ashamed, I'm such a fool!"
"Right."
He got her up the stairs and into his room, turning it on as he opened
the door. She was too befuddled with drink to notice its details,
though he himself was rather pleased with them: his usual waterbed, some
wall-sized enlargements of erotic pen-and-wash drawings by the French
artist Bertrand, several more wardrobes than usual, and a cabinet of
perfectly clear glass around the shower, bidet, and toilet bowl. Also
the towels were black, a highly suitable color.
Quiet music began, intermingled with the wash of waves on a beach, and
the air was warm and fresh and the lamps, when they came on, shed the
color of moonlight in irregular patches.
Not bad.
But he had other preoccupations. He said, "Get out of those filthy clothes."
She had begun to cry again as they came upstairs. The brusqueness of his
command snapped her back to awareness. She stared at him with a hurt,
little-girl look.
"I said get out of them! They reek of vomit!"
"But -- but I only bought them day before yesterday! This is my best gear!
I can't just . . ."
The words tailed away as she gazed down at herself and realized just
how much of a mess she had created. Before she could recover, he reached
out with careful precision and tore the garments away from her: rr-rip,
rr-rr-rip. He balled up the fabric and flung it in the direction of a
waste bin.
and his table, in single occupation and with nothing on it but a
half-empty glass of Coke and a clean ashtray, formed the eye of a storm
of noise and shouting and feverish activity -- that the girl he was
expecting turned up.
Two young men, both apparently Arabs, both in impeccable dinner suits
incongruously combined with pale fawn headdresses bound with green silk
cords, entered ahead of two women: one plump and blond, about thirty,
and the other slim and brown-haired but with a streak of silver, very
much younger -- at most, eighteen. It was she who, glancing around,
spotted him and gave a nervous wave and smile behind her companions'
backs. She wore yellow satin pants, very tight, and a blue strapless top
held up by a ruched elastic insert. On the left of her neck, inexpertly
powdered over, there was a strawberry-colored bite mark. She looked tired
and ill at ease. But she smiled the instant she caught sight of Godwin,
and everything -- or almost everything -- became clear to him.
One table remained vacant, in a bad position well away from the
dance-floor, and the party was shown to it and at once supplied with
a bottle of whisky and a bowl of ice and a syphon of soda, along with
dishes of junk food of the kind Godwin had been resolutely refusing
since his arrival. Like alcohol, that was something he would only risk
in the security of home. He waited another couple of minutes until the
group settled down, then rose and approached them with his most leonine
strides. Thanks to Irma, his body tingled with vitality, and virtually
everyone in the place stared at him as he moved.
The girl started up from her chair in excitement, holding out her hand
to seize his as soon as he came in range.
"I'm so glad you're here!" she exclaimed. "Let me introduce my friends!
This is Rashad. This is Afif. This is Peggy. This is Godwin!"
He acknowledged them with a succession of cool nods, not letting go of
her hand. It was very clear from their expressions that neither Afif --
the older -- nor Rashad welcomed his intrusion. In fact both looked in
a thoroughly bad temper. He sensed storm warnings, but continued anyhow.
"Hello . . . I came over to ask if you'd like to dance with me."
Beautifully controlled, his voice lanced through the din.
"Yes, I'd love to! You will excuse me, won't you?" -- to Rashad,
who was clearly her partner for the evening, wherever it had begun.
"No," he said.
Startled, she stared at him, poised half out of her chair.
He pointed at the dance floor. Some quiet persuasion from the management
had removed from it the girls who were going topless and obliged them
to dress again, but two or three who were up there now were in shorts
and halters or strapless dresses slit to the thigh.
"No," he said again. "I have bought you for tonight. You have been paid for.
If you dance, you will dance with me or with my brother."
The brother nodded firm agreement. Blond Peggy looked a trifle alarmed,
but did her best to conceal her reaction.
Godwin planted the knuckles of both fists on the table and leaned
toward Rashad.
"I asked the lady if she'd like to dance with me and she said yes," he
stated in level tones. "She said yes. I don't care how you treat women
in the slave markets of wog-land, but in this country they are not for
buying and selling. They are people. Got that? Now let's go and dance,"
he concluded, turning to the girl again.
Rashad's hand flashed across the table and seized her by the wrist.
"You will do as you are told!" he hissed.
"Let go -- you're hurting!" she cried.
By now the attention of half the room was on them. Most of the dancers
had checked in mid-movement and were staring this way; eyes wide, lips
apart, they were visibly hungry for something out of the ordinary run
of events, and if it was violent they would be most pleased.
It was not going to turn out that way.
Three tall male members of the staff converged, two to take station either
side of Godwin, one to bend deferentially over the Arabs' table and say,
"Is this gentleman disturbing you?"
Rashad uttered an Arabic curse and made as though to spit. The deferential
one turned to Godwin.
"I believe the manager would like a word with you, sir. This way,
if you please."
After what Irma had done to him, Godwin was well aware he could have
broken all three of them into small pieces and scarcely been out of breath
at the end of it, but somehow this did not feel like the right response.
Shrugging, he let himself be led through a door set inconspicuously at
the end of the bar, and instantly he was in another world: one of hustle
and bustle, of deliveries and shouted orders, of dust and litter and
junk to be concealed from the gaze of the clientele. A few yards along a
dim-lit corridor, and they entered the manager's office: a shabby room
with functional furniture, an old-fashioned desk, telephones, filing
cabinets, a worn rug on a concrete floor.
The manager, a balding man of fifty-odd, didn't even glance up as he
spoke on Godwin's entrance.
"I don't know what your game is, chum, but I don't like it. I'm not even
sure you're you, and not your twin brother. Last night and the night
before, you come in here like the original big spender, you make with
the tips and the champagne, you generally make yourself welcome. Tonight
you don't eat, you don't drink, you don't dance, you sit there like a
bloody statue
and
, to crown it all, you make waves with Prince Afif
and Prince Rashad -- "
One of the phones on his desk buzzed; it was an internal one. He barked
at it, "Yes?" And listened.
"The hell you say," he said after a while. "That's exactly what we
don't need!"
Cradling the receiver, he stared directly at Godwin for the first time.
"They marched out!" he snapped. "Said this wasn't the way they expected
to be treated! I hope you're bloody satisfied!"
"What do you expect me to do if your rich chums behave like slave dealers?"
Godwin countered.
"I don't give a damn what you do so long as it doesn't fuck up my
operation!" He pulled himself to his feet; he overtopped Godwin by a
good three inches.
"I gather you have a room in the hotel. Go to it! Get some beddy-byes! And
don't come back in my disco, hear? Not until you're prepared to act
like a customer again instead of a specter at the bloody feast! Christ,
what do you expect me to do -- carry you because you spent so much here
already you ran out of money? It won't work on me, chummy, if that is
your game! I've had 'em all in here, and I keep the ones who can afford
it. And only those! Now you get lost, okay?" To one of the heavies he
added, "Show him back to the foyer. And I mean show him! Don't turn him
loose to 'lose his way' and sneak back into the disco!"
Meekly Godwin let himself be shown, knowing what was in store.
He just had time, eluding his escort, to vanish through the door marked
Gentlemen before the pangs of punishment descended. There was one
astonished young man in the toilet -- barely more than a boy -- who
summed up his condition in a single glance and hurried away . . . and
was wrong. Contrary to appearances, Godwin was not drunk enough to vomit,
though his paleness and unsteady gait combined to give that impression.
He was simply suffering, and resigned to the fact. He had, after all,
messed up his assignment . . . one of the sort he was good at.
In a bolted cubicle he struggled not to resist the pangs, recognizing
them as just. But repressing the moans called forth from him cost all
his energy, and when it was over he had to sit with head in hands for
a long while before he dared venture forth again.
He used the time well, though, and made plans.
Miraculously, it appeared that no one had remembered to get at Jackson.
Emerging cautiously into the hotel lobby, Godwin put on the boldest face
he could contrive, and strolled toward the entrance as though to glance
at the weather. The commissionaire leaped to attention.
"Going out, sir?"
"Not right away," Godwin said musingly, and contrived to slide a fiver
into the man's hand. "But . . . Well, you saw Prince Rashad and Prince
Afif leave some time ago with a couple of girls?"
"Oh, yes! With Peggy and Gorse. I called them a cab."
"Well, I'm going to be in the lounge bar for a while" -- with a jerk
of his head. "I'd like to know when they come back. I take it they will
come back? They have rooms here?"
"The Imperial Suite on the second floor," Jackson confided. He had made
the money vanish without so much as a rustle.
"Fine. I'll sit where I can see you reflected in that glass door,"
Godwin said, having rapidly checked several possibilities in his mind's
eye. "Give me a signal -- wave your arm up and down, or something --
as soon as you recognize them. Okay?"
"Will do," Jackson said, and Godwin headed for the lounge.
It was almost two hours before the signal came. Thirty cabs had drawn up
-- for want of any better way to pass the time, Godwin had kept score --
and this was the thirty-first. The lounge barman was reading a newspaper
and trying not to yawn; the lights were lowered in the foyer; outside,
the last of the beggars had quit for the night.
Godwin rose to his feet with electric rapidity and strode out through
the automatic doors so fast they would not have had time to open for
him. Jackson, though, was already treading on the sensor pad against the
arrival of the princes and their women. The taxi was drawing away. Godwin
shouted commandingly, "Hang on, driver! I want you!"
Obediently the woman -- for it was a woman at the wheel -- braked and
reversed.
The girl who had been identified by the peculiar name of Gorse was
red-eyed and looked as though she had been crying. Peggy was attempting
to comfort her. Both the brothers wore expressions of thundercloud rage
and were talking to one another in rapid Arabic, paying no more attention
to the girls than to make sure they were not trying to cut and run.
The moment they recognized Godwin, they halted in their tracks and
flinched away from him. He closed on them with his fists raised to elbow
height, wider apart than the width of his body, and the eyes of each
fixed, fascinated, on one fist.
"I told you," he said mildly. "I don't care what you get up to in
wog-land, but here we don't buy and sell women!"
And instead of punching, he kicked, leaping into the air like a ballet
dancer. He caught Rashad first just below the left kneecap and the man
crumpled with a yell; then he took Afif in the crotch and strode between
the pair of them with one hand poised to catch Gorse by the elbow. With
his other hand he hauled open the taxi's door, and seconds later they were
safely inside. Reflex made the driver start up the instant the door shut.
"Hey, I say!" she shouted over her shoulder. "I don't like what you
just done! You get right out of this cab again, now! Or else I'll call
a copper, understand?"
But before she could brake to a halt, Godwin said, "They were going to
sell her as a white slave!"
Prompt on cue, the girl crumpled against his shoulder and began to utter
huge gut-wrenching sobs.
Before the driver could say anything else Godwin gave her his address
and leaned back, stroking Gorse's soft dark hair with its incongruous
silver streak as though he were comforting a little child.
So far the whole episode had gone so smoothly he was already on the
verge of being bored.
When they were nearly at their destination Gorse sat up without warning
and said slowly and clearly, "Please stop. I think I'm going to be sick."
Godwin tapped on the glass partition behind the driver, who understood
instantly and pulled in at the curb. Deftly he opened the door and thrust
her head out just far enough, keeping his other arm around her to steady
her. She uttered a gush of liquid that made the air stink of gin.
Wiping her chin with a handkerchief, he sat her back and closed the door
again, and they completed their journey without further incident.
In his home street all but two of the lamps were out. She shivered
noticeably as he helped her to the ground, having already passed the cab
fare plus a generous tip to the driver. Slowly, through her alcoholic
fog, she registered the high-piled rubbish in the gutters, the derelict
cars, the dark faces of the houses where many windows had been broken
and mended, after a fashion, with cardboard or sheets of plastic.
"What have you brought me here for?" she demanded between a cry and a sob.
"It's where I live," he answered, taking her arm and guiding her roughly
up the steps of his home. She tried to rebel, tried to hang back -- but
a fresh bout of nausea overcame her, and this time instead of spurting
out, her vomit dribbled, staining the front of her clothes.
Godwin waited with forced patience until the spasm passed, then urged
her indoors. "You're not going anywhere in that state," he muttered. But
she scarcely paid attention. She was gesturing at herself, shuddering.
"I didn't mean to make such a mess of myself!" she wailed. "I'm so sorry,
I'm so ashamed, I'm such a fool!"
"Right."
He got her up the stairs and into his room, turning it on as he opened
the door. She was too befuddled with drink to notice its details,
though he himself was rather pleased with them: his usual waterbed, some
wall-sized enlargements of erotic pen-and-wash drawings by the French
artist Bertrand, several more wardrobes than usual, and a cabinet of
perfectly clear glass around the shower, bidet, and toilet bowl. Also
the towels were black, a highly suitable color.
Quiet music began, intermingled with the wash of waves on a beach, and
the air was warm and fresh and the lamps, when they came on, shed the
color of moonlight in irregular patches.
Not bad.
But he had other preoccupations. He said, "Get out of those filthy clothes."
She had begun to cry again as they came upstairs. The brusqueness of his
command snapped her back to awareness. She stared at him with a hurt,
little-girl look.
"I said get out of them! They reek of vomit!"
"But -- but I only bought them day before yesterday! This is my best gear!
I can't just . . ."
The words tailed away as she gazed down at herself and realized just
how much of a mess she had created. Before she could recover, he reached
out with careful precision and tore the garments away from her: rr-rip,
rr-rr-rip. He balled up the fabric and flung it in the direction of a
waste bin.
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