Philip Dick: The Game-Players Of Titan

There's no one that can beat me at Bluff, Luckman said to himself. And everybody knows that. Still, with a pre-cog... it was a sure thing. And he liked the idea of a sure thing because although he was an expert Bluff player he did not like to gamble. He had not played because he enjoyed it; he had played to win.

He had, for instance, run the great Game-player Joe Schilling right out of existence. Now Joe operated a little old phonograph record shop in New Mexico; his Game-playing days were over.

"Remember how I beat Joe Schilling?" he said to Sid. "That last play, it's still in my mind, every detail. Joe rolled a five with the dice and drew a card from the fifth deck. He looked at it a long time, much too long. I knew then that he was going to bluff. Finally he moved his piece eight squares ahead; that put him on a top-win square; you know, that one about inheriting one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from a dead uncle. That piece of his sat on that square and I looked at it—" He had, perhaps, a little Psionic talent of his own, because it had seemed to him that actually he could read Joe Schilling's mind. You drew a six, he had felt with absolute conviction. Your move eight squares ahead is a bluff.

Aloud, he said that, called Schilling's bluff. At that time,

Joe had been New York City Bindman and could beat anyone at The Game; it was rare for any player to call one of Joe's moves.

Raising his great shaggy, bearded head, Joe Schilling had eyed him. There was silence. All the players waited.

"You really want to see the card I drew?" Joe Schilling asked.

"Yes." He waited, unable to breathe; his lungs ached. If he were wrong, if the card really were an eight, then Joe Schilling had won again and his grip on New York City was even more secure.

Joe Schilling said quietly, "It was a six." He flipped over the card. Luckman had been right; it had been a bluff.

And the title deed to Greater New York City was his.

The cat on Luckman's desk yawned, now, hoping for breakfast; Luckman pushed it away and it hopped to the floor. "Parasite," Luckman said to it, but he felt fond of the cat; he believed devoutly that cats were lucky. He had had two toms with him in the condominium apartment that night when he had beaten Joe Schilling; perhaps they had done it, rather than a latent Psionic talent.

"I have Dave Mutreaux on the vid," his secretary said. "He's standing by. Do you want to speak to him personally?"

"If he's a genuine pre-cog," Luckman said, "he already knows what I want, so there's no need for me or anyone else to speak to the zwepp." The paradoxes of pre-cognition always amused and irked him. "Cut the circuit, Sid, and if he never shows up here it proves he's no good."

Sid, obediently, cut the circuit; the screen died. "But let me point out," Sid said, "you never spoke to him, so there never was anything for him to preview. Isn't that right?"

"He can preview the actual interview with me," Luckman answered. "Here in my office. When I give him his instructions."

"I guess that's right," Sid admitted.

"Berkeley," Luckman said musingly. "I haven't been there in eighty or ninety years." Like many Bindmen he did not like to enter an area which he did not own; it was a superstitution, perhaps, but he considered it decidedly bad luck. "I wonder if it's still foggy there. Well, I'll soon see."

From his desk drawer he brought forth the title deed which the broker had delivered to him. "Let's see who was Bindman last," he said, reading the deed. "Walter Remington; he's the one who won it last night and then right away sold it. And before him, a fellow named Peter Garden. I wouldn't be surprised if this Peter Garden is angry as hell, right now, or will be when he finds out. He probably figures on winning it back." And he'll never win it back now, Luckman said to himself. Not from me.

"Are you going to fly out there to the Coast?" Sid asked.

"Right," Luckman said. "As soon as I get packed. I'm going to set up a vacation residence in Berkeley assuming I like it—assuming it isn't decayed. One thing I can't stand is a decayed town; I don't mind them empty, that you expect. But decay." He shuddered. If there was one thing that was surely bad luck it was a town which had fallen into ruin, as many of the towns in the South had. In his early days he had been Bindman for several towns in North Carolina. He would never forget the fshnuger experience.

Sid asked, "Can I be honorary Bindman while you're gone?"

"Sure," Luckman said expansively. "I'll write you out a parchment scroll in gold and seal it with red wax and ribbon."

"Really?" Sid said, eyeing him uncertainly.

Luckman laughed. "You'd like that, a lot of ceremony. Like Pooh-bah in the Mikado. Lord High Honorary Bindman of New York City, and tax assessments fixed on the side. Right?"

Flushing, Sid murmured, "I notice you worked hard for darn near sixty-five years to get to be Bindman for this area."

"That's because of my social plans to improve the milieu," Luckman said. "When I took over the title deed there were only a few hundred people here. Now look at the population. It's due to me—not directly, but because I encouraged non-B people to play The Game, strictly for the pairing and re-pairing of mates, isn't that a fact?"

"Sure, Mr. Luckman," Sid said. "That's a fact."

"And because of that, a lot of fertile couples were un-

covered that otherwise never would have paired off, right?"

"Yes," Sid said, nodding. "The way you've got this musical chairs you're practically single-handedly bringing back the human race."

"And don't forget it," Luckman said. Bending, he picked up another of his cats, this one a black Manx female. "I'll take you along," he told the cat as he petted her. "I'll take maybe six or seven cats along with me," he decided. "For luck." And also, although he did not say it, for company. Nobody on the West Coast liked him; he would not have his people, his non-Bs, to say hello to him every time he ventured forth. Thinking that, he felt sad. But, he thought, after I've lived there a while I'll have it built up like New York; it won't be an emptiness haunted by the past.

Ghosts, he thought, of our life the way it was, when our population was splitting the seams of this planet, spilling over onto Luna and even Mars. Populations on the verge of migration, and then those stupid jackasses, those Red Chinese, had to use that East German invention of that ex-Nazi, that—he could not even think the words that described Bernhardt Hinkel. Too bad Hinkel isn't still alive, Luckman said to himself. I'd like to have a few minutes alone with him. With no one else watching.

The only good thing you could say about the Hinkel Radiation was that it had finally reached East Germany.

There was one person who would know whom Matt Pendleton Associates would be fronting for, Pete Garden decided as he left the apartment in San Rafael and hurried to his parked car. It's worth a trip to New Mexico, to Colonel Kitchener's town, Albuquerque. Anyhow I have to go there to pick up a record.

Two days ago he had received a letter from Joe Schilling, the world's foremost rare phonograph record dealer; a Tito Schipa disc which Pete had asked for had finally been tracked down and was waiting for him.

"Good morning, Mr. Garden," his car said as he unlocked the door with his key.

"Hi," Pete said, preoccupied.

Now, from the driveway of the apartment house across

the street, the two children that he had heard earlier emerged to stare at him.

"Are you the Bindman?" the girl asked. They had made out his insignia, the brilliantly-colored armband. "We never saw you before, Mr. Bindman," the girl said, awed. She was, Pete guessed, about eight years old.

He explained, "That's because I haven't been here to Marin County in years." Walking toward the two of them, he said, "What are your names?"