“I am, you see,” went on the magistrate, “one of the real people who actually plays the Game. But perhaps you don’t know about the Game, Human?”
Coley rubbed his dry lips in what he hoped was a casual gesture.
“A little about it,” he said.
“You could hardly,” said the magistrate, leaning on the high desk, “know more than a little. Understanding in its full sense would be beyond you. You see—we real people, all of us, hope to reach Old Age.” He paused, his black eyes steady on Coley. “Of course, I am not speaking of a physical old age, an age of the body, which is nothing. I am speaking of true Old Age, that highest level of development that is winnable.”
“That’s pretty much how I heard it,” said Cole.
“Few of us,” said the magistrate, going on as if Cole had said nothing, “very few of us make it, and we do it only by playing the Game to perfection.”
“Oh. I see,” said Coley.
“It does not matter if you do,” said the magistrate. “What matters is that I offer you this explanation, leaving it up to you to use, misuse or ignore it as you will. Because, you see, there is one thing required of a player of the Game.” He paused, looking at Coley.
“What?” said Coley, filling the gap in the conversation
“Consistency,” said the magistrate. “His rules of living—which he chooses for himself—may be anything, good or bad. But having adopted them, he must live by them. He cannot do himself the violence of violating his own principles. A person may adopt selfishness as a principle; but, having adopted it, he may not allow himself the luxury of unselfishness. He must live by the principles chosen in youth—and with them try to survive to years of maturity and wisdom.” He paused. “If he falters, or if the world kills or destroys him, he has lost the Game. So far—” he leaned a little closer to Coley—“I have neither faltered nor been destroyed. And one of my principles is absolute honesty. Another is the destruction of the dishonest.”
“I see,” said Coley. “Well, what I meant was—”
“You,” went on the magistrate, inexorably, “are one of the dishonest.”
“Now, wait! Wait!” cried Coley. “You can’t judge us by your standards. We’re Human!”
“You say that as if it entitled you to special privileges,” said the magistrate, almost dreamily. “The proof of the fact that the Game encompasses even you is the fact that you are here caught up in it.” He reached below the table and came up with a sort of hour-glass, filled not with sand but with some heavy liquid. He turned it over. “This will run out in a few moments,” he said. “If before it has run out you come up with a good reason why you should, within the rules of the Game, be allowed on into the Human Compound, I will let you and the female go. Otherwise, I will have you both destroyed.”
The liquid from the little transparent pyramid at the top of the timing device began to run, drop by drop, down into the pyramid below. The liquid was clear, with no reddish tint, but to Coley it looked like the blood he could feel similarly draining out of his heart. His mind flung itself suddenly open, as if under the influence of some powerfully stimulating drug, and thoughts flashed through it like small bursts of light. His gutter-bred brain was crying out that there was a gimmick somewhere, that there was a loophole in any law, or something new to get around it—The liquid in the top of the timer had almost run out.
And then he had it.
“How can you be sure,” said Coley, “that you’re not interrupting a process that greater minds than your own have put in motion?”
The magistrate reached slowly out, took the timer from the top of the desk and put it out of sight behind the desk top.
“I’ll have you escorted to the gates of the Human Compound by one of our police persons,” he said.
Coley was furious—and that fury of his, according to his way of doing things, hid not a little fear.
“Calm down,” said his jailer, one of a squad of star-marines attached to the embassy, unlocking the cell door. “I’ll have you out in a minute.”
“You’d better, lint-picker,” said Coley.
“Let’s watch the names,” said the star-marine. He was almost as big as Coley. He came inside and stood a few inches from Coley, facing him. “They want you upstairs in the Consul’s office. But we got a couple of minutes to spare, if you insist.” Coley opened his mouth—then shut it again.
“Forget it,” growled Coley. “Shoved into jail—locked up all night with no explanation—you’d be hot, too. I want to see that Consul.”
“This way,” said the jailer, standing aside. Coley allowed himself to be escorted out of the cell, down a corridor, and up a fall-tube. They went a little way down another corridor and through a light-door into the same office Coley had been in before. Some two weeks before, to be precise. The Consul, Ivor Ben was standing with his back to the hunched, smoke tube in his fingers, and a not pleasant look on his aristocratic face.
“Stand over there,” he said; and crossing to his desk, pushed a button on it. “Bring in the girl,” he said. He pushed another button. “Let Ansash in now.”
He straightened up behind the desk. A door opened behind Coley; and he turned to see the girl he had escorted from Tannakil. She looked at him with her usual look, advanced a few steps into the office, as the door closed behind her, and then halted—as if the machinery that operated her had just run down.
Only a couple of seconds later, a door at the other end of the room opened, and Ansash came in. He walked slowly into the room, taking in Coley and the girl with his eyes.
“Well, hello there,” said Coley. Ansash considered him flatly.
“Hello,” he said in Basic, with no inflection whatsoever. He turned to the Consul. “May I have an explanation?”
The Consul swiveled about to look at Coley.
“How about it?”
“How about what?” said Coley.
The Consul stalked out from behind his desk and up to Coley, looking like some small rooster ruffling up to a turkey. He pointed past Coley at the girl.
“This is not the woman I sent you to get!” he said tightly.
“Oh, I know that,” said Coley.
The Consul stared at him.
“You know it?” he echoed.
“He could hardly avoid knowing,” put in the smooth voice of Ansash. “He was left alone with this female briefly, when I went to fetch his beloved. When I returned, he had vanished with this one.”
The Consul, who had looked aside at Ansash when the other started speaking, looked back at Coley, bleakly and bitterly.
“That,” went on Ansash, “is the first cause of the complaint I brought you this morning. In addition to stealing this real person, the Human, Coley Yunce, has committed other crimes upon the earth of Yara, up to and including murder.”
“Yes,” breathed the Consul, still staring at Coley. Coley looked bewildered.
“You mean she’s no good?” he asked the Consul.
“No good? She isn’t Sara Illoy, is she?” exploded the Consul.
“I mean, won’t she do?” said Coley. “I mean—she looks pretty human. And she talks fine Basic—” He stepped over to the girl and put a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Recite for them, Honey. Come on, now—‘Friends, Romans—’.”
She looked up into his face and something that might almost have been a smile twitched at her expressionless mouth. She opened her lips and began to recite in an atrocious accent.
“Frendz, Rawmans, Cundzrememns, I cauzm nodt do burrey Shaayzar, budt do brayze ymn. Dee eefil dwadt memn dooo—”
“Never mind! Never mind!” cried the Consul, furiously; and the girl shut up. “You must have been out of your head!” he barked, and swung about on Ansash. “Very clever, my friend,” he grated. “My compliments to Yara. I suppose you know the real Sara Illoy came back of her own accord, the day after this man left.”