"But it might as well be you," Mawhrin-Skel hissed, floating still closer.
Gurgeh had to draw away to focus on the device. "Well—"
"Why leave it to chance, Jernau Gurgeh?" Mawhrin-Skel said, pulling back a little. "Why abandon it to mere, stupid luck?"
"What are you talking about?" Gurgeh said slowly, eyes narrowing. The drug-trance was dissipating, the spell breaking. He felt keen, keyed-up; nervous and excited at once.
"I can tell you which beads are in which globes," Mawhrin-Skel said.
Gurgeh laughed gently. "Nonsense."
The drone floated closer. "I can. They didn't tear everything out of me when they turned me away from SC. I have more senses than cretins like Amalk-ney have even heard of." It closed in. "Let me use them; let me tell you what is where in your bead-game. Let me help you to the Full Web."
Gurgeh stood back from the balustrade, shaking his head. "You can't. The other drones—"
"— are weak simpletons, Gurgeh," Mawhrin-Skel insisted. "I have the measure of them, believe me. Trust me. Another SC machine, definitely not; a Contact drone, probably not… but this gang of obsoletes? I could find out where every bead that girl has placed is. Every single one!"
"You wouldn't need them all," Gurgeh said, looking troubled, waving his hand.
"Well then! Better yet! Let me do it! Just to prove to you! To myself!"
[]
"You're talking about cheating, Mawhrin-Skel," Gurgeh said, looking round the plaza. There was nobody near by. The paper lanterns and the stone ribs they hung from were invisible from where he stood.
"You're going to win; what difference does it make?"
"It's still cheating."
"You said yourself it's all luck. You've won—"
"Not definitely."
"Almost certainly; a thousand to one you don't."
"Probably longer odds than that," Gurgeh conceded.
"So the game is over. The girl can't lose any more than she has already. Let her be part of a game that will go down in history. Give her that!"
"It," Gurgeh said, slapping his hand on the stonework, "is," another slap, "still," slap, "cheating!"
"Keep your voice down," Mawhrin-Skel murmured. It backed away a little. It spoke so low he had to lean out over the drop to hear it. "It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority — a majority, mark you; not all — of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"
"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.
"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage."
The drone hung above the drop and the waking plain. Gurgeh watched the Orbital dawn come up, swinging from the edge of the world. "Take hold of your luck, Gurgeh. Accept what I'm offering you. Just this once let's both make our own chances. You already know you're one of the best in the Culture; I'm not trying to flatter you; you know that. But this win would seal that fame for ever."
"If it's possible…" Gurgeh said, then went silent. His jaw clenched. The drone sensed him trying to control himself the way he had done on the steps up to Hafflis's house, seven hours ago.
"If it isn't, at least have the courage to know," Mawhrin-Skel said, voice pitched at an extremity of pleading.
The man raised his eyes to the clear blue-pinks of dawn. The ruffled, misty plain looked like a vast and tousled bed. "You're crazy, drone. You could never do it."
"I know what I can do, Jernau Gurgeh," the drone said. It pulled away again, sat in the air, regarding him.
He thought of that morning, sitting on the train; the rush of that delicious fear. Like an omen, now.
Luck; simple chance.
He knew the drone was right. He knew it was wrong; but he knew it was right, too. It all depended on him.
He leant against the balustrade. Something in his pocket dug into his chest. He felt in, pulled out the hidden-piece wafer he'd taken as a memento after the disastrous Possession game. He turned the wafer over in his hands a few times. He looked at the drone, and suddenly felt very old and very child-like at the same time.
"If," he said slowly, "anything goes wrong, if you're found out — I'm dead. I'll kill myself. Brain death; complete and utter. No remains."
"Nothing is going to go wrong. For me, it is the simplest thing in the world to find out what's inside those shells."
"What if you are discovered, though? What if there is an SC drone around here somewhere, or the Hub is watching?"
The drone said nothing for a moment. "They'd have noticed by now. It is already done."
Gurgeh opened his mouth to speak, but the drone quickly floated closer, calmly continuing. "For my own sake, Gurgeh… for my own peace of mind. I wanted to know, too. I came back long ago; I've been watching for the past five hours, quite fascinated. I couldn't resist finding out if it was possible…. To be honest, I still don't know; the game is beyond me, just over-complicated for the way my poor target tracking mind is configured… but I had to try to find out. I had to. So, you see; the risk is run, Gurgeh; the deed is done. I can tell you what you need to know…. And I ask nothing in return; that's up to you. Maybe you can do something for me some day, but no obligation; believe me, please believe me. No obligation at all. I'm doing this because I want to see you — somebody; anybody — do it."
Gurgeh looked at the drone. His mouth was dry. He could hear somebody shouting in the distance. The terminal button on his jacket shoulder beeped. He drew breath to speak to it, but then heard his own voice say, "Yes?"
"Ready to resume, Jernau?" Chamlis said from the button.
And he heard his own voice say, "I'm on my way."
He stared at the drone as the terminal beeped off.
Mawhrin-Skel floated closer. "As I said, Jernau Gurgeh; I can fool these adding machines, no problem at all. Quickly now. Do you want to know or not? The Full Web; yes or no?"
Gurgeh glanced round in the direction of Hafflis's apartments. He turned back, leant out over the drop, towards the drone.
"All right," he said, whispering, "just the five prime points and the four verticals nearest topside centre. No more."
Mawhrin-Skel told him.
It was almost enough. The girl struggled brilliantly to the very end, and deprived him on the final move.
The Full Web fell apart, and he won by thirty-one points, two short of the Culture's existing record.
One of Estray Hafftis's house drones was dimly confused to discover, while cleaning up under the great stone table much later that morning, a crushed and shattered ceramic wafer with warped and twisted numbered dials set into its crazed and distorted surface.
It wasn't part of the house Possession set.
The machine's non-sentient, mechanistic, entirely predictable brain thought about it for a while, then finally decided to junk the mysterious remnant along with the rest of the debris.
When he woke up that afternoon, it was with the memory of defeat. It was some time before he recalled that he had in fact won the Stricken game. Victory had never been so bitter.