Gurgeh didn't know what to say. There was a strange tingling feeling at the back of his neck. He cleared his throat a couple of times. In the end all he could find to say was, "I hope you do win. I really hope you do."
The woman looked briefly up at him, then down again. She shook her head.
After a while, Gurgeh suggested that he take her back to her father, and she assented. She said one more thing.
They were walking down the great hall, threading their way through the clumps of people to where her father waited, and at one point they passed between a great carved pillar and a wall of battle-murals. During the instant they were quite hidden from the rest of the room, the woman reached out one hand and touched him on the top of his wrist; with the other hand she pressed a finger over a particular point on the shoulder of his robe, and with that one finger pressing, and the others lightly brushing his arm, in the same moment whispered, "You win. You win!"
Then they were with her father, and after repeating how welcome he felt, Gurgeh left the family group. The woman didn't look at him again. He had had no time to reply to her.
"Are you all right, Jernau Gurgeh?" Flere-Imsaho said, finding the man leaning against a wall and seemingly just staring into space, as though he was one of the liveried male servants.
Gurgeh looked at the drone. He put his finger to the point on the robe's shoulder the girl had pressed. "Is this where the bug is on this thing?"
"Yes," the machine said. "That's right. Did Shohobohaum Za tell you that?"
"Hmm, thought so," Gurgeh said. He pushed himself away from the wall. "Would it be polite to leave now?"
"Now?" The drone started back a little, humming loudly. "Well, I suppose so… are you sure you're all right?"
"Never felt better. Let's go." Gurgeh walked away.
"You seem agitated. Are you really alright? Aren't you enjoying yourself? What did Za give you to drink? Are you nervous about the game? Has Za said something? Is it because nobody'll touch you?"
Gurgeh walked through the people, ignoring the humming, crackling drone at his shoulder.
As they left the great ballroom, he realised that apart from remembering that she was called somebody's-daughter, he had forgotten the woman's name.
Gurgeh was due to play his first game of Azad two days after the ball. He spent the time working out a few set-piece manoeuvres with the Limiting Factor. He could have used the module's brain, but the old warship had a more interesting game-style. The fact that the Limiting Factor was several decades away by real space light meant there was a significant delay involved — the ship itself always replied instantly to a move — but the effect was still of playing an extraordinarily quick and gifted player.
Gurgeh didn't take up any more invitations to formal functions; he'd told Pequil his digestive system was taking time to adjust to the Empire's rich food, and that appeared to be an acceptable excuse. He even refused the chance to go on a sight-seeing trip of the capital.
He saw nobody during those days except Flere-Imsaho, which spent most of its time, in its disguise, sitting on the hotel parapet, humming quietly and watching birds, which it attracted with crumbs scattered on the roof-garden lawn.
Now and again, Gurgeh would walk out on to the grassed roof and stand looking out over the city.
The streets and the sky were both full of traffic. Groasnachek was like a great, flattened, spiky animal, awash with lights at night and hazy with its own heaped breath during the day. It spoke with a great, garbled choir of voices; an encompassing background roar of engines and machines that never ceased, and the sporadic tearing sounds of passing aircraft. The continual wails, whoops, warbles and screams of sirens and alarms were strewn across the fabric of the city like shrapnel holes.
Architecturally, Gurgeh thought, the place was a hopeless mix of styles, and far too big. Some buildings soared, some sprawled, but each seemed to have been designed without any regard to any other, and the whole effect — which might have been interestingly varied — was in fact gruesome. He kept thinking of the Little Rascal, holding ten times as many people as the city in a smaller area, and far more elegantly, even though most of the craft's volume was taken up with ship-building space, engines, and other equipment.
Groasnachek had all the planning of a bird-dropping, Gurgeh thought, and the city was its own maze.
When the day came for the game to start he woke feeling elated, as though he'd just won a game, rather than being about to embark on the first real, serious match of his life. He ate very little for breakfast, and dressed slowly in the ceremonial garments the game required; rather ridiculous gathered-up clothes, with soft slippers and hose beneath a bulky jacket with rolled, gartered sleeves. At least, as a novice, Gurgeh's robes were relatively unornamented, and restrained in colour.
Pequil arrived to take him to the game in an official groundcar. The apex chattered during the journey, enthusing about some recent conquest the Empire had made in a distant region of space; a glorious victory.
The car sped along the broad streets, heading for the outskirts of the city where the public hall Gurgeh would play in had been converted into a game-room.
All over the city that morning, people were going to their first game of the new series; from the most optimistic young player lucky enough to win a place in the games in a state lottery, right up to Nicosar himself, those twelve thousand people faced that day knowing that their lives might change utterly and for ever, for better or worse, starting from right now. The whole city was alive with the game-fever which infected it every six years; Groasnachek was packed with the players, their retinues, advisors, college mentors, relations and friends, the Empire's press and news-services, and visiting delegations from colonies and oominions there to watch the future course of imperial history being decided.
Despite his earlier euphoria, Gurgeh discovered that his hands were shaking by the time they arrived at the hall, and as he was led into the place with its high white walls and its echoing wooden floor, an unpleasant sensation of churning seemed to emanate from his belly. It felt quite different from the normal feeling of being keyed-up which he experienced before most games; this was something else; keener, and more thrilling and unsettling than anything he'd known before. All that lightened this mood of tension was discovering that Flere-Imsaho had been refused permission to remain in the game-hall when the match was in progress; it would have to stay outside. Its display of clicking, humming, crackling crudity had not been sufficient to convince the imperial authorities that it was incapable of somehow assisting Gurgeh during the game. It was shown to a small pavilion in the grounds of the hall, to wait there with the imperial guards on security duty.
It complained, loudly.
Gurgeh was introduced to the other nine people in his game. In theory, they had all been chosen at random. They greeted him cordially enough, though one of them, a junior imperial priest, nodded rather than spoke to him.
They played the lesser game of strategy-cards first. Gurgeh started very cautiously, surrendering cards and points to discover what the others held. When it finally became obvious, he began playing properly, hoping he would not be made to look too silly in the rush, but over the next few turns he realised the others were still unsure exactly who held what, and he was the only one playing the game as though it was in its final stages.
Thinking that perhaps he'd missed something, he played a couple of more exploratory cards, and only then did the priest start to play for the end. Gurgeh resumed, and when the game finished before midday he held more points than anybody else.
"So far so good, eh, drone?" he said to Flere-Imsaho. He was sitting at the table where the players, game-officials and some of the more important spectators were at lunch.