Pequil shoved his way through the crowd and bustled up to Gurgeh, but instead of coming to rescue the man, he told him he'd brought another twenty reporters with him. He touched Gurgeh without seeming to think about it, turning him to face some cameras. More questions followed, but Gurgeh ignored them. He had to ask Pequil several times if he could leave before the apex had a path cleared to the door and the waiting car.
"Mr Gurgee; let me add my congratulations." Pequil said in the car. "I heard while I was in the office and came straight away. A famous victory."
"Thank you," Gurgeh said, slowly calming himself. He sat in the car's plushly upholstered seat, looking out at the sunlit city. The car was air-conditioned, unlike the game-hall, but it was only now Gurgeh found himself sweating. He shivered.
"Me too," Flere-Imsaho said. "You raised your game just in time."
"Thank you, drone."
"You were lucky as hell, too, mind you."
"I trust you'll let me arrange a proper press-conference, Mr Gurgee," Pequil said eagerly. "I'm sure you're going to be quite famous after this, no matter what happens during the rest of the match. Heavens, you'll be sharing leaders with the Emperor himself tonight!"
"No thanks," Gurgeh said. "Don't arrange anything." He couldn't think that he'd have anything useful to tell people. What was there to say? He'd won the game; he'd every chance of taking the match itself.
He was anyway a little uncomfortable at the thought of his image and voice being broadcast all over the Empire, and his story, undoubtedly sensationalised, being told and retold and distorted by these people. "Oh but you must!" Pequil protested. "Everybody will want to see you! You don't seem to realise what you've done; even if you lose the match you've established a new record! Nobody has ever come back from being so far behind! It was quite brilliant!"
"All the same," Gurgeh said, suddenly feeling very tired, "I don't want to be distracted. I have to concentrate. I have to rest."
"Well," Pequil said, looking crestfallen, "I see your point, but I warn you; you're making a mistake. People will want to hear what you've got to say, and our press always gives the people what they want, no matter what the difficulties. They'll just make it up. You'd be better off saying something yourself."
Gurgeh shook his head, looked out at the traffic on the boulevard. "If people want to lie about me that's a matter for their consciences. At least I don't have to talk to them. I really could not care less what they say."
Pequil looked at Gurgeh with an expression of astonishment, but said nothing. Flere-Imsaho made a chuckling noise over its constant hum.
Gurgeh talked it over with the ship. The Limiting Factor said that the game could probably have been won more elegantly, but what Gurgeh had done did represent one end of the spectrum of unlikely possibilities it had been going to sketch out the previous night. It congratulated him. He had played better than it had thought possible. It also asked him why he hadn't listened after it had told him it could see a way out.
"All I wanted to know was that there was a way out."
(Again the delay, the weight of time while his beamed words lanced beneath the matter-dimpled surface that was real space.)
"But I could have helped you," said the ship. "I thought it was a bad sign when you refused my aid. I began to think you had given up in your mind, if not on the board."
"I didn't want help, ship." He played with the Orbital bracelet, wondering absently if it portrayed any particular world, and if so, which. "I wanted hope."
"I see," the ship said, eventually.
"I wouldn't accept it," the drone said.
"You wouldn't accept what?" Gurgeh asked, looking up from a holo-displayed board.
"Za's invitation." The tiny machine floated closer; it had discarded its bulky disguise now they were back inside the module.
Gurgeh looked coldly at it. "I didn't notice it was addressed to you too." Shohobohaum Za had sent a message congratulating Gurgeh and inviting him out for an evening's entertainment.
"Well, it wasn't; but I'm supposed to monitor everything—"
"Are you really?" Gurgeh turned back to the holospread before him. "Well you can stay here and monitor whatever you like while I go out on the town with Shohobohaum Za tonight."
"You'll regret it," the drone told him. "You've been very sensible, staying in and not getting involved, but you'll suffer for it if you do start gallivanting."
" "Gallivanting"?" Gurgeh stared at the drone, realising only then how difficult it was to look something up and down when it was just a few centimetres high. "What are you, drone; my mother?"
"I'm just trying to be sensible about this," the machine said, voice rising. "You're in a strange society, you're not the most worldly-wise of people, and Za certainly isn't my idea of—"
"You opinionated box of junk!" Gurgeh said loudly, rising and switching off the holoscreen.
The drone jumped in mid-air; it backed off hastily. "Now, now, Jernau Gurgeh…"
"Don't you "Now, now" me, you patronising adding machine. If I want to take an evening off, I will. And quite frankly the thought of some human company for a change is looking more attractive all the time." He jabbed a finger at the machine. "Don't read any more of my mail, and don't bother about escorting Za and me this evening." He walked quickly past it, heading for his cabin. "Now, I'm going to take a shower; why don't you go watch some birds?"
The man left the module's lounge. The little drone hovered steadily in mid-air for a while. "Oops," it said to itself, eventually, then, with a shrug-like wobble, swooped away, fields vaguely rosy.
"Have some of this," Za said. The car swept along the city streets beneath the erubescent skies of dusk.
Gurgeh took the flask and drank.
"Not quite grif," Za told him, "but it does the job." He took the flask back while Gurgeh coughed a little. "Did you let that grif get to you at the ball?"
"No," Gurgeh admitted. "I bypassed it; wanted a clear head."
"Aw heck," Za said, looking downcast. "You mean I could have had more?" He shrugged, brightened, tapped Gurgeh on the elbow. "Hey; I never said; congratulations. On winning the game."
"Thanks."
"That showed them. Wow, did you give them a shock." Za shook his head in admiration; his long brown hair swung across his loose tunic top like heavy smoke. "I had you filed as a prime-time loser, J-G, but you're some kind of showman." He winked one bright green eye at Gurgeh, and grinned.
Gurgeh looked uncertainly at Za's beaming face for a moment, then burst out laughing. He took the flask from Za's hand and put it to his lips.
"To the showmen," he said, and drank.
"Amen to that, my maestro."
The Hole had been on the outskirts of the city once, but now it was just another part of one more urban district. The Hole was a set of vast artificial caverns burrowed out of the chalk centuries ago to store natural gas in; the gas had long since run out, the city ran on other forms of energy, and the set of huge, linked caves had been colonised, first by Groasnachek's poor, then (by a slow process of osmosis and displacement, as though — gas or human — nothing ever really changed) by its criminals and outlaws, and finally, though not completely, by its effectively ghettoised aliens and their supporting cast of locals.