Ater four days of the game on the Board of Becoming, Gurgeh was poised to win. He saw Ram talking worriedly with some of his advisors afterwards, and half expected the apex to offer his resignation then, after the afternoon session. But Ram decided to fight on; they agreed to forgo the evening session and resume the next morning.
The big tent ruffled slightly in a warm breeze as Flere-Imsaho joined Gurgeh at the exit. Pequil supervised the way being cleared through the crowds outside to where the car was waiting. The crowd was composed mostly of people who just wanted to see the alien, though there were a few demonstrating noisily against Gurgeh, and an even smaller number who were cheering him. Ram and his advisors left the tent first.
"I think I see Shohobohaum Za in the crowd," the drone said as they waited at the exit. Ram's entourage was still cluttering the far end of the ribbon of path held clear by the two lines of policemen.
Gurgeh glanced at the machine, then down the line of arm-linked police. He was still tensed from the game, bloodstream suffused with multifarious chemicals. As happened every now and again, everything he saw around him seemed to be part of the game; the way people stood like pieces, grouped according to who could take or affect whom; the way the pattern on the marquee was like a simple grid-area on the board, and the poles like planted power-sources waiting to replenish some exhausted minor piece and supporting a crux-point in the game; the way the people and police stood like the suddenly closed jaws of some nightmarish pincer-movement… all was the game, everything was seen in its light, translated into the combative imagery of its language, evaluated in the context its structure imposed upon the mind.
"Za?" Gurgeh said. He looked in the direction the drone's field was pointing, but couldn't see the man.
The last of Ram's group cleared the pavement where the official cars waited. Pequil gestured for Gurgeh to proceed. They walked between the lines of uniformed males. Cameras pointed, questions were shouted. Some ragged chanting began and Gurgeh saw a banner waving over the heads of the crowd; "GO HOME ALIEN'.
"Seems I'm not too popular," he said.
"You aren't," Flere-Imsaho told him.
In two steps (Gurgeh realised in a distant, game-sense way even as he was speaking and the drone was replying), he was going to be adjacent to… it took one more step to analyse the problem… something bad, something jarring and discordant… there was something… different; wrong about the three-group he was about to pass on his left; like unplaced ghost-pieces hiding in forest territory…. He had no idea exactly what was wrong with the group, but he knew immediately — as the protagonising structures of the game-sense claimed precedence in his thoughts — that he wasn't going to risk putting a piece in there.
… Another half-step…
… to realise that the piece he didn't want to risk was himself.
He saw the three-group start to move and split up. He turned and ducked automatically; it was the obvious replying move of a threatened piece with too much momentum to stop or bound back from such an attacking force.
There were several loud bangs. The three-group of people burst towards him through the arms of two policemen, like a composite piece suddenly fragmenting. He converted his ducking motion into a dive and roll which he realised with some delight was the almost perfect physical equivalent to a trip-piece tying up a light-attacker. He felt a pair of legs thud into his side, not hard, then there was a weight on top of him and more loud noises. Something else fell on top of his legs.
It was like waking up.
He'd been attacked. There had been flashes, explosions, people launching themselves at him.
He struggled under the warm, animal weight on top of him, the one he'd tripped up. People were shouting; police moved quickly. He saw Pequil lying on the ground. Za was there too, standing looking rather confused. Somebody was screaming. No sign of Flere-Imsaho. Something warm was seeping into the hose he wore on his legs.
He struggled out from under the body lying on top of him, suddenly revolted by the thought that the person — apex or male, he couldn't tell — might be dead. Shohobohaum Za and a policeman helped him up. There was a lot of shouting still; people were moving or being moved back, clearing a space around whatever had happened; bodies lay on the ground, some covered in bright red-orange blood. Gurgeh got dizzily to his feet.
"All right, game-player?" Za asked, grinning.
"Yes, I think so," Gurgeh nodded. There was blood on his legs, but it was the wrong colour to be his.
Flere-Imsaho descended from the sky. "Jernau Gurgeh! Are you all right?"
"Yes." Gurgeh looked around. "What happened?" he asked Shohobohaum Za. "Did you see what happened?" The police had drawn their guns and were clustered around the area; the people were moving away, the press-cameras were being forced back by shouting police. Five policemen were pinning somebody down on the grass. Two apices in civilian clothes lay on the path; the one Gurgeh had tripped was covered in blood. A policeman stood over each body; another two were tending to Pequil.
"Those three attacked you," Za said, eyes flicking around as he nodded at the two bodies and the figure under the pile of police. Gurgeh could hear somebody sobbing loudly, in what was left of the crowd. Reporters were still shouting questions.
Za guided Gurgeh over to where Pequil lay, while Flere-Imsaho fussed and hummed overhead. Pequil lay on his back, eyes open, blinking, while a policeman cut away the blood-soaked sleeve of his uniform jacket. "Old Pequil here got in the way of a bullet," Za said. "You all right, Pequil?" he shouted jovially.
Pequil smiled weakly and nodded.
"Meanwhile," Za said, putting his arm round Gurgeh's shoulders and looking round all the time, gaze darting everywhere, "your brave and resourceful drone here exceeded the speed of sound to get about twenty metres out of the way, upwards."
"I was merely gaining height the better to ascertain wh—"
"You dropped," Za told Gurgeh, still without looking at him, "and rolled; I thought they'd got you, actually. I managed to knock one of these bods on the head and I think the police burnt the other one." Za's gaze settled momentarily on the knot of people beyond the cordon of police, where the sobbing was coming from. "Somebody in the crowd got hit too; the bullets meant for you."
Gurgeh looked down at one of the dead apices; his head lay at right-angles to his body, across his shoulder; it would have looked wrong on almost any humanoid. "Yeah, that's the one I hit," Za said, glancing briefly at the apex. "Bit too hard I think."
"I repeat," Flere-Imsaho said, moving round in front of Gurgeh and Za, "I was merely gaining height in order to—"
"Yes, we're glad you're safe, drone," Za said, waving the buzzing bulk of the machine away like a large and cumbersome insect and guiding Gurgeh forward to where an apex in police uniform was gesturing towards the cars. Whooping noises sounded in the sky and the surrounding streets.
"Ah, here's the boys," Za said, as a wailing noise dopplered its way over the park, and a large orange-red airvan rushed out of the sky to land in a storm of dust on the grass near by; the marquee fabric flapped and banged and rippled in the blast of air. More heavily armed police jumped out of the van.
There was some confusion about whether they ought to go to the cars or not; finally they were taken back into the marquee and statements were taken from them and some other witnesses; two cameras were confiscated from protesting news-people.
Outside, the two dead bodies and the wounded attacker were loaded on to the airvan. An air-ambulance arrived for Pequil, who was lightly wounded in the arm.
As Gurgeh, Za and the drone finally left the marquee to be taken back to the hotel in a police aircraft, a groundcar-ambulance was pulling in through the park gates to pick up the two males and a female also injured in the attack.