So there is a game going on! I thought.
But it was the queerest feeling. It was like having got into a reflection in a shop window. And, at the same time, I had a notion I was really standing outside in the open air, under the canal arches somewhere. I thought at first that it was this feeling that kept me standing there. I thought I was plain confused. It only came to me gradually that I was sort of hanging there, and that I couldn’t move at all.
The one of Them nearest me walked round behind me and shut the door. “Another random factor,” he said. He sounded annoyed. It was the way my mother would say, “Bother! We’ve got mice again.”
And the other one said, “We’d better deal with that before we go on then.” He said it the way my father would answer, “You’d better set traps again, my dear.”
“How?” asked the first one, coming back round me to the machines. “Can we afford a corpse at this stage? I do wish we could do without these randoms.”
“Oh but we can’t,” said the other. “We need them. Besides, the risk adds to the fun. I think we’d better discard this one to the Bounder circuits – but let’s get a read-out first on the effect of a corpse on play.”
“Right you are,” said the first one.
They both leant over the machines. I could see Them through the white sheets of reflected sky, looking at me carefully and then looking down to press another button. It was the way my mother kept looking at the colour of our curtains when she was choosing new wallpaper. After that, They turned their attention to another part of the machine and gazed at it, rather dubiously. Then They went down the room to look at that huge flickering table.
“Hm,” said the first one. “Play is quite delicately poised at the moment, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the second. “If it was on your side, it would help bring your revolution closer, but I can’t afford any urban unrest for a couple of decades or more. I claim unfair hazard. Let’s discard. Agreed?”
The first one came back and stood looking into the machine in the intent way They did. “It would make good sense,” he said, “if we could go back over the family of this discard and scrub all memory of it.”
“Oh no,” said the other, moving up too. “It’s against the rules for a discard. The anchor, you know. The anchor.”
“But we can scrub with a corpse. Why don’t we?”
“Because I’ve already claimed unfair hazard. Come on. Make it a discard.”
“Yes, why not?” said the first one. “It’s not that important. What’s the rule? These days we have to check with the rest in case the Bounder circuits are overloaded, don’t we?”
As I sit here, it’s true! They said all that, talking about me just as if I was a wooden counter or a piece of card in a game. And I floated there and couldn’t do a thing about it. Next thing I knew, They were punching more buttons, round the end of the machines.
And the place opened up.
You know if you go to a barber’s shop with a lot of mirrors, how you can sit looking into one mirror and see through it into the mirror behind you, over and over again, until it goes all blurred with distance? Well, what happened was like that. Over and over again, and all blurred, there were suddenly triangular rooms all round. They were slotted in on both sides, and beyond and behind that, and underneath, down and down. They were piled up on top of us too. I looked, but it made me feel ill, seeing two of Them walking about up there, and others of Them above and beside that, all strolling over where They could see me. They all wore those cloaks, but They weren’t just reflections of the first two. They were all different from one another. That was about all I could tell. It was all so blurry and flickery, and the reflection of the canal arches went striding through the lot, as if that was the only real thing there.
“Your attention for a moment,” said one of Them who was with me. “We are about to make a discard. Can you confirm that there is still room on the Bounds?”
A distant voice said, “Computing.”
A nearer, hollower voice asked, “What’s the reason for the discard?”
The second one of my Them said, “We’ve had an intrusion by a random factor, entailing the usual danger of feedback into the native world here. I’ve claimed unfair hazard against reinsertion as a corpse.”
“That seems adequate,” said the hollow voice.
Almost at once, the distant voice said, “The Bounds have space for four more discards. Repeat, four more only. Is the reason good enough?”
There was a little murmuring. For a moment, I thought I was going to end up as a corpse. I still didn’t know what I was in for, you see. Then the murmur grew – with an air of surprise to it, as if They were wondering what They were being asked for. “Reason sufficient. Sufficient reason,” came rumbling from all round, above and underneath.
“Then I must caution you,” said the hollow voice. “Rule seventy-two thousand now comes into play. The final three discards must only be made with extreme caution and at the most pressing need.”
With that, They all faded away, into the reflection of the sky again, and left just my two.
The second one came sweeping towards me. The first was standing with his hand ready on a handle of some kind. The second one spoke to me, slowly and carefully, as if I was an idiot. “You are now a discard,” he said. “We have no further use for you in play. You are free to walk the Bounds as you please, but it will be against the rules for you to enter play in any world. To ensure you keep this rule, you will be transferred to another field of play every time a move ends in the field where you are. The rules also state that you are allowed to return Home if you can. If you succeed in returning Home, then you may enter play again in the normal manner.”
I looked up at him. He was a grey blurred figure behind a sheet of white reflected sky. So was the other one, and he was just about to pull down the lever. “Hey! Wait a minute!” I said. “What’s all this? What are these rules? Who made them?”
Both of Them stared at me. They looked like you would if your breakfast egg had suddenly piped up and said, “Don’t eat me!”
“You’ve no right to send me off without any explanation, like this!” I said.
He pulled the lever while I was saying it. You might whack your egg on top with your spoon the same way. The sideways twitch came while I was saying “explanation”. As I said “like this!” I was somewhere else entirely.
And I mean somewhere else. It’s hard to explain just how different it was. I was standing out in the open, just as I’d half thought that I was out in the open under the canal arches before, only this was real, solid and real. There was green grass going up and down over hills in all directions. Across the valley in front of me, there was a group of black and white animals, eating the grass. I thought they were cows, probably. I’d never seen a live cow till then. Beyond that, going up against the sunset, was a spire of smoke. And that was all. The place was empty otherwise, except for me. I turned right round to make sure, and it was the truth.
That was shock enough, if you were a city boy like me. It was a horrible feeling. I wanted