The priest came up to Gurgeh when the session's play was over and Gurgeh was still sitting in his high stoolseat, looking down at the shambles on the board and wondering what had gone wrong. The apex asked the man if he was willing to concede; it was the conventional course when somebody was so far behind in pieces and territory, and there was less shame attached to an honourable admission of defeat than to a stubborn refusal to face reality which only dragged the game out longer for one's opponents. Gurgeh looked at the priest, then at Flere-Imsaho, who'd been allowed into the hall once the play had ended. The machine wobbled a little in front of him, humming mightily and fairly buzzing with static.

"What do you think, drone?" he said tiredly.

"I think the sooner you get out of those ridiculous clothes, the better," the machine said. The priest, whose own robes were a more gaudy version of Gurgeh's, glanced angrily at the humming machine, but said nothing.

Gurgeh looked at the board again, then at the priest. He took a long, sighing breath and opened his mouth, but before he could speak Flere-Imsaho said, "So I think you should go back to the hotel and get changed and relax and give yourself an opportunity to think."

Gurgeh nodded his head slowly, rubbing his beard and looking at the mess of tangled fortunes on the Board of Origin. He told the priest he'd see him tomorrow.

"There's nothing I can do; they've won," he told the drone once they were back in the module.

"If you say so. Why not ask the ship?"

Gurgeh contacted the Limiting Factor to give it the bad news. It commiserated, and, rather than come up with any helpful ideas, told him exactly where he'd gone wrong, going into considerable detail. Gurgeh thanked it with little good grace, and went to bed dispirited, wishing he'd resigned when the priest had asked him.

Flere-Imsaho had gone off exploring the city again. Gurgeh lay in the darkness, the module quiet around him.

He wondered what they'd really sent him here for. What did Contact actually expect him to do? Had he been sent to be humiliated, and so reassure the Empire the Culture was unlikely to be any threat to it? It seemed as likely as anything else. He could imagine Chiark Hub rattling off figures about the colossal amount of energy expended in sending him all this way… and even the Culture, even Contact, would think twice about doing all it had just to provide one citizen with a glorified adventure holiday. The Culture didn't use money as such, but it also didn't want to be too conspicuously extravagant with matter and energy, either (so inelegant to be wasteful). But to keep the Empire satisfied that the Culture was just a joke, no threat… how much was that worth?

He turned over in the bed, switched on the floatfield, adjusted its resistance, tried to sleep, turned this way and that, adjusted the field again but still could not get comfortable, and so, eventually, turned it off.

He saw the slight glow from the bracelet Chamlis had given him, shining by the bedside. He picked the thin band up, turning it over in his hands. The tiny Orbital was bright in the darkness, lighting up his fingers and the covers on the bed. He gazed at its daylight surface and the microscopic whorls of weather systems over blue sea and duncoloured land. He really ought to write to Chamlis, say thank you.

It was only then he realised quite how clever the little piece of jewellery was. He'd assumed it was just an illuminated still picture, but it wasn't; he could remember how it had looked when he'd first seen it, and now the scene was different; the island continents on the daylight side were mostly different shapes to those he remembered, though he recognised a couple of them, near the dawn terminator. The bracelet was a moving representation of an Orbital; possibly even a crude clock.

He smiled in the darkness, turned away.

They all expected him to lose. Only he knew — or had known — he was a better player than they thought. But now he'd thrown away the chance of proving he was right and they were wrong.

"Fool, fool," he whispered to himself in the darkness.

He couldn't sleep. He got up, switched on the module-screen and told the machine to display his game. The Board of Origin appeared, thru-holoed in front of him. He sat there and stared at it, then he told the module to contact the ship.

It was a slow, dreamlike conversation, during which he gazed as though transfixed at the bright game-board seemingly stretching away from him, while waiting for his words to reach the distant warship, and then for its reply to come back.

"Jernau Gurgeh?"

"I want to know something, ship. Is there any way out of this?" Stupid question. He could see the answer. His position was an inchoate mess; the only certain thing about it was that it was hopeless.

"Out of your present situation in the game?"

He sighed. What a waste of time. "Yes. Can you see a way?"

The frozen holo on the screen in front of him, his displayed position, was like some trapped moment of falling; the instant when the foot slips, the fingers lose their last strength, and the fatal, accelerating descent begins. He thought of satellites, forever falling, and the controlled stumble that bipeds call walking.

"You are more points behind than anybody who has ever come back to win in any Main Series game. You have already been defeated, they believe."

Gurgeh waited for more. Silence. "Answer the question," he told the ship. "You didn't answer the question. Answer me."

What was the ship playing at? Mess, mess, a total mess. His position was a swirling, amorphous, nebulous, almost barbaric welter of pieces and areas, battered and crumbling and falling away. Why was he even bothering to ask? Didn't he trust his own judgement? Did he need a Mind to tell him? Would only that make it real?

"Yes, of course there is a way," the ship said. "Many ways, in fact, though they are all unlikely, near impossible. But it can be done. There isn't nearly enough time to—"

"Goodnight, ship," he said, as the signal continued.

"— explain any of them in detail, but I think I can give you a general idea what to do, though of course just because it has to be such a synoptic appraisal, such a—"

"Sorry, ship; goodnight." Gurgeh turned the channel off. It clicked once. After a little while the closing chime announced the ship had signed off too. Gurgeh looked at the holo image of the board again, then closed his eyes.

By morning he still had no idea what he was going to do. He hadn't slept at all that night, just sat in front of the screen, staring at its displayed panorama of the game until the view was seemingly etched into his brain, and his eyes hurt with the strain. Later he'd eaten lightly and watched some of the broadcast entertainments the Empire fed the population with. It was a suitably mindless diversion.

Pequil arrived, smiling, and said how well Gurgeh had done to stay in contention at all, and how, personally, Pequil was sure that Gurgeh would do well in the second-series games for those knocked out of the Main Series, if he wished to take part. Of course, they were mostly of interest to those seeking promotion in their careers, and led no further, but Gurgeh might do better against other… ah, unfortunates. Anyway; he was still going to Echronedal to see the end of the games, and that was a great privilege, wasn't it?

Gurgeh hardly spoke, just nodded now and again. They rode out to the hall, while Pequil went on and on about the great victory Nicosar had achieved in his first game the previous day; the Emperor-Regent was already on to the second board, the Board of Form.

The priest again asked Gurgeh to resign, and again Gurgeh said he wished to play. They all sat down around the great spread of board, and either dictated their moves to the club players, or made them themselves. Gurgeh sat for a long time before placing his first piece that morning; he rubbed the biotech between his hands for minutes, looking down, wide-eyed, at the board for so long the others thought he'd forgotten it was his turn, and asked the Adjudicator to remind him.