Gurgeh placed the piece. It was as though he saw two boards; one here in front of him and one engraved into his mind from the night before. The other players made their moves, gradually forcing Gurgeh back into one small area of the board, with only a couple of free pieces outside it, hunted and fleeing.

When it came, as he'd known it would without wanting to admit to himself that he did know, the… he could only think of it as a revelation… made him want to laugh. In fact he did rock back in his seat, head nodding. The priest looked at him expectantly, as though waiting for the stupid human to finally give up, but Gurgeh smiled over at the apex, selected the strongest cards from his dwindling supply, deposited them with the Adjudicator, and made his next move.

All he was banking on, it turned out, was the rest being too concerned with winning the game quickly. It was obvious that some sort of deal had been arranged which would let the priest win, and Gurgeh guessed that the others wouldn't be playing at their best when they were competing for somebody else; it would not be their victory. They would not own it. Certainly, they didn't have to play well; sheer weight of numbers could compensate for indifferent play.

But the moves could become a language, and Gurgeh thought he could speak that language now, well enough (tellingly) to lie in it… so he made his moves, and at one moment, with one move, seemed to be suggesting that he had given up… then with his next move he appeared to indicate he was determined to take one of several players down with him… or two of them… or a different one… the lies went on. There was no single message, but rather a succession of contradictory signals, pulling the syntax of the game to and fro and to and fro until the common understanding the other players had reached began to fatigue and tear and split.

In the midst of this, Gurgeh made some at first sight inconsequential, purposeless moves which — seemingly suddenly, apparently without any warning — threatened first a few, then several, then most of the troop-pieces of one player, but at the cost of making Gurgeh's own forces more vulnerable. While that player panicked, the priest did what Gurgeh was relying on him doing, rushing into the attack. Over the next few moves, Gurgeh asked for the cards he'd deposited with the game official to be revealed. They acted rather like mines in a Possession game. The priest's forces were variously destroyed, demoralised, random-move blinded, hopelessly weakened or turned over to Gurgeh or — in only a few cases — to some of the other players. The priest was left with almost nothing, forces scattering over the board like dead leaves.

In the confusion, Gurgeh watched the others, devoid of their leader, squabble over the scraps of power. One got into serious trouble; Gurgeh attacked, annihilated most of his forces and captured the rest, and then kept on attacking without even waiting to regroup.

He realised later he'd still been behind in points at that time, but the sheer momentum of his own resurrection from oblivion carried him on, spreading an unreasoning, hysterical, almost superstitiously intense panic amongst the others.

From that point on he made no more errors; his progress across the board became a combination of rout and triumphal procession. Perfectly adequate players were made to look like idiots as Gurgeh's forces rampaged across their territories, consuming ground and material as though nothing could be easier or more natural.

Gurgeh finished the game on the Board of Origin before the evening session. He'd saved himself; he wasn't just through to the next board, he was in the lead. The priest, who'd sat looking at the game-surface with an expression Gurgeh thought he'd have recognised as «stunned» even without his lessons in Azadian facial language, walked out of the hall without the customary end-of-game pleasantries, while the other players either said very little or were embarrassingly effusive about his performance.

A crowd of people clustered round Gurgeh; the club members, some press people and other players, some observing guests. Gurgeh felt oddly untouched by the surrounding, chattering apices. Crowding up to him, but still trying not to touch him, somehow their very numbers lent an air of unreality to the scene. Gurgeh was buried in questions, but he couldn't answer any of them. He could hardly make them out as individual inquiries anyway; the apices all talked too fast. Flere-Imsaho floated in above the heads of the crowd, but despite trying to shout people down to gain their attention, all it succeeded in attracting was their hair, with its static. Gurgeh saw one apex try to push the machine out of his way, and receive an obviously unexpected and painful electric shock.

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.