The eyes closed. His hands went to his ears. He looked down. "Enough," he muttered.

Flere-Imsaho switched the screen off. The man rocked backwards on his heels, as though there had indeed been some attraction, some artificial gravity from the screen, and now that it had ceased, he almost over-balanced in reaction.

"That one is live, Jernau Gurgeh. It is taking place now. It is still happening, deep in some cellar under a prison or a police barracks."

Gurgeh looked up at the blank screen, eyes still wide and staring, but dry. He gazed, rocked backwards and forwards, and breathed deeply. There was sweat on his brow, and he shivered.

"Level Three is for the ruling elite only. Their strategic military signals are given the same encrypting status. I think you can see why.

"This is no special night, Gurgeh, no festival of sado-erotica. These things go out every evening…. There is more, but you've seen a representative cross-section."

Gurgeh nodded. His mouth was dry. He swallowed with some difficulty, took a few more deep breaths, rubbed his beard. He opened his mouth to speak, but the drone spoke first.

"One other thing. Something else they kept from you. I didn't know this myself until last night, when the ship mentioned it. Ever since you played Ram your opponents have been on various drugs as well. Cortex-keyed amphetamines at least, but they have far more sophisticated drugs which they use too. They have to inject, or ingest them; they don't have genofixed glands to manufacture drugs in their own bodies, but they certainly use them; most of the people you've been playing have had far more «artificial» chemicals and compounds in their bloodstream than you've had."

The drone made a sighing noise. The man was still staring at the dead screen. "That's it," the drone said. "I'm sorry if what I've shown you has upset you, Jernau Gurgeh, but I didn't want you to leave here thinking the Empire was just a few venerable game-players, some impressive architecture and a few glorified night-clubs. What you've seen tonight is also what it's about. And there's plenty in between that I can't show you; all the frustrations that affect the poor and the relatively well-off alike, caused simply because they live in a society where one is not free to do as one chooses. There's the journalist who can't write what he knows is the truth, the doctor who can't treat somebody in pain because they're the wrong sex… a million things every day, things that aren't as melodramatic and gross as what I've shown you, but which are still part of it, still some of the effects.

"The ship told you a guilty system recognises no innocents. I'd say it does. It recognises the innocence of a young child, for example, and you saw how they treated that. In a sense it even recognises the «sanctity» of the body… but only to violate it. Once again, Gurgeh, it all boils down to ownership, possession; about taking and having." Flere-Imsaho paused, then floated towards Gurgeh, came very close to him. "Ah, but I'm preaching again, aren't I? The excesses of youth. I've kept you up late. Maybe you're ready for some sleep now; it's been a long night, hasn't it? I'll leave you." It turned and floated away. It stopped near the door again. "Good night," it said.

Gurgeh cleared his throat. "Good night," he said, looking away from the dark screen at last. The drone dipped and disappeared.

Gurgeh sat down on a formseat. He stared at his feet for a while, then got up and walked outside the module, into the roof-garden. The dawn was just coming up. The city looked washed-out somehow, and cold. The many lights burned weakly, brilliance sapped by the calm blue vastness of the sky. A guard at the stairwell entrance coughed and stamped his feet, though Gurgeh could not see him.

He went back into the module and lay down on his bed. He lay in the darkness without closing his eyes, then closed his eyes and turned over, trying to sleep. He could not, and neither could he bring himself to secrete something that would make him sleep.

At last he got up and went back to the lounge where the screen was. He had the module access the game-channels, and sat there looking at his own game with Bermoiya for a long time, without moving or speaking, and without a single molecule of glanded drug in his bloodstream.

A prison ambulance stood outside the conference-centre. Gurgeh got out of the aircraft and walked straight into the game-hall. Pequil had to run to keep up with the man. The apex didn't understand the alien; he hadn't wanted to talk during the journey from the hotel to the conference-centre, whereas usually people in such a situation couldn't stop talking… and somehow he didn't seem to be frightened at all, though Pequil couldn't see how that could be. If he hadn't known the awkward, rather innocent alien better, he'd have thought it was anger he could read on that discoloured, hairy, pointed face.

Lo Prinest Bermoiya sat in a stoolseat just off the Board of Origin. Gurgeh stood on the board itself. He rubbed his beard with one long finger, then moved a couple of pieces. Bermoiya made his own moves, then when the action spread — as the alien tried desperately to wriggle out of his predicament — the judge had some amateur players make most of his moves for him. The alien remained on the board, making his own moves, scurrying to and fro like a giant, dark insect. Bermoiya couldn't see what the alien was playing at; his play seemed to be without purpose, and he made some moves which were either stupid mistakes or pointless sacrifices. Bermoiya mopped up some of the alien's tattered forces. After a while, he thought perhaps the male did have a plan, of sorts, but if so it must be a very obscure one. Perhaps there was some kind of odd, face-saving point the male was trying to make, while he still was a male.

Who knew what strange precepts governed an alien's behaviour at such a moment? The moves went on; inchoate, unreadable. They broke for lunch. They resumed.

Bermoiya didn't return to the stoolseat after the break; he stood at the side of the board, trying to work out what slippery, ungraspable plan the alien might have. It was like playing a ghost, now; it was as though they were competing on separate boards. He couldn't seem to get to grips with the male at all; his pieces kept slipping away from him, moving as though the man had anticipated his next move before he'd even thought of it.

What had happened to the alien? He'd played quite differently yesterday. Was he really receiving help from outside? Bermoiya felt himself start to sweat. There was no need for it; he was still well ahead, still poised for victory, but suddenly he began to sweat. He told himself it was nothing to worry about; a side-effect of some of the concentration boosters he'd taken over lunch.

Bermoiya made some moves which ought to settle what was going on; expose the alien's real plan, if he had one. No result. Bermoiya tried some more exploratory gestures, committing a little more to the attempt. Gurgeh attacked immediately.

Bermoiya had spent a hundred years learning and playing Azad, and he'd sat in courts of every level for half that time. He'd seen many violent outbursts by just-sentenced criminals, and watched — and even taken part in — games containing moves of great suddenness and ferocity. Nevertheless, the alien's next few moves contrived to be on a level more barbarous and wild than anything Bermoiya had witnessed, in either context. Without the experience of the courts, he felt he might have physically reeled.

Those few moves were like a series of kicks in the belly; they contained all the berserk energy the very best young players spasmodically exhibited; but marshalled, synchronised, sequenced and unleashed with a style and a savage grace no untamed beginner could have hoped to command. With the first move Bermoiya saw what the alien's plan might be. With the next move he saw how good the plan was; with the next that the play might go on into the following day before the alien could finally be vanquished; with the next that he, Bermoiya, wasn't in quite as unassailable a position as he'd thought… and with the following two that he still had a lot of work to do, and then that perhaps the play wouldn't last until tomorrow after all.