Gurgeh suspected that many of the people still in the fortress would as soon have left Echronedal to head back to Eä, but the coronation ceremony and the religious confirmation still had to be witnessed, and nobody would be allowed to leave Echronedal until the fire had passed and the Emperor had risen from its embers.
Probably only Gurgeh and Nicosar were really looking forward to the match; even the observing game-players and analysts were disheartened at the prospect of witnessing a game they were already barred from discussing, even amongst themselves. All Gurgeh's games past the point he had supposedly been knocked out were taboo subjects. They did not exist. The Imperial Games Bureau was already hard at work concocting an official final match between Nicosar and Krowo. Judging by their previous efforts, Gurgeh expected it to be entirely convincing. It might lack the ultimate spark of genius, but it would pass.
So everything was already settled. The Empire had new star marshals (though a little shuffling would be required to replace Yomonul), new generals and admirals, archbishops, ministers and judges. The course of the Empire was set, and with very little change from the previous bearing. Nicosar would continue with his present policies; the premises of the various winners indicated little discontent or new thinking. The courtiers and officials could therefore breathe easily again, knowing nothing would alter too much, and their positions were as secure as they'd ever be. So, instead of the usual tension surrounding the final game, there was an atmosphere more like that of an exhibition match. Only the two contestants were treating it as a real contest.
Gurgeh was immediately impressed by Nicosar's play. The Emperor didn't stop rising in Gurgeh's estimation; the more he studied the apex's play the more he realised just how powerful and complete an opponent he was facing. He would need to be more than lucky to beat Nicosar; he would need to be somebody else. From the beginning he tried to concentrate on not being trounced rather than actually defeating the Emperor.
Nicosar played cautiously most of the time; then, suddenly, he'd strike out with some brilliant flowing series of moves that looked at first as though they'd been made by some gifted madman, before revealing themselves as the masterstrokes they were; perfect answers to the impossible questions they themselves posed.
Gurgeh did his best to anticipate these devastating fusions of guile and power, and to find replies to them once they'd begun, but by the time the minor games were over, thirty days or so before the fire was due, Nicosar had a considerable advantage in pieces and cards to carry over to the first of the three great boards. Gurgeh suspected his only chance was to hold out as best he could on the first two boards and hope that he might pull something back on the final one.
The cinderbuds towered around the castle, rising like a slow tide of gold about the walls. Gurgeh sat in the same small garden he'd visited before. Then he'd been able to look out over the cinderbuds to the distant horizon; now the view ended twenty metres away at the first of the great yellow leaf-heads. Late sunlight spread the castle's shadow across the canopy. Behind Gurgeh, the fortress lights were coming on.
Gurgeh looked out to the tan trunks of the great trees, and shook his head. He'd lost the game on the Board of Origin and now he was losing on the Board of Form.
He was missing something; some facet of the way Nicosar was playing was escaping him. He knew it, he was certain, but he couldn't work out what that facet was. He had a nagging suspicion it was something very simple, however complex its articulation on the boards might be. He ought to have spotted it, analysed and evaluated it long ago and turned it to his advantage, but for some reason — some reason intrinsic to his very understanding of the game, he felt sure — he could not. An aspect of his play seemed to have disappeared, and he was starting to think the knock to the head he'd taken during the hunt had affected him more than he'd first assumed.
But then, the ship didn't seem to have any better idea what he was doing wrong, either. Its advice always seemed to make sense at the time, but when Gurgeh got to the board he found he could never apply the ship's ideas. If he went against his instincts and forced himself to do as the Limiting Factor had suggested, he ended up in even more trouble; nothing was more guaranteed to cause you problems on an Azad board than trying to play in a way you didn't really believe in. He rose slowly, straightening his back, which was hardly sore now, and returned to his room. Flere-Imsaho was in front of the screen, watching a holo-display of an odd diagram.
"What are you doing?" Gurgeh said, lowering himself into a soft chair. The drone turned, addressing him in Marain.
"I worked out a way to disable the bugs; we can talk in Marain now. Isn't that good?"
"I suppose so," Gurgeh said, still in Eächic. He picked up a small flat-screen to see what was happening in the Empire.
"Well you might at least use the language after I went to the trouble of jamming their bugs. It wasn't easy you know; I'm not designed for that sort of thing. I had to learn a lot of stuff from some of my own files about electronics and optics and listening fields and all that sort of technical stuff. I thought you'd be pleased."
"Utterly and profoundly ecstatic," Gurgeh said carefully, in Marain. He looked at the small screen. It told him of the new appointments, the crushing of an insurrection in a distant system, the progress of the game between Nicosar and Krowo — Krowo wasn't as far behind as Gurgeh was — the victory won by imperial troops against a race of monsters, and higher rates of pay for males who volunteered to join the Army. "What is that you're looking at?" he said, looking briefly at the wall-screen, where Flere-Imsaho's strange torus turned slowly. "Don't you recognise it?" the drone said, voice pitched to express surprise. "I thought you would; it's a model of the Reality."
"The — oh, yes." Gurgeh nodded and went back to the small screen, where a group of asteroids was being bombarded by imperial battleships, to quell the insurrection. "Four dimensions and all that." He flicked through the sub-channels to the game programmes. A few of the second-series matches were still being played on Eä.
"Well, seven relevant dimensions actually, in the case of the Reality itself; one of those lines… are you listening?"
"Hmm? Oh yes." The games on Eä were all in their last stages. The secondary games from Echronedal were still being analysed.
"… one of those lines on the Reality represents our entire universe… surely you were taught all this?"
"Mm," Gurgeh nodded. He had never been especially interested in spacial theory or hyperspace or hyperspheres or the like; none of it seemed to make any difference to how he lived, so what did it matter? There were some games that were best understood in four dimensions, but Gurgeh only cared about their own particular rules, and the general theories only meant anything to him as they applied specifically to those games. He pressed for another page on the small screen… to be confronted with a picture of himself, once more expressing his sadness at being knocked out of the games, wishing the people and Empire of Azad well and thanking everybody for having him. An announcer talked over his faded voice to say that Gurgeh had pulled out of the second-series games on Echronedal. Gurgeh smiled thinly, watching the official reality he'd agreed to be part of as it gradually built up and became accepted fact.
He looked up briefly at the torus on the screen, and remembered something he'd puzzled over, years ago now. "What's the difference between hyperspace and ultraspace?" he asked the drone. "The ship mentioned ultraspace once and I never could work out what the hell it was talking about."