And Doon turned on his heel. Since they hadn't yet discussed the game, Herman had no choice but to follow. "Listen, boy," Herman said as he trotted doggedly behind the younger man's brisk walk, "I don't know what your purpose is with my game, but you certainly don't need any money. And you're certainly not going to win any bets, not the way you're playing."

Doon smiled over his shoulder and went on walking down the corridors. "It rather depends, doesn't it, on whit I'm betting on."

"You mean you're betting that you'll lose? The way you're playing, you'd never get any takers."

"No, Grandfather. As a matter of fact, I'm holding bets made months ago. Bets that Italy would be destroyed and utterly gone from Europe 1914d within two months of your waking."

"Uttedy destroyed!" Herman laughed. "Not a chance of that, boy. I built too well, even for a games moron like you."

Doon touched a door and it slid open.

"Come in, Grandfather."

"Not a chance, Doon. What kind of fool do you take me for?"

"A rather small one, actually," Doon said, and Herman followed the younger man's gaze to the two men standing behind him.

"Whore did they come from?" Herman asked stupidly.

"They're my friends. They're coming to this party with us. I like to keep myself surrounded by friends."

Herman followed Doon inside.

The setting was austere, functional, almost middle-class in its plainness. But the walls were lined with real wood-- Herman recognized it at a glance-- and the computer that overwhelmed the small front room was the most expensive, most self-contained model available.

"Grandfather," Doon said, "contrary to what you think, I brought you here tonight because, for all that you've been a remarkably bad parent and grandparent, I feel some residual desire for you not to hate me."

"You lose," Herman replied. The two thugs grinned moronically at him.

"You haven't had much connection with the real world lately," Doon commented.

"More than I wanted."

"Instead you've devoted your life and your fortune building up an empire on a shadow world that exists only in the computer."

"My Lord, boy, you sound like a clergyman."

"Mother wanted me to be a minister," Doon said. "She was always pathetically hunting for her father-- you, if you recall-- but this time a father who'd not desert her. Sadly, sadly, Grandfather, she finally found that surrogate parent in God."

"At least I thought I'd bequeath a child of mine some good sense," Herman said in disgust.

"You've bequeathed more than you know."

The world of Europe 1914d appeared on the holo. Italy was pinkly dominant.

"It's beautiful," Doon said, and Herman was surprised by the honest admiration in his voice.

"Nice of you to notice," Herman replied.

"No one but you could have built it."

"I know."

"How long do you think it would take to destroy it?"

Herman laughed. "Don't you know your history, boy? Rome was falling from the end of the republic on, and it took fifteen hundred years for the last remnant to fall. England's power was fading from the' eventeenth century on, but nobody noticed because it kept gathering real estate. It stayed independent for another four hundred years. Empires don't fall easily, boy."

"What would you say about an empire failing in a week?"

"That it wasn't a well-built empire, then."

"What about yours, Grandfather?"

"Stop calling me that."

"How well have you built?"

Herman glared at Doon. "No one has ever built better."

"Napoleon?"

"His empire didn't outlive him."

"And yours will outlive you?"

"Even a total incompetent could keep it intact."

Doon laughed. "But we're not talking about a total incompetent, Grandfather. We're talking about your own grandson, who has everything you ever had, only more of it."

Herman stood up. "This meeting is pointless. I have no family. I lost custody of my daughter because I didn't want her. I don't know, and I certainly don't want her offspring. I'll be under somec in a few months, and when I wake up I'll take Italy, whatever damage you've done to it, and build it back."

Doon laughed. "But Herman. Once a country has ceased to exist, it can't be brought back into the game. When I'm through with Italy, it'll be a computer standard country, and you won't be able to buy it."

"Look, boy," Herman said coldly, "do you plan to keep me here against my will?"

"Youre the one who asked for a meeting."

"I regret it."

"Seven days, Grandfather, and Italy will be gone."

"Inconceivable."

"I actually plan to do it in four days, but something might go wrong."

"Of all criminals, the worst are those who see beauty only as an opportunity for destruction."

"Good-bye, Grandfather."

But at the door, Herman turned to Doon and pleaded, "Why are you doing this? Why don't you stop?"

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

"Can't you wait until next time? Can't you let me have Italy for this waking?"

Doon only smiled. "Grandfather, I know how you play. If you had Italy this waking, you'd take over the world, wouldn't you? And then the game would end."

"Of course."

"That's why I have to destroy Italy now-- while I still can."

"Why Italy? Why not go ruin somebody else's empire?"

"Because, Grandfather, it's no challenge to destroy the weak."

Herman left, and the door slid shut behind him. He went back to the tube, and it took him to his home station. At home, the holo of the globe was still dominated by pink. Herman stopped and looked at it, and even as bg watched, a large section of Siberia changed colors. He no longer raged at Doon's incompetence. The boy was obviously compensating for a miserably religious childhood, which he blamed on his grandfather. But no amount of talent the boy might have could possibly dismember Italy. The computer was too rigidly realistic. Once the computer-simulated populace of Italy realized what Doon's character, the dictator, was doing, the unchanging laws of interaction between government and governed would oust him. He would be compelled to sell, and Herman could buy. And rebuild all the damage.

England rebelled again, and Herman went to bed.

But he woke gasping, and remembered that in his dream he had been crying. Why? But even as he tried to remember, the dream slipped from his mind's grasp, and he could only remember that it had something to do with his former wife.

He went to the computer and cleared it of the game. Birniss Humbol. The computer summoned her picture to the screen, and Herman looked as she went through a sequence of facial expressions. She was beautiful then, and the computer awakened memories.

A courtship that had been oddly chaste-- perhaps religion was already in Birniss's blood, only to surface fully in her daughter. Their wedding night had been their first intercourse, and Herman laughed at how it had been-- Birniss, worldly and wise, so strangely timid as she confessed her unpreparedness to her husband. And Herman, tender and careful, leading her through the mysteries. And at the end, her asking him, "Is that all?"

"It'll be better later," he had said, more than a little hurt.

"It wasn't half as bad as I expected," she answered. "Do it again."

They had done everything together. Everything, that is, but the game. And it was a crucial time for Italy. He began going to bed later and later, talking to her less, and even then talking of nothing but Italy and the affairs of his small but beautiful world.

There was no other man when she divorced him, and to satisfy a whim of curiosity he looked up her name in the vital statistics bank. He wasn't surprised when the computer told him that she had never remarried, though she hadn't kept his name.

Had there been something remarkable about their marriage, so that she'd never marry again? Or was it simply that she had only trusted one man, and then found that marriage wasn't what she'd wanted-- or sex, either, by extension. Her hurt had poisoned their daughter; her hurt had poisoned Doon. Poor boy, Herman thought. The sins of the fathers. But the divorce, however regrettable, had been inevitable. To save the marriage, Herman would have had to sacrifice the game. And never in history, real or feigned, had there been such a thing of beauty as his Italy. Dissertations had been written on it, and he knew that he was acclaimed by the students of alternate histories as the greatest genius ever to have played. "A match for Napolean, Julius, or Augustus." He remembered that one, and likewise the statement of one professor who had pleaded for an interview until Herman's vanity no longer allowed him to resist: "Herman Nuber, not even America, not even England, not even Byzantium compared to your Italy for stability, for grace, for power." High praise, coming from a man who had specialized in real European history, with the chauvinism of the historian for the era he studied.