The Gamesman by Barry N. Malzberg

Author:Barry N. Malzberg [Malzberg, Barry N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575102460
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-09-29T08:00:00+00:00

12

AGAIN GAMES MASTER: And the next shift I am summoned by the Games Master and when I see him it is very much like the dream, at least at the beginning; he has the same grim and bitter expression, there is the same quizzical tilt to his head. I think that he has summoned me to tell me that I have been passed to the next level and I do not know what I will say to him, whether at this time I will tell him everything that has happened or I will merely accept the passage but instead, to my surprise, he does not mention my own performance at all. Instead he tosses across the desk to me papers which I see have been marked in my own hand and I realize that he has come not to talk to me as to a Player but as to a Gamesman. “I see,” he says, “that you have passed these two. You have recorded their responses as sufficient.”

“That is right,” I say, a thin clutching in my chest as if a fine net had been thrust around the heart and gossamer wires pulled. I keep my hands inserted into one another, level, unmoving, hoping that they will not betray emotion. “That was my instruction; to record their answers and pass them on to the next level for approval should they be satisfactory.”

“How can you be lying to us in this way?” the Games Master says, “it is impossible that they could be passed. They are completely insufficient.”

“But they performed—”

“We do not believe that,” the Games Master said. He motioned to the papers. “Look at these,” he said, “they have not been filled out properly. You have not given sufficient detail. You have merely marked them passing without an explanation.”

“That was my option, I thought.”

“You have no option! It cannot be that these could pass; we have all of the materials on them at hand and it is out of accord with any understanding.” Suddenly, the Games Master whips off his glasses, behind them he is no longer a bitter but an apologetic man whose eyes gape in little pockets of his face as if they were merely witness to what is going on. I have no culpability, the eyes are saying, this has nothing to do with me at all, look for responsibility somewhere else. “Look here,” he says, “you shouldn’t get the wrong idea here; we’re perfectly willing to meet our obligations here and if a Player passes he passes; we wouldn’t hold him back without any basis. But these results are impossible.”

I sit there impassively, hands folded, looking at a point near and yet beyond him. My fear, if that is the word for it, has congealed toward resolve and beyond anything there is a grim unwillingness to concede to the Games Master any hint of my confusion and vulnerability. Thinking this, I think also that I have in a basic sense gone too far, that this is

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