… The sound faded, whisper-quieted, became the wind-moan of stale air through dead trees on a barren midnight solstice, the soul's midwinter in some calm, hard place.

He knew-

(Start again…)

Somebody knew that somewhere a man sat in a seat, in a big hall in a city in… on a big place, a big threatened place; and the man was playing… playing a game (a game which killed). The man still there, living and breathing… But his eyes did not see, his ears did not hear. He had one sense now: this one, inside here, fastened… inside here.

Whisper: Who am I?

There'd been a little accident (life a succession of same; evolution dependent on garbling; all progress a function of getting things wrong)…

He (and forget who this «he» is, just accept the nameless term while this equation works itself out)… he is the man in the chair in the hall on the big place, fallen somewhere inside himself, somewhere inside… another one. A double, a copy, somebody pretending to be him.

… But something wrong with this theory…

(Start again. …)

Marshal forces.

Need clues, reference points, something to hold onto.

Memory of a cell dividing, seen in time lapse, the very start of independent life, though still dependent. Hold that image.

Words (names); need words.

Not yet, but… something about turning inside out; a place…

What am I looking for?

Mind.

Whose?

(Silence)

Whose?

(Silence)

Whose?…

(Silence)

(… Start again.…)

Listen. This is shock. You were hit, hard. This is just some form of shock, and you'll recover.

You are the man playing the game (as are we all) … Still something wrong, though, something both missing and added. Think of those vital errors; think of that dividing cell, same and not-same, the place that's turned inside out, the cell cluster turning itself inside out, looking like a split brain (unsleeping, moving). Listen for somebody trying to talk to you.…

(Silence)

(This from that very pit of night, naked in the wasteland, the ice-wind moaning his only covering, alone in the freezing darkness under a sky of chill obsidian:)

Whoever tried to talk to me? When did I ever listen? When was I ever other than just myself, caring only for myself?

The individual is the fruit of mistake; therefore only the process has validity… So who's to speak for him?

The wind howls, empty of meaning, a soak for warmth, a cess for hope, distributing his body's exhausted heat to the black skies, dissolving the salty flame of his life, chilling to the core, sapping and slowing. He feels himself falling again, and knows that this time it is a deeper plunge, to where the silence and the cold are absolute, and no voice cries out, not even this one.

(Howled like the wind:) Whoever cared enough to talk to me?

(Silence)

Whoever ever cared-

(Silence)

Who-?

(Whisper:) Listen: "The Jinmoti of-

… Bozlen Two.

Two. Somebody had spoken once. He was the Changer, he was the error, the imperfect copy.

He was playing a different game from the other one (but he still intended to take a life). He was watching, feeling what the other was feeling, but feeling more.

Horza. Kraiklyn.

Now he knew. The game was… Damage. The place was… a world where a ribbon of the original idea was turned inside out… an Orbital: Vavatch. The Mind in Schar's World. Xoralundra. Balveda. The (and finding his hate, he hammered it into the wall of the pit, like a peg for a rope) Culture!

A breach in the cell wall; waters breaking; light freeing; illumination… leading to rebirth.

Weight and cold and bright, bright light…

… Shit. Bastards. Lost it all, thanks to a Pit of Self-Doubt Treble…

A wave of despondent fury swept over him, and something died.

Horza tore the flimsy headset away. He lay quivering on the couch, his eyes gummed and smarting, staring up at the auditorium lights and the two white fighting animals hanging half-dead from the trapezes overhead. He forced his eyes closed, then pulled them open again, away from the darkness.

Pit of Self-Doubt. Kraiklyn had been hit by cards which made the target player question their own identity. From the tenor of Kraiklyn's thoughts before he'd pulled the headset off, Horza thought Kraiklyn hadn't been too terrified by the effect, just disorientated. He'd been sufficiently distracted by the attack to lose the hand, and that was all his opponents had been aiming for. Kraiklyn was out of the game.

The effect on him, trying to be Kraiklyn but knowing he wasn't, had been more severe. That was all it was. Any Changer would have had the same problem; he was certain…

The trembling began to fade. He sat up and swung his feet off the couch. He had to leave. Kraiklyn would be going, so he had to.

Pull yourself together, man.

He looked down to the playing table. The breastless woman had won. Kraiklyn glared at her as she raked in her winnings and his straps were unfastened. On the way out of the arena, Kraiklyn passed the limp, still warm body of his last Life as it was released from its seat.

He kicked the corpse; the crowd booed.

Horza stood up, turned and bumped into a hard, unyielding body.

"May I see that pass now, sir?" said the guard he'd lied to earlier.

He smiled nervously, aware that he was still trembling a little; his eyes were red, and his face was covered in sweat. The guard gazed steadily at him, her face expressionless. Some of the people on the terrace were watching them.

"I'm… sorry…" the Changer said slowly, patting his pockets with shaking hands. The guard put out her hand and took his left elbow.

"Perhaps you'd better-"

"Look," Horza said, bending closer to her. "I… I haven't got one. Would a bribe do?" He started to reach inside his blouse for the credits. The guard kicked up with her knee and twisted Horza's left arm behind his back. It was all done in the most expert fashion, and Horza had to jump to ride the kick tolerably. He let his left shoulder disconnect and started to crumple, but not before his free hand had lightly scratched the guard's face (and that, he realised as he fell, had been an instinctive reaction, nothing reasoned; for some reason he found this amusing).

The guard caught Horza's other arm and pinned both his hands behind his back, using her lock-glove to secure them there. With her other hand she wiped blood from her cheek. Horza knelt on the terrace surface, moaning the way most people would have with an arm broken or dislocated.

"It's all right, everybody; just a little problem over a pass. Please continue with your enjoyment," the guard said. Then she pulled her arm up; the locked glove hauled Horza up, too. He yelped with pretended pain, and then, head down, was pushed up the steps to the walkway. "Seven three, seven three; male code green incoming walk seven spinwards," the guard told her lapel mike.

Horza felt her start to weaken as soon as they got to the walkway. He couldn't see any other guards yet. The pace of the woman behind him faltered and slowed. He heard her gasp, and a couple of drunks leaning on an auto-bar looked at them quizzically; once turned on his bar stool to watch.

"Seven… thr-" the guard began. Then her legs buckled. Horza was dragged down with her, the locked glove staying tight while the muscles in the woman's body relaxed. He connected his shoulder again, twisted and heaved; the field filaments in the glove gave way, leaving him with livid bruises already starting to form on his wrists. The guard lay on her back on the walkway floor, her eyes closed, breathing lightly. Horza had scraped her with a non-lethal poison nail, he thought; anyway he had no time to wait and see. They were sure to come looking for the guard soon, and he couldn't afford to let Kraiklyn get too far ahead of him. Whether he was heading back to the ship, as Horza expected he would, or staying to observe more of the game, Horza wanted to stay close.