Pequil had arrived as usual in the Alien Affairs Bureau car in the morning, and taken Gurgeh to the park. The apex no longer tried to put himself in front of the cameras, but busily hurried them out of the way to clear a path for Gurgeh.

Gurgeh was introduced to Lo Wescekibold Ram. He was a short, bulky apex with a more rugged face than Gurgeh had expected and a military bearing.

Ram played quick, incisive lesser games, and they finished two on the first day, ending about even. Gurgeh only realised how hard he'd been concentrating that evening when he fell asleep watching the screen. He slept for almost six hours.

The next day they played another two of the lesser games, but the play extended, by agreement, into the evening session; Gurgeh felt the apex was testing him, trying to wear him out, or at least see what the limits of his endurance were; they would be playing all six of the lesser games before the three main boards, and Gurgeh already knew he was under much more strain playing Ram alone than he'd been competing against nine others.

After a great struggle, almost to midnight, Gurgeh finished fractionally ahead. He slept seven hours and woke up just in time to get ready for the next day's play. He forced himself awake, glanding the Culture's favourite breakfast drug, Snap, and was a little disappointed to see Ram looked just as fresh and energetic as he felt.

That game became another war of attrition, dragging through the afternoon, and Ram didn't suggest playing into the evening. Gurgeh spent a couple of hours discussing the game with the ship during the evening, then, to wash it from his mind, watched the Empire's broadcast channels for a while.

There were adventure programmes and quizzes and comedies, news-stations and documentaries. He looked for reports on his own game. He was mentioned, but the day's rather dull play didn't merit much space. He could see that the agencies were becoming less and less well-disposed to him, and he wondered if they now regretted standing up for him when he'd been ganged up on during the first match.

Over the next five days the news-stations became even less happy with "Alien Gurgey" (Eächic was phonetically less subtle than Marain, so his name was always going to be spelled incorrectly). He finished the lesser games about level with Ram, then beat him on the Board of Origin after being well down at one stage, and lost on the Board of Form only by the most slender of margins.

The news-agencies at once decided that Gurgeh was a menace to the Empire and the common good, and began a campaign to have him thrown off Eä. They claimed he was in telepathic touch with the Limiting Factor, or with the robot called Flere-Imsaho, that he used all manner of disgusting drugs which were kept in the vice den and drug emporium he lived in on the roof of the Grand Hotel, then — as though just discovering the fact — that he could make the drugs inside his own body (which was true) using glands ripped out of little children in appalling and fatal operations (which was not). The effect of these drugs seemed to be to turn him into either a super-computer or an alien sex-maniac (even both, in some reports).

One agency discovered Gurgeh's Premises, which the ship had drawn up and registered with the Games Bureau. These were held to be typically shifty and mealy-mouthed Culture double-talk; a recipe for anarchy and revolution. The agencies adopted hushed and reverent tones as they appealed loyally to the Emperor to "do something" about the Culture, and blamed the Admiralty for having known about this gang of slimy perverts for decades without, apparently, showing them who was boss, or just crushing them completely (one daring agency even went so far as to claim the Admiralty wasn't totally certain where the Culture's home planet was). They offered up prayers that Lo Wescekibold Ram would wipe the Alien Gurgey off the Board of Becoming as decisively as the Navy would one day dispose of the corrupt and socialistic Culture. They urged Ram to use the physical option if he had to; that would show what the namby-pamby Alien was made of (perhaps literally!).

"Is all this serious?" Gurgeh said, turning, amused, from the screen to the drone.

"Deadly serious," Flere-Imsaho told him.

Gurgeh laughed and shook his head. He thought the common people must be remarkably stupid if they believed all this nonsense.

Ater four days of the game on the Board of Becoming, Gurgeh was poised to win. He saw Ram talking worriedly with some of his advisors afterwards, and half expected the apex to offer his resignation then, after the afternoon session. But Ram decided to fight on; they agreed to forgo the evening session and resume the next morning.

The big tent ruffled slightly in a warm breeze as Flere-Imsaho joined Gurgeh at the exit. Pequil supervised the way being cleared through the crowds outside to where the car was waiting. The crowd was composed mostly of people who just wanted to see the alien, though there were a few demonstrating noisily against Gurgeh, and an even smaller number who were cheering him. Ram and his advisors left the tent first.

"I think I see Shohobohaum Za in the crowd," the drone said as they waited at the exit. Ram's entourage was still cluttering the far end of the ribbon of path held clear by the two lines of policemen.

Gurgeh glanced at the machine, then down the line of arm-linked police. He was still tensed from the game, bloodstream suffused with multifarious chemicals. As happened every now and again, everything he saw around him seemed to be part of the game; the way people stood like pieces, grouped according to who could take or affect whom; the way the pattern on the marquee was like a simple grid-area on the board, and the poles like planted power-sources waiting to replenish some exhausted minor piece and supporting a crux-point in the game; the way the people and police stood like the suddenly closed jaws of some nightmarish pincer-movement… all was the game, everything was seen in its light, translated into the combative imagery of its language, evaluated in the context its structure imposed upon the mind.

"Za?" Gurgeh said. He looked in the direction the drone's field was pointing, but couldn't see the man.

The last of Ram's group cleared the pavement where the official cars waited. Pequil gestured for Gurgeh to proceed. They walked between the lines of uniformed males. Cameras pointed, questions were shouted. Some ragged chanting began and Gurgeh saw a banner waving over the heads of the crowd; "GO HOME ALIEN'.

"Seems I'm not too popular," he said.

"You aren't," Flere-Imsaho told him.

In two steps (Gurgeh realised in a distant, game-sense way even as he was speaking and the drone was replying), he was going to be adjacent to… it took one more step to analyse the problem… something bad, something jarring and discordant… there was something… different; wrong about the three-group he was about to pass on his left; like unplaced ghost-pieces hiding in forest territory…. He had no idea exactly what was wrong with the group, but he knew immediately — as the protagonising structures of the game-sense claimed precedence in his thoughts — that he wasn't going to risk putting a piece in there.

… Another half-step…

… to realise that the piece he didn't want to risk was himself.

He saw the three-group start to move and split up. He turned and ducked automatically; it was the obvious replying move of a threatened piece with too much momentum to stop or bound back from such an attacking force.

There were several loud bangs. The three-group of people burst towards him through the arms of two policemen, like a composite piece suddenly fragmenting. He converted his ducking motion into a dive and roll which he realised with some delight was the almost perfect physical equivalent to a trip-piece tying up a light-attacker. He felt a pair of legs thud into his side, not hard, then there was a weight on top of him and more loud noises. Something else fell on top of his legs.