Free The Game of X: A Novel of Upmanship Espionage by Robert Sheckley Page A

alleys off the Calle della Massena.
    There were fewer tourists in this section. Workmen and souvenir-sellers passed me, and an off-duty gondolier. I received cryptic directions from a fat woman with a basket of laundry, and passed a group of noisy children shepherded by a nun. Then a little boy in a white sailor’s suit came by, and after him a hip-booted fisherman.
    The fisherman moved on. The little boy stopped, danced from one leg to the other, and raised a peashooter to his mouth. I heard a dry rattle as the pea hit the wall behind me. The boy grinned, turned, and shot at a stately lady dressed in black with a shopping basket under her arm. The lady reached involuntarily for her backside, stopped herself, and cursed the boy in an unfathomable dialect. The boy jumped up and down, and the old lady continued down the street.
    The boy looked around for a new target, took aim at me again and fired. I raised my arm, heard the puff of his breath, and felt something tug at the sleeve. I examined the sleeve and found a tiny dart imbedded in the cloth, its back a piece of cotton wadding, its front an indigo-stained needle.
    Then the streetlights came on. In their yellow glare I saw the boy’s face, still grinning, his forehead wrinkled under the sailor’s cap, his eyes dark and pouched, his nose sharp with deep lines running from the nostrils to the sides of his mouth, his chin and cheeks covered with a powdered stubble. It was none other than my old friend, the malignant dwarf.
    I stared. It was Jansen, bereft of his beard, his teeth bared in an evil grin. Jansen masquerading as a child, raising a blowpipe masquerading as a peashooter. He fired, and I dodged. The dart missed my neck by inches; I wondered if he had tipped it with curare or strychnine, or with some noxious fluid of his own distillation.
    Jansen danced and giggled in a poor but sufficient imitation of childish high spirits. Several strollers laughed. Jansen fitted another dart into his gun.
    I wanted badly to rush him before he had time to fire, and to drop-kick him into the canal. But a crowd had collected to watch the fun. And at least three people in that crowd were not amused.
    One of them was Carlo. One was the red-faced shoefighter from the vaporetto. And the third was the fat man who had taken my taxi when I first arrived at Marco Polo airport.
    Then I understood the premise of the scene that Forster, with his taste for dubious tableaux, had arranged for me. Maddened with rage, I was supposed to assault the dwarf before he had time to puncture me with his indigo needles. The crowd, apparently seeing a child thus attacked, would react with violence. During the scuffle, Carlo would slip a knife between my ribs.
    I turned and walked away. Forster’s men followed, and Jansen skipped along in front of them. I lengthened my stride, wondering about the effective range of his peashooter.
    I tried to lose myself in the complex interconnections of streets and canals and bridges. But the streetlights threw my treacherous shadow behind me; I dragged it after me like a tail. I crossed a bridge, went down an alley, and found myself in the Ghetto Vecchio, in front of the little synagogue. As usual, I was lost. I turned a corner and found myself on the Viale di San Lazzaro. I wasn’t particularly surprised. In the maze of Venice it is difficult to find anything quickly; but it is equally difficult to lose anything for long.
    Number 32 was at the end of the street near the canal. It lay behind a high stone wall with a glitter of broken glass on top. There was a heavy iron gate, which was locked. I shook it, heard the bolt slide, and the gate swung open. A voice said, “Hurry!”
    I went through the gate, took a few blind steps in the darkness and something knocked me down. I got up and saw that it was a stone cupid.
    The gate closed and the bolt slammed home. Then Karinovsky was standing beside me, gripping me fiercely by the shoulder.
    “Nye!” he said. “My dear