End Game

"Ricia's gamin(e) smile breaks forth."

-"The Saturn Game," IV, p. 69.

My other two editions of "The Saturn Game" have "gamin," not "gamine," let alone "gamin(e)." "Gamin" is masculine. "Gamine" is feminine. "Gamin(e)" is how a dictionary would indicate both genders but is not usual in texts.

Even after Garcilaso's death, Scobie and Broberg continue their psychodrama which involves:

a Pythoness

an old man with one eye, a grey beard, a wide hat and a blue cloak (say no more)

trolls

a dwarf

the White Witch (Narnia!)

a giant

Kendrick's spear forged by Wayland

orcs besieging a tower (Middle Earth!)

(I have just read about Wayland Smith in Bill Willingham's Fables.)

Realizing that their fuel cells will run out long before they are able to climb out of the bowl into which they have fallen, they must choose between a heroic or peaceful death in the fantasy or full consciousness of their deaths in reality. They choose the latter but the only way to terminate the game is for Kendrick to kill Ricia, then himself. There is a double space between paragraphs...

The reader wonders: when Kendrick kills Ricia, then himself, does Scobie kill Broberg, then himself? They are trying to escape from the fantasy but do they succeed? Yes:

"'That was...a nightmare.' Broberg sounded barely awake." (p. 70)

In an Andersonian moment of realization, she realizes that they can use Garcilaso's fuel cell to light a beacon that will enable Danzig to locate them. The game had sustained them as they climbed to a height from which the beacon would work but then they had to return to reality so that Broberg could think clearly.