Desperate Games Read online

  But in addition to his stature and his strength, The Killer possessed quick reflexes. He launched a second attack without leaving the young woman time to catch her breath. At the very moment when she spun around and turned to face him again, she was hit full in the chest by the giant’s hundred and twenty kilos, as in one bound he catapulted himself at her feet first, true to the genuine traditions of the ancient sport, which the super-wrestlers had embraced.

  She seemed to stagger under the impact, swayed, let go of her dagger, and collapsed onto the ground. The crowd emitted a roar of anger when they saw the other wrestler, who had got up again quickly, take off with another bound and land on her again, brandishing his weapon.

  What happened next occurred so quickly that many spectators were given the wrong impression. Later the television had to show this much admired sequence in the battle again in slow motion, in order for everyone to appreciate Miss Lovely’s composure and masterful strategy. She was much less affected than it appeared, and when, stretched out on her back with her left hand clenched, she fiddled with the sand of the arena, it was not due to spasms of pain, as her adversary and the crowd believed. Seeing her at his mercy and keen to finish her off, The Killer did not take any precautions. As he raised his arm, he got the fistful of fine sand she had picked up right in the face, and momentarily blinded, his fatal reflex was to put his hands to his eyes. At the same moment the dagger, which she had taken care to keep within reach of her right hand at the moment when she collapsed, was plunged into the spot on his hairy chest where his heart was.

  He fell down dead onto the young woman’s body and, before she had time to push him off by twisting the lower part of her body, her own chest was covered with the blood of her victim. So much so that part of the audience believed that she was fatally wounded and the stadium was filled with a distressed silence, heavy with disappointment.

  It was only when she leaped up again, alert and triumphant, while the body of her opponent contracted in a final spasm, that the spectators understood. Then the concrete stadium was shaken by a storm of applause and incredible howls, celebrating the success of their favourite, who within moments had become their idol. Those on the official stand also joined in the general euphoria, and Mrs Betty Han saluted in recognition of the victory of intelligence and cunning over brute force, while five hundred thousand mouths chanted the name Lovely. The Nobels who were present were no less enthusiastic, at least those who belonged to the clan of the physicists, for they all supported the Alpha team which represented quantum theory. Their cheeks burning with pride, and considering the victory their own, they behaved in a noticeably frenetic way, waving their arms, tapping their feet, drooling, belching and uttering threatening shouts, not a single word of which could be discerned clearly.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ Yranne asked Zarratoff ironically.

  The latter had followed the fight in silence, but with bated breath like the rest of the spectators. His friend’s question surprised him just as he was opening his hands in an instinctive gesture to join in the applause. He started, and seemed to be ashamed of himself. He put down his arms and shrugged his shoulders. He made no reply.

  The crowd turned their attention to the other fights, from which they had been distracted by the dramatic intensity of the star bout. One of them was in the process of finishing tragically: it was between a male Alpha wrestler and a female Beta. The latter had at first defended herself courageously, but after being wounded on two occasions it was obvious that she would not be able to last much longer. As her adversary approached her to finish her off, her attitude changed suddenly. With no strength left, and feeling that she was lost, she looked at him imploringly. She dropped to her knees in front of the man and lowered her head, crossing her arms over her blood-spattered breast.

  The audience showed immediately how indignant this made them, and all kinds of projectiles were thrown over the bars, overwhelming the miserable woman. It was against the rules of the game: the athletes should fight to the death. The audience did not calm down again until a referee intervened, who made the woman get up again, threatening her with his revolver. She stumbled to her feet. The crowd reacted violently again when they saw the male wrestler throw his dagger aside. The referee was going to intervene again, but, like the spectators, he had not understood the meaning of this gesture. There was no question of him showing mercy. It was simply that his hands were sufficient to finish the job. He knocked the woman out with one blow of his fist, and then, sitting astride her, he strangled her.

  Having calmed down again, the crowd applauded, for even though the bout had not been an artistic masterpiece like the previous one, it always appreciated players who introduced some variety into their style.

  The Alpha team’s victory could scarcely be in doubt any more. However, while this bout had been going on, they had lost another of the two final bouts. It was between two men. The Alpha wrestler was under the other man. Stretched out on his back, with one arm broken by a brutal armlock, he could no longer defend himself except by trying to dodge the blows by contorting his body. He managed to avoid some in this way, but the last one was fatal. However the Beta wrestler’s triumph was short-lived. Kneeling down by his adversary, he kept up the momentum as he was about to deal the death blow, and the crowd was just about to applaud, for it was only fair to acknowledge his achievement, even if he was not one of the favourites. But then he suddenly stopped and held his breath. Miss Lovely, who had just freed herself from the body of her first victim, was approaching him stealthily. After a few moments of oppressed silence, a new wave of cheers greeted the glint of a dagger as she plunged it between the shoulders of the short-lived victor. The steel penetrated so deeply that she had to use all her strength to pull it out again, pressing the corpse down with her knee, causing it to fall back on top of that of the Alpha wrestler.

  The show was drawing to a close, or at least most of the audience thought so: with two Alpha players unharmed and now available to help their partner, as was permitted by the rules of the game, the outcome of the world championship was no longer in doubt and the last bout was scarcely of interest.

  This one was between two women, who had inflicted only light wounds on each other. But when the last female Beta wrestler saw that Miss Lovely was also coming towards her with her victorious companion, she was so sure of the fate which awaited her at the hands of three opponents, that she panicked and behaved in a despicable way, which prompted more booing and a torrent of insults. She threw aside her dagger and sought salvation in vain by fleeing. She had gone completely out of her mind. She rushed towards the edge of the ring, ran around it, clinging onto the bars and in her madness shook them violently. But they were solid and had been erected to prevent all attempts at escape. The staff of the stadium kept a watchful guard around the ring and were quick to force the miserable woman back towards the centre, where her opponents were waiting for her, by striking her with lances. There she stopped, wild-eyed, and waited without even looking at the male Alpha wrestler and her former opponent, who were preparing to attack her from different directions.

  ‘Leave her to me!’ Miss Lovely, who had not taken part in this maneouvre, shouted suddenly.

  The crowd understood her intention at once and uttered howls of approval.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Lovely! Lovely!’

  Her intervention introduced some unexpected suspense, for which all were grateful to her. The spectators who were getting ready to leave their seats sat down again. The male and female wrestlers from the Alpha team hesitated and exchanged meaningful looks with each other, for there was a special bonus for each individual victory and Miss Lovely had already had her fair share of those.

  ‘Lo-ve-ly!’ the crowd roared. ‘Lo-ve-ly! Lo-ve-ly!’

  ‘Leave her to me,’ the young woman insisted. ‘Leave her to me, please, and I’ll give all my bonuses to you.’

  Smiling at her, the man and woman bowed. They were no doubt interested in her generous offer, but al
so they were concerned not to disappoint their public, and perhaps they were also touched by the mischievous charm with which she had entreated them.

  They separated. There was scarcely any danger for the woman champion. The Beta woman, although much heavier than her, was far from being in the same class. What is more she was out of breath and too distraught to offer any serious resistance.

  Miss Lovely also threw her dagger aside and faced her last opponent with her bare hands. For several minutes it was a classic celebration of wrestling, achieving at times the greatness of ancient times, and not one of the spectators present ever forgot it. There was an enchanting quality about it which filled the old enthusiasts with wonder. She was intoxicated, and transported to the highest summits of her art by the encouragements of five hundred thousand admirers, and the young woman deployed, in her range of infinite variations, her knowledge of wrestling, her feline suppleness and her strength, transcending herself every moment in order to deserve and win from the crowd ever more intense roars.

  It started with a series of forearm blows, rapid blows to which she was able to impart as much grace as violence, and which shot out like bolts of lightning with sudden, unprecedented force from her whole body. In the face of this onslaught, the numbed woman, who was stunned and incapable of predicting the moment and angle of the attack, was soon unable to do anything but bury her head in her tightly closed arms, swaying unsteadily on her legs at each new blow.

  Seeing her like this, like a bull dazzled and thrown into a panic by the whirl of capes and the banderillas, Miss Lovely adopted another technique. She withdrew a little, taking a new run at her and throwing her marvellous athletic body like a projectile. As though struck by a battering ram her opponent fell to the ground and could only get up again with difficulty, to be kicked again, once in the pit of her stomach and again full in the face, by the goddess’ two feet, which had been catapulted through the air again. This happened five or six times and every time the woman got up again but with increasing difficulty. Each time she was a little more wobbly, her vision a little more blurred, and each time she was brutally knocked down again.

  Miss Lovely raged tirelessly. With all its muscles powerfully extended, her much admired naked body, red with the blood of previous victims and taut as a bow, literally flew through the air. Then, having hit her target, she landed smoothly on her hands, did a pirouette on the sand, and without even pausing to draw breath, launched into flight once more. It defied the laws of gravity, an almost supernatural demonstration of strength and beauty. The crowd, the three referees and the surviving wrestlers followed each of her movements as though in a dream, holding their breath with a religious fervour. Everyone adored her at that moment for the free gift that she was offering as a bonus to her admirers. They all curbed their shouts of congratulation. In the huge stadium nothing could be heard but the increasing breathlessness of the victim and the light rustling of the body flying through the air as it lightly brushed the sand which floated up around her. Emotions reached a climax which could not be maintained for very long. The silent stadium seemed ready to explode. It was time to bring things to a close. And Miss Lovely did so with the mastery of a great artiste. When, finally knocked senseless, the woman had collapsed onto the ground, the young woman bent down, grabbed hold of her, one hand between her legs, the other under her breasts, and, quickly stretching her own loins which revealed the harmonious form of her musculature, she raised the flabby body that seemed to be more than twice as big as hers above her head. Amidst the bursts of applause prompted by this gesture, she whirled it round, offering it as a sacrifice to her public, twice, three times, ten times, until she herself became dizzy, exhilarated by this triumphal waltz. Then she let the inert body of the woman fall to the ground, turned her onto her stomach, placed one of her divine legs on her back, and, grabbing hold of her neck, broke her cervical vertebrae.

  With perfect coordination and spontaneity, the crowd became silent one last time, for a brief moment, to hear the bones cracking. When this was done, it felt finally free to go wild to the point of ecstasy. Grasped by her two partners, who carried her in triumph, Miss Lovely raised her arms and arced her gleaming body towards a public that had gone mad, and was incapable of restraining its passion, smashing the seats and the telescopic viewers and breaking everything around them, uttering wild cries to the glory of their idol all the while.

  3.

  A few months before, Mrs Betty Han had obtained the agreement of the government, which was in desperate straits, to put a certain programme into practice that had been prepared by her collaborators, a team of psychologists and psychiatrists, with a view to curing the world of the ills which were devastating it and threatened to ruin it completely.

  The report which she presented to the Council included a minute scientific analysis of the scourges which psychology had been called upon to combat. The entire conclusion of this first section, translated into ordinary language, could be expressed in these few points:

  The world was suffering from melancholy. And the suicides were a direct consequence of this condition. The enormous amount of leisure time, which was the consequence of the rationalisation of work, had not itself been properly organised.

  Education, which had been granted such a large role, had proved itself incapable of filling the void of empty hours and satisfying the thirst for entertainment and for occupying the mind that was inherent in human nature. Contrary to Betty’s advice, the Ministry for Leisure had neglected the Department of Games, which, with only derisory means at its disposal, had not taken any worthwhile initiative. In fact the opposite was true, and the former sport competitions between national teams, which had previously aroused general enthusiasm, had disappeared with the demise of nations. Nothing replaced them. The instinct for play, which psychology considered to be one of the most powerful ones in human beings, had thus been despised.

  Concerning the matter of LCE, the world had lost confidence in itself, because it trusted instead the perfect automatic equipment that science had provided. The case of the cosmonauts was typical. During the long periods they spent in space, they had become used to relying on their computers completely, which never did anything wrong. So much so that they got to the point where they weren’t able to make even a basic move without instructions and approval from the machines.

  After having developed and analysed these points in depth, the report came to possible solutions to the problems that had been created in this way. They were based on very simple principles.

  As the situation was very serious, it was necessary to resort to a shock remedy capable of provoking passionate and violent interest in order to bring the world out of its melancholy state. It was necessary to conceive some entertainments which would be sufficiently sensational, in the literal sense of the word, to enthrall the mind during its interminable leisure time.

  These entertainments, which the Ministry of Psychology envisaged in the form of games, should be of such a nature as to restore confidence in human value to the individual who practiced them and to the spectator who watched them, and in such a way as to fire the imagination and the senses. Thus, by a sequence of logical argument, they arrived at the concept of competitions, which were brutal and violent, and brought into play all the energy of the participants.

  The report then went on to deal with questions of pure psychology, and cited innumerable experiments conducted in ordinary life or carried out under laboratory conditions, and mentioned also that aggression was a very important factor. It was composed with such skill that it gradually led the reader to admit that it was logical, and almost natural, to propose the inauguration of a series of popular spectacles, in which players would confront each other in murderous combat. A start could be made immediately, by way of a trial with bouts between only two opponents, for example, two experienced fencers.

  The experts predicted that the emotion created by these duels would lead to a relatively rapid improvement, but that it would not be s
ufficient to keep the world in a condition of mental health. Mrs Betty Han could see further ahead, and, even before the principle of the games was approved, her staff of specialists were working on varying the programme both in terms of its scope and its quality.

  When Fawell and the ministers were informed of this conclusion, after letting themselves be convinced for a moment by the insidious temptations of logic, they were nevertheless overcome with indignation and swore that they would never agree to these barbaric measures. However, as they were all men of science, used to using their reason, they soon regained their composure and thought the matter over, which led to great confusion in their minds. It was in this state of mind that they attended the council convened by the President, to discuss the project and listen to its author’s explanations.

  Fawell arrived at the meeting depressed and demoralized. The decision that was to be taken was so important that the Nobels had appointed an important delegation to represent them. It was presided over by O’Kearn, who had put pressure on the government to reserve an important role for psychology.

  It was a long and lively debate. Several ministers had criticised the project at the beginning in the name of morality and simple humanity. Mrs Betty Han listened to them calmly, and then replied. Playing with the meaning of words, she commented first on the fact that so-called ‘humanity’ was at that moment on a path which would lead to it disappearing completely. Then appealing to their rational minds, she had no difficulty in demonstrating that the death of a few was an insignificant evil compared with the self-massacre of suicides. For her, this remedy was by contrast deeply humane, if it managed to put an end to the deadly epidemic. The most well informed psychologists were convinced of this. Even meticulous scholars could not help being swayed by this reasoning, and criticisms became less incisive. Zarratoff, however, remained fiercely opposed, but for him it was not a question of morality or humanity. He was against the idea of games as such, because of their childish nature. But his voice was barely listened to.