by John Shirley
“Winstead, isn’t it?” the manager finally replied as the boys worked. “What is dangerous is the next move. Their bishop will now attack our bishop, while he is still fresh from a fight. Fortunately our piece didn’t have a hard struggle.”
And so it happened, and the bishops exchanged hideously crashing blows, until the Moloch-Thanat piece threw a mace at his opponent’s face, and missed. In four quick blows the NixFax bishop won again, but two moves later he was knocked unconscious by the trunk of the rook’s elephant. Play continued for several moves, when the enemy queen rook pawn stepped into the square diagonal to Artemisia. In reply Artemisia advanced diagonally into the rook pawn’s square.
“I’m afraid your investment is about to be squandered to wear down a rook, my friend. Well, let’s see how she does.”
The opposing pawn threw a spear at Artemisia, missing. She did not throw back, but calmly advanced, holding her small wand at her side. He drew a long dagger, and thrust it at her, and then moved with great suddenness, in an attack Winstead would only see in the repeats. Leaping forward while whipping the blade behind him he brought it down as a chopping weapon, straight for her head. But Artemisia responded by stepping very slightly to one side, hopping onto her bare foot to change her center of gravity and motion. Her wand rose and hooked above the descending blade, bringing it down even faster than her enemy intended. Yanking backward as his sword hit the ground she made him fall to his knees with the force of his own blow.
As her right hand hooked his sword down, her shield had risen high in the air. Now she turned toward him and brought the edge of it down viciously into his exposed neck.
The blow bent her shield badly, and his seemed too bulky for her, so she let the boys carry them both off. Winstead realized he had been holding his breath, and gasped.
“Not bad.” The manager offered Winstead a nibble tray. “But the rook will finish her.”
But the rook did not finish her, though as he advanced atop his elephant, it would have been impossible to believe it.
Winstead met his pawn again at the victory reception, his mind still reeling from the few moments with the CEO. The Great Dame herself had bowed to him, had congratulated him on his choice of pawn, had handed him a ferule of honor, had made him understand that he would rise in the new, merged, NixFax-driven chikarabatsu.
But CEOs are one thing, Artemisia another. After the surviving winning pieces, both shoulders bare to emphasize their strength and one leg exposed to the hip to reveal fitness, had been introduced to the bigwigs; after he had watched her for half an hour; she strode across the room directly to him.
“I wish to thank you, sir,” she said, and smiled most sweetly. It took him several seconds to take in what she had said, and that she had said it to him.
“Well, I mean . . . ”
“This chance you gave me means much to my career. I will now be trained as a knight, without having to spend years seeking recognition as a pawn in minor games.”
“Well. That is,” he stumbled, “you’ve made my career as well.”
“Then it was a well-omened day that we met,” she replied, with more poetry in her voice than he expected from so attractive a killer. Sensing that he must say something to keep her there, he stammered the first thing he could think to ask.
“Well . . . but . . . that is, how did you do it? With the elephant, I mean?”
She smiled and leaned forward, her head conspiratorially next to his, the second woman to do this today. “I watch the elephants train. I knew if I touched them with my little hook they’d think it was a mahout goad, and be confused. So, I just gave the elephant the signal to lie down on its side, figuring to catch the rook off guard. His getting pinned under his own mount just made it more dramatic.”
Winstead laughed. He had never laughed with a woman before, and certainly never laughed about a real death before, and most certainly never about a death he had paid for, and would be promoted for; but he couldn’t think of another thing to say.
I wonder if chess pieces ever marry the managerial class, he was just thinking, just getting ready to ask his monocle, when his boss grabbed his arm. Artemisia had bowed and slipped away in an instant, seeing that business was at hand; before he could say anything. Before he could even think anything.
“Don’t waste your time getting to know her,” the boss said, honey dripping from every word. “Nobody will be sending you to chess games anymore. You and I are going to be strictly big leagues from now on. We’ll be playing chikarabatsu against the world! We’re going to play Go!!”
“Are there pawns, in Go?” Winstead asked, hesitantly. “Or knights?”
“Nothing of the sort,” the boss assured him. “Go pieces are a different type altogether, much more austere. No overlap at all.”
He turned his head furtively, quickly searching the room for Artemisia, but seeing only company employees, their spouses, the servants. All the chess pieces had been cleared away.
Hunger Games-author Suzanne Collins was not quite three years old when this story was first published in 1965. Both Collins’ trilogy and Walter Moudy’s story have a basis in Roman gladiatorial combat and both explore what type of person it takes to win in deadly combat. Survivors of both become heroes and their own people benefit from the “spoils”—money, food, energy—of their victory. Where the Hunger Games are fought to remind the citizens of Panem of the futility of rebellion, the Olympic War Games are staged to remind nations of the pointlessness of war. Both games are staged in specialized arenas and universally televised with color commentary and up-close-and-personal replays of death. A few of the Cold War-era details of Moudy’s story are a bit dated, but it remains a chilling tale that is even more interesting in light of the current popularity of Collins’ trilogy and the subsequent film versions of the books.
The Survivor
Walter F. Moudy
There was a harmony in the design of the arena which an artist might find pleasing. The curved granite walls which extended upward three hundred feet from its base were polished and smooth like the sides of a bowl. A fly, perhaps a lizard, could crawl up those glistening walls—but surely not a man.
The walls encircled an egg-shaped area which was precisely three thousand meters long and two thousand one hundred meters wide at its widest point. There were two large hills located on either side of the arena exactly midway from its center to its end. If you were to slice the arena crosswise, your knife would dissect a third, tree-studded hill and a small, clear lake; and the two divided halves would each be the exact mirror image of the other down to the smallest detail. If you were a farmer you would notice the rich, flat soil which ran obliquely from the two larger hills toward the lake. If you were an artist you might find pleasure in contemplating the rich shades of green and brown presented by the forested lowlands at the lake’s edge. A sportsman seeing the crystalline lake in the morning’s first light would find his fingers itching for light tackle and wading boots. Boys, particularly city boys, would yearn to climb the two larger hills because they looked easy to climb, but not too easy. A general viewing the topography would immediately recognize that possession of the central hill would permit dominance of the lake and the surrounding lowlands.
There was something peaceful about the arena that first morning. The early-morning sun broke through a light mist and spilled over the central hill to the low dew-drenched ground beyond. There were trees with young, green leaves, and the leaves rustled softly in rhythm with the wind. There were birds in those trees, and the birds still sang, for it was spring, and they were filled with the joy of life and the beauty of the morning. A night owl, its appetite satiated now by a recent kill, perched on a dead limb of a large sycamore tree and, tucking its beak in its feathers, prepared to sleep the day away. A sleek copperhead snake, sensing the sun’s approach and anticipating its soothing warmth, crawled from beneath the flat rock where it had spent the night and sought the comfort of its favorite rock ledge. A red squirrel chatt
ered nervously as it watched the men enter the arena from the north and then, having decided that there was danger there, darted swiftly to an adjacent tree and disappeared into the security of its nest.
There were exactly one hundred of them. They stood tall and proud in their uniforms, a barely perceptible swaying motion rippling through their lines like wheat stirred by a gentle breeze. If they anticipated what was to come, they did not show it. Their every movement showed their absolute discipline. Once they had been only men—now they were killers. The hunger for blood was like a taste in their mouths; their zest for destruction like a flood which raged inside them. They were finely honed and razor keen to kill. Their general made his last inspection. As he passed down the lines, the squad captains barked a sharp order and the men froze into absolute immobility. Private Richard Starbuck heard the rasp of the general’s boots against the stones as he approached. There was no other sound, not even of men breathing. From long discipline he forced his eyes to maintain their focus on the distant point he had selected, and his eyes did not waver as the general paused in front of him. They were still fixed on that same imaginary point. He did not even see the general.
Private Richard Starbuck was not thinking of death, although he knew he must surely die. He was thinking of the rifle he felt securely on his shoulder and of the driving need he had to discharge its deadly pellets into human flesh. His urge to kill was dominant, but even so he was vaguely relieved that he had not been selected for the assassination squad (the suicide squad the men called it); for he still had a chance, a slim chance, to live; while the assassination squad was consigned to inevitable death.
A command was given and Private Starbuck permitted his tense body to relax. He glanced at his watch. Five-twenty-five. He still had an hour and thirty-five minutes to wait. There was a tenseness inside him which his relaxed body did not disclose. They taught you how to do that in training. They taught you lots of things in training.
The TV screen was bigger than life and just as real. The color was true and the images three-dimensional. For a moment the zoom cameras scanned the silent deserted portions of the arena. The sound system was sensitive and sharp and caught the sound made by a squirrel’s feet against the bark of a black oak tree. Over one hundred cameras were fixed on the arena; yet so smooth was the transition from one camera to the next that it was as though the viewer was floating over the arena. There was the sound of marching feet, and the pace of the moving cameras quickened and then shifted to the north where one hundred men were entering the arena in perfect unison, one hundred steel-toed boots striking the earth as one. For a moment the cameras fixed on the flashing boots and the sensitive sound system recorded the thunder of men marching to war. Then the cameras flashed to the proud face of their general; then to the hard, determined faces of the men; then back again to the thundering boots. The cameras backed off to watch the column execute an abrupt halt, moved forward to focus for a moment on the general’s hawklike face, and then, with the general, inspected the troops one by one, moving down the rigid lines of men and peering intently at each frozen face.
When the “at ease” order was given, the camera backed up to show an aerial view of the arena and then fixed upon one of the control towers which lined the arena’s upper periphery before sweeping slowly downward and seeming to pass into the control tower. Inside the tower a distinguished gray-haired man in his mid-forties sat beside a jovial, fat-jawed man who was probably in his early fifties. There was an expectant look on their faces. Finally the gray-haired man said: “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’m John Ardanyon—”
“And I’m Bill Carr,” the fat-jawed man said.
“And this is it—yes, this is the big one, ladies and gentlemen. The 2050 edition of the Olympic War Games. This is the day we’ve all been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen, and in precisely one hour and thirty-two minutes the games will be under way. Here to help describe the action is Bill Carr, who is known to all of you sports fans all over the world. And with us for this special broadcast are some of the finest technicians in the business. Bill?”
“That’s right, John. This year NSB has spared no expense to insure our viewing public that its 2050 game coverage will be second to none. So stay tuned to this station for the most complete, the most immediate coverage of any station. John?”
“That’s right, Bill. This year NSB has installed over one hundred specially designed zoom cameras to insure complete coverage of the games. We are using the latest sonic sound equipment—so sensitive that it can detect the sound of a man’s heart beating at a thousand yards. Our camera crew is highly trained in the recently developed transitional-zone technique which you just saw so effectively demonstrated during the fade-in. I think we can promise you that this time no station will be able to match the immediacy of NSB.”
“Right, John. And now, less than an hour and a half before the action begins, NSB is proud to bring you this prerecorded announcement from the President of the United States. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
There was a brief flash of the White House lawn, a fade-out, and then:
“My fellow countrymen. When you hear these words, the beginning of the fifth meeting between the United States and Russia in the Olympic War Games will be just minutes away.
“I hope and I pray that we will be victorious. With the help of God, we shall be.
“But in our longing for victory, we must not lose sight of the primary purpose of these games. In the long run it is not whether we win or lose but that the games were played. For, my fellow citizens, we must never forget that these games are played in order that the frightening specter of war may never again stalk our land. It is better that a few should decide the nation’s fate, than all the resources of our two nations should be mobilized to destroy the other.
“My friends, many of you do not remember the horror of the Final War of 1998. I can recall that war. I lost my father and two sisters in that war. I spent two months in a class-two fallout shelter—as many of you know. There must never be another such war. We cannot—we shall not —permit that to happen.
“The Olympic War Games are the answer—the only answer. Thanks to the Olympic War Games we are at peace. Today one hundred of our finest fighting men will meet one hundred Russian soldiers to decide whether we shall be victorious or shall go down to defeat. The loser must pay the victor reparations of ten billion dollars. The stakes are high.
“The stakes are high, but, my fellow citizens, the cost of total war is a hundred times higher. This miniature war is a thousand times less costly than total war. Thanks to the Olympic War Games, we have a kind of peace.
“And now, in keeping with the tradition established by the late President Goldstein, I hereby declare a national holiday for all persons not engaged in essential services from now until the conclusion of the games.
“To those brave men who made the team I say: the hope and the prayers of the nation go with you. May you emerge victorious.”
There was a fade-out and then the pleasant features of John Ardanyon appeared. After a short, respectful silence, he said:
“I’m sure we can all agree with the President on that. And now, here is Professor Carl Overmann to explain the computer system developed especially for NSB’s coverage of the 2050 war games.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ardanyon. This year, with the help of the Englewood system of evaluating intangible factors, we hope to start bringing you reliable predictions at the ten-percent casualty level. Now, very briefly, here is how the Englewood system works . . . ”
Private Richard Starbuck looked at his watch. Still forty more minutes to wait. He pulled back the bolt on his rifle and checked once more to make sure that the first shell was properly positioned in the chamber. For the third time in the past twenty minutes he walked to one side and urinated on the ground. His throat seemed abnormally dry, and he removed his canteen to moisten his lips with water. He took only a small swallow because the rules pe
rmitted only one canteen of water per man, and their battle plan did not call for early possession of the lake.
A passing lizard caught his attention. He put his foot on it and squashed it slowly with the toe of his right boot. He noticed with mild satisfaction that the thing had left a small blood smear at the end of his boot. Oddly, however, seeing the blood triggered something in his mind, and for the first time he vaguely recognized the possibility that he could be hurt. In training he had not thought much about that. Mostly you thought of how it would feel to kill a man. After a while you got so that you wanted to kill. You came to love your rifle, like it was an extension of your own body. And if you could not feel its comforting presence, you felt like a part of you was missing. Still a person could be hurt. You might not die immediately. He wondered what it would be like to feel a misshapen chunk of lead tearing through his belly. The Russians would x their bullets too, probably. They do more damage that way.
It might not be so bad. He remembered a time four years ago when he had thought he was dying, and that had not been so bad. He remembered that at the time he had been more concerned about bleeding on the Martins’ new couch. The Martins had always been good to him. Once they had thought they could never have a child of their own, and they had about half adopted him because his own mother worked and was too busy to bake cookies for him and his father was not interested in fishing or basketball or things like that. Even after the Martins had Cassandra, they continued to treat him like a favorite nephew. Mr. Martin took him fishing and attended all the basketball games when he was playing. And that was why when he wrecked the motor scooter and cut his head he had been more concerned about bleeding on the Martins’ new couch than about dying, although he had felt that he was surely dying. He remembered that his first thought upon regaining consciousness was one of self-importance. The Martins had looked worried and their nine-year-old daughter, Cassandra, was looking at the blood running down his face and was crying. That was when he felt he might be dying. Dying had seemed a strangely appropriate thing to do, and he had felt an urge to do it well and had begun to assure them that he was all right. And, to his slight disappointment, he was.