Players at the Game of People

by John Brunner

  More details impinged on his awareness. He wore a foul, greasy garment, too shapeless to be called a robe, which covered him from shoulders to knees. He was accustomed to sandals protecting his feet, but they were a forgotten luxury now. There were two small holes and one large in the walls and floor of his cell: one serving to piss and shit into, one admitting a little air -- but it was so small, he could not even thrust his emaciated fist down it -- and one closed with a heavy and expensive door, made of solid wood. The rest of the structure was of mud brick, not kiln-fired, not even baked, only sun-dried. But it was enough of an obstacle to contain such a weakling as a man.

  From far away he heard the noise of a celebration: chanting, drumming, beating of cymbals, punctuated with loud laughter. His mouth turned bitterly down at the corners.

  But that was ill-advised. That was stupid. That was dangerous. There was a reason why he was here -- he firmly believed it -- and it was his duty to endure patiently until understanding came. He forced his lips to shape a smile, and between gapped and aching teeth he hummed a sacred melody for the sake of its magical protective powers. A certain comfort came upon him as he repeated it over and over, lulling his consciousness into a state of vague, starvation-bred euphoria.

  Abruptly he was aroused by the scraping of the wooden bars locking the cell door as they were drawn aside. He turned to face the entrance, rising to his knees.

  The door creaked on its peglike hinges. In the opening was the jailer's bodyguard, club upraised. He believed the prisoner to be a sorcerer, and terribly dangerous. But he also believed in his club, and was proud of it, for it had been cut from a tree the like of which did not grow within seven days' journey. He had studded it with copper nails and around its narrower end he had bound leather strips for better purchase.

  Behind him, though, came the jailer himself, wearing a relatively cleanly robe with an embroidered hem and a pair of costly copper bracelets.

  "Come on, you!" he barked. "Got to make you fit to enter the king's presence!"

  All of a sudden the prisoner realized the music had stopped while he was lost in his self-induced torpor. From the same direction there now came shouts and occasional wails of anguish.

  Very interesting!

  Stiffly, so he expected the creaking of his joints to be audible, he complied. He was hastened up a narrow passageway leading to a flight of much-worn stone stairs. At the top two women were waiting by the light of a rush-dip torch: one scrawny and middle-aged, one still youthful, both naked but for loincloths and bracelets. They had visibly been weeping; their eyes were red and swollen.

  "Throw away that rag you're wearing!" barked the jailer. And, when the prisoner was slow to comply, ripped it from him.

  "Rinse him down!" he ordered. "Anoint him with something that'll get rid of the stink! Hurry!"

  The women had brought rags and pottery jars of clean water. With obvious distaste, for their services were not ordinarily misapplied to jailbirds, they slopped and sluiced away the worst of the dirt, then ladled perfumed oil on to his hair and beard and tore at the tangled locks with bone combs. A passable result was rapidly achieved, and the jailer, fretting, handed him a new robe, ankle-length, of blue cloth with red embroidery. Also his bodyguard produced a pair of sandals with leather thongs.

  When he was presentable, he was hustled along another passageway and into a large courtyard, where he was surrendered into the charge of a guard captain, a burly man with a bronze sword, helmet and greaves, and bronze strips on his leather cuirass. He was accompanied by four taller men bearing long spears, like pikes, also helmeted, but with only epaulette plates on their cuirasses and short daggers in their belts instead of swords.

  There was a formal exchange that included an oath or two. During it, the prisoner registered that the air stank of incense, roast meat, and terror in approximately equal proportions. He also saw that ahead of him, on the far side of the courtyard, there were several large windows beyond which torches shone and people's shadows moved. That was where the shouting was coming from, though it was not so loud by now.

  The wailing and weeping, however, had proved contagious. It was being echoed from somewhere behind him, doubtless from other cells like his where hapless prisoners were confined in misery. It was amazing they had the strength to cry.

  Then it was time for him to be taken into the royal presence and display his gifts as a soothsayer. With the guard captain ahead of him, two soldiers flanking and two following him, he limped across the irregular paving of the courtyard, resolving that the first thing he was going to demand when he entered the banqueting hall was a goblet of wine. And some decent bread, too, to mend the pangs in his belly. If this pagan despot wanted to use his services, he could damned well pay for them!

  The prospect of bread and wine quite elevated his spirits, together with the sensation of clean cloth on his body and sound footgear under his abraded soles. He heard music beginning again and by reflex started to hum along, for he recognized it.

  It was by William Walton.

  It was Belshazzar's Feast .

  Hurt, puzzled, dismayed, he halted in his tracks. Instead of colliding with him from behind, the soldiers following him froze like a stopped cinema film. So did those either side; so did the captain a pace ahead. It became impossible to move. The shifting shadows visible on the wall beyond the high windows, cast by flickering torches, became equally still. Everything turned into a fixed picture. Only his mind kept on functioning, though he was incapable of moving a single muscle. It was far worse than being confined in a cell, and it lasted for what felt like an eon. Then --

  Then it was worse still. He was taller, but he was also older, and instead of merely being chafed at wrists and ankles he had open, running sores; he had worn metal gyves until they were lately struck from him with such casualness he thought one of his wrist bones might be broken. He was completely naked, and did not need to glance down at himself to realize he was closer than ever to the verge of starvation.

  The air was hot, but now with the full blast of a noontide sun, and it reeked not just with the stench of unwashed humanity but also with the fouler stink of rotting meat and new-spilled blood. He was in a barrel-shaped, vault-like room, shadowy but not cool, one end of which was blocked with the same two-palms-by-one fired brick that made up its ceiling-wall, the other being closed by a chained metal grille.

  He was not alone. Slumped on the floor, or leaning with their backs against the wall in attitudes of unspeakable despair, were half a dozen men and women and two very young girls, not more than ten, all naked, all bruised and filthy. The girls were on either side of a woman who looked like their mother. It was obvious from their expressions and their tear-swollen eyes they wanted to hug her for what comfort the contact could provide; it was also plain that they dared not, for they were indecently unclad, and instead of reaching out with their hands they were using them to shield their private parts.

  From outside, at intervals, could be heard screams, some of which were definitely not human, and the roar of a crowd brought to a peak of hysteria.

  Someone, using a pebble or a smuggled stick, had managed to erode the outline of a fish into one of the softer bricks. One of the men was on his knees before this symbol and praying with all the force terror could lend him, except that not a sound emerged from his working lips.

  The rest looked on as though they could not summon enough energy even to whisper.

  More and different noise, much closer, heralded the arrival of four lanistae: all clad in rags, all armed with whips and sharp metal goads, one of them one-eyed and another one-armed. The two intact ones held great baying, slavering hounds on leashes.

  The girl-children started to scream.

  But with cuffs and kicks and jabs the lanistae roused the captives and herded them along a twisting tunnel, also closed by a grille, which at their approach was drawn aside. They were forced to emerge into the harsh sunlight of the arena called the Colosseum. They signed themselves and
attempted futilely to strike up an audible hymn, but the roar of the crowd -- loudest on the expensive side, where the spectators enjoyed awnings as a protection against the heat -- drowned everything else, even the winding of buccinae as the editor of the games signaled for the next item.

  A gang of slaves hurried out of the arena, wheeling with them carts which had served first to remove the carcasses from the last performance, then to bring clean sand while a musical interlude kept the throng entertained. But music was not what they had come here for.

  A gust of laughter greeted the appearance of the captives, bare and helpless, and the emperor himself deigned to glance down from his box, where in fact a game of dice was occupying his attention. But on seeing that none of the victims was armed, and that a lion was being released from a cage on the far side, he lowered his emerald monocle and went back to something less predictable in its outcome.

  The lion was nearly as ill-favored as the meal he was scheduled to enjoy. His tawny pelt was blotched with some sort of eczema, and he favored his right front foot as he looked about him, growling, in a posture halfway between a crouch and getting ready to spring. The crowd shouted louder than ever and people began to toss empty wine jars and bits of broken masonry in the hope of arousing the beast.

  But instead of scenting food and rising to his full height and pouncing, he looked vaguely puzzled for a moment and then sat back and inspected his right forepaw. After licking it a couple of times, he looked again at the huddled group of humans in front of him.

  And purposefully, despite his limp, began to pad in their direction, purring noisily.

  He looked remarkably like a man in a lion's skin, rather than a real lion.

  Oh -- no!

  Shaw! Androcles who took the thorn out of the lion's pad! The whole setup was so silly, he couldn't help bursting into laughter. The laughter spread. First his fellow Christians, whose identity he had no faintest notion of, and then the watchful lanistae and the slaves who surrounded the arena like banderilleros and picadores at a bullfight . . . and then the crowd at large, and ultimately the emperor himself were caught up in the hysterical mirth.

  Meantime the editor of the games fumed and screamed and struck out insanely at his personal retinue.

  This also ground to a halt eventually.

  Then --

  He was being helped to mount a bad-tempered horse. He felt like a lobster. He was encased in stiff, badly articulated armor bolted on his body over a thick, here and there quilted set of garments designed, apparently, to protect his most vital organs . . . but which were wholly revolting to the skin. They chafed; they itched abominably.

  He could see very little of the world, for his head was boxed in by a clanging metal sallade and his view was obstructed by its visor.

  Yet some thrilling chord in the depths of his being was touched by this predicament, as though he had proved in the ultimate analysis to be a bondage freak after all.

  A person at the left edge of his field of vision took his left hand, which wore a clumsy plated gauntlet, and forced along his forearm a shield held in position with leather straps. Another person to his right, equally unrecognizable because the helmet acted like blinders, thrust a long, heavy, metal-tipped wooden pole into his grasp.

  A lance? Yes, logically. But not nearly as well balanced as he had always imagined a lance to be. Trying to couch it against the back of his saddle -- which itself was by no means a masterpiece -- so that the brunt of an impact would be transferred to the greater mass of the horse, he found there was far too much of it still ahead of the pivotal point at which he was constrained to grasp it. It was going to wave about like a ship's mast in a gale.

  But it was much too late to worry about that kind of thing. His attendants, screaming with terror, were vanishing into the surrounding woodland . . .

  Woodland?

  As best he could he surveyed the scene. This was a glade in hilly but well-forested country, and there were chiefly birch, ash, and beech trees to be seen. It had recently been raining: the nearby rocks -- which looked like granite -- were glistening, and the grass underfoot was damp and marshy.

  And a noise was coming from somewhere out of sight which was causing his steed to whinny and back, provoking a reflex jerk on the reins and a jab of both heels into the sides of his poor mount. He was clearly not the finest one could wish for; though he was stocky and broad-hoofed, he was fitter to haul a cart or drag a plow than carry a knight-at-arms into battle. He was half bald, and --

  Battle?

  Still thinking about the horse's mange-gnawed mane, the rider listened again to the noise, partway between a roar and a howl, which had so upset the beast. This time it provoked a curvet, a caracole and a turnabout, all done without schooling, which bid fair to unseat him. He found himself facing in the opposite direction before he could regain control.

  And there, dead ahead of him, was a nearly naked girl tied to the face of a smooth gray rock. She was overweight for her age -- about fifteen -- and her hair was hanging in sweaty strands either side of her fat, ill-tempered face, and her fat hands had clawed at the rock until the nails were rimmed with red, and she had shat herself with terror and the thin yellow garment which was all she wore revealed the news to the world only too plainly.

  As it began to crisp around the edges in the blasting-hot breath of a creature waddling toward her on scaly legs with claw-tipped toes like an overgrown cockerel's, its body patched with lurid yellow and green like an attack of luminescent fungi, its head on a serpentine neck weaving back and forth with its maw not just blood-red as it gaped, but glowing red, and instead of arms or forelegs or forelimbs, a pair of totally unbelievable scarlet wings, as formal as a lady's fan.

  Half Uccello, half -- someone else's. Confused. But with the ill-assorted mix still identifiable. It did not require him to turn his shield to realize that it would be white with a red cross.

  What were these bastards and sons-of-bitches trying to do to him? This wasn't funny. This was a mockery!

  And a great welling flood of black, unadulterated fury erupted from the depths of his being. The scene tried to freeze. It didn't have time (curious that he should think in terms of the scene as autonomous -- but since obviously it could never have occurred in reality, perhaps it was so).

  Instead, it melted: each patch of color, like wax, blending into another; like the contrasts of children's modeling clay rolled into a ball, it ended in a flat brownish- gray mess in the midst of which he was embedded, unable either to move or to reason. He felt that someone's back had been turned on him: that a Power had offered him the best that was to be had, and he -- through stupidity or ill-temper or perverseness -- had rejected it.

  He felt, and knew, that he was damned.

  It was very much worse than the pangs of punishment. It divorced him from his body, from his essence, from any semblance of anything he might believe in as reality.

  It went on and on, as though he had been flung aside and then forgotten.

  He came to himself feeling that he had rather been possessed than rewarded. He ached dreadfully; he was very cold; his belly was sour and his head throbbed and he had clenched his hands into suffering fists for so long, his nails felt as though they had begun to grow into his palms. He fought with all his feeble force to avoid thinking of it, but he was inexorably reminded of the days -- so far in the past, it was like trying to remember with someone else's brain, yet simultaneously it was as real as yesterday -- when this was his ordinary state on waking.

  He wanted to weep, but his eyes were obstinately dry. Instead he undertook the terrible effort first of unfolding his fingers, then of turning into a sitting position on the edge of the bed to look about him.

  Beyond the window he saw bright sunlight and blue sky with a few scudding clouds. But the room, inactive, looked gray and dingy and neglected. One of the taps over the cracked sink was dripping for want of a new washer, and had left an iron-brown stain on the china. The mirror above was fly-specked wi
th age. A spider had woven a complex web from the towel rail to the corner of the shower cabinet.

  It would have taken only a slight effort to turn the room on again, but he was either too weak or too full of self-loathing to make the necessary decision. He hoped it was only the former. He had been lying still for a long, long while. His face and hands felt positively dusty, paralleling the foulness in his memory.

  Eventually he was able to do something about his predicament. Regardless of complaints from all his muscles, he forced himself to his feet, stripped off his clothes, and stepped into the shower. The water was cold and the soap had turned to a jellied mess in its dish, but he found paradoxical relief in inflicting punishment on himself. He rubbed down with a greasy and overused towel and scrubbed his teeth until his gums bled, but felt he had made some sort of expiation when he turned at last to the wardrobe, planning to dress, get out of here, and find something to eat. He never kept provisions at home, and if he had had any, they would be spoiled by this time, and besides -- perhaps for the same indefinable reason he didn't care to switch on the room -- he wanted something plain and dull and crude, like sandwiches of greasy bacon between doorsteps of bread washed down with hot, sweet tea.