Between the Strokes of Night

by Charles Sheffield

  Wilmer looked around him, then raised a tentative hand. “I do.”

  Gilby stared at him. “Do you now? Mind telling me how, since that sort of knowledge shouldn’t be public down on Pentecost.”

  “My uncle was a Planetfest winner, twelve years ago. Last year I asked him about the off-planet trials.”

  “Before you even started on the first round for Planetfest! Cocky little bastard, aren’t you? So tell us all about Barchan.”

  “Sand dunes, just like the picture shows. Primitive vegetable life, no animals, not much atmosphere. And hot as blazes except at the poles. Hot as melted lead.” Wilmer hesitated, then added: “Not my choice for a trial. If it’s held there it will mean hotsuits all the time.”

  “Now then, no trying to influence the others,” said Gilby mildly. While Wilmer had been talking a tray of hot drinks had arrived, and the captain was eyeing it longingly. “But the rest of what you say is right enough. Hot enough to boil your balls off in two minutes, if your suit fails. And if you have balls. Barchan is only a hundred and twenty million kilometers from Cassay. Let’s look at another one, a bit farther out. This is Gimperstand. Know anything about it?” Gilby was holding up two pictures. One showed a space view of a greenish-brown ball, the other a lush jungle of incredibly tangled vines. Wilmer shook his head, and no one else seemed ready to speak.

  “And you probably don’t want to. It’s officially Gimperstand, but the unofficial name we have for it is Stinker. And it deserves it. There’s an atmosphere. It’s a little thin, but in principle it’s breathable. I’ve tried it. Two breaths make you run off and puke. It’s something one of the vines releases, and it makes night-lapper shit smell like honeysuckle. A real stinkeroo. One whiff of it will knock you flat.”

  He held the pictures out delicately at armslength, then dropped them back into the case.

  “We have a lot of ground to cover, but I don’t think we’ll do it all right now. For a start, I don’t think you lot can absorb much at a time. And for a second, I want one of those drinks or I’ll fall down right here.”

  He walked over to the tray and grinned unpleasantly at his audience. “I’m glad it’s you doing the trial, not me. We’ve got some monsters out there in the Cass system. You’ve seen the official planet names in school, but that’s not what people who’ve been there call them. And their names are a lot more accurate. There’s Bedlam, and Boom-Boom, and Imshi, and Glug, and Firedance, and Fuzzball. And when we get to the Outer System it’s even worse. We’ve got to take a look at Goneagain, and Jellyroll, and Whistlestop, then Whoosh, Pinto, Dimples, Camel, and Crater. They’re not called the Fifty Worlds for nothing, and every one can be a death trap.” He picked up a flask, took a tentative sip, and gave his audience another sadistic grin. “Don’t think your worries are over. By the time the off-planet tests are done you’ll be wishing that you’d gone back home today with the losers.”

  * * *

  The whole afternoon had been devoted to briefings, by Gilby and others. Then came news conferences and meetings with the VIP’s from each winner’s home area. It was late evening before they had any time to themselves, or even time for food. Peron had found a quiet place in a corner of the food area and was eating alone. But he was more than pleased when Elissa carried a tray over and seated herself opposite him uninvited.

  “Unless you’re hiding away for a good reason, I thought I’d join you. I’ve already talked to Lum and to Kallen, now I want to pay my respects to you.” “You’re working down the whole list of winners, in order?”

  She laughed. “Of course. Doesn’t everyone? No, I was just joking. I’m interested in you, so I thought it would be nice to eat dinner together — unless you really are hiding away?”

  “I’m not. I’m brooding. I’ve just been sitting here and thinking how damnably rude everybody has been today. It started this morning with Captain Gilby, and I just assumed it was his hangover. But it’s been getting worse. We’re polite to everyone, and people we meet — complete strangers, most of them — treat us like dirt.”

  Elissa said, “Of course they do. Better get used to it. They don’t mean any harm. But see, we’re the Planetfest winners, names in lights, and that makes us a big deal. A lot of people have to keep telling themselves that we’re not all that great, that they’re just as good as we are. And one way they convince themselves of that is by putting us down.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” Peron looked at Elissa with respect. “But I wouldn’t have thought that way. You know, this is going to sound stupid, but I still can’t believe that I came higher than you in the rankings. You did better than me in everything. And I think you think better. I mean, more perceptively. I mean, you’re — “

  “If you’re getting ready to ask me to go out for a walk,” said Elissa, “there are more direct ways.”

  She leaned forward and put her hand on Peron’s arm. “All you have to do is say it. You’re the exact opposite of Sy. He thinks everybody else is some sort of trained ape. But you always undervalue yourself. That’s rare for a winner in Planetfest. Most people are like me, pushy. And as for Lum — “

  “And as for Lum — “ echoed a voice behind her. “What about him? Something nice, I hope.”

  It was Lum, and he had with him Kallen, the second place winner.

  “Good. It’s convenient to find you two together,” he said. He hoisted one huge thigh and buttock to perch on the corner of their table, threatening to overturn the whole thing. “Do you feel up to another interview tonight? The Planetfest organizers would like to meet with the top five.”

  “First things first, Lum,” said Elissa. “Peron, you have to meet the mystery man. This is Mario Kallen.”

  “Hello.” Peron stood up to take the hand of the second place winner, and found he was grasping empty air. Kallen was blushing a bright red, and looking away. “Pleased to meet you.” The voice was a whisper, deep in the throat. Peron looked at Kallen again, and noticed for the first time the red lines of scar tissue on his Adam’s apple.

  “Let’s all sit down,” Lum said cheerfully. “We have an hour yet before the interview, and I want to tell you what Kallen has been telling me about Planetfest.”

  “Don’t you have to find Sy, too?” asked Elissa.

  “I already did. He told me to go to blazes, said he didn’t want any fool interviews.” Lum pulled back the bench so that he and Kallen could sit down. “He’s an interesting case, old Sy. I don’t know how he could do so well with that injured arm, but he certainly didn’t get any extra points from the judges for tact and diplomacy.”

  Elissa winked at Peron. Nor does Lum, said her smile. She turned innocently back to the other two.

  “I’ve thought of nothing but Planetfest for two years, but I’d like to hear something new.”

  “You will,” said Lum grimly. “Go on, Kallen.”

  Kallen sat for a moment, rubbing his hands together. He again turned red with embarrassment. “I thought of nothing but Planetfest, too,” he said at last, in that throaty, pained voice. Then he hesitated, and looked helplessly from one person to the next. What had been difficult to tell to one person was impossible to tell to three.

  “How about if I say it, and you tell me when I get it wrong?” said Lum quickly. “That way I’ll have a chance to see if my understanding is correct.” Kallen nodded gratefully. He smiled in a sheepish fashion at Elissa, then looked away to the corner of the room.

  “I suspect we all did the same sort of thing when we started out in the trials,” said Lum. “Once I knew I was going to be involved, I set out to discover everything I could about the Planetfest games — when they started, how they’re organized, and so on. I’d heard vague talk, nor more than random words really, about Gossameres and Pipistrelles, or Immortals and Skydown. People mentioned S-space and N-space. I wanted to know what they were all about, or at least get the best rumors I could.”

  Peron and Elissa nodded assent. It was exactly what they had done themselves. “B
ut Kallen’s case was a little different. He was legally old enough — just — for the previous games. He was born on the exact cutoff date, right at midnight. And he went through all the preliminary rounds then. He aced them.”

  Kallen blushed a brighter red. “Never said that at all,” he whispered. “I know. But it’s true. Anyway, that’s when he had his accident. A carriage wheel broke apart as it went past him, and a piece of a spoke speared his throat. It cost him his vocal cords, and it took him out of circulation for almost a year. And of course it killed off all his hopes for the trials. That looked like the end of it, except that Kallen was born in border country, between two planetary time zones. He found out his birth was recorded twice, in two different zones. According to one zone he was an hour younger. Still young enough to try again, in this trial. So he applied again, and here he is. “But before the trials began this time, he was very curious to catch up on the results of the last one. He remembered the people who had competed, and he was pretty sure, from his own experiences, who the winners would be. He checked, and sure enough he was right. The top twenty-five had seven people that he remembered. And in the off-planet tests, three of those had finished in the final ten. They had gone through the preliminary rounds with Kallen, and they’d all become pretty good friends.”

  Peron and Elissa were listening, but they were both beginning to look a little puzzled. It hardly seemed that Kallen’s tale held any surprises.

  Lum had caught the look that passed between them. “Wait a bit longer before you yawn off,” he said. “You’ll find something to keep you awake in a minute. I did. “He tried to get in touch with them, but not one of them had gone back to their home region. According to their families, they were all working in big jobs for the government, and they all sent messages and pictures home. Kallen saw the videos, and it was the same three people he remembered. And the messages replied to questions from their families, so they couldn’t be old videos, stored and sent later. But they never came home themselves, not in four years. They had stayed off-planet. They were out there, somewhere in the Fifty Worlds.” Kallen lifted his hand. “Don’t assume that,” he whispered. “I don’t assume that.”

  “Quite right. Let’s just say they might be somewhere in the Cass system. Or they could be even farther away. Anyway, at that point, Kallen got nosy. He checked back to the previous Planetfest, the one before he was involved. With over a billion people on Pentecost, the odds that you’ll know a finalist personally are pretty small. But you know the old idea, we’re only three people away from anybody. You’ll know somebody who’ll know somebody who’ll know the person you want to get to. Kallen starting looking — he’s persistent, I found that out the hard way in the Seventh Trial, when we were both lost in The Maze. And he finally found somebody who had been knocked out in the preliminary trials from the earlier ‘Fest, but who was a friend of a winner. And that winner had never been home since the off-planet trials.”

  Lum paused and stared at Peron, who was nodding his head vigorously. “You don’t seem very surprised. Are you telling me you know all this?”

  “No. But I had a similar experience. I tried to reach a former winner from our region, and I got the runaround. She was supposed to be off-planet, and unavailable, but she’d be happy to answer written questions. And she did, eventually, and sent a video with it. Kallen, are you suggesting that none of the off-planet winners come back to Pentecost? That doesn’t seem to make much sense. Why would they want to stay away?”

  Kallen shrugged.

  “No reason that we can think of,” said Lum. “Let me give you the rest of it. When Kallen went through the preliminaries on the previous Planetfest, there was a contestant called Sorrel. He never came first in any trial, but he was always high enough to make the cutoff for the next round. He was easy-going, and popular, and he seemed to hit it off well with the guards, but he never got any publicity from the government media. Three other things: he never seemed to need much sleep; he tended to know bits and pieces of information that others didn’t — because a cousin of his had been a finalist in a previous ‘Fest. And he was completely bald. That make you think of anybody we know?”

  “Wilmer,” said Elissa and Peron in unison.

  “But he can’t be,” went on Elissa. “He couldn’t compete twice. He wouldn’t be allowed to, unless he was a freak like Kallen — oh, don’t look like that. You know what I mean, he’d have to be born at just the right time at exactly where two zones meet.”

  “Didn’t compete — twice,” said Kallen softly.

  “Sorrel and Wilmer don’t look anything like each other,” added Lum. “Kallen is absolutely sure they are two different people. Wilmer didn’t compete twice.” “Or even once?” said Peron thoughtfully. “We travelled back together after the Polar Trial. And I couldn’t get a word out of him about the way he’d handled the glacier crossing and crevasses. He just grinned at me. I thought at the time, he’s so cool and fresh, it’s hard to believe he’s just spent fourteen hours stretched to the limit.”

  “I agree,” said Lum. “After I heard what Kallen had to say I had the same feeling. Wilmer’s not a real contestant at all. He’s a plant. I don’t think he took part in any of the trials — no one saw him during them, only before and after. The question is, why put an outside observer in with the contestants? — and a completely bald one, at that, which makes him easy to remember.” “My father told me before I entered,” said Peron. “There’s more to Planetfest than the government wants to tell. He hates the government of Pentecost, and he didn’t want me to take part in these trials. He says we’ve lived for the past four hundred and fifty years at a standstill, without real progress, ever since Planetfest began. But I didn’t take much notice. He lives for underground politics, and since I was ten years old I’ve expected that one day he’ll be arrested. Now you seem to be agreeing with him, the ‘Fest had things in it that we’ve never been told about.”

  “But it doesn’t answer Lum’s question,” said Elissa. She was tracing patterns in water droplets on the table top, but now and again her eyes did a quick survey of the room to see if anyone was watching them.

  “Not yet,” agreed Peron. “But give me a minute, and let me tell you the way my father would see it. First, Wilmer. Suppose he is a government plant. Then he is observing us for a definite reason. My father would say, there’s no point in his presence if it has no effect on the Planetfest trial results. So that suggests the results are being tampered with — so that the right people win. But I just don’t believe that. Too many people are involved in the evaluation and judging. It has to be a little more subtle. Somebody wants to know how the winners will behave when faced with certain facts. And that’s consistent with Kallen’s other observation: something that we haven’t been told about yet happens to Planetfest winners. Maybe not to all of them, but at least to some of them.” The other three were silent for a long time. They were looking at Peron expectantly. He finally realized that they were simply waiting. He remained silent himself, until at last Lum glanced at his watch.

  “Five minutes more, then we have to go.” His voice was respectful. “Carry on, Maestro, keep going and tell us the rest. I’m sure you’re right so far. I’m beginning to feel less and less entitled to that number one rating.” Peron looked intently at each of the others. Elissa’s eyes were downcast, staring thoughtfully at the table. Kallen and Lum were both visibly excited. “First of all,” Peron said. “If we know of one government plant in the group, there could be others. So we don’t say anything to anyone, unless we’re absolutely sure of the other contestant. That means people we knew before, or people we’ve worked with on trials who couldn’t be fake competitors. What about Sy?”

  Kallen shook his head. “He is a genuine competitor,” he whispered. “And an amazing one. I spent time with him during some of the trials. He is much more intelligent and resourceful than any of us, but because of that withered arm he sees the world through a distorting mirror. We should tell him — t
hough it will confirm all his worst suspicions about people.”

  It was Kallen’s longest speech to the group. He seemed to realize that, and smiled at Elissa in an embarrassed way.

  “All right, Sy is in,” said Lum. “What else, Peron?”

  It was disconcerting to be treated as an authority. Peron chewed at a fingernail, and thought hard.

  “We don’t have to do anything at all,” he said at last. “Except keep our eyes open and our mouths shut. You see, it’s obvious from what Kallen told you that at some point we will learn the mystery of the off-planet trials. The earlier winners must have been told. So we’ll be told, too, and we’ll find out what happens to the winners after the off-planet contest is over. There’s no suggestion that anything bad happens to us — just that something is going on that the government doesn’t want the public to know. I tend to agree with my father, that in itself is a bad thing. But until we know what it is, we can’t disagree with it. So it’s simple: for the moment we try to define how many of our group of twenty-five we can really trust. And from now on we question everything that we’re told.”

  “You think we should even discuss this with others?” Lum stood up. “My preference is to tell no one else at all.”

  “We need all the eyes and ears we can find,” said Peron. “We’ll be careful.” They moved as a group to the exit, not speaking again until they were outside the food hall and heading for the Planetfest communication headquarters. Lum and Kallen walked on ahead, leaving Peron and Elissa to stroll side by side through the chilly autumn air. Little Moon had already risen, and off near the horizon the red fire of Cassby threw long, ocher shadows across the deepening twilight.

  Elissa stopped and looked up at the sky. It was clear, and the stars were slowly appearing through the dusk.