There were six racers on the track now, one more than last year. Perhaps there would be others, although it was rare for others to volunteer after the Race had begun.
A boy like this one who had just gone down might have been expected to live another eighty or ninety years before he failed his physical. He would never be ill, never hungry, never anxious, neither too hot nor too cold, never without a sexual partner. If he wanted a child, he could get on the list like everyone else and maybe before he was too old he could get permission to have one. If he were exceptional, he might even go to college and do something really important, like work in the undersea food farms or in a moon lab. He might be selected for one of the colonies or join the Government if his tests indicated such an aptitude. Then he could have a travel permit, at least on a need basis, and would not have to wait, like the shop people, for the Race and hope for a ticket just to leave his city.
Yet he and others did it, risked everything just to be heroes. If being a hero was all you wanted, that was the way. Even those who lost the Race became famous, had their pictures all over the world for a year. But it had never made sense to John. He had his moments of foolishness when it occurred to him, but then he would think of Betty's warmth and softness, and smile. Why should he risk losing that? Or he would think again of how hopeless it was to win, that the Race was rigged, and the thought would frighten him. There was something about the spectacle that disturbed him; though he would never admit it to anyone.
The six below presented their info cassettes to the recorder so that everything about them could be digested before the Race. They waited as the computer worked. He saw the boy move his feet nervously. Once the computer had your cassette you had to go.
The cars were lined up at the starting gate. They seemed smaller than in years past when he'd seen them on the medium. They were bright-colored aluminum machines with room for only the driver.
The gates were buried in the track now, apparently under the control of the track computer. John realized with surprise that he was already sunburned and that the wine was working on him. He looked around the crowd, noticing that the noise level had risen and that the others, too, were affected. It was a strange feeling, something like power and something like courage, as though those words were just beginning to have meaning. The track was clear now and the crane stood ominously in the infield. The sight of it sobered John somewhat.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Race will begin in five minutes."
The announcer's voice surprised him. He hadn't realized Race time was so close. Tension was heavy in the air and the crowd noise was suddenly hushed.
The language of the program was simple, low key, nothing to detract from the serious purpose of the day. They would never have allowed this, John thought vaguely, if it were not serious and important. He didn't know where the idea had come from, though there had been rumors about that too. One was that the social engineers or whoever controlled them were worried about the easypills. They were not sure that undesirable behavior would not somehow come to the surface despite the easypills. Nor were they certain that everyone could be trusted to take them. Strict enforcement was possible but not desirable. They wanted some way to release the tension the pills merely covered up. Someone had come up with the Race.
"The events here today," said the announcer, "are serious and of great magnitude for the world. We have gathered to admire the courage of those who race today, and to praise once again our great Champion."
The crowd was immediately on its feet, despite the earlier grumbling, applauding wildly as the grizzled Champion stood. All the wine-reddened and sunburnt faces grinned, and there was even more noise. Wine skins plopped to the floor. The other dignitaries with the Champion were clapping and trying to shake his hand, trying to draw some of his glory to themselves. John realized that Rita Landers had arrived and was now standing beside the Champion. As though true to some ancient ritual, she had arrived at the last minute.
"Champ," the crowd screamed, "Rita, Champ, Rita, Champ, Rita." John was caught up in their emotion. Surely there had never been two more desirable and admirable people, he thought, and his eyes were wet with tears of pride. Yet somehow the Champion seemed untouched by the crowd, almost sad and bored. John chanted louder, as though that would break the Champion from his dark mood, and the tears streamed down his sun-reddened cheeks. He yelled until he grew dizzy and had to sit down.
Finally the crowd's noise began to subside, but not completely. There was now that frenzied undertone he remembered hearing from the medium at other Races. This was what they had come for.
The announcer knew it and moved them expertly. "Our first racer," he said before they could begin their chant again, "is Sadakichi Muramoto from Tokyo. He is twenty-five years old and works in Shop Thirteen." The announcer went on, using the computer-organized biography. By the time he had finished, John felt he, knew the man from Tokyo—no, felt he was the man from Tokyo.
Then it was time for the first Race. Sadakichi climbed into his car, a red one, and was pushed the few feet to the starting line. An official stood by a button with his hand raised. There was, as everyone knew, no controlling the speed. It was 60 miles an hour, calculated to round the track in two minutes—if the driver could avoid the gates. The gates would rise as the computer determined, at various places along the five lanes. At that speed, it was unrealistic to try to avoid them; indeed, by the time the car reached one it might well have snapped back into the track. It was all simply a matter of chance. There was no controlling one's fate on the track. Yet almost every driver tried.
Muramoto got almost a mile, weaving from lane to lane, before a gate rose in front of him. He swerved to avoid it and ran into another which had risen where a moment before no gate had been. The gate he had swerved to avoid was already back in place by the time his car impacted. The car crumpled, as it was designed to do, like an accordion.
"Oh," breathed the crowd as one. Then individual shouts of, "Oh no," and, "He's hit it."
All around him people were crying and John felt tears again in his own eyes. It was difficult to remember from year to year what it was like. The easypills probably prevented that. But this was it, all right, and much stronger than what you got through the medium. His head throbbed with the wine as he let his emotions be purged with the others. "He was such a promising young man," a woman near him moaned. "Why couldn't he make it?" She was comforted by a man sitting next to her. "It's all right," he said sadly. "You know they have to try." "But you can't beat the gates," she said.
"The Champion did," the man said, without much conviction.
The crane moved smoothly to the place on the track where the car had struck and lifted it. The gate snapped back into place unharmed and the crane deposited crumpled car and driver into a vehicle waiting on the infield. There would be a collective burial of drivers in their cars after the Race.
"Our next racer," said the announcer, his own voice full of emotion, "is a man from . . ."
And so it continued. John knew why it was better to be here at the stadium than to experience it at home. The crowd was as one, sharing its collective sorrow and strength. There was no more hatred, no more separation. After the third racer—a woman named Consuela from Buenos Aires who barely got away from the starting line before a gate crushed her like a moth against a moving transport window—he saw the man who had shown bigotry earlier, walk down three rows to put his hand on a weeping black woman's shoulder. Everyone was crying now, except the Champion. John saw him above, sitting impassively while Rita wept on his shoulder.
The boy was last. They saw him hesitate, then climb into a yellow car. The official's hand came down and he was off, attaining top speed almost immediately. He too chose to dodge from lane to lane. The second-hand moved on the stadium clock as he got farther around the track. You're from Jacksonville, John thought as the tiny car moved. You work in Shop Thirty-six. Your name is Henry Matthews. All of that must count. Make it count.
Th
en a gate caught him too.
You can't beat the gates.
It was the last Race, so the crowd released its pity and relaxed its fear for all the racers. The stadium was filled with it. The Race was over now and they mourned their heroes well. But in the process they prepared themselves to carry on. We did not race, they thought. We must go on living. They felt a load had been lifted from them. They felt almost lighthearted.
But suddenly there was a commotion. People turned to look. It was the wrong time for a disturbance and they resented it.
"The Champion," someone said.
John, too, looked behind and saw the Champion standing. His expression had not changed. He still looked bored.
The Champion did beat the gates, they remembered together.
Was he going to speak? John wondered. He had never spoken voluntarily before. John stood and turned around to see better. Then he noticed Rita pulling on the Champion's arm.
"No, no!" she screamed. Dignitaries tried to hold him back, and were shrugged off. The Champion began to walk down the ramp.
John still did not understand until someone screamed, "He's going to race!" Yes, he thought as he watched the Champion come down the ramp toward him, it could only mean that.
But why? John wondered, and heard voices in the crowd echo his question. He had everything in the world he could want. He had travel and women and food and adventure and fame. He had earned it already and did not have to earn it again.
The Champion looked at some in the crowd as he passed. John was one of those whose eyes met his—for long minutes it seemed—and he felt drowned in sadness. He felt the Champion was trying to tell him something.
Was that it? Could the Champion be tired of his life? Was there something about it none of them knew—something to confirm John's nagging doubts—that could make him do this? The wine had his head so hot, so confused. It was a terrifying idea and John fought to put it from his mind. Surely that wasn't what the Champion had tried to tell him. But the way he had looked at him.
Then the Champion was walking onto the field. He spoke briefly with the announcer, who appeared not to know what to do. The announcer disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared at the microphone.
"The Champion will defend his title," he said softly.
A silver-gray car, the color of the Champion's hair, was rolled onto the track. With no hesitation he climbed in and allowed it to be pushed to the line.
The crowd was becoming hysterical. "No, don't let him," John heard, and turned to see Rita struggling with two of the dignitaries. But the crowd picked it up. "Don't let him," they began to chant. "Don't let him," John chanted with them. But when he looked back the Race had begun.
The Champion had won the first time by driving straight down the center lane. He knew the odds and didn't try to outmaneuver the gates. Others had tried his system without success. But there was no doubt it had worked for him and he was using it again this time. Already he was beginning the second mile and still moving. Did he have some special charm? The Champion made it. Would the luck that brought him through the first time bring him through again?
Then suddenly the Champion was gone, an unseen but felt red explosion inside a silver-gray lump of aluminum. The crane did not move, as though it could not believe its next task.
There was a deep and long silence.
Then there was a growing noise in the stadium. John realized part of it was coming from him. At first it was inarticulate, like the cries of animals, then it found words. "He's gone," someone screamed. "There's no more Champion." "We've lost him." The Champion didn't make it.
A pounding grew in John's head and became a refrain with which he led the crowd. "We need a Champion. We need a Champion."
He did not know its origin, not even, really, its meaning. But it was there, throbbing in his head, overwhelming him completely. It had now been communicated to the others and the whole stadium shook with the sound. "We need a Champion! We need a Champion! We need a Champion!"
Then suddenly it was, "I will be the Champion! I will be the Champion! I will be the Champion!"
Then he was running, down the ramp, toward the track, waving his arms and shouting, "I will, I will, I will!"
And behind him came others.
Afterword
Sometimes it seems to me the modern world can only be viewed as conspiracy. The Right tends to credit communism with planning race riots and campus disorders. SDS believes the military-industrial complex conspires to keep the Viet Nam war alive and deadly. And how difficult it is to believe it was Oswald alone, or James Earl Ray alone, or even Sirhan alone. Having no faith that God is alive, let alone in control, we credit men with the most prodigious powers of conspiring to make us unhappy.
There's a nice paradox here. We need to have faith in the ability of our fellow men to conspire against us. Even those of us who reject most conspiratorial theories find them fascinating and somehow reassuring. Because if we can't believe that a god planned our troubles, and if we don't believe men planned them, then we come face to face with the unplanned event, the random twitch, chaos and the void.
The writer must impose some sort of order on the chaos of experience, and writers have, it seems to me, relied more and more on the idea of conspiracy as a pattern of organization. Such different novels as Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 are built around conspiracies. In the case of the latter, as with many of the black humorists, an absurd universe requires an absurd conspiracy. We see, in Earth, Burroughs and others, a protagonist who creeps behind the proscenium arch of the puppet show for a look at those pulling the strings. He may find the controllers as mad as the puppets, or he may find that they too have strings, connected to others with strings, connected to . . .Despite the release of dark laughter at such knowledge, it is not a pleasant experience.
This is another conspiracy story and it is not pleasant. It was most unpleasant to write, and I usually enjoy writing. It began with the image of a race rigged against any possibility of winning, of men going down to fling themselves like moths against steel gates because someone has learned to manipulate some of their best qualities to keep them enslaved. Usually I let an idea gestate, but I pushed this one, I think because I didn't want to understand it too well. I wanted to share the ignorance and terror of my protagonist as he groped for understanding.
He never sees behind the curtains, though he suspects—because he is something of a misfit in his beehive world—that all is not for the best. He wonders, in a rare use of metaphor, what is at the bottom of the iceberg, but he never finds out. Nor do you, except as you use what I've given you from his limited point of view to extrapolate.
So you build your own conspiracy. And you decide why the Champion went down and whether his act liberated or further enslaved the world he abandoned. And you make up your mind what Aristotle and Hugh Hefner have to do with the story. And you tell me whether it could ever happen or not.
Introduction to
IN RE GLOVER
Along with such great unsolved mysteries of the universe as a) Who was Kaspar Hauser? b) What significance did the Easter Island statues originally have? c) Did Pancho Villa really shoot Ambrose Bierce d) What was Jack the Ripper's real identity? and e) How did Erich Segal ever become a popular writer? two things have long puzzled me:
1. Why, though there are numerous sf writers who are Jewish, has there been so little Hebraically-based sf or fantasy? The background is certainly rich enough.
2. Why, though it is certainly ripe for being poked fun at, has there been so little memorable humorous sf and fantasy? God knows much of what's written is laughable without intentionally being meant to evoke laughter.
With the exceptions of a few Avram Davidson stories, an extraordinary new novel from Ballantine by Isidore Haiblum titled The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders, an occasional dybbuk or golem, a marvelous Carol Carr short in Orbit 5 titled "Look, You Think You've Got Troubles," some of the early Fredric B
rown cavorts, Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero, some Sheckley, some Goulart and most of Larry Eisenberg's stuff (remember "What Happened to Auguste Clarot?" in DV?), there's neither very much yiddishe sf or very much funny sf. If it weren't for Isaac Bashevis Singer, where would we be?
Though these two conundrums will never be satisfactorily solved, every once in a while we get some lunatic in our midst—like Lafferty—who does that dandy little rigadoon and we naively believe the balance will at last be corrected. But it's only one story, by one writer, and when it has faded into the past, we wonder again.
Wonder no more.
Both questions are answered, at least temporarily, with Leonard Tushnet.
The mad M.D. from Maplewood, New Jersey—who piously refuses to impart any personal information on himself—here whips off an hilarious vision that includes among its many dangers, the possibility of having one's heart attack oneself, from laughter. With the Vonnegut and the Wilson and the McCullough and the Blish stories, it helps bring things more into balance, proving that we of the sf world are not such humorless bastards as we may seem to the outside world.
Again, Dangerous Visions Page 77