“I see that they have the barriers already in place for the Game of Pedestrians. For those of you new to the show, I’ll just say that the structure they are erecting down there is known as the maze. It’s a pretty simple maze, and the passage through it is just wide enough for a sports car. The turns are tight, but they’re banked, so the drivers can take them at good speeds. Why don’t you tell us some more about this event, Mel?”
“Well, it’s simple enough,” Prott said. “You have a pedestrian down there in the maze with the motorist. The motorist has his car, the pedestrian has his hand grenades. They go one on one in the maze. Only one man walks or drives away.”
“The pedestrian has five hand grenades, isn’t that right, Mel?”
“That’s right, Gordon. He usually carries one in each hand and three clipped to his belt. There have been pedestrians who carried an extra grenade in their teeth, but most experts agree that slows you down.”
“For those of you watching this event for the first time,” Gordon Philakis said, “I should point out that the walls of the maze are pierced here and there by openings just large enough for a man to duck through. That’s important when the motorist is racing down a straightaway at you.”
“And we should also mention,” Mel Prott said, “the grenades have a default setting of one and one half seconds. But you can decrease the time with thumb pressure to half a second.”
“That’s cutting it pretty fine, though, isn’t it, Mel?”
“It sure is,” Prott said. “You have to throw the grenade with the car just about on top of you, and then dive through the hole before the blast wipes you out along with the car. It takes a fine judgment, I can assure you.”
“Car and driver are now moving through the maze,” Philakis said. “The car is flashing silver in the sun. It’s a Porsche, the 1600 Normal, one of the old models favored for running down pedestrians in mazes. Pedestrian and motorist are in the maze now, firing at each other with the .22 caliber target pistols provided for a little extra excitement. The motorist is coming around a turn, the pedestrian has ducked through one of the holes, now he’s come back out again, he’s behind the motorist just as he has to slow for a turn. The pedestrian’s arm is back, he’s ready to throw the grenade. But what’s this …”
“The motorist was ready for him,” Mel Prott said. “Preparation and anticipation, that’s what you need in an event like this. The motorist is in reverse now, backing up fast. The pedestrian has thrown his first grenade, but he put too much on the pitch, it explodes high in the air. Now he’s scrambling to get out of the way, he’s racing for a hole, he’s tumbled through it. But I think he took a glancing blow from the car’s onside fender.”
“He’s dazed, uncertain,” Philakis said. “Here comes the Porsche again down the straightaway, accelerating nicely. The pedestrian is up, he’s fumbling for a grenade—”
“Too late,” Prott said.
The Porsche reversed again, disappearing around a corner. The pedestrian looked around desperately, trying to locate it. Suddenly there it was, coming at him from the other side. The crowd was cheering wildly.
The pedestrian was caught on a straightaway. He looked frantically for a hole, but none was close enough. Convulsively he threw a grenade at the on-rushing car. The setting must have been wrong, because it bounced off the car’s roof and exploded harmlessly behind the onrushing vehicle.
By the time it went off the pedestrian was as dead as last year’s herring, a red mess spread-eagled over the Porsche’s front grille. Men came out, carted off the wreckage, and hosed down the track, and it was time for the next pair.
53
“They’ve cleared away the maze now,” Gordon Philakis said, “and here comes the vehicles for the Trafficulant event. What a glittering procession of mobile weaponry! You can go a long way before you find something a man likes more than a personal fighting vehicle. Mel, why don’t you tell us something about this contest?”
“It’s basically your old demolition-derby format,” Prott said. “Only in the game of Trafficulants, instead of just running around a track and slamming into each other, our vehicles are armored and equipped with cannon and other kinds of weaponry. So what you get here is essentially a battle of tanks and armored cars on the popular level.”
“I think we should mention,” Philakis said, “that all the shells used by the contestants are supplied by the Hunt Academy Armorers and are fused to explode twenty feet from the muzzle. That’s to ensure that stray rounds don’t go into the crowd.”
“Is that a rocket launcher on the roof of that Lincoln?” Prott asked.
“That’s just what it is,” Philakis said. “Autoloading, self-aiming. And I see that the Toyota Special has a cannon mounted at either end.”
“Here comes the Mourlan Spider,” Mel Prott said. “It’s got a 2,000-horsepower engine and a claw arm operated from a crane mounted on the rear. The claw itself works through the dashboard computer.”
“Here’s Eddie’s Ram,” Philakis said, “a car shaped like one of those old dinosaurs—a stegosaurus, I believe. The dinosaur theme has always been popular in assault-car design. It’s completely armored all around and works with a periscope system. It’s jockeying for position. There’s the signal! The event of Trafficulants has begun!”
“Eddie’s Ram hasn’t wasted no time,” Mel Prott said. “It’s powerful magnet has gripped Maxwell’s Monster. A panel in the Ram’s side has opened, and out comes a carbon-tipped circular saw. It’s going through the armor plating like a knife through butter. Now the telescoping robot arm has planted the explosive charge.”
“Beautiful,” Mel said.
“And here comes Kelly’s Scorpion, built for speed and maneuverability like one of the old Formula 1 racers, low to the ground, difficult to get a grip on and hard to hit.”
Down on the yellow sand of the arena the battle raged. Clouds of white smoke rose into the cloudless blue sky as the cars turned and slewed, hammering at each other with cannon at short range. Grease and blood and spare parts began to appear on the arena sands. Cars wheeled and turned, blowing off each other’s tires and doors or ramming their opponents into the arena walls.
Soon there were only two fighters moving, the Scorpion and the Egg Layer.
“These two fighting vehicles have entirely different approaches,” Philakis said. “Want to tell us about them, Mel?”
“The Scorpion is as close to a hummingbird as you can get on wheels. With its 360-degree four-wheel-capability steering, it can turn and dart off at unexpected angles. Its built-in randomized steering program renders it difficult for an enemy computer to get a fix. It has a heavy machine gun firing explosive rounds mounted in front. But it’s real punch is in the heavy cannon mounted in the rear.”
“What a contrast with the Egg Layer,” Philakis said, “which is built along entirely different principles. Egg-shaped, as its name implies, and painted a matte black, its twenty-four-point steel armor adds greatly to its weight but renders it impervious to anything but a direct hit at close range. The Egg Layer presents no show of offensive weapons, no gun ports or turrets, no muzzles sticking out, not even an antenna. It defends itself by laying mines in the path of opposing vehicles.”
The Scorpion darted past the Egg Layer, a flash of gold in the afternoon sun. The vehicle slewed around, and its powerful rear gun trained on the Egg Layer’s flank. At that moment, the ground beneath the Scorpion erupted. The car was thrown twenty feet straight up in the air and came down in six large pieces and many smaller ones.
“Well, how about that!” Philakis said. “Looks to me like the Scorpion underestimated the Egg Layer’s rapid mine-laying capability, thinking perhaps that a flank attack would be safe. The car is moving into the victory circle now. What a mess down there! But what a fine rousing finish!”
“Sure is,” Mel Prott said. “I always love to see the big cars slug it out. It’ll be bloody pistons in the old garage tonight.”
54
&n
bsp; “You’re sure about that?” Louvaine said to Sachs.
“I’m sure about what my brother-in-law told me,” Sachs said.
“Damnation,” Louvaine said. “I didn’t expect it to be that. What a weird idea. Souzer, we got anything to cover this situation?”
Souzer smiled. “I was expecting something like this. And I packed the right equipment.”
He opened one of the canvas bags. “Come on, boss, let’s hurry. You’re on soon.”
55
“Next come the scythe-cycle events,” Philakis said. “Mel, why don’t you tell us something about them, seeing as how you’re a three-time winner of this event.”
“Well sure, Gordon. As you can all see, the cyclists have long, razor-sharp scythes attached to their hubcaps, like the Romans used to have on their battle chariots. The men on foot are armed with net and trident like the ancient Roman gladiators from whom we adopted the custom. The question is, can the man on foot get the man on the bike before the man on the bike gets him? That’s oversimplifying it, but that’s what it basically comes down to.”
“Sometimes it seems as if the cyclists are at a disadvantage,” Philakas said. “After all, they have to drive and balance their vehicles no matter what else they do. When the netman throws his net, even if it misses, it’s sure to divide the driver’s attention, throw him off stride, give the netman time to dart in behind the flashing scythes and take down the driver with his trident.”
“That’s true, of course, Gordon,” Mel said. “But the cyclists have developed their own strategies to deal with that situation. Their short, light, powerful bikes can make astonishing stops, turns, and slides. They can lay them down flat and come back an instant later with the rear wheel digging. They can slide their bikes rear end first into the netman, hooking him at the knees. Sometimes they can grab the net without losing control of the bike and pull the netman around the arena behind them until he’s a pile of rags, if you’ll excuse the expression. So it’s not all in favor of the netmen.”
Down in the arena the event had begun. Motorcycles snarled and screamed, some of them spinning out of control, their drivers caught in the nets, twisting and turning, trying to escape the deadly tridents. Some of the netmen were down, too, screaming as the scythes cut them apart.
Limbs and heads rolled on the bloody sand.
The crowd was weak with emotion when the last two survivors, one netman and one cyclist, were announced winners of the melee.
56
There was a short intermission to give everyone time to get refreshments and go to the toilet. During this time the high wire was set up for the high-wire duelists.
A hundred feet above the arena floor, the fencers came out on the high wire. Each man was clad in a one-piece suit of stretch satin. Their pointed foils winked in the sun. They advanced toward each other. Each man had a wire noose secured around his neck and leading back to a large reel. The reel allowed a man to move backward and forward on the wire without interfering with his movements. But if he should happen to fall from the high wire, he would drop no more than fifty feet before reaching the end of his wire. Then, with a sudden jerk, his neck was broken.
It was an eccentric sort of event, even for Esmeralda, and needed a special kind of person to volunteer to do it. Luckily, the human race has never thought up anything so ludicrous, dangerous, and frivolous that it won’t attract many willing volunteers.
The antagonists met at the midpoint, tapped swords, and the duel was on.
In this sort of fencing, your movements must be both minimal and precise. Lunges and parries, too, required a certain lightness of touch. Sometimes it was better to take a hit than, by warding it off too vehemently, be cast from the wire.
The man on the left, Augustin Smiles, a two-times-past winner from Slot, North Dakota, advanced lightly on slippered feet, his rapier a flickering snake’s tongue. His opponent, Gerard Gateau from Paris, France, was a new contestant. Nobody knew his form.
Smiles led off boldly. Gateau retreated before the North Dakotan’s strong advance. The Frenchman parried violently, and then whipped a blow at Smiles saber-fashion. This was within the rules but was unheard of in practice, because of the danger of propelling oneself off the wire through the sudden explosive production of torque. This was common knowledge. But Gateau did not seem to care for the established parameters of the high-wire duel. Instead of trying to dampen the wire’s wavelike oscillations, he swung his body again, increasing them.
Philakis was one of the few in the crowd knowledgeable enough to know that Gateau was one of the new high-wire theorists which Paris had recently produced. From their coffee shops on the Rue St. Denis, Gateau and others had been proclaiming to the world that oscillation was but another form of stability; but they had been proclaiming it in French, and so nobody in Great Britain or America had understood them.
Now Gateau was here to prove his assertion.
Smiles, the gaunt North Dakotan, fought to keep his balance. No use—the stability upon which he relied no longer existed. Arms flailing wildly, he fell from the wire.
A gasp went up from the crowd. Then a great cheer as Gateau, just as his opponent’s fall began, skewered Smiles neatly through the heart, thus enabling him to die of a wound more noble than a broken neck.
But the move put Gateau himself into trouble. Now it was his turn to flail his arms, to feel the oscillation of the wire become more than he could control, to hang there for a heartbeat, impossibly trying to ride the wire as it swung like a giant jumprope in the hands of two peevish and enormous little girls.
Then Gateau fell. But his sangfroid did not abandon him, nor did his cool. Releasing the sword, he grasped the neck wire with both hands, bringing himself to a stop before his descent could build up an insurmountable momentum. He hung there for a moment, making small kicking movements of the feet in acknowledgment of the crowd’s cheers, and then climbed up the neck wire hand over hand, back to the high wire.
After acknowledging the crowd’s applause he cried, indicating the trembling wire, “You see? It did move!”
There was a lot of discussion in the newspapers the next day as to what he meant by that.
Next came the Death Frisbee contest. The two players advanced into the center of the arena and saluted the crowd and the referee, who was protected for this event by plate armor from head to toe. He raised his checkered flag, dropped it. The fight had begun.
The Frisbees for this event were made of light steel plate, and their edges were razor-sharp. The contestants wore no protective armor. They were clad only in bathing suits and sneakers. Their only means of defense were the heavy leather gauntlets they wore, whose inner surfaces were protected by three layers of mesh steel. Only with a glove like this could a Death Frisbee safely be caught.
The Frisbees soared, arced, and fluttered back and forth across the arena. An early use was seen of the boomerang shot, in which the Frisbee, if it missed its target, arced around and returned to its owner’s glove. Both men were adept at skimming the deadly missiles along the ground, to dart upward at unexpected moments.
The shiny steel-blue Frisbees soared and winked in the sun, buzzed like enraged hornets, darted and fluttered like a flock of bats settling off into the sunset.
For a while the duel swayed back and forth inconclusively. The crowd watched in rapt silence. No sound could be heard but the metallic chunk as a Frisbee was caught in a protective glove. Each man had a sack of spare Frisbees carried in a broad leather pouch on his back.
The favorite this year was Oscar Szabo. He was facing Manuel Echeverria, Manos, as he was nicknamed, a Spanish Basque from Bilbao. Echeverria had been training in secret. No one knew what kind of moves he had.
Early in the fight it was evident that Manos’s catches were not as crisp as Oscar’s, and the Basque seemed a trifle unsteady on his feet, as though he had been partying too long the previous night, which was in fact the case.
The hulking Hungarian sensed his advantage and bega
n to edge forward, pushing back his opponent with a quick succession of throws that dipped and fluttered crazily like a flight of starlings high on paraquat. Manos retreated, bobbing and weaving as the Death Frisbees swooped toward him, batting them away with his glove-clad fists, trying to keep his balance.
It seemed like the finish for the Boozy Basque. But aficionados of the sport who had seen Manos play in Europe nudged their less knowledgeable companions in the ribs and said, “Watch this!”
And sure enough, just as it seemed like the end for the Bumbling Basque, Manos suddenly made a neat double sidestep and reached into his basket, took out two Frisbees, and flung them simultaneously. Yes, the bloody old Basque was ambidextrous, and well trained in the intricacies of the two-handed Frisbee attack!
The gleaming saucers of slaughter came swooping at Szabo from different directions and angles, delivered with incredible speed and spin, arriving as near to simultaneity as makes no never-mind. In desperation the Hairless Hungarian fell on his back, kicking away the buzzing Frisbees that came at him like black flies in June with the desperate fly swatters of his steel-shod feet.
Even in this posture Szabo was able to perform the desperation bolo throw that had won the prize for him last year. His Frisbee screamed through the air, swung toward the stands, curved around, and flew toward Manos from an oblique angle.
The Basque was up to the challenge. His left-handed counterthrow collided with his opponent’s Frisbee in midair, causing sparks to fly, redirecting both Frisbees harmlessly into the stands.
Then Manos spun around three times like a discus thrower and flung two Frisbees simultaneously.
The saucer-shaped missiles arced high into the air and curved in at Szabo from different directions, traveling like out-of-control locomotives.
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