Doomsday Warrior 18 - American Dream Machine

by Ryder Stacy

  This “game” would be over quickly, Rock thought. The monster, its form obscured by a blur deliberately placed in the transmission, located the victim’s quaking form and was moving toward him. It lumbered, but its size was enough to cut off the only possible avenue of retreat, the still-open large gate. The victim’s eyes were half-closed, face twisted in pain now. His lips narrowed primly. His right hand left his face and drifted up into a raised position. “We who are about to die salute you, warden,” he said. Rockson was surprised at that.

  The camera zoomed in briefly on the audience, on the mean-looking bastard with a whole box to himself. He yawned, apparently not even interested in what was happening. He was bending over and talking to somebody in the box below: a woman, who fanned herself and tittered. They were joking.

  “Now! Here it comes!” Jansen shouted.

  The shape, distorted deliberately again by a device in the camera lens, had cornered the man, and the burly victim screamed out and pulled a dagger. He suddenly charged, a last show of courage! The Zrano raised what would have been a paw in any other monster; it was blurry. Maybe it was a claw, like a lobster claw, Rock suspected.

  The view on the visi-screen cut suddenly to the carpet of greenery below the victim’s feet. There was a spurt of dark liquid on it, and another . . . bloodcurdling screams with each splash. Now the camera showed the audience on its feet, all cheering. The camera panned back to the scene of “battle.” Now the blurred-out monster was obviously stepping on what was left of a human, doing a three-legged waltz on it. The man’s head vanished under one of the huge clawed feet. Rock didn’t look away. If he was to face this thing, any information he could gather could mean something, could give him a slim chance . . . Damn! It was worse, not seeing it, seeing just the blur.

  He was aware of Dovine standing and flicking the pair of viewers off simultaneously. The pictures seemed to fold in on themselves.

  All the men were looking awkwardly in Dovine’s direction, waiting for him to speak. Rock finally asked, “When do we go up against—it?” His words came slowly, carefully even in tone. The other prisoners were shocked.

  “The games are held every month, except for a special meeting like the one you just saw,” Dovine intoned. “Special meetings happen very rarely—only on holidays. Today is Planetoid Day, so we were lucky, weren’t we?”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “You all will face the Zrano Tuesday, the next scheduled meeting.”

  “In four days,” It was Horse-face now, his voice rising. “But we can’t possibly learn to beat a monster in such a short time! We want to work! Please, I’ll be good!”

  “You will have as good a chance against the Zrano as anybody, prisoner. More than that, no one on Esmerelda could offer you. You’ll be armed. Armaments are chosen by lot; some are better than others!”

  “It’s not enough,” the mournful-looking Reelk said. “You’re sending all of us out there to die.”

  But Dovine had turned and was already on his way out of the banquet hall.

  “I w-want to WORK, not die,” Horse-face whimpered to no one in particular. “Why did he say before we were going there to work? Why?”

  Rockson answered with one word: “Sadism.”

  Thirteen

  A day later—a day in which Rockson was confined to quarters and had no visitors—they landed on Esmerelda. He saw nothing of the approach to the asteroid, just felt the ship change direction, and the bump of the landing.

  The prisoners were led into an airlock compartment and then off-loaded directly into a jet car. They sat where they were told while a computer set the course. The jet car took them from the landing site past gray fields and rickety-looking cubical houses toward a looming arena. The one they had seen on the visi-screen, no doubt. The planetoid looked like a vast city.

  The colors of the cubelike buildings were bright pink and gold. When they stopped and filed inside one cube-building’s lobby, Rock saw that the inside was a series of natural pastel shades, with a carpet of artificial grass. Rock had formed a different impression from the visi-screen pictures, expecting some grim exteriors, dark interiors; but this place looked cheerful and was well kept. People strolled by, smiling, looking happy, well fed. Many were couples. Several guards with max-stun guns watched them.

  The imitation air made him cough. It smelled like excrement. The sky, seen through an oculum, was lighted with a small yellow sun—artificial for sure. His coughing fit didn’t stop until Rock was separated from the others and led into a sealed room. Two men came after a while out of a doorway, and faced him. One snapped a bracelet on Rockson.

  The leaden-eyed man said, “Unlike the last man to die, you will be able to train against the Zrano. You have a chance. Now, come to the arena. Disobey, and that pain-bracelet is activated.”

  Rock, as he followed, wondered if the “obedience bracelet” around his right wrist was infallible. Maybe the pain that was transmitted to it if he disobeyed was endurable. He deviated slightly from the suggested path and a white-hot, agonizing pain shot up from the bracelet. One guard smiled. “That’s a no-no.” Rock returned to the straight-and-narrow and found his eyes moving toward the wide gate ahead, which turned out to be the northeast gate of the stadium—it connected directly to this building.

  His coughing fit resumed. The air here was worse. One of the guards suddenly blocked his way. “Stop! Why do you cough? Haven’t you been given tiblets?”

  “Given what?”

  “Every Esmerelda native takes ‘tiblets’ to prolong life in this artificial air environment,” the blond man said.

  “Is that the stuff that makes everybody’s skin look as if it had been shined?” Rock snapped. “No thanks.”

  “It prolongs life.” The guard’s shrug dismissed an irrelevancy, “and the smell goes away. At least you can’t smell it. I mean the air seems to get better. We’ll get you some.”

  Rock looked sullenly toward the man, and shrugged.

  The guard, a fresh edge in his voice, asked, “You’re Rockson, aren’t you? Niles Rockson, famous playboy? Follow me, I’ll fix you up.”

  Rock again shrugged. “Do I have a choice?” He walked behind the guard and over to the lowest circle of hard blue spectator seats. They had come right out into the stadium proper.

  The guard said brusquely, “Sit down here, I’ll get you some tiblets.” He went away. Rock just coughed and stared out at the porters washing the red off the floor in the far end of the arena with mops and detergent. Shortly, the blond guard returned with a glass of water and two pills. “Swallow these. They last twenty-four hours. You’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah,” Rock said swallowing the pills, “sure.”

  Some men were being led into the arena below the seats now. They were the prisoners from the ship. They all were dressed in gladiator gear; some had nets, some swords. They began to “practice,” fighting a laughable wooden replica of a Zrano that was rolled out for them to hit.

  “They are being instructed about what to do against the Zrano,” the blond guard said. “It’s not for you.”

  “Why can’t I be with them?” Rock asked.

  “You don’t know? I suppose you don’t know why you were made the subject of a special game?”

  “I can guess—the severe nature of my crime? Playboyism?”

  “Yes, but more than that, dust from a destroyed audi-writing tablet was found during a search of your room. You were actively plotting with Sanders—part of a conspiracy to escape.”

  “I see.”

  The guard shrugged. “You do the crime, you pay in a short time.” He smiled. “It rhymes, you see?”

  “And I suppose I’m going to be punished by having less of a chance against the Zrano? What will my weapon be?”

  “You’ll have more of a chance than your friends.” The guard was brusque now. “Come on. We’ll go join them. You can listen to what the others are told, but you can take no part in the physical exercises they go through. Orde
rs.”

  Fourteen

  The “trainer” was a huge, leather-outfitted man whose long red hair was combed almost like an ocean wave. He stood with both feet apart as he spoke to the prisoner-trainees.

  “You’re going to run around the surface of this arena to develop your familiarity with the total area. That’ll be helpful to keep you from getting overly excited when the Zrano is facing you. We will run first, and then walk and then run. Now follow me! Everyone except Rockson here.”

  The exercises, such as they were, Rock noticed, posed no problems for most of the prisoners, but Skinny Jones was sweating furiously before they had moved halfway down the length of the arena. Rock was aware of an occasional envious glance in his direction from the men in the wide pit, because he didn’t have to do anything except listen. It did strike him as ironical. He always had it easier, didn’t he? He wondered about Kimetta. What was she doing? He touched the blue medallion pendant on his chest. They had let him keep it, laughing when he said it would protect him. Would it?

  When an hour had passed in walking and running, the burly trainer ordered, “Sit down now men, and I’ll be able to give you some good news.”

  The men flopped down next to Rockson on the well-barbered grass, but the skinny prisoner lay down flat, breathing hard.

  “Now I’m going to tell you what I’ll spend the balance of the week repeating, so as to din it into your ears in hopes of understanding coming to you all. The Zrano can be beaten, it can be cheated of its prey. A man who is both smart and quick can do it. That fact makes the encounter a sporting event, you see, and keeps the people of Esmerelda both alert and interested. It is possible for this reason: the Zrano has strength and size, as you well have seen, but not true intelligence. It is the human beings who have that. You must bear that fact in mind, and use your innate common sense.”

  Almost breathless, the skinny prisoner spoke bitterly, “What good is brains against something like that?”

  “The purpose of the contest is to find out,” the trainer smiled, “and give the citizens a thrill at the same time.”

  “Give us some help,” Jansen pleaded. “Tell us its weak points.”

  “To get down and discuss actual cases, I understand that in the year 2096, a man put one arm into the previous Zrano’s mouth, cracking a number of its teeth. The beast wrenched that man’s arm out of its socket, but was so angry afterwards that it lay down in the middle of the arena and wouldn’t continue with the game. Zranos have pride.”

  “A shrewd cookie, all right,” the mournful one said sardonically. “Fellow who lost his arm, I mean. Did he—”

  “Yes, he lived. And well! For the human player, as I have pointed out, the objective of this game is to survive. Period. Survive and the world is your oyster.”

  Rock found himself nodding at that. He would survive. He didn’t depend on the medallion, but he had always been clever. There had to be something simple he could do to defeat the Zrano and keep his arm too!

  “The arm trick won’t work anymore. That Zrano was old,” the trainer said. “As to the how of your survival, that’s up to you. A man who died not long ago of old age managed to kick the old Zrano so severely that the beast was unable to retaliate for a long time. The game was declared finished by excessive overtime and so he won. Let me point out that you only need to survive for twenty minutes. As for that second player, the one I just spoke of, he had trained on Earth as a dancer. He was extremely agile. You can do anything to defeat the monster; you have all the latitude in the world. Dirty tricks are fair play.”

  “That’s going to be a big help,” the skinny man pointed out. Nobody laughed.

  Rock, listening intently, nodded again to himself. Dirty tricks! That was the way. It always was.

  Rockson was given a small, clean single room in the upper area of the arena. He had a nice soft bed and he fell asleep at once when the light was shut off.

  But he dreamed. No, it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare. Someone might have asked “What could be worse than his real life?” The dream was. In the dream, he was sealed in something called a “nightmare coffin.” The air in there was bad, he was dreaming bad dreams. He was sealed inside a coffin, inside a cavern. Alone. Buried alive. Alone. Dreaming . . . dreaming he was about to face a thing called a Zrano.

  With a start he sat bolt upright, covered with sweat. He was gasping. He took two of the air-purifying “tiblets.”

  A routine was worked out for them during the next few days, which was comforting somehow. Rockson and the other prisoners would wake up, join together for eats and drinks, then go down to the arena floor. The others would train and Rock would read (or watch). Then they all would see visi-screen films of previous meets with the blurry monster, eat again, and spend the balance of each night in their rooms—God knows the others complained they had nothing to do there, but Rock was given a pile of books he requested.

  Rock started pumping the blond guard for information on why he wasn’t required to train, and why he was given nice quarters and books. The guard said rumor had it a woman named Kimetta Langdon, who was well placed in the hierarchy, being the warden’s daughter, had arranged it. Rock slept better for that thought. The traitoress might be changing her stripes again. Maybe he had a chance after all. But—how come Kimetta had never told him about her father’s job?

  Rock spotted a window slit high in the arena so he knew when it was day and night outside; and the exact stages in between could be observed by anybody who could catch a glimpse of the guards’ impressive gold wristwatches. Really, though, the day was a matter of artificial lighting, and darkness followed on exact schedule. Rock found himself in a state of rising edginess that didn’t involve thinking of the Zrano at all. In one way only could it be alleviated, he decided. He wanted to make love to a woman.

  At the third day’s supper, he asked the blond guard if he could send a girl to his room. Preferably an “A-1” girl called Qettm. The guard arranged for a visit, but it was, sadly, a different “A-1” girl. Nevertheless, Rock made love happily to her and to the different girls he was sent every evening. He was astonished at the proficiency of the women. They were all green-heads, fiery Esmereldan green-heads.

  The first one, whose name was Pattok, told him warmly, “I’ve never been with anybody like you before.”

  The second, Jeami, remarked, “I didn’t know sex could make me feel so good.”

  The third girl’s, Kamoo’s, testimonial was just as enthusiastic. “Everything that the other girls say about you is the Esmereldan truth.” Rockson was making lots of female allies!

  The fourth night’s visitor showed her gratitude in another way, pleasing both of them additionally in a manner that Rock, for all his playboy experience, had never encountered: the “Esmereldan position.” It would be difficult to explain.

  Fifteen

  By the second week of nontraining, Rock was calm and relatively at ease. Reelk, the toothless prisoner with the mournful expression, had ventured to take on a Callistan steak at supper one night, while the pudgy Jansen was stoking himself with two different meats and a regimen of Esmereldan sprouts and vegetables. The food was extra good this night, and that made Rock suspect the worst. The training was over. None of the life-preserving tiblets were offered to the prisoners this night—most likely because they weren’t expected to survive their all-too-soon-encounter with the Zrano. There wasn’t any point wasting any air-pills on them. Rock was eating lightly. If he was right, he’d need to be fast.

  Jansen noted Rock’s slackness at eating and figured out its meaning. He put down his fork. “This is it, right Mr. Rockson, isn’t it?” he whispered to Rock.

  “Just a guess,” Rockson whispered back.

  Reelk said, “You’ll be sorry now you weren’t toughened up by training. I’ve heard that you’ve had a different girl every night—it weakens one, you know! You’ll probably be half-asleep in the arena, facing . . . it.”

  Before Rock could reply, Jansen, reaching
for his water glass, said, “I want to propose a toast to the cook, who did a great job for us this time. He served an excellent final meal!”

  Reelk raised his water glass, too: “Yeah, a toast to the man who served us our last meal.”

  Nobody laughed. They were all feeling a bit sick. All except Horse-face, who snarled, “Well then, a toast to the Zrano, who’ll get us all out of this miserable training—the sooner the better!” His pain-bracelet glinted in the light as he raised his cup.

  The others protested. “What? What are you saying!”

  Rockson sighed and said, “How about a toast to the enjoyment of all the senses? I drink to pleasure, gentlemen. Here’s to pleasure, and NOT to monsters. We who are about to die salute pleasure.”

  He was prepared for a knock at his door some time around ten o’clock that night, and it came. His dark hair with the white streak was combed, his welcoming smile was in place when the door opened. It was Dovine, not a girl! Rock couldn’t say he was pleased.

  The fat officer looked around at the neat, bare room and the pile of books. He didn’t make the slightest personal remark, but said, “I have come to discuss the request you made to a guard this afternoon, asking for audi-writing materials.”

  “Is there any objection? I get women, books, why not audi-cubes or a pen and some paper at least.”

  “Not in principle, of course, it’s fine. You said that you wanted the audi-writing to go to your friends on Earth and Venus?”

  “Certainly.”

  “But why send them anything? To what purpose?”

  “So they’ll know what happened to me.”

  “Will they care? Surely they’ve got their own existences to plan, their own selves to provide for. They certainly wouldn’t welcome the taint of a letter from a heinous felon.”

  “They’ll care,” Rock said. “I was famous back there.”