Deathsport

by William Hughes

  Meanwhile, the flashed warning told him that the man was coming on a visit to inspect the new intake and the jailer switched on the loudspeakers to get them prepared.

  “Attention. Stand by your cell doors, quiet and ready for immediate inspection.”

  In the cell that he now shared with Doctor Karl, Kaz Oshay at first took no notice of the order. He had had enough of this enemy who hid behind a booming electronic voice machine, such a coward that he did not dare to come and challenge the Guide in the open, even though the latter was unarmed.

  Doctor Karl had fallen into a fitful sleep but now he awoke with a jerk and at once got wearily to his feet, still battered by the beating he had taken. He swayed over to the door and used one hand to prop himself up from the wall as he waited.

  Now Kaz rose as well, realising that by disobeying the order he would be inflicting the same punishment on the Stateman as he would on himself, and realising, too, that the other man probably did not have the strength to take it. Such treachery to weaker brethren was contrary to the teachings of the code.

  They stood next to each other in silence for a while, waiting to learn if there was any reason for this latest drill. The doctor wearily broke the silence, at last:

  “What do you know of the Death Sport?”

  Kaz shrugged.

  “I have heard of the game, of course. It is played by Statemen so they can live through the deaths of others. We Guides have no need of such odd behaviour.”

  Somehow, his flat tone took all offence out of any insult to Doctor Karl as a Stateman that might have been implied by the answer. The doctor managed a painful smile. He had always admired the Guides for their quiet skills and boundless courage and he seemed to be faced with a very special man, even of their calling. He tried, haltingly, to explain about the games and the reasons for the Death Sport.

  “It is not just a sport in itself, it is a ruse that allows the Family of Zirpola to maintain their power over the Statemen of Helix: a trick as old as the rule of one man over the other.”

  Kaz frowned.

  “But it is still just a game, is it not?”

  Doctor Karl tried to make his explanation clearer:

  “No, that is only the surface of it. Have you ever heard of it being played in any of the other Statemen Cities—in Triton, for example? There at least I know it is not played.”

  Kaz Oshay frowned in thought. The man spoke words of truth. He had travelled far and wide across the wastelands and the deserts and had come into contact with the citizens of many Cities, but he had never heard of the Death Sport, except from the citizens of Helix.

  “What you say is truth, but then there is much about the City of Helix that is different from the homes of the other Statemen.”

  The doctor could not restrain his curiosity.

  “Different?”

  Kaz hesitated. He was groping for the right words to use to describe what he had seen and heard.

  “Well, their leaders. In the other Cities there is usually a council of wise men or one wise man. He is proclaimed by the other citizens for a period of time, then makes way to be proclaimed again or to let another take his place. Only in Helix does the power pass through one family, from father to son for as long as they live.”

  Karl nodded. He had heard about what other Statemen called “elections” from travellers passing through the City who had come for medical help. Most citizens of Helix were not allowed to mix with temporary visitors, but the doctor had occupied a privileged position, as he now realised, bitterly.

  “Do you know of differences other than that?”

  Kaz nodded. “The guards. They have them too in the other Cities, but they are helpful men, charged with helping the citizens and protecting them. Only here do they have the strange name of Obedience Enforcers and answer only to the whim of the master of the City—and then there are the trees and the flowers . . .”

  Karl frowned. He seemed to have memory of such things from books and tapes in his youth. “What are those?”

  Kaz smiled. “They are things that grow. They are green mainly, but some have leaves and blossoms that are all colours. I have been told that they have grown inside the Cities for many centuries. Now, Statemen from some of the Cities are trying to make them grow in the deserts that surround them. A few have succeeded.”

  Doctor Karl sighed. He remembered now. They were things that had grown all across the earth before the land had been poisoned by the terrible war that had ended all wars. Truly, this night was teaching him hard and fast that he had always lived in an oppressive place. He spoke at last:

  “Yes, Helix is a City apart and the Death Sport is central to what makes it so. The power of the Lord Zirpola would be lost without it, for while it brings excitement to those who watch it, it also brings fear into their hearts as well as providing entertainment to Zirpola’s followers and cronies.”

  Kaz Oshay eyed his cellmate with a growing respect. Why, the man even thought in the manner of the Guides. To Kaz’s mind that was the highest compliment that he could pay. He had before him a man who would honour the teaching of the code itself, a valuable man.

  His attention was diverted back to the door as the blips sounded and the light code lit up on the inner panel of the huge metal door at the entrance to the prison area. For the jailer, this augured the arrival of Ankar Moor at last and he stood smartly by his console, waiting for the door to open and the mighty leader of the Obedience Enforcers to stride in. He suppressed the sudden fear he felt, the fear all men felt when Ankar Moor came to them.

  As Ankar Moor entered, the jailer was irritated to see that Polna was at his side and he let his words about the use of punishment die on his lips, unspoken.

  Ankar Moor glared at him through the slits in his frightening mask and snapped:

  “I will see the new prisoners at once.”

  The jailer bowed low, aware that, behind his master’s back, Polna was giving him a malevolent grin, and pointed out the corridor down which the giant would have to go.

  The two men moved quickly forward at a military pace, their hobnails ringing on the metal floor, sending up a shower of sparks as they went down the corridor. Ankar Moor came to an abrupt halt as he reached the door of Deneer’s cell. He turned to Polna.

  “Is this the cell of the woman you found for me?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  Ankar Moor nodded brusquely and squinted into Deneer’s eyes through the slit in the door. His voice rasped out:

  “Who are you?”

  She made no reply, but her eyes stared bravely, challengingly into his own. He felt a sudden stab of unaccustomed fear and covered it over by snarling: “I demand to know.”

  The hatred and defiance that sparked from her eyes grew in intensity. She recognised him and his covered face from long ago, but she reserved part of her hatred for the leader of the men who had captured her.

  “I am Deneer—and you are the damned Ankar Moor, the destroyer of the code.” She had spat out his name as if even the sound of it on her lips was poisonous.

  He was amused by the intensity of her answer. On balance again, his first fear gone, his voice became low, but still hard:

  “Yes, I am Ankar Moor himself. There is perhaps some reason why you do not approve of my name?”

  Her eyes turned to mirrors and he saw himself, the dark side of the code, reflected back at him, but he was unable to tear his own eyes away for the moment. Her reply seemed oblique to Polna, but struck straight at the heart of his companion.

  “Everything is within the self. Nothing is outside. It is known to all who abide by the code that you have lost yourself. Ankar Moor is a man who is without a soul. A name to be despised.”

  On the surface the chief of the Enforcers was accepting the challenge of her eyes and her words, but deep within him he felt a terrible cold fear, all the more frightening for being unassuageable. He used his own hatred and contempt for her teachings to try to stare her down, but with no success. Each word
he used was rasped out with a deliberation that was supposed to burn into her brain, but made no apparent impression on her.

  “Ankar Moor, you say, has no soul. But Ankar Moor stands free. You stand where you are now, enslaved by him. Your self is not your own, it belongs to me. Show me your humility or I will break you.”

  Deneer did not show whether she had heard by so much as the movement of a muscle, but continued her level stare until it was the big man who was forced to lower his eyes. Then she spoke:

  “You have not the power to break me, empty man. I am my only master. Take away my body and my soul will still be mine, forever.”

  For a long moment Polna watched with real fear in his heart as he wondered what his master might do. Ankar Moor had pulled himself up close to the door as if he was about to try to tear it out bodily to confront his prisoner, at the same time remaining as if he had been carved out of stone.

  Behind the mask, his brain was seething with anger at the insult she had offered to him in the terms of the code he so despised. He could have her killed now, at once. Just one bolt of electricity at the right intensity would do the job. But the anger died in him as he thought of witnessing her death in the arena the following day. When he spoke his final words to her, his voice was flat, hiding his inner emotions.

  “You are lucky, Guide. Today you may continue with both soul and body; today, I still have need of you.”

  He turned abruptly on his heel and walked across the corridor to face another door where a pair of eyes blazed out at him, filled with hatred. The look of them was as dreadful as those of the woman he had just torn himself away from.

  “And what is your name, Guide?”

  Kaz Oshay did not give him a direct answer. His voice was as soft and as devoid of emotion as if he was in a trance:

  “It is a name that I can carry with pride.”

  The anger that was burning inside Ankar Moor welled up once more as the implication of the answer sank in. “You must answer me. I demand to know.”

  Kaz let his eyes blaze in disdain at the querulous tone of his interrogator.

  “I am called Kaz Oshay. I am the son of Oshay.”

  The effect of this information was immediate and startling to Polna as he watched his master closely. Ankar Moor’s hands came up as if to protect himself from some blow and he took an involuntary pace backwards in the corridor, as if the man in the cell had threatened him. Inside the cell his reaction was matched by the intake of Doctor Karl’s breath. So this was the son of the legendary Oshay of the Guides.

  Ankar Moor recovered himself in an instant, aware that his reaction had been seen and anxious to cover it up.

  “Kaz Oshay, you say. I knew your mother.”

  Kaz nodded calmly.

  “Yes. She often told me of you, Ankar Moor. It was she who gave you your disgrace. It was you who betrayed the consciousness. Your dishonour is a legend among the free Guides.”

  Inwardly, Ankar Moor shuddered as he remembered his fight with the woman who had destroyed his face and had banished him forever from the Guides for his betrayal of the code. She had him at her mercy and could have killed him. That he could have stood. But the deformities she had stricken him with would remain forever, keeping him apart from normal men. The stigma was upon both his body and his soul.

  He shrugged away the painful memory with the thought that the code held no magic for him now, no place in his plans and ambitions. They were foolish and outmoded in this world which he would so rapidly change. When the time came, he would destroy all the free Guides and the stigma would be lifted from him.

  His voice was harsh and he made no attempt to hide contemptuous hatred for the man who faced him from behind the locked door of the cell.

  “My dishonour is now your fantasy, Kaz Oshay, son of Oshay. But what is reality is that I can now return to you a better gift than ever your mother gave to me—your death, Guide. I would give it to you now, but am happy that you will receive it in the Death Sport.”

  Kaz Oshay was not frightened by such threats, his eyes remained level as he repeated the formula of the code that Deneer had used:

  “If you take away my body, my soul will still be mine, forever.”

  This was the second time this answer had been given to him and it acted on the chief of the Enforcers like a slap in the face. He could only take comfort in the knowledge that before another night had fallen, their bodies would have died and their souls would be wandering away from the Earth for eternity. They would be no further threat to him then. He turned on his heel, pushed past Polna, who hurried to get back alongside him, and marched away from the cells.

  Only when he was in the main hall, and was sure that he was out of their sight, did he pause to try to relax the tension that had grown in him, the fear that had gripped his heart. He turned to Polna and the sadistic jailer smiled as he heard the order given:

  “Starting at dawn, you will put them in separate chambers and feed them disorientation.”

  Polna nodded, keeping his face as devoid of expression as Ankar Moor’s mask made the latter. If he had seen and recognised the fear in Ankar Moor he was wise enough to give no indication of it.

  “It has already been arranged.”

  The two men approached the great door and, with a show of impatience, Ankar Moor waited while Polna tapped out the appropriate code on the light panel that would break the security circuits and allow the door to open. A moment later they strode through the space and were gone, the sound of the closing door booming through the cells.

  But Ankar Moor and Polna had not been out of Kaz Oshay’s sight for a moment. Pushing the doctor to one side, Kaz had moved round so that by putting his eye to an oblique angle in the slit, he had been able to squint into the main area. The light panel by the door had been fully in his view and he had committed the tapped-out code to memory, should the opportunity to make a break for it arise. He had no plan in his mind, but a Guide stores away any information he can acquire in a given situation, in case it should assume some importance in the scheme of things. Nothing is too insignificant to be overlooked. If he could, he was determined to be far away from the City of Helix before the Death Sport was due to begin.

  In the silence that followed the closing of the main door, the doctor did his best to contain his curiosity, but at last could do so no longer. His voice was awed as he asked:

  “Your mother, she was truly Oshay?”

  Kaz nodded. “Truly.”

  There was no hint of boasting in his voice, just the flat statement. Now that he knew she was dead, his mother belonged to the closed book of the past. The future was all that was ever important to a Guide, the promise of the future and the dangers of the present.

  He turned away from the doctor and back to the slit in the door, his eyes once more locking on those of the girl in the cell opposite. Karl, however, was still going to let curiosity override good manners.

  “I had always believed that Oshay was a myth.”

  Kaz did not break the gaze. “She lived. I am her offspring, her proof.”

  He was not really inclined to talk about her, but he respected and admired this Stateman and would not dismiss his questions as he would have done those of other men.

  Karl pressed on:

  “The powers that she is said to have possessed. They never seemed quite believable to me. Not even for a Range Guide.”

  “But they were true. She had such powers.”

  “But it is said that she just had to feel the open air and then knew, even days in advance, that a deadly Flash Wind was going to come off the wastelands. Could she really do that? It does not seem possible.”

  The locked-on stare between the two Guides in their separate cells remained unbroken.

  “It was possible. She could do it.”

  “And all her faculties were equally in tune with the elements—her smell, her hearing, everything?”

  Kaz sighed.

  “All that men have heard about her was true.” />
  The doctor was now so deeply involved in his own thought processes that he could not cease the questions. As a medical man he was profoundly interested that the human race could have mutated to such an extent as that. “And do you have these powers?”

  This time, Kaz Oshay withdrew from the gaze and he turned to look deep into the doctor’s eyes as he replied:

  “It is sometimes true.”

  “Why not always?”

  “My life is not yet over. I do not know if I will retain them.”

  An answer like that, so simple, so primitive, underlined the truth of all that Kaz had ascribed to his mother. The doctor fell silent, locked in his own mind for a moment. What a waste a quick death on the morrow would be.

  As for Kaz Oshay, he returned to gaze into the eyes of Deneer, while the doctor began to pace up and down the tiny cell. At length, realising once more the extent of his exhaustion, he leaned against the back wall and allowed himself slowly to slide down into a sitting position, with his back pressed hard against the metal. His arrest and beating had exhausted him more than he wished to admit, even to himself. He was amazed that he had been able to stay active this long and ascribed it in some measure to the latent vitality of the man with whom he was incarcerated.

  Had he not drifted again into sleep, he could have watched for one long hour as Kaz Oshay stood at the door of the cell, his eyes locked on Deneer’s. During that time he would have been unable to detect a single movement in the other man.

  It was at the end of this hour that the blips came again on the light screen at the side of the main door and Kaz withdrew his gaze from Deneer to squint again along the line of sight he had found for himself as he watched the light pattern coded out.

  The great door swung open and one of the Enforcers entered. Behind him came another of his kind, pushing a large trolley of stainless steel, which carried food bowls for the prisoners. Bringing up the rear was a third man, who, like the first, had his anti-matter blaster at the ready. All three were wearing their protective helmets and had their visors down, so their faces could not be seen. It was the man pushing the trolley, who had taken the shift to allow Levron some time off, who had told the men to don all this equipment. He had already been wearing his own and said that the orders came directly from Ankar Moor, so they had not been questioned.