Desperate Games

by Pierre Boulle

  Then, turning towards Fawell, Betty asked him with a smile if he had the latest statistics concerning suicides. He did not attempt to conceal the truth: they were worse than the most pessimistic predictions. A sense of tragedy hung silently over the council, faced with such responsibilities.

  ‘Assuming that we decide to try out this experiment, we still need to find some volunteers for these sorts of games.’

  Betty reassured him on this point. With the help of her reputation as a psychologist, she declared that she was certain of finding as many volunteers as necessary and even many more. It would be necessary to reject some and to conduct a selection process to ensure that they would keep only the most deserving people. Apart from the material advantages which would be granted to the survivors (even in a world in which prosperity reigns everywhere, it is always possible to invent refinements to reward people for their merits, such as giving them works of art, for example, which, justifiably, cannot be priced), the simple prospect of triumphal victory, orchestrated and celebrated of course over the airwaves and in the press, would tempt a mass of enthusiasts. Even the possibility of a glorious demise in front of thousands of spectators would attract all those who, unable to put up with their present way of life, would prefer it to a lonely and miserable end hanging from a rope or in the murky waters of a river.

  ‘Amongst other ills the world was also suffering from a lack of star personalities,’ Betty maintained, ‘and it is far from unimportant for our programme that it will lead to the emergence of such stars. I advised you previously to create a world anthem and world banners. Experience has proved me right. I am telling you today, that a world state cannot do without world stars.’

  Some of the ministers still hesitated. O’Kearn put the weight of his authority behind Mrs Betty Han in a few decisive phrases:

  ‘We are realists,’ he said. ‘We cannot refuse to accept a realistic solution. It is my opinion that we should try the experiment.’

  To utter the word ‘experiment’ in a gathering of scholars was to lure them irresistibly with something that dazzled their eyes. The government decided to proceed with the plan, and were unanimous, except for one voice, that of Zarratoff.

  The games were inaugurated immediately. At first it was of course simple individual sword fights, with the duellists not being made to follow the rules of fencing. They could move around, run and jump just as they wanted to and use their fists when they had the chance. It resulted in attacks which were quite like those seen in former times in swashbuckler films, with the difference that the weapons did not have foils, the wounds were real, and the fight ended in the death of one of the combatants.

  The first competitions were a great success. The crowd went wild about each armed sequence and the victors were raised to the rank of world stars, as Betty had hoped. By a fortnight after the start of the shows, which were put on almost everywhere in the world and broadcast widely by all audio-visual media, the number of suicides had gone down by twenty-five per cent. Fawell had to admit that the psychologist’s prediction was right, yet again. He did so with good grace and Mrs Betty Han was given a free hand to pursue her programme and perfect it.

  For knowing that the duels would end up becoming boring, she maintained feverish enthusiasm among her staff. Several teams of researchers worked relentlessly in laboratories specialising in putting together a range of games which became more and more stimulating, and more and more thrilling, in order to maintain and stir up the enthusiasm provoked by the first experiments even more. In this way the formula for super-wrestling with mixed teams was discovered. The world championship, with keenly contested knock-out rounds in various regions, had been an enormous success. The finale surpassed all expectations.

  It was quite strange that the first idea for super-wrestling was born not in the mind of a professional psychologist but in that of the mathematician Yranne.

  He had in no way taken offence at the promotion of Mrs Betty Han. On the contrary he was happy to find himself relieved of part of his responsibilities. After producing an enormous amount of work during the last few years, he also found himself now with some leisure time. He used it not to pursue his analytical research, but, following a strange inclination which he sensed in advance that he would not be able to resist, to think about the Chinese psychologist’s projects. He found them very interesting and allowed his logical and subtle mind to indulge itself quite naturally in imagining some innovation in the programme of games, to the great fury of his friend Zarratoff, who could no longer persuade him to play a game of chess, so absorbed was he in his daydreams tinged with speculation.

  After pursuing a series of fruitless deductions, it came to Yranne one evening that wrestling, if pushed to its extreme, that is to say to a mortal end, would be a good way to fulfill all the conditions necessary to arouse the passions of crowds. He shared his idea with Betty, masking his shyness with a joking manner.

  She did not smile, as he feared she would, but on the contrary remained serious and pensive. Then she thanked her friend warmly, and went off with this fresh idea to one of her laboratories straight away, where it was immediately considered, dissected, analysed and finally improved upon till it gave birth to the actual show decided upon. The last touch of spice was added by a very young male student of psychology, by the name of Rousseau, whom she had found to be very imaginative, and had recruited into her research department, judging that youth was a good qualification for work of this kind. It was he who had the idea of introducing women into the teams and having them fight naked or almost so, like the men, adding thereby the spice of striptease to the pepper of violence. Mrs Betty Han congratulated him on his brainwave and predicted a brilliant future for him.

  As for the suggestion that the rival teams should bear the names of various scientific theories, this came from Betty herself. She thought that in this way they could replace the passionate element provided in the past by the confrontation between two groups of different nationalities. Fawell had approved of this point without reservation. He hoped to arouse in an indirect way, by means of the games, some interest in the theories themselves, which would ultimately be beneficial to science.

  Although it was not imposed by any rule, it happened that the Alpha team almost always chose to represent a theory of physics, while the Beta team wore the colours of a hypothesis dear to the hearts of biologists.

  4.

  After the world championships, the Ministry of Psychology seemed to rest on its laurels and did not make any innovations in the realm of games for quite a long time. Research continued, but none of the proposals submitted to Mrs Betty Han satisfied her. In her opinion, no doubt with reason, super-wrestling was a kind of masterpiece and she was afraid that innovations would appear dull in comparison.

  There were some interesting proposals however, which she studied attentively: a kind of rugby, in which the players wore helmets fitted with sharp points; a charge on horseback by two teams, brandishing lances as in the tournaments of yesteryear, and dashing towards each other at top speed. Another project was inspired by Roman games and pitched retiarii against murmillones or gladiators against wild animals.

  Just in case, she put these proposals away in a cupboard, but she hoped that her collaborators would come up with better ones. For the present, super-wrestling satisfied humanity’s desires completely. The suicide tendency curve was constantly downward towards the base and was close to reaching a normal level. President Fawell was regaining confidence. The time would come when an additional effort of the imagination would be required of the researchers, on the day when the game fashionable at that time was no longer sufficient. That day would come, Betty had no illusions about it, but she hoped it was far off.

  In the meantime, the fireworks display of the world championship had not gone out, far from it. It continued for several months, inspired by the simple memory of that marvellous finale, in which Miss Lovely had revealed herself in all her glory. She was now revered as the equivalent of a
goddess, in a way no star of former times had ever been. Every day all the broadcasting media praised her merits and beauty, both of which were incomparable. Her admirers could be counted in their billions and hideous crimes were committed with the sole object of gaining her attention. Mrs Betty Han and the psychologists who collaborated with her judged this unrest to be healthy and did everything possible, with much publicity, to keep the world in this feverish and passionate state to dispel the dreadful melancholy of the previous year. The statistics proved them right. Miss Lovely was a powerful healing force, and Fawell realised this. He decided to add to the young woman’s glory by personally hanging on her valorous breast the medal of world merit.

  After several triumphant months, however, the world champion team had to defend their title, due to a challenge from some little known opponents who had been trained in secret. They were beaten this time. All four players had their throats cut and this time it was Miss Lovely’s blood which stained the arena sand red, while her victorious rival, even younger than her, uttered ecstatic cries as she danced on the corpse. The whole world wept and moaned, but to the great satisfaction of the Ministry of Psychology, the rival had in her turn become an idol within days and the public’s enthusiasm for her was even greater than for the former champion, both in its loudness and frenzy. One of Mrs Betty Han’s collaborators, Rousseau, the young man of whom she expected so much after his participation in perfecting super-wrestling, said to her one day, with a smile, that this sort of star did not run a very great risk of wearing themselves out and ending up destitute and forgotten, for their occupation only left them a very small chance of surviving more than a few months. In this way the world’s interest and passion was constantly renewed and rejuvenated.

  The psychological programme had another success: LCE, or loss of confidence in the ego, had shown a net decrease, as had the epidemic of suicides, and was becoming just a memory of something in the past. In general it was only necessary for sufferers of the illness to attend one or two sessions of super-wrestling and their self-confidence would almost miraculously reappear. And the simple experience of watching the show on television led to a notable improvement in many cases.

  But not for everybody: for some patients the cure was not effective. This was the case for quite a lot of cosmonauts, the first to have experienced it and certainly the most deeply affected. This was especially the case with Nicolas Zarratoff, whose condition had not improved and who suffered horrible crises of LCE at fairly frequent intervals. After taking him to several sessions of the games, however remarkable they were, Ruth noticed in despair that there was no noticeable progress at all and Nicolas himself realised it too.

  In face of the powerlessness of all the doctors and psychiatrists, Fawell and Zaratoff’s father, overcome by grief and foreseeing the collapse of their marriage, decided to seek Betty’s advice. Fawell now regarded her as Providence itself in such desperate situations, and the astronomer started to forgive him for his initiative in setting up the games, since the finale of the championship had captured his interest. The Chinese woman screwed up her eyes, as she usually did in such moments of critical reflection.

  ‘I see only one remedy,’ she said finally, ‘but I cannot reveal it to either you or Ruth. I promise you that I will talk to him privately.’

  They could not get anything else out of her, but she kept her word. She discussed the matter with Nicolas in one of his lucid moments and pointed out to him that his sole chance of being cured was to take part in one of the matches, not as a spectator but as a player.

  Nicolas was strong and in the past he had played a large number of sports. She managed to convince him, and he trained secretly for a month and then entered a particularly brilliant competition, without Ruth or those close to him knowing about it. He felt that the psychologist was right. It was his last lifeline, his final hope of recovering his mental health and of escaping a torment which had become unbearable, and which would have finished by driving him to suicide.

  He was lucky to prevail, stabbing two opponents, a man and a woman, to death with his own hands after attacks which won him applause. He felt an immediate change in himself, and after numerous examinations the medical unit confirmed that there was no trace of the illness any longer. He now had no difficulty at all in driving a car or piloting an airplane and was considered capable again of leading missions into space. On the day when he revealed to Ruth the details of both the treatment he had followed and the complete cure, she embraced him sobbing, and made him swear never to do it again, and then, her heart bursting with gratitude, she took an enormous bouquet of the rarest flowers to the tomb of his victims.

  Certain cosmonauts, who were indifferent to the shows, copied his example and took part in the games. They were either cured or died after the first session. In this way LCE was quickly eliminated from the planet.

  As for the third obstacle which the government had come up against – the fact that the world showed little interest in pure science, despite having so much leisure time – it was difficult to claim that the Ministry of Psychology had made equal progress in this direction, although Betty sometimes did so. If there was some improvement in this area, then it only seemed to concern scientists themselves. The world had in fact become less demanding in the matter of progress in material goods, and scholars, who were no longer the object of constant complaints, would certainly be able to tear themselves away from the monstrous requirements of industrial technology and take up their fundamental research again. They would at last be able to devote themselves in a disinterested manner, as in the past, to the pursuit of truth and to make real progress in science, which had tended to slow down since the advent of world government.

  It was not the future which Fawell had dreamed of. In fact he had the feeling that the world was marching directly towards that division into two classes which he had dreaded in the past, and which he might find himself obliged to accept as a lesser evil. In moments of melancholy, he began to repeat to himself the predictions of Father Teilhard that had inspired his initial programme: ‘The moment will come, and it is necessary that it should come, when man… will recognise that science is not for him an accessory occupation, but an essential form of activity, a natural derivative in fact, open to the excess of forms of energy constantly being set free by machines.’

  For the moment the derivative was artificial and took the form of barbaric and deadly games. In his conversations with Betty, the latter accepted that this was so with good grace, but claimed that they had successfully made the first step. In one sense the world was beginning to become interested in science through the teams of players who presented themselves as the champions of this or that theory. Thanks to this initiative words such as atoms, molecules, cells and others were recurring quite frequently in everyday conversations whenever there were competitions. She would never give up hope, for it was the very basis of her thinking, her great plan, to transfer this passion for the symbolic representatives of an idea onto the idea itself. It had to be admitted that they had had a remarkable result: psychology had triumphed and crowned the marvellous successes already achieved through super-wrestling.

  5.

  The day foreseen by Mrs Betty Han, when super-wrestling was no longer enough to satisfy the world’s passionate avidity, came very soon. And it quickly became obvious that it would not be long before everyone became bored.

  One morning Fawell went to the psychologist’s home to have a confidential talk with her. What he had to tell her was still a secret and he did not want it spread around. No sooner had he entered her home than he put before her the table of suicides, the real one, which he was provided with personally by a special department every day. Betty hardly glanced at it and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I know the situation,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think I’ve got my own statistics? And it all makes sense. The last games were disappointing. Even if I didn’t have accurate equipment at every session to show me to the nearest decibel the
intensity of the cheers, I could tell by the attitude of the spectators.’

  ‘Melancholy?’ Fawell asked gloomily.

  ‘Not openly, but there’s certainly the threat of it.’

  In fact the crowd was not yet showing this dreaded gloominess openly at all. There was still some applause, and sometimes some yells, when the wrestlers excelled themselves or when some weakling managed to overcome an unpleasant brute, rather as Miss Lovely had done. But for an observer with sharpened senses like the psychologist, these cheers did not have the same resonance. The fire of enthusiasm was missing. The players themselves noticed this deficiency and the show suffered because of it. Like the actor who starts to suspect that the cheering is the result of ordinary politeness and who thus starts to go to pieces somewhat, the wrestler could no longer, or only in exceptional circumstances, manage to raise himself to the summit of his art. Previously unimaginable behaviour had even been observed in one of these athletes: discouraged and stretched out on the ground, yet without any serious wound, he obstinately refused to get up and waited for the pistol shot in the nape of the neck by the referee, without lifting a finger to save his own life. And this was simply because the public’s attitude had disappointed him.