The Blood Red Game

SIXTEEN

O'Hara turned to his companions.

'This is your trial,' he said. 'Get ready.'

There was a faint humming sensation in the huge, circular chamber.

O'Hara had adjusted his screen so that he could now see the alien ships swimming through space towards them. Only a few miles from the fleet they came to a stop and remained, in relation to the fleet, in a fixed position.

Roffrey suddenly found himself thinking of his childhood, his mother, what he had thought of his father and how he had envied his brother. Why should he suddenly decide to…? Hastily he pulled himself out of this reverie, feeling slightly nauseated by a random thought that had begun to creep into his conscious mind. This was akin to what he'd experienced earlier, but not so intense.

'Careful, Roffrey - it's beginning,' said O'Hara.

And it was only a mild beginning.

Whatever the aliens had learned of the human subconscious, they used. However, they had gained such a store of information, Roffrey would never know - though the human psychiatrists had a similar store of 'weapons' to turn back against their enemies.

Every dark thought, every unhealthy whim, every loathsome desire that they had ever experienced was dredged up by the alien machines and shoved before their conscious minds.

The trick, as O'Hara had said, was to forget values of good and evil, right and wrong, and to accept these impressions for what they were - desires and thoughts shared by everyone to some degree.

But Roffrey found it hard going.

And this was not all. The alien means of triggering these thoughts was spectacular and mind smashing in its incredibly clever intensity.

He found it difficult to define between what was sight or smell, taste or sound.

And pervading it all, in the aching background of everything, was the swirling, whirling, chattering, shrieking, odorous, clammy, painful colour - the blood red sense.

It was as if his mind had exploded. As if it were gouging its contents, awash with blood and the agony of naked thoughts, unclothed by prejudice and self-deception. There was no comfort in this world he had suddenly entered - no release, no rest or hope of salvation. The alien sensory-projectors were forcing him further and further into his own mind, jumbling what was there when it did not suit their purpose to show it to him as it really was. All his conscious thoughts and senses were scrambled and jellied and altered. All his subconscious feelings were halted before him and he was forced to look.

In the back of his mind was a small spark of sanity repeating over and over again: 'Keep sane - keep sane - hang on - it doesn't matter - it's all right.' And at times he heard his own voice blended with dozens of others as he howled like a dog and cried like a child.

Yet in spite of all this that was flung against him and the rest, in spite of the loathing he began to feel for himself and his fellows, there was still the spark which kept him sane.

It was at this spark that the aliens aimed their main concentration, just as the more experienced Gamblers in the human ranks aimed to destroy the little sparks of sanity alive in their opponents.

Never in the history of the human race had such dreadful battles been fought. This was more like a war between depraved demons than between material creatures.

It was all Roffrey could do to keep that spark alive as he sweated and struggled against the columns of sound, the vast, booming waves of smells, in the groaning movement of colour.

And as if in keeping with this battleground, the blood red mingling of senses swam and ran and convulsed and heaved themselves through his racked being, hurled themselves along his neural tracts, hacked past his cortical cells, mauled his synapses and shook body and brain into a formless, useless jelly of garbled receptions.

Blood red! There was nothing now save the blood red shrilling of a pervading, icy, stinking taste and a washed-out feeling of absolute self-loathing that crept in everywhere, in every cranny and corner of his mind and person so that he wanted nothing more than to shake it aside, to escape from it.

But it trapped him - the blood red trap from which he could only escape by retreating back down the corridors of his experience, to huddle comfortingly in the womb of…

The spark flared and sanity returned completely for a moment. He saw the sweating, concentrated faces of the other operators. He saw Talfryn's face writhing and heard the man groaning, saw O'Hara's thin hand on his shoulder and grunted an acknowledgement. He glanced at the tiny screen which was fluttering with dancing graphs and pulsating light.

Then he was reaching for the small control panel before him, and his bearded face bore a twisted half-smile as he shouted:

'Cats!'

'And they crawl along your spines with their claws gripping your nerves.

'Tides of mud, oozing. Drown, creatures, drown!'

The words themselves were of little effect, but they were not meant to be - they were triggering off emotions and impressions in his own mind.

He was attacking now! Using the very emotions and impressions which the aliens had released. And he had grasped some understanding of how they could react to these things, for there had been in their attack several impressions which had meant nothing to him, translated into his own terms. These he flung back with a will and his own screens began to lap to the horrid rhythms of his savagely working mind.

First he sent the blood red impressions back, since these were obviously a preliminary attack which formed the basis of the Game. He didn't understand why this should be, but he was learning quickly. And one of the things he had learned was that reason played little part while the Game was on. That instinct had to be turned into a fighting tool. Later the experts could analyse results.

But then he felt the hysteria leave him and there was silence in the chamber.

'Stop! Roffrey - stop! It's over - they won. Christ! We haven't got a hope now!'

'Won? I haven't finished…' 'Look - ' Several of the Gamblers were sprawled on the floor, mewling and drooling insanely. Others were curled into tight foetal balls. Attendants rushed in to tend to them.

'We've lost seven. That means the aliens won. We got perhaps five. Not bad. You nearly had your opponent, Roffrey, but they've pulled back now. You'll probably get another chance. For a first-timer you did exceptionally well.'

Talfryn was insensible when they turned their attention to him.

O'Hara appeared unconcerned. 'He's lucky - it looks as if he's only blacked out. I think he's tough enough to take another round or two now he's got used to the Game.'

'It was - filthy…' Roffrey said. His whole body was tight with strain, his nerves were, bunched, his head ached terribly, his heart pumped wildly. He even found it hard to focus on O'Hara.

Seeing his trouble, O'Hara took a hypodermic from a case in his pocket and gave Roffrey an injection before he could protest.

Roffrey began to feel better. He still felt tired, but his body started to relax and the headache was less intense.

'So that's the Blood Red Game,' he said after a moment

'That's it,' said O'Hara.

Selinsky studied the papers Mann had prepared for him.

'You may well have something here,' he said. 'It is possible that the Shifter exerts a particular influence on the human mind that equips that mind for withstanding the attacks of the aliens.'

'He looked up and spoke to Zung, who was fiddling with some equipment in one corner of the room.

'You say that Roffrey stood up particularly well in his first round?'

'Yes,' the little Mongolian nodded. 'And he resumed the attack without direction. That's rare.'

'He's valuable enough without having any special characteristics,' Selinsky agreed.

'What do you think of my suggestions?' Mann said, almost impatiently, wanting to get back to his own line of inquiry.

'Interesting,' Selinsky said, 'but still nothing very definite to go on. I think we might ask to see Roffrey and Talfryn

and find out what we can about their experiences in the Shifter.'

'Shall I ask them to come here?' Zung suggested.

'Yes, will you?' Selinsky frowned as he studied Mann's notes.

From the turmoil that was her ruined brain, Mary was emerging. Half afraid, for the knowledge of her insanity preyed always on her sane mind, she was reassembling her reason.

Suddenly there was no more confusion. She lay there, eyes seeing nothing at all - no sights of disordered creation, no threatening creatures, no danger. All she heard was the slight scuffling sound of somebody moving about near her.

Very carefully, she thought back.

It was hard to distil a sense of time out of the chaos of memory. It had been as if she had spent most of her life in a whirlpool, performing such meaningless actions as piloting a ship, opening airlocks, making equations on pads that flowed away from her and disappeared.

There had been periods when the turmoil of the whirlpool had abated - sane periods where she had hovered on the brink of insanity but never quite succumbed. There had been the first arrival at the Shifter, looking for the knowledge she had found on Golund. There had been a landing on Entropium, and then a chaotic journey among the planets through space that contained no laws, only a turbulent inconsistency; landing, finding nothing, keeping a hold on her sanity which kept threatening to crack; and finally to Roth where her mind had gone completely. Aware of warmth. Then away from Roth in a manner she could never remember, back to Entropium; a man who asked her questions - Jon Renark - and the horror of half-sanity finally smashed by the cataclysm that had turned Entropium into rubble; the dash for the Hauser, crashing on a peaceful planet - Ekiversh, perhaps? - and resting, resting - then on to Roth… chaos… warmth… chaos…

Why?

What had kept pulling her back to Roth, so that every time she returned her sanity had given out a little more, a little more? But the last time there had been something extra - a turning point, as if she had gone full circle, on the road back to sanity. She had met entities there, things of formless light that had spoken to her. No, that was probably a hallucination…

With a healthy sigh she opened her eyes. Willow Kovacs stood over her. Mary recognised the woman who had comforted her. Mary smiled.

'Where's my husband?' she said quietly, and composed her features.

'Feel better now?' Willow said. The smile she gave in reply was sorrowful, but Mary saw it was not her that Willow pitied.

'Much. Is Adam…?'

'He's been recruited to play this Game.' Briefly Willow explained all she knew. 'He should be getting in touch soon.'

Mary nodded. She felt rested, at peace. The horror of her madness was a faint memory which she pushed further and further back. Never again, she thought. That was it - I'm all right now. That was the last time. She felt herself drifting into a deeper, more natural sleep.

Roffrey and Talfryn entered Selinsky's lab. Roffrey, huge and powerful, his black beard seeming to bristle with vitality, said:

'More tests, professor?'

'No captain. We wish merely to question you on one or two points which have cropped up. To tell you the truth, neither of you appears to possess any strong trait which can account for your besting so many opponents. We have discovered that the reason you were able to beat those ships with such apparent ease was that every one of their Gamblers was beaten - put out of action by some force so powerful that it crossed space without any sending equipment to aid it. Their receivers turned the emanations into a force which destroyed their minds completely. But you possess no qualities of sufficient strength which could account for this. It is as if you needed an… amplifier of some kind. Can you explain that?'

Roffrey shook his head.

But Talfryn was frowning and said nothing. He appeared thoughtful. 'What about Mary?' he said slowly.

'Yes, that may be it!' Zung looked up from his notes.

'No, it isn't,' Roffrey said grimly.

Talfryn broke in: 'She's the one. Your wife, Roffrey. She was absolutely crazy on Entropium. She travelled between the Shifter's planets when space was wild and chaotic. She must have had a tremendous reserve of control somewhere in her if she could stand what she did. She could have picked up all kinds of strange impressions that worked on her brain. She did, in fact. She's our amplifier!'

'Well, what about it?' Roffrey turned round and looked at the three scientists standing there eagerly, live vultures who had spotted a dying traveller.

Selinsky sighed.

'I think we're right,' he said.

Mary stared out at the hazy light of the fleet dropping through darkness towards the far-off stars gleaming like lights at the end of a long, long tunnel.

'Adam Roffrey,' she said aloud, and wondered what she would feel when she saw him.

'How did you get to the Shifter?' Willow asked from where she sat.

'I ran away from Adam. I got tired of his restless life, his constant hatred of civilisation and ordered society. I even tired of his conversation and his jokes.

'Yet I loved him. Still do. I'm an anthropologist by profession, and took advantage of Adam's trips to the remote outworlds to keep my hand in. One time, we landed on Golund - the planet with signs of having been visited by a race from another galaxy. I hunted around the planet but got no more than the scant information available. So I left Adam and went to the Shifter when it materialised in our space-time, hoping to find some clues there. I searched the Shifter system, I searched it and clung to my sanity by a thread. But Roth was the last straw, Roth finished me.

She turned back to look at Willow, smiling. 'But now I feel saner than I've ever done - and I'm thinking of settling down if I can. Becoming a good little wife to Adam. What do you think of that, Willow?' Her eyes were serious.

'I think you're nuts,' Willow said tactlessly. 'Don't sell out for the easy life. Look at me…'

'It's been hard, though,' said Mary, staring at the floor. Tar too hard, Willow.'

'I know,' she said.

The communicator whistled. Mary went to it, operated the control.

It was Roffrey.

'Hello, Adam,' she said. Her throat felt constricted. She put her hand to it.

"Thank God,' he said, his weary face impassive.

She knew she still loved him. That alone was comforting.

'You got a doctor, then?' he said.

'No,' she said smiling. 'Don't ask me how - just accept that I'm sane. Something happened - the fight with the aliens, something on Roth, maybe just Willow's nursing. I don't know. I feel a new woman.'

His face softened as he relaxed. He grinned at her. 'I can't wait,' he said. 'Can you and Willow come over to the Game Ship right away? That's what I contacted you for - before I knew.'

'Certainly,' she said. 'But why?'

'The people here think that all four of us, as a sort of team, managed to beat off the alien sense-impression attack. They want to give you a few routine tests along with Willow. Okay?'

Tine,' she said. 'Send over a launch to collect us and we'll be with you.'

She thought she saw him frown just before he switched out.

Much later, Selinsky screwed up his tired face and pushed his hand over it. He shook his head briskly as if to clear it, staring at the two women who, under sedatives, lay asleep in the testing chairs.

'There's certainly something there,' he said, rolling a small light-tube between his palms. 'Why couldn't we have tested all four of you together? A stupid oversight.' He glanced at the chronometer on his right index finger.

'I've no idea why, but Asquiol is to broadcast to the entire fleet in a little while. About the Game, I think. I hope the news is good - we could do with some.'

Roffrey was ill at ease, brooding, paying scant attention to the scientist. He stared down at Mary and he suddenly felt weak, ineffectual, as if he no longer played a part in her life, and could hardly control his own. An unusual feeling - connected, perhaps, with the shape that events seemed to be taking…

Now she remembered. As she slept, physically, her mind was alert. She remembered landing on Roth, of stumbling over the surface, of falling down an abyss that took her upwards; of the strange, warm things that had entered her brain… She remembered all this because she could sense something similar quite close to her. She reached out to try and contact it, but failed - only just failed. She felt like a climber on a cliff-face who was reaching for the hand of the climber just above, the fingers stretching out carefully, desperately, but not quite touching.

There was somebody out there - somebody like her - but more like than she was. That was the impression she got. Who or what was it? Was it a person, such as she defined the word, or something else?

Adam? No, it wasn't Adam. She realised she had spoken his name aloud.

'I'm here,' he said, smiling down at her. She felt his big hand grasping her firmly, encouragingly.

'Adam… there's something… I don't know…'

Selinsky appeared beside her husband. 'How are you feeling?' he asked.

'Fine, physically. But I'm puzzled.' She sat up in the chair, dangling her legs, trying to touch the floor. 'What did you find out?'

'Quite a bit,' he said. 'And we'll be needing you. Are you willing to take a big risk and help us play the Game?'

Mary wondered why her husband was so quiet.