The Blood Red Game

SEVENTEEN

This time, Asquiol realised, he would have to visit the Game Ship personally, for the time he had feared had come.

The aliens had virtually won the Blood Red Game.

Jewelled, the multiverse spread around him, awash with life, rich with pulsating energy, but it could not compensate for his mood of near-despair. Coupled with the empty ache within him, the ache for the missing piece which seemed so close, it threatened to control him.

He still could not trace the source, but it was there. Something, like him but not so developed, was in touch with him - almost the multiverse. He began to put out feelers of his mind into the multiverse, searching.

But then his conscience made him withdraw from this and concentrate once more on the immediate problem. As had happened on past occasions, he had been in communication with the alien leaders. This time they had found it hard to disguise their jubilation, for the Game had taken firm shape.

They were winning. Even with the setback they had received from Roffrey's ship, their score had mounted enormously.

Asquiol still found it difficult to comprehend their method of scoring, but he trusted them. It was unthinkable for them to cheat.

His way of communicating with them was the way he and Renark had learned from the Originator. It wasn't telepathy. It relied on no exact human sense, but involved the use of waves of energy which only one in complete awareness of the multiverse might sense and harness. It did not involve words, but used pictures and symbols. It had been by analysis of some of these symbols which Asquiol had passed on to them that the psychiatrists had managed to devise 'weapons' for use against the aliens.

Asquiol still had no idea of what the aliens called themselves and did not even have a clear impression of their physical appearance. But their messages were easy enough to interpret and the fact remained that the human race had reached a crisis point.

Only one more round of the Game would decide the issue!

Then, if the human race refused to accept the decision and began open war again, Asquiol knew they were doomed, for their fleet was too depleted to stand any chance at all.

News received recently did not alter this certainty. A number of farmships had broken down, others had been lost completely or been destroyed in their early physical encounters with the aliens. Less than two thousand ships of all kinds remained in the fleet - a vast enough caravan by any ordinary standards, but nearly a quarter of a million ships had originally left the home universe.

It was in a mood bordering on hopelessness that he stretched out a scintillating arm and put his communicator on to a general broadcast wavelength to inform the race of what he had learned. It was rare for him to do this, since direct contact with members of his race was becoming increasingly less attractive. He began:

'Asquiol here. Please listen attentively to my message. I have recently been in contact with our attackers and they have informed me that, as far as they are concerned, the game is virtually won - that they are confident that they will be the victors. This means that our position is very nearly hopeless.

'We have, at most, enough supplies to last us for a month. Unless we make planet-fall on some habitable world soon, you will all be dead.

'The only way in which we can survive is to win, decisively, the last round of the Game. The aliens already have a considerable advantage over us and feel that they can, in the next round, sufficiently increase this to ensure victory. Our Gamblers are weary and we have no more recruits. We have drained out talent as we have drained our resources. Our scientists are still working to devise a new way of beating the aliens, but I must tell you that time is running very short. Those among you not directly involved in playing the Blood Red Game had best make what plans you can, bearing in mind what I have said.

'To the Gamblers and all those attached to the Game Ship I can only ask for greater effort, knowing you have worked at full capacity for many days. Remember what we can win. Everything! Remember what we stand to lose. Everything!'

Asquiol sat back, his message still unfinished, and as he breathed in the exotic scents of the multiverse, he saw the hull of his ship a stark outline against an over-poweringly beautiful background of space alive; sensed, again, that peculiar feeling of kinship with another entity. Where was it? In this universe - or another? Then he continued:

'I myself will not be directly affected by the outcome, as many of you have guessed. But this is not to say I am unaffected by my trust - to lead the race to safety in the first instance and to something more in the second. There are those among you who ask what became of my companion Renark, our original leader. You wonder why he stayed behind in the contracting universe. My answer is vague, for neither of us got a clear idea from the Originators why this had to be. It is probably that the stuff of his great spirit was spread amongst us, to give all of us extra vitality - the vitality that we need. It may also have been that he sensed his role finished and mine only to have begun. Perhaps that is an arrogant thing to say.

'Renark was a brave man and a visionary. He was confident that mankind, by its efforts, could avoid, destroy or survive all danger. He was a believer in human Will conquering all obstacles - physical, intellectual, and metaphysical. In this, perhaps, he was naive. But without that idealism and naivete, our race could not have survived.

'However, what saved us from one form of peril may not be able to save us from another. Different problems require different solutions. Will alone is not now sufficient to win the Blood Red Game. It must be remembered that the circumstances applying to us in our present predicament are much more complex than they were when Renark and I went on our quest.

'We must be totally ruthless, now. We must be strong and courageous. But we must also be devious, cautious and sacrifice any idealism which made us embark on this voyage. Sacrifice is for survival - and the survival of a greater ideal.'

Asquiol wondered whether to continue. But he decided he had said sufficient for the moment.

Again he sat back, allowing himself to experience full unity with the multiverse.

'Where are you…?' he said, half-aloud. 'Who are you?'

The need was tangible in him - disconcerting, distracting his attention from the matter he must give all his mind to.

He had already been in contact with the Game Ship and now waited impatiently for the signal which would tell him a vessel was ready to take him there.

He rose and paced the cluttered cabin, the light shivering and breaking apart into rays of shining blue, gold and silver; shadows quivered around him and at times there seemed to be several ghostly Asquiols in the cabin.

At length the launch clamped against the side of his ship and he passed through his airlock and into the cramped cabin of the launch. Quickly it cruised over to the Game Ship and eased sideways into a receiving bay. The great outer doors closed down swiftly and Asquiol stepped out to be greeted by Lord Mordan.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'with your aid, Asquiol…'

But Asquiol shook his iridescent head. 'I have little special power,' he said. 'I can only hope that my aid will help the Gamblers to hang on a little longer.'

'There is something else. Selinsky wants to see you. It appears that all four of those people who came in from the Shifter have some kind of group-power…'

They were striding along the corridors, their boots clanging on metal.

Asquiol said, 'I'll speak to Selinsky now.'

He stopped as Mordan paused beside a door. 'This is Selinsky's lab.'

'Is he in?'

Mordan turned a stud and entered. Selinsky looked up, blinking as Asquiol followed Mordan in.

'An honour…' he said, half-cynically.

'Lord Mordan tells me, professor, that you are on to some new development?'

'Yes, that's so. The woman - Mary Roffrey. She's not only sane now, she's… what? Super-sane! Something was done to her mind on Roth. The whole nature of it altered. It is very different from anyone else's - except, perhaps…'

'Mine?' Asquiol felt excitement creeping through him. 'Is she, then, like me - as you see me?'

Selinsky shook his head. 'She seems perfectly normal - until you analyse her brain structure. She's what we need, all right.'

Asquiol was beginning to see the pattern now. Was this woman the missing piece in his existence? Had the Originators done something to her brain in order to form her into what she potentially was - a weapon? He could only guess.

Selinsky said: 'She wasn't a product of the alien attack at all. She was a product of more than just a series of madness-inducing hallucinations on Roth. Something or somebody had actually tampered with her brain. It's the most delicately balanced thing I've ever seen!'

'What do you mean?' Asquiol asked.

'One way - utter madness; the other way - unguessable sanity.' Selinsky frowned. 'I'd hate to be in her position. We've got her doing a quick training course with O'Hara at the moment. But playing the Game could ruin her mind for good, tip the balance once and for all.'

'You mean she'd be completely insane?'

'Yes.'

Asquiol pondered. 'We must use her,' he said finally. 'Too much is at stake.'

'Her husband is against the idea, but she seems to be taking it all right.'

'He's the trouble-maker - Roffrey,' Mordan interposed.

'Will he give trouble in this business?'

'He seems resigned,' Selinsky said. 'A strange mood for him. Playing the Game seems to have wrought a change in him. Not surprising…'

'I must see her,' Asquiol said with finality, turning to leave the laboratory.

They began the long walk down the corridor to the Game Chamber.

Now Asquiol wanted to see Mary Roffrey - wanted to see her desperately. As he strode along, his mind worked quickly.

Ever since he and Renark had gone to the Shifter, their paths had crossed indirectly. He had never met her - yet she had been the person to supply Renark with a lot of important information without which they might never have reached the Originators. What was she? Some puppet of the Originators which they were using to aid the race? Or was she something more than a puppet?

She must be the missing factor in his own existence. Yet obviously she had no direct contact with the multiverse. She had the power to strike devastatingly back at the aliens - and he had no comparable power. There were things that linked them, yet there were qualities that separated them also. It was as if they both represented certain abilities which Man was capable of possessing. She had something he didn't have - he had something she didn't have. How similar were they?

This, perhaps, he would find out in a moment.

He went over in his mind the information he had. Mary's mind had been primarily responsible for disorientating the aliens in a wild round of the Game. At that stage she had acted as a conductor for the rest. All of them having been on Roth, they were probably that much more capable of fighting the aliens than anyone else in the fleet. Therefore they would use the other three as well as Mary.

But uppermost in his mind was what Selinsky had just told him.

Mary's mind could improve - or snap irreparably under the stress of this last round.

He knew what he would have to do now. But it was a heavy weight. As he contemplated it, the light around him seemed to fade, become colder and less frenetic in its movement. Sadness, such as he had never thought to experience again, filled him, and he fought it unsuccessfully.

He might, in essence, have to murder a woman - and cut himself off from the power she possessed. The power that was part of him as well as of her.

It was getting late - too late for anything but immediate action. The time of the last round was approaching.

They reached the door of the Game Chamber…