The Blood Red Game

EIGHTEEN

In the main chamber, Mary was seated between Willow and listening to the man's briefing. Around them, the other Gamblers were readying themselves for the last round. They looked ill at ease and weary. Many of them did not look up even when Asquiol came in, flinging the door of the chamber open and striding quickly across the great room. The light flowed about the many facets of his body and streamed away behind him. Mary turned round and saw him.

'You!' she said.

A look of puzzlement crossed Asquiol's face. 'We've met?' he said. 'I don't remember.'

'I saw you with Renark several times - on Roth.'

'But we left Roth ages ago!'

'I know - but Roth is a strange planet. Time is non-existent there. Anyway, it wasn't only that.'

'Then how else did you recognise me?'

'I've sensed you've been here all the time. Even before we reached the fleet, I think.'

'But obviously you do not exist, as I do, in the entire multiverse. What could the link be, I wonder?' Then he smiled. 'Perhaps our mutual friends the Originators could tell us.'

'Probably it's simpler than that,' Mary replied. The sense of empathy with Asquiol was like nothing she had ever experienced before. 'Because we have seen them and gained from the contact, we recognise it in each other.'

'Very likely.' He nodded, then suddenly noticed that Willow was staring at him, her eyes full of tears. He took control of himself and said briskly: 'Well, we had better get ready. I'm going to be in control of this project. You, Mary, will work under my direction using - as power, as it were - the other three, Roffrey, Talfryn and Willow. It's quite simple - a sort of gestalt link.'

She looked at the others, who had crossed the room from where Selinsky and his team were working on a mechanism. 'Did you hear that?' Adam had the look of a dumb beast in pain as he stared at her for a moment before dropping his eyes.

'We heard it,' he said. 'All of it.'

She glanced at Asquiol as if seeking his advice, but he couldn't help her. Both of them were now in a similar position - Mary with Roffrey and Asquiol with Willow.

The time was nearing, Mary felt, when she would have to sever her ties with her husband.

The time had passed, Asquiol reflected, when he and Willow could have been united by the common bond which he and Mary possessed.

As they looked at one another, they seemed to convey this without need of speech.

O'Hara interrupted them:

'Get ready, everyone! Remember, we need an overwhelming win in the round that is to follow. This round will be the last we have to play. Winning it must be decisive!'

The five people, Asquiol and Mary in the lead, went towards the specially prepared panel.

Selinsky and his team finished their work and stepped aside.

The five composed themselves to play.

Both Willow and Adam Roffrey had to force themselves to concentrate, but both were motivated by a different fear. Willow feared that Mary would become extra-sane through her ordeal. Roffrey feared she would become insane, while he hated the alternative which would break their relationship before it ever had a chance to resume.

Asquiol was his rival now, Roffrey saw. Yet Asquiol hardly knew it himself.

Only Talfryn was not afraid of the possible results. Either way, he felt, he stood to win - so long as Mary was effective in helping the Gamblers win the Game.

Asquiol bent close to Mary and whispered: 'Remember I am in the closest possible touch with you, and you with me. However near you feel you are coming to insanity, don't panic. I'll keep you on the right course.' She smiled at him. 'Thanks.'

The tension rose as they waited.

It was so delicate, the first probe. As delicate as a slicing scalpel.

O'Hara shouted: 'Don't wait for them. Attack! Attack!'

In contact with Mary now, Asquiol began to dredge up Mary's memories from the deepest recesses of her subconscious, doing to her what only a totally evil man might do.

Yet, even as she slipped into the giddy, sickening whirlpool of insanity, it was obvious to her that Asquiol was not evil. There was no malice in him at all. It was taking fantastic control for him to force himself to continue. But he did continue. He worked at her mind, slashing at it, tearing at it, working it apart in order to remould it, and he did it in the full knowledge that he might, in the final analysis, be committing a dreadful crime.

Beside him, the trio sweated, feeding power to Mary that was channelled by Asquiol and directed by him at the alien attackers.

'There they are, Mary - you see them!'

Mary turned glazed eyes towards the screen.

Yes, she saw them.

It was suddenly like horrible darkness then rolling through her. Red-hot needles forced themselves into the grey mass of her brain. It was like being tightened like a banjo string, together and tighter until she must surely snap. She couldn't… She couldn't…

She laughed. It was a huge joke against her. They were all laughing at her.

She sobbed and mewled and lashed back at the pouring stream of demons and hobgoblins that came prancing and tumbling down the long corridors of her mind. They sniggered and simpered and fingered her brains and her body and pulled her nerves about, enjoying their sport, caressing the parts of her they captured.

She lashed back as the whole scene became pervaded with the blood red sense that had always been there. She knew it. She was familiar with it and she hated it more than anything else.

Gone were emotions - gone self-pity - gone love - gone yearning and jealousy and impotent sadness. The trio linked and locked and lent their strength to Mary. Everything that she felt, they felt. Everything she saw and did, they saw and did. And at times, also, so close were the five blended, they saw something of what Asquiol saw and it lent them strength to pass on to Mary.

On and on they went, driving at the aliens, hating them and sending back impression after impression from the multiple brain.

To the alien players of the Game, it was as if they had suddenly been attacked by an atomic cannon in a war that had previously been fought with swords. They reeled beneath the weight of the attack. They reeled, they marvelled and, in their strange way, they admired. But they fought back even harder, playing, after the initial shock, coolly and efficiently.

Roffrey broke contact at the sound of a voice outside. It was O'Hara shouting: 'We're winning; they were right. Somehow she has the key to the whole mastery of the Game. She does something with her mind that sends exactly the thing most loathsome to them back to them. There's a twist there somewhere that no human experience could have made. She's doing it!'

Roffrey stared at him for a moment as if in panic, and then returned his attention to the Game. For a moment, O'Hara watched him before he returned his own attention. Their gains were slowly mounting - and Mary's inspiration seemed to be encouraging the rest of the Gamblers to give their best.

This is our finest hour,' O'Hara said thickly. 'Our finest hour.'

And as he passed her he saw Mary's twisted and distorted face with the sweat and saliva all over it, wreathed in the same flickering images that surrounded Asquiol's intent face.

Now she knew she was winning. Now she could see they were reeling back. Now she felt victory within her reach.

Although the madness was frenzied and all-consuming, there was behind it all the confidence that Asquiol's presence gave her, and she kept sending, though her mind and body ached with searing agony.

Then, quite suddenly, she blacked out, hearing a voice call from a long way off:

'Mary! Mary!'

Asquiol, knowing that he had aided her to reach this state, could hardly bear to continue. But he had to. He put a hand to her sweat-wet hair and dragged the head back to stare into the vacant eyes.

'Mary - you can send them away, You can!' He began to communicate with her. He forced her attention to the screens.

She threshed in her chair. For a second she stared at him. To his relief he saw sanity there.

'Asquiol,' she said, 'what is it we were?'

'We can be the same, Mary - now!'

And then she was bellowing in his face, her laughter seeming a physical weight battering around his head so that he wanted to fling up his hands to ward it off, to run and escape, to hide from what he had created. But again he forced control on himself and pushed her face towards the screens.

Roffrey, pain-drunk, glared at him, but did nothing.

Finally, she was roaring and tearing. Asquiol couldn't make contact with her. One of her hands flailed out, the nails slashing his face. Roffrey saw the blood come and was half-astonished. He had forgotten that Asquiol was in many ways as mortal as himself. Somehow it made the feelings in him worse.

Asquiol fought to control this rage, turn it against the aliens. He battled to resume empathetic contact with Mary.

She stirred, her name formed and curled and buzzed through the darkness. She reached out for it.

Elsewhere, many of the Gamblers had already succumbed to the force of the alien impressions. Tidal waves of garbled sense-impressions were being flung against them and even the strongest were finding it hard to resist, to keep the spark of sanity alive and to retaliate.

Asquiol used the communicating-sense that allowed him to contact the aliens and 'converse' with them. He did this to Mary. He shoved impressions and pictures into her mind, things taken from his own memory. And so real did they become, in such close empathy was he with the woman, that he felt his own sanity slipping away. But he was the controlling part of the team - he had to keep aware. He held on for as long as he could, then straightened his back, gasping.

Those watching saw the light surrounding him skip erratically and dim suddenly. Then it became brighter, like a flaring explosion.

And then the light appeared to make contact with Mary. The same thing appeared to happen to her body. Her image split and became many images…

Asquiol! ASQUIOL! ASQUIOL!

Hello, Mary.

What is it?

Rebirth. You're whole now.

Is it over?

By no means!

Where are we, Asquiol?

On the Ship.

But it's…

Different, I know. Look!

She saw, through facet after facet, her husband, the girl and the other man. They were staring at her in astonishment. Angled, opaque images surrounded every space they did not occupy.

'Adam,' she said, 'I'm sorry.'

'It's all right, Mary. I'm not. Good luck - like I said.' Roffrey was actually smiling.

A new image swam into focus - O'Hara gesticulating.

'I don't know what's happened to the woman and I don't care. Get your attention back to the Game, or it's lost!'

She turned, and the horrifying impressions came back, but it was as if they were pressed through a filter which took away their effect on her mind.

Carefully, she searched her being. She felt Asquiol beside her, felt the warmth of his encouragement. She lashed back, with deliberate and savage fury, searching out weaknesses, using them, splitting the alien minds to shreds. Asquiol guided her - she could feel it. Talfryn, Willow and Adam supplied power and extra impressions which she took and warped and sent out.

More of the Gamblers were dropping out and attendants were kept busy clearing them from the chamber. There were only five complete teams left.

But it was victory. Mary and Asquiol could feel it as they worked together - oblivious of everything else - to defeat the aliens. They felt at that moment as if they knew everything about their opponents, to such an extent that they were even in danger of giving up out of sympathy.

They fought on, riding a tide of conquest. Soon the entire alien complement was finished. They retreated back and stared around them.

'Asquiol - what happened?'

Asquiol and Mary saw Willow looking up at them. They smiled at her and said:

'This was the Originators' plan, Willow. They obviously did not allow sufficiently for human weakness - but they did not count on the strength of the human spirit, perhaps. Please don't suffer, Willow. You have done more today for humanity than you could ever have done for any single person.'

They turned to regard the others.

'You too, Roffrey - and you, Talfryn. Without you It is unlikely that we could have defeated the alien intelligences. Everything has suddenly become a clear pattern. There was, perhaps, a purpose for Willow and Talfryn when they stayed behind. There was a purpose, also, for Roffrey when he took it into his head to visit the Shifter. We nearly threw away our chance.

'What exactly has happened?' Lord Mordan interrupted. 'Have you become one entity or what?'

'No.' Asquiol spoke with a slight effort. 'It is simply that, existing on the multiversal level, we are capable of linking minds to forma more powerful single unity. That was how we finally defeated our opponents.

'Obviously this was part of the Originators' plan. But they never do anything for us directly. At best, they merely put certain aids in our path. If we can make use of them - assuming we realise what they are - so much to the good. If we can't, we suffer. We were near complete defeat there. If we had not got some hint of Mary's abilities when we did, the plan would have come to nothing. As it was, we were lucky.'

Mary said: 'I must have been watched by the Originators right from the start - even before I met you.'

Asquiol continued: 'The Originators make things especially difficult for people they think are… material for the new, multiversal race. Simply, only the fittest survive.'

Lord Mordan said obsequiously, yet hastily: 'But the aliens. Can we not discover what our peace terms are? We must hurry… the farm-ships…'

'Of course,' Asquiol nodded. 'Mary and I will return to my ship and contact them from there.'

Mary and Asquiol moved towards the exit, gave one last glance at the three others, and left.

'What the hell have you got to smile about, Roffrey?' Talfryn said accusingly.

Roffrey felt at peace. Maybe it was the mood induced by weariness, but he didn't think so. There was no more pain in him, no more jealousy, no more hatred. He moved over to the big blank screen and stared up at it. The place suddenly brightened as assistants switched on the central lights and began clearing up the mess the Gamblers had left…

'I give up.' Talfryn shook his head, perplexed.

'That's the trouble,' Willow said. 'So many of us do, don't we?'