The Nail and the Oracle

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “You mean he gets more or fewer points depending on where the Spot is.”

  “Positiv-eo. From centerfield, into North, goes from zero to ninety and back to zero.”

  “In degrees.”

  “In points. Degrees is points, points is degrees.”

  “I guess I understand it.”

  “Simpler’n a Texas leaguer an’ a fielder’s choice. Here come the girls.”

  As if by magic, from unmarked areas in the end zones, girls appeared briskly, perhaps two per second, springing and dancing off in all directions. In a matter of moments the field was a kaleidoscope of leaping, running, bending forms, each wearing—Mr. Ourser would have said “bearing”—the most exquisite arrays of trailing plumes and ribbons, cobwebby streamers of all the colors there are, all at once and ever-changing, some trailing real smoke from slim anklets and bracelets, green, purple, yellow, orange. Mr. Ourser could smell the smoke now—pine, heliotrope, sea breeze, vanilla, fresh bread. Music appeared from nowhere, everywhere, perhaps from the girls, who seemed a part of it. It heightened its tempo, and the girls began to form into patterns and lines, intermingle, cluster and whirl, then break into disorganized riots of color that instantly turned into avenues and orchards of beauty and motion.

  Bil Ferry rose and crossed in front of Mr. Ourser. “Look down there,” he said. Mr. Ourser moved to the side rail and looked down into a square pit between their box and the next. He saw three uniformed men there, each bearing the insignia of the slanted, glowing blue Quoit with a scarlet thread through it. On the front, or field-side, wall were thirty or more monitor screens. In the center were four immense trideo tanks bearing closeup three-dimensional images of the pageantry on the field. “Broadcast monitors,” explained the flack. “The 2-d screens are for the ref’ree—him over there on the high chair. The other citizens ‘re techs, one for stadium management—sound, lights, force screens and all—an’ the other’s a Quoit tech. See that big red handle? Thass it, classmate. Thass the big one. Thass the Quoit.”

  Mr. Ourser, intrigued by a movement in the trideo tanks, turned his attention back to the field. At a twinkling run the girls had formed themselves into two large Xs, one in each end zone, and raced into the mysterious spot from which they had come, the Xs swallowing themselves up in their own apexes.

  “Where do they go to?”

  “Down under. They got like a four-sided pyramid with gateways, on’y you can’t see it. Force field.”

  “What are these force fields? How do they work?”

  “How sh’d I know? Look, y’r belly can take y’r lunch an turn it into that big happy smile an bright eyes, poz? You know how that works? Does y’r belly know? If it works, who cares? If y’want technol’gy, classmate, ask one of those techs down there after the game, don’t ask a flack. Now watch the clown.”

  The clown was tall and gangling and many-jointed, bobbing and staggering and falling over his feet. Bil Ferry pointed into the control tank, and Mr. Ourser saw the Quoit tech draw down the big red handle.

  The stadium, even the most habituated fans in it, gasped; Mr. Ourser was thunderstruck. A mighty toroid, or doughnut shape, of transparent blue light, with a threadlike core of aching red, the Quoit was tilted at thirty degrees, with one edge contacting the ground just on the circular path of the Track. Where it touched, a circular patch of brilliant light appeared, the Spot. About twelve feet across and exactly bisected by the Track, it was green on the infield side and orange on the outfield side, and it traveled the Track at a steady pace as the huge Quoit moved. The motion of the Quoit was that of a saucer spinning on its edge and slowing down, so that it rolls on its perimeter. The Quoit, however, did not slow down, but nutated at its steady four revolutions per minute, the bicolored Spot moving with it. “Watch clown.”

  The gangling clown, jelly-legged, spaghetti-armed, did a boneless dance on the Track. The crowd shrieked at him as the Quoit approached. He stopped dancing and looked at the stands, cupping one ear. With the Quoit upon him, he turned and leaped in mock panic, and tried to lurch out of its way. The red thread at the heart of the Quoit sliced down through his bobbing bustle, severing it neatly. The crowd howled. The clown, hands clapped to his backside, scampered across the infield, making the stadium rock with bursts of shrill amplified laughter.

  “Ol’ core cut anything—steel, bones, bottoms or rice puddin,” chuckled the flack. “Para-matter field.”

  “How does it work?”

  “I tol’ you, ask the techs. All I know is that red core cuts off hand, foot, anything. Line only a few molecules thick. Seals it, heals it and makes you laugh.”

  “Who laughs?”

  “I jingle you not, classmate—it’s some sort of shock. Cut off your behind, you laugh like hell.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “They say not. Not for a while anyhoo. Then the medicos stick it back on good as new.”

  “Good as new?”

  Bil Ferry shrugged. “Most times. Sometimes numb. Sometimes rots off.” He laughed suddenly and pointed at the clown, who had tripped over his feet and sprawled across the Track just as the Quoit arrived. To the horror of the Primitive, the deadly red thread cut through both the clown’s legs at the knees. The clown howled with merriment, flopped like a fish into the danger zone again, where the line crossed his neck. The head rolled away and then exploded with a loud bang, for it had been some kind of balloon. Out of the headless torso stepped a diminutive and enchanting female, who rushed to the retreating Spot, caught up with it and did a roundoff, a handspring and a perfect layout back somersault over the scarlet core. She bowed charmingly and skipped to the North centerfield, where she disappeared.

  “Now the quoiters,” said the flack, leaning forward expectantly. Mr. Ourser found himself doing the same; perhaps it was the music, which thundered and diminished and, with the unresolved chord, waited. “Here comes Florio.”

  The local hero was greeted enthusiastically as he appeared in the South centerfield. His name floated above him in huge block letters as he bowed to the right, to the left and ahead. He was dark, compact, and extraordinarily muscled. “Mother-naked!” gasped the Primitive. Bil Ferry shook his head and thumbed down into the control pit. Mr. Ourser could see, in the immense magnification of the trideo tanks, the quoiter advancing down the field with little mincing steps, his arms out like a tightrope walker’s. And if one could see no garments, one could also see no details: he was, if naked, as smoothly streamlined as a teenage-boy doll. “He got his minibiki,” said Bil Ferry.

  “Minibiki,” muttered Mr. Ourser, by some alchemy of inflection making the word sound like giggling from behind the barn, “Minibiki.”

  From centerfield North, out of thin air, pranced a tall golden figure wearing long yellow hair and a minibiki which, like his opponent’s, exactly matched the color of his skin. He was all of six feet six and broad and flat. He sprinted forward, bending as he ran, until he was hurtling along stooped almost double, his long arms wide and curved forward a few inches above the ground; he rushed Florio as if to scoop him up like a mail sack. Florio half knelt, one foot far forward, braced his rear foot, expanded his enormous chest, bunched his shoulder and arm muscles and waited there like some artist’s conception of The Immovable Object. At the last possible moment Adam the Great stopped, poised in an amazing and perfect arabesque, and then left the ground. His elevation was phenomenal, and he soared over the stocky Florio’s head like a big golden bird. The crowds loved it, and said so.

  “This is Quoit? It looks more like a dance recital,” scoffed Mr. Ourser.

  “Positiv-eo!” cried the flack, not offended. He took his own fingers one by one and rattled off, “Quoit is dance and prizefight, wrestling, bullfight, bearbait, gym meet, track, everything.”

  “Except baseball.”

  Bil Ferry laughed and turned back to the field, just as the Quoit flickered on and off twice, still moving. There was a long silver note from the sourceless band, and the whole place fell silen
t, a breathing velvet silence in which nothing moved but the great wheeling blue Quoit. The two quoiters stood, each in his own infield, legs apart, hands clasped behind them, heads bowed.

  “What’s happening?” Mr. Ourser demanded, and was answered by a chorus of growls and shushes from the people around. “Minute silence memory dead quoiters,” murmured Bil Ferry.

  The silence, commanded by the noiseless hypnotic undulations of the mighty Quoit, seemed much longer than the sixty seconds it actually was. Then the music came up with organ tones and a crescendo clear from the marrow and all the way up to the wailing wall, and broke into a nippy little trot, and everyone relaxed. “Two cut in th’ last three months,” explained Bil Ferry. “Fans take it serious.”

  “I thought you said the doctors could fix them up.”

  “Most times. Not through the head.”

  A Gabriel trumped, and instantly the infield, the wonderful smooth greensward, developed spokes ten degrees apart. From the center line around to the North, nine segments glowed with spectral colors, red to indigo. From the North around again to the center line, indigo to red. And the same at the South side of the circular playing field. At the same time a hitherto unsuspected (by Mr. Ourser) force field over the entire stadium went opaque. Daylight was inked out, and the intensity of everything—the Quoit, the spoked circular centerfield, and the traveling Spot, green inside the Track, orange outside—it all was stepped up, so that the eye had to narrow and blink to accommodate it. And the two men, still standing at ease with their hands behind them, had acquired a glow of their own: Florio the local champion, silver, Adam the Great, a glowing gold.

  “Are they painted?”

  “Taint paint,” said the flack. “They got to spray ’em so the sensors know who’s in the Spot or over the line so they c’n send to the computers so they c’n score ’em. Hey, Quoit!” he bellowed, and it seemed as if half the world was bellowing with him. Mr. Ourser recognized the equivalent of “Play ball!” and was also aware of the wildly partisan nature of the crowd. At the South end the boxes seemed almost to rock with a rhythmic chant of “Florio! Flo-ri-o!” mostly from an idolizing younger group, while at the North end a large block of upper seats flared with the letters A-D-A-M spelled out in glowing cards. The two quoiters trotted to the center line and extended their hands. They touched fingertips and then turned and went completely across to touch ground at the ninety degree point in their own territory.

  “You want to watch that Adam,” said Bil Ferry tensely. “He got a trouble. He be champ by now sept for that.”

  “What trouble?”

  Bil Ferry tapped his own head. “He gets mad.”

  Mr. Ourser tsked. Even to the wilderness it had penetrated that there is something vulgar about anger; it was the new obscenity. Children learned to control their anger before they could toddle. It was thought that this might, in the long run, prevent war. The entire civilized world was studded with methods and devices, rituals and reflexes designed to drain off anger, or to transmute it into something else. One did not—simply did not—make public displays of anger. “You mean he’s a sore loser, something like that?” asked Mr. Ourser.

  “Neg-a neg-a no,” the flack said. “He take that all right-eo. But don’t make him look like a damn fool, you find me? There they go.”

  The Spot was just leaving North—Adam’s territory—and as it entered the South segment Adam began to move. Florio, watching him intently, faded slowly back. As he crossed the center line, Adam shortened his steps, every fourth or fifth one being a small feint to right or left, to which Florio responded as if he were wired to the other’s central nervous system, going up on his toes to balance there, arms out, tensed, ready to go anywhere including straight up.

  “Now,” said Mr. Ourser, explaining it aloud to himself, “he has to get past Florio and keep himself in the Spot for five seconds to score anything.”

  “Poz. Or maybe keep Florio in it for five. Florio lose points. In his own ter’tory.” He laughed excitedly. “But I bet Florio say no.”

  The teenagers in the next box were shrieking at Florio to stop Adam, to rush him, to look out for him. But it was Adam who rushed. His great size making the speed completely deceptive, he took two long strides and left the ground in one of his exquisite leaps. It was planned to carry him over Florio’s head and down just in advance of the Spot as it entered the eighty degree segment. He could then stay in its green area, inside the Track, for the necessary five seconds or more, while fighting Florio off.

  But Florio was not deceived and had plans of his own.

  As the magnificently arched and balanced figure soared overhead he reached up almost casually and tipped up the trailing ankle. Florio then made an immense bound, landing a dozen feet away even before his flailing, tumbling adversary hit the ground. Catlike the big man might be, but a cat he was not; he landed on his shoulder and the side of his face, the speed of his passage then carrying his long body up and over. His head was twisted almost under his armpit, and his legs just missed the rising red threat of the Quoit’s core as it passed through the ninety degree segment. The crowd gasped.

  “Now Florio usin’ his think-tank!” crowed the flack. “You see him jump?”

  “Yes. What did he do that for?”

  “Rule say no direct contusions. No punchin’, kickin’, stompin’, or bitin’. If you dump a quoiter an he gets contused, that’s all right, you find me? But you don’t pick him up and whang him on the ground or it costs you. So if you get away before he hits, he can’t claim. Hey, look that Florio.”

  By now the Spot had swung into North territory. The golden giant still lay where he had fallen. Mr. Ourser rose anxiously. Half the stadium was on its feet. Florio was strutting with a cocky little heel-and-toe into enemy country, blandly ignoring the Spot, though pacing it, until it should get into a high-scoring area. He waved to someone high up in the stands. He blew a kiss. And then as if the joy in him simply could not be contained, he cut across the infield of North’s territory with a roundoff, two crisp back handsprings and a high back somersault which took him over the Spot, over the core and out of bounds. He was back in again with a dive and roll as if he had bounced off something solid, having used up only the narrowest slice of the second that would have cost him points. The crowd roared approval.

  “But what about him?” cried Mr. Ourser, pointing at the still figure of Adam the Great. “He could be hurt. He could be dead!”

  “Patience, classmate. We find that out end of quarter. Look that Florio now!”

  Florio was staring at the ninety degree segment, play-acting an immense concentration, holding his chin and wagging his head. Suddenly he turned his back and walked away. “Score! Score!” shrieked his partisans, but Florio shook his head, and someone suddenly shouted, “He don’t need it! He don’t need it!” and everyone took up the cry, laughing and cheering and pounding one another on the back. And in the midst of the bedlam Mr. Ourser took Bil Ferry by the shoulders and shook him, trying to be heard: “Somebody should go out there and see. Somebody—Ferry! Ferry!” he bellowed, and found himself inarticulate. “The thing, the thing there, the what-you-call it, red thing, that core, it’ll take off his legs! Make ’em stop the Quoit, Ferry, damn it, you hear? You’ve got to make ’em stop the Quoit!” he cried, shocked and horrified to his Primitive bones.

  This got through to the flack, and no mistake about it. Ferry’s eyes went wide, his jaw dropped, he gasped. Then, “Stop the Quoit? They never stop the Quoit!” he intoned, more shocked, even, than his guest.

  Florio disdainfully trotted along in the undefended Spot as it passed through the low-scoring segment. On the bulkhead before him Mr. Ourser saw luminous letters and numbers appear: SOUTH 5, but he could not think about that at the moment. The scarlet thread at the core of the great ghostly Quoit pursued its stately way, with the brilliant bicolored disc of light centered on and traveling with the Quoit’s point of contact with the ground. The stadium was in total uproar. Incredibl
y to Mr. Ourser, it seemed like laughter. Inexcusably, it was, for Florio had flopped down on his stomach and was pretending to pull up blades of grass and pick his teeth with them. And now, along with the roars and shrieks of laughter, there was an undercurrent of something else—a low-pitched buzz of terror and intoxication and something unforgivably akin to delight—the mob sound which, once heard, can never be forgotten or mistaken for anything else. And here and there, widely separated, ineffective, was a scream of horror, a cry of protest as the Quoit’s core, like the slow-motion picture of a whiplash, red already for its deadly work, moved down toward the motionless Adam.

  Adam lay with his legs across the Track in South’s eighty degree segment. As the green-and-orange Spot approached the sixty-five degree mark, something like a silver torpedo hurtled across the arena from the North infield. How Florio had converted himself from a lolling, grass-chewing sloth into this projectile—how any human being could move this fast—was beyond Mr. Ourser’s comprehension. One second he was belly down on the sward and taking his ease, the next he was flashing across the playing field, the third he had Adam by the wrists and had jerked him clear of the Quoit. It seemed as if everybody in the place was on his feet but one. Mr. Ourser fell back into his seat, covered his face and trembled.

  Bil Ferry plumped down beside him and pounded his shoulder. “Now, thass Quoit. Thass really Quoit. Now you know. Is great, neg-a neg-a no, hey?” he crowed. Then before the dazed Primitive could react he gave a wordless shout and pointed. Florio was standing over the prone giant bowing to the crowd, when with one of those bewildering transitions from stasis to full movement, from fear to hilarity, from combat to playfulness that seemed to characterize this game, Adam the Great rose fluidly from what had seemed to be total unconsciousness, caught the smaller man by the thighs, and came up standing with him in a fetal position in his arms. The closeup in the trideo tanks showed the heavy strain it took for Adam to hold Florio this way—and that he was capable of it. It showed, too, what seemed to be unalloyed fury on the big man’s face, and the effortful but still amused expression of the little one in his arms.