by James Axler
She felt herself gagging on the vomit that rose in her gorge, turned away and was glad Doc couldn’t see this.
TANNER WAS DOING just fine. He had beaten his opponents by sheer determination and an application of logic he had thought no longer within him. He had noted that the woman had done the same. If they had met in what was, in effect, the semifinal of the tournament, then all eyes would be upon them, and the audience he craved would be an impossibility.
Fortune smiled upon him. They met in the relatively early stages, with most still occupied in their own matches, or those of their friends.
Seemingly in a bubble of their own silence, they sat opposite each other, the first moves proceeding smoothly. Doc made his move, then sat back and waited until she had made hers, each time studying her intently. She was of medium height, dressed in a loose-fitting tunic and pants of olive-green and black. Her hair was iron-gray, and had a wave that caused her to push it back behind her ear each time she leaned over the board, her bangs sweeping forward over her steel-framed spectacles. Her face was lined, grooves etched into her forehead as she studied the board. These eased off as she sat back after each move. She had once been a handsome woman, but time and the vicissitudes of this sector had taken their toll. The constant psychic strain of not knowing keeper or kept had impressed itself on her; of that he was sure.
Although he gave no sign, Doc knew that she watched him carefully as he made his moves. She was sizing him up, as much as he was doing the same to her. Who would be the first to crack, and make a move outside the board? Aware that he didn’t wish to waste time unnecessarily, Doc took the plunge as she prepared to move her queen.
“An interesting move,” he began.
“Only if it achieves its aim,” she countered. “That’s the problem. Chance and probability dictate that you have a certain number of options. Somewhere down the line, I have to have judged you enough to have eliminated all but the most likely.”
“Yet you have not had the time to get to know my game, and define how my mind works,” he said with no little deliberation.
“Indeed.” She paused, queen in midair, and looked up. He was aware of a fierce intelligence glittering in those eyes, an intelligence that had been used to masking itself.
“Perhaps some indicators to my personality would be of assistance,” he said softly. “I have always been one to play for the little victory, believing that incremental victories can win a war. I have caution for those pieces I value. And I most admire their ability to move with freedom and impunity.”
“I like the way you play,” she said in a level tone. “I suspected as much. There are some of us who also like this method, but find ourselves constrained by the rules, and by the methods of others. We yearn for a new kind of game, but we perhaps need a thinker outside the board. Someone who can open up possibilities.”
“I pride myself that has always been my forte,” Doc said. She laid down the queen, and Doc picked up a pawn. He used it as a piece in checkers, claiming three of her pieces and taking them from the board before holding them out to her in the palm of his hand. She took them from him and replaced them on the board.
“There have been those who try to invent new rules for the game,” she said in a discursive tone that did little to hide her meaning. “They make new boards, new areas for playing. But in doing so they cut themselves off from the rest of us. And it’s hard to play the game when you are denied pieces. They can try to borrow, but there are those who like to keep the pieces firmly in the box.”
“I think I have seem such maverick game players,” Doc said carefully, remembering the coldhearts who had attacked them when they crossed the maze. Perhaps not such coldhearts, after all. An—how should he call it?—understandable mistake. Not to be repeated. And it would perhaps be politic not to mention it right now.
“They are few,” she continued, “but there are some fundamentals about the game that they have bequeathed to us. Take the board, for example.” She used her hands, palms out, to proscribe the edges of the marked table. “The edges have nothing to keep the pieces on the board. The invisible wall that we automatically assume doesn’t exist. What really prevents us from stepping off are the watchers who hover over the board, and over adjoining boards. The game could proceed off the board, if only it was when the watchers had their eyes averted.”
“So perhaps what you really need for a different game to be forged is for the watchers to have their attention taken?” Doc suggested.
“It would certainly allow for new rules to be tried,” she stated. “At present, all we have are the promises of being transferred from one board to another. Which is all very well, but we still play by the same rules.”
Their eyes met across the board. Despite her caution, there was a yearning in her eyes. One chance was all they asked, and all they might need.
“Madam, there are those of us who find the attentions of one game a trifle tedious. We like to try a variety, and if possible we like to cause distraction and move the parameters. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that we may tire of these restrictions and seek a fresh game in a very short while.”
“I was hoping that this spirit of quest would be forthcoming,” she murmured guardedly. “In the meantime, games already under way need to come to conclusions. The watchers like to see a definite result, otherwise they become a little restive.”
“Very well, then. Shall we say that I will be forthcoming, and you should await further speculation on rule changes?”
“That sounds good,” she replied simply.
Aware that too long spent without movement on the board could attract attention, they proceeded. The woman allowed Doc to take the game within a few moves, to cover for lost time, and as he carried on to the next opponent, he could see as he looked around between moves that the woman was surreptitiously moving among the growing crowd of those eliminated, pausing occasionally to impart a few words to others. Potential allies? he wondered.
Knowing that it was unlikely that he would be moved back to the central sector merely because of a chess game, and yet unwilling to seem too keen to lose, he forced himself to concentrate for another two matches, winning them both, before being relieved that he found himself opposite a better—and seemingly more driven—player. He eased up on his game gracefully, allowing the man to win and move forward to his goal. All the while, Doc pondered on what he would tell Mildred, little realizing the horror she had to reveal.
It was only at this point that he was astonished to realize that he didn’t even know the name of their new ally.
IT TOOK J AK a short time to work out what was happening in his sector. People who were considered to work on an instinctual level, and so followed a gut reaction rather than a considered course of action, were seen as somewhere between animals and man. They were put through a series of assault courses that were designed to test specific sets of reactions.
The first one he had been on was a walled-off part of the sector that housed several buildings pockmarked by blasterfire. A number of mannequins were visible, and he knew that there were others hidden from view. He was given an air blaster with marked darts.
“The purpose of this course—” a whitecoat began slowly, as though talking to a child.
“Shoot ones with blasters, not without, as come to life,” Jak finished tersely.
“Very good,” the whitecoat said, looking down his nose in a manner so patronizing it made Jak want to forget about the mannequins and empty the blaster in the man’s ass.
“Get on with it,” Jak snapped.
The whitecoat was less than pleased by Jak’s attitude, but he disappeared into an adjacent building without a backward glance, leaving Jak at the beginning of the course.
It was straightforward. Three streets, with eighteen visible and hidden mannequins. Some had blasters that fired balls of dye. Some had nothing. Jak had to run hell-for-leather through the course as fast as possible, and make it to the other end free of dye, while shoo
ting those mannequins that were aiming for him and leaving the others.
The upside was that they couldn’t harm him. The downside, perversely, was that without this imminent danger, his instincts were blunted. Yet it was simple for the albino teen. Time slowed for him as the adrenaline pumped, and he saw each mannequin almost in the moment before it turned to him, or slid in front of a window or doorway. His aim was unerring, landing a dart in each mannequin with a blaster while rolling and tumbling to avoid the balls of dye they fired. Some shadow or weight in the way they moved told him which were armed.
His perfect score at the end of the course seemed to almost annoy the whitecoat, which only added to Jak’s pleasure.
Other courses weren’t as easy. Under sec escort, Jak was taken with three other men into a densely wooded area that lay somewhere to the north of the ville. A fenced-in area, barbed wire standing three yards high with cameras along the length of each side, was their destination. Within this, starving dogs and bizarre mutie creatures who were mammal, but unlike anything Jak had ever seen, prowled hungrily. It crossed his mind that Doc’s erstwhile friend Andower had been experimenting on more than humans.
The four men were herded into the expansive pen and then told that they would have to survive forty-eight hours, finding their own food and water in the dense enclosure, while avoiding the predators. Their weapons had been taken from them.
The purpose of the exercise was immediately obvious. The sheer density of the enclosure and the proliferation of ravening beasts meant that the men would have to overcome their first instinct to go solo, and work together. As a way of observing both instinctual behavior and the modification of such under extreme duress, it struck Jak as both effective and dangerous.
Especially as the three men he was with showed little initial sign of a willingness to cooperate. One of them cursed heavily, told them he was better off on his own, and at the first sight of a dog pack deserted them. The wisdom of his move was belied by the anguished screams that sounded from within the dense growth.
“Better stick together than buy farm,” Jak told the others. Unwillingly, they agreed.
Although each of them could hunt and had excellent instincts for danger, to merely avoid being chilled wasn’t enough. They had to establish a safe place where they could take turns at watch during the dark, and protect whatever food and water they could find.
It was while one of them slept, and Jak was on watch, that he was approached by the third man. He sat side-by-side with Jak at the fire they had built, and said nothing for some time. Finally, in an undertone, he said, “You want to get out?”
“Trap?” Jak asked simply.
The man shrugged. “You could see it that way. But I’ll make you do nothing. Just make a suggestion.”
Jak nodded, and the man spit into the fire before continuing.
“Vid’s all around here to see how we do. Vid everywhere. But no sec. Not enough, see. Baron likes us to think so, but you keep your eyes open and you’ll see there ain’t that many. So if you find the vid blindspots, then you can move. Nothing between sectors but empty dirt. Good vid, though.”
“How you know?”
The man grinned. “Got me some pussy in another sector. Separated ’bout a year back, but she’s too sweet to lose. So I worked out the angles. You look at them vid cams, you can do that. Try it, dude. That’s if we get out of here.”
“How I know you not with sec?”
“You don’t. But you’re smart. Even if it is a trap, then you can beat it, boy.”
Jak said nothing. The man stared at him for a while, as if trying to work him out.
Finally he said, “Your choice. Leave it at that.”
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Jak wasted little time. He and his two erstwhile companions made it through the forty-eight hours with little threat. The beasts in the enclosure were hungry and vicious for sure, but they were kept too hungry. It gave them an edge of desperation that made them clumsy. Jak could have heard them coming from a mile away. Being ready for them and avoiding having to fight them was easy under such circumstances. Their carelessness also meant that they were easily trapped for food.
Jak was almost contemptuous when he and the others were freed. The three men were rushed to the center of the sector, where they were put into individual rooms and questioned on their responses and what they felt was good and bad about their actions. The whitecoat who questioned him had Jak watch a vid of the forty-eight hours. Jak was sure he glimpsed the moment when he had been told about the cameras and their blindspots. He kept his face blank, and the moment passed. If the whitecoat had been hoping for a reaction, he was unlucky. If he wasn’t, then good.
Jak was impatient for the interrogation to end, and glad when they were led back to their respective quarters. He sat on his bunk, staring out the window, waiting for night to fall.
So he had experienced the ranges, and they hadn’t been the frightening things that had been suggested by the words of Pulaski and Foxx. He suspected that they talked a better bunch of experiments than they actually ran. A lot of the ville seemed to be based on words that those using them barely understood. Not that he understood them, either. Point was, he didn’t claim to. They were fooling themselves. That would be fine, if not for the fact that they were harming a lot of people along the way. More important, they were likely to harm his friends and himself if things didn’t change. Jak didn’t want that to happen.
So it was that, when darkness fell, Jak stayed in his room and waited for the sounds of the night to settle outside his window. When background noises had reached a level where he could identify every little sound, he nodded to himself and moved.
The two madmen who ran this sector believed in heavy sec when they were conducting experiments, and around their own building. But Pulaski and Foxx were plain stupe when it came to the rest of the sector. They relied solely on the ingrained behavior of their subjects and the vid cameras. Jak didn’t have the one, and knew the failings of the other.
Jak exited the room and moved swiftly to the stairwell. He was down it in a matter of seconds and onto the ground floor. There was little sign of life. Most of the other inhabitants of the building were either taking part in experiments, or sleeping off the effects of those from which they had recently returned. There was little light here, and pools of shadow where he could pause and take stock.
The entrance would be a bad place to exit, as there was a camera roving the sidewalk outside, just as there was one at the back. But the side of the building looked out onto a narrow alley. It was easy to find an empty room and slip out of the window.
Now that he was outside, he would wait. He had all night.
There was one sec patrol. Two men. They passed him after a half hour, not even looking down the alley. He listened intently. It was so quiet that he could hear their footsteps as they echoed away, turned a corner, walked on, then turned again. By the time they were out of his sight, he had a good idea of their route. He settled on his haunches, hunched against the chill night air, and waited.
It was an hour before they passed by again. It had been a tedious hour, but he had made use of it by running over the layout of the sectors, as much as he knew of them, in his head. By the time he had heard the sec patrol pass by and round two corners, he had a plan. He set out and shadowed them as far as the point where the barren stretches of land delineated the marker points between sectors. Where the sec patrol took the middle of the road, Jak used alleys to cut out exposed stretches of sidewalk, pausing to wait while the cameras turned on their podiums before slipping past on the blindside. For those that were fixed, he simply slipped up to them while the moving cameras were away from him, then passed beneath the body of the vid.
It was only when he reached the empty stretch of land that he had a problem. There were cameras along the wire. Sec patrols also passed at regular intervals on his side. On the other, he noticed, there was none. He would have to find
a dark spot and wait it out, working out the patterns of the cameras and the patrols before light came to ruin his plans.
One patrol made its circuit, and came in contact with the deserted land in such a way that Jak would be seen if caught out.
He cursed to himself as he timed them. They came exactly halfway along the patrol circuit he had followed. And they chose a time when most of the cameras were turned away from him—his optimum moment to cross the barren area. Very well, then, he would have to take a chance. The strait became a blind spot in only one location that gave him enough time to cross, and that would mean risking coming within the purview of one camera in this sector. The window of opportunity when he could hit the barbed wire and tumble over into the barren area would be just over ten seconds. And just under a hundred yards. Jak was fast, but it was asking a lot.
He looked up at the moon as sparse cloud scudded across its face. If he was to get over, find Doc and Mildred and get back, he would have to move. He was sure they would be in this sector. Arcadian may have assumed he was dumb because he didn’t say much, but the baron had underestimated him.
Jak’s thoughts blanked as instinct came to the fore: now was the time. Heart pounding, he shot from the shadows and made for the wire, one eye on the camera as it just pivoted beyond the path he was taking. He took the wire at a running leap, grabbing at the knotted metal between the barbs and using his own momentum to lift him up and over the top. He felt the wire catch and rip at his clothes, and the sharp needle pain of scored flesh on his hands. He ignored it as he landed on the balls of his feet. A quick look to see that he had left no telltale remnants of cloth and he was across the barren area in a few strides. Looking back, he could see in the moonlight that the earth was packed too hard for footprints to register. That had been a gamble won. Now for the next. He took the wire on the far side with more caution, having had less chance to build up a head of steam. He winced as he felt the wire bite into those parts of his hands that had been scored. Blanking the pain, he was over and into the shadows once more. A look back showed him cameras that were still turned away.
