The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’m John Ardanyon—”

  “And I’m Bill Carr,” the fat-jawed man said.

  “And this is it—yes, this is the big one, ladies and gentlemen. The 2050 edition of the Olympic War Games. This is the day we’ve all been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen, and in precisely one hour and thirty-two minutes the games will be under way. Here to help describe the action is Bill Carr who is known to all of you sports fans all over the world. And with us for this special broadcast are some of the finest technicians in the business. Bill?”

  “That’s right, John. This year NSB has spared no expense to insure our viewing public that its 2050 game coverage will be second to none. So stay tuned to this station for the most complete, the most immediate coverage of any station. John?”

  “That’s right, Bill. This year NSB has installed over one hundred specially designed zoom cameras to insure complete coverage of the games. We are using the latest sonic sound equipment—so sensitive that it can detect the sound of a man’s heart beating at a thousand yards. Our camera crew is highly trained in the recently developed transitional-zone technique which you just saw so effectively demonstrated during the fade-in. I think we can promise you that this time no station will be able to match the immediacy of NSB.”

  “Right, John. And now, less than an hour and a half before the action begins, NSB is proud to bring you this prerecorded announcement from the President of the United States. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

  There was a brief flash of the White House lawn, a fade-out, and then:

  “My fellow countrymen. When you hear these words, the beginning of the fifth meeting between the United States and Russia in the Olympic War Games will be just minutes away.

  “I hope and I pray that we will be victorious. With the help of God, we shall be.

  “But in our longing for victory, we must not lose sight of the primary purpose of these games. In the long run it is not whether we win or lose but that the games were played. For, my fellow citizens, we must never forget that these games are played in order that the frightening spectre of war may never again stalk our land. It is better that a few should decide the nation’s fate, than all the resources of our two nations should be mobilized to destroy the other.

  “My friends, many of you do not remember the horror of the Final War of 1998. I can recall that war. I lost my father and two sisters in that war. I spent two months in a class-two fallout shelter—as many of you know. There must never be another such war. We cannot—we shall not —permit that to happen.

  “The Olympic War Games are the answer—the only answer. Thanks to the Olympic War Games we are at peace. Today one hundred of our finest fighting men will meet one hundred Russian soldiers to decide whether we shall be victorious or shall go down to defeat. The loser must pay the victor reparations of ten billion dollars. The stakes are high.

  “The stakes are high, but, my fellow citizens, the cost of total war is a hundred times higher. This miniature war is a thousand times less costly than total war. Thanks to the Olympic War Games, we have a kind of peace.

  “And now, in keeping with the tradition established by the late President Goldstein, I hereby declare a national holiday for all persons not engaged in essential services from now until the conclusion of the games.

  “To those brave men who made the team I say: the hope and the prayers of the nation go with you. May you emerge victorious.”

  There was a fade-out and then the pleasant features of John Ardanyon appeared. After a short, respectful silence, he said:

  “I’m sure we can all agree with the President on that. And now, here is Professor Carl Overmann to explain the computer system developed especially for NSB’s coverage of the 2050 war games.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ardanyon. This year, with the help of the Englewood system of evaluating intangible factors, we hope to start bringing you reliable predictions at the ten-percent casualty level. Now, very briefly, here is how the Englewood system works. .. .”

  * * * *

  Private Richard Starbuck looked at his watch. Still forty more minutes to wait. He pulled back the bolt on his rifle and checked once more to make sure that the first shell was properly positioned in the chamber. For the third time in the past twenty minutes he walked to one side and urinated on the ground. His throat seemed abnormally dry, and he removed his canteen to moisten his lips with water. He took only a small swallow because the rules permitted only one canteen of water per man, and their battle plan did not call for early possession of the lake.

  A passing lizard caught his attention. He put his foot on it and squashed it slowly with the toe of his right boot. He noticed with mild satisfaction that the thing had left a small blood smear at the end of his boot. Oddly, however, seeing the blood triggered something in his mind, and for the first time he vaguely recognized the possibility that he could be hurt. In training he had not thought much about that. Mostly you thought of how it would feel to kill a man. After a while you got so that you wanted to kill. You came to love your rifle, like it was an extension of your own body. And if you could not feel its comforting presence, you felt like a part of you was missing. Still a person could be hurt. You might not die immediately. He wondered what it would be like to feel a misshapen chunk of lead tearing through his belly. The Russians would x their bullets too, probably. They do more damage that way.

  It might not be so bad. He remembered a time four years ago when he had thought he was dying, and that had not been so bad. He remembered that at the time he had been more concerned about bleeding on the Martins’ new couch. The Martins had always been good to him. Once they had thought they could never have a child of their own, and they had about half adopted him because his own mother worked and was too busy to bake cookies for him and his father was not interested in fishing or basketball or things like that. Even after the Martins had Cassandra, they continued to treat him like a favorite nephew. Mr. Martin took him fishing and attended all the basketball games when he was playing. And that was why when he wrecked the motor scooter and cut his head he had been more concerned about bleeding on the Martins’ new couch than about dying, although he had felt that he was surely dying. He remembered that his first thought upon regaining consciousness was one of self-importance. The Martins had looked worried and their nine-year-old daughter, Cassandra, was looking at the blood running down his face and was crying. That was when he felt he might be dying. Dying had seemed a strangely appropriate thing to do, and he had felt an urge to do it well and had begun to assure them that he was all right. And, to his slight disappointment, he was.

  Private Richard Starbuck, formerly a star forward on the Center High basketball team, looked at his watch and wondered, as he waited, if being shot in the gut would be anything like cutting your head on the pavement. It was funny he should have thought of that now. He hadn’t thought of the Martins for months. He wondered if they would be watching. He wondered, if they did, if they would recognize the sixteen-year-old boy who had bled on their living room couch four years ago. He wondered if he recognized that sixteen-year-old boy himself.

  * * * *

  Professor Carl Overmann had finished explaining the marvels of the NSB computer system; a mousy little man from the sociology department of a second rate university had spent ten minutes assuring the TV audience that one of the important psychological effects of the TV coverage of the games was that it allowed the people to satisfy the innate blood lust vicariously and strongly urged the viewers to encourage the youngsters to watch; a minister had spent three minutes explaining that the miniature war could serve to educate mankind to the horrors of war; an economics professor was just finishing a short lecture on the economic effects of victory or defeat.

  “Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” Bill Carr said when the economics professor had finished. “You all know there’s a lot at stake for both sides. And now— what’s that? You what? Just a minu
te, folks. I think we may have another NSB first.” He looked off camera to his right. “Is he there? Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, NSB has done it again. For the first time we are going to have—well, here he is, ladies and gentlemen, General George W. Caldwell, chief of the Olympic War Games training section. General, it’s nice to have you with us.”

  “Thank you, Bill. It’s good to be here.”

  “General, I’m sure our audience already knows this, but just so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not possible for either side to communicate to their people in the arena now. Is that right?”

  “That’s right, Bill, or I could not be here. An electronic curtain, as it were, protects the field from any attempt to communicate. From here on out the boys are strictly on their own.”

  “General, do you care to make any predictions on the outcome of the games?”

  “Yes, Bill, I may be going out on a limb here, but I think our boys are ready. I can’t say that I agree with the neutral-money boys who have the United States a six-to-five underdog. I say we’ll win.”

  “General, there is some thought that our defeat in the games four years ago was caused by an inferior battle plan. Do you care to comment on that?”

  “No comment.”

  “Do you have any explanation for why the United States team has lost the last two games after winning the first two?”

  “Well, let me say this. Our defeat in ‘42 could well have been caused by overconfidence. After all, we had won the first two games rather handily. As I recall we won the game in ‘38 by four survivors. But as for our defeat in ‘46—well, your estimate on that one is as good as mine. I will say this: General Hanley was much criticized for an unimaginative battle plan by a lot of so-called experts. Those so-called experts—those armchair generals—were definitely wrong. General Hanley’s battle strategy was sound in every detail. I’ve studied his plans at considerable length, I can assure you.”

  “Perhaps the training program—?”

  “Nonsense. My own exec was on General Hanley’s training staff. With only slight modifications it’s the same program we used for this year’s games.”

  “Do you care to comment on your own battle plans, General?”

  “Well, Bill, I wouldn’t want to kill the suspense for your TV audience. But I can say this: we’ll have a few surprises this year. No one can accuse us of conservative tactics, I can tell you that.”

  “How do you think our boys will stack up against the Russians, General?”

  “Bill, on a man to man basis, I think our boys will stack up very well indeed. In fact, we had men in the drop-out squads who could have made our last team with no trouble at all. I’d say this year’s crop is probably twenty percent improved.”

  “General, what do you look for in selecting your final squads?”

  “Bill, I’d say that more than anything else we look for desire. Of course, a man has to be a good athlete, but if he doesn’t have that killer instinct, as we say, he won’t make the team. I’d say it’s desire.”

  “Can you tell us how you pick the men for the games?”

  “Yes, Bill, I think I can, up to a point. We know the Russians use the same system, and, of course, there has been quite a bit written on the subject in the popular press in recent months.

  “Naturally, we get thousands of applicants. We give each of them a tough screening test—physical, mental, and psychological. Most applicants are eliminated in the first test. You’d be surprised at some of the boys who apply. The ones who are left—just under two thousand for this year’s games—are put through an intensive six-month training course. During this training period we begin to get our first drop-outs, the men who somehow got past our screening system and who will crack up under pressure.

  “Next comes a year of training in which the emphasis is on conditioning.”

  “Let me interrupt here for just a moment, General, if I may. This conditioning—is this a type of physical training?”

  The general smiled tolerantly. “No, Bill, this is a special type of conditioning—both mental and physical. The men are conditioned to war. They are taught to recognize and to hate the enemy. They are taught to react instantly to every possible hostile stimuli. They learn to love their weapons and to distrust all else.”

  “I take it that an average training day must leave the men very little free time.”

  “Free time!” The general now seemed more shocked than amused. “Free time indeed. Our training program leaves no time free. We don’t coddle our boys. After all, Bill, these men are training for war. No man is permitted more than two hours’ consecutive sleep. We have an average of four alerts every night.

  “Actually the night alerts are an important element in our selection as well as our training program. We have the men under constant observation, of course. You can tell a lot about how a man responds to an alert. Of course, all of the men are conditioned to come instantly awake with their rifles in their hands. But some would execute a simultaneous roll-away movement while at the same time cocking and aiming their weapons in the direction of the hostile sound which signaled the alert.”

  “How about the final six months, General?”

  “Well, Bill, of course, I can’t give away all our little tricks during those last six months. I can tell you in a general sort of way that this involved putting battle plans on a duplicate of the arena itself.”

  “And these hundred men who made this year’s team—I presume they were picked during the last six months training?”

  “No, Bill, actually we only made our final selection last night. You see, for the first time in two years these men have had some free time. We give them two days off before the games begin. How the men react to this enforced inactivity can tell us a lot about their level of readiness. I can tell you we have an impatient bunch of boys out there.”

  “General, it’s ten minutes to game time. Do you suppose our team may be getting a little nervous down there?”

  “Nervous? I suppose the boys may be a little tensed up. But they’ll be all right just as soon as the action starts.”

  “General, I want to thank you for coming by. I’m sure our TV audience has found this brief discussion most enlightening.”

  “It was my pleasure, Bill.”

  “Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. You heard it from the man who should know—Lieutenant General George W. Caldwell himself. He picks the United States team to go all the way. John?”

  “Thank you, Bill. And let me say that there has been considerable sentiment for the United States team in recent weeks among the neutrals. These are the men who set the odds—the men who bet their heads but never their hearts. In fact at least one oddsmaker in Stockholm told me last night that he had stopped taking anything but six-to-five bets, and you pick ‘em. In other words, this fight is rated just about even here just a few minutes before game time.”

  “Right, John, it promises to be an exciting day, so stay tuned to this station for full coverage.”

  “I see the troops are beginning to stir. It won’t be long now. Bill, while we wait I think it might be well, for the benefit of you younger people, to tell the folks just what it means to be a survivor in one of these games. Bill?”

  “Right, John. Folks, the survivor, or survivors as the case may be, will truly become a Survivor. A Survivor, as most of you know, is exempt from all laws; he has unlimited credit; in short, he can literally do no wrong. And that’s what those men are shooting for today. John.”

  “Okay, Bill. And now as our cameras scan the Russian team, let us review very briefly the rules of the game. Each side has one hundred men divided into ten squads each consisting of nine men and one squad captain. Each man has a standard automatic rifle, four hand grenades, a canteen of water, and enough food to last three days. All officers are armed with side arms in addition to their automatic rifles. Two of the squads are armed with air-cooled light machine-guns, and one squad is armed with a mortar with one thousa
nd rounds of ammunition. And those, ladies and gentlemen, are the rules of the game. Once the games begin the men are on their own. There are no more rules—except, of course, that the game is not over until one side or the other has no more survivors. Bill?”

  “Okay, John. Well, folks, here we are just seconds away from game time. NSB will bring you live each exciting moment—so stand by. We’re waiting for the start of the 2050 Olympic War Games. Ten seconds now. Six. Four, three, two, one—the games are underway, and look at ‘em go!”

  The cameras spanned back from the arena to give a distant view of the action. Squad one peeled off from the main body and headed toward the enemy rear at a fast trot. They were armed with rifles and grenades. Squads two, three, and four went directly toward the high hill in the American sector where they broke out entrenching tools and began to dig in. Squads five and six took one of the light machine guns and marched at double time to the east of the central hill where they concealed themselves in the brush and waited. Squads seven through ten were held in reserve where they occupied themselves by burying the ammunition and other supplies at predetermined points and in beginning the preparation of their own defense perimeters.