Desperate Games

‘I think you mean deaf, Madame,’ the young man corrected her with a smile. ‘If you will allow me to make a comparison, I would say that our games were comparable to the silent cinema of ancient times. It produced a few masterpieces, but the world became bored with it in the end and demanded sound. When the visual aspect is thrilling, as with wrestling, then it is not so important at first: the crowd supplements the deficiency with the sound of its own cheering and yells. But in the long run it is not enough. In our cavalry charges, it’s true there was the galloping of the horses and the clash of the lances. But this is far from providing a suitable accompaniment. A much more extensive range of sounds is necessary to awaken people’s enthusiasm. As for these submarine games which take place in complete silence, I believe they are doomed to failure and I have only presented them today to provide evidence of the pitfall which we have always come up against.’

‘Brilliant!’ Yranne added.

Mrs Betty Han, who had completely regained her composure, did not fail to perceive the importance of this comment, but did not want to show too much admiration.

‘Perhaps,’ she sighed, ‘but all this is still negative. Don’t you have a constructive plan to put to me? This is really urgent.’

The young man said that he did not have anything to offer yet, but that his research would be taking a new direction after this discovery, and that he had high hopes.

It was Betty’s rule to let the researchers follow their own method of working. She dismissed him with an encouraging smile. He went back to his office watched enviously by two young psychologists, the one leaning on his work table, the other on his drawing board. And the two ministers left the laboratory.

‘We might not have anything positive yet,’ Yranne murmured, ‘but I think we’ve taken a big step. As of tomorrow, I’ll also think it over. And I’ll talk about it with Zarratoff too.’

‘Why Zarratoff? How can astronomy help us?’

‘He has the soul of a poet, and poets sometimes have good ideas.’

‘He has always been a bitter enemy of the games.’

‘He used to be,’ Yranne corrected her, with an enigmatic smile.

Part Four

1.

A television screen lit up at the far end of the amphitheatre. It was gigantic, as was appropriate for the events which it was intended to display, and it covered almost the entire wall. The busts of Einstein and of some other celebrities had been removed so as not to block the view and had been consigned to an attic. A young blonde woman appeared and, enchanting the entire world with her smile, announced:

‘Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. In a few minutes satellite television coverage will start its live broadcast, in colour, and of course in 3D and with odours, of the fourth game in this historical series. The teams are now in place. The best reporters and cameramen at our disposal have been mobilised for this occasion and have been positioned at the most interesting vantage points. I hope therefore that you will not miss a single stage of the competition. Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you enjoyable days, excellent evenings and thrilling nights, as the broadcast will continued uninterrupted until the match is over and, of course,’ (at this moment she accentuated her smile) ‘no one can tell how long it will last.’

She disappeared and was replaced on the screen by a pendulum. It was five minutes to midnight, but the number twelve on the clock had been replaced by the letter H. There was a trembling and shuddering throughout the amphitheatre, with the government, a few important persons and all the Nobels also attending the new game in a state of fever. Young Rousseau was also aware of the honour awarded him by admitting him to this group, as a reward for his exceptional services.

Other similar giant screens had been set up almost everywhere in the world, as the new game included too many dangerous aspects for the spectators to be seated in the actual playing area. But the television services had made a special effort to provide this broadcast with all the qualities one would experience seeing it live, and had been helped in this by an army of scholars and technicians. All the qualified scientists had collaborated to produce a flawless spectacle, of a scale and realism that was hitherto unequalled.

Of course excellent colour reproduction had long been available, but it had been improved even more, not only in so far as it attained the perfection of nature, but it also surpassed it in the intensity of its tints and the evocative force of its contrasts. A group of the best physicists worked for a long time in their laboratories to obtain these effects. Fawell, who had at first helped them with advice, finished by putting himself in charge. He himself was starting to take a strong interest in the games.

A new procedure was perfected which guaranteed a faultless 3D performance. And concerning sound, its quality had been so improved that it could capture, without the least distortion, every possible noise which could enliven the game, from the rustling of an insect and the sigh of a dying man, to the most deafening crash. O’Kearn himself had neglected his nuclear work and devoted his genius to technology in order to enable the development of this acoustic masterpiece.

As all the odours were also transmitted faithfully and the dimensions of the images had been enlarged to considerable proportions without loss of definition, the television viewers would be able to perceive reality itself. There were tens of thousands of centres distributed at regular intervals around the Earth, where the spectacle could be broadcast without interruption thanks to an array of artificial satellites, the plan for which had been drawn up by Zarratoff.

As it happened however, there was also a considerable number of fanatics who were not satisfied with such perfection in realism and who chose to come to the actual site, the very locations used in the competition. They were allowed, but at their own risk and peril.

On the screen the pendulum disappeared just at the moment the large hand touched the H. However each passing second of time was still being shown in small boxes at the bottom on the right side of the screen. It was midnight, but a special process made it possible to show the surrounding countryside in a sort of half-light. For the spectacle began with a series of panoramic images. They could be seen for some time from various angles as they unfolded, but none of the players appeared.

The first view was of the sea, quite a beautiful sea, yet with a slight swell. Several cameras showed different aspects of it, first the open sea, and then, coming gradually closer to the shore, the smell of the sea invaded the amphitheatre. A beach with sand and pebbles was revealed, with huge mounds here and there, which could be taken at first to be rocks, but which did not deceive those in the know.

‘Bunkers,’ whispered Sir Alex Keene with a little laugh. ‘They’ll be popular.’

As the details became more distinct, it was possible to see that these blocks had edges which were too regular to be natural. They were in fact concret

e structures, projecting from which, when shown in close-up, could be seen the long tubes of cannons, turned towards the sea. Another camera that was scanning the beach revealed a serried network of barbed wire, reinforced at certain points by steel stakes. There followed several similar views, providing quite a clear impression of the shoreline, over a distance of several kilometres.

Then the camera operator slowly returned to the open sea, where people were now visible. It was covered with a multitude of boats of all kinds, an armada filled the screen and was progressing towards the land. Shortly afterwards there was time to look in detail successively at the turrets of a battleship, another smaller warship, and then freighters of all sizes.

Now for the first time, visible on the decks of certain vessels, were some of the players. They belonged to the physical sciences or ‘Alpha’ team. They formed a compact mass, serried close together on the decks of the boats, but not a word had been spoken and there was a kind of solemnity about this silence. The only sound which was being faithfully transmitted was that of the sea and of the engines which were just idling.

But soon another noise could be heard, gradually dispelling the relative silence, and becoming louder with each passing second indicated in the boxes in the corner of the screen.

‘It’s our airplanes,’ proclaimed O’Kearn, with a defiant look in Sir Alex Keene’s direction.