Desperate Games

‘No –’

  She interrupted herself and uttered an exclamation, finally seeing the light herself. She had had a vague feeling for a long time that the previous failures had a very simple cause, but she could not define it.

  ‘I understand, I understand,’ she murmured, ‘but continue your explanation of what you’re thinking all the same.’

  ‘Well, Madame,’ said Rousseau, swelling with pride, ‘even though I don’t have a specific project to present to you myself, I really believe I have discovered the flaw in all our previous inventions, even including super-wrestling. Let’s take it as an example: the visual element was excellent, perfect, that’s why it lasted so long, but it failed to make an auditory impression. It lacked sound, noise. It is only possible to enthrall human beings by appealing to all their senses, or at least the main ones.’

  ‘He’s right,’ exclaimed Yranne. ‘We’ve been stupid.’

  ‘And me more than anyone,’ Betty admitted bitterly. ‘How could I have neglected the need to make an auditory impression? Wasn’t I the one who came up with the idea of a firework display, and the world anthem? How could we have been so blind?’

  ‘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.

  And it was indeed airplanes that were approaching the fleet, progressing in the same direction towards the shore. They soon flew over the fleet and then overtook it, as the cameras started to capture the first aircraft in the sky. They appeared in several waves, and were of different types. After several panoramic views the camera operator endeavoured to follow a heavy bomber in close-up and was able to show distinctly its load of deadly equipment.

  It was nearly thirty minutes past midnight. Satellite television coverage left the sea to return to the shore, where the noise of the engines had started to become noticeable and where a certain restlessness was in evidence. Brief orders had been issued during the night. Shadowy figures ran from one shelter to another. And suddenly, just as the last second of thirty minutes past midnight was reached, a terrible din burst out simultaneously on the land, on the sea and in the air, as the whole screen erupted in violence.

  No image of a real battle had ever produced as striking an impression as this game. At the time of the actual landings in ’44, some shots gave a good idea of the violence of the operations, but the cameramen were filming in a hurry, with limited technical means and without any organisation comparable to the present one. They could not be everywhere at the same time to give a general impression and also pay particular attention to a mass of details as these cameramen were doing. As for films involving historical reconstruction after the event, of course they lacked the great emotion and the realism of a live event.

  In this case the persons responsible for the games had taken care to place specialists at all the places considered important and which they knew well, as they had determined them themselves. The place and time of the first assault was specified in the rules of the game. After that a large amount of freedom was given to the teams to do their best with the means available to them. And considerable protective measures were taken with regard to the television crews and to be prepared for them being struck down, which was always possible, the groups of camera operators had been tripled, quadrupled and sometimes even increased tenfold at the greatest flashpoints. In this way there was no risk of the spectators being deprived of some outstanding episode.

  This professional attention to detail bore fruit. The work of preparation had not been in vain: the spectacle promised to be of exceptional quality. From the first bombardment Yranne considered that the game was won and, tapping Betty on the shoulder in a familiar way, he held out his fist, giving her the thumbs up. The audio-visual images were marvellous and the television viewers would have to be made of marble not to be very deeply moved.

  The screen was now permanently lit up by the explosion of bombs, which the cameras were often able to follow through the air from the moment they were dropped to the explosion in a deluge of fire and metal. Now viewers were very much present at the maneouvres of the Beta players, who belonged to the biological sciences team and were defending the shore. Some of the images made it possible to assess the turmoil inside the shelters; others showed the rapid blasting of the guns; yet others the feverish activity of the anti-aircraft defence. And all these images were sustained and sublimated by an auditory accompaniment which was finally worthy of them: the continuous crackling of small calibre weapons punctuated by the intermittent thundering of the big guns, the whole making up an intoxicating orchestra of sound, and all this was heightened by the odour of the battle which spread throughout the amphitheatre.

  The view was no less striking in the sky over the coast of Normandy, where traceries of dazzling rays made streaks in the darkness. The projectors quite often managed to capture some of the moving forms, darker than the night itself, as they came out of a cloud, and they looked like brilliant stars encased in luminous cones. This one was not dropping bombs any more. One of these stars flickered occasionally, disappeared and reappeared a little lower, in the darkness, as a plume of smoke which was turning red. A cameraman almost always managed to follow planes like this one which had been shot down right until it exploded on the ground, which drowned out for a moment the rest of the din and intensified the luminosity of the sky even further.

  This enchanting spectacle of supernatural character, and of a dramatic intensity never previously attained, this live representation of such a huge confrontation, the outcome of which was uncertain, and between champions who understood all the resources available to their art, created an atmosphere of passion and nervous over-excitement to which nobody could be immune. The spectre of melancholy had been banished. Even Mrs Betty Han allowed herself to succumb for a brief moment to the global enthusiasm, and her eyes, which were usually cold, blazed with triumph.

  2.

  This new game, the theme of which was ‘The Landings’, was simple. One team attempted to invade the continent of Europe; and the other’s task was to ward off this sea-born opponent. It was the fourth in a series which had proved to have a wealth of exciting aspects and finally attained lasting success.

  The guiding principle proposed by the Ministry of Psychology was that of historical games. And the government could be proud of itself for having adopted it. Even though the young Rousseau’s important comment underlining the necessity of auditory impressions worthy of the images was the basis for these productions, he could not claim to be the sole originator. It was the fruit of a collaboration in which Yranne and also the astronomer Zarratoff participated. The latter, as the mathematician had confided subtly to Betty, was in the process of undergoing a remarkable change: not only was he no longer a fierce opponent of the games, but he was often tempted to add a stone himself to help build up the edifice of psychology.

  The first game in the series was in fact thought up by Yranne and Zarratoff when, by a stroke of luck, there was a conjunction of two different trains of thought. When Yranne went to visit his friend, still deep in thought about Rousseau’s sensible comment, he found him bent over his desk, in the meditative attitude he knew so well. But he was not buried in contemplation of an astronomical map but of a large cardboard rectangle, on which mobile pieces could be shifted around, some of them red and the others blue, representing warships belonging to two opposing camps. Zarratoff did not utter a word. He just made an imperious gesture with his hand, to signify that he was absorbed in studying a complicated scheme and that he did not want to be disturbed.

  This did not unduly surprise the mathematician. He took a seat, and sat in silence on the other side of the table, also leaning on the sheet of cardboard, and without disturbing his friend’s meditation, he started to study the position of the pieces too, trying to work out the best possible move to enable the game to continue.

  ‘It?
??s blue’s turn to move,’ Zarratoff deigned to say.

  ‘Well, I’ll take red.’

  It was a game from former times, which the two friends had recently discovered and, surprisingly, taken a liking to. For them it took the place of chess, the laborious combinations of which they now found boring as their interests had been developing in a new direction for some time.

  The game continued in silence. Yranne, who was usually the winner, watched his ships sink one after the other and found himself obliged to give up, which he in fact did with good grace. At first Zarratoff was uncontrollably exultant, but then he showed surprise at his uncustomary lack of tact.

  ‘You gave it to me on a plate, right from your second move. You have to protect your aircraft carrier at all costs. It’s simple.’

  Yranne recognised his blunder and apologised for it.

  ‘It’s because I’ve got something else on my mind,’ he said.

  So he explained to him that he had been present the previous day at a strange meeting in the psychology laboratory, and he repeated to him Rousseau’s conclusions. The astronomer understood, shaking his head in silence, and then both of them became absorbed in new reflections, staring blankly at the sheet of cardboard.

  ‘Good God!’ Zarratoff said suddenly.

  ‘Of course!’ exclaimed Yranne.

  Nobody ever knew in which of the two brains the spark was first ignited. What is certain is that the theme of the first historical game was developed in that moment and simultaneously an important point was established concerning the principle governing all such entertainments. The two scholars only needed a few words to communicate their flash of inspiration to each other and find an ordinary, practical way to realise it. As soon as that was achieved, Yranne picked up the telephone and called the psychology laboratory. Mrs Betty Han was there, involved in an animated discussion with Rousseau.