The 10th Victim, Page 2
Robert Sheckley
Enrico worked away, concentrating now on the gleaming spurs. His forehead was wrinkled with worry as he gently coated the silvery steel with a lustrous steely silver substance.
He was not alone. Beside him, looking on with a definite degree of interest, was a man who might have been taken for Enrico’s identical twin. The two men were dressed alike down to the last shoddy detail. The only thing that set them apart was the fact that the second Enrico was bound and gagged.
Outside, the crowd roared its approval of the Mexican’s performance. Above its roar could be heard the baron’s parade-ground bellow:
“Enrico!”
Now, hastily, Enrico #1 rose to his feet, gave the boots a last inspection, patted Enrico #2 on the forehead, between the ropes, and limped rapidly across the grandstand to the side of his current master.
“Hah!” said the baron, and followed that remark with several statements in a spluttering German—incomprehensible, but doubtless derogatory to the humble Enrico.
“Well, let one see,” the baron said at last, his wrath cooling to a normal choler. He inspected the boots and found them irreproachable. Nevertheless, he rubbed them with a chamois boot-rubbing rag which he always kept in his pocket as a useful implement for teaching uppity stable-hands their place in the scheme of things.
“Now immediately the boots upon me place,” the baron said, and thrust forth a powerful Teutonic foot.
The boot placement was accomplished after much tugging and cursing. And just in time, too, for the Mexican horseman (he had pomade on his hair!) was leaving the field to tumultuous applause.
Booted at last, with his monocle firmly set, and with his trusty horse (the famous Carnivora III by Astra out of Aspera) standing nearby, the baron marched forward to present himself to the judges.
Coming to a stop precisely three paces in front of the reviewing stand, the baron came to ramrod attention, bowed his head one-quarter of an inch, and smartly clicked his heels together.
Whereupon there was a loud explosion and a gush of gray smoke.
When the smoke had cleared away, the baron could be seen pitched forward on his face in front of the reviewing stand, as dead as last week’s haddock.
Pandemonium came, followed by emotional catharsis for all of the onlookers except one lone Englishman, dressed in prebagged tweeds and Scotch-grain brogans weighing 2 and ¾ pounds apiece, who called out in a firm, loud voice, “The horse! Is the horse all right?”
Upon being assured that the baron’s horse was completely undamaged, the Englishman settled back in his seat, muttering that it was completely unfair to horses to explode explosives in their vicinity, and that in some countries the perpetrator of such an action would be faced with immediate police attention.
In this particular country, the perpetrator of the action also received immediate police attention. The responsible party revealed himself at once, emerging from the stable and throwing off his disguise.
Formerly he had been Enrico #1; now he stood revealed as Marcello Polletti, a man of 40, or perhaps 39, with an attractive, melancholic face, a self-deprecating smile, and a height somewhat above the middle range. He had high, prominent cheekbones suggesting deep reserves of passion, the restrained smile of the natural skeptic, and the tawny, heavy-lidded eyes which spoke strongly of a streak of indolence in the man. These qualities were immediately apparent to several thousand people in the reviewing stands, and they commented on them with pungent wisdom.
Polletti bowed gracefully to the cheering crowd and showed his Hunting license to the nearest policeman.
The policeman checked the card, punched it, saluted, and handed it back to Polletti. “Quite in order, sir. And may I be the first to congratulate you on a kill both exciting and esthetically pleasing.”
“You are very kind,” Marcello said.
By now he was surrounded by a crowd of reporters, thrill seekers, and well-wishers of every sort and description. The police turned back all save the genuine journalists, and Marcello answered their questions with quiet dignity.
“Why,” asked a French reporter, “did you use the method of high explosive on the baron’s spurs?”
“It was expedient,” Polletti replied. “The man was wearing a bulletproof vest.”
The journalist nodded and scribbled in his notebook, “The Prussian heel click, which has brought dread to so many, set off an ironic doom this day to one. To die in the performance of an act of symbolic arrogance—that act which presumes superior worth, which in turn presumes immortality—this must surely be called an existential death. Such, at least, was the view implied by Hunter Marel Poeti. …”
“How do you think you will make out as Victim in your next hunt?” asked a Mexican newspaperman.
“I don’t really know,” Marcello replied. “It will doubtless end one way or the other.”
The journalist nodded and wrote down, “Mariello Polenzi killed with placidity and viewed his own imminent doom with equanimity. In this we can see the universal statement of machismo, that quality of manhood which engages life only through the ungrudging acceptance of death. …”
“Are you tough?” asked an American girl reporter.
“Definitely not,” Marcello said.
She wrote, “A disinclination toward boasting, coupled with a supreme confidence in his own powers, makes Marcello Polletti a man peculiarly acceptable to American patterns of behavior. …”
“Are you afraid of being killed?” a Japanese reporter asked.
“Of course I am,” Marcello replied.
“Zen, in at least one learned view,” wrote the reporter, “is the art of seeing things as they are; Marcello Polletti, by quietly viewing his own fear of death, may be said to have conquered his own fear of death in a manner peculiarly Japanese. Or has he? For the question inevitably remains, is Polletti’s admission of fear a magnificent conquest of the unconquerable, or a mere admission of the inadmissable?”
Polletti received a considerable amount of publicity. It wasn’t every day that a man was blown up at the International Horse Show. That sort of thing made news.
And it helped, of course, that Polletti was attractive, modest, world-weary, virile, and, above all, quotable.
3
A gigantic computer clicked and chattered, flashed red lights and rippled blue ones, turned οff white dots and turned on green ones. This was the games computer, the great machine which had its counterparts in all the capitols of the civilized world, and which arbitrated the destinies of all Hunters and Victims. Randomly it selected and paired the individual antagonists, recorded the results of their contest, and awarded prize money to the victor or condolences to the family of the loser, alternating the surviving players as Victim or Hunter, continuing them irrevocably in the game until one of them had reached the arbitrary limit of ten.
The rules were simple: The Hunt was open to anyone, man or woman, regardless of race, creed, or nationality, between the ages of 18 and 50. Anyone entering was in for all ten Hunts, alternately serving five as Victim and five as Hunter. Hunters received the name, address and photograph of their Victim; Victims simply received notification that a Hunter was after them. All kills had to be performed in person and there were severe penalties for killing the wrong person. Prize money was awarded in sums increasing with the number of kills. A Tens Winner, having gone the entire route successfully, was awarded almost unlimited civil, financial, political, and moral rights.
That was all there was to it. It was as easy as falling off a precipice.
There had been no more big wars since the inauguration of the Hunt; only countless millions of small ones, scaled down to the smallest possible number of contestants: two.
The Hunt was entirely voluntary, and its aim was in accord with the most practical and realistic outlook. If someone wants to kill someone, the argument ran, then why not let him try, providing we can find someone else who also wants to kill someone. That way, they can slaughter each other and leave the rest of us alone.
Though it gave the appearance of the utmost modernity, the Hunting Game was, in principle, not new at all. It was a qualitative reversion to an older, happier age when paid mercenaries did the fighting and noncombatants stayed on the sidelines and talked about the crops.
History is cyclical. An overdose of yin changes inevitably into yang. The day of the professional (and frequently nonfighting) army passed, and the age of the mass army began. Farmers could no longer talk about their crops; they had to fight for them. Even if they had no crops to fight for, they still had to fight. Factory hands found themselves involved in Byzantine intrigues in lands beyond the sea, and shoe clerks carried weapons into alien jungles and across frozen mountaintops.
Why did they do it? In those days it had all seemed very clear. Many reasons had been given, and every man adopted the rationale which suited his own particular emotionality. But what seemed obvious at the time became less so as the years passed. Professors of history argued, experts in economics demurred, psychologists begged to differ, and anthropologists felt it necessary to point out.
The farmer, shoe clerk and factory hand waited patiently for someone to tell them why they were really being killed. When no clear-cut answer was forthcoming, they became irritated, resentful, and sometimes even wrathful. Occasionally they would turn their weapons upon their own rulers.
That, of course, could not be countenanced. The growing intransigency of the people, plus the technological possibility of killing everyone and everything, definitely overloaded the yang, thereby bringing forth the yin.
After five thousand or so years of recorded history, people were finally beginning to catch on. Even rulers, notoriously the slowest of men to change, realized that something had to be done.
Wars were getting nobody nowhere; but there was still the problem of individual violence which untold years of religious coercion and police instruction had failed to curb.
The answer, for the moment, became the legalized Hunt.
That, at any rate, is one view of the growth of the institution. But it is only fair to add that not everyone agrees with this interpretation. As usual, professors of history continue to argue, experts in economics demur, psychologists beg to differ, and anthropologists feel it necessary to point out.
So, taking their objections into account, we are left with nothing but the irreducible fact of the Hunt itself; a fact as strange as the burial rites of the ancient Egyptians, as normal as the initiation ceremonies of the Sioux, and as unbelievable as the New York Stock Market.
In the final analysis, the existence of the Hunt is explicable only because of its existence; for, in at least one prominent view, nothing justifies the existence of anything.
Lights flashed, circuits clicked, relays rocked, cam wheels rolled. Punch cards fluttered like white doves, and the games computer brought two lives together.
Hunt ACC1334BB: Hunter, Caroline Meredith. Victim, Marcello Polletti.
4
“Caroline,” said Mr. Fortinbras, “I want to congratulate you on your very nice kill.”
“Thank you, sir,” Caroline said.
“Your ninth, I believe?”
“That is correct, sir.”
“Just one more to go, mmmm?”
“Yes sir. If I make it.”
“You’ll make it,” Fortinbras assured her. “You will make it because I, J. Walstod Fortinbras, say that you will make it.”
Caroline smiled modestly. Fortinbras grinned immoderately. He was Caroline’s boss, head of the UUU Teleplex Ampwork. He was a small man who tried to find grandeur in the grandiose, and whose taste for the vulgar was exceeded only by his enjoyment of the vile. He leaned back now, brushed the sleeve of his jacket (which was made of genuine Fulani), puffed upon a large cigar, spat upon the three-inch-thick piling of his priceless Bokhara rug, wiped his mouth with a lace handkerchief woven by indigent Brahmins beneath the burning ghats of the Ganges, and stroked his forehead with a burnished fingernail to indicate that he was thinking.
He wasn’t thinking, of course; he was trying, as he had been trying for so many years, to characterize himself. The fact was, Mr. Fortinbras had no character whatsoever. Highly skilled professionals had labored for years to correct this single defect, but to no avail. This was the one great sorrow of Fortinbras’ life.
“You’ll be a Hunter next, hmmmm?” he asked Caroline.
“That is correct, sir.”
“And you have already received notification of your next Victim?”
“I have, Mr. Fortinbras. He is a man named Marcello Polletti, a resident of Rome.”
“Rome, New York?” Fortinbras asked.
“Rome, Italy,” Caroline gently corrected.
“Well, all the better,” Fortinbras said. “Probably more picturesque. Now my idea is this, and I want you all to think it over carefully and tell me what you really and honestly think. My idea is, since we’ve got a potential Tens Winner right here in our own shop, why don’t we go ahead and do a documentary on her tenth kill? Hmmmm?”
Caroline nodded thoughtfully. Aside from her and Fortinbras, there were three other men in the room, all of them young, handsome, quick, talented, and obnoxious.
“Yes, yes!” cried Martin. As Senior Executive Assistant Producer, he was the only one (aside from Fortinbras himself) allowed to use exclamation marks.
“You’ve really got it, boss,” Chet said softly. (To the best of his recollection, 37 documentaries had been made last year on various aspects of the Hunt.)
“Personally, I’m not so sure,” said Cole. As the youngest executive assistant, it was Cole’s unhappy duty to disagree with his employer, since Fortinbras would not tolerate being surrounded by yes-men. Cole hated the job, since he always felt that Fortinbras was right. He dreamed of the day when a fourth executive assistant would be hired, and he would be able to say yes.
“Three against one,” Fortinbras said, disgustingly moistening the end of his cigar. “Guess you’re outvoted, eh, Cole?”
“Probably just as well,” Cole said cheerfully. “I feel it is my duty to state my opinions, but I can assure you that I have no faith in them.”
“I like that in you,” Fortinbras said. “Honesty and sound judgment can take a man a long way, make no doubt about that. Now then, let me see. Suppose we call it The Moment of Truth.”
Everybody concealed their winces admirably. Fortinbras said, “That, however, is merely tentative; I was just trying it on for size to see if I wanted to wear it home. What about—The Instant of Candor?”
“I like that very much!” Martin said instantly. “It really hits them where they live!”
“Good, good, yes, it’s very good indeed,” Chet said, savoring the horror of the title with half-closed eyes.
“I think it lacks something,” Cole said miserably.
“What does it lack, precisely?” Fortinbras asked.
Cole had never before been asked to explain why he disagreed with anything. Now he felt a paralysis grip at his throat and an icy tremor pass through his stomach. These, he well knew, were sure symptoms of the onset of unemployment.
Martin, whose kind heart was proverbial as far west as Tenth Avenue, bailed him out. “I think,” he said, “that what Cole had in mind was probably one of those old-fashioned punchy titles. Like calling it simply Ten.”
“Or perhaps he didn’t have it in mind,” Chet said, quickly covering for Martin.
“I think I had something or other like it in mind,” Cole said, hastily covering for both of them. “But of course that short punchy stuff is sorta moldy potatoes now. …”
He stopped. Fortinbras, with the midfinger of his right hand pressed to a spot one inch above his vague eyebrows, was in meditation. Seconds passed. Fortinbras closed his nondescript eyes, then opened them again.
“Ten,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Old timey,” Martin commented. “But of course, that sort of thing comes right back into its own after a while.”
“It may have certain possibilities,” Chet admitted, “though of course we must always remember—”
“TEN!” Fortinbras shouted triumphantly. “Yes, yes, TEN! It speaks to me, gentlemen, it really and truly does. Hmmmm. …” He took another puff on his loathsome cigar, tried unsuccessfully to twist his mouth out of shape, and said, “Has there ever been another female Tens Winner?”
“Not as far as I know,” Martin replied. “Not in the United States, anyhow.”
“Well, that’s all we’re concerned with,” Fortinbras said. “We’ve had a few female nines, though, haven’t we?”
“Miss Amelia Brandome was the last,” Martin said. “She achieved nines status eight years ago.” He had boned up on all this the previous night out of a prescience of the day’s events. It was for this kind of thinking that Martin was a Senior Executive Assistant Producer.
“What happened to her?” Fortinbras asked.
“She got overconfident. A Victim got her on her tenth attempt. He used a shotgun filled with birdseed.”
“Not a particularly lethal-sounding weapon,” Fortinbras commented.
“Lethal enough in this case,” Chet said. “The shot was delivered from a distance of approximately two inches.”
“We wouldn’t want you to become overconfident, Caroline,” Mr. Fortinbras chuckled.
“No sir, I also wouldn’t want to,” Caroline said.
“Otherwise you could find yourself out of a job,” Fortinbras said, in a wretched attempt at playfulness.
“I could also find myself out of a life,” Caroline replied.
Everyone enjoyed Caroline’s flash of wit. After the laughter had faded to a snicker, Fortinbras got down to business.
“OK, kids,” he said, “Make your travel arrangements and let’s get moving on this. We’ve got a free half hour of air time day after tomorrow, ten to ten-thirty a.m., so we’ll do it then, live—or should I say dead? Heh, heh. Anyhow, you boys know the tone we want; deadly serious, but with a light touch. Don’t bother with any background sequences, just get the kill in an impressive, jazzy manner, but also with humor and dignity. You know what I mean, don’t you, Martin?”
