Mindgames: Fool's Mate (8 page)

‘
I have a chance, now that he is only a man,’ said Carroll, and once his boots were off he went immediately into some vigorous stretching exercises. He did not know how long he had. As he dropped down into box splits he gazed across at his opponent. The old oriental was squatting like a casual gargoyle. Carroll did not like the look of him at all.

‘
Luck to you, Jason Carroll.’

Carroll
glanced around and saw the Masai and the Cavalier standing behind him.

‘
I will need it I think,’ he said, and stood up. When he scanned around he noted that all the fighters were glancing between him and the oriental. He wondered if any bets were being made, and if so what the odds were. With his feet bare he got into a fighting stance and bounced back and forth. The surface was good, better than some of the dojos he had trained in. He hoped he would do his instructors proud. He stepped out towards his opponent.

‘
Are you now ready to begin?’ asked the General.

‘
Ready enough,’ said Carroll, and as he said it the oriental’s head snapped round in his direction and he rose to his feet.

The General said,
‘There are no rules, no time limit. This is a fight to the death. You may begin.’

Carroll
and the oriental approached each other and circled, the oriental with his head tilted to one side as if listening, yet, observing him, Carroll reckoned he was not wholly blind. It occurred to him that he must not assume blindness at all, Anubis being a known cheat. He closed, carefully.

Throwing t
wo body punches and two head punches in rapid succession showed Carroll that the oriental was fast but not infallible. He dodged the first three with unnatural speed, but the last connected. Yet even that was only a glancing blow to the cheekbone, and Carroll had to step back as hooked fingers stabbed at his eyes then a foot like a gnarled club tried to take his head off. No rules. He had to remember that.

Blind
…

Carroll
moved close and brought his hands together for a ringing clap. For a moment the oriental seemed confused and in that moment Carroll brought the edge of his foot down on the kneecap of his opponent’s leading leg. Something cracked and the oriental seemed to fall backwards. Carroll tried to follow through, but the man's other leg came up blindingly fast and the foot slammed into Carroll's chest like an iron bar. With his breath leaving him, Carroll stumbled back. The oriental did not follow through though. His damaged leg gave way and he stumbled, giving Carroll a moment to recover before they closed again.

They
exchanged blows at a speed that made it evident why karate matches require three referees. None connected tellingly until the oriental stumbled on his bad leg and Carroll caught him on the side of his head with the edge of his hand. Then it was over in seconds. Carroll's next twisting karate punch took the oriental in the windpipe. He dropped to his knees choking. Carroll's next punch came down on the base of his skull like a hammer and the man fell bonelessly on his face. Gasping Carroll stepped back.

A silence ensued
, shortly broken by Ellery's cheer, then Julius's, then the cheers of the others.

‘
He is not dead,’ said the General, and the cheering slowly died away. Carroll glared with distaste at the General before returning his attention to his felled opponent. He stepped up close, squatted down, took hold of the oriental's head and in one violent movement snapped his neck.

‘
Satisfied now?’ he asked the General as he stood up.

‘
He is dead now,’ said the General.

C
arroll looked round at the Four, whereupon Anubis's throne roared and shot into the air. As the jackal-headed god receded out of sight the oriental burst into greasy flame. Carroll turned away and headed back towards Ellery and Julius, reaching them as Kali's throne then Quetzalcoatl's dais followed Anubis's into the twilight.

♠♠♠

Once he was back with Julius and Ellery Carroll said, ‘He would not have dodged the knife, but that is not important.’

Carefully he sat down and put on his socks and boots.
‘What is important is how and when we act.’ At that point the Masai, the Cavalier, and the British Redcoat approached.

‘
We have come to congratulate you for a fine –’ began the Redcoat.

‘
Yes, great, wonderful,’ said Carroll, and turned away to enter the building. Julius and Ellery quickly followed. Soon they were seated at one of the tables again while Carroll wrapped an elasticated bandage round his ribs.

‘
When do we do it?’ asked Ellery.

Carroll
held out his hand and after a moment Ellery handed him his bomb.

‘
Deal the cards, Julius,’ he said as he pocketed the sweating explosive.

Julius did as bid and they all took up their cards.

‘We cannot do it yet. We don't know how quickly the other three can get back here. It would be best to wait until the start of the next game. That way we'll know they are back at their home bases.’

T
hree hours later the General's summons came.

‘
Now,’ said Carroll, and offered round his cigarettes, ‘we go out with the rest and try to get as close to the Reaper and the General as possible, remember, on my signal we go for it. As agreed, you, Ellery, go for the General and you, Julius, go for the Reaper. I'll keep mine back to finish either of them you might miss or not completely scrap. Remember, your discs appear blue to you, don't run without them.’

They stood and joined the fighters leaving the building. Pulling the bombs from concealment they edged towards the General and the Reaper rather than the hexagons indicated by their wristbands. Glancing at his wristband
Carroll was surprised to see that neither colour nor number was showing. This then was his reward. From this game he was exempt. But the next? There would be no next.

Suddenly there came a shout from behind.
Carroll swore and broke into a run. He did not have to look back to know who had shouted, obviously the extra time had been enough for Kruger to free himself.

Ellery took the lead as they sprinted towards the General and the Reaper. He slid to a halt as the General raised his baton, pulled out his bomb and touched his cigarette to the fuse.
As he was doing this Carroll saw the Reaper's skeletal hand shoot into the box on the arm of its throne. Ellery's arm came back for a grenade throw. A stab of ruby light from the Reaper and Ellery became sheathed in flame. He did not have time to scream. His arm continued through its motion and the bomb travelled in a text book arc, then what remained of him slumped to the ground, dead so much quicker than Kruger, as he had burnt in a hotter flame.

Carroll
counted as the bomb flew through the air. ‘One hundred and one, one hundred and two, on –’ He never reached three because the bomb exploded early, a yard from the General's head, which disappeared, and trailing smoke he fell back and hit the ground like a bag of tools. Subliminally Carroll saw exposed and twisted metal, wires and shattered circuitry, and cogs rolling across the ground.

The turbine of the Reaper's throne burst into life just as Julius threw his bomb and
Carroll touched his cigarette to the fuse of his. A smoky orange flash knocked the Reaper's throne sideways and blasted his robes away to expose metallic skeleton. It was not enough. Carroll hurled his bomb just as the Reaper fixed its attention on a second disc.

A
nother stab of ruby light dropped Julius screaming in flames, just before Carroll's bomb blew the Reaper from his throne in smoking pieces. A wreckage of electronics and mechanisms strewed all around, some still falling even as Carroll stepped in amongst them in search of a blue disc. The throne, still partially intact, still had that box on its arm containing most of the discs. Carroll stepped up, searched it, grabbed his own and then turned to the fighters who stood watching in stunned amazement.

‘
Your own discs are blue! Grab them and run!’ he shouted, and then he ran towards the forever setting sun. He did not look back.

He had run for at least ten miles.

He was sure of this because he felt as exhausted as he used to feel on a training run and that had always been with a twenty pound pack on and over rough terrain, not this unchanging flatness. But then, on those training runs he had not recently fought for his life, though it had not been unusual to run with injuries like the bruised ribs he now had. He
glanced back and saw that the building was almost indiscernible now. He looked forwards and wondered just how far he had to go and what his destination was to be. And he ran on, trying not to think of his thirst, and how foolish he had been not to bring supplies.

It was after
what had to be least twenty miles when he looked aside and saw the Clown keeping pace with to him. He slowed to a walk.

‘
I can communicate with you now,’ said the Clown. ‘The longer they forego that ridiculous disc-ringing ceremony the easier it is for me to do so.’

‘
Where am I heading?’ asked Carroll between gasps.

‘
To the edge of what you call the steel plain, then beyond. You are close now. Look.’ The Clown pointed.

Carroll
peered ahead and saw that below the sunset a line could be discerned, a horizon.

‘
You see, the steel plain is just one face of one of the matter converters I used to construct the solar disc.’

Carroll
felt his heart and stomach tighten and he suddenly felt very small. So massive a construction and it was only a tool.

‘
Matter converter,’ he repeated, ‘a tool, a machine bigger than a city...  How long–’ he stopped when he saw the Clown's pained expression and what could only be described as a crack dividing him in two.

‘
They play the game yet,’ said the Clown, and another crack appeared. ‘They think you will die just like the rest, that I have no plan–’ another crack appeared then another and another, and before Carroll the Clown broke apart, flew to pieces, and disappeared.

What the Hell!
thought Carroll, and looked ahead towards the edge of the steel plain. There, very faintly, he could see indistinct shapes. He set out towards them at a trot.

The first shape
Carroll came to was a desiccated corpse so far gone with age that when he touched it with is foot it collapsed to dust.

‘
They think you will die just like the rest.’

He did not know exactly how long it would take for a corpse to get into such a condition in a place like this, but what he did know was that this corpse had been here for a very long time. He moved on, slowing to a walk as he saw another corpse, then another. In all he saw six, two of them burnt, the other four all desiccated. He wondered again about the duration of the game, and he also wondered about the duration of the Clown's game, whatever it might be. How many had died
permanently in the Clown's cause? He did not want to be one of their number. He did not want to die again.

Eventually he reached the edge and the last of the shapes.
Here stood a resurrection machine, though one very different from those he had seen before. It was comprised of a cylinder approximately seven feet in height and four in diameter, its top a hemisphere and its bottom resting in a vase-like pedestal. Tubes and hexagonal ducts fed into it from all around from sockets in the steel ground. It was predominantly black and silver and its surface was deeply pitted. The door inset into the cylinder confirmed that at it was indeed a resurrection machine, though perhaps a very old one. He approached with a degree of suspicion.

O
n a yard-high stalk of blackish metal a short distance from the machine stood what looked like a metal sunflower, and which Carroll assumed to be a control console, though he could discern no buttons or switches. A chaotic coloured pattern as from immiscible coloured liquids swirled together decorated its top surface. He reached out to touch this and light ignited under his fingertips and followed their course. Not knowing how this might benefit him or not he stepped past the console to the main machine, only there to find a skeleton slumped at its base.

‘
What were you promised then?’ he asked in a cracked voice.

The skeleton lean
t up against a cluster of tubes that disappeared like the roots of a tree into the ground. It was curled up with his knees up against his chest and his ragged clothes pulled tightly around it as if against cold. Empty eye sockets gazed up at Carroll.
Why?
Carroll turned away with a shudder, his throat dry with thirst and his body weak with exhaustion. Why had this one decayed and the others merely dried out?

He walked away from it to the edge and a breeze of moisture laden air gave him his answer like a taunt. An increase in the dampness of the air had allowed the corpse to go through the slow process of decay by the bacteria it carried, unlike those corpses further back. It seemed a horrible irony to
Carroll, considering that this man had probably died of thirst. He shook his head and looked down.