Earth Games
Many millions of light years from Earth, the planet Cork was the principal world in a dying solar system. Once known for its ideal wine-growing valleys, Cork’s climate became too hot for the survival of the best grapes. As its three suns brightened in a relatively short period of time, the grape production fell off severely.
Corker warships searched the galaxy for planets best suited to raising the Grenache wine grapes all Corkers required as daily sustenance. Earth became one of the conquered worlds that was suitable for this purpose. Within a decade, the Corkers had established a regular travel route between their doomed planet and Earth, bringing back that distant world’s grapes and slaves to work in the remaining Corker vineyards.
Millions of Corkers left during this period of upheaval, emigrating to the newly-conquered worlds. But others remained on Cork … some out of fondness for memories and traditions … others out of stubbornness. A few even harbored faint hopes that conditions might improve, that the suns might begin to cool. The entire Corker royal family remained as well, rather like a captain refusing to desert his sinking vessel.
To keep the minds of the remaining Corkers off the serious problems of the day, elaborate entertainment spectacles were staged, in which the slaves were forced to participate. One favorite game, “Road Rage,” was based on an ancient Earth highway ritual, and the Corker promoters even brought in old Earth equipment for authenticity.…
O O O
It was a scorching afternoon, with three white-hot Corker suns overhead. Sitting in a Manno fighter car, the Earth slave Enrique Pierce dripped perspiration as he listened to the old slave in his pit crew. Dressed in the blue shorts, tee-shirt and cap of the Manno Squadron, the old man leaned against the car door, speaking through the open window.
“Do you see that name on the side of your fighter car by the engine portholes?” he said, in his gravelly voice. “Buick? The Buicks were a ruling family on Earth, you know.” The old slave rubbed a corner of one eye. “That was many years ago, of course.”
“I know,” Enrique said, impatiently. He looked away, anxious for his turn to fight, and only heard some of the old slave’s ensuing words.
As Enrique watched across his metallic blue hood, other supercharged Buicks and Pontiacs on the giant auto carrier roared down ramps onto the freeway. Enrique’s car was on the top level, a random placement having nothing to do with his stature as the Manno ace. In a few minutes he would start the engine.
“They used to race and fight on the highways of old Earth,” the old slave said, “but they only used pistols against each other in those days, or rifles … nothing like the firepower you have. And sometimes they just flipped each other off.”
Enrique tuned out and watched the enemy Wommo auto carrier position itself across the simmering strip of concrete battlefield. Wonder if Marta’s on that one, he thought. God, I hope not.
He visualized the pretty, green-eyed blonde, and remembered what she’d said to him once, that she liked his tallness, and thought he was handsome with his olive skin and straight black hair. She’d even laughed and said that his only physical flaw was a nose that was a bit too long and arched at the bridge.
A Corker overseer near the ramp control panel yelled, “Cut the chatter! Pay attention to your duties!” Short and round with a backpack of grain alcohol strapped to his back, the Grenache-purple Corker stood on six stubby legs. His peculiar, scaly skin had bumps that looked like flattened grapes, and even from a distance of ten meters, Enrique could hear the sucking sounds the creature made while working tubes that led from his grain alcohol pack to his mouth.
The old slave resumed talking. The Corker glared again, then spit purple phlegm and looked away. Enrique heard parts of sentences describing hundreds of years ago, when the powerful Corker fleet defeated Earth and its allied planets in huge space battles.
“It’s Manno against Wommo!” a Corker loudspeaker announced. Enrique heard the sucking sound over the loudspeaker. The crowd of drunken Corker spectators roared with approval.
“Cork’s suns could explode at any moment, you know,” the old slave said. “And these competitions are supposed to keep people from thinking about that.”
Enrique touched the starter button early to avoid having to hear more. The supercharged 1956 Buick roared to life like an angry, rudely awakened beast. It rumbled roughly and hesitatingly at first. As the old slave stopped talking and stepped back from the car, Enrique felt the change in the engine’s rhythm, when it began to smooth out. He touched a console button, and all the car windows rolled up.
Even with the windows closed, the noise inside the car was deafening, and Enrique smelled exhaust. He snapped on his blue plastic helmet, and across the built-in earphones he heard the nervous chatter of slave pilots as they communicated with the carrier’s slave-operated control tower.…
“All set, Jimmy G.”
“Okay, Lady-killer Six. Blow those Wommo fighter cars away, buddy.”
“Right, Jimmy G.”
“And Lady-killer Seven, watch your blind spots. We almost lost you the last time out.…”
Within seconds, cars Six and Seven were off, and soon Enrique saw them as distant specs on the freeway, receding into the low-hilled horizon at high speeds.
More excited chatter blared across the frequency. Then he felt his pulse quicken as the car ahead of him screamed down the ramp.
“You’re up, Lady-killer Nine,” the tower voice said across Enrique’s earphones. “You’re doing a lane battle today—go to Merge Section Three, paralleling the Wommo car. When both of you get to the light and it turns green, anything goes.…”
“Yes sir, Jimmy G.,” Enrique responded, thinking about the Wommo kill count on the doors of his Buick. I’m the best, he thought. Just a few more kills and they’ll send me back to Earth. He focused on the black explosive capsules mounted to each front fender beneath machine guns, and shuddered.
Enrique touched the bright purple “Takeoff” button on his console, and the Buick rolled forward slowly, thumping as it bounced from ramp to pavement. He grimaced from the stress of too many missions. The Manno squadron called him “Ace,” but who else cared that he had survived so long?
He went to manual accelerator control, and fell into his merging lane. To his left, he saw the Wommo car, in its own merging lane. Ahead, perhaps a half mile away, was a round red light. Beyond that, the Manno and Wommo lanes, merged into one. Other freeway battlefields ran alongside this one. He saw pink and blue fireballs explode on them, and heard the thunder of blasts that marked hits by the Mannos and Wommos against enemy fighter cars.
Corker spectators lined each side. Rotund, purple little creatures, the drunken, foul-tempered aliens threw empty grain alcohol packs on the freeway to show their displeasure. Enrique watched a pack bounce off the hood of his car, felt more under the wheels as his car bounced over them. For a moment, the Buick slipped when its accelerating rear wheels caught hold of the packs. Then the wheels found traction on the pavement, and the car resumed acceleration.
Enrique’s fighter car and the pink and yellow Wommo car ran evenly at the signal-governed speed for several seconds. He glanced over, trying to see who was operating the other vehicle. It was a black-haired woman. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Recent missions against the Wommos had been like someone else’s dream to him, and this one was no exception. The Wommos’ pink and yellow cars zipped onto the freeway ahead and behind, firing their machine guns and bazookas as they fell into fierce battle against Enrique’s all-male squadron of metallic blue hot-rods. A strangely euphoric numbness took over his psyche. It was almost a blackout, and he became only dimly aware of pulling the machine gun trigger on the pole to his right, activating the guns on his front fenders. He heard the weapon’s staccato rat-a-tat rhythm, stepped on a floor button three times and heard the thunder of his rooftop bazooka. Three pink balls of flame ahead marked the hits he had made. A distant, guttural voice called out play-by-play action over the public address system.
Inhuman games! Enrique thought. Making our men and women kill one another … playing on the rivalries between Earth sexes.
“On your tail, Lady-killer Nine!” a voice crackled across the radio. “A pair of Wommo fighter cars!”
Enrique glanced in his rear-view mirror, saw the female pursuers and turned the steering wheel to swerve. His Buick hit a shoulder of gravel, then swung across three lanes and went into a weaving, elusive pattern from one side of the freeway to the other. He heard the percussion of enemy fire close behind, pulled a trigger to fire the rear-mounted machine guns at them, leaving explosions in his wake, though not before the enemy fired at him. A bullet shattered one of his rear windows, throwing glass around the inside of the cab, but not injuring him.
I’m going to make it, Enrique thought, seeing a Manno-controlled exit ramp just ahead, beyond a purple cluster of Corker spectators. A bright blue Manno banner flew over the cloverleaf exit, meaning it had been secured by the men, and could not be used by the competing women. He took the exit at high speed, felt the safety of concrete walls on each side, then leaned forward against his shoulder harness as the car’s deceleration hooks grabbed catchers on the pavement.
O O O
An hour later, Enrique walked between two rotund Corker guards as they escorted him along a corridor in the newly-constructed Earth quarters. Enrique wrinkled his nose in revulsion at the creatures’ putrid body odors as they guided him around a corner to the left.
“Here,” one of the Corkers said in a throaty, guttural voice. Its tiny, ferret-like eyes caught Enrique’s glare as the escort stopped at a door marked “1.” The asexual creature coughed, then hawked and spit a ball of purple phlegm against the wall. It pulled the door open, and the other Corker pushed Enrique inside.
As the door closed behind him, Enrique glanced around the familiar little room. Furnished with items brought from Earth, it was dominated by a large bed at the center, with a white plastic dresser on one side. The legless dresser had been placed upside-down on the floor. The Corkers apparently did not understand its function, for they wore no clothing and had no personal possessions other than their disposable wine packs. A fan high in one corner whirred with a tinny sound, turning in a half circle to circulate the hot room air. This was the Consortium Room of the Manno ace, to be shared with his Wommo counterpart. Other nearby rooms were similarly shared by Mannos and Wommos, as rewards for their kill counts.
Did she make it? Enrique wondered. He whispered an Earth prayer for her.
The door squeaked open and a young woman stumbled in, having been pushed. A pair of Corkers in the outside hallway slammed the door shut, leaving the two aces alone. Trim-figured and pretty, Marta wore a pink and yellow Wommo pilot’s jumpsuit. She appeared to be in her late twenties. Her hair was light yellow, straight and pageboy short, with bangs across the forehead.
“Still winning, eh, Enrique?” she said, smiling confidently.
“Three kills today,” he announced wearily. “Two more and I get to go home to Earth. Home and freedom.” He studied her pale green eyes, saw coolness that warmed as she returned his gaze.
“Freedom?” she said. “Humans there are slaves, too. Though not all of them, I suppose.”
“We’d be under Corker occupation on Earth, of course. But it would have to be better than here.”
“You believe their promise?” She stood on her tiptoes to give him a peck on the cheek. It was the ninth consecutive time they had shared a Consortium Room.
“The Corkers said we would be sent back to Earth after blowing away two hundred, and I’m almost there.”
“And you trust those vulgar little beasts to keep their word?”
“We don’t have much choice,” he said. “It’s important to hold onto hope, and—”
“Maybe it’s false motivation, to get the most out of us.”
He furrowed his eyebrows thoughtfully. “Could be,” he admitted.
“And even if we are sent back, what’s there? I hear millions of our people are dead of starvation. Those filthy Corkers are growing grapes everywhere on Earth … in places where human food used to grow. And hundreds of thousands of Corkers emigrate to Earth each year. You can bet they’re keeping the best for themselves.”
“But home, Marta. Just think of it.”
“Home,” she sneered. A cruel smile worked at the corners of her mouth. She turned away from Enrique and walked slowly around the room. “Home will never be the same again.”
“What are you looking for?” he asked, watching Marta pull a wall picture out at its bottom to look behind it. She ran her fingers along the back of the picture frame, then turned to face him.
“I know they’re listening in on us,” she said. “I just haven’t figured out how. Bugs and cameras are here somewhere. Those asexual freaks are fascinated with human sexual habits. It’s another Earth game to them.”
“Maybe,” Enrique growled. “But they aren’t the only ones playing games.”
He stared out the window. The freeway was quiet now, and beyond its shimmering asphalt he saw low hills with sparse vineyards. Corker castles and rock houses sat on the hilltops, overlooking what once had been a fertile valley. “I was a champion stock car racer on Earth,” he said, “but what about you? Why haven’t you revealed your background to me?”
“Your profession prepared you well for our freeway games, didn’t it?” Marta said, as she sat on the bed. “But I feel sorry for the schoolteachers and office workers who were brought here. No training in driving or weapons.”
“Isn’t it about time you told me what you did on Earth? And something about your family? Despite our intimacy, you’re still a mystery woman to me, full of secrets.”
“My life story isn’t that interesting.”
He took her hand, turned it up to study the palm and said, “Your hands are not soft.”
She smiled. “Why should they be?”
“Hands reveal a great deal about a person.” He examined the young woman’s long fingers and unpainted cuticles, looked at her face with its hint of hardness, stared into her pale eyes. She was a blend of iron and silk, moving easily between femininity and toughness. He felt a momentary wave of fear at the thought.
Marta smiled, then began to nibble on his ear lobe. “I don’t care if they are watching,” she said. “I want you, Enrique.”
“Military,” he said. “That’s it, isn’t it? You were a soldier, from a military family. Am I right?”
“You talk too much,” she whispered in his ear.
“You’ve had weapons training, all right,” he said, pulling away. “I hear you’re deadly with those guns … but where’d you learn to drive?”
“As for the weapons,” she said with a laugh, looking at him full in the face. “My grandfather was a colonel in the Global Army.”
“And you?”
“Why, I’m his granddaughter, of course.”
“More of your games within games,” he said, with a tone of disdain. “All right, tell me whenever you decide to. If you decide to. Apparently you’re worried about telling me something that could give me an advantage if we ever have to fight out on the freeway. We’ve been lucky so far, Marta, drawing different days or battle lanes. But what if we have to face off?”
“Don’t worry about such things, Darling.” She held his chin, brought her lips close to his.
But he pulled away, to ask, “How many kills do you have left before you return to Earth? I mean, before you supposedly return?”
“One.” The answer rang in his ears, like a bell pealing for his own death.
“Would you fire on me?”
“What a question!”
“And what if I had to fire on your fighter car?”
“We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?”
“Perhaps, but now the stakes are higher than before, aren’t they?”
Marta laughed nervously. “There are eleven freeways, with battles at all different hours. We haven’t drawn the same assignment yet, and maybe we never will. Maybe the next time I see you it will be on Earth.”
“I don’t know. I have a strange feeling …” He looked at Marta, then hugged her tightly. “I could never blow you away,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”
She laughed again. “I wouldn’t put myself in such a vulnerable position!”
“What do you mean?” He held her by the shoulders, at arm’s length. “Are you challenging me?” he asked, feeling uneasy.
“Certainly not, Enrique.” The smile returned. “But don’t ever assume you’re better than I am.”
He thought he heard the anger of more than one woman in her words. He was not even certain he heard anger—it was more a hostile, threatening undertone, a certain warning, and it made him realize the Corkers had tapped a limitless source of competition for their deadly games.
He and Marta lay together on the bed. As their bodies began to undulate with the passion of human lovemaking, Enrique knew he would have to be alert for her on the freeway tomorrow. She was good, maybe too good, and it scared the hell out of him.