“Robotics?” The Savage glanced suspiciously at the weaving figures on the floodlit pitch. “Are you telling me that is a contest between two teams of robots?”
Carson laughed aloud. “Of course not! That would be a poor substitute indeed for the traditional clash between two teams of red-blooded men.”
“But …”
“Don’t you see it? One team out there, the visiting team, is composed of robots—each of them perfectly linked to and controlled by a human counterpart up in Manchester. Similarly, every one of our human Arsenal players out there is linked to a robot counterpart which was sent up to Manchester this morning. Every movement of every human player is faithfully duplicated at the other venue, every spin and slice of the ball is replicated to perfection. In this way the same match can be played in two different places, in front of two crowds of home supporters—thus eliminating the old problem of hooliganism at away matches.”
“But this is all wrong,” the Savage cried. “That’s why the match is so dead. The human players aren’t being fired and inspired and driven by the emotional energies generated in the crowd. All the sense of tribal conflict is gone from the terraces, the catharsis of personal involvement is missing, the hint of danger…
“Wait a minute! Why did the soccer-supporting public accept this terrible new system so meekly and passively? Why didn’t some of them insist on travelling to away matches just as they always did?”
Carson put a capsule into his mouth and swallowed it. “Some of them did at first, then the Government realised it was in the best interests of everybody in the country to limit the mobility of proles. A geosynchronous satellite blankets the country with a type of radiation which, unless a person is specially protected, induces pain and severe nausea in all who travel through it laterally for more than about five kilometres. In a way, it almost makes the dual match idea redundant, except that players have got used to never having to waste time travelling in person, and never having to face a hostile foreign crowd in person. The whole system is very effective.”
“It’s evil and inhuman,” the Savage whispered, his eyes smouldering in a face which had become a brooding mask. “Tell me, my good friends, am I protected from your cursed radiation which keeps ordinary men in invisible cages?”
“There is no restriction on your mobility,” Gatesby said, “but I don’t see…”
“You will—I promise you.” The Savage strode to the edge of the directors’ box, and in one powerful flowing movement vaulted the balustrade and disappeared into the milling crowds below. At that moment one of the players on the lime-glowing turf scored a goal and the stadium echoed with polite orderly applause.
“What are we going to do?” Gatesby said when the cheering had subsided. “Should we inform the police?”
“Don’t bother,” Carson replied comfortably. “I was getting pretty bored with the Savage—and he will soon learn that there is absolutely nothing he can do to upset the system.”
Controller Carson had cause to remember his words when, only a month later at the F. A. cup final, he was struck on the head by a beer bottle which had been launched with superhuman accuracy from the hand of a robot soccer hooligan, part of a gang which—under the leadership of a wild-eyed and bearded figure—had begun kicking up a very human kind of hell on terraces throughout the length and breadth of the country.