Seventeen Pendulums

By theidiotmachine

The Great Seer of Hammersmith -  or Dave, as he was known to his friends — fidgeted under the bright lights. The presenter was on the other side of the room, interviewing York's All-Seeing Aye, but Dave could never tell when the cameras were recording him. Last week he'd been shown scratching his bum, and he didn't want that to happen again today.

I hate this, he thought. I wish I'd never been subbed in.

The All-Seeing Aye — or Kirstie — was wrapping up her schtick. She was so much better at this than Dave: she seemed to love the publicity and the paparazzi and the sponsorship deals and the general grind to monetize her time here. Dave found it grubby and exhausting and wished he had her drive. In fact, all the other Team GB divinators were better at it than him. Even Iain, a grumpy old Scott who went by the stage name of Scottstrodamus, managed to project a roguish charm when needed. Whereas when he saw himself on TV, Dave just looked old, surly, and fat.

He sighed, and tried to focus on the game ahead.

This was the last game of the group stage. They were up against the Chileans, while the Flemish played the Moroccans. The Flemish were useless, unlikely to make it into the last sixteen. The Moroccans were passable. But the Chileans: they were really good. They were all shamans called machi, and they carried big round leather drums and wore huge black cloaks with their numbers on the back. They looked much more imposing than the flimsy red, white and blue of his kit, which, while great for sporting endeavours like running, didn't do much for his figure.

I don't know how we're going to stop them, he thought. I'm sure half the reason they're so successful is their crazy drumming.

He rubbed his forehead and hoped he wouldn't look stupid on live TV.

Outside, the crowd was roaring one of the track heats. Dave thought that it might be the men's eight hundred metres. The presenter was making the kind of noises that meant she would soon say '...and now, back to the studio...' which implied she wouldn't be interviewing him, which was a relief. But that just meant that soon he'd be facing that crowd, and he wasn't sure that made him much happier.

Kirstie was their captain and attacking psychic, as far as Dave could tell, mostly just shouted at them, and everyone else. Iain was their blocker: his job was to stop the other teams from reading what they were doing. Dave and his other team-mate, Clara (professional name of Disputin — she'd been a solicitor from Exeter before being a professional psychic athlete) did the actual divinations. He quite liked Clara. She wrinkled her nose in amusement when he made bad jokes and was good at predicting cards; but the fact was that she was frightened of slugs and everyone knew it, and a good offensive team would push past Iain's defence and make Clara hallucinate the damn things everywhere.

Dave was only in the team because their first choice had become embroiled in a betting scandal involving the dressage team. He'd been subbed in at the last minute. The other three had trained together for weeks, knew each other incredibly well, were a well-oiled machine. He felt like a rusty cog.

The presenter finished her interview; she smiled, wished them luck, and trooped out, followed by the camera and lighting people. Kirstie smiled back, which vanished as soon as the only people in the room were the athletes.

'Right then, you lot,' she said. 'I'm not having my backside handed to me by those drumming weirdos. Iain: you're gonna keep them out of our head. No inch given, not at all. Clara and Dave: do not lose your shit, no matter what happens. I will pummel them into the ground. Do we all understand?'

'Aye,' Iain replied.

'I do!' Clara said; then she turned to Dave. 'It'll be okay. You just need to see the future.'

Which, actually, was the easiest part of his job.

So, he nodded, and tried to look competent and enthusiastic, and said, 'yes.'

'Good. Now lets get out there and win this game.'

They all stood, took a few moments to adjust their kits, making sure their numbers were correct and the right way up; and then they went out of the door, and into the corridors under the stadium, the noise building as they went. Clara winked at him.

Dave was struck at how chaotic it was down here. As they walked along endless concrete tunnels there was always someone with a lanyard and a walkie-talkie shouting at them, or a group of exhausted athletes trudging away from the stadium, or another group trotting towards it. Everyone shouted in baffling jargon in a hundred languages; and they all stared at Dave and his other diviners.

The fact was this was the first Olympic Games where divining was an approved sport, and the general public was not taking it as seriously as Dave would like. If he'd been paid a penny every time someone had made a joke about him not seeing something coming he could have retired wealthy. It didn't help that even the e-sports people looked down at them and made rude comments when they thought he couldn't hear.

They stepped out into the stadium, blinking under the floodlights and the grey Stockholm sky. The roar of tens of thousands of people shouting all around him was like nothing Dave had ever experienced before.

A drone whirred down, its camera pointing at them. Kirstie flashed a wide smile at it — the same one that she used in the Tetleys adverts — Scotty grinned, Clara gave it a thumbs up, and Dave arranged his face in a way that he hoped look confident. He glanced up, and there, indeed, was the four of them on the huge screens, but no one cared because another eight hundred metres heat was happening — the crowd were all shouting encouragement at the runners on the other side of the stadium as they hurtled around the track.

They were ushered through a little tunnel under the track, and emerged in the centre of the huge stadium, surrounded by officials and cameras. Just behind them the Chileans were doing the same. Dave noticed that they looked utterly unfazed by the attention, which just made him even more nervous.

Come on my son, he thought. You have absolutely got this.

He tried to unknot the muscles in his neck by rotating his head.

My mum's watching this, he thought. Come on. Chin up.

The officials were giving out bottles of water which, while probably necessary for the more strenuous sports going on, were hardly key to divination.

Still, free water! Can't complain about that. At least I'll get something even if I don't get a medal.

So he took a bottle from the man, and opened it and took a swig in a way he thought might be athletic, and looked around. The Chilean team were in a huddle with people that Dave amused were their coaches, which made Dave yet more worried.

Divination wasn't considered important enough to the British Athletic Board to have coaching staff. Or, any kind of staff, really, unlike the cyclists who always seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of flunkies. But then, as far as he could tell, being a cyclist was a life of unending toil with no crisps or beer, so, you know, upsides downsides.

They finished their huddle, and their captain walked up to the referee; Kirstie saw her cue and did the same thing. He was too far away to hear what was said, but he imagined it was something along the lines of let's have a good fair game and no summoning terrors from beyond the grave, because that's generally what they said. Then, Kirstie returned to them, and the four of them sat down on plastic chairs with little plastic tables, all arranged around one side of the game pit, facing the Chileans.

Game time.

He took out his deck of cards and laid it on the table in front of him. Yes, he was old-fashioned but he didn't care. Clara used some I-ching/dice hybrid which confused him. Kirstie had a crystal ball. Iain just used pure rage.

He couldn't see what the Chileans had, although he was relieved that they'd put down their drums. That must just be one of those things they did to psyche out the opposition. Well, it was working. He shivered in fear.

The stadium was weirdly quiet. That's because... oh God, they were on the big screens and everyone was watching them.

You have got his, Dave. You have.

He didn't quite believe himself.

The ref blew her whistle, and they were off.

The game was simple: seventeen pendulums were set up between them and the opposition. Under each of them were two magnets, coloured red and blue. In five minutes they would submit predictions, the referee would set off each of the pendulums, and the pendulums would stop over one of the two magnets; and the team who had predicted the most got the win. Easy as that. Seventeen was some bullshit mystical number that the game had used when it was still underground, but its only significance now was that it made guessing pretty useless.

Their team's game plan: Dave started at pendulum nine and went numerically up while Clara started on eight and went down. It was a simple system which meant they wouldn't miss one. Meanwhile, Kirstie would play with the opposition's mind to make it harder for them to guess, and Iain would try and keep them from doing the same to Dave and Clara.

He concentrated on pendulum nine, just getting a feel for the psychic energy flowing around it. He let the cards play in his hands. It felt good today: they moved smoothly and clicked into place in a way that told him they knew what was going on.

He glanced down: his hands were dripping in vomit. The smell was incredible.

This was the Chilean attackers, messing with his head. He imagined that Iain was prioritising Clara to protect: she was the better seer, but also the more vulnerable.

He smiled. He had actually been sick on his cards once, when he had been drunk out of his mind, trying to impress a girl at a party, and this was nothing like that.

Yeah, nice try cupcakes, he thought. If you think that's shocking, stay away from Hammersmith.

He drew a fortune for number nine. It flowed smoothly, and he wrote 'red' on his pad.

Next, number ten.

Clara was already on pendulum six. She was fast and accurate and easily their star player. Iain was frowning, veins on his temple standing out, bright Scottish fury blazing from his eyes. I'm so glad I'm not on the other end of that, Dave thought absent-mindedly. Blue.

'Come on!' screamed Kirstie, the jolly Yorkshire twinkle completely gone. Dave couldn't tell who she was shouting at, but he decided to ignore it.

Pendulum eleven was harder. It felt like the wire was made of rubber, unable to decide its own fate.

Wait. They're actually attacking the pendulums, not us. Sneaky.

Dave had started his competitive divination career as an attacker, and moved to seer later, so he took some pleasure in shoving the psychic attack from the pendulum.

Yeah, how do like those apples.

One of the Chileans grunted.

They'll change tactics now, he thought.

The pendulum's fate flashed clean and true. Another blue.

Three minutes left.

Pendulum twelve was easy and the cards sung to him, but when he looked down to read the results, they were all blank. More attacking. He pushed it away but it pushed back.

'Uh, Iain, bit of help here,' he said.

Iain glanced at him, grinned an angry, toothy grin, and the cards were visible. A red, which he noted down. However, Clara gasped, presumably because she was plunged into some kind of slug hell.

This was insane. Either their attacker was incredible or...

'They're using two attackers,' he whispered to Iain. 'Do you want me to switch?'

'That they are, laddie. What are you suggesting?'

'I could alternate between seer and attacker.'

Kirstie rounded on him, beads of sweat glistening on her forehead.

'Yes, I agree,' she said. 'I'll switch to blocker. That way we can go quicker than them.'

He nodded, and reached his mind out to punch someone.

Dave didn't attack subtly; he was no master of illusion. He just sent simple, brute panic with his mind. All the fear and nerves jumped up, formed into a mental point, and he threw it at one of the Chileans, not really caring who.

The effect was immediate. Clara stopped panting with fear and got back on it, and Iain grunted with angry satisfaction.

'Come on!' Kirstie shouted, which sounded like a celebration rather than an instruction.

He stopped long enough to finish pendulum thirteen, and then sent another withering bolt of mental fear. The Chilean seer dropped her pencil.

Both attackers focussed on him. He saw monsters clawing their way from his clothes, he was naked in front of the audience, a woman was laughing at this genitals, it was raining blood. He plunged into the fear that they gave him and sent it back, a shivering jolt of terror and insecurity. One of them whimpered. Scottie snarled and Kirstie yelled and Clara wrote furiously. One minute left.

He could manage one more pendulum, he thought, while they were reeling. The cards weren't so pliable though; attacking was a very different mood to predicting, especially for him. It took him a few seconds of fumbling to get into the groove, but he managed to scribble another red down for pendulum fourteen. However, both Kirstie and Scottie were buckling under the attack, so he sent another salvo at their seer, forcing them to pay attention to him again.

Come on, you gits.

Forty five seconds left.

Clara was writing like a demon, flipping her dice, murmuring a little song. She had gone past pendulum one and was now on pendulum seventeen...

It was hard to focus: he was getting weaker. Maybe this is a proper sport, he thought. Maybe I really do need to give up beer, like a cyclist.

And it was that despair of never going to a pub on a summer evening with friends and laughing over a pint that pushed him further, and he channelled all his most desperate worries into one last lighting bolt of misery which caused the opposite side to flinch and their seer to falter. Clara put down a number for sixteen, and with the seconds ticking down, the two of them both scribbled blue for the remaining pendulum, the colour they had agreed on for all their guesses.

An air horn honked and officials snatched away their papers. Dave slumped back into his plastic chair, exhausted. Clara rubbed her eyes. Iain glowered.

'Well done, guys,' Kirstie said. 'Good thinking Dave.'

Dave glanced up: the Chileans were looking as shell-shocked as he felt. Well, that was a good sign. It meant Team GB probably hadn't just been steam-rolled.

Their predictions were all up on the boards now, showing across the stadium and presumably on TV. A pair of camera drones buzzed down, their red lights flashing. They were filming an official who stepped out into the pit, and set the pendulums spinning, starting with number one, working her way around to number seventeen.

A pendulum with two magnets was a classic chaotic system: the weight — or 'bob' in competitive divination trade — would eventually stop, attracted to one of the two, but it was impossible to predict which using classical mechanics. This was because tiny differences in the starting location would be enough to flip which magnet ended up being the place that the bob ended up pointing at.

Pendulum number one stopped swinging crazily, and settled on red. The score appeared on the board, and the crowd roared its approval. Dave blinked: he'd forgotten that he was surrounded by people staring at him.

More pendulums finished, shivered into place. These were all Clara's, so they were comfortably correct. The Chileans were also correct, however. Their seer must be very good. That had been their tactic: rely on how good their seer was and use two attackers to stop the other side. No wonder they'd been so successful so far.

Pendulum seven came up and they were still neck and neck. Dave couldn't watch but he also couldn't not watch either: it was agonising. Pendulum eight was next, which was Clara's first which of course she'd got right. Then number nine, Dave's first.

It was correct.

Now every result was on him. This was even worse than having his mind turned inside-out by their attackers: the sheer weight of fear weighed on that they would fail and it would all be his fault.

Pendulum ten sailed through correct. Then pendulum eleven: correct for GB, wrong for Chile. The noise was incredible, a wall of sound from all around them. Pendulum eleven was the first one that they'd attacked him on, and he was gratified to see that he'd got it correct. Pendulum twelve was when it had all started getting really hard... and both teams got it correct.

All four of them were standing by now, straining at the screen. His hands were clenched into fists, and sweat ran down his forehead. At least this kit was good at dealing with persperation.

Pendulum thirteen settled... and he'd got it wrong, while the Chilean's prediction was correct. They were neck and neck again and it was all his fault. He'd thrown away their lead.

Pendulum fourteen was right for both teams. Pendulum fifteen was the one they'd guessed and it was incorrect, and of course the Chileans were correct, so now they were one behind with two pendulums to go.

Dave wanted to sink to his knees and cry.

Sixteen. The Chilean prediction was wrong: Clara was on the money. They were level again. The crowd was going crazy, but it washed over Dave as he stared down into the pit.

One last pendulum was still gyrating, number seventeen. Its bob swung from pole to pole, spun between the two magnets. Dave glanced up at the screen. Up there was the last prediction: red for GB, blue for Chile.

The bob, a simple cone of iron, lurched one way and then the other. It span around blue, lunged towards red, returned to blue.

Everything went silent, the entire stadium focused on a single lump of metal which would decide everything.

With a final shiver, it shook itself away from the blue, and pointed at red, quivering to a halt. They'd won.

The stadium erupted.

'Holy shit,' Dave said. 'Anyone up for a pint?'