The Stroke of the Sun - Arthur C. Clarke

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Stroke of the Sun by Arthur C. Clark kill
the umpire, The audience cried, and why shouldn't they He
was on the ball, wasn't he? Some one else should
be telling this story, someone who understands the funny kind

(00:23):
of football they played down in South America. Back in Moscow, Idaho,
we grabbed the ball and run with it. In the
small but prosperous republic, which i'll call Parivia, they kick
it around with their feet, and that is nothing to
what they do to the umpire. One of the first
things I learned when I got to Perivia after various

(00:45):
distressing adventures in the less democratic parts of South America,
was that last year's match had been lost owing to
the knavish dishonesty of the referee. He had, it seemed,
penalized most of the players on the team, disallowing a goal,
and generally made sure that the best side wouldn't win.
This diatribe made me quite homesick, but remembering where I was,

(01:08):
I merely commented, you should have paid him more money.
We did, was the bitter reply. But the Panegoians got
at him later too bad. I answered, it's hard nowadays
to find an honest man who stays bought. The customs
inspector who'd just taken my last hundred dollar bill had

(01:28):
the grace to blush beneath his stubble as he waved
me across the border. The next few weeks were tough,
but presently I was back in what I prefer to
call the agricultural machinery business. The last thing I had
time to bother about was football. I knew that my
expensive imports were going to be used at any moment,
and wanted to make sure that this time my profits

(01:51):
went with me when I left the country. Even so,
I could hardly ignore the excitement as the day for
the return match drew nearer. For one thing, it interfered
with business. I'd go to a conference arranged with great
difficulty and expense at a safe hotel, and half of
the time every one would be talking about football. Gentlemen,

(02:13):
I'd protest, our next consignment of rotary drills is being
unloaded tomorrow, and unless we get that permit from the
Minister of Agriculture, some busy body may open the cases
and then don't worry, my boy, General Sierra or Colonel
Pedro would answer airily, that's already been taken care of.
Leave it to the army. I knew better than to

(02:36):
retort which army, and for the next ten minutes I'd
have to listen to arguments about football tactics in the
best way of dealing with recalcitrant referees. It was then
that Don Hernando Dias's name came up for the first time.
I knew of him as one of the country's leading industrialists,
but he had an equal reputation as playboy, racing car

(02:58):
driver and science dilettante. It surprised me to learn that
he was one of us, for he was also a
favorite of President Ruez. Naturally, I'd never met him. He
had to be very particular about his friends, and there
were few people who cared to meet me unless they
had to. I suspected that something was happening when I

(03:19):
took my place in the football stadium on that memorable day.
If you think I had no wish to be there,
you are quite correct. But Colonel Pedro had given me
a ticket and it was unhealthy to hurt his feelings
by not using it. There had been a slight delay
in admitting the spectators. The police had done their best,

(03:40):
but it takes time to search one hundred thousand people
for concealed firearms. The visiting team had insisted on this,
to the great indignation of the locals. The protests faded
swiftly enough, however, as the artillery accumulated at the checkpoints.
Then a sweating band played the two national anthems. The
teams were presented to il Presidente and his lady, and

(04:03):
the Cardinal blessed everybody. While we were waiting, I examined
the program a beautifully produced affair that had been given
to me by the Lieutenant. It was tabloid sized, printed
on art paper and bound in metal foil that gleamed
like silver. You could see your face in it, and
I noticed a number of ladies using it to make

(04:24):
last minute repairs and adjustments. I also noticed that this
special Victory souvenir issue had been paid for by an
impressive list of subscribers, headed by Don Hernando, who had himself,
it seemed, presented fifty thousand free copies to our gallant
fighting men. If this was a bid for popularity, it

(04:44):
seemed a rather naive one, and surely President Ruez wouldn't
let half his army be bottled up in the stadium
for the best part of an afternoon. These reflections were
interrupted by the roar of the enormous crowd as the
play started. For the first ten minutes, it was a
pretty open game, and I don't think there were more

(05:04):
than three fights. The Parivians just missed one goal. The
ball was headed out so neatly that the frantic applause
from the Pangorian supporters, who had a special police guard
and a fortified section of the stadium all to themselves,
went quite unbooed. I began to feel disappointed. Why if

(05:25):
you changed the shape of the ball, this might be
a good natured Idaho game. There was no real work
for the Red Cross until nearly half time, when three
Parivians and two Panegorians, or it may have been the
other way around, fused together in a magnificent melee, from
which only one survivor emerged under his own power. The

(05:46):
casualties were carted off amid such pandemonium, and there was
a short break while replacements were brought up. This started
the first major incident. The Perivians complained that the other
sides omed It were shamming, so that fresh reserves could
be poured in, but the referee was adamant. The new
men came on and the background noise dropped to just

(06:10):
below the threshold of pain. As the game resumed, the
Panegorians promptly scored, and though none of my neighbors actually
committed suicide, several seemed close to it. The transfusion of
new blood had apparently papped up the visitors, and things
looked bad for the home team. Their opponents were passing
the ball with such skill that the Parivian defenses were

(06:32):
as porous as a sieve at this rate. I told
myself the refkin afford to be honest. His side will
win anyway, and to give him his due. I'd seen
no sign of any obvious bias so far. I didn't
have long to wait. A last minute rally by the
home team blocked a threatened attack on their goal, and
a mighty kick by one of the defenders sent the

(06:53):
ball rocketing toward the other end of the field. Before
it had reached the apex of its flight, the piercing
shriek of the referee's whistle brought the game to a halt.
There was a brief consultation between ref and captain's. The
crowd was roaring its disapproval. What's happening now, I asked plaintively.

(07:15):
The ref says, arm man was off sides, But how
can he be He's on top of his own goal. Shush,
said the lieutenant, obviously unwilling to waste time in lightening
my ignorance. I don't shush easily, but this time I
let it go and tried to work things out for myself.
It seemed that the ref had awarded the Panegoians a

(07:38):
free kick at our goal, and I couldn't understand the
way everybody felt about it. The ball soared through the
air in a beautiful parabola, nicked the post and cannoned in.
A mighty roar of anguish rose from the crowd, then
died abruptly to a silence that was even more impressive.
It was as if a great animal had been whoed

(08:00):
and was biding the time for its revenge. Despite the
heat pouring down from the not far from vertical sun,
I felt a sudden chill, as if a cold wind
had swept past me. Not for all the wealth of
the incins would I have changed places with the man
sweating out there on the field in his bulletproof vest.

(08:22):
We were too down, but there was still hope. A
lot could happen before the end of the game. The
Parvians were on their metal, now, playing with almost demonic intensity,
like men who had accepted a challenge and were going
to show that they could beat it. The new spirit
paid off promptly. The home team scored one impeccable goal

(08:42):
within a couple of minutes, and the crowd went wild
with joy. By this time I was shouting like everyone
else and telling that referee things I didn't know I
could say in Spanish. It was one to two now
and a hundred thousand people were praying and cursing for
the goal that would bring us left again. It came
just after halftime. The ball had been passed to one

(09:05):
of our forwards. He ran about fifty feet with it,
evaded a couple of the defenders with some neat footwork,
and kicked it cleanly into the goal. It had scarcely
dropped down from the net when that whistle blew again.
Now what I wondered, He can't disallow that, but he did.
The ball, it seemed, had been handled. I've got pretty

(09:28):
good eyes, and I never saw it, so I cannot
honestly say that I blame anyone for what happened next.
The police managed to keep the crowd off the field,
though it was touch and go for a minute. The
two teams drew apart, leaving the center of the pitch
bear except for the stubbornly defiant figure of the referee.
He was probably wondering how he could make his escape

(09:51):
from the stadium, and was consoling himself with the thought
that when this game was over, he could retire for good.
The thin, highw call took every one completely by surprise, everyone,
that is, except the fifty thousand well trained men who
had been waiting for it with mounting impatience. The whole
arena became instantly silent, so silent that I could hear

(10:14):
the noise of the traffic outside the stadium. A second time,
that bugle sounded, and all the vast acreage of faces
opposite me vanished in a blinding sea of fire. I
cried out and covered my eyes. For one horrified moment,
I thought of atomic bombs and braced myself uselessly for
the blast. But there was no concussion, only that flickering

(10:39):
veil of flame that beat even through my closed eyelids
for long seconds, then vanished as swiftly as it had come.
When the bugle blared out for the third and last time,
everything was just as it had been before, except for
one minor item. Where the referee had been standing, there
was a small smoldering heap, from which a thin column

(11:00):
of smoke curled up into the still air. What in
Heaven's name had happened? I turned to my companion, who
was as shaken as I was. Madre di dios, I
heard him mutter, I never knew it would do that.
He was staring not at the small funeral down there

(11:20):
on the field, but at the handsome souvenir program spread
across his knees. And then, in a flash of incredulous comprehension,
I understood, seldom do we realize just how much energy
there is in sunlight. I've since looked it up, and
the experts say that more than a horse power hits
every square yard of the earth. Those fifty thousand well

(11:43):
trained fans with their tinfoil reflectors had intercepted most of
the heat falling on one side of that enormous stadium
and aimed it all in one direction. Even allowing for
the programs that weren't tilted accurately, The late ref must
have absorbed the heat of about a thousand electric fires.
He couldn't have felt much. It was as if he

(12:06):
had been dropped into a blast furnace. I doubt if
even the ingenious Don Hernando realized exactly what would happen
when he had talked his trusting friend President rhaz into
lending him the necessary man power. The well drilled fans
had been told that the ref would merely be dazzled
out of action for the game, but I'm sure that

(12:27):
no one had any regrets. They played football for keeps
in Parivia, likewise politics. While the game was continuing to
its now predictable end beneath the benign gaze of a
new and understandably docile referee, my friends were hard at work.
When our victorious team had marched off the field, the

(12:48):
final score was fourteen to two. Everything had been settled.
There had been practically no shooting, and as the President
emerged from the stadium, he was politely informed that as
had been reserved for him. On the morning flight to
Mexico City, as General Sierra remarked to me, when I
boarded the same plane as his late chief. We let

(13:11):
the army win the football match, and while it was busy,
we won the country. So everybody's happy. Though I was
too polite to voice any doubts, I could not help
thinking that this was a rather shortsighted attitude. Several million
Panegurians were very unhappy, indeed, and sooner or later there
would be a day of reckoning. I suspect that it's

(13:33):
not far away. Last week, a friend of mine, who
is one of the world's top experts in our specialized field,
indiscreetly blurted out one of his problems to me, Joe.
He said, why the devil should anyone want me to
build a guided missile that can fit inside a football?

(13:56):
And of the stroke of the sun. Arthur C. Clarke