Grand Central Arena

by Ryk E. Spoor

  A leaf-green globe popped into existence next to DuQuesne; he didn’t seem surprised, but Simon and the others jumped slightly. The globe immediately began speaking. ‘‘Marc, Simon, Laila, y’all better get back here!’’ the voice of Gabrielle Wolfe said urgently, her accent strong with her emotion. ‘‘We got serious trouble!’’

  ‘‘Simon here, Gabrielle. What’s the problem?’’ She isn’t the type to panic, and ‘‘trouble’’ in the Arena isn’t a word any of us want to hear.

  ‘‘Steve and Ariane were out to the Grand Arcade, and somehow Steve got in trouble . . . don’t know the whole story yet, but the short of it is that the Captain’s done gone and accepted a challenge from the Blessed!’’

  Chapter 46

  ‘‘No offense, Captain, but what the hell were you thinking?’’

  Ariane restrained an acid retort. The former Hyperion’s tone of voice and gaze showed that his anger had its basis in concern; he was afraid of the consequences to her and maybe the rest of them, not just mad over her doing something stupid. ‘‘Marc, I was thinking about the characteristics of the Challenges. Remember, we’ve been getting info about them sort of piecemeal, mainly because we’ve had so many other things to worry about.’’

  DuQuesne took a deep breath, held it, let it out, visibly calming himself. ‘‘Right. Well, we still have the option of backing out, though it would cost us a lot, so let’s just look at the situation. What happened?’’

  It all started out so simple. ‘‘Well, Steve wanted to see the Arcade for himself, and there’s a lot of it I hadn’t seen yet . . . and to be honest, we’re still just feeling our way around here. Going out and meeting people in unofficial settings tells us a lot that we won’t necessarily get when we have these big formal meetings with reps from various Factions.’’ She glanced around, saw the others nod (except of course Orphan and Relgof, who gave their own equivalent). Not surprised Orphan’s here, with the Blessed involved, but I think Relgof came along because he just actually likes us—or Simon at least. Don’t think I’m discussing anything sensitive yet, so I don’t need to worry about kicking them out.

  ‘‘So we wandered around for a while, looking into new areas—Steve actually managed to trade, gave some art examples to a physical artistics trader and got us some trade credits, basically the local currency. He’s a good haggler.’’ Steve tried to smile, but didn’t manage much of a grin. Wasn’t really his fault, but I’ll bet he thinks it is. ‘‘Thinking back on it, there was this one guy—from that sort of rhino or triceratops-headed race, you remember them?—always in sight, but it didn’t really register at the time, and I don’t know if I’d paid much attention to it even if I had. I mean, these days there’s always someone following us or staring at us; we’re still awfully new.’’

  ‘‘Right,’’ DuQuesne agreed. ‘‘Maybe you should’ve been more careful, but hindsight’s perfect and we aren’t. So go on.’’

  ‘‘So we ended up at the Random Fortune Casino, and Steve decided to try his luck.’’

  ‘‘Let me guess,’’ DuQuesne said with a grimace. ‘‘He got cleaned out, leading to an argument that got leveraged to a challenge?’’

  Steve couldn’t keep from a laugh there. ‘‘Oh, how very wrong you are, my favorite superman. Take a look at that!’’

  Steve Franceschetti upended a small bag and a river of silvery-bronze polygons rattled across the table. Orphan almost upset his chair—would have, Ariane suspected, if it weren’t for his bracing tail—and Relgof’s beard-filter flipflopped so hard she thought he might sprain it.

  ‘‘By the Death of Minds!’’ Orphan exclaimed. ‘‘Stephen, this is . . . a quite considerable sum indeed!’’

  DuQuesne was eyeing the pile speculatively. ‘‘Well, well, well. So it was the other problem.’’

  ‘‘Other problem?’’ Sandrisson looked puzzled.

  Ariane shook her head, laughing despite herself. ‘‘Simon, I think it’s clear just where you haven’t spent a lot of time. Real casinos don’t like anyone to win too much, too reliably; it generally means the guy’s cheating somehow; even if not, too many good wins can cost you a lot in your house margin. So they’ve got people around to escort you out of the establishment if you get to be too lucky. You don’t actually see this happen very often, because it really is very, very hard to cheat in a modern casino, even with good AISage help, and to get to that level with just honest to god luck . . . well, it’s rare.’’

  ‘‘But I got there,’’ Steve said. ‘‘I understood that craps-like game pretty well, so I took some shots on that, tripled my money pretty quick, then played a few hands of this card-type thing, doubled my money, figured it was my lucky day, and went to their roulette machines.

  ‘‘Guys, it was like I was psychic. I think I missed about two or three picks in a hundred. I could do no wrong; any game I hit, anything I tried playing, once I knew what the hell I was supposed to do, I did it.’’ Steve shook his head, grinning.

  Then the grin faded. ‘‘I was back at the dice table and there was a big crowd around, and all of a sudden these two bruisers, same type as Nyanthus’s bodyguards, grab me and drag me out, where this horn-headed guy starts accusing me of cheating.’’ The diminuitive design engineer’s jaw tightened at the memory.

  ‘‘Steve’s almost pathologically honest,’’ Ariane said, taking over. ‘‘It’s a matter of pride with him, and accusing him of cheating just really pushes his buttons. Which of course to some people looks like he’s guilty and defensive. And I got stuck in the crowd—I think partly deliberately—and by the time I got there it had gotten to a shouting insult match, and Mr. Hornhead suddenly said . . . ’’ She consulted her headware to make sure she got the wording right. ‘‘Um . . . ‘For such insults exchanged and received, if you will not apologize, then there is no remedy but a Challenge! Do you accept or do you refuse?’’’

  ‘‘I was going to refuse.’’ Steve said pointedly. ‘‘I’m not stupid, I recognized that I didn’t want to commit us to that kind of thing, even if it was my authority to do it, which it wasn’t.’’

  ‘‘But it wasn’t that simple.’’ Ariane glanced at Orphan. ‘‘One of the points I remembered then was about the strategy of Challenges. You can refuse a Challenge, or even two, but you have to accept the third one, or else you suffer the penalty as if you’d lost the Challenge anyway. Right, Orphan?’’

  ‘‘It is indeed so.’’

  ‘‘Now, just hold on there. Why in the world would anyone decline the third one, then?’’ Gabrielle demanded.

  ‘‘What if the Challenge ends up a duel to the death?’’ DuQuesne pointed out. ‘‘Might be worth giving up whatever you’d lose in the challenge to keep from dying, or seeing one of your friends die.’’ She saw Gabrielle nod in understanding.

  ‘‘So what Orphan had told us was that one of the most common strategies is to set up Challenges to be refused, so that the real person behind it could then put forth the third Challenge and come out of it with what they were after. I thought it would be a real bad idea to put us in a position where someone else could back us into a corner, so I decided to shortcut the tactic and accept.’’

  ‘‘Unfortunately,’’ Orphan said, ‘‘that is also another common tactic—to prey upon those who are cautious in the other way.’’

  ‘‘Yeah. I kinda figured that out,’’ she said with barely restrained sarcasm. ‘‘So as soon as I accept, the guy says ‘So be it! I then present to you our representative in this Challenge,’ and that son of a bitch Sethrik steps around the corner, and I swear, if he were human he’d have been wearing a grin about a yard across.’’

  ‘‘They can do that? Choose other representatives? What’s to stop everyone from choosing the most dangerous people to represent them?’’ Simon looked disturbed and worried—the way he tried not to look too much at her, she guessed he was mostly worried about her.

  ‘‘Two things, in truth.’’ Dr. Relgof answered. ‘‘First, of course, the Challenger do
es not choose all of the conditions of the Challenge; the major type of Challenge is chosen by the Challenged. So unless you can be certain as to the skills and choices of your opponent, any proxy is something of a risk.

  ‘‘More importantly, however, is that the one who actually meets the Challenge is the one who receives the benefit.’’

  ‘‘Oh, my.’’ Gabrielle said. ‘‘You mean, if I were to issue a Challenge to, oh, those nasty Molothos and I had Orphan be my representative—’’

  ‘‘—then upon winning I could, in fact, take for myself and the Liberated the prize that I was ostensibly gaining for you. Yes.’’

  ‘‘Of course, since this was pretty obviously a Blessed set-up, that wouldn’t have been an issue. The stooges never expected to get the prize—they were just looking for an opportunity to pick enough of a fight to trigger a legal excuse for a Challenge.’’

  ‘‘So,’’ DuQuesne said slowly, as though he was afraid of the answer, ‘‘what is it that you’ve challenged them to?’’

  ‘‘I hadn’t made up my mind yet,’’ Ariane said with a sudden smile. But I have now. ‘‘Since it was our first official Challenge, and because I think Sethrik’s pretty damn sure he has the knowledge and skill edge in most things, they gave me a little time to talk to you and think about it. With one stipulation: that I, personally, am the one to actually participate. I did counter that with the requirement that Sethrik himself be the one in on the other side.’’

  DuQuesne looked up sharply. ‘‘I don’t like this one tiny little bit, Captain.’’ Is there more than just professional concern behind that voice? Am I crazy to even think it? And even if there was, should I even pay attention to it? ‘‘Sethrik’s got almost all the cards here.’’

  ‘‘That’s a very accurate assessment, Dr. DuQuesne.’’ Even Orphan’s translated voice was somber. ‘‘I feel somewhat responsible for this, as the Blessed would undoubtedly not care much about you were it not for me. But . . . Captain Austin, I dislike counseling retreat, yet Sethrik is a terribly formidable being; he is the current leading agent of the Blessed, the chosen representative of the Minds, and they can—without manifesting full artificial intelligence—provide him with considerable knowledge and skill in many or all fields of endeavor.’’

  One of the green balls of light appeared. Ariane smiled at the others. ‘‘I appreciate the concern . . . but I really think I can handle this one.’’

  ‘‘Ariane Austin of Humanity, you have had time to consider,’’ the little sphere said, in Sethrik’s voice. ‘‘I ask that you either select the nature of our Challenge, or concede and prepare to pay the price of that concession. How do you answer this Challenge, Captain Austin?’’

  She felt her grin broaden, and saw Steve’s eyes suddenly go wide with understanding, as she answered. ‘‘I will accept your Challenge, Sethrik. And the nature of that Challenge will be . . . ’’

  DuQuesne, never slow on the uptake, let out an abrupt chortle of comprehension, as she finished,

  ‘‘ . . . single-seat space obstacle racing.’’

  Chapter 47

  A glittering double-headed arrow, with a curved cabin section in the center, slid to a halt in the polished landing/launch bay. Barely had the movement ceased when DuQuesne saw the top hatch pop open and Ariane vaulted from the pilot’s cabin. Carl was already in motion, running forward from his support and maintenance station.

  ‘‘Yee-ha!’’ Ariane whooped, a sound so joyful that DuQuesne couldn’t help but grin; he and Simon started forward, as Carl caught Ariane up in a hug that spun her around.

  ‘‘I like the enthusiasm,’’ Simon said, ‘‘but it seems a bit overmuch, given that we haven’t even gotten to the race yet.’’

  ‘‘But now I know I can win this race, Simon,’’ Ariane answered. ‘‘This is a sweet, sweet ship, Carl!’’

  ‘‘You looked awfully wobbly at first, Captain,’’ DuQuesne said slowly, a bit reluctant to throw a damper on things. ‘‘In fact, I’d wager money that you just about lost control on that second go-round.’’

  ‘‘Oh, you are so totally right, Marc.’’ The deep blue hair cascaded out of her helmet as she yanked it off. ‘‘But you are also totally wrong.’’

  Carl nodded, smiling. ‘‘You get a brand new ship—especially one like this, for use in a type of race you’ve never been in—you do your best to make it screw up, if you think you can risk it, so that you know what the worst possible failure modes are.’’

  ‘‘And this certainly is a type of race I’ve never been in,’’ Ariane concurred.

  ‘‘And that,’’ DuQuesne said bluntly, ‘‘is what’s got me dancing on pins and needles. We should’ve forced the game to go our way.’’

  ‘‘We already did, Marc.’’ DuQuesne felt a small part of him want to glare in disbelief, because he simply wasn’t used to hearing people talk to him in that tone of voice, that said that he was a worrywart who just didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Sethrik and Ariane, with Orphan and Nyanthus and, sometimes, the Arena itself acting as intermediaries, had spent two days hammering out the details of the Challenge, partly through each making a refining proposal and sometimes outright argument. ‘‘Space racing’’ had at least two, sometimes three, definitions in the Arena, and Sethrik had insisted on it taking place in Arena conditions (i.e., not vacuum)—especially since her careful and deliberate specification of ‘‘single-seat’’ meant that he would be flying alone. Ariane had noticed that the Blessed never seemed to go anywhere alone, and Orphan had confirmed that there was a constant low-level link between Blessed that helped take some of the burden of being separated from the Minds. Her condition was going to negate that, place additional stress on him, and so Sethrik insisted on this as compensation. Ariane, for her part, had been equally adamant that it had to take place at least partially in null-gravity, and after considerable debate, both sides had agreed to make a course which would offer challenges familiar to both sides, but whose aggregate was unfamiliar to either side.

  As Ariane had no Human vessels at all appropriate to an Arena-focused race, Nyanthus had proposed—with Orphan supporting—that both contestants use essentially identical vessels (with controls modified to fit their expectations) from some other race’s base designs, so that neither would be any more or less familiar with the equipment. This was one point that Sethrik had balked at, but been overruled on; clearly he’d hoped to use a Blessed-designed racing vehicle and gain that advantage over Ariane. The race, therefore, would be performed in modified Vengeance scout-combat units called thysta, roughly translating to some kind of venomous fast-striking creature—cobra, viper, something of that nature.

  The course as plotted would be at some location in the Arena (for which the Arena would provide passage to and from) which featured both gravity and non-gravity portions, with multiple obstacles of various types to maneuver around and through. The exact details of the course were being withheld until the time of the race.

  ‘‘You’re a space obstacle race expert, Ariane.’’ Simon clearly shared DuQuesne’s concern. ‘‘This race is . . . not space racing, as we know it.’’

  ‘‘Exactly my point,’’ said DuQuesne. ‘‘This is atmospheric racing all the way, although the lack of gravity in some portions will sure throw some weird curveballs at you. These clowns have been flying in the Arena for, what, thousands of years?’’

  ‘‘Marc, Simon, thank you for your worry, but please, stop it.’’ Ariane’s voice was as confident as he’d ever heard it, a calm contralto that was only somewhat like the worried, duty-ridden Captain Austin that was her usual face to the world. ‘‘You don’t even get to space obstacle racing until you’ve shown you can beat the hell out of almost anyone in atmosphere racing. I won my first air obstacle race—the Texas Aero Unlimited—when I was fifteen, Simon, and I was racing against some guys more than ten years older than me who’d won that same race before. Sure, I’ve lost races, and I could lose this one—’’

>   ‘‘—but don’t you bet on that side, guys,’’ Carl Edlund interrupted smoothly, ‘‘because you are looking at the lady who was almost unbeaten for two years in a row in the Solar Unlimited League, and whose overall record looks to beat out Hawke’s—the only guy who beat her those two years—by the time she’s thirty. It’s been my privilege to work with her for almost five years now, and let me tell you, she’s just the best there is.’’

  Ariane blushed. ‘‘There’s no way I’m beating Hawke.’’

  ‘‘Well, maybe not now that we’re missing the best part of the season. Then again, he isn’t racing in this league.’’

  Seeing her smile in answer to Carl’s point, and the way she stood casually leaning against the sharp-edged surface of her ship sent a strange pang through DuQuesne. I’ve never seen her like this. She doesn’t need anyone’s help here. She knows what she has to do, and she’s going to do it, and she’s as sure as anything that she can do it. This is her element.

  God, she looks good like that. Confident, ready to take on the world, and ready to go right through anyone who gets in her way.

  As soon as he thought it, he realized how terribly dangerous that thought was. He could also see that Simon felt the same way. That’s a direction you do not want to go, Marc. Absolutely not. There’s no chance of anything that would be able to last. Too dangerous for her. And nothing that doesn’t last is going to work for me. The elegant Dr. Sandrisson was at least a reasonably worthy match for her, and not a dangerous one.