by John Shirley
“Piss off,” she said, mustering her braveness.
“You wobbling tub of guts, don’t you dare speak to me that way,” he said, shouting right in her ear. The Baang fell silent and everyone looked at her. The Pakistani who ran the Baang was on his phone, no doubt calling the coppers, and that meant that her parents would discover where she’d been and then—
“I’m talking to you, girl,” he said. “You disgusting lump of suet—Christ, it makes me wanta puke to look at you. You ever had a boyfriend? How’d he shag you—did he roll yer in flour and look for the wet spot?”
She reeled back, then stood. She drew her arm back and slapped him, as hard as she could. The boys in the Baang laughed and went whoooooo! He purpled and balled his fists and she backed away from him. The imprint of her fingers stood out on his cheek.
He bridged the distance between them with a quick step and punched her, in the belly, and the air whooshed out of her and she fell into another player, who pushed her away, so she ended up slumped against the wall, crying.
The mean boy was there, right in front of her, and she could smell the chili crisps on his breath. “You disgusting whore—” he began and she kneed him square in the nadgers, hard as she could, and he screamed like a little girl and fell backwards. She picked up her schoolbag and ran for the door, her chest heaving, her face streaked with tears.
“Anda, dear, there’s a phone call for you.”
Her eyes stung. She’d been lying in her darkened bedroom for hours now, snuffling and trying not to cry, trying not to look at the empty desk where her PC used to live.
Her da’s voice was soft and caring, but after the silence of her room, it sounded like a rusting hinge.
“Anda?”
She opened her eyes. He was holding a cordless phone, silhouetted against the open doorway.
“Who is it?”
“Someone from your game, I think,” he said. He handed her the phone.
“Hullo?”
“Hullo, chicken.” It had been a year since she’d heard that voice, but she recognized it instantly.
“Liza?”
“Yes.”
Anda’s skin seemed to shrink over her bones. This was it: expelled. Her heart felt like it was beating once per second, time slowed to a crawl.
“Hullo, Liza.”
“Can you tell me what happened today?”
She did, stumbling over the details, back-tracking and stuttering. She couldn’t remember, exactly—did Lucy move on Raymond and Anda asked her to stop and then Lucy attacked her? Had Anda attacked Lucy first? It was all a jumble. She should have saved a screenmovie and taken it with her, but she couldn’t have taken anything with her, she’d run out—
“I see. Well it sounds like you’ve gotten yourself into quite a pile of poo, haven’t you, my girl?”
“I guess so,” Anda said. Then, because she knew that she was as good as expelled, she said, “I don’t think it’s right to kill them, those girls. All right?”
“Ah,” Liza said. “Well, funny you should mention that. I happen to agree. Those girls need our help more than any of the girls anywhere in the game. The Fahrenheits’ strength is that we are cooperative—it’s another way that we’re better than the boys. We care. I’m proud that you took a stand when you did—glad I found out about this business.”
“You’re not going to expel me?”
“No, chicken, I’m not going to expel you. I think you did the right thing—”
That meant that Lucy would be expelled. Fahrenheit had killed Fahrenheit—something had to be done. The rules had to be enforced. Anda swallowed hard.
“If you expel Lucy, I’ll quit,” she said, quickly, before she lost her nerve.
Liza laughed. “Oh, chicken, you’re a brave thing, aren’t you? No one’s being expelled, fear not. But I wanta talk to this Raymond of yours.”
Anda came home from remedial hockey sweaty and exhausted, but not as exhausted as the last time, nor the time before that. She could run the whole length of the pitch twice now without collapsing—when she’d started out, she could barely make it halfway without having to stop and hold her side, kneading her loathsome podge to make it stop aching. Now there was noticeably less podge, and she found that with the ability to run the pitch came the freedom to actually pay attention to the game, to aim her shots, to build up a degree of accuracy that was nearly as satisfying as being really good in-game.
Her da knocked at the door of her bedroom after she’d showered and changed. “How’s my girl?”
“Revising,” she said, and hefted her maths book at him.
“Did you have a fun afternoon on the pitch?”
“You mean ‘did my head get trod on?’ ”
“Did it?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I did more treading than getting trodden on.” The other girls were really fat, and they didn’t have a lot of team skills. Anda had been to war: she knew how to depend on someone and how to be depended upon.
“That’s my girl.” He pretended to inspect the paint-work around the light switch. “Been on the scales this week?”
She had, of course: the school nutritionist saw to that, a morning humiliation undertaken in full sight of all the other fatties.
“Yes, Da.”
“And—?”
“I’ve lost a stone,” she said. A little more than a stone, actually. She had been able to fit into last year’s jeans the other day.
She hadn’t been in the sweets-shop in a month. When she thought about sweets, it made her think of the little girls in the sweatshop. Sweatshop, sweetshop. The sweets shop man sold his wares close to the school because little girls who didn’t know better would be tempted by them. No one forced them, but they were kids and grownups were supposed to look out for kids.
Her da beamed at her. “I’ve lost three pounds myself,” he said, holding his tum. “I’ve been trying to follow your diet, you know.”
“I know, Da,” she said. It embarrassed her to discuss it with him.
The kids in the sweatshops were being exploited by grownups, too. It was why their situation was so impossible: the adults who were supposed to be taking care of them were exploiting them.
“Well, I just wanted to say that I’m proud of you. We both are, your mum and me. And I wanted to let you know that I’ll be moving your PC back into your room tomorrow. You’ve earned it.”
Anda blushed pink. She hadn’t really expected this. Her fingers twitched over a phantom game-controller.
“Oh, Da,” she said. He held up his hand.
“It’s all right, girl. We’re just proud of you.”
She didn’t touch the PC the first day, nor the second. The kids in the game—she didn’t know what to do about them. On the third day, after hockey, she showered and changed and sat down and slipped the headset on.
“Hello, Anda.”
“Hi, Sarge.”
Lucy had known the minute she entered the game, which meant that she was still on Lucy’s buddy-list. Well, that was a hopeful sign.
“You don’t have to call me that. We’re the same rank now, after all.”
Anda pulled down a menu and confirmed it: she’d been promoted to Sergeant during her absence. She smiled.
“Gosh,” she said.
“Yes, well, you earned it,” Lucy said. “I’ve been talking to Raymond a lot about the working conditions in the factory, and, well—” She broke off. “I’m sorry, Anda.”
“Me too, Lucy.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she said.
They went adventuring, running some of the game’s standard missions together. It was fun, but after the kind of campaigning they’d done before, it was also kind of pale and flat.
“It’s horrible, I know,” Anda said. “But I miss it.”
“Oh thank God,” Lucy said. “I thought I was the only one. It was fun, wasn’t it? Big fights, big stakes.”
“Well, poo,” Anda said. “I don’t wanna be bor
ed for the rest of my life. What’re we gonna do?”
“I was hoping you knew.”
She thought about it. The part she’d loved had been going up against grownups who were not playing the game, but gaming it, breaking it for money. They’d been worthy adversaries, and there was no guilt in beating them, either.
“We’ll ask Raymond how we can help,” she said.
“I want them to walk out—to go on strike,” he said. “It’s the only way to get results: band together and withdraw your labor.” Raymond’s voice had a thick Mexican accent that took some getting used to, but his English was very good—better, in fact, than Lucy’s.
“Walk out in-game?” Lucy said.
“No,” Raymond said. “That wouldn’t be very effective. I want them to walk out in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. I’ll call the press in, we’ll make a big deal out of it. We can win—I know we can.”
“So what’s the problem?” Anda said.
“The same problem as always. Getting them organized. I thought that the game would make it easier: we’ve been trying to get these girls organized for years: in the sewing shops, and the toy factories, but they lock the doors and keep us out and the girls go home and their parents won’t let us talk to them. But in the game, I thought I’d be able to reach them—”
“But the bosses keep you away?”
“I keep getting killed. I’ve been practicing my swordfighting, but it’s so hard—”
“This will be fun,” Anda said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Lucy said.
“To an in-game factory. We’re your new bodyguards.” The bosses hired some pretty mean mercs, Anda knew. She’d been one. They’d be fun to wipe out.
Raymond’s character spun around on the screen, then planted a kiss on Anda’s cheek. Anda made her character give him a playful shove that sent him sprawling.
“Hey, Lucy, go get us a couple BFGs, OKAY?”
In martial arts, the importance of Zen (primarily for practitioners of the Japanese school) and Taoism (Chinese) have often been noted. They affect both the mind and the body. As the author commented on this tale: “Judo and Zen are a discipline and a philosophy grounded in the human experience. I was interested in exploring how they might interact, translate, and transcend with a nonhuman race that knows illusion and is in fact its master.” All the editor can add is this: Once she was—by far—the least trained, least athletic person visiting a karate dojo. The sensei asked her to break a board with the side of her hand. Of course, she was not successful. The sensei said, “I know you. This is only a matter of the mind. You can do this. Now. Break the board.” She did. Without injuring her hand. No trick. In her world of the time—mostly that of easily impressionable elementary-school-age boys—she became, briefly, a legend: the mom who could break boards with her mind.
Listen
Joel Richards
Kata.
Cameron moved slowly and fluidly on an unseen path. Each movement flowed from the one before, yet there was no clear line of demarcation between where one left off and the next began. But there was precision.
One step. Two. Turn and pivot.
But no one to throw. Or to throw him.
Cameron switched his mindset from judo to karate, and wished that he had trained more in that art. He had only a white belt’s skill and complexity to work from. Still, a karateka could punch and kick at chimeras and feel fulfilled. Judo required an uke to offer resistance and a tori to counter throw. There were no other judokas on this world.
But somehow, improbably, there was a karateka. The air shimmered before Cameron, a heat refraction, perhaps. Cameron smelled the straw of Earthside tatami beneath him.
He looked up to see the serene features of Hideo Nakajima, his old sensei, advancing toward him, his faded black belt and its embroidery before him in perfect detail to the smallest thread.
The sensei advanced deliberately, with none of the speed that he could produce against a high ranked opponent in free combat. He launched a series of blows. Cameron blocked, pivoted and delivered a roundhouse kick. In a movement of grace and economy, the black belt evaded the blow and landed a sidekick of his own. Cameron saw his sensei’s foot meet his gi, but he felt nothing. His mind raced back to that first series of blows that he had blocked, his mind registering what he had ignored in the instinctive transition to counter kick. No impact. He had blocked nothing.
He turned to face his partner and found himself alone.
Off to the side stood the head of the diplomatic mission, the consul. Beside him was a visiting Alcaidan, one Cameron had not seen before. Or had he?
The Alcaidan smiled and turned away.
The consul folded his hands neatly on the desk before him and looked at them with near respect. How many forms they had shuffled, how many memos they had signed!
“Peter,” he said with something of a sigh, “It relieves and gratifies me that our hosts have finally extended a social invitation to us. It pains me that it has been extended to you. But so be it.”
Cameron waited, but the consul’s gaze had once more retreated to his manicured and immobile hands.
“An invitation,” Cameron stated, with no interrogatory inflection.
“They invite you to an interview. If you comport yourself satisfactorily—whatever that may mean—then you will be invited to a Hunt.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” The consul raised his eyebrows. “There’s a lot I don’t see. What these Alcaidans are really like. They’re shapeshifters, but what do they really look like when they’re not trying to make some sort of impression on us? How do they think? Why do they invent and have us process endless forms and have us carry on to little purpose? My job has been all idle paper pushing, even—I’ll be frank—by my standards. And I’ve pushed a lot of meaningless paper in my fight to the top of the tree.”
“Very Savoyard,” Cameron observed.
“Yes, Peter, I do understand my own allusion, even if I need help with yours. We’re not all the fools you think us. Just frustrated and worn out. We’ve got to oversee the scientists researching this planet’s botanicals. Pharmaceuticals of great value, I understand. What we can give back to the Alcaidans I don’t know, but I’m supposed to find something in case they ask for compensation. Perhaps this Hunt will give you some insight.” The consul looked at Cameron’s expectant face. “Or do you have one already?”
Cameron regarded the consul soberly. “Straw mats and judo gis.”
The consul opened his mouth, then closed it. He silently waved Cameron out.
Ansari Farhal was this year’s Master of the Hunt and therefore inheritor of the Alcaidan title of kir. Kir—an Earthside drink of cassis and wine. Very cool and refreshing, as Cameron remembered it. Ansari kir looked cool. Refreshing, however, was not the word. Noble was more it. Noble in purpose, not in effete decay.
Ansari’s eyes glittered. His clothes glittered. He shimmered as he moved. His motions were economical, smooth, purposeful. Nothing wasted. He used his hands, did not study them. He motioned Cameron to a chair.
“Would you like to join our Hunt?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you know what it is, what is its quarry, what it is about?”
“No.”
Ansari kir turned from his desk to the window and looked out on the forest that began beyond his walls. No tended greensward, no formal gardens to the estate of this nobleman. A local Schwarzwald seemed his estate.
Cameron studied his profile and thought of Roman coins.
Ansari kir turned back to look at Cameron full face. “We come to a gorge with an untried bridge over turbulent rapids. Someone must try the bridge—or the quarry escapes. You or a companion of the Hunt. How do you choose?”
Cameron turned and looked about him in studied scrutiny.
“I see no bridge, no rapids, no companions.”
Ansari kir nodded. “You’ll do.”
“That answer did it?” the consul asked.
“Seems so.”
The consul shook his head. “I don’t see that this tells us much. I don’t understand the mode of thinking, the allusion. Perhaps that’s why I wasn’t chosen. But, Peter—would you explain?”
“Explaining spoils it,” Cameron said, then relented at the sight of the consul’s visage. Nothing noble there. This was no longer the bureaucratic superior who had formerly plagued him, his officiousness to be combated with irreverent flippancy. “It’s self-referential. The answer is part of the question. The question is rhetorical. All their questions are. And this was an interior joke, acknowledging our own idiom. A bridge that shouldn’t be crossed till we get to it. Perhaps we never will.”
Silence from the consul.
“They’re telling us to stop making elaborate contingency plans,” Cameron added gently. “Stay in the moment.”
The Hunt was gathering in the courtyard when Cameron arrived, but Ansari kir disengaged himself from the preparations to meet his offworld guest. Glass in hand and with a lazy camaraderie that transcended noblesse oblige, he placed his arms about Cameron’s shoulder and escorted him up the broad steps and into his hall. A great punch bowl of crystal rested on a roughhewn trestle table covered by a damask cloth. A pleasing set of contrasts. Heaped on silver trays was an array of rolls and loaves, some with warmth rising from them. Several sportsmen busied themselves with cutting the breads and layering them with spreads from nearby bowls. All turned toward the master of the hall and the Hunt as he neared with Cameron in tow, and all raised their glasses in salutation.
“Mr. Peter Cameron,” Ansari kir announced. He stepped back and raised his glass. “Our new companion of the Hunt!”
All the company swung glasses to lip in graceful parabolic arcs. The nearest took a crystal goblet chased in silver, filled it from the bowl and extended it to Cameron.
“The Hunt!” Cameron toasted. “And the Field!”
To an approving murmur all drank again. Cameron as well.
“Drink up and eat, gentlemen,” Ansari kir said. “We mount up in ten tecors.”
In that time, about fifteen minutes by his reckoning, Cameron learned the names to a dozen faces and had eaten a hunt breakfast that would have done for dinner at many an Earthside inn.