Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The Ansaru team managed to capture an Immerle flagball and dunk it into their goal hoop, then fifty seconds later Xante snatched the second Ansaru flagball. The arena stabilized, and both teams bounced gently down to the floor.

  “Two minutes,” Alexandre announced.

  Dellian and the rest of the team went into a delighted huddle. Getting the first point was always a good sign, and it demoralized the opposing team. Tilliana and Ellici started telling them everything they’d done wrong. They barely had time to snatch a gulp of juice before the referees called them back to play.

  The four flagballs went zipping high into the arena. Alexandre’s whistle blew.

  Immerle was up 11–7, and playing the next point, when things changed. The arena was producing centrifugal gravity at right angles to the axis—which Dellian always hated—when the hurdles themselves started tumbling.

  “What the Saints?” Xante exclaimed in panic as he bounced off a moving surface in a completely unexpected direction.

  Dellian just laughed in delight. The lights flashed violet, and the arena shifted again; it had been barely thirty seconds since the last shift.

  “Concentrate, for Saints’ sake!” Tilliana yelled furiously, as a flailing Janc missed the Ansaru flagball he’d been aiming to snatch. He careered into a hurdle, whose rotation flung him away toward the arena’s center point.

  Dellian glided toward a hurdle, manipulating his limbs carefully. His cohort bundle flexed responsively, and he could tell which surface they were going to land on, how it would be angled. He altered fractionally, and munc legs bent accordingly. The bounce propelled him straight up toward the Ansaru flagball. Four munc hands reached out as if they were lifting a trophy in victory.

  Yirella sailed across his trajectory and snatched the flagball, curling around to land square on a hurdle.

  “Too slow,” she chided, laughing—and bounced.

  Admiration for her agility mingled with the annoyance of being beaten to the flagball, Dellian studied the tumbling hurdle he was now heading for and judged the rotation almost right. He bounced to follow Yirella down, ready to provide support against any Ansaru intercept.

  Two Ansaru players tried. But the moving hurdles were an unexpected complication for them, too. Both missed, swishing ineffectually behind Yirella as she flew true toward the goal hoop below.

  Violet light flashed again.

  “Oh, come on,” Dellian groaned. If the arena kept this up, it would take them hours to get the final points. And he was already tired.

  He could see from the course Yirella was on that she only had one more hurdle bounce planned out, which would put her directly on the floor. Then he caught sight of Ansaru’s number eight going for a last-minute intercept. The boy was good, he admitted grudgingly as he watched his munc bundle smack into a hurdle and break apart in a complex slingshot-spin that transferred a lot of kinetic energy to him. Number eight soared out of his collapsing cohort, alone and at a speed that startled Dellian.

  Things came together in his mind as he examined number eight’s trajectory: that the boy would have to slow down, because to strike anything at that speed would hurt, maybe even break some bones. He couldn’t slow because there was no hurdle close by to bounce off and transfer momentum. The way he flew, with arms thrust out above his head, and hands clenched into fists, that was deliberate, calculated to injure Yirella. Then there was the sullen resentment number eight had shown throughout the game when Yirella scored a point, and she’d got six of Immerle’s total. That was back with a vengeance.

  It’s not the flagball he’s going for, Dellian knew. His arms jerked around, hands in a grasping motion. The muncs reacted instantly, elongating the bundle shape. One of the muncs hit the side of a hurdle, managing to grab an edge for a brief moment. It was enough. The hurdle’s rotational velocity was transferred through the cohort, and they slung Dellian away.

  Now he was the one going far too fast.

  “What—?” Tilliana gasped. “No! Yi, Yi, look out!”

  Dellian’s elbow punched into number eight’s side, and the two of them rebounded, veering sharply away from Yirella. The force of the impact dazed him as something like fire engulfed his arm. Somewhere close by he heard his target cry out in pain and fury. They were both twirling around each other like twin stars bound in a single orbit. The arena’s lights strobed scarlet as a siren went off.

  Dellian hit a surface hard enough to knock the breath out of him. It must have been the wall, because he was immediately slithering down to thud onto the floor. Number eight landed on top of him.

  A fist struck Dellian’s leg. He shoved back. Both of them were yelling wordlessly. Hands scrabbled at each other. Then Dellian made a fist and drove it into number eight’s stomach. The boy let out a howl of anger and pain, and immediately head-butted Dellian. Their helmets made it pretty ineffectual, but the adrenaline was pumping now. Dellian tried to chop his opponent’s neck.

  “Stop it!” Tilliana and Ellici were both shrieking in his ears.

  Then both cohorts of muncs arrived and jumped on the wrestling boys. Yirella was shouting. Small fingers clawed at the boys; high-pitched squeals of distress rose. Little pointed teeth snapped viciously. Dellian hit out twice more as they writhed around, only to receive a punch that dislodged his helmet, squashing it into his nose. Blood started to flow out of a nostril. No pain, just rage. He brought a knee up with all his force, feeling it sink deep into his enemy’s abdomen.

  That was when Alexandre and the other referee arrived. Hands closed around the snarling, kicking boys, prying them apart. The scrum of muncs was going berserk, both cohorts tearing into each other. It took another couple of minutes for them to break apart and cluster anxiously around their beloved masters. By then Dellian was sitting heavily on the arena floor as it spun up to full gravity, gripping his nose to try to stanch the unsettling quantity of blood pouring out. Number eight was curled up, hugging his stomach, his dark complexion now sickly pale as he drew juddering breaths. The two teams had grouped together on opposite sides of the antagonists, staring belligerently at each other. Even the girls had joined them.

  “I think the match is now officially over,” Alexandre said firmly. “Boys, back to the pavilion, please.”

  The Ansaru referee was also ordering hir boys out of the arena. Alexandre consulted with hir for a moment, the two of them nodding together and keeping their voices low as adults always did when a serious infraction had been committed. “And no team tea,” they both announced.

  Dellian walked slowly through the portal, emerging blinking into the bright afternoon sunlight searing over the estate’s pitches. Boys from the younger yeargroups were playing football, oblivious to the drama that had just transpired in the arena. The normality of the scene somehow made Dellian feel sheepish.

  The Ansaru referee was walking with hir team, keeping them in line as they marched off toward the guest team’s changing pavilion. Several of the boys glowered at Dellian. He stiffened, wondering how far he should take it…

  An arm came down on his shoulder. “To Zagreus with them,” Orellt said. He raised his voice: “We won! Twelve to seven.”

  The Ansaru team switched their glares to Orellt.

  “Enough,” Alexandre snapped behind them.

  Orellt grinned unrepentantly. “Saints, but you got him good,” he confided to Dellian.

  Dellian managed a weak grin of his own. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “No, you didn’t,” Ellici said.

  Both boys looked around and up at the girl looming over them, their expressions locked into guilt. “You put no thought into it,” she continued. “That’s tactically stupid. You should have planned how to strike. People can be incapacitated with a single blow. All you had to decide on was the severity of the damage you wanted to inflict.”

  “I didn’t have time, it was too fast,” D
ellian protested. “He deliberately tried to hurt Yirella.”

  “It was nice that you thought to protect her, I suppose, but the Saints know the way you did it was stupid,” Ellici said. “Next time either shout her a warning or be more forceful when you attack.”

  “More forceful,” Orellt said softly in wonder as Ellici dropped back to talk to Tilliana.

  “Not a bad idea,” Dellian admitted.

  “I think you were forceful enough with him. Alexandre is going to chuck you into the world’s deepest hole. And then Principal Jenner will fill it in—probably with poop.”

  “Maybe.” Dellian shrugged. He looked around at his cohort. They all had bruises and scratches, and two were limping. “I’m proud of you guys.”

  The muncs nuzzled up against him, each wanting the reassurance of touch. He stroked the glossy fur on their heads, smiling fondly. Dellian glanced around for Yirella, the one person who hadn’t thanked him or even said anything. She was walking behind Tilliana and Ellici, her face devoid of expression.

  As if nothing’s happened, he thought, or too much.

  In the home team changing pavilion, the boys took their muncs away to clean up first. Sports clothes were thrown into the laundry hopper, then the cohorts showered, soaping then sluicing their pelts before standing on the air-dryer where they larked about under the warm jets. Finally they put on their everyday tunics—simple sleeveless one-pieces that went over the head. Dellian had chosen a fabric of orange-and-green stripes for his cohort, which stood out from the blander choices of his yearmates.

  Once the muncs were done, he showered himself. Standing under the hot water, he suddenly felt profoundly tired. His nose was swelling badly now, and it was aching. His arm felt horribly stiff and a little numb. Bruises were making themselves known. The brief fight replayed in his mind, and, strangely, he began to appreciate Ellici’s comments. It was all dumb instinct, no thought, no strategy. Hit and be hit. “Stupid,” he told himself.

  Uranti, the munc-tech, was waiting in hir clinic. Arena matches always produced a variety of injuries and bruises among the cohorts that sie patched up. This time Uranti’s head shook in bemusement as Dellian brought his cohort in.

  “My my, what have we got here?” sie said with acid sarcasm. “Am I tending your cohort or you?”

  Dellian stared at the floor. Uranti was female cycling, which Dellian always found more intimidating than when sie was in a male cycle. He didn’t know why; he just did. When the grown-ups were female it somehow managed to make any guilt bite deeper. With a groan he remembered Principal Jenner was also in hir female cycle now.

  * * *

  —

  The clan’s dormitory domes were all clustered together in the middle of the Immerle estate—grand white marble buildings with tall arches around the base, and inset with slender, dark windows. After he finished in the clinic, Dellian started off toward them through the lush gardens, but when he was still a hundred meters away, he caught sight of the figures racing around the thick base columns, heard the chatter and laughter of his clanmates—all so perfectly normal. He promptly turned off the path and wandered through the tall old trees (great for climbing), winding up in one of the sunken lawns, surrounded by high hedges of pink sweet-scented flowers. There was a stone-lined pond in the center, with two fountains playing in the middle. He sat on the edge and watched the long gold-and-white koi carp slide about below the surface, hiding from the curious muncs under big lily pads.

  Right now he just didn’t feel like company. He knew his yearmates would be gathering in the lounge, gossiping about the match. By now the news of the fight in the arena would have spread to every yeargroup. The clan would be talking about it for days; all the younger kids would ask him a thousand questions.

  But I did the right thing, he told himself. He was going to hurt Yirella.

  It wasn’t long before he heard someone coming down the stone steps behind him. His muncs all turned around, but he kept staring at the fish; he was pretty sure who it was. All the clan kids reckoned the adults who looked after them could mainline the genten that managed the estate; it was how they kept track of where everyone was the whole time. Because sure as Zagreus this wasn’t a random encounter.

  “Something on your mind?” Alexandre asked.

  Dellian suppressed a grin at being right. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “Huh?” Dellian twisted around to find a surprisingly lively smile on hir lips. “But…we were fighting.”

  “Ah, but why were you fighting?”

  “If he’d hit Yirella at that speed he would have hurt her. It was deliberate, I was sure of it.”

  “Okay, that’s good enough for me.”

  “Really?”

  Alexandre’s arm swept around. “Why do we have a fence around the estate?”

  “To keep the beasts out,” Dellian replied automatically.

  “Right. If you haven’t learned just how unsafe Juloss is by now, you never will. The enemy is out there, Dellian; they search for humans constantly. And because we have to be silent, we never know how successful they are. We live in a dangerous galaxy, and it may be that Juloss is home to the last free humans. You have to look out for each other to survive. That’s the real lesson you’re learning here. And you practiced it today. I’m pleased about that.”

  “So…does that mean I’m not in detention?”

  “Very calculating, Dellian. No, you’re not in detention. But you don’t get a reward, either. Not yet.”

  “Yet?”

  Hir smile grew wider. “We’ll leave that for when you get to the real battle games in your senior years. For now, you need to learn about strategy and teamwork, which is what the arena tournaments are all about. So let’s concentrate on getting that right first, shall we?”

  “Okay!” He grinned, and his cohort began reflecting his relief, smiling and flapping their hands in contentment. “Good good,” they cooed.

  “Now get yourself back to the dormitory. You need to eat something before afternoon class. And the longer you put off talking to your clanmates, the longer they will want to talk.”

  * * *

  —

  The afternoon class for Dellian’s year was held in the Five Saints Hall, which sat at the western end of the estate, a good five-minute walk from the dormitory domes. He always enjoyed the stories they heard in the Five Saints Hall, because they were always about the Five Saints, who one day would defeat the enemy.

  “How’s the nose?” Janc asked as they sauntered along the palm-lined path. The fronds were just stirring above their heads, a sign of the evening breeze starting its daily journey along the massive valley from the sea.

  Dellian just managed not to touch it in reflex. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Saints, I still can’t believe you didn’t get detention!”

  “Yeah, me too.” He saw the three girls up ahead, keeping together like they always did. “Catch you later.”

  The girls turned as one when he called out. Tilliana and Ellici gave Yirella knowing looks. For a moment Dellian thought she might not stop, or worse, the others would wait with her. Thankfully, they walked on.

  “Sorry,” he said as he caught up.

  “For what?”

  He looked up into her heart-shaped face, troubled that she was treating him like this. They normally got on so well. Girls were all destined to be smart—a lot smarter than boys, Alexandre had explained; it was how their genes were sequenced. But he just knew Yirella was going to be the smartest of them all. Having her as a special friend was something he didn’t want to lose. “Are you angry with me?”

  She sighed. “No. I know why you did it, and I am grateful. Really. It’s just…it was very violent. Saints, Dellian, you were both going so fast when you hit! Then there was fighting. Your nose was bleeding. I didn’t…It was awful.”


  “Ellici said I should be more forceful next time.”

  “Ellici is right. You can debilitate with a single strike, you know. Then it would all be settled quickly.”

  An image of the boy’s expression inside his helmet at the moment of impact flashed through Dellian’s mind. “I know. Maybe I should learn how.”

  “In three years, we’ll get combat tutorials for the battle games.”

  “I bet you could hack the data now.”

  Her lips twitched. “Of course I could.”

  “Seems funny to be talking about it. Hurting people.”

  “It’s a dangerous universe out there.” She indicated the four-meter-high fence they were approaching. There was only silence outside in the valley’s tangled vegetation, which somehow managed to be even more threatening than when the creatures were on the prowl.

  “So everyone tells us.” He stared through the fence. Twenty-five kilometers away, across the flat expanse of the valley floor, the crystal and silver towers of Afrata rose up amid the lower slopes of the mountains. Even now the old city was impressive, which Dellian found quite sad. No humans had lived in it for forty years. It seemed that every day the verdant vines and creepers had twined their way several more meters up the skyscrapers. The streets had long since been engulfed by wild greenery. And all those fancy apartments were now home to the various predatory animals of Juloss that stalked each other along Afrata’s broken boulevards.

  “Doesn’t make it right,” Dellian said. “Saints, I know we’re all okay and safe living here in the estate. It’s just…I want to be out there!”

  “We’ll get there,” she said sympathetically. “One day.”

  “Ugh, you sound like Principal Jenner. Everything good’s going to happen tomorrow.”

  She smiled. “It is.”

  “I want to walk outside the fence. I want to climb one of those towers. I want to go to the beach and swim in the sea. I want to be on board one of the warships they’re building up there, and fight the enemy.”