by Ted Kosmatka
BLOOD SPORT
She turned to look at him as his car rolled past, and he thought he saw recognition in her eyes. He wondered what crossed through her mind in that moment. Her hair was gray and wild, and in her arms she cradled a big cardboard sign with thick block letters painted in black marker.
FOR THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH
He shook his head. Those wages were paid to all men, sinner and saint alike.
FOR SILAS, the next three days were spent in a whirlwind of activity. He had meetings with regulators by day, dinner parties with dignitaries by evening, and Vidonia by night. Still Vidonia by night, John or no John.
“I met with the president today,” he told her, while they ate chicken wings at midnight in the hotel bar.
“President of what?”
He just looked at her. Took another bite.
“You’re serious.”
“Yep,” he said. “We were at a luncheon together. There were several heads of state there.”
“They’re staying for the competition?”
“Yeah. Most of them are going to spend the entire week here. They were even making friendly wagers.”
“What kind of odds were they laying?”
“Not sure, but I think we’re the favorite.”
“What were they betting?”
“The usual trifles.” He took another bite of chicken wing. “You know, sovereign languages, submarines, space stations.”
She smiled and thumped his shoulder.
“I don’t even want to tell you what language we’ll be speaking if we lose,” he went on. “There must have been a dozen members of Congress there, too. This thing is getting bigger every time.”
“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.”
“It’s turning into something.”
“Into what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a kind of”—Silas paused—“international sociopolitical economic summit.”
“That’s a lot of words. There’s no way you made that up just now.”
“I’d been working on it.” He turned serious. “Actually, that came from a reporter. I’m not sure I know what this is anymore.”
“Any talk of the protesters?”
“They used euphemisms. Mentioned security concerns but nothing specific.” And Silas had been grateful for the euphemisms. He wasn’t up for high-level talks about protester issues. He thought of that sign. Blood Sport. A description Silas was having more and more trouble arguing against.
“Next month, in Monterrey, those guys don’t realize how lucky they have it.”
“Meaning what?”
“Nobody protests the human portion of the Olympics.”
She shrugged. “They don’t compete to the death.”
“The president said something to me. He pulled me aside to ask if we were going to win this thing or not. That’s just how he put it: ‘Are we gonna win this thing?’ ”
“What’s so wrong with that?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it. It was the look he had, though. Like it was important that he hear a yes from me.”
“What did you say?”
“I gave him his yes.”
They finished their wings and took the elevator up to their hotel suite.
He waited until she was naked. “Should I sleep down the hall?” he asked her.
Again, she let her hands be her answer.
Part III
Deluge
Then they gathered the Kings together to the place called Armageddon.
—Revelation, Chapter 16, Verse 16
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Grand Marq was one of the finest and most exclusive hotels in the world. Its triplet towers stood a mere pair of blocks from the Olympic area that dominated the epicenter of the city. To passersby, the Grand Marq’s three reflective spires shone like beacons in the desert sunshine, rising daggerlike into the sky and tapering to points somewhere just beneath the feet of God.
Catering exclusively to high-class clientele, the Marq was designed to get attention: this was shock-and-awe luxury at its finest. Prices started at don’t even ask. The staff worked hard to see that every amenity was available to its guests. But to a man like Silas, who had spent early childhood at the edge waters of the Mississippi, where you sometimes couldn’t tell the end of the swamp from the beginning of the river, and where the people sometimes actually ate what they pulled from the flow of brown water, it seemed like just so much conspicuous consumption.
But this was not to say that Silas wouldn’t take full advantage of the facilities. Even when you could afford to do so, there was a big difference between buying a neural relaxer and using one if it was made available for free. Or so he told himself again as he lay back on the cushions.
He let the technician drone on and on about how the “toxins” were being leached from his muscle tissues. It was funny to him how dependent most of this post-new-age bullshit seemed to be on that particular buzzword. Toxins. As if the electrodes were little suction cups that drained some invisible poison from him that had been accumulating over the course of a hectic day. He knew the neural relaxer worked because it signaled the brain to release its serotonin cache. Then came requiescence, low-grade euphoria. An alcohol buzz without the alcohol, or the hangover. And like alcohol, it could become addictive very quickly, which was another reason not to buy one.
“Please be quiet,” Silas said when the blond technician began talking about the wonders of deep-tissue emulsification. He didn’t want to be rude, but he couldn’t force himself to listen to a single second more of her ridiculous pseudo-medical jargon.
But there was nothing pseudo about the buzz. That came on quick and strong. There was no disorientation, no feeling of drunkenness. Just warmth, contentment. He reminded himself to tell Vidonia about this later. She’d love it.
He floated.
“You have a call, Dr. Williams,” the blonde said.
Silas opened his eyes and saw her holding a small videophone out to him. He hadn’t even heard it ring. When he took it, Ben’s face considered him from the little screen, a line of empty cages sprawling away behind him. He was in the catacombs beneath the arena, and he didn’t look happy.
“Yeah,” Silas said.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I really need you to come down here.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t want to explain over the phone.”
“Why?”
“We need a secure line.”
“Just a hint, then?”
“You won’t believe it.”
“That’s a hint?”
“It’s all the hint you’re getting. Trust me, when you get here, you’ll understand.”
“Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Silas closed the receiver and began plucking off the wires that crisscrossed his arms and legs.
“You shouldn’t do that,” the blonde said, and her look of alarm made her face almost comical. “You need a cool-down period first. There can be problems. The cleansing of your tissues is only partially complete.”
“Sorry, I guess my tissues will have to be a little dirty.”
The elevator seemed to take an eternity as it descended, picking up several groups of passengers in its drop to the lobby. It became immediately clear upon his exit to the street that it would be quicker for him to walk the two blocks than to take a cab. Traffic was gridlocked. Somewhere amid his struggle through the humanity-clogged sidewalks, his headache began. It was subtle at first but gathered force as he walked.
Here and there a face would show a flash of recognition when glancing up at him. A few people pointed. But for the most part, he wasn’t noticed, just a tall man with a pained expression. By the time he reached the arena, the headache was like no other he had ever experienced.
Can a head actually explode?
He flashed his badge to the guards, and they let him through. At the elev
ator he inserted his passkey into the console and pushed B3. Descent again, but this time the motion made him reel with pain. The doors opened, and he followed the dark cement corridor for twenty meters before stepping down a side hall. The familiar zoo smells came again, and if it was possible, his head hurt worse.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Ben whispered, when he saw Silas’s face.
Silas hadn’t realized it was that obvious. “Toxins,” he said.
Ben gave him an incredulous look.
“Don’t worry about it. Tell me what was so important that you dragged me down here like this. And why are you whispering?”
Silas followed Ben’s gaze through the bars to their gladiator. Inside the small enclosure, it looked even bigger than usual, a shining black monster. There was no other word for it.
Its head almost touched the ceiling as it hulked in the back against the iron wall. Two members of their handling crew stood off to the side, arms folded across their chests.
Ben put a hand on Silas’s shoulder and turned his back to the cage, leading them away.
“I think the gladiator can understand what we say,” he said, voice low and soft.
“You think it understands English?”
“Yeah, Silas, I do. I really do.”
“How?”
“I guess it must have picked it up over months of listening to us talk around it. We should have been more careful. We—”
“No, I mean, how do you know it can understand us? Maybe you’re confusing some sort of Pavlovian conditioning for comprehension. Even untrained dogs can learn to associate sounds with food.”
“This isn’t some ringing bell I’m talking about. This thing understands, and I don’t mean just simple words.”
“How do you know?”
“Watch,” Ben said. He turned and walked back to the men standing by the cage. They were young interns from the eastern district cytology schools, and they shared the same sandblasted expression of shock on their faces.
The gladiator moved forward to the edge of the cage. Ben was careful to stay out of arm’s reach.
“Get the zapstick,” he said to the taller intern.
The gladiator moved to the back of the cage again, quickly.
That doesn’t prove a thing, Silas thought. The zapstick had been used as a motivational device by the handlers since their arrival in the city. It was no great leap that the gladiator could have picked up on the word. A golden retriever would have done the same thing.
Ben flashed Silas a look. “Now put the zapstick down,” he said to the intern. “And let’s haul out the feed.”
The gladiator moved to the front of the cage again in anticipation. Its wings bobbed slightly.
Still doesn’t prove anything. It heard “feed” and responded. A simple cue.
The interns hauled out a huge slab of prey food from the supply cart, sharing the red weight of it between them.
“Now, throw the food in the cage.” Ben pronounced each word carefully. “But if the gladiator touches it, use the zapstick.”
The interns heaved the processed-meat slab through the bars, and then one of them picked up the zapstick from the floor. He held the four-foot stick loosely in his hand, just within striking distance of the food.
The gladiator didn’t move.
Its tongue came out of its mouth, and its wings bobbed faster. Its gray eyes crawled over every inch of the meat. But it didn’t make a move.
“Never mind,” Ben said. “Don’t use the zapstick if it eats the food.”
The handler didn’t move, didn’t change his stance in the slightest, but the gladiator rushed forward and scooped the meat up in a taloned hand. It bit a huge chunk free and swallowed it down whole.
The intern with the zapstick moved forward a step, closer to the bars. The creature was easily within striking distance of the electrified rod, but it still didn’t move away. It looked up briefly at Benjamin and Silas, then returned to its meal.
Holy shit.
The four of them stood and watched the gladiator eat. It was gulping down the last mouthful when finally someone broke the silence. “So what do we do now?” Ben asked Silas.
Silas stared through the bars for a long time before saying anything, and when he did speak, his voice was soft. “I don’t know.”
SILAS WAS numb as he walked back to his hotel. This was something he’d never suspected, this level of intelligence in the gladiator. After all these months, he’d thought he was beyond being surprised. By anything. He’d considered himself immune to the emotion. But this new piece of the puzzle had caught him off guard.
He’d long suspected the thing was smart.… But then a great many animals were merely smart. Merely.
Smart was not such a rare commodity in the animal kingdom. Lions, and wolves, and jackals, and even bears all had their own sort of animal cunning. Most predators did. But this was something different. The thing he’d watched in the cage today had understood, and that was a very rare thing, indeed—to understand spoken language. To understand the intricacies of human speech beyond a short list of commands. There was only one animal known that could do that, Homo sapiens, and it had taken quite a long time to develop the knack.
Now that the proof was in front of him, it seemed obvious. Silas wondered how he’d missed it for so long. Had the creature shown any other signs? Had there been clues that Silas was too blind to see?
Silas shook his head, oblivious to the strange looks he got on the crowded street. The thing in the cage had understood, and that shouldn’t have been possible. That was the bottom line. It shouldn’t have been possible. Just as the very existence of the creature shouldn’t have been possible.
Silas had been angry at the commission for months now about his loss of control of the project. He’d grown comfortable with that anger. He’d been frustrated and confused, but until now, he’d always felt that it was still a worthwhile endeavor that he was involved in. Even after Tay was killed, even after the confrontation with Baskov at the funeral, even after he’d lost confidence in the gladiator itself, he’d still believed in the ideals of the Games. He’d still believed he was on the right side of the science. Or at least he’d believed that the science justified the side he was on. And he’d believed the protesters, each and every one of them, were fools. Now he wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t too sure of anything anymore.
Silas entered the lobby of his hotel and crossed to the elevators. The doors dinged open, and two minutes later he was at the door of his suite. He carded himself inside and turned on the light. He went to the window and opened the curtains. The minibar was a gravity well. He felt the pull.
The cap twisted in his hand, and he drank. It was not smooth. It was not good. But that’s what he needed at that moment, a not-good drink. Rough like cordwood. It burned going down.
Silas eyed his watch and did the math. It would be nine P.M. in Colorado. Not too late. He dialed the numbers and listened to rings. On the third ring, his sister answered.
“Hello.”
“Sis,” Silas said. It was all he had to say. “Silas!”
“How are things going?”
“Pretty good,” she said. “We can’t complain.”
“Good.”
“We’ve been watching you on the news.”
“Are they still running the same old picture?”
“The same one,” she said. “You walking out some door with that goofy look on your face.”
“I wish they’d update that. I’ve got at least ten percent more gray in my hair now.”
“That picture’s only a few months old.”
“Exactly.”
“Ah, it must be the pressures of fame aging you before your time.”
“Yeah. The next thing you know, I’ll be walking with a cane and tipping five percent at restaurants.”
“I’ll start checking out nursing homes for you.”
“Don’t put me out to pasture yet. So what are these news shows saying … t
he ones you’ve been watching—anything interesting?”
There was a pause on the line. “You don’t sound good,” his sister said, ignoring the question. That’s how she was. Always concerned and considerate of her big brother.
Silas sighed. “Bad day at the office,” he said.
“Anything you can talk about?”
“No.” Now it was Silas’s turn to be quiet for a long moment. She let him be quiet. Another of her talents. Silas wanted to shift the conversation, make it about something else. “Tell me about your day,” he said.
And she did. She told him.
And it was safe, and normal, and dull, and wonderful. Her day. Her life. And that’s what he’d needed to hear. That’s why he’d called. To hear that people could live like that. To hear that people lived like that day in and day out.
They talked for half an hour. Before he got off the phone, he asked about Eric.
“He’s in bed now,” she said.
“I figured that. I was just wondering how he was doing.”
“He’s been busy with a school project lately. A paper he’s been writing. He’s actually pretty proud of it. He mentioned wanting you to read it when he was done.”
“What’s it about—genetics?”
“Of course, but it’s a little trickier than that. It’s about adaptive radiation and the American automobile.”
“The evolution of cars?”
“Something like that; he’s got it all worked out on paper, comparing the Model T to Darwin’s first finch—and then all the later models radiate out from there to fill the niches. SUVs and minivans and sports cars. Just different finches for different niches.”
“That’s deep stuff for his age.”
“Well, he’s interested in it.”
A long silence again. This time, she broke it. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“No. But I’ve got to go, Sis. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
SILAS HATED cocktail parties. He hated the clink of glass on teeth. He hated the food, served in twists of color on white china, more aesthetic than edible. Most of all, he hated the smiles.