by John Varley
But since that first day, every time I tried to write one of Walter's damnable articles… nothing happened.
Result: the cabin was coming along nicely, ahead of schedule. Another few weeks like the past one and I'd have it finished. And be out of a job.
I crested the top of the cliff and looked down. I could just see the white blob that was Brenda. I called down to her and she swarmed up like a monkey.
"Nicely done," I said, as I coiled the rope. "Did you ever think what that would have been like if you weighed six times what you weigh now?"
"Oddly enough, I have," she said. "I keep trying to tell you, I'm not completely ignorant."
"Sorry."
"I'm willing to learn. I've been reading a lot. But there's just so much, and so much of it is so foreign… " She ran a hand through her hair. "Anyway, I know how hard it must have been to live on the Earth. My arms wouldn't be strong enough to support my weight down there." She looked down at herself, and I thought I could see a smile. "Hell, I'm so lunified I wonder if my legs could support my weight."
"Probably not, at first."
"I got five friends together and we took turns trying to walk with all the others on our shoulders. I managed three steps before I collapsed."
"You're really getting into this, aren't you?" I was leading the way down the narrow ledge to the cave entrance.
"Of course I am. I take this very seriously. But I'm beginning to wonder if you do."
I didn't have an answer to that. We had reached the cave, and I started to lead her in when she pulled back violently on my hand.
"What is that?"
She didn't need to elaborate; I came through the cave twice a day, and I still wasn't used to the smell. Not that it seemed as bad now as it had at first. It was a combination of rotting meat, feces, ammonia, and something else much more disturbing that I had taken to calling "predator smell."
"Be quiet," I whispered. "This is a cougar den. She's not really dangerous, but she had a litter of cubs last week and she's gotten touchy since then. Don't let go of my hand; there's no light till we get to the door."
I didn't give her a chance to argue. I just pulled on her hand, and we were inside.
The smell was even stronger in the cave. The mother cougar was fairly fastidious, for an animal. She cleaned up her cubs' messes, and she made her own outside the cave. But she wasn't so careful about disposing of the remains of her prey before they started to get ripe. I think she had a different definition of "ripe." Her own fur had a rank mustiness that was probably sweet perfume to a male cougar, but was enough to stun the unprepared human.
I couldn't see her, but I sensed her in a way beyond sight or hearing. I knew she wouldn't attack. Like all the large predators in disneylands, she had been conditioned to leave humans alone. But the conditioning set up a certain amount of mental conflict. She didn't like us, and wasn't shy about letting us know. When I was halfway through the cave, she let fly with a sound I can only describe as hellish. It started as a low growl, and quickly rose to a snarling screech. Every hair on my body stood at attention. It's sort of a bracing feeling, once you get used to it; your skin feels thick and tough as leather. My scrotum grew very small and hard as it tried its best to get certain treasures out of harm's way.
As for Brenda… she tried to run straight up the backs of my legs and over the top of my head. Without some fancy footwork on my part we both would have gone sprawling. But I'd been ready for that reaction, and hurried along until the inner door got out of our way with a blast of light from the far side. Brenda didn't stop running for another twenty meters. Then she stopped, a sheepish grin on her face, breathing shallowly. We were in the long, utilitarian hallway that led to the back door of my condo.
"I don't know what got into me," she said.
"Don't worry," I said. "Apparently that's one of the sounds that is part of the human brain's hard wiring. It's a reflex, like when you stick your finger in a flame, you don't think about it, you instantly draw it back."
"And you hear that sound, your bowels turn to oatmeal."
"Close enough."
"I'd like to go back and see the thing that made that sound."
"It's worth seeing," I agreed. "But you'll have to wait for daylight. The cubs are cute. It's hard to believe they'll turn into monsters like their mother."
***
I hesitated at the door. In my day, and up until fairly recently, you just didn't let someone enter your home lightly. Luna is a crowded society. There are people wherever you turn, tripping over your feet, elbowing you, millions of intrusive, sweaty bodies. You have to have a small place of privacy. After you'd known someone five or ten years you might, if you really liked the person, invite her over for drinks or sex in your own bed. But most socializing took place on neutral ground.
The younger generation wasn't like that. They thought nothing of dropping by just to say hello. I could make a big thing of it, driving yet another wedge between the two of us, or I could let it go.
What the hell. We'd have to learn to work together sooner or later. I opened the door with my palm print and stepped aside to let her enter.
She hurried to the washroom, saying something about having to take a mick. I assumed that meant urinate, though I'd never heard the term. I wondered briefly how she'd accomplish that, given her lack of obvious outlet. I could have found out-she left the door open. The young ones were no longer seeking privacy even for that.
I looked around at the apartment. What would Brenda see here? What would a pre-Invasion man see?
What they wouldn't see was dirt and clutter. A dozen cleaning robots worked tirelessly whenever I was away. No speck of dust was too small for their eternal vigilance, and no item could ever be out of its assigned place longer than it took me to walk to the tube station.
Could someone read anything about my character from looking at this room? There were no books or paintings to give a clue. I had all the libraries of the world a few keystrokes away, but no books of my own. Any of the walls could project artwork or films or environments, as desired, but they seldom did.
There was something interesting. Unlimited computer capacity had brought manufacturing full circle. Primitive cultures produced articles by hand, and no two were identical. The industrial revolution had standardized production, poured out endless streams of items for the "consumer culture." Finally, it became possible to have each and every manufactured item individually ordered and designed. All my furniture was unique. Nowhere in Luna would you find another sofa like that… like that hideous monstrosity over there. And what a blessing that was, I mused. Two of them might have mated. Damn, but it was ugly.
I had selected almost nothing in this room. The possibilities of taste had become so endless I had simply thrown up my hands and taken what came with the apartment.
Maybe that was what I'd been reluctant to let Brenda see. I supposed you could read as much into what a man had not done to his environment as what he had done.
While I was still pondering that-and not feeling too happy about it-Brenda came out of the washroom. She had a bloody piece of gauze in her hand, which she tossed on the floor. A low-slung robot darted out from under the couch and ate it, then scuttled away. Her skin looked greased, and the pinkish color was fading as I watched. She had visited the doc.
"I had radiation burns," she said. "I ought to take the disneyland management to court, get them to pay the medical bill." She lifted her foot and examined the bottom. There was a pink area of new skin where the cut had been. In a few more minutes it would be gone. There would be no scar. She looked up, hastily. "I'll pay, of course. Just send me the bill."
"Forget it," I said. "I just got your lead. How long were you in Texas?"
"Three hours? Four at the most."
"I was there for five hours, today. Except for the gravity, it's a pretty good simulation of the natural Earthly environment. And what happened to us?" I ticked the points off on my fingers. "You got sunburned. Conseque
nces, in 1845: you would have been in for a very painful night. No sleep. Pain for several days. Then the outer layer of your skin would slough off. Probably some more dermatological effects. I think it might even have caused skin cancer. That would have been fatal. Research that one, see if I'm right.
"You injured the sole of your foot. Consequence, not too bad, but you would have limped for a few days or a week. And always the danger of infection to an area of the body difficult to keep clean.
"I got a very nasty injury to my hand. Bad enough to require minor surgery, with the possibility of deep infection, loss of the limb, perhaps death. There's a word for it, when one of your limbs starts to mortify. Look it up.
"So," I summed up. "Three injuries. Two possibly fatal, over time. All in five hours. Consequences today: an almost negligible bill from the automatic doc."
She waited for me to go on. I was prepared to let her wait a lot longer, but she finally gave in.
"That's it? That's my story?"
"The lead, goddamit. Personalize it. You went for a walk in the park, and this is what happened. It shows how perilous life was back then. It shows how lightly we've come to regard injury to our bodies, how completely we expect total, instant, painless repairs to them. Remember what you said? 'It's not fixed!' You'd never had anything happen to you that couldn't be fixed, right now, with no pain."
She looked thoughtful, then smiled.
"That could work, I guess."
"Damn right it'll work. You take it from there, work in more detail. Don't get into optional medical things; we'll keep that for later. Make this one a pure horror story. Show how fragile life has always been. Show how it's only in the last century or so that we've been able to stop worrying about our health."
"We can do that," she said.
"We, hell. I told you, this is your story. Now get out of here and get to it. Deadline's in twenty-four hours."
I expected more argument, but I'd ignited her youthful enthusiasm. I hustled her out the door, then leaned against it and heaved a sigh of relief. I'd been afraid she'd call me on it.
***
Not long after she left I went to the doc and had my own hand healed. Then I ran a big tubful of water and eased myself into it. The water was so hot it turned my skin pink. That's the way I like it.
After a while I got out, rummaged in a cabinet, and found an old home surgery kit. There was a sharp scalpel in it.
I ran some more hot water, got in again, lay back and relaxed completely. When I was totally at peace with myself, I slashed both my wrists right down to the bone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dirty Dan the Dervish went into his trademark spin late in the third round. By that time he had the Cytherian Cyclone staggering.
I'm not a slash-boxing fan, but the spin was something to see. The Dervish pumped himself up and down like a top, balancing on the toes of his left foot. He'd draw his right leg in to spin faster, until he was almost a blur, then, without warning, the right foot would flash out, sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes connecting. Either way, he'd instantly be pumping up and down with the left leg, spinning as if he were on ice.
"Dervish! Dervish! Dervish!" the fans were chanting. Brenda was shouting as loud as anyone. She was beside me, at ringside. Most of the time she was on her feet. As for me, they issued clear plastic sheets to everyone in the first five rows, and I spent most of my time holding mine between me and the ring. The Dervish had a deep gash on his right calf, and the slashing spin could hurl blood droplets an amazing distance.
The Cyclone kept retreating, unable to come up with any defense. He tried ducking under and attacking with the knife in his right hand, and received another wound for his trouble. He leaped into the air, but the Dervish was instantly with him, slashing up from below, and as soon as their feet hit the mat again he went into his whirl. Things were looking desperate for the Cyclone, when he was suddenly saved by the bell.
Brenda sat down, breathing hard. I supposed that, without sex, one needed something for release of tensions. Slash-boxing seemed perfectly designed for that.
She wiped some of the blood from her face with a cloth, and turned to look at me for the first time since the round began. She seemed disappointed that I wasn't getting into the festivities.
"How does he manage that spin?" I asked her.
"It's the mat," she said, falling instantly into the role of expert-which must have been quite a relief for her. "Something to do with the molecular alignment of the fibers. If you lean on it in a certain way, you get traction, but a circular motion reduces the friction till it's almost like ice skating."
"Do I still have time to get a bet down?"
"No point in it," she said. "The odds will be lousy. You should have bet when I told you, before the match started. The Cyclone is a dead man."
He certainly looked it. Sitting on his stool, surrounded by his pit crew, it seemed impossible he would answer the bell for the next round. His legs were a mass of cuts, some covered with bloody bandages. His left arm dangled by a strip of flesh; the pit boss was considering removing it entirely. There was a temporary shunt on his left jugular artery. It looked horribly vulnerable, easy to hit. He had sustained that injury at the end of the second round, which had enabled his crew to patch it at the cost of several liters of blood. But his worst wound had also come in the second round. It was a gash, half a meter long, from his left hip to his right nipple. Ribs were visible at the top, while the middle was held together with half a dozen hasty stitches of a rawhide-like material. He had sustained it while scoring his only effective attack on the Dervish, bringing his knife in toward the neck, achieving instead a ghastly but minimally disabling wound to the Dervish's face-only to find the Dervish's knife thrust deep into his gut. The upward jerk of that knife had spilled viscera all over the ring and produced the first yellow flag of the match, howls of victory from Dirty Dan's pit, and chants of "Dervish! Dervish! Dervish!" from the crowd.
The Cyclone's handlers had hacked away the torn tangle of organs under the caution flag, repaired the neck artery during the second pit stop and retired glumly to their corner to watch their man walk into the meat grinder again.
The Dervish was sitting erect while his crew did more work to the facial wound. One eyeball was split open and useless. Blood had temporarily blinded him during the second round, rendering him unable to fully exploit the terrible wound he'd inflicted on his opponent. Brenda had expressed concern during the lull that the Dervish might not employ his famous spin now that his depth perception had been destroyed. But the Dervish was not about to disappoint his fans, one eye or not.
A red light went on over the Cyclone's corner. It made the crowd murmur excitedly.
"Why do they call it a corner?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"It's a round ring. It doesn't have any corners."
She shrugged. "It's traditional, I guess." Then she smiled maliciously. "You can research it before you write this up for Walter."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Why the hell not? 'Sports, Then and Now.' It's a natural."
She was right, of course, but that didn't make it any harder to swallow. I wasn't particularly enjoying this role reversal. She was supposed to be the ignorant one.
"What about that red light? What's it mean?"
"Each of the fighters gets ten liters of blood for transfusions. See that gauge on the scoreboard? The Cyclone just used his last liter. Dervish has seven liters left."
"So it's just about over."
"He'll never last another round."
And he didn't.
The last round was an artless affair. No more fancy spins, no flying leaps. The crowd shouted a little at first, then settled down to watch the kill. People began drifting out of the arena to get refreshments before the main bout of the evening. The Dervish moved constantly away as the dazed Cyclone lumbered after him, striking out from time to time, opening more wounds. Bleeding his opponent to death. Soon the Cyclone could only
stand there, dumb and inert with loss of blood. A few people in the crowd were booing. The Dervish slashed the Cyclone's throat. Arterial blood spurted into the air, and the Cyclone crashed to the mat. The Dervish bent over his fallen foe, worked briefly, and then held the head high. There was sporadic applause and the handlers moved in, hustling the Dervish down to the locker rooms and hauling away both pieces of the Cyclone. The zamboni appeared and began mopping up the blood.
"You want some popcorn?" Brenda asked me.
"Just something to drink," I told her. She joined the throngs moving toward the refreshment center.
I turned back toward the ring, savoring a feeling that had been all too rare of late: the urge to write. I raised my left hand and snapped my fingers. I snapped them again before I remembered the damn handwriter was not working. It hadn't been working for five days, since Brenda's visit to Texas. The problem seemed to be in the readout skin. I could type on the keyboard on the heel of my hand, but nothing appeared on the readout. The data was going into the memory and could later be downloaded, but I can't work that way. I have to see the words as they're being formed.
Necessity is the mother of invention. I slipped through the program book Brenda had left on her chair, found a blank page. Then I rummaged through my purse and found a blue pen I kept for hand corrections to hard copy.
***
(File Hildy*next avail.*)(code Bloodsport)
(headline to come)
***
There may be no evidence of it, but you can bet cave men had sporting events. We still have them today, and if we ever reach the stars, we'll have sports out there, too.
Sports are rooted in violence. They usually contain the threat of injury. Or at least they did until about a hundred and fifty years ago.
Sports today, of course, are totally non-violent.
The modern sports fan would be shocked at the violence of sports as it existed on Earth. Take for example one of the least violent sports, one we still practice today, the simple foot race. Runners rarely completed a career without numerous injuries to knees, ankles, muscles, or spine. Sometimes these injuries could be repaired, and sometimes they couldn't. Every time a runner competed, he faced the possibility of injury that would plague him for the rest of his life.