by Spoor,Ryk E
Wu Kung settled into a long-familiar stretching routine. Slowly prepare the body for the race or the war. Stretch the muscles in careful sequence, to the right degree, a carefully building progression…
As he stretched, a green comm-ball materialized. “Good luck, Wu,” said Maria-Susanna’s voice.
Just the voice hurt. He had read what she had done since the Fall of Hyperion, and Wu just could not understand it. She had been so kind, so gentle. She still sounded as kind and gentle. Yet she had killed so many. “You are with the Vengeance. Why wish me luck?”
The laugh was sad. “Oh, Wu. I don’t have anything against these poor people trying to get recognition—I applaud them. That’s really why I refused to take the Vengeance’s side—though the reason I told them was that I thought DuQuesne’s familiarity with me would give him an advantage, and that I was—honestly!—too fond of you to really want to go all out to defeat you. So good luck.”
“Thank you,” he said after a moment. It still hurt to talk to her, but it would hurt more to ignore her. Maybe she can still be saved. DuQuesne doesn’t think so, but …he’s been wrong before. Not often …but he has.
A few more comm-balls and well-wishers, the most emphatic being Ariane herself. “Run Tunuvun into the ground, Wu,” she said.
“Do the best I’m allowed,” he said, grinning widely. He stood up slowly. A few seconds more.
The Arena’s voice spoke again. “Racers, take your places. Players, prepare for first cards. The Challenge between the Genasi and the Vengeance begins in five …four …three …two …one …GO!”
Sun Wu Kung leapt from the starting line, a flying jump that would have cleared two meters in height on the level. Tunuvun, seized by the same impulse, gave a matching jump, and the two landed at the same moment, more than thirty meters downhill from the start point, and practically flew down the hill, Wu Kung’s longer legs moving just slightly less quickly than Tunuvun’s shorter strides, so the two racers remained neck-and-neck.
Match him for a while, make sure I know where I stand with him. I don’t think he was holding back in that fight, but I could be wrong. He might have wanted to hide some of what he could do from me.
Faintly, in his ear, he could hear, “First cards dealt. Dealing outer show cards.” Their game’s begun. Obstacles could start showing up at any time.
The pine woods were getting thicker, so Wu Kung took to the trees directly, bounding from one to the next, running along branches as though they were level ground. He heard and, from the corner of his eye, saw Tunuvun making similar maneuvers. He’s maybe not quite as good as me, or as the ‘me’ I’m being now, in the trees, but I’ll bet that’s because he evolved for no gravity. Those two null-g parts of the course will be his best.
Without warning, one of the branches beneath Tunuvun gave way, sending him dropping towards the forest floor. A grunt of distant satisfaction told him that had been DuQuesne’s doing. Time to start opening up a little distance. While he might have wanted to keep it closer for the sake of making the race look more exciting, Tunuvun wouldn’t thank him for the added worry.
The Hyperion Monkey King kicked off his current tree and practically flew through the next three, now moving at a speed that only his friends—and Orphan—had ever seen before. From all around he heard indrawn breaths and murmurs. Ha! They are letting us hear something of the crowd’s reactions! That is fun too!
He broke out of the woods, saw the edge of the cliff a hundred meters ahead. Behind him, Tunuvun’s swift movement was audible, trailing by several dozen meters. Wu Kung turned, back to the cliff, dug in his claws, and felt the ground disappear from under his feet just as he was stopping, letting his clawed hands drop securely to the edge.
The cliff below was solid basalt, rough but still vertical—a quite noticeable challenge for anyone. But with ring-carbon reinforced claws he rammed ten anchors home into the stone and began swiftly clambering down, a cat descending a four-hundred-meter scratching post.
Wow! Tunuvun’s just about keeping up! His claws must be like mine! He remembered the battle in the sky. Natural ring-carbon must be in a lot of Arena native species. No wonder he’s so tough!
Still, Tunuvun was behind; he had to do more than just “keep up”, and since they both knew that the luck of obstacles could turn at any time, and that—at least as far as Tunuvun was concerned—they were nearly evenly matched, neither could afford to play too much of a long game. He’s probably not going to push it here on the cliff, but at the bottom…
As he thought that, a hundred meters from the bottom, an entire section of the cliff face suddenly cracked, and Wu Kung found himself flailing in midair, plummeting towards the ground below. Well, at least I’ll get there faster, he thought, even as he kicked off from one of the fragments, bouncing back towards the cliff face. His claws dug in, ripped free; he spun in midair, tried to reach the cliff again, I need to slow down—
WHAM!
To Wu’s groggy astonishment, he’d actually lost a second or two; he could hear Tunuvun’s feet dashing madly away across the plain. “Wu! Wu, you okay?”
“That hurt, DuQuesne. But I am all right,” he said, hearing murmurs of astonishment from the audience as he rose and sprinted after Tunuvun.
“Thank our Dujuin friend for that one.”
“I like Tunuvun, but could you drop him in a pit for me?”
“As soon as I get the points, I’ll slow him down, I guarantee it.” The plains were streaming by now, the green-gold waving grasslike plants hissing like a waterfall of sand as he tore through them.
It suddenly dawned on Wu that they were actually more handicapped than their opposition. We don’t want to hurt Tunuvun. Certainly don’t want to take a chance on crippling or killing him. But that obstacle showed that Byto and the Vengeance don’t have that problem with me.
Halfway across the plains now, and he’d closed the distance so that Tunuvun and he were once more even, racing up their lines of airborne sparks in arrow-straight paths.
It was then that a pack of scale-armored, fanged creatures like a cross between a small dragon, a lion, and an eagle erupted from the underbrush and attacked.
Even as he dodged, blocked, and flipped, he realized that Tunuvun was speeding away, unimpeded. Another obstacle!
There were only twelve of the creatures, so it didn’t take too long to deal with them, but even so, Tunuvun was a hundred and fifty meters ahead now.
Wu Kung gave vent to multiple curses and sprinted forward hard. He was very, very tempted to start letting himself really go, but he remembered DuQuesne’s emphatic instructions. I gave him my word. I can’t do that unless he gives permission.
But even at the level he was allowed, he was still faster. A hundred fifty meters was a long lead in a short race, but this was not a short race and most of it was still ahead.
First no-gravity section coming up, though. I’ll have to push what I’m allowed to make up distance there; that’s where Tunuvun’s got to be at his best.
They leapt from the plains into the void, Tunuvun first and Wu trailing by eighty-seven meters, and immediately Wu could tell he’d been right. The tiny white-and-purple Genasi bounded from one floating rock to the next, spun and smacked aside an encroaching zikki, and skittered around a hundred-meter-wide boulder at lightning speed, as effortlessly as ordinary people might walk through a light crowd.
Still, I am the Monkey King, and this is the kind of thing I do, too!
He laughed as he bounded weightlessly through space, ricocheting from stones and outraged inhabitants with reckless abandon. Have to keep closing the distance! He was only fifteen meters, more or less, behind Tunuvun now, three-quarters of the way across this weightless space, and—
He saw it out of the corner of his eye, rapid movement all down relative to the fixed parts of the course, and there it was, a waterfall of dust and rocks incalculably high, driving down to unguessable depths. “Hells of boiling souls!” he cursed, as the Skyfall roared towards
him. “DuQuesne!”
“Hang on, Wu—it’s about four hundred meters thick!”
Even as the Skyfall reached Wu, he heard the Arena’s distant, dispassionate voice: “Warning to Player DuQuesne: do not provide precise guidance. First of three allowed warnings.”
Wu found himself scrambling for dear life, jumping from one tumbling fragment to the next, evading randomly crashing boulders, knowing that he was caught in the associated gravity field and thus dropping down, down, down even though he fought desperately to stay at least somewhat level.
He burst from the Skyfall finally, blood trickling from a dozen small wounds. “What in the name of …of Hyperion is going on?” he demanded plaintively. Tunuvun had disappeared over the edge into the forest, and with all the speed he dared muster Wu knew he was going to be at least three hundred fifty meters behind, maybe as much as five hundred—half a kilometer down.
Tunuvun was far in the lead of a race he must not win …and dared not lose.
Chapter 9
“Draw two,” DuQuesne said, evaluating his cards. Nothing impressive in this hand. I need a break.
The two cards passed to him turned out to be a Sky Gate and a Nexus Gateway. With the Inner Gateway and Outer Gate I have, that at least makes a decent run. “Bet 5 points,” he said, not without trepidation. That’s half of what I’ve got left.
He could see Orphan, absently stroking his high head-crest in a nervous fashion, sitting near Ariane; Laila Canning sat on his other side, with Simon on Ariane’s left. The Players themselves were in the center of a large circular amphitheatre—maybe even the same one that Ariane and Amas-Garao had dueled in—and around them was a ghostly image of the racing course.
Unlike the racers, DuQuesne could also see inside the huge final building, which contained a winding maze that was at least three kilometers long—a lot more of the race than the building’s external appearance would imply. Have to mention that to Wu—without being specific, of course.
“Match five points,” Byto said in his gravelly, deep voice. “Rolling draw die.”
The eight-sided die rattled across the table, to come up with a single-line symbol. Damn! That’s the fourth time!
“Line of Transition,” the Arena announced. “Accrue two more Obstacle points and may draw up to three cards.”
Byto’s gained points almost every play so far, and I’ve barely stayed even. DuQuesne saw his opponent choose to take three cards. At least that means his hand wasn’t that strong—
The twitch Byto gave was incredibly subtle, but DuQuesne’s Hyperion-built senses picked up on it. Damn. He’s got something now. As he’d delved deeper into the game, it had become clear it was indeed more like a mash-up of three or four games, ranging from standard poker to collectible card duel games, but that wasn’t really helping. There were more ways to win, or lose, and different types of winning plays or hands.
Wu Kung and Tunuvun were dashing through the forest now, the Genasi racer considerably ahead of Wu—and, DuQuesne saw, was taking advantage of the lead to drop large tree branches across his competitor’s path. If my luck doesn’t turn…
He rolled the Draw die; it came up as Emergent, which at least let him draw three like his opponent. He decided to only take two. Okay, that makes a Gateway run and Dual Shadeweavers, that’s not a bad hand. Still …“Bet three points.”
Byto rocked his head from side to side, rolled, drew two cards, discarded two into the dump, and matched the bet, spreading out his cards. DuQuesne also saw him muttering instructions to Tunuvun. Can’t hear them, of course, any more than he can hear what I say to Wu.
Huh. I don’t see any triples or doubles, or a run of…
The murmuring from the crowd started just before it dawned on DuQuesne. “Hand of Arena,” the Arena announced. Every one of Byto’s cards was different, and represented one of the major facets of the Arena, including the Arena card itself as the high card. It was technically a losing hand in Arena Challenge—but in a Racing Challenge such a hand gained the player twenty Obstacle points. Since the total bet on the hand by Byto had been eight points, this was a big win overall for him.
On the positive side, DuQuesne was at least now up by eight points, and it would also be his turn first on this play. Still …“Wu,” he said.
“Yes, DuQuesne?”
“Open it up just a hair. You’re way back and it’s not getting any easier from here on out. By the way, the course in that building is a lot bigger than it looks.” That should be sufficiently nonspecific.
Apparently he was right, because the Arena said nothing, as Wu answered, “Okay, I’m stretching my legs a little. But only a little, right?”
“Right. Not quite ready to hit the panic button.”
* * *
The murmurs rippled around the stadium again, with Ariane showing a hint of a smile instead of concern as Wu Kung raced along the branches of the network-like trees, ducking under the branches to evade the obstacles Tunuvun had dropped. He was closing the distance, slowly but surely, between him and his opponent.
DuQuesne and Byto finished the next play as Wu Kung burst from the forest and began racing across gray-golden desert sands, pursuing the faint dust trail that showed where Tunuvun was scrambling like a lizard ahead of him. “I’m getting closer, DuQuesne. Two hundred thirty meters, I think. Still keep going at this speed?” Wu didn’t even sound winded yet, which—if anyone other than DuQuesne could have heard it—might have been a dead giveaway about how much Wu was holding back.
“Throttle it back just a hair, to the top we agreed on before. You’ll still catch him about the time you guys hit the water, I think.”
This time Byto obviously thought he had something, but DuQuesne knew he had a major hand, too. Arena card for me. Only two in circulation, and the one he had is still going to be in the dump, but more importantly I’ve got three Faction Leader cards—and not small ones, either. Vengeance, Molothos, and Blessed— only two of each of those in circulation, too. The Arena can be counted as a Faction, a Construct, or a Leader, so that gives me almost a Great Leader Run, which is something close to a Royal Straight Flush. Plus with two Spheres in my show cards and the single Sphere in my hand I’ve got a triple.
“Bet eight,” he said. Byto matched him without a pause, rolled, got to draw one card. Again Byto tensed in that way that signaled he thought he had something big. But by now he might guess I’ve started reading him and be trying to use his tell to throw me off. Hard to know if he realizes what his tell is; maybe no one but a Hyperion would notice it.
Byto glanced up, then nodded. “Bet eight.”
Ow. That’s a big bite. Must be confident. DuQuesne wasn’t going to yield this one that easily, so he matched and rolled the die. Ha! Finally luck’s turning my way! Line of Transition for me. Two more points and I get to draw up to three. Real good chance of drawing at least some Faction Leader in that, even if not a Great Faction. Time for me to make up some ground too. “Draw three.”
Staring at him from the middle of the two new cards was Faction Leader: Tantimorcan. Not all Great Factions, but definitely a very high Leader Run …and I’ve got another Sphere, too! He dumped one of the draw cards—a Sky Gate—and also dumped the Challenge card from his show cards, replacing it with the Tantimorcan Leader card. I’ve got sixteen points left. This is a huge hand, though. “Bet ten.”
Byto looked up at him, expression on the rhinoceros-like face unreadable. “Match and increase six.”
That’s the most allowed—he can’t raise beyond what I can match! “Are you sure you want to do that, Byto?” he asked, levelly.
The other hesitated only a fraction, then waggled his ears in what was clearly assent. “Match and increase six.”
Too late to bail now. Okay, that’s the sunk cost fallacy, but still …“Match with six. Beat this: Leader Run, Arena high, and a Quadruple Sphere,” he said, laying down his cards.
Murmurs chased themselves around the audience; Byto sat back slightly, surpris
ed. “Indeed an impressive hand,” he said. “And an interesting coincidence.” He spread out his hand. “Great Leader Run, with Quadruple Challenges.”
DuQuesne stared in momentary shock. He couldn’t even think of an appropriate curse as his count of Obstacle Points went to zero. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that Orphan looked, if anything, more shocked. Wonder why that is. Probably the whole improbability of the thing; chances of both of us getting all those same cards is ridiculously low. But this is really bad; I’m broke and he’s thirty-two points up in one play. “Arena, I need my first stake,” he said, and saw ten points appear in his account.
I’ve really got to win the next plays. At least I’ve got a good read on his style, his tells—I don’t think he knows I can read them—and I know what’s in the dump and how fast it recirculates. There’s still time.
But Wu, nearing the edge of the desert, suddenly vanished into the sand. “DuQuesne! Dry quicksand! This really annoys me!” The image showed Wu now effectively swimming through the sand, looking for an edge where it turned solid enough to burrow upwards. Ordinary human wouldn’t stand a chance, really, but Wu and Tunuvun ain’t ordinary in any sense of the word. Still, that was dead-slow movement compared to Tunuvun, who was now speeding through the water part of the course, his tail lashing back and forth and helping propel him rapidly through the water. Looks like …it is! That damn tail actually shifted shape, it’s got fins top and bottom!
That was going to be too much of a pain. DuQuesne used all ten of his points to have a bunch of predators converge on Tunuvun, letting the Arena give him another ten stake. If I lose so badly again that I need the third stake, it’s not going to matter much that I used up the first this way.
Wu burst from the sands and dove into the water ten seconds before Tunuvun finished dispatching his adversaries. Wu had only lost thirty meters, but it was clear he was going to lose more for the rest of the swim; Tunuvun was just too well adapted for swimming. “DuQuesne…” Wu murmured pleadingly.