The Starry Rift Part 31

He straightened up and looked at me. I had my hand on the k.n.o.b of the front door, wis.h.i.+ng now that I hadn't asked the question.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "That is very nice of you to ask, Maja."

Sniff! "Actually, I have to give a big presentation at work tomorrow and it's making me a little . . . stressed out. Nothing for you to worry about." Sniff! "I took the afternoon off to prepare. I'll be fine."

He smiled without opening his lips.

I left him tearing the cus.h.i.+ons off the sofa and sniffing.

"You think you've got a big day tomorrow," I muttered, shaking my head.

Once outside, I went straight into a working run.

Forgetting Dave was easy. He'd probably forget himself if you gave him half a chance. Forgetting the Battle that was to come wasn't so easy. This was my third Battle, but my first time fighting Jarel. I had home-court advantage because I had won the last Battle in 2112 on an orbital of Jain's World. Jarel would have to come to this times.p.a.ce to fight me, but I had been here for months, acclimating myself to the conditions. When I needed to report for training, I M-folded myself to the simulations facilities, but the rest of the time I was a regular person, 1994-style.

Was Jarel here? Was he thinking about me? About what he was going to do to me?

Because I was thinking about him and it wasn't pretty. I pictured his face as I ran, and I saw myself flattening his nose, knocking out teeth with my fist. I hardened my abdomen, preparing for blows- or worse. Jarel had a powerful gut-wrench, and I'd seen him tie guys up like pretzels. I mustn't let him close with me.

All the while that I was thinking this, I put one foot in front of the other and ran.

Sense your bones, my trainer used to say. Forget all that simulator c.r.a.p. Kinesthetic perception is everything.

I didn't want to get caught on the ground. I didn't want to wrestle Jarel. I visualized myself going into a sprawl if he tried to shoot for my legs. Hit hit hit, I thought. And stuff like that.

I had watched realtime clips of my opponent on the M-ask. His targets had been mapped on his body like acupuncture points, transport meridiens gleaming like the armature of a sculpture. He moved nice. If you took off the M-asks and put Jarel and me in a ring or a cage and had us fight it out, I'd be meat. No doubt about it. The guy was bigger, stronger, and meaner, and judging from his pancratium fight profile, his pain threshold was way higher than mine.

My targets had not been painted on my body, but my opponent would know what each of my parts and systems corresponded to, in the M-ask. Nerves were communications, lymph was weapons transport, and blood was human lives. More specifically, each target, from giant M-eq generators to weapons silos a hundred light years away, had been mapped. My body and its correspondences had been plotted from the biggest inst.i.tutions down to the last individual on the Scatter census. My elbows were plotted with schools, for example, and the Broca's Belt Mining Commission ran down the side of my right thigh in a thin line. The big a.r.s.enals were in my liver. Hospitals were cl.u.s.tered around my heart. The government, of course, had been mapped onto my brain tissue. They'd stay alive as long as I wasn't brain damaged.

Governments always knew how to save their own a.s.ses.

I started to run intervals. After a couple of miles, my left hamstring started to throb. I'd strained it three weeks ago while training in the simulator, and it still wasn't right. One of our M-eq power transfer stations was plotted there, and I hoped that Jarel wouldn't notice my weakness and capitalize on it.

I pulled up and walked home, trying not to limp in case anyone on Jarel's side was watching.

The next day was weird. I had a hard time concentrating in precal-culus. I kept being tempted to switch my M-ask to Away Mode to see if anything major had changed in the Battle configuration. Every time I did this I got Diego in my auditory cortex telling me to let him worry about that stuff and pay attention to my own body.

But my body felt like it was going to jump out of itself. In driver's ed we were tested for night blindness and braking reaction time. I slowed my reactions deliberately, but I was still quicker than everybody in the cla.s.s, including Derek the basketball star. As I walked down the hall clutching my books to my chest, I kept seeing people as targets. I had the urge to shoulder them out of the way, to headb.u.t.t them, to take their legs out from under them and kick them as they were lying on the floor.

I smiled more than usual to make up for it.

I was scared. I admit it. Anybody who isn't scared before a fight is just stupid.

After school I walked up to the construction site for the new industrial park. The top of the mountain had been shorn off by dynamite, and there were pits of tan earth in the process of being sculpted by bulldozers and excavators. It had been a year since the Project bought off the developers who owned this land, and it showed. Several of the big machines had been left parked as though their drivers had just gone on a coffee break, but scrub gra.s.s grew around their rusted blades and a sapling had sprouted from dirt collected in the back of a dump truck. Around the edges of the excavation stood a forest of maples and oaks, their leaves flaming bronze and crimson and their branches loud with migrating blackbirds. Squirrels sprang from tree to tree, getting ready for winter.

If I listened carefully, I could hear the marching band practicing on the football field.

It was 3:13. Diego was standing outside his car, putting mustard on a Sabrett hot dog.

"Is this a baseball game?" I said.

"Let's go over the map, wiseguy."

Dutifully I recited the Battleground boundaries: from the Kodak building, across the lily pond, to the housing development, across the back of McCoy Avenue to the woods behind the high school, down the hill to the Foodtown mini-mall, and back up through a maze of residential streets to the industrial park again. Most of the Battleground was wild: scrubland or undeveloped forest. But not all.

Diego used his Official Voice.

"The contest will take place within the above boundaries. Cross the perimeter and you automatically forfeit victory. Your onboard guidance will take care of orientation, so there's no reason for you to leave the perimeter unless you choose to do so."

"I'm not a coward," I said.

"I have to repeat these things," said Diego. "No weapons are allowed. Otherwise, you are permitted to use any and all resources you find within the perimeter, to any purpose you choose, provided that you don't violate the local times.p.a.ce possibility parameters. Beyond that, I can only say the usual, which you already know by heart. War is war is war, yadda yadda, take no prisoners, poach no eggs, get your b.u.t.t out in one piece. Make like Greyhound and leave the thinking to us."

"Me brawn, you brains," I said. "I am but here to serve. Are you going to eat that?"

He pushed the hot dog into my hand. "How's the hamstring?"

"Been better," I said with my mouth full. "But I ran on it yesterday. It'll hold."

"And of course, you'll have me in your ear the whole time."

I made a whirlybird gesture with my forefinger and swallowed pseudo-meat.

"Yippee."

Down in the excavation there was a rough pit that had been filled with sand by the Project. During the Battle it would be patrolled by Shades to keep the locals out. We could fight here under times.p.a.ce protection, knowing we wouldn't be seen by the 1994 people. The rest of the area was more of a problem. Like, if we exchanged blows on the corner of Main Street we'd just be arrested.

The Battle would start here, and I wanted it to finish here. Cleanly.

Jarel was already in the pit, talking to his handlers. He was twitchy and pumped, just like I'd known he would be.

I started tuning out distractions. I ignored Diego's last-minute advice.

I'm going to rip your head off, I thought.

I thought: Try to hurt me and I'll kill you.

Everything but Jarel and me faded from my awareness. Diego and the other handlers M-folded to a remote times.p.a.ce location. I knew I was ready because time was slowing down for me. Every eye blink stretched like a big gong counting time.

There was no referee. In the middle of the pit was a circle of darker sand. Once one of us stepped into it, the Battle was on. It wouldn't stop until a winner had been determined by the M-eq.

We both surged toward the dark sand. We clashed in the middle.

I had a lightning-fast left hand; that was common knowledge. I used the jab to keep him away from me, and then caught him with a right cross almost immediately. He took the shot pretty well, which was more than could have been said for my hand. Even given every genetic advantage, it was difficult to condition your hands to hit bone.

He winked at me. "I got a hard head," he said as I danced out of range.

But I wasn't fooled. He'd have a black eye; it was red and swelling already. Hah!

I angled off to the side to catch him with my round kick. People never think I'm in kicking range from this position, and Jarel was proving no exception. I caught him again and again before he changed his position, chipping away at that lead leg. I knew I'd hurt him even if he didn't let on. He was still holding back on me. He had the reach on me, and I was having to use every piece of footwork I knew to stay out of range of his punches. He attempted one shot and I evaded to the side, sending him careering off. He came up with a fistful of dirt, which he threw in my face as he shot for my lead leg again. The dirt didn't work-all that eye-s.h.i.+elding Diego had been talking about must have paid off. I kneed Jarel straight in the face. Missed his nose, unfortunately.

Now, that would have had an effect on the insurgents' power base. I split my awareness briefly to include Away Mode.

From the outside our s.h.i.+ps look cool and smooth, running silent and lightless in moon orbit. The surface of Losamo is a wash of serene blues and greens, opalescent where the mountain ranges throw spikes of rare minerals toward the skies. The effects of our bombardment appear as white scratches on the colored planet. I don't know what this really means until I peel away another layer of the M-ask and look closely.

Great gouges have been carved in the fertile, inhabited regions of Losamo.

Refugees are piling into caterpillar-trucks by the thousands. Their Losamo-specific energy-skin, normally bright green, has been damaged by chemical agents and their hides now range in color from graphite gray to chalky white. They will not be able to survive long without working chloroplasts, and the a.s.sault has made sure no one for a thousand miles has those.

Our redevelopment teams will move in and reorganize the existing infrastructure to take it away from the enemy, but in the meantime most of these people will die.

I switched to Local Mode. I refused to let this get to me. I was here to do a job.

Diego weighed in with "They're better off under us than under the enemy. Even if they don't know that."

"Oh, save it, Diego," I muttered. "Any more Let's Save the Little People propaganda and I'm gonna be sick."

Jarel might have lost Losamo, but he feinted a left hook and then caught me with an uppercut to the gut. Involuntarily I said, "Ungh!" as the air went out of me, and he used the contact to try and wrap a guillotine around my neck. Now I was in trouble. I slithered out of the guillotine before he could crank it on tightly, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he caught me in some kind of lock. As long as we were in close proximity, the fight wasn't going my way.

I buried my fist repeatedly in his liver until he loosened his grip.

Tried to knee him in the groin but he blocked it with his thigh. He let me go fractionally and I spun and caught him with a back elbow across the same eye I'd already hit. He let go and I was away. But we'd reached the edge of the sand and I tripped and fell against the sharp edge of a bulldozer blade. The left leg again, dammit.

"Get out of there. You almost lost Broca's Belt and you've taken damage at the transfer station."

I broke into a run, leaping over heaps of plowed dirt, and sure enough, the twinge in my hamstring renewed itself at a higher pitch. I was bleeding now.

My trainer had always said never to be obsessive about hitting a particular target. Jarel's galactic map didn't really matter, she'd told me. You have to beat the man, she'd said. There's a person inside that target map. Just as you are a person, even though you're wired for M-s.p.a.ce. And don't you ever forget it, because that's how he'll be trying to beat you.

I checked my Away Mode again. I'd blasted some low-grade storage facilities on Jarel's homeworld and there was a communication problem among his Broca s.h.i.+ps.

I was thrilled.

"Take that, ya sonuvab.i.t.c.h," I muttered.

Yep, there's a lot to be said for s.p.a.ce Battles. They don't affect the local environment, so they're green. They give both sides a chance to show off their hardware, which has had a trickle-down effect on the tek-literacy of the whole society that's been recognized since Sputnik. If you win: infinite glory. If you lose, your hardware goes up in a fiery explosion that makes a visible mark on the heavens. What could be better?

Well, let me tell you. Thanks to this very att.i.tude, my predecessor Jack had had to be hospitalized with Post-Ironic Stress Syndrome (p.i.s.s). He'd wanted to shoot the big guns and fly fast s.h.i.+ps without ever leaving the comfort of his La-Z-Boy, and he had been good at it. But then the latest M-ask design had come out, with its ultrafast feedback mechanism that meant not only did your every little action have a large-scale correspondence across s.p.a.ce, but that you perceived these consequences. When Jack had worn the M-ask, he had actually experienced the obscenities of ma.s.s warfare. The simple fact that every blow he gave-or took-under the M-ask would result in thousands of deaths was enough to put Jack over the edge. The next thing the Project had known, Jack couldn't sleep, he'd broken out in hives, and he'd started complaining that the Project was insincere.

I mean, duh. The Project is run by our government, which means its Insincerity Quotient ranges from somewhere between Too Big and Astronomical, without getting into any heavy detail. Everyone knows this. Like, lose the hang-ups and move on already. Would you rather get taken over by barbarians like Jarel's people? We couldn't let just anybody run the M-eq. Galactic order would collapse.

Take M-s.p.a.ce. Fold some dimensions up, do the kfllabi yau boogie, and the next thing you know, you're making s.p.a.cetime look like a bad-hair day. I could be sitting in American history and scoping out the forces of evil across the cosmos, and n.o.body but me would even know. I could live in 1994 and be a warrior across the Scatter a thousand years downtimestream, thanks to the M in M-ask.

That kind of power brings responsibility, and that's why we can't let the insurgents take over. So we have to fight. I guess that kind of superchunk paradox was just too much for the likes of Battlestar Jack.

Me, I just liked the physical side of hand-to-hand combat. I liked fighting; I'd been bred for it. And that's why I ended up in the Battle and Jack ended up in therapy for p.i.s.s.

I knew that M-ask warfare was the most efficient and most effective way to determine control of the galactic economy. Therefore, the war would be shorter and less damaging to all concerned. Knowing this, I accepted that there would be casualties and I could deal with it.

The Project had designed me. I'd been fortified with all the iron in irony. I was born tough.

So I ignored the damage, to me and to our people's lives. I limped through the woods and hid inside a hollow old tree that I knew. I watched Jarel walk right past me and carry on to the end of Page Drive. Then I followed him.

There are a lot of legends about past Battles. This particular Battleground was similar to two others from a similar time period and region. In one famous Battle, there was an unforeseen power outage halfway through, and our guy had been relying on a chainsaw he'd stolen from a garage. He'd tied the insurgents' warrior to a tree and prepared to literally rip him apart, when the power cut out. In total darkness, the insurgents' warrior managed to escape and kill our guy with a claw hammer.

After that, the rules changed and weapons were outlawed.

That was why I couldn't imagine what Jarel wanted in the hardware store. But that was where he went, straight after our first round of Battle. I knew he didn't have any money; it wasn't allowed. But in those days shoplifting was easy. So what was he after?

I had run a lot of scenarios through my mind. I knew how to make pit traps and snares, and I could have tried to use tactics like those. There were various interesting ways to kill or disable somebody in 1994 suburbia that didn't involve "weapons" as such. I started to sift through these possible threats.

Jarel emerged empty-handed from the hardware store and then went to the drugstore. Came out pressing an ice pack to his eye.

This was getting boring.

I followed him all over the place. I paced the aisles of Foodtown, pretending to shop. I had to slip behind a stack of dog-food bags when he took an unexpected turn and almost saw me. I abandoned the shopping cart by the Entenmann's rack. Then I darted outside, past the dry cleaner's and post office and around to the loading bays at the back of Foodtown. I ended up scaling the rear facade of CVS and lying on the roof, my face resting on tar that was stained with pigeon droppings.

I didn't want to think what I looked like by then.

I crawled to the edge of the roof and peered over. I could see him leaving Foodtown carrying a couple of bags. No one tried to stop him. I wondered if he had mugged somebody for cash. . . .

As I watched, he got into an old station wagon, fiddled with something under the steering wheel, and pulled out of the parking lot. I felt outraged. He wasn't even native to this times.p.a.ce, and he was in control already. And behaving criminally!

"I wish I'd thought of that," I said. "Is it legal to steal money and then hire locals to beat your opponent?"

"No," said Diego tartly. "Pay attention-he's getting away."

Actually, he was gone. Muttering four-letter words, I took a look at my left leg. Dried blood glued the fabric of my jeans to the wound, and I decided to leave it alone rather than risk opening it up again.

But it hurt, and the swelling would compromise my movement.

I switched to Away Mode.

The Broca power transfer station has taken severe damage. The M-eq there has been mangled and no M-folding exchanges can take place across Broca's Belt now. Repair bots have been diverted to patch things up, but that will take time.

Time. I didn't know where Jarel was now, only that he needed to stay within the perimeter or forfeit the Battle. So I made my way back to the industrial park and the sand pit.

He wasn't there.

I hadn't planned for this tactic. I wasn't sure what to do.

Diego presented his advice.

"Suggest you rest. Play possum and see if that draws him out."

It wasn't a bad idea. If Jarel was going to try a sneak attack, he would wait for me to fall asleep and then move in. I'd been trained to sleep only lightly and for brief periods. I would be ready for him.

The night was about half over and I was in a light doze when a sharp pain tore into my left side. I came awake instantly, my hand clutching at my side as I shot to my feet. I was already primed, and although I'd been startled I was ready to fight.