Achilles choice

Chapter 13

A mile away, in the central stadium, the crowds were cheering.

Jillian watched as speeches were made. The winners paraded proudly alongside those losers who had, in Donny’s fevered phrasing, “the strength of character, the wisdom and depth of commitment to share in the true spirit of the games, to rejoice in the uplifting of the human race without the hunger for personal gain.” And she watched him present the gold medal to that little Taiwanese slut.

Abner had been awash in pain medication by the time she got to his room. He mumbled words that might have been comforting if they had been comprehensible. His eyes were closed-she’d thought he’d gone to sleep-when he said clearly: “Check the records. Check my records.”

“Records? Abner, which records?”

“O… lym… piad.”

He had slipped further and further away from her, into delirium. His words and thoughts became ever more garbled. Jillian sat beside him in a darkening room, feeling her bruises and scrapes, watching Abner Warren Collifax slide into the same pit which would, in five or six years, yawn to welcome her.

For twenty hours she sat there, a statue of flesh, watching him wither before her eyes. With all of her strength she willed him to speak, to breathe, to live.

In vain. After twenty hours he died.

Numb, Jillian tucked the sheet around his neck, kissed his forehead, and left quietly, almost on tiptoe, as if he were merely asleep.

More loss:

Walking back to the dorm along the edge of the island. A warm Mediterranean evening, falling swiftly. A sweet heavy breeze swayed in from the south.

Activity over next to one of the low sea walls. A half-dozen silver blazers, the sudden appearance of a Medtech tram.

Something wet and limp was hauled up from the ocean. Jillian caught a momentary image of flaccid, heavy muscle, dripping water. Vulnerable nakedness. Wet black hair, shadow-dappled by dying sunlight.

An easy death. Anesthetized by the cold, put to sleep by oxygen starvation— What was that, in the shadows off to the right? Broken, shattered: something in the darkness. Jillian stepped quietly to it, bent, watching her fingers tremble as she reached.

Half of Jeff Tompkins’s palace was still perfect, a study in ivory. Half was stove in as if by a sudden, terrible effort, one of those moments of madness which, once done, cannot be undone.

Even partly crushed, the model was exquisite, a monument to his persistence and skill. But it hadn’t been good enough. In the end, Jeff’s castle had been not of ivory, but of sand.

A silver girl took the model from her hands and waved a wordless Jillian away from the scene.

Back in her room she watched the Olympics closing down. She was too heavy and limp to move. From beyond her window machine noises ebbed and flowed as helicopters, boats, and skimmers arrived to take the losers away.

A nebula of fireworks exploded above the coliseum. Jillian heard their distant thunder, could see the brief bright promise of their flame wavering through a sheen of tears.

For hours she sat there, until the fireworks died and the stadium emptied, and the spectators began their long exodus. The room was illuminated only by yellow-orange streetlights and the distant glow of the Athens cityscape. Intermittently, limos cruised or floatcars drifted past her window, their headlights piercing her shadows.

She flexed her hands in the darkness.

The door swung open, and Holly stood there, hipshot and gently mocking, resplendent in frilly pink chiffon that plunged and gathered and teased, and contrasted beautifully with her dark skin.

She pirouetted, and the dark waters of Jillian’s grief grew shallow. “Poetry,” Jillian croaked, and managed a smile.

Holly took Jillian in her arms, comforting, and finally Jillian let go in great whooping sobs. Holly stroked the back of her head.

“Do you want me to stay here with you?” Holly whispered. “All you have to do is say the word—”

“How do you do it?” Jillian’s voice was low and hoarse. “You lost, and you act like you won.”

“I’ve got four years to try again, and I’ve got insurance,” Holly answered, as kindly as she could. “I believe in myself.”

“You may be the smartest person here.” Jillian sniffed. “You go to that party tonight. Whoop it up for both of us.”

“A promise.” Holly smiled. “And another one: if I make it, we’ll both make it, lady. Remember that.”

Jillian started to protest, to say something about honor, and chances taken, and perhaps something trite about dice rolling as they may. Holly hushed her.

“Trust me, Jillian. And listen: you’re not Linked, but you’ve earned more Comnet time. We can help each other, Jillian. We’re going to help each other, understand?”

“All right. Now, get out of here, go to the party. Enjoy yourself.”

They hugged again, more fiercely this time, and then Holly left.

The city was settling down to sleep, gradually deflating after two weeks of media gluttony. Reflected in the glass was a woman Jillian didn’t know, a woman who had abandoned everything familiar, and had nowhere left to turn.

For the thousandth time, she inserted the plastic chip into its slot, saw the error message appear, and knew just how big a fool she had been.

Took the card out, tenderly tucking it back into her purse.

It was seven steps to the bathroom. She had measured them. Eventually she would need to know the distance to the medicine cabinet.

There were pain tabs and sleeping tabs in there. Just peel back the protective strip and press the adhesive edge onto a pulse point. One was enough to ensure a sound night’s sleep. Ultimately she would increase the dosage until even Abner’s deep, devouring pain floated away from her, leaving her in soothing oblivion.

She felt the play of webbed muscles in her forearms, sensed the strength and inhuman precision of her every motion. Being human hadn’t been enough. Today she was stronger, faster, better than she had ever been in her life. It still hadn’t been enough. God damn it, it hadn’t been enough.

She’d be twenty-seven by the next Olympiad. How could she take a gold in judo? Or even place as highly as she had this time? She was over the hill for competition. She was walking around, dead.

She pushed against the window, felt its slight bend, guessed at its thickness.

There. She felt the exact angle to push. She could rip it right out of its track. Could shatter it. She and the shards of glass could go tumbling down to the pavement below, down into the night place where Beverly waited.

It would be sin. And she shouldn’t have blasphemed.

Jillian offered a quick prayer for forgiveness, then slammed her palm against the glass plate.

There were questions left unanswered.

Abner had left a hint.

She didn’t need anything elaborate to access public files. She used the building’s computer. What was it that Abner had said? Check the records?

The 2044 Olympiad?

Nothing classified there.

She quickly found herself skimming through fouryear-old images, stopping whenever something interesting occurred. There was the usual scattering of “Classified” notices. She wished she could have borrowed Holly’s Void. From a Void, she might have figured out ways past the security blocks, and any information she got would be absorbed much faster. But this would get her there.

She sorted for Abner, and his records came up on the screen swiftly. His judo wins were famous, and she had studied them a thousand times. It was still startling to see him at the peak of his physical prowess, a wiry streak of quicksilver. He’d made a decent showing in fellrunning, a bronze, and in Arts his recital of original poetry had won an ovation, if not a gold.

His last category had been abstract sociology, similar to her own. His paper had explored the emergence of a pseudomatriarchal leadership structure in the American prison systems.

She scanned for Pushkin’s name.

And found it, but his paper was on-the rebirth of Keynesian economics.

Confused now, she called up the list of competitors and—

Donny Crawford’s name jumped out at her. The subject of his paper?

Classified.

Donny had taken the gold, of course. Abner had lied. He’d given her a clue, then backed off when he realized she could get in trouble. Donny Crawford excelled at everything he touched. He had taken gold in one athletic event, and two academic categories. One of his papers had been implemented. One hidden.

She doubled back to social theory, and scanned to be sure she had missed nothing. She hadn’t. Donny Crawford was the only choice.

Jillian turned off the console, and stood.

Well.

She hadn’t wanted to go to the party, but maybe there was something for her to do there after all.

The main ballroom of the Arts and Entertainments pavilion was thinning out. A few couples still swayed to live music, a few conversations still percolated around the refreshment tables.

She attached herself to a group of revelers. They slapped her on the back, got her drinks, called her a hell of a good sport, and were too drunk to look carefully at her eyes, to notice that she wasn’t drinking at all.

To see that her eyes rarely strayed far from Donny. He was still there, smiling and nodding and officially congenial. And Mary Ling was standing so close to him, taking every marginally discreet opportunity to rub against him, marking off her territory.

Jillian gritted her teeth, searched the room, and found Holly dancing with a knot of pleasantly inebriated Olympians. All had placed, none had won gold or silver.

They weren’t really dancing in partners. They were a group, moving in intense rhythm, tribal rhythm perhaps, trying to lose their emotional pain in a cocktail of endorphins and alcohol.

Holly waved a glassy hello, and went into an even more violent gyration.

Jillian joined them, keeping one eye on Donny and his vixen. She couldn’t really forget herself, couldn’t really lose the pain, but it helped, made the ache of waiting more endurable.

Holly handed her a glass of spiked punch. Jillian hesitated, and then gulped it down greedily. Then another.

Minutes passed, and songs changed. By the time Donny and Mary made their excuses and headed for the door, the room was spinning pleasantly.

Jillian waited five minutes and then excused herself. She was almost to the door, when she felt the hand on her arm.

Holly.

Her friend gazed up at her, with narrowed eyes that showed not the slightest trace of intoxication. “Be sure, Jillian,” she said. “Be very careful.”

“Being careful doesn’t make a whole lot of sense just now, Holly.”

Holly’s calves bunched as she tiptoed up and kissed Jillian’s cheek. Then she returned to her friends.

The back stairs were deserted, and Jillian raced down them, consumed now with an ugly curiosity. She slipped through the front door of dorm 7, then searched the registry until she found Mary’s name.

Give them a little time. Let the sweet heavy intoxication of sex and alcohol, excitement and fatigue, work their savagely hypnotic magic.

For twenty minutes she stared sightlessly into Olympic Boulevard, eyes observing but not tracking the occasional tram. Then she dictated the number.

After a few seconds a drowsy, musically accented woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello?”

“I have a message for your friend.”

“Who is this?”

“I don’t think names are important. Just give him the message.”

A pause. Mary Ling’s voice became cautious. “Yes?”

“The message is: the Denver Mountain Rescue committee would like to have a few words.”

“Ah… I do not understand.”

“That’s all right. He will.”

Almost exactly a minute later, Donny came on line. “Is this who I think it is?” His voice was more guarded than Mary’s.

“Yes.”

“Ah… — listen. I’m sorry about the bad break that you got.”

Go to hell. “Come and talk to me. I need five minutes.”

He was down in four, wearing a robe that clung like wet silk. It was such a sight that she almost forgot what she came to say. She saw nervous impatience, but also a kind of arrogant compassion.

He said, “Listen, sorry about the way it went.” His massive shoulders rippled the robe with his shrug. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I know. I also know that it wouldn’t be a good idea if anyone found out about your collapse on the mountainside.”

The compassion went; so did the impatience. Easy arrogance now. The breeze shifted, and she caught a whiff of body oils, of Mary Ling’s pungency. She was disgusted and utterly turned on at the same instant, and ashamed of her reaction. He watched her coolly. He said, “I wonder if you know what you’re playing with.”

“A little. I did some research. What’s really going on here, Donny? Do a dying woman a favor.”

Donny stopped, seemed to be listening to the wind. Finally, he sighed.

“I’ll meet you up on the roof in ten minutes. Take the back stairs.”

Jillian’s ID card got her through the back door of dorm 7, and she climbed up the back stairs with legs and lungs and arms working together like gears churning in an implacable machine.

A chill wind whipped across the roof, but Jillian didn’t feel it. She looked out across to the city lights.

Donny showed up fifteen minutes later.

He rubbed a wristband nervously. A weapon? More probably just a specialized comlink, something not patched directly into the neural net.

“So what do you want from me?”

“I want their motives. Is the Council at war with itself? Crime and plagues and civil disobedience and industrial accidents — I’ve seen work that could have stopped all that. They’re not just accidents and happenstance and unavoidable turmoil.”

“You’re way out of your depth.”

“I went through the public records. You’ve been representing Transportation, and Trans has been angling for a twelve percent increase in its rates shipping oil for Energy and Pan-Latin Industrial. Two days after the disruption of your nervous system, they settled for six and a half percent.”

“I don’t see—”

She was so tired of lies. The cityscape blurred in her vision. She closed her eyes, and the lights danced on her eyelids. “Sure you do, Donny. Within ten hours of your little problem, there were several ‘events’ involving your section leaders. A thrombosis in Bangkok. A myocardial infarction in Vienna. I counted twelve apparently unconnected events.”

“Just where is this leading you, Jillian?”

“The Council is lying. They can’t deliver on their promises. I’m not even sure they want to.”

He turned up the collar on his robe. His face was hard. “I don’t have anything to say to you. Your time is up.”

“Donny—”

“Publish and be damned.”

“No, no.” She half laughed. “They’d never let me do that anyway, but Donny, I know about your illiteracy paper! It would have worked. We could have cut crime, human misery, violence. They chose not to. Why? And why did you let them buy you off?”

He stared at her, silent. He tried to twist away when she reached out to grasp his wrist, but her fingers dug in and held.

“The man who wrote that paper had compassion,” she said urgently. “Insight. He cared, Donny. Look at yourself now. You don’t believe in anything anymore. Did you know that your little bedmate killed Catherine St. Clair with a rock? Do you care?” It might have been her imagination, but Donny seemed to shiver. “What will you bet that nothing will be done about it? It isn’t justice they’re after, Donny. They want the best and the brightest to kill each other scrabbling to the top. They swallow our data whole, and use it or don’t use it, but us they throw away. When they let someone like you through, you’re a damned pet puppy.

“Tell me the truth, Donny. Make a dying woman happy.”

A floatcar spun up into its flight pattern, the headlamps flashing across Donny. His handsome face was a mask of pain, of anger, of misery. After a long pause, he spoke.

“All right. The truth. But it won’t make you happy, Jillian.

“It’s not a war. A domination game, maybe. A few people die. Check the numbers on a single major battle in World War Two and tell me we’re not better off.

“Everybody’s better off—”

“And the babies who die in poverty? Donny, if you can reduce crime and human misery by improving the schools, you can increase it by reducing the standard of education. How many little nudges has the Council used to weaken governments, destroy the faith of the voters, strengthen the corporations?”

“Jillian—”

“How much have you kept yourself from seeing, Donny? How about— Oh, my God.”

“Conspiracy theories are old stuff. They can even be fun if you…” He saw her shock. “What?”

“Jesus Christ, I just saw it, just now. It’s so blasted obvious once you think of it. Don’t you see how the Council has been at war with the nations? They control the Olympiad. How many papers besides yours have been classified, Donny? For at least forty years the Council has had the best minds on the planet helping them undermine participatory government.”

“Shit.”

Jillian waited, but that was all Donny had to say. He believed her. It was real.

She asked, “Who’s the Old Bastard, Donny?”

“I don’t know,” he said dully. “I’ve never seen him.”

“It’s a him? Not a her or a them?”

Donny shrugged. “The rumor is about an old man. The Council is waiting for him to die. He can’t last much longer, they say. He’s behind all of this. You want to blame someone, find him.” He pulled his robe tight, and turned away from her. “Leave me alone, Shomer. I don’t want to know about any of this. I don’t care what happens to you. Just… leave me to hell alone.”

“You were the dream,” she said contemptuously, stepping back away from him.

“I have to tell them we talked, dear heart. They’ll know already, or they might. If they’ve been listening, you’re dead. They don’t need you, and if you’re right about the nations… you’re just dead.” He shivered. “Goddamn you for telling me that.”

“Donny Crawford.” She spoke the name almost reverently. “I guess everyone dies in the Olympiad, huh, Donny?” She turned away abruptly.

“Goddamn you!”

But she was already dropping down the staircase, quick but quiet, in a fellrunner’s controlled descent.