The Games Page 21

  It was low to the ground and moved like the crack of a whip, a thing part alligator, part wolf, with eyes that didn’t point in the same direction.

  Leave it to the French.

  To Baskov, it seemed that countries sometimes put out gladiators simply to show they could, without any particular competitive consideration. In reality, the French gladiator was probably less dangerous than the constituent species from which it was assembled. If the French had lacked the demonstrated ability to successfully cross phyla (a tricky thing, even if you knew what you were doing), then they certainly shouldn’t have made their attempt on the world stage. There are basic and fundamental differences between the physiologies of reptiles and mammals, which resisted crossing. As Baskov watched the creature move into the light, he wondered how many distorted siblings it had left behind. How many tries had they made to produce this one fighter?

  The tragic creature moved farther into the arena, dragging a long wire-haired tail behind it through the sawdust.

  The spectators cheered. In Baskov’s experience, they always cheered, no matter the competitor.

  Years ago, before the gladiator competition, there’d been problems with gene doping and genetic tweaks. Web-footed swimmers. Myostatin freaks. Then testing caught up, and the Games enforced the ban.

  But the crowds had still wanted the freak show.

  They’d wanted this.

  Science had wanted it, too—an arena to showcase its newest art form.

  So the freak watchers were given the gladiator competition. The single event where genetic engineering was allowed. It became the most popular event in the Games.

  And the most vilified.

  A second door began its slow ascent. The strange French weregator didn’t even notice.

  Behind the Argentina door was something that lacked the French contestant’s seeming docility. Big furry forelimbs dug at the sawdust while the door rose. A head pushed under, then shoulders, a long torso. The creature was out in a flash of brown; and in another instant, it froze, locking eyes on the combatant across the arena.

  Baskov was impressed, he had to admit. He hadn’t expected anything like this from Argentina. The gorilla hybrid had claws at the ends of long, muscular arms. Its mouth was a gaping maw of teeth, borrowed from somewhere in order Carnivora.

  It surged across the sawdust, kicking up plumes of wood chips in its four-legged charge. The weregator finally noticed and turned, baring its teeth.

  The two collided in an explosion of flesh and bone.

  Even Baskov was taken aback by the scope of the violence. Their modes of attack were primitive but effective. They latched their jaws onto each other and shook. The weregator had Isaac Newton on its side, but mass only counts for so much. In the end, it was those claws that decided it.

  The gorilla thing sank its teeth deeper into a shoulder, tightening its hold. Then it simply began digging into the side of the scaly creature in the same way a dog might dig a hole in the ground. There was blood, then the sound of cracking ribs. The weregator loosened its hold and tried to get away, but it was no use. The gorilla thing held fast and continued digging. The French contestant screamed when its abdominal wall was breached, and then organs spilled out in bright loops, piling between the gorilla thing’s back legs exactly like the dirt behind a digging canine. It was fantastic.

  The fight lasted six minutes. The victor was left to feed for another three. The French flag came down, leaving the flag of Argentina flapping alone.

  The crowd roared.

  When the door slid open again, the icers distended from the walls, blowing freezing clouds of CO2; the survivor was maneuvered back into its pen.

  The men and women in the skybox drifted from the windows, smiles on their satisfied faces. “Damned good match” seemed to be the consensus.

  The crowd thrummed outside. What would their reaction be to the strange U.S. gladiator? Baskov wondered. Would they roar? Would they scream?

  The cleanup crew busied themselves in the arena. They chained the carcass of the weregator to the back of a small tractor and hauled it away, methodically raking the path smooth behind it. Several others stayed behind to bag up the largest stray clumps of tissue.

  Little time was wasted between matches. When the arena was clean, the announcer’s voice came again. It would be Saudi Arabia vs. Australia. This match would be even better, Baskov thought.

  Two new flags went up the poles. The skybox crowd—most with freshened drinks in their hands—shifted back against the glass.

  The door with the Aussie flag opened first, and Baskov knew immediately why the Australians had been so secretive about their creation. There was certainly no rule, implied or otherwise, that required a gladiator be constituted from species native to the particular country it represented. Such a rule would have put Africa at a prohibitive advantage. But for Australia, it seemed to be a matter of national pride. Their contestant didn’t just step into the arena, it hopped.

  The crowd roared, the people in the skybox smiled, and Baskov had to admit it was kind of cute, in a predatory, rip-your-head-off sort of way.

  While not so difficult as mammal-reptile crosses, marsupial-placental hybrids were usually just as painful to look at. Like the Argentinean contestant, the Aussie gladiator was surprisingly sophisticated. It was built like a giant kangaroo but armed with bulk and teeth as no kangaroo he’d ever seen. The arms were long and powerfully thick, terminating in vicious hooked talons.

  It was too good, almost. Baskov remembered reading once about a species of carnivorous kangaroo that became extinct tens of thousands of years ago, leaving only its bones lying buried in the sun-scorched earth. Perhaps the Australians had made a breakthrough in DNA extraction technology. Perhaps their gladiator hadn’t been so difficult to come by, after all. Baskov made a mental note to file a petition of display against the Australians after the Games were over. If they had come up with some new tricks for extracting the code of extinct species from fossil bones, then it was only fair that everybody know them.

  The other door began to open, and the ’roo jumped away from the sudden movement. It turned and lowered its head to stare under the rising iron, digging its long front limbs into the sawdust.

  From beneath the Saudi door slid a long, low bear of a thing.

  The crowd roared.

  It was built like a wolverine but larger, with a flatter head. There was no flashiness about the beast, nothing that jarred or caught the eye. To those unfamiliar with nature’s handiwork, this could be mistaken for one of her own. It was like something you’d expect to see on a nature vid shot in some exotic out-of-the-way place. It wasn’t a creature you could put a name to, but it looked like it should exist. Baskov knew the ones that looked normal were usually the most dangerous.

  The creature locked its eyes on the ’roo, then squealed, a porcine scream of alarm. The two beasts froze for a moment. Then they charged.

  The crowd roared again—a noise like a runaway freight train rising up through Baskov’s feet and legs, shaking the glass in the skybox.

  The ’roo jumped high and spun away from the snapping jaws. The jaws followed. The ’roo jumped again, then came in for a quick attack—a mash of fur and skin, the snap of jaws, and the ’roo stayed just out of reach.

  For a moment, Baskov was afraid things were going to be one-sided; those kinds of matches were never fun to watch. You couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for a creature running for its life. But the ’roo turned and stood its ground, attempting to connect with a series of jabs as the Saudi gladiator came at it.

  The wolverine thing was too fast and took advantage of its lowered angle of attack. The ’roo had to bend down to punch, and the wolverine thing went for the descending throat. Twice it almost got it. Twice the ’roo flinched back at the last second. When the wolverine thing came in for the third time, the ’roo countered with a kick from a hind limb, sending it sprawling through the sawdust.

  The crowd screamed. Around him,
in the skybox, voices shouted, faces pressed to the glass.

  The kangaroo thing was smart to change strategies, but Baskov knew it would not be enough. Even before blood had been drawn, he could tell the ’roo was doomed. Against a taller enemy, one it could strike at from an upright position, the ’roo might have had a chance. But against something long and low to the ground, it couldn’t use the cutlery at the end of its arms without bringing its throat within striking distance.

  The wolverine thing charged again, snapping at air.

  The ’roo countered with a glancing kick to the broad skull. The wolverine thing screamed again, baring a wide row of jagged teeth. The two circled each other.

  As Baskov thought it might, the fight ended at the very first show of red.

  The wolverine thing came in again and drove the Aussie combatant off balance. When the ’roo tried to fend off the Saudi gladiator with a jab, the wolverine caught it by the throat, pulled it to the ground, and ripped out its windpipe.

  Tissue flung away in a spray of gore as the wolverine thing pulled free a chunk of living meat and shook it violently in its teeth.

  It took one second.

  The crowd roared again while blood spurted the sawdust red. The ’roo thrashed in death. It was over.

  The vibration rose up through Baskov’s feet again as the crowd roared, shaking the stadium.

  Again, the victor was allowed to feed for a short while. Again, the icers moved in and brushed the survivor back into its holding pen. Again, the loser’s flag was lowered. And again, the people in the skybox moved back away from the window to freshen their drinks and grab a bite from the complimentary buffet.

  Baskov glanced down at the glass in his own hand and noticed it was empty.

  He was a drinking man, he’d admit that. Perhaps a heavy-drinking man.

  On his darker days, those days when he was tempted to be honest with himself, maybe he’d acknowledge being a step beyond that, even. A step toward being what his father would have called a serious drinking man. But not a drunk. Never that. No, drunks couldn’t get things done the way he could. Drunks didn’t run corporations.

  The bartender slid another scotch toward him. Baskov dropped two notes on the counter, and as he took the first sip, his eyes snagged on someone across the top of the glass. At the far end of the skybox, the man’s shaggy blond mane set him apart from the older, conservative crowd, and when the face turned into full view, Baskov recognized Ben Wells.

  Baskov scanned the crowd around him and was glad to see the young man wasn’t accompanied by his troublesome boss. Ben was alternately munching on a plate of chicken wings and talking heatedly with a man Baskov recognized as a representative from a pharmaceutical company—a pharmaceutical company that happened to own a controlling interest in a particularly lucrative bacterial gene patent.

  When the announcer came on again, Baskov moved back to his position near the glass, and the flags of Germany and India climbed their poles. He could rouse only faint interest in which flag would come down; his mind was already ahead, on the U.S.-China competition. And he was certain that would be the matchup they’d face, the United States vs. China. What he wasn’t at all certain about was which flag would be coming down after that fight.

  The most recent intelligence reports, which they’d paid so dearly for, had been anything but encouraging. China was going to be a huge obstacle.

  He took a deep swig of his scotch, keeping Ben in the corner of his eye.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Silas unwound himself from Vidonia and collapsed next to her on the bed, breathing heavily. She was smiling now, and propped her head up with her hand, elbow planted deeply in the soft pillow. The flickering light of the holo-screen lent a shifting, semi-strobe quality to her features, and he thought again of how beautiful she was, the angular nose balanced perfectly by the full mouth.

  She didn’t say anything at first, just looked at him with that soft, self-satisfied grin he’d come to know so well, a sweep of dark hair cascading casually over her cheek.

  He closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation of her body pressed closely against his. It was in these moments, just after, that he felt closest to her, when their bodies were theirs alone again and he could still feel the connection, like words unspoken between them. She never talked during these times. She looked into his face and smiled. But what she was thinking, he had no idea. She’d tell when she was ready.

  He opened his eyes and looked over the tops of his feet at the glowing images.

  “Indonesia and South Africa,” she said, in anticipation of his unspoken question. She was good at that.

  The two creatures were so poorly constructed, and so tangled in battle, that he couldn’t be sure where one began and the other ended. Finally, they broke, and the dichotomy became clear.

  “Iguana-lion meets bull-hyena-leopard?” she said.

  Silas looked closely at the creatures and had to agree that was a pretty fair assessment of the combatants. The bull thing had a clear advantage at this point, and was using its enormous, twisted horns to drive its adversary across the arena. The horns were eight feet wide, asymmetrical, and as thick as a man’s calf. One curled slightly forward, and the other spiraled out to the side for four feet before hooking upward in a vicious barb.

  The crowd went absolutely crazy as the iguana-lion backed itself into the corner, hissing and pawing at the air. It had nowhere left to go.

  The bull roared as no bull would, then charged. The impact was amazing. Silas clearly heard the snap-crackle of bone splintering as the iguana-lion was driven into the unyielding iron. Purple loops of gut spurted along the wall precisely the way a frog’s guts might squirt out from beneath the shoe of a sadistic child.

  Whether there was still life left in the carcass, Silas didn’t know, but the bull spun the body on its bizarre horns and sent it tumbling into the air like an off-luck rodeo clown. It landed in a heap several yards away, and the bull charged again. It scooped the pulped animal off the sawdust and sent it tumbling toward the night sky, spraying blood and bile through the netting and into the first and second rows of the audience. The crowd orgasmed.

  Silas tried not to look at Vidonia as the scene played across the screen. Not for the first time in the last couple of days, he felt self-conscious about what he did for a living. All that talk of truth and the statue of David seemed far away now. Just a story he’d been trying to convince himself of. This was science whored out for entertainment.

  Eventually, when the cries of the crowd began to ebb, the automatic icers maneuvered the strutting bull back beneath its door with a fine spray of freezing particles.

  Silas had to hand it to the Indonesians for their originality. They’d used territoriality for internal motivation rather than a typical predation drive. It was an unusual approach, and it had worked beautifully. Their gladiator hadn’t taken so much as a single bite out of the vanquished animal. Bulls aren’t carnivorous, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t aggressive.

  Silas turned his head away from the screen and nuzzled himself into Vidonia’s breast, trying to block out the color commentary blathering through the speakers.

  Across the bottom of the screen, a news bulletin broke in.

  There are reports of a disturbance outside the Olympic stadium. Protesters have converged on the entry gates; police are handling the situation

  .

  The announcers droned on, oblivious.

  The commentary continued for several more minutes. Silas shook his head. How many times did he have to listen to the same two guys saying the same tired lines about a fight he had just watched with his own eyes? He had almost drifted off to sleep when he heard the word “America” and sat bolt upright in bed. Suddenly, he was very much awake.

  He felt a cool hand at the back of his neck. She didn’t say “Calm down.” She didn’t say “Relax.” Just that hand against the back of his neck. He wondered how she had come to know him so well in so little time.


  Two flags were raised, similar for their use of stars but worlds apart, both geographically and culturally. The Chinese flag beat the United States to the top. Silas wondered if that was an omen.

  A swirl of conflicting emotions spun through his head as he waited for the fight to begin. His heart galloped in his chest. He was surprised at his physical reaction and realized it was fear that his body was reacting to. What am I scared of? Losing? No. That wasn’t it. He realized that the emotion he’d feel if the Chinese contestant won was this: relief. He wanted the U.S gladiator to lose. To die. He was rooting against himself.

  He looked over at Vidonia and wondered if she suspected. He’d kept it hidden. From her. From himself.

  Her dark eyes were unreadable.

  His hand slid across the bedsheet to hers, and he turned back toward the screen, concentrating, trying to put conscious thought out of his mind. He pushed himself into his senses, trying to see and hear only, while feeling nothing. It would be over soon. That was his one consolation. One way or the other, it would be over soon.

  HAND IN hand, they watched in silence as the China door began its ascent. Silas knew they intentionally programmed the doors to open slowly to heighten the suspense, and he felt a surge of anger at being manipulated so easily. But he pushed that away, too, focusing on the expanding rectangle of shadow.

  A striped yellow shape ducked under the rising door and lumbered into view.

  It turned its head from left to right, splayed nostrils sucking at the air, eyes scanning the arena. The head was enormous, wide, and vaguely bearlike in conformation. The front of the body, too, was bearlike, broad and hulking, enormously wide at the chest. But the torso was long, and tapered into a graceful striped tail that flickered with excitement.

  “Bear-tiger?” There was awe in Vidonia’s voice.

  “I think so,” Silas said, then, “Has to be, but there’s something more.”

  The bear-tiger sauntered casually around the arena, eating up an amazing distance between each long-legged stride.