by Stant Litore
5
Our tyrannosaurs are in full stampede now, carrying us down the long red road, creating wind in our faces. Liberty’s daughters have danced with violence and have not only survived but gentled and bridled these most vicious of beasts; now we careen across the world on their backs, lifting our voices, one after the other, in song. Only one of us lies bleeding and broken behind; the goddess is pleased. And you are pleased; how your feet stomp! How your screams fill the cylinder! Scream for me!
Something swerves into the peripheral view on my left. Glancing, I see Alicia perched high on her tyrannosaur’s head. Her tyrannosaur is in full charge beside mine. My gaze at her is hot with hate. She smirks at me, taking her second hook in her left hand and tapping its blunt end against the beast’s eyelid. The beast’s eye snaps shut and it leans its head sharply toward me and veers suddenly, slamming its body into my own bull’s shoulder. My beast stumbles and I am in the air but I flip quickly and swing in on my rope, catching the beast’s knee painfully with my hip, forcing a cry of pain from my throat. The nanites are on it, and the pain fades almost instantly, but the humiliation doesn’t. She has made me look clumsy, ungraceful. The bitch. Throat tight with rage, I pull myself swiftly up the rope, recovering the creature’s back even as it snaps at the other bull’s neck. But Alicia is already wheeling her tyrannosaur away. I can hear her shrill laugh and then I hear your laughter, the laughter of all you millions and I scream in my fury. Unhooking from my beast I balance on its shoulder, ready to leap, spinning the hook on its rope in circles over my head to gain enough momentum and force. My aim is precise, my arm is powerful. The hook flashes in the air, in the colored lights, then slams into the other tyrannosaur’s right eye. The creature flips its head back, that scream like metal. I have already leapt, I am already landing on its shoulder, sweeping my arm to catch Alicia’s leg and throw her. She is fast, too; she is already flipping in the air over my head. I turn and meet her as she lands on the tyrannosaur’s back, catching her swift kick on my arm and deflecting it. I jab my hand toward her face but she catches it in hers and twists, but I pivot, a foot aimed high toward her head; she dodges, and I wrench my hand free and we two are dancing, dancing on the tyrannosaur’s back, kicks and sweeps almost too fast for the screens to catch, and you are roaring your approval and excitement and arousal, and I can hear your roar beating inside my body, the pump of my heart, the thrill of my blood. Alicia is old and I am faster and I am better and she knows it, and I can see it in her eyes. The egret flies above the gazelle. Always.
I get in a good kick to the back of her knee and her leg crumples and then she is falling back. Catching herself against the beast’s shoulder, she tucks in her legs and flips in the air toward the other bull; she does it right, but she is too near the other tyrannosaur’s head, the bull I hooked first. The creature must have caught sight of her in its peripheral because its head darts to the left and those overwhelming jaws snap shut over Alicia’s legs and hips. It flips her from side to side, several times, her shriek piercing and high in my ears, then throws her.
She slams into the sand, a tyrannosaur’s leap away. Her scream stops.
The bull’s legs tense for the leap but before it springs, I have unhooked and leapt toward its back. I miss and slide down its leg and slam my hook in. Its head whips around toward me; it has forgotten Alicia and those teeth like desert knives and its fetid breath are all coming at me in a rush and I let go of the rope and drop. My feet hit the sand, jarring me; I hear the snap of its jaws above me but I am up and running, unwinding the rope about my right arm, readying my next hook. If I am not astride this creature in another second or two, I will be dead. I don’t know why I have done this. It is stupid. Something about her scream; I acted before I could think. I might die for it, but I simply don’t have time for fear, and the nanites are pumping so much adrenaline into me that I wouldn’t feel the fear if I did. And you are all watching. I have to recover now, and not just recover, but recover in a way that will make you love me. The creature strikes at me again, and I leap right at its head. My hook slams into the side of its upper jaw, and I have my arms and legs about the jaw and it slams its teeth together but no part of me is inside, I am clinging to the top of its head. The goddess has blessed me, I am uninjured, it has nothing to grip, no way to flip me about as it did Alicia. Its snort so near my ear is a sound like something heavy splashing into water, and its hot breath washes across my arm and back. I am shrieking with glee. You are all screaming my name again.
Panting, a little dazed but the nanites still at my organs, pumping hot chemicals into my blood, I get my limbs under me and half-spring, half-scurry over the bull’s head, down the back of its neck. I cut open its flesh behind the shoulder, quickly, grimacing as I shove my hand in and grip the ragged edge of its hide. Holding on by its wound, I rip out the hook and sling it through the air, lashing its right flank, sending it lunging forward into a run, forgetful of Alicia, fleeing the sting of pain. Then I am on its back, on my feet, rocking my weight as it roars, lashing it on, while behind me Alicia lies in the sand, shattered, other bulls thundering past her, following mine, a few with other women on their backs.
Glancing over my shoulder, I catch Alicia’s gaze for the briefest instant. Her eyes are glassy. She has a hand clutched to her hip, dark fluid pumping out between her fingers; the nanites might not be fast enough to repair her. Her face now is not proud but gentle and strangely sad.
I have seen her like that once before—on the night after our first training in the jungles of the conservatory world. I was fourteen and terrified, and I failed my first mount. I’d been trying to one-up Alicia, who had just thundered past on the back of a large albino bull, whooping and calling insults to us from its back as it careened by in a crash of foliage. So when the other bulls crashed out of the thicket following the one she’d caught, I took a risk. I moved too fast. I still remember a tyrannosaur crouching over me where I fell, its mouth gaping, the whole sky full of teeth, then the burning stench and the crackle of electricity against its tongue as Mai drove it back with a shock rod, her blue gown billowing about her. She stood over me, protecting her investment in grim silence, and I remember staring at her fabric, oddly fixated, in shock myself, seeing how fine the stitches were, how unstained by the forest around us. I realized it was real silk, rare as diamonds; there aren’t many silkworms left, and they’re supposed to be difficult to engineer. I remember Mai’s hand, ice cold as always, grasping my fingers so tight it hurt, lifting me to my feet. I remember the sting of her slap across my face, and the burn she incited in my nerves in the airlock afterward, once we were all safe and awaiting our shuttle back to the training house above Europa’s ice-covered saltwater sea. I screamed and twitched and jerked, and after the pain was gone I kept shaking on the metal floor.
Mai’s words as she turned to face the other girls were as sharp and severe as her cheekbones, as the slant of her eyes. “This is not play. You don’t giggle, you don’t shriek, you don’t show off unless the cameras are on, and you don’t make stupid errors. You are expensive and the tyrannosaurs are expensive, and you will treat them with respect, or some of you will not be coming back through this airlock alive.”
A dozen murmurs of “Yes, Mai,” from the others. I just lay shuddering, pulling huge breaths from the air.
That night in my bunk, my hands still shook as I took sleep induction. Waiting for unconsciousness to come and replace a day of terror with a night of terror, I lay back naked on my bunk and sobbed. The first time I had cried since the early days. Great, heaving sobs that just about took me apart. I didn’t hear the door open. Didn’t hear the footsteps soft against the carpet. I just wanted it to be over, wanted everything to be over, the training, the nanites’ work on my body, Mai’s fire. The dreams.
“Shhh, shhh.” A voice so soft in the dark. A small hand on my shoulder. Blinking away the blur, I glanced up into Alicia’s face. Into sad eyes glinting with the dim light from the crack of the door. She s
at with me a moment while I sniffled and hid most of my face in a pillow, knowing I must look ugly and swollen with tears, and not wanting to share this moment of absolute abandonment with anyone. Then she took her hand from my shoulder, gripped my fingers in hers—warm, not like Mai’s—and pressed something small into my palm. She cast a glance to the door; I could see her fear then, in her posture, in the quickness of her movements. If caught out of her own room, she might be nerve-burned or worse. Mai could easily do worse.
“Shhh,” she whispered again, without looking at me. Her fingers closed mine around the object. Then she stood in the dark, lithe and naked as I was, her braid hanging down her back. She flitted swiftly to the door. Our gaze met for an instant, then she was gone.
Blinking away more tears, I opened my hand. There was a small pebble of hard chocolate in my palm, something to be sucked on until it melted on the tongue. I stared at it for a long while, this alien object. My mother had used to give me chocolates like that. Long ago. With a final sniffle I slipped it between my lips and then lay back in my bunk, still trembling a little, waiting for sleep. The chocolate was warm and soothing. It had a rich, dark taste, like a little piece of some unimaginably good world.
Now, as she lies bleeding, Alicia shares another secret with me.
There is singing in the air around us, amplified like the voice of the goddess. The screens are showing you Alicia’s face, wet with her blood, as the Patriot Choir sings for her, but I look away. I take the rope in my teeth so that my hands are empty, then cross my wrists over my breasts, bowing my head in the sign of Silence for the Fallen. You are intent on Alicia, I know, but you will see my gesture and remember, and this will make you love me even more. Beneath me, the tyrannosaur’s breathing is labored. We are running them hard.
It must be a painful thing, to die faster than your nanites can heal you. Alicia deserves it. She was a hateful, proud, old girl who lorded it over us, made it clear to me and the other younger girls that we could never be her, never be half as good. Still, she must be in so much pain. She must be closing her eyes now, falling into the dark. I wonder if her mother read to her at night when she was small, if she is hearing that soft voice now. I wonder if her mother ever gave her chocolates.
6
The stampede carries us far and fast, and I guide my tyrannosaur with skill and I am showy about it. Hooking its flanks again and again to bleed it, I drive the bull on, and soon mine is running ahead, far ahead of the others. But though your cheers are loud, they are distant noise; I am numb inside. I can’t stop thinking about Alicia behind me, bleeding in the sand, waiting while hovercraft rush medics toward her. The run is nearly over, the garland is ahead of me, really I have won it already. I am the best, I am the fastest. The others are behind me. The only one who could compete with me may be dying.
The run is nearly over, until next year.
I blink back moisture and salt, and rappel down the tyrannosaur’s back until I can slash open its flank again. It needs to be faster yet. It is not enough for me to be first. I must leave the others far behind. You all must scream for me. I will never lie in the sand, never. Because I am the best. Alicia wasn’t, that’s all. I knew that already; only you didn’t.
So why am I crying?
7
Watching me from above, from most of a kilometer away on the opposite interior surface of Liberty Cylinder, you must be intent on the screens: an aerial view of the tyrannosaurs in stampede, flecks of foam on their flanks, their eyes rolling now, muscles straining with exertion, most of them packed close together, thick tails streaming behind them for balance as they run, kicking up clouds of disturbed sand. My own out in front, me standing on its back, a rope wrapped about my arm. Close-ups of my face, and the others. Loud voices of announcers speaking fast, detailing what they see, what you see. Recorded tyrannosaur screams to add sound effects to a run that is now silent but for the pounding of massive three-toed feet and the pounding of my heart. That metal shriek is not the only sound tyrannosaurs make; I have heard the bulls hoot like owls on the conservatory world, mating hoots long and eerie in the thick forest. And I have heard a tyrannosaur dam croon like an oboe over her hatchlings. The screams you hear that make you think tyrannosaur, those are the sounds they make when they are frightened or in pain.
Knowing I am ahead and you can see me, I raise my right hand high again, grasping the unseen, intangible torch that lights the sand road to freedom, guides ships into open harbor. You shout for me. I can hear the athletes behind me singing the Liberty Prayer. I do, too. I sing louder, though for the first time my heart isn’t in it.
That death in the sand, Alicia’s body bleeding out, seems to me the only real thing I have seen. I know why I have tears. It is because she is free. She will never again have to vomit up her food, or gaze at her reflection while the nanites reshape her breasts and thighs to some new standard, or feel her skin on fire at Mai’s displeasure.
The garland is ahead and I can see the Liberty Shrine, the silhouette of Madame President against its golden lights and the flashing of the hovers above Liberty’s crown, and in a few moments I will be there, there before all the rest—sand billows behind the tyrannosaur I ride—but Alicia has beaten me. I envy her.
An urge overtakes me, stronger than any I have ever felt, than any itch in my loins or hunger in my belly: an urge to stop running, to throw myself from the tyrannosaur and wait in the sand. I want to. I want to. To defy Mai and all of you. But what then? What will I have left? With all of you staring at me then in silence, or even jeering at me, none of you shouting in adoration Egret, Egret, Egret! If even that one solace, that one thing to live for, is taken from me? What then?
Oh, I want to.
I envy you.
Your freedom comes at no cost of being perfect. My freedom lasts one hour on the sand, yours lasts a life. I run, but you roar.
And yet, just as my own body, my desires and my dreams, are shaped for your entertainment, I suppose yours are shaped, too, for the entertainment and profit of others. Just less perfectly, less completely than mine. Maybe neither you nor I are free. Liberty’s torch in my hand is unseen, unfelt: an imagination made out of empty air. Was it ever real? Was the goddess ever real? Is anything real but Alicia’s blood darkening the sand?
8
Because I know you expect it, I chop at the tyrannosaur’s head with my hook, in whatever soft, vulnerable places I can find, forcing the creature to turn from the pain. The great bull skids to a halt, spraying sand, right before the marble steps of the Liberty Shrine, its breath huffing, fetid and rank, and the smell of sweat and musk nearly knocking me from its back. But I do this properly. I do this to impress. I slide down its shoulder and leap to the sand, landing in a crouch and rising quickly, my head lowered. Madame President and her attendants are descending the high steps toward me to fanfare, bursts of golden light from the stair at each of her footsteps. I know she carries a garland in her hand but I do not look up; my eyes are still hot with unshed tears. I cannot hear the other tyrannosaurs bearing the other athletes, over the blare of Liberty music, but I can feel the ground shake at their approach. I hope dully that none of them manage the dismount as well as I. Behind me, handlers with shock rods are already backing my tyrannosaur away. You all expect that I will keep my back turned, but in fact, it is all I can do not to flinch, knowing that the great bull I have danced and run is behind me, each of its teeth long as my hand. Yet I know that if I glanced over my shoulder, I would see it staggering as the handlers drive it back around the Shrine toward the waiting pens. The creature would be too exhausted, too docile now, to attack. As I, too, am exhausted.
The nanites have reached the limit of their ability to heighten my adrenaline. The reaction is coming, and it will be bad. I stagger a little, then catch myself, knowing I must look graceful for you, desirable to you. When you run the tyrannosaurs, grace is everything. Through blurred vision, I can see a hover zipping toward me over the sand, carrying my crew, to refresh m
e and pamper me and clean me swiftly for the cameras. My belly is snarling like a beast itself despite sudden nausea, but I know they will not allow me food.
I swallow back a little vomit, burning my throat; I am unsteady. That hovercraft is not approaching fast enough. If I throw up or pass out... I feel the soreness in my body now; I have never felt such fatigue, not even after hard training.
A different hover sweeps by, and I catch a glimpse of Alicia on the craft, wrapped in blankets, her face gray, her arms a forest of tubes, medics fussing over her. Bitch. But there is no venom in the word any more, only heaviness. And she was the only one, the only one almost as good as I was. Now no one is. Tomorrow there will be interviews and glamour vids and then more training, even fiercer training, because next year I will be old and the younger girls will be faster and they will look at me the way I have looked at Alicia, and I will have to be even better—my reflexes even quicker, my breasts even larger, my smile even more fetching. But there will be no one my own age to compete with. Just me. Last year’s sensation.
I sway. The cylinder tilts, which shouldn’t be possible. Then everything is sideways and I am looking at the sand and men are leaping down to it, boots running toward me, toward my face, except everything is in bright shades of yellow and green and then I am retching, my stomach hurling its way up my throat as if it intends to dance the beast, too. Lifting my head, the slime of my vomit on my chin, I can see, blurred, Madame President near the bottom of the stairs, her face stern and cold and pale in the floodlights, like Mai’s. Maybe that is Mai. Maybe she is here to set fire to my skin, to rebuke me for this lapse of grace.
