Flesh and Gold (22 page)

Zella said in a strangled voice, “Let's keep going.”

“Yar,” said Gobo, taking the buckler from Zella. “Get some English on that 'bok, Ned.” Without warning he knocked Ned's buckler aside and swung his armored fist outward at the side of Ned's head.

Zella without thinking sent her chebok up his armpit to deflect his aim. He said, “Uh,” almost inaudibly and stepped back.

“Not on the first day, Gobo,” Zella said, and gave him a grin that did not reach her ice-blue eyes.

After the noon meal the siesta broke the long hot day, and its deserted quietness was profound. Ned was lying on his cot with his hands folded in back of his head, watching the shadows as the sunbeam swung in his round window like a searchlight. Every once in a while he heard a snore from Smugger next door, or a ringing from far off: the robot Spartakos, untiring, a gold-edged guardian with a surface rippling like satin as he moved, stalked the corridors; his feet were padded, but not thickly enough to keep his steps from resonating.

Ned wondered if Zella would come. He was expecting her—whether to seduce him or give him another crack on the head he was not sure. She'd been quick enough with Gobo. The memory made him snigger.

He did not hear any steps at all before the tap on his door. When he called out, “Yeh?” it opened and she came in and sat down on the bed, calmly and looking rather determined.
Her eyes were on him, and she rested her hand lightly just above his navel as if it were the center of the universe and very, very far away. “I'm here,” she said. “You want me?”

Ned thought her eyes were a bit smoky. He seemed to hear his father's voice saying,
Better not go blindside to that one, Ned. When her kind rankle up it's devil take the hindermost
. His father would have known, had married one, among others. He had still a way to go in the arena with this one.

He breathed deeply, put his hand over hers, and said, “Any time you want to do it. Right now somebody else wants you to do it.”

She took her hand away and looked at him, fathoming him from a new point of view. “Who are you, Ned Gattes?” Her whisper seemed very loud in the silence punctuated by Smugger's snores.

“What'd they tell you? Your people think I know too much about something I never even got to find out until last night!”

“My people?”

“Whoever paired you with me because you look so much like Jacaranda.”

Zella recoiled. “Me? Jacaranda?”

“You have the same body shape and movement. Determination.”

She shivered. “I'm nothing like, nowhere near like her!”

“I thought you were, the moment I saw you, and they must think so, whoever they are.”

“That's terrible. I don't even want to think of it.”

“But they wanted you to stick to me?”

“Stay close to you. Sleep with you . . . anything so you'd talk. I was told you were a spy for a gambling ring.”

“I thought it was something like that.”

“That's why I banged you on the head. I was peeved at being maneuvered into agreeing . . . did you love her very much? Jacaranda?”

“As a friend. She wasn't ever my lover . . . they didn't realize, they never thought . . . she went with men for money, sometimes, but she never cared for any man—the closest we got was that we shared a lover, and Jacky was the one that was loved, not me. They made a mistake, whoever ‘they' are.”

“My ‘they' is Kati'ik. She's the Personnel Supervisor on this level.”

“I noticed, when she came by, the way you were looking at each other.”

“One thing she's not is ‘my people.'” She looked at him directly, daring him. “Why did you come? She'll keep pushing at me, I need something to tell her.”

“I applied to join the Spartakoi for seven Standard years before they gave me the call. It doesn't look as if I'm going to enjoy my membership now I've got it. But I had really wanted to come here.”

Her eyes were doubtful and searching. “That isn't all, though?”

“It's all I can say.”

She stood up. “I hope . . . she'll believe me.”

“I was stupid to jump straight into a trap, but what I've told you is true.” He took her hand. “You do believe me . . . you wouldn't let Gobo flatten me.”

But her mind was on Kati'ik and she forced a smile to cover her fearful thoughts. “Maybe I need a friend here as much as you do.”

“Can't I be more than than only a friend?”

Zella slipped out without answering yes or no, and he did not hear her light step beyond the door. There was nothing else then but to sit on the edge of the bed and think of her.

I don't know why I even said that, there's no time for it
now. I've got to keep telling lies and trying to stay alive long enough to get out of here . . . yes, I guess I know why I said that. It's dangerous to trust her, but I want more than a friendly machine, or a good fighting partner, or a whore who lets herself get beaten up for me and makes me feel like a shit
.

Ned's first match was one of the many free round-the-clock fights that took place in the lobbies of casinos, brothels, and amusement parks: a game of
blitz
, a simple contest in which two fighters squatted like sumo wrestlers in a circle and tried to shove each other out of it. The arena was a little theater of marble, a miniature Greek odeon with velvet cushions.

Blitz was an old time-waster for spacers and the children who imitated them—and for Ned who had been an alley-boyo; his opponent was Sweet, Zella's sparring partner. It occurred to Ned that he was just being put through the motions until he could be easily disposed of—unless Front Office expected Sweet to do it.

Crouching in this circle that reminded him very much of a target, he was wary; he watched, hands up and out with fingers rigid, like knives; no fists were allowed. Sweet's diamond tooth glinted in the arc lamp.

After dodging a couple of feints Ned realized that all Sweet wanted was the thrill of being in competition rather than sparring. After that he found his rhythm, knocked aside a jab with his shoulder and got under Sweet's arm to whack him on the side of his head with the edge of a hand and push him out of the ring. The members of the audience, mush-mouthed with free drinks and cheap drugs, gave him a few halfhearted yelps of approval and tossed some scant handfuls of brass tokens and sweetdrift petals.

The next day passed without combat or any other incident. Ned worked out in the gyms among the pugs who had landed with him.

Zella kept him within sight most of the time, but she had become untouchable—he had freed her to refuse him and thought she would as long she felt that making love to him was following orders; he was certain she was not his enemy. But he had no lover either.

One more night, and the next afternoon he and Zella fought a double with buckler and chebok for charged admission with a pair named Hammer Head and Knuckle Duster, sisters who usually fought each other or did an act. The arena was bigger and so was the audience. The women were better fighters than Sweet, and the fighting rhythm needed to be more intense and dramatic to give the watchers their money's worth. Zella was used to the techniques of their opponents, but Ned took some scratches and earned his money hard: each of the sisters weighed half again as much as he. All four came back together down endless corridors on the service rideways, Zella weary enough to lean on Ned's shoulder. She murmured, “I told Kati'ik what you told me, that you'd trying to come here for years. All she said was, to stay with you . . . do you think she believed me?”

Ned, much as he wanted to reassure her, could say only, “I don't know. I hope so.”

Zella shivered. “She just wants me to be a whore.”

“You aren't, you'll never be a whore.”

She said nothing.

When he opened the door of his room he found a woman—he thought it was a woman—waiting for him. A beige-skinned, hairless person of a species he had seen many times without noticing or recognizing as a people he knew. He thought she was a servant who brought his towels and laundry. She stirred the memory of the pair who had jumped him on his first evening here; they had had the same color of skin.

She had been sitting on the bed in the dark and as he came in and flicked light on she stood up. Her impervious helmet glittered with fake jewels. He stared at her without thinking very much of anything; she was slender and narrow-shouldered, and her mouth was lightly rouged. “Yes?” A question he forced past his lips. Of course he knew the answer.

“I am at your service, Mister,” she said in a soft voice, and began to pull down the tag of her zip. Underneath she was wearing something red with the glint of gold spangles, and a gold chain with a pendant that hung down between her tiny breasts. He reached to touch and examine it and she flinched, just observably. The little heart with the keyhole that Jacaranda had worn.

He felt as if he had been kicked. She stood before him in her flesh almost the color of dust and darker around her eyes and creases, almost asking to be abused, with little lightning forks of fear flickering in her eyes.

“Thank you, Miss,” he said. “Not this evening. Maybe another time,” and stepped aside to let her go.

But she shrank back into a corner of the room. “Mister, please don't push me out. You don't have to pay me anything.”

“I'm tired and hungry, lady!”

She whispered, “They'll beat me.”

He sat down on the bed and said wearily, “Sit down. Who are ‘they'?”

“The ones that pay me. That run this place.”

“What do they want of me?” He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don't ask me, mister! Please don't ask me.”

He lifted his hand. “Don't be frightened! I won't touch you and they won't beat you either.” He opened the door, stood up and pulled her toward him; standing at the doorway
in full view, he kissed her on the mouth; she flinched a little as if it had been the first time ever. “Tell 'em I like you very much and want to see you again.” He kissed her again. “You go tell 'em, darling-o.”

He stood staring after her, licking her rouge off his mouth, as she disappeared in the shadows of doorways or among clumps of people gathering families or lovers for a pub drink before dinner. He wondered who she was, surely not a citizen of any nations he had learned of at school in the history book about his ancestral Earth. She seemed to be a Solthree woman . . .
Anyway, it looks as if they've given up trying to make a spy out of Zella
. . . The unease settled into him more deeply.

While he was bathing and changing he noticed that one of his cuts was uglier than he had thought and was seeping so badly that he could not stop it. He dressed quickly and hurried down to the clinic. Though he was not afraid of the Lyhhrt doctors, the one available to him was a medmech and in a few moments he was absorbing an antiseptic dermcap and being patched.

In the Clinic waiting room there was a cylindrical tank of fish, and Ned paused to watched them for a moment. He wondered if they had developed in the brackish seas beyond the docks; they looked truly alien and not restful. A few were twisted monsters in splattered colors that made him think of the swimming creature who had set the whole train of events in motion by calling out to Skerow, the Lizard Lady.

He asked the robot doctor, “Do those come from here?”

“A few. We breed them. The others are clones that we make here.”

“Really?”

“We clone zoo animals too, some for research. We are known throughout Galactic Federation for our Research
Foundation. Have you not heard of it? Tours every tenday.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Ned said. He did not think he wanted a tour.

The medmech did not quite nod, and its metal face of course did not change expression.

Ned went away bemused. Tanks, swimmer, slaves.
We breed them
. He had wondered first why he and Jacaranda had been assigned to that swimmer and afterward whether that had anything to do with slaves. He realized that the two assignments were bound together in a way he did not understand.

Manador knew nothing about the swimmer and Lebedev had not told Ned much when he was sent out, but Jacky had died for her, he himself had been hunted, nearly killed without knowing what her importance was; innocent Zella was a counter tossed and spinning in a game she knew nothing about.

As he threaded his way back through the level of practice arenas, he heard Spartakos's resonant voice declaiming; the words were blurred by baffles and echoing. He followed the sound to a tiny amphitheater where twenty-odd people had gathered to listen. These were not pugs but the patrons who usually hung about the small arena to gamble.

Ned thought the robot might have been repeating the same spiel he had given to the incoming gladiators earlier, but it seemed he had more than one. “Members of the audience,” he was saying, “I have been given the name of a slave.” While he spoke he was polishing himself with a chamois, wiping his limbs unaffectedly like a bather, but quite unlike any known bather of his shape, turning his head by a hundred and eighty degrees and bending his arms backward to make sure he had not missed a spot. Sometimes he paused to emphasize a point with a gesture.

“I am sure you have been told by your tour guides that
Spartacus was a Roman slave thousands of years ago who rebelled, and ultimately led an army of rebels, only because he wanted to go home to Thrace. Only to go home. I have no other home than this, so I am home, and I have the freedom to stand here waving my arms and entertaining you. Therefore I have been given the name of a slave. This shows that though you are called a slave you need not be one. I am your example.”

While Ned was wondering who had programmed these strange words, he noticed that not all the members of the audience were patrons; a small cluster to one side was made up of more hairless dun-colored people like the woman who had tried to seduce him. There were only five or six of them, dressed neatly in inconspicuous zips, mesh impervious helmets on their heads, but he thought he remembered one or two who were supervisors of working machines. They were not strongly differentiated sexually, but there seemed to be more females than males. A short distance away from the group a robot cleaner had stopped as if it had paused and hunched down to listen. Ned shook himself like a dog against his imaginings and moved on.