The Games (23 page)

“The important ways.”

He looked at her then, and her hair was dancing, reaching into the wind.

“I should tell you we live together … or that we … lived together before I came here.”

“You’re close?”

“Close, sure. He slept right on the other side of the bed most nights. Other nights, the couch. Or wherever.”

“The couch. I guess he is different from me.”

“I told you.” She was still looking out into the desert and didn’t offer more, didn’t make any promises.
John
, he thought. Just an old, common name. Old, common-issue.
Let it be. Let it be
. He forced himself not to ask more.

P
HOENIX
. A place of cactus and rock and mountains and heat.

Phoenix is a place without history. It is new and air-conditioned. It defies the desert. On the side of the highway, as decoration, colored pebbles lie arranged in intricate Indian designs, pastels and browns and pinks, alternately anthropomorphic or zooplastic—strange totems and zigzags—all of it sloping upward and away from the road, an artistic canvas that five thousand pairs of eyes might see every day. And it goes on for miles, glass buildings and blue skies and mountains looming in the background.

The city isn’t so much surrounded by mountains as interwoven with them. But it is not a mountain city, not really.

Phoenix itself is flat. Phoenix is desert. The houses and roads and buildings have accreted
between
the rocky outcrops of higher ground. Human habitation sits everywhere in the lee of stone, as if the city were a liquid poured onto this jagged landscape and had found level.

Silas and Vidonia arrived in the downtown area at about three. The
hotel, the Grand Marq, wasn’t hard to find. Vidonia dug their reservations from the clutter of the glove compartment. Two reservations, two rooms. She put one back and let him check in. The desk clerk was more than happy to cancel the second reservation. This week, the hotel could probably book the room almost immediately at triple the normal rate.

Walking back outside to the car, Silas saw where the first of the protesters had assembled their tents along the stony median between the parking lot and the road.

There is hot, and there is hot. And there is Arizona in the summer. In Phoenix, the heat is a ten-pound hammer.

A dozen men and women stood sweating in the sun with their signs, but he knew their numbers would grow as the competition date approached.

The protesters came in all types. There were your animal-rights people, anti-genetics people, anti-technology people, and, of course, your everyday basic religious fanatics. There were also game puritans protesting the corporate sponsorship of the Olympics. And then there were your run-of-the-mill crazies. All united by their desire to see the gladiator event shut down.

That they stood in the Phoenix sun was testament to their commitment.

He knew for certain those tents had been erected illegally on city property, but the Olympic Commission had learned from experience that it was best to ignore them rather than to have them removed. The protest groups craved conflict, and the last thing the program needed was a crowd of riled malcontents screaming police brutality into a hundred rolling news cameras. The commission wanted the media circus to focus on what went on
inside
the dome, not in the parking lots.

Silas climbed behind the wheel and circled the parking lot, making a point to swing near the street. As he slowed past the group of protesters, the words on the back of one woman’s shirt caught his attention.

BLOOD SPORT

She turned to look at him as his car rolled past, and he thought he saw recognition in her eyes. He wondered what crossed through her mind in that moment. Her hair was gray and wild, and in her arms she cradled a big cardboard sign with thick block letters painted in black marker.

FOR THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH

He shook his head.
Those wages were paid to all men, sinner and saint alike
.

F
OR
S
ILAS
, the next three days were spent in a whirlwind of activity. He had meetings with regulators by day, dinner parties with dignitaries by evening, and Vidonia by night. Still Vidonia by night, John or no John.

“I met with the president today,” he told her, while they ate chicken wings at midnight in the hotel bar.

“President of what?”

He just looked at her. Took another bite.

“You’re serious.”

“Yep,” he said. “We were at a luncheon together. There were several heads of state there.”

“They’re staying for the competition?”

“Yeah. Most of them are going to spend the entire week here. They were even making friendly wagers.”

“What kind of odds were they laying?”

“Not sure, but I think we’re the favorite.”

“What were they betting?”

“The usual trifles.” He took another bite of chicken wing. “You know, sovereign languages, submarines, space stations.”

She smiled and thumped his shoulder.

“I don’t even want to tell you what language we’ll be speaking if we lose,” he went on. “There must have been a dozen members of Congress there, too. This thing is getting bigger every time.”

“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s turning into something.”

“Into what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a kind of”—Silas paused—“international sociopolitical economic summit.”

“That’s a lot of words. There’s no way you made that up just now.”

“I’d been working on it.” He turned serious. “Actually, that came from a reporter. I’m not sure I know what this is anymore.”

“Any talk of the protesters?”

“They used euphemisms. Mentioned security concerns but nothing specific.” And Silas had been grateful for the euphemisms. He wasn’t up for high-level talks about protester issues. He thought of that sign.
Blood Sport
. A description Silas was having more and more trouble arguing against.

“Next month, in Monterrey, those guys don’t realize how lucky they have it.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nobody protests the human portion of the Olympics.”

She shrugged. “They don’t compete to the death.”

“The president said something to me. He pulled me aside to ask if we were going to win this thing or not. That’s just how he put it: ‘Are we gonna win this thing?’ ”

“What’s so wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s
wrong
with it. It was the look he had, though. Like it was important that he hear a yes from me.”

“What did you say?”

“I gave him his yes.”

They finished their wings and took the elevator up to their hotel suite.

He waited until she was naked. “Should I sleep down the hall?” he asked her.

Again, she let her hands be her answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
he Grand Marq was one of the finest and most exclusive hotels in the world. Its triplet towers stood a mere pair of blocks from the Olympic area that dominated the epicenter of the city. To passersby, the Grand Marq’s three reflective spires shone like beacons in the desert sunshine, rising daggerlike into the sky and tapering to points somewhere just beneath the feet of God.

Catering exclusively to high-class clientele, the Marq was designed to get attention: this was shock-and-awe luxury at its finest. Prices started at don’t even ask. The staff worked hard to see that every amenity was available to its guests. But to a man like Silas, who had spent early childhood at the edge waters of the Mississippi, where you sometimes couldn’t tell the end of the swamp from the beginning of the river, and where the people sometimes actually
ate
what they pulled from the flow of brown water, it seemed like just so much conspicuous consumption.

But this was not to say that Silas wouldn’t take full advantage of the facilities. Even when you could afford to do so, there was a big difference between buying a neural relaxer and using one if it was made available for free. Or so he told himself again as he lay back on the cushions.

He let the technician drone on and on about how the “toxins” were being leached from his muscle tissues. It was funny to him how dependent
most of this post-new-age bullshit seemed to be on that particular buzzword.
Toxins
. As if the electrodes were little suction cups that drained some invisible poison from him that had been accumulating over the course of a hectic day. He knew the neural relaxer worked because it signaled the brain to release its serotonin cache. Then came requiescence, low-grade euphoria. An alcohol buzz without the alcohol, or the hangover. And like alcohol, it could become addictive very quickly, which was another reason not to buy one.

“Please be quiet,” Silas said when the blond technician began talking about the wonders of deep-tissue emulsification. He didn’t want to be rude, but he couldn’t force himself to listen to a single second more of her ridiculous pseudo-medical jargon.

But there was nothing pseudo about the buzz. That came on quick and strong. There was no disorientation, no feeling of drunkenness. Just warmth, contentment. He reminded himself to tell Vidonia about this later. She’d love it.

He floated.

“You have a call, Dr. Williams,” the blonde said.

Silas opened his eyes and saw her holding a small videophone out to him. He hadn’t even heard it ring. When he took it, Ben’s face considered him from the little screen, a line of empty cages sprawling away behind him. He was in the catacombs beneath the arena, and he didn’t look happy.

“Yeah,” Silas said.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I really need you to come down here.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t want to explain over the phone.”

“Why?”

“We need a secure line.”

“Just a hint, then?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“That’s a hint?”

“It’s all the hint you’re getting. Trust me, when you get here, you’ll understand.”

“Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Silas closed the receiver and began plucking off the wires that crisscrossed his arms and legs.

“You shouldn’t do that,” the blonde said, and her look of alarm made her face almost comical. “You need a cool-down period first. There can be problems. The cleansing of your tissues is only partially complete.”

“Sorry, I guess my tissues will have to be a little dirty.”

The elevator seemed to take an eternity as it descended, picking up several groups of passengers in its drop to the lobby. It became immediately clear upon his exit to the street that it would be quicker for him to walk the two blocks than to take a cab. Traffic was gridlocked. Somewhere amid his struggle through the humanity-clogged sidewalks, his headache began. It was subtle at first but gathered force as he walked.

Here and there a face would show a flash of recognition when glancing up at him. A few people pointed. But for the most part, he wasn’t noticed, just a tall man with a pained expression. By the time he reached the arena, the headache was like no other he had ever experienced.

Can a head actually explode?

He flashed his badge to the guards, and they let him through. At the elevator he inserted his passkey into the console and pushed B3. Descent again, but this time the motion made him reel with pain. The doors opened, and he followed the dark cement corridor for twenty meters before stepping down a side hall. The familiar zoo smells came again, and if it was possible, his head hurt worse.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Ben whispered, when he saw Silas’s face.

Silas hadn’t realized it was that obvious. “Toxins,” he said.

Ben gave him an incredulous look.

“Don’t worry about it. Tell me what was so important that you dragged me down here like this. And why are you whispering?”

Silas followed Ben’s gaze through the bars to their gladiator. Inside the small enclosure, it looked even bigger than usual, a shining black monster. There was no other word for it.

Its head almost touched the ceiling as it hulked in the back against the iron wall. Two members of their handling crew stood off to the side, arms folded across their chests.

Ben put a hand on Silas’s shoulder and turned his back to the cage, leading them away.

“I think the gladiator can understand what we say,” he said, voice low and soft.

“You think it understands English?”

“Yeah, Silas, I do. I really do.”

“How?”

“I guess it must have picked it up over months of listening to us talk around it. We should have been more careful. We—”

“No, I mean, how do you know it can understand us? Maybe you’re confusing some sort of Pavlovian conditioning for comprehension. Even untrained dogs can learn to associate sounds with food.”

“This isn’t some ringing bell I’m talking about. This thing
understands
, and I don’t mean just simple words.”

“How do you know?”

“Watch,” Ben said. He turned and walked back to the men standing by the cage. They were young interns from the eastern district cytology schools, and they shared the same sandblasted expression of shock on their faces.