“A competition,” Lesa answered. “You’ll see. We’re in time for a few rounds before high heat.”
Around them, the atmosphere had textures with which Kusanagi‑Jones was unfamiliar. The heat was no worse than Cairo, but the air felt dense and wet, even filtered by his wardrobe, and it carried a charge. Expectant.
“It gets hotter than this?” Vincent asked.
Lesa flipped her hair behind her ear. “This is just morning. Early afternoon is the worst.”
They crossed another broad square that would have had Kusanagi‑Jones breaking out in a cold sweat if the heat wasn’t already stressing his wardrobe. Here, there were onlookers–mostly armed women, some of them going about their business and some not even pretending to, but all obviously interested in the delegates from Earth. Kusanagi‑Jones was grateful that Vincent knew how the game was played and stuck close to him, using his body as protection.
Smooth as if they had never been apart.
Miss Pretoria led them under cover at last, into the shade of an archway broad enough for two groundcars abreast. The path they followed descended, and women in small, chatting groups emerged from below–settling hats and draping scarves against the climbing sun–or fell in behind, following them down.
This place was cooler, and the air now carried not just electric expectation, but the scent of an arena. Chalk dust, sweat, and cooking oil tickled Kusanagi‑Jones’s sinuses. He sneezed, and Miss Pretoria smiled at him. He spared her a frown; she looked away quickly.
“Down this way,” she instructed, stepping out of the flow of traffic and gesturing them through a door that irised open when she passed her hand across it. Kusanagi‑Jones stepped through second, because the taller of the two security agents beat him to first place.
This was a smaller passageway, well lit without being uncomfortably bright. With a sigh, he let his wardrobe drop its inadequate compensations for the equatorial sun.
“Private passage,” Miss Pretoria said. “Would you rather sit in my household’s box, or the one reserved by Parliament for dignitaries?”
Vincent hesitated, searching her face for a cue. “Is yours nicer?” he asked.
Her mouth thinned. “It is,” she said. “And closer to the action.”
Kusanagi‑Jones caught the shift in Vincent’s weight, the sideways glance, as he was meant to. Miss Pretoria didn’t approve of them, or perhaps she didn’t approve of the “action.”
Kusanagi‑Jones stepped aside to let her take the lead again. It wasn’t far: a few dozen yards and they could hear cheering, jeering, the almost inorganic noise of a crowd.
There must have been other concealed side passages, because this one led them directly to the Pretoria house box. They emerged through another irising door and among comfortable seats halfway up the wall of an oblong arena. The galleries were severely raked, vertiginous, and one of the security agents reached out as if to steady him when he marched up to the edge. He stepped away from her hand, and she let it fall.
When he leaned out, he looked down on the heads of the group seated immediately below. And Vincent was just as unprotected from anybody watching from the next tier above.
While the immediate security concerns distracted Kusanagi‑Jones, Vincent touched his elbow. He didn’t need to be told to follow Vincent’s line of sight; he did it automatically, his alerted interest becoming a startle and a reflexive step closer as another cheer went up.
The floor of the arena was divided into long ovals, each one bounded by white walls that were thick, but not higher than a man’s waist. And in each of the pits were men.
Young men, judging from the distance, paired off and engaged in contests of martial arts, each pair attended by an older man and a woman–referees or adjutants. Kusanagi‑Jones, his hands tightening on the railing, had the expertise to know what he was seeing. These were men trained in a sort of barbaric amalgam of styles, and they were not fighting for points. He saw blood on the white walls, saw at least one individual fall and try to rise while his opponent continued kicking him, saw another absorb a punishing roundhouse and go down like a dropped handkerchief.
Beside him, Miss Pretoria cleared her throat. “There are screens,” she said, and touched the wall he leaned against. “Please sit.”
Vincent did, back to the wall, and Kusanagi‑Jones was comforted when he saw Vincent surreptitiously dial his wardrobe higher. Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t the only one feeling exposed.
Miss Pretoria continued fussing with the wall, and images blossomed under her hands. These were the same combats being carried out below, close‑up, in real time. Nothing here was faked, or even as ritualized as the pre‑Diaspora bloodsports that had masqueraded as contests of athletic prowess.
It was a public display of barbarism that Kusanagi‑Jones should have found shocking if he were at all well socialized.
Vincent shifted slightly, leaning back in his chair, but Kusanagi‑Jones wouldn’t allow himself to give away so much. Instead, he placed himself in the seat before Vincent, beside Miss Pretoria, and leaned forward to speak into her ear as another roar went up from the galleries and–on the sand, on the monitors–another man fell. Medics came to him, capable women checking his airway and securing him to a back board, and the view on the monitor shifted to the weary champion feted by the referees. Around them, Kusanagi‑Jones saw women consulting datacarts and bending in close conversation.
“What’s the prize?”
Miss Pretoria considered him for a moment. “Status. To the victors go a choice of contracts; households with more status will bid for preferred males. Which benefits both them, and their mothers and sisters–”
Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t need to turn to see Vincent’s expression. He hadn’t let his fisheye drop since they set foot planetside.
Vincent reached past him, leaning forward, and indicated the monitor. “You’re selecting foraggressive men?”
Miss Pretoria showed her teeth. “We’re not docile, Miss Katherinessen. And we’re not interested in forcing males to conform to standards that ignore what nature intended for them.”
She said it easily, without apparent irony. But the look Vincent shot the back of Kusanagi‑Jones’s head had enough of that for all three of them and the self‑effacing security agents, too.
They lingered at the arena for an hour or so longer than Vincent really wanted to be there, although he supposed it was beneficial in terms of information gathered–both regarding the society they found themselves contending with, and what Miss Pretoria chose to show them about it. Angelo, of course, watched the bloodsport with as much appearance of interest as he might have mustered for a particularly tiresome political speech. Even Vincent wasn’t certain if he was analyzing the technique of the duelists and finding it wanting, musing on the ironies of this open display of arts that on Old Earth would be considered illegal, or sleeping with his eyes open.
Vincent, by contrast, let himself wince whenever he felt like it. Which was fairly frequently. Eventually, Miss Pretoria chose to take note of her guest’s discomfort, and suggested she show them their quarters so that they could take advantage of siesta to get ready for the reception and dinner.
The walk back was quiet and uneventful, though the still‑increasing heat left Vincent feeling unwell enough that he was grateful it wasn’t long. He recognized the courtyard where they’d first emerged from the limousine by its colors and layout. The particular building they approached–if any given portion of the city could be called a separate building–had a long sensual single‑story arch rising into a slender tower with a dimpled curve like that of a hip into a high‑kicked leg. The tower was even shaped like a human leg–a strong, shapely one, with a pointed toe and a smooth swell of calf near the peak. An oval window or door opened into that small valley; Vincent would have liked to see a garden there, pots and orchids, maybe. On Ur, on Old Earth, there would have been flowers, great waterfalls of them growing up the wall. The swags and garlands of dead, cut flowers were another alien grace note, a funereal touch. They even smelled dead, sweet rot, although if you ignored the fact that they were corpses they were pretty.