There's plenty of time for you to get your fucking samples. You haven't even finished Ocypete yet!"
"There's something I have to tell you. About Aello."
"It'll wait." Abruptly, there was nothing.
For an hour Jana sat alone and listened to the void. There might just be a way ...
Ariane Methol lay on her back in the cool water, staring upward with a blind gaze. She followed a train of thought, of things that she found perplexing in herself. The pool was something like the one in the Fitness Center of her arcology, its waters reflecting the light, throwing shards of moving brightness up onto the ceiling which were thrown back at her. The interplay of light and shadow shifted delicately, mirroring the soft cadences of her breathing, taking her back through time. . . . Montevideo recreated itself like a permanent haven. Arcologia de Tupac Amaral had been a wonderful place to grow up, and to live in as an adult. The great arcologies that had come to dominate the cities of South America, some of them inhabited by more than a million people, had everything that a civilized human being could want, everything but the spacious outdoors, and that was only an elevator ride away. They had a social milieu that afforded equal access to whatever benefits interaction could provide, in a word, fun. . . . And yet, somehow, when she met Brendan, it had no longer been enough. She remembered when it all started. The Pan-American Games were being held at last in the Grand Solarium of Tupamaro. Though it was the largest sports arena in SA, the usual site of the World Cup soccer matches, it was generally thought that South Americans were too "civilized" for the organized savagery of the Games. A poor turnout had been predicted. To Ariane, Vana, and their friends, it was a chance to see the athletes that they'd heard so much about, whose exploits were syndicated on Globo Sur.
Some of them had gone together to see the various contests and had frequently found themselves sitting so far away that they'd ended up watching the huge 3V screens that wereeverywhere. For the free-style boxing matches, however, the luck of the draw had put them up close, in the third row. Initially, she had been disturbed by this atavistic, bloody sport; then, as match gave way to match, and her excitement grew, she had been disturbed at that. . . . Whatever it was, it had been in her all along, unsuspected, an ability to ... what? She didn't know. It grew inside her. It was then that she'd seen the man who was to become that year's silver medalist: Brendan Sealock, the program said, and New York Free City. She'd watched him savage a series of contenders, earning whistles of contempt from the audience as he smashed his opponents around, obviously intent on injury. How the people cheered when he'd been beaten in the final match by a swift, dark Cuban who was simply too fast for him. He'd charged his massive bulk around the ring, swinging wildly, while his opponent bloodied his face with quick jabs. Even then he almost won. The Cuban got overconfident at the beginning of the third and last round and came within reach of the thick arms: a hard blow to the temple sent him staggering to the mat. He got up, took a standing eight count, and then boxed carefully, jabbing and backpedaling until the bell put an end to things. The referee had smiled as he raised the Cuban's hand in victory, and the sour look on Sealock's face had provoked catcalls that echoed from the crystal dome as he left the ring.
She never understood where she'd gotten the nerve to go to his room that night, but gone she had, Vana's cry of "You must be totally crazy!" going unnoticed. She'd hesitated before his door, strongly aware of a certain vaginal tightness that seemed -to signal her physical state, before nervously tapping on the call button. The door opened and he was there, glowering down at her, his face bruised and swollen from the Cuban's many blows. "Well? What do you want?"
"I'm Ariane Methol. May I come in?"
A glimmer of amused understanding crossed his face as he stood aside to admit her. She knew that there was a class of people contemptuously called "slinkers," who followed the athletic contests, waiting to do sexual service for the "animals." Even before her eyes could adjust to the gloom of hischamber he'd picked her up and dumped her unceremoniously on the bed, then he was squatting over her, robe open, not quite resting his weight on her chest, his penis dangling in her face. "OK. Go ahead." She lay frozen, and he said, "What? A novice? Well, it goes like this, kiddo." He pried her jaws open and put it in her mouth, then he had his hands on the sides of her head, organizing her movements, regulating the thrust and gradually deepening his penetration. It dawned on her that she was being raped, but she felt completely numb, helpless, and there seemed nothing to do but cooperate. She gagged a lot, but it was over quickly.
He got to his feet and stretched, his heavy, muscular body beautiful in the dim light. After a while she got up and went to his refresher console for a drink. He called to her, "You ready to go again?" She turned and looked at him, then said, "I'm not one of them."
"What?"
"I'm not a slinker. You just raped me."
He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at her, looking puzzled. "Not a slinker—" he repeated.
"What the hell are you doing here then?"
She came over and sat down beside him, put her head in her hands, then said, "I don't know." His face grew heavy with suspicion. "You're going to have a hard time getting a conviction with that line. What the fuck was I supposed to think?" Exasperation colored his voice. "No one ever comes to see me but slinkers and some of the other athletes!"
She looked up and saw the bewilderment on his face. "It's . . . not your fault, maybe . . ." She knew this was typical, victimish, but, "Maybe I am a slinker. I did come here to have sex with you, I guess.... I just didn't expect you to do something like that, something so ... preemptive."
"Well . . . I'm sorry, for whatever that's worth to you."
After that they'd talked, at first about what had happened, then about other things, and finally about their lives. She told him about her job with Globo as a 'net engineer and was stunned to discover that he was with Metro Design. It seemedthat full-time amateur athletes were rare and he was no exception.
"Who the hell would want to be a pro boxer?" he said. "They all work for the entertainment 'nets and do what they're told."
In the end they'd had sex again, gently, and he'd tried hard to do right by her. Later, when they fell in love, it was, surprisingly, on her terms.
Her friends were mortified.
Harmon Prynne and Vana Berenguer had finished making love and were silent as an assortment of tacky secretions dried on their bodies. Finally the man said, "Vana?" He was trying to frame his thoughts, wondering how to bring the subject up once again, then lay back and turned his gaze to the ceiling. At length, when he had exhausted his capacity to make up a scenario that came out the way he wanted, he rubbed his eyes and said, "Tell me why you're keeping on with him." He heard her sigh—that same exasperated release of breath that he'd heard so often before, and had come to dread. "You mean Demogorgon, don't you?
"Yes." He nodded slowly, not wanting to look at her again and realizing he was almost afraid to hear her answer.
"Damn it, Harmon, I told you before. You should see it! The time I'm spending with Demo is in there
—and it's . . . it's, well, it's not as if we're off fucking all the time. You can come too, if you want to."
"It's his world, Vana. I'm no superhero."
"You don't need to be. Besides, he needs someone!" Harmon put his back against the smooth, neutral plastic of the opaqued wall, bringing his knees up to his chest. "So do I," he murmured.