“Shit, wait,” Conrad backpedaled. “I'll take it! Clean kill.”
The move had been a feint; Steve was counting on that reaction, and followed up with his spear before Luca could bring the sword down and through and back up again. The thing was light, but not that light. And so the tip of Steve's spear lanced forward in a left-handed thrust that caught Luca just under the chin. And that was that.
Except that Luca didn't fall down. The spear wasn't even lodged in his throat; it had skated off to the side instead, tearing a red gash along his neck but apparently missing everything vital along the way.
“What the—”
And now Luca was bringing the sword around and over, and Steve was off balance and a lot farther forward than he ought to be, and the sword came down right on him.
Well, not precisely on him; he managed to jerk to one side at the end of the stroke, so that instead of cleaving his head in two it merely severed his right arm at the shoulder. The sound of the flesh parting wasn't audible over the gasping of the crowd, but Steve's scream of pain and rage certainly was.
And still the fight was not over! Staggering back in a spray of blood, Steve somehow managed to dodge a second blow, and then block a third one, though it cost him the front third of his spear. And then, amazingly, he contrived to clock Luca on the side of the head with the broken shaft, and then jab him in the stomach, and then whack him even harder across the side of the skull!
Now Luca was staggering back, bleeding from the nose, and Steve was falling back as well. But Steve had regained his equilibrium, and circled carefully in his retreat, putting the bright, mango-colored sun in Luca's eyes while he . . . while he . . .
Dropped the broken spear. And fished his severed arm up off the bloodstained killing floor. And hefted it like a club in his left hand, with the shoulder end forward. And charged forth to beat Luca across the head with it! Once, twice, thrice, dodging strokes of the Ringing Sword all the while!
The crowd went wild as Luca Elmer Rodhaim scrambled backward, tripped, dropped his sword clanging and ringing against the wellwood floor, and suffered an uppercut like an overpowered golf swing from Steve's severed arm. His head fell back against the wellwood of the killing floor.
And even then it was only over in the sense that Luca was out of the running. He wasn't going to win this. Actually beating him to death took Steve another full minute, and an ugly spectacle it was, particularly since Steve himself was bleeding out all the while, and afterward barely had the strength to raise his remaining arm in victory before he, too, collapsed and died.
“That's why he's still Luca's boss!” Bascal murmured admiringly as the gleaming medic robots danced out onto the field.
But here was an interesting point: could they really call it Security training if neither combatant survived to learn a lesson from it? If the medics were quick, he supposed, they might salvage some sensory impressions and short-term memory from the corpses. Maybe. But anyway, what was the story with that spear to the throat? Luca should have died right then!
“It wasn't a fair fight,” Conrad protested.
“Fairer than it would have been,” Bascal said quietly. “Luca had some armor plates under his skin. Why not, with fax machines at his disposal and stodgy Queendom proprieties suspended? And yes, I knew about it, and don't worry, I won't collect on our bet. I just wanted you to feel involved in the action. This is a nice stadium, by the way. Well designed, good acoustics. Much classier than crowding around like schoolboys while Security brawls in the streets. My cap is off to you, sir.”
“Thanks,” Conrad said, taking the compliment at face value. But pride was not among the emotions he felt just now. It did make a kind of sense for Security to stay sharp through dueling, and with a fax to print fresh copies of the dead and wounded, there was no particular reason for them to pull their punches. They weren't beating on innocents, here, and Conrad wasn't about to tell consenting adults what to do or not do with their own bodies. And yes, shamefully, it was exciting to watch these hard men and women fight for their lives.
But he could see right away that there'd be an arms race, with Security personnel beefing up their bodies in more and more elaborate ways. This wasn't about public safety at all. Had he really thought so? It wasn't even about scaring the public into a law-abiding stupor, although from Bascal's point of view that might be a nice side effect. Really, mainly, it was about violence for its own sake—a dark, repressed bit of human psyche dragged out into daylight celebration.
“You look aggrieved,” Bascal said to him, with a touch of genuine concern.
“Yeah,” Conrad said. But with effort he shrugged off these bleak feelings and said, “It isn't necessary for me to approve of everything people do in this colony.”
Bascal smiled and put a warm hand on Conrad's shoulder. “Indeed not, boyo, for such is the nature of freedom. If we were all restricted to your personal sense of propriety, then you would be king, and a tyrant, and the people would weep to have come so far for so little. The city already has its first filthy beggar, did you know that? It's Louis McGee, and I wish him well of it, for apparently that's the thing that makes him happy.”
Conrad snorted. That was a delicate face to paint on such an indelicate matter; there were still sporadic freakups whose perpetrators had to be cycled back into fax storage again until such time as the colony had resources to deal with them. But would such a time ever truly arrive? The neural balance filters were voluntary, as indeed they had to be; put that power in the hands of government, and where might it end? There were crazies back home, too—sad-eyed addicts and vagrants unable or unwilling to ask for help. They were the curse of any free society.
“Anyway,” Bascal continued, “a beggar does round the place out a bit—make more of a world of it. We have thousands of others to pick up the slack, and if things get too busy we can all double up. Print an extra copy: one to work and one to enjoy our hard-won freedom.”
“Meaningful work is its own reward,” Conrad countered, irritated at the thought of Louis getting a free ride. “After a lifetime without it, we should all be clamoring. Who needs extra copies?”
The king laughed. “Ah! Hoy! And we also have you, my friend, reaching for greatness in your own personal way; and this world, this star system, is the screen upon which your epic will be writ. You don't have to make me proud—you don't have to do anything—but I hope you'll find your potential, and live up to it.”
And here Conrad drew himself up and said, “On that, Your Majesty, you can bet the planet.”
Which is, in some sense, exactly what happened.
Book two.
The colonium
Chapter eleven.
On settling down
Even without improvisation for its own sake, there was lots of hard work to be done, and nearly everyone was busy nearly all the time. They could print extra copies of themselves to rest and relax, and then integrate that experience just to say they'd had it, but Conrad, like many colonists, elected not to. Hard work was refreshing. Their bodies were young and physically fit; they demanded the bliss of meaningful action. Conrad thought, perhaps, that he had never truly slept before in his life. But in those early years, in the building of a world, he felt both more awake and better rested than he'd ever known he could.