Tidelands: I-Five (10)
Mount. Subtlety.
Everything goes dark.
A fanfare blares out across the sands, momentarily subduing the hubbub, which then rebounds up past its previous volume as the crowd erupts in whistles, hoots and cheers. The screens blank, the tables, stats and interviews fade, replaced by the itinerary of battle. There are to be three bouts, in the third of which her mark will appear, the crowning culmination of the night’s – or by then, early morning’s entertainments. So Squirrel has some time to consider what to do. And time too with which to stand slack-jawed in awed and awful wonder.
There is another subterranean tremor, and she senses now its point of origin – or rather, points – as the shadows of two large black cubes, some thirty feet high, theatrically materialise into the arena. More drone cloaking (what else is here that she can’t see?), and now the thumps and tremors are increasing, matched this time to the visible rattle and lurch of the two cages – for that’s what they are. Surmising the occupants’s size from that of the veiled containers, she’s surprised to find herself disappointed: she’d hoped they’d be bigger. But as a resonant groan draws her eyes to the closest cage, its opaque exterior begins to dissolve, revealing sturdy, well-weathered bars, and what they restrain causes her to revise that initial disappointment, for in the thirty-foot high space, its occupant is sitting down.
And then the bars dissolve too.
Shouts rise up from beneath and around the shape, drawing her attention for the first time to the pole-men, their prods sparking angry threats like giant, electrified cotton buds, sending fleeting shadows flitting across the hulking form. It is trying to get up, and failing, slumps back, the impact staggering its keepers.
“Mounts have got to be drugged, see?” says Denton. “Until the jockey is interfaced. Makes them compliant.”
It attempts once more to rise, getting to one knee, a snarl of animosity spasming across its face as it hurls out a massive hand at its nearest gaoler, swatting an annoyance, but who last second neatly ducks and rolls across the sand, provoking a renewed onslaught of electrified threats from his confederates.
“Well,” Denton adds, “more compliant. They do build up a tolerance – like addicts.”
In the half-dark a peripheral motion catches her attention, and she sees now that any jeopardy is purely theatre, for the pole-men are not unaided: there are drones, hanging near-silently in the air around it, ready to provide backup in case things get out of hand.
It tries a third time to stand, and finally succeeds, causing the pole-men to cautiously back-step, their prods flickering and sparking. And from their cruel, intermittent light, she begins to assemble a stuttering picture of the creature itself.
Judging from this specimen at least, their storied size has been little exaggeration. Its frame and face are human enough, but of that ungainliness of proportion that have always marked out the oversized among non-modified people. Its cheekbones are pronounced and scarred; its jaw, broad and imposing, but slightly awry; its nose too, battered squat, misaligned and miss-set, with cavernously flared nostrils, the breath from which is even audible from her hundred-yards’ vantage; and its massive brow, jutting sternly forward, overhangs twin deep-set caves, out of which burn eyes of the most incredible, innocent blue, giving soul to a face of otherwise brutish caricature. Another sparking prod causes it to snarl again, and this time the startling eye-colour is echoed in intricate patterns traced upon its skin, luminous blue swirls of Celtic knotwork, phosphorescing in sympathy with its amped-up annoyance.
The second cage contains no less startling a spectacle, but of a quite different sort, for here there is not one occupant, but multiple: a pack of lithe-limbed supersized cat-like creatures, three – no, four of them, each isolated within its own separate quadrant of a two-tiered enclosure. But these too have transcended their origins, for “cat” here is only Squirrel’s plucked-from-the-air approximation of what Nature unaided has never yet produced, creatures that switch unsettlingly between two- and four-limbed postures, now pacing sinuously or spitting and hissing at their neighbour, now standing on tiptoe like nightmare meerkats – “kats”, then? – to rattle the bars with pincer-tipped, creepily prehensile paws, their long striped tails – which also look capable of grip – weaving agitatedly, communicating impatience for release from their unjust confinement.
“Ooh, those’ll do some damage.”
And now Denton is almost avuncular, eagerly highlighting to her this or that, cooing over some just-noticed nuance of lab-bred flesh and form.
But it’s the giant’s eyes that fascinate her, limpid pools of iridescence that contain – though they mustn’t, can’t (“only fleshy robots”, remember?) – a fathomless well of suffering and sadness. Denton misreads this disquiet as her increasing absorption in the proceedings, and her growing unease as tense impatience for their onset.
“Not long, now,” he says.
And at some point, its exact moment difficult to discern, a calm descends over the opponents.
“Stand ground!” A thunderous voice echoes out across the arena, at which the soon-to-be combatants turn to face each other, calling to her mind images of Fogler’s gaming tank.
The jockeys have jacked in.
The blue-eyed giant, squaring off like a sumo in that half-squat stance, leans forward in anticipation, one rock-knuckled hand braced against the sand; even swaddled in the same type of loincloth, but less to protect his modesty and more to guard a vulnerable region from ungentlemanly attack. She doubts sporting etiquette will be observed.
The nightmeerkats have also taken on a fresh sense of purpose and focus, setting aside any inter-pack animus, and are now arrayed in a loose formation, heads down and glaring out with one joint malignant purpose – but whose? The jockey’s? Or is he merely a director of the creatures’ own native predatory malice?
Her eyes flick between the two towers, but both gaming capsules are now sealed off, shutters down.
“Another security measure,” Denton, for once reading her thoughts correctly. “Also helps them concentrate. But not much to see, anyway. Just gimp suits and harnesses.”
Full-body VR, jacked straight into the implant, would give the jockey intimate control of its mount, the ability to move and react in real time as if it were the creature itself (but without the accompanying negative sensory consequences of its actions). Then what about the nightmeerkats? You can’t be four things at once – can you? Or are there four jockeys? Is that allowed?
And – with an ear-splitting ping – it begins.
The kats immediately start to fan out, attempting to flank the giant, who responds by dropping low, backing away toward the perimeter, guarding his sides with long defensive swings of his ape-like arms. Sensing what it thinks is a gap, the closest kat jumps for the giant’s throat, but its mistimed leap earns it a backhand smash that propels it off toward the far-left perimeter’s force-field, sending that section of the audience scrambling, before bubbling up into nervous laughter at their own panicked reactions. The flung beast slowly attempts to gather itself, but for the moment its team are a player down, and the giant takes the opportunity to go on the offensive, grasping out at the nearest kat, kicking out at another, but in its enthusiasm it has overreached (“Oh, big mistake”, Denton notes gleefully), and unnoticed, the remaining kat has circled around to the giant’s back, from where it skips up onto its shoulder and buries its set of needle-pointed teeth into its neck. Immediately the tables have turned, and now its fellows sense the opening, as the giant’s attempts to detach the attacker leave its other flank wide open, where another kat now latches on to its midriff, biting and scything with those horrid claws, while the third worries at its inner thigh in similar fashion.
“Looking for the femoral artery.” Denton the commentator nods sagely. “Endgame.”
But no. His thumb in its eye, the giant finally succeeds in detaching the kat from its shoulder, closes its hand around the creature’s head in a sickening squelch, turns, and with preternatural composure, slings the body directly at the opposing gamer’s tower, where it lands a direct hit – protected, of course, by the same field that shields the spectators, but with the incumbent jockey’s own instinctive flinch and loss of concentration the nightmeerkats also momentarily pause, lose focus, and the giant is again on the attack. He gouges the kat off his thigh, detaching it like a tick before again crushing it and dropping it crumpled to the ground. It proceeds to work at the kat on its side, which, no match in one-to-one, is dispatched in similar fashion. The last kat, which has continued to crawl gamely back toward the action after its earlier interaction with the force-field, is just in time for the coup de grâce, and is ground mercilessly into the reddening sand with three decisive stomps.
By which point, Squirrel is on her feet, punching the air and screaming her throat hoarse – until catching Denton’s curious smirk, and herself.
“Quite compelling,” he says, “isn’t it?”
The cheers and screams break down into boisterous chatter, and the lull between bouts provides an informal interval, during which the bots and drones clear the arena of dead and wounded, and the spectators join the queues for the pop-up bars and food stalls, or head back to the bookies, eager to recoup their losses or reinvest their success. In contrast, Denton utilises the break to go over the plan, to fine-tune the details and ensure each is aware of their allotted roles.
“No, left, Grocers. Your other left.”
“Right, right. I mean, yeah.”
But it’s not a complicated scheme. The boys will simply stand by, ready to run interference or cause a distraction should some sharp-eyed functionary catch on to what Squirrel will be about.
“Which should be simple,” Denton reassures her. “You’ve seen what a moment’s distraction can do. That’s all I’m asking.” Palms out, eyebrows raised: a perfectly reasonable, simple request.
Among the wounded is the giant itself, of course, whom Squirrel’s concerned gaze follows as it limps off through the invisible gap that appears in the perimeter, cautiously harried by pole-men and drones. A confused grimace has replaced the stern face of battle, its many wounds dripping ichor down its patterned flesh, which has now returned to a barely perceptible glow.
“What will happen to it?” she asks Denton.
He turns, frowning, irritated at the interruption to his schooling of Grocers, which is still ongoing.
“Patched up. Stitched and glued. Ready for the final.”
“It’ll fight again?”
“What?” Denton laughs. “You think it deserves a holiday?”
This first bout, she learns, has been the semi-final, as will be the next one, during which she will get her first glimpse of the champion – her mark. Surely, this next fight will be a formality.
“So why not hobble this one?” she asks. “Won’t the odds be longer?”
A brief spark of anger crosses Denton’s face, as his eyes quickly scan the crowd about them. Sshhh! he mouths, a finger raised to his lips, and leans down in a whisper: “Because the champ, beaten in the warm-up: no one would believe that, little Squirrel.”
But as he stands up his look has a different cast, gauging her in a way she’s never seen before.
The chatter is again ramping up, and the now-familiar fanfare elicits the same response from the crowd – in fact, greater: this is the champ.
She looks up at the display screen and notes for the first time the names of the mounts – or is it their jockeys? Or even, perhaps, the team itself, the symbiotic relationship between human and creature? Gargantuan – her blue-eyed giant – has just beaten Infernal Fury, and will now face off against the winner of Spleenitude vs Grimdark (the current champion).
She makes some quip to Grocers, gesturing up at the screen – how naff the names are – but receives only a shrug, as he looks down and away.
“Ah,” says Barnaby, laying a hand on Grocers’ shoulder, which he sulkily shakes off, “you’ll have to learn him his letters before he’ll get jokes like that.”
The same rigmarole begins again – the materialising cubes, the gradual unveiling – and she, like much of the crowd, is hushed into fascination at the reveals.
Grimdark is everything the name suggests, everything that her blue-eyed giant was, but more – nastier, more brutish and bestial, and also comparatively shorter, as if its malice has been condensed to the optimum form and size. Its face reminds her of a walrus, two long curved tusks tapering into glistening, sharpened points; or that of a boar or pig, for it has more snout than nose, tipped with a spear-like horn, and which wrinkles up as it snarls, revealing an irregular array of shark-like serrated teeth spoking off in haphazard directions. It is also broader, a bodybuilder’s bulk – not unlike Denton’s, in fact – with arms and shoulders of an impressive and clearly delineated musculature, sloping down to rock-knuckled hands sporting bear-like claws. All of which is beginning to make her stomach churn with the anticipated carnage of which such implements will be capable come the final.
But if Grimdark possesses fewer human qualities, its opponent has none at all.
It is an enormous spider.
“What’s up, Squidgle? Don’t like bugs?”
Grocers laughs, turning to Barnaby, comrades once more in her belittlement.
But it’s true, and Fogler’s jungle vines now have new nightmares to populate them.
What would it even feel like to interface with such a thing? And who would choose to do so?
And it is not just its size – which is horrific enough – but its modifications, its excessive limbs – on a creature that Squirrel already feels possesses too many – providing opportunity for a Swiss-army knife of cruelty – stings, hooks, barbs, blades. So much for “warm-up”. The champ might not even make the match she’s supposed to hobble.
She expects Grimdark to be wary of the spider’s many threats, but it – or its jockey – is short on subtlety, and no sooner has the ping sounded than it launches at its opponent with incredible speed and force, burying its horn and tusks deep into the arachnoid’s midriff. In retaliation, the spider frantically attempts to deploy its many tools, eventually succeeding with a scorpion-like sting that embeds itself deep into Grimdark’s right arm, and which begins to droop in a creeping paralysis. But this barely slows it, and its repeated gouging and goring eventually have their effect, as the spider flops and spasms, its final dead weight tossed aside with a triumphant grunt and a thrust of the head.
“Uncomplicated,” Denton says, with a satisfied grin. “That’s what I love about him.”
And how will her blue-eyed boy fare against such lack of subtlety?
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.