Larry Niven - Achilles choice

From there, it was a few smooth feet to the sunshine. He followed her along the concrete and then onto the grass, heading out toward the gravel-covered oval of the track.

In all it was less than a quarter mile, but Abner was already red-faced and slightly winded. They stayed there for a few minutes, watching the dozens of athletes in training. Jeff Tompkins was throwing the hammer, the corded wedge of his body contracting and expanding explosively, whirling, releasing the haft with perfect timing. His body glistened in its exertions.

She remembered the model of Versailles.

“So,” said Abner. “Second thoughts?”

“Oh, yes.”

The sun warmed Jillian’s face deliciously, the slow whisper of the wind its own strange poetry.

She said, “All my life I’ve watched the Olympics. All my life I’ve wanted to be one of those. But, Abner, we’re taught not to die. Don’t Do Drugs. Walk lights. Seat belts and air bags. The Boost, it’s…”

“Risky.”

“Risky, yeah. But I’ve spent… six years training with people who take it for granted! For a gold in the Olympics, sure they’d Boost. You Boosted. But does it really make sense?”

“Matter of priorities. You don’t need an excuse to want to be the best… Jillian, the truth is that I never knew I could lose. I knew it, but I didn’t know it.” He touched his forehead, and then his chest. “Maybe I’m lying to myself. Maybe achievers are people who select death over life.”

“That’s crazy. They’re more alive than anyone else.”

His mouth tightened, and his eyes were alight again. “This may sound odd, Jillian. I know that I only have a few months to live, but I’ve never felt more alive. Maybe we’re all dying, all the time, but the winners know it, and use it, and aren’t afraid of facing it.”

“I’m… afraid.”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t be. I said you shouldn’t be afraid to face the fact of death. There’s a difference.”

“I’m not sure why I did it…” The wave of uncertainty hit her with a roar, overwhelming. She had had reasons and excuses, and all of them crumbled into nothing before the stark enormity of what she had done.

She was weak beyond words, helpless for the first time since the Marianas flu six years ago.

She wanted to tell Abner. The Council has blocked my research, they’ve kidnaped my favorite computer program, I’m only doing this because— Some instinct held her back. Some ancient paranoia buried deep in her brain stem, ineradicable— Why had she Boosted? Was it to probe some dirty mystery behind her mother’s death, or the greater mystery of chaos in the human condition? Or to be the best fellrunner in all history? Or only to beat Osa?

Abner said, “There are more questions than answers, Jillian. Why do the doctors perform the operation? What happened to the Hippocratic oath? Why does the Council want the best and the brightest doing this to themselves?”

“I don’t know,” she said, never taking her eyes off the bodies as they leapt and twisted, spinning around the track. Brown and white bodies, muscles knotting and coiling tirelessly.

Abner talked on. “People at the top want to stay at the top. Whatever purpose they have in letting some of us move a little bit closer has nothing to do with anything that we want. I know.” That curious intensity was even more severe now. “The Olympic thesis, the performances, do you know how new that is? It used to be strictly athletics. Now they’re generating knowledge.”

“Boost doesn’t help anyone there. We think faster, but maybe we’d learn more by taking longer—”

“Nobel Prize winners tend to pick up ideas from the Olympic theses.”

“If I could inspire… I’d rather take a piece out of violent crimes than run any kind of race. I’ve always known that.” And just as definitely, with the visceral certainty of someone treading on a snake, she knew she’d made a horrible mistake.

Oh God. I’m going to die.

She breathed to the pit of her stomach, regaining control. She still had her goals to consider, and she clung to those with both hands and her teeth. “Abner. You said… there was a gold winner who had an approach to crime control.”

“Nothing about fractals, love. Isn’t that what you’re—”

“He beat you. Literacy. Raise the literacy rate and the crime rate drops enough to pay for it.”

“Yeah, I remember. What was his name, now?”

Her head was full of fog. “Wrestler, you said. One of the nations… ah, Soviet? Puss…”

Abner was nodding. Head lowered, eyes hidden in shadow. “Pushkin. Big as a redwood, you wouldn’t have thought there was a brain in there, and he lost to a Brazilian the same year I did. Nicolai Pushkin! His paper is classified, but…” A long pause. “I think I can find a copy. I got one before they slapped a seal on it.”

She felt dubious. If the paper had been any good, the Council would have used it… but she would have been grateful for anything he tried to do for her. She took his hand, squeezed it with what little strength she had, and said, “Thank you, Abner.”

I/O error 1154.

The wafer containing Beverly’s personality slid back out of the processor. It had just arrived this morning from Massachusetts. Jillian’s hand shook.

They still wouldn’t let her load Beverly into the main processor.

Be a good little girl. Play along, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll see Beverly again.

Jillian slid her finger down the precious golden Simulacrum module. Without the slightest trace of selfconsciousness, she raised the wafer and touched her lips to its cool surface.

“Sleep well, Bev,” she whispered.

She’d be good.

A good little robot she was, and They knew where the buttons were. It would be most savagely satisfying to shake their predictions… but in fact their predictions were working out fine. Jillian Shomer had given up prying into secret corners, had accepted the Boost treatment, had abandoned the topic of her mother’s death. And hadn’t given up on Beverly; she kept trying to activate the program, knowing it wouldn’t work and trying, trying… telling herself she was only misdirecting Them.

Were they wrong?

High time, it was, for any act that would let Jillian show herself that she wasn’t a good little robot. But all she could think of was to work on her thesis and wait to heal.

Abner watched her from a shadowed corner of the gymnasium. Jillian was already stretching and balancing her body, moving from yoga Plow into Cobra and then out into the full split of the Tortoise pose with a gymnast’s grace. He waited until she’d levered her legs out to a hundred and eighty degrees, rolled stomach then chest and chin down to the mat, before he extended a sheaf of papers with a hand-lettered cover.

“Pushkin’s paper,” he said. “I had some trouble finding it.”

She opened her eyes, peeped up at him. “Gimme.” She sighed into her long thigh muscles, ordering them to stop quivering, and hiked herself up to her elbows. She started reading.

The approach wasn’t like her own, but Pushkin’s ideas were fresh, and vital, and impressively presented. He had deserved that gold.

And there was something familiar about the paper, something about the way Pushkin phrased his thoughts. “Was this delivered in Russian?”

“Sure. Straighten your back.”

“Sorry. Who translated? The phrasing seems familiar.”

He took it back, thumbed it a bit. “… Doesn’t say. I don’t know.”

As she browsed it, she was jolted again and again by the careful, logical juxtaposing of ideas. But there was nothing she could use, in fact at this late date it was almost distracting. She handed it up to him.