Larry Niven - Achilles choice

Jillian curtsied to Jeff Tompkins, solemnly linked arms with him, and revolved carefully. Too much enthusiasm in low gravity could send an Olympian caroming into a wall, to the vast amusement of all but Eldren.

Gravity returned: the track led up, the cars began to slow. Jillian excused herself and made her way to the movie car.

Connery and Chan-Smythe had just sunk the German warship, and were celebrating in a manner probably envisioned, but certainly never filmed, by John Huston. With a final roar of appreciation the film was terminated, and someone conjured up a map of the subway.

Jillian just glimpsed the world-girdling network as the scale began to zero in on the deep Atlantic tunnel. on the Aegean Sea… — on Greece… — It was like watching a computer program take the Mandelbrot Set to finer and finer scale. Major subway trunks ran across continents, coast to coast, under mountains and deserts and farmland. Bigger channels yet ran beneath the oceans. The view ran up from beneath the Atlantic, took a branch that ran beneath the Aegean, out of the sea to Greece, chose from hundreds of branches. the view zeroed in on Athens, on ghostly city streets, following the moving dot that was themselves.

Funny, she’d never noticed that the world’s subway system was designed as fractals.

The cars turned smoothly; they twitched as other cars matched or detached. Presently the doors opened on light and sound.

Athens Convention Center. Hundreds of anonymous human shapes milled near the terminals, held back by ropes and security forces as they waved placards and chanted welcome. Jillian returned to her seat.

There on the narrow cushions Abner stirred restlessly from his nap. He slept a great deal lately, husbanding his energy, perhaps, or seeking in unconsciousness a muting of the ceaseless pain.

His eyes opened, took a few seconds to focus. His face was more brutally weathered by the Boost now, and his breathing was more labored. Sometimes she listened to it at night as he slept. She dreaded its irregularity, imagined that she heard in it a cry for peace, a weariness of body that extended, finally, even to the spirit which animated the withered shell.

“We’re here,” he said. His lips lifted at the corners. “I promised myself I’d make it this far.”

“We’re not done here yet, Abner.” She gripped his hand as if by strength alone she could halt his deterioration. “You can’t leave me until I’ve won.”

The subway eased through a seal, and air hissed into the lock. The Olympians hooted, hustled up out of their seats, and began to unload their gear.

She waited. Abner shouldn’t even have been on a general passenger train. He could be hurt in the press.

The aisle began to empty toward the front, and she stood, snaked out past Abner, and helped him to his feet.

Like a granddaughter helping a beloved but doddering elder to cross the street, Jillian escorted Abner, took both of their bags in tow, helped him out into the terminal.

A Greek band oompah’d its way through a bizarre medley of “God Bless America” and Transportation’s corporate anthem, “Songs from the Sky.” A few Olympians automatically stiffened to attention. Jillian scanned the Olympians until she saw Holly. The biologist was fighting hard to swallow a sardonic grin.

As they flowed toward the line of waiting shuttles they were showered by confetti and streamers, cheered, given all of the fanfare that Jillian had craved on departure from Boston. Now it was too late. Now she didn’t really give a damn.

Rain swept down in curtains, wavering across the pavement like bed sheets blowing on a clothesline. The crowd eddied like ocean waves, frantic to see the arriving athletes. She could not see faces. Their faces were darkened, backlit ovals.

A pool of light: they were close enough now for her to make out a sign printed in Greek, Japanese, and English. The English read: STOP THE OLYMPICS. The protester was clearly visible for a moment, face no longer an indistinguishable smear, now a twisting, screaming mouth and a fringe of sopping hair. Then security men moved swiftly from the sides, and he vanished into the shadows.

Some of the others strutted and posed for the crowds, flexing muscles, smiling broadly. Holly held up a briefcase containing her precious files, waving confidently to the cameras.

Holly was ready. Her studies on the immune system were complete and broken down into display mode. If they didn’t win her the gold, they might still save her from the effects of Boost.

Maybe. The world would change.

“Quite a show, isn’t it?” Abner said as their car glided away through the crowd.

The press of humanity actually thickened for the first hundred feet or so, then thinned out. Then they were on the road and heading out of the terminal.

Jillian felt like hiding. “Why do I get the feeling that I haven’t seen anything yet?”

“Because you are a bright, perceptive girl.”

The caravan to Olympic Bay took half an hour.

The floating islands were tethered in standard three-by-three resort formation. Each hosted a network of dormitories, gymnasiums, cafeterias, and entertainment facilities. They were fortified and fenced, protected on all sides: a temporary luxury community created to fill every Olympian need.

Olympic Bay glittered in the misty rain like a mythical mountain fortress, and Jillian felt her pulse race.

Ferry skimmers were coasting in on plumes of steaming foam. Helicopters and floatcars braved the wind to reach landing pads. And from every vehicle streamed Olympians and their coaches.

Jillian helped Abner onto the docking platform, hustled him to a two-passenger robot monotram. It surged forward the moment they were seated.

Abner’s thin fingers tapped against the glass, and he sighed audibly.

“What is it?” Jillian asked as they drew up to one of the condos. It rose up out of an artificial hillside on enormous aluminum stilts. An escalator rippled up the side of the hill to the main entrance. Rain was deflected by a silver awning.

“All the rest of it was just rehearsal, Jill. I can’t help you anymore.”

Was he asking permission to die? Abner seemed translucent, ephemeral.

“It may be I don’t need you,” she said in a voice she might have used with a child. “But I want you to see me win.”

His hands slid down into his lap, were still. “All right.”

She kissed his cheek as the tram stopped and the door slid open. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Please.”

A silver-garbed young man offered to carry Jillian’s luggage for her, and she declined. She shrugged the strap over her shoulder and straightened up, stepping onto the escalator.

The little monotram disappeared around a curve.

Holly waited for her at the top of the escalator. “Where’s Abner going?”

“A Medtech Intensive. He’s going to need lifesupport soon.” The wind whipped a spray of rain into her face. With the tip of her tongue she tasted it. Salt. “Real soon.”

“Is he septic?”

She shrugged. “It’s a miracle he’s hung on this long. He’ll make it another month. Bet on it.”

They stood and watched the crowd gather and thin on the dock, ebbing and surging as a tide. Holly chuckled, calculatedly changing the mood. “I’ve never seen so much healthy flesh in all my life. I wonder if the rumors are true.”

Curiosity nudged Jillian out of her pensive mood. “What rumors?”

“Ah, you know.” Holly leaned over, stagewhispered conspiratorially. “They say that the most intense sex in the known universe takes place in the Olympic villages.”

“I’ve heard that. Are you planning a little personal inquiry?”

“Certainly. A series of controlled experiments in the name of science.”