Larry Niven: Achilles choice

She felt the play of webbed muscles in her forearms, sensed the strength and inhuman precision of her every motion. Being human hadn’t been enough. Today she was stronger, faster, better than she had ever been in her life. It still hadn’t been enough. God damn it, it hadn’t been enough.

She’d be twenty-seven by the next Olympiad. How could she take a gold in judo? Or even place as highly as she had this time? She was over the hill for competition. She was walking around, dead.

She pushed against the window, felt its slight bend, guessed at its thickness.

There. She felt the exact angle to push. She could rip it right out of its track. Could shatter it. She and the shards of glass could go tumbling down to the pavement below, down into the night place where Beverly waited.

It would be sin. And she shouldn’t have blasphemed.

Jillian offered a quick prayer for forgiveness, then slammed her palm against the glass plate.

There were questions left unanswered.

Abner had left a hint.

She didn’t need anything elaborate to access public files. She used the building’s computer. What was it that Abner had said? Check the records?

The 2044 Olympiad?

Nothing classified there.

She quickly found herself skimming through fouryear-old images, stopping whenever something interesting occurred. There was the usual scattering of “Classified” notices. She wished she could have borrowed Holly’s Void. From a Void, she might have figured out ways past the security blocks, and any information she got would be absorbed much faster. But this would get her there.

She sorted for Abner, and his records came up on the screen swiftly. His judo wins were famous, and she had studied them a thousand times. It was still startling to see him at the peak of his physical prowess, a wiry streak of quicksilver. He’d made a decent showing in fellrunning, a bronze, and in Arts his recital of original poetry had won an ovation, if not a gold.

His last category had been abstract sociology, similar to her own. His paper had explored the emergence of a pseudomatriarchal leadership structure in the American prison systems.

She scanned for Pushkin’s name.

And found it, but his paper was on-the rebirth of Keynesian economics.

Confused now, she called up the list of competitors and—

Donny Crawford’s name jumped out at her. The subject of his paper?

Classified.

Donny had taken the gold, of course. Abner had lied. He’d given her a clue, then backed off when he realized she could get in trouble. Donny Crawford excelled at everything he touched. He had taken gold in one athletic event, and two academic categories. One of his papers had been implemented. One hidden.

She doubled back to social theory, and scanned to be sure she had missed nothing. She hadn’t. Donny Crawford was the only choice.

Jillian turned off the console, and stood.

Well.

She hadn’t wanted to go to the party, but maybe there was something for her to do there after all.

The main ballroom of the Arts and Entertainments pavilion was thinning out. A few couples still swayed to live music, a few conversations still percolated around the refreshment tables.

She attached herself to a group of revelers. They slapped her on the back, got her drinks, called her a hell of a good sport, and were too drunk to look carefully at her eyes, to notice that she wasn’t drinking at all.

To see that her eyes rarely strayed far from Donny. He was still there, smiling and nodding and officially congenial. And Mary Ling was standing so close to him, taking every marginally discreet opportunity to rub against him, marking off her territory.

Jillian gritted her teeth, searched the room, and found Holly dancing with a knot of pleasantly inebriated Olympians. All had placed, none had won gold or silver.

They weren’t really dancing in partners. They were a group, moving in intense rhythm, tribal rhythm perhaps, trying to lose their emotional pain in a cocktail of endorphins and alcohol.

Holly waved a glassy hello, and went into an even more violent gyration.

Jillian joined them, keeping one eye on Donny and his vixen. She couldn’t really forget herself, couldn’t really lose the pain, but it helped, made the ache of waiting more endurable.

Holly handed her a glass of spiked punch. Jillian hesitated, and then gulped it down greedily. Then another.

Minutes passed, and songs changed. By the time Donny and Mary made their excuses and headed for the door, the room was spinning pleasantly.

Jillian waited five minutes and then excused herself. She was almost to the door, when she felt the hand on her arm.

Holly.

Her friend gazed up at her, with narrowed eyes that showed not the slightest trace of intoxication. “Be sure, Jillian,” she said. “Be very careful.”

“Being careful doesn’t make a whole lot of sense just now, Holly.”

Holly’s calves bunched as she tiptoed up and kissed Jillian’s cheek. Then she returned to her friends.

The back stairs were deserted, and Jillian raced down them, consumed now with an ugly curiosity. She slipped through the front door of dorm 7, then searched the registry until she found Mary’s name.

Give them a little time. Let the sweet heavy intoxication of sex and alcohol, excitement and fatigue, work their savagely hypnotic magic.

For twenty minutes she stared sightlessly into Olympic Boulevard, eyes observing but not tracking the occasional tram. Then she dictated the number.

After a few seconds a drowsy, musically accented woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello?”

“I have a message for your friend.”

“Who is this?”

“I don’t think names are important. Just give him the message.”

A pause. Mary Ling’s voice became cautious. “Yes?”

“The message is: the Denver Mountain Rescue committee would like to have a few words.”

“Ah… I do not understand.”

“That’s all right. He will.”

Almost exactly a minute later, Donny came on line. “Is this who I think it is?” His voice was more guarded than Mary’s.

“Yes.”

“Ah… — listen. I’m sorry about the bad break that you got.”

Go to hell. “Come and talk to me. I need five minutes.”

He was down in four, wearing a robe that clung like wet silk. It was such a sight that she almost forgot what she came to say. She saw nervous impatience, but also a kind of arrogant compassion.

He said, “Listen, sorry about the way it went.” His massive shoulders rippled the robe with his shrug. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I know. I also know that it wouldn’t be a good idea if anyone found out about your collapse on the mountainside.”

The compassion went; so did the impatience. Easy arrogance now. The breeze shifted, and she caught a whiff of body oils, of Mary Ling’s pungency. She was disgusted and utterly turned on at the same instant, and ashamed of her reaction. He watched her coolly. He said, “I wonder if you know what you’re playing with.”

“A little. I did some research. What’s really going on here, Donny? Do a dying woman a favor.”

Donny stopped, seemed to be listening to the wind. Finally, he sighed.

“I’ll meet you up on the roof in ten minutes. Take the back stairs.”

Jillian’s ID card got her through the back door of dorm 7, and she climbed up the back stairs with legs and lungs and arms working together like gears churning in an implacable machine.

A chill wind whipped across the roof, but Jillian didn’t feel it. She looked out across to the city lights.

Donny showed up fifteen minutes later.

He rubbed a wristband nervously. A weapon? More probably just a specialized comlink, something not patched directly into the neural net.