Larry Niven - Achilles choice

Parts of H. P. Lovecraft’s “Dream Quest” had been filmed in these ancient tunnels, ten years before Jillian was born. Those were the scenes where Carter lived among the ghouls.

Jillian used her credit disk to summon food from a noodle dispenser. She ate while she unraveled the maps on the walls. These days she seemed to be hungry all the time.

She wanted platform 28, an L car. Just get her luggage, find another hotel, and go.

It was deep in the bowels of the earth, down an escalator that seemed to run all the way to Hell. New York’s subways had a bad old reputation. Charles Bronson and Bernhard Goetz no longer sprinted up and down the escalators — … but their prey, the muggers, were gone too, and Jillian Shomer could break any ancient mugger in four pieces without working up a hunger.

The platform was occupied. A little girl held her mother’s hand. The girl was maybe eight years old and small for her age, all in pleated cotton print. She had long red hair that might never have been cut at all, falling past her shoulders in a scarlet cascade. She looked at Jillian for three minutes, while a score more of passengers gathered and avoided each other’s eyes. Finally the little girl screwed up her courage.

“‘Scuse me,” she said politely. “Aren’t you Jill Shomer?”

Jillian smiled, and gave a small nod. The girl’s mother glanced sideways a little, gave a quick, nervous smile, and stared straight ahead.

A gleaming silver tube six cars long emerged from the tunnel with a silent puff of air. Four cars were marked as L’s.

The little redhead’s eyes never moved from Jillian’s. “I saw you on the vid,” she said worshipfully. “When I grow up, I’m going to be an Olympian! I want to be just like you.”

Jillian’s smile drooped.

The cars opened. The girl’s mother dragged her toward a front car. The redhead waved frantically. Jillian turned to find a less crowded car, and locked eyes with a tall, wiry man with square-cut brown hair and a florid complexion.

Sean!

Sean Vorhaus gaped. Then he waved, pointed, and half ran for the last car—

Jillian followed, already becoming irritated. He could have waited! These cars came through every fifteen minutes. How did he know they both wanted a local? And what was he doing here, and why hadn’t he told her? Oh, maybe there was a message waiting for her at the blasted MGM Grand—

There were six people in the car, with seats for at least twenty. Weird. A moment ago it was as crowded as the others. Sean must be at the back. She’d thought he was at the back—

The doors had closed.

These little airtight cylinders were in use worldwide. They ran on independent motors and switched back and forth from train to train, from locals to gravity-assisted cross-continental vacuum tubes to tunnels that ran beneath the oceans-and they were too small to hide in. Where was Sean?

She’d missed him somehow, and the other six passengers were staring at her. She sat down next to an old Hispanic woman. Now only a chubby late-teen in loose creased pants, white shirt, and a vest sweater was still looking at her. She waited for the 38th Street platform.

The train hummed along in near silence. The dim light fluttered a little when the car reached its first switch point. The train slowed. The cars decoupled, and rearranged with cars from other lines, clicking back together and heading down new lines.

There was an odd bulge in the boy’s sweater, like a small left breast. The kid was soft, undermuscled, overpadded. His eyes flicked toward her every few moments. Wearily she thought, Again?

The car dropped. Jillian stifled a scream of surprise. There was a soft pop. They’d passed a seal, into vacuum. The car was still falling, still accelerating. But this was a local line! They shouldn’t have—

Alarmed, she glanced at the other passengers.

They were taking it very well, suspiciously well. None of them had moved. In fact… — they were fewer.

They were disappearing whenever she turned her head!

Now only the kid in the sweater was left.

The car was still falling through the Earth.

Jillian made herself relax as Abner had taught her. If They wanted to kill her, there were a thousand easier ways… and her fear of death, she discovered, was gone. Clean gone.

She asked, “Are you a hologram, too?” He had to be. She was getting her first good look. Wrinkles in his pants. Buttons, zippers, glasses— He must be as old as the subways.

The kid smiled back at her. “I’m the Old Bastard,” he said.

She asked, “What’s that on your chest?”

Of the myriad questions whirling through her head, she’d found one to surprise him. His smile flickered. Then he pulled his sweater over his head. There was a pocket in his rumpled shirt, and a clear plastic envelope in the pocket, and a dozen colored sticks in that.

“Shirt protector.”

“What’s in it?”

“Things for writing and drawing. These days I’d have a wrist link, or just use the neural net. Ever see one of these?” He pulled, from a pants pocket that couldn’t have been deep enough, a flat wooden stick painted white with fine black markings. “My father had one. Slide rule.”

She remembered: a slide rule came somewhere between an abacus and a pocket calculator. “That must be worth a fortune.”

Almost unconsciously, her hand had drifted out toward it. Her “ghost” snatched it out of reach in a gesture reminiscent of a ten-year-old protecting a sheaf of trading chits. A sheepish smile. “Let’s save some time, Jillian. The Council doesn’t know about this interview and never will. The car is headed for Denver. So’s your luggage. The records will show you arranged it all yourself. Half the passengers in another car are listed as traveling on this car. So we’ve got plenty of time to solve any little mysteries that are still bothering you, but let’s not abuse it, okay? I need some of my attention for the rest of the planet.”

Jillian examined the Old Bastard, seeing too much weakness. The thin shoulders, the baggy body, the eager, friendly eyes. This was the monster who controlled the Council? She felt disorientation, savage disappointment, and an almost morbid distaste.

She said, “You arranged for my gold, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve killed Osa.”

“Osa bribed her way in. Not likely to pass her genes on, either. She’ll try again in four years.”

“And Abner.”

“Because of our research, Abner lived long enough to coach you.”

She paused. “And my mother?”

“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Accident?”

“Jillian, it’s the kind of accident that happens when things aren’t running right. Mining and Agricorp were dancing. Certain machines didn’t get serviced. A program picked up some noise. A waldo claw picked up just the top of a habitat when… sorry.” The boy flickered and was in a different position, palms raised in supplication. “Calm down, Jillian. Maybe I’m giving you this too fast—”

Her voice trembled, rose to a half-scream. “Just tell me why.”

“I can’t do that short.”

“Long, then.”

He nodded once. “It’s been an even century since I looked like this. Computer nerds, they called us. We didn’t get along well with people, but we got along fine with computers.

“Computers don’t deal in nuances. If I type, ‘Is there no friend to rid me of this pestilential priest?’ my computer doesn’t kill Thomas a Becket for me. It says, ‘Bad command or file name’ and waits for me to say what I mean. Sanskrit was one of the few spoken languages with no ambiguity. Using it produced a useful clarity of thought, and birthed a body of philosophy. Computer programmers speak a language of mathematics. When that language became integrated into our natural thought patterns, it was the beginning of an entirely new human culture, Jillian.”