Larry Niven - Achilles choice

Jillian Shomer ran along the north edge of the quarry, toward a distant, silent ocean, into the dawning sun.

Her breath vibrated in her mastoid process, made sharp rasping sounds in her Comnet ear link. In her own very informed opinion, she sounded ragged and undisciplined.

Hot fudge sundaes are a basic food group. The words were etched in acid, her self-appraisal as merciless as the grade.

She unclipped the plastic bottle at her side, and sipped shallowly. Thin, faintly sweet, with a briny edge. The drink was custom-formulated from analysis of her own sweat, a nutrient solution composed chiefly of water and long-chain glucose polymers, with a few electrolyte minerals judiciously added. Jillian thought the sweat tasted better.

The air would heat soon. Morning chills burned off quickly of late, unusual for Pennsylvania in late March. April and May would be hot.

She squeezed the bottle closed with her teeth, and pushed onward. Halfway through now. Sean Vorhaus would be meeting her for the last two miles of the run. With the first tickle of fatigue her mind, ordinarily the most orderly of instruments, began to wander. She focused, and continued to dictate.

“Beverly: note. Mind seeks patterns. Predictions. Wrong here. Old math… says weather’s chaotic. Initial conditions. Disease, money, whatever. Try crime. Greek poets, storm… metaphor for personal change. Proposal—”

She panted, and wiped away the trickle of sweat oozing from beneath her terry-cloth headband. Her breathing normalized swiftly, and she continued.

“—use fractals, predict-global sociopolitical patterns. Determine where chaos rules human life—”

Funny how concise these notes always were. When she was running, she couldn’t spare the breath! An athlete training at a reasonable level should still be able to talk… and unable to sing; who was it tried that? And Beverly would edit out the gasping.

In print it would come out more like, “Although the human mind functions so as to seek patterns and predictability within chaos, the peculiar mathematics of my chosen field suggest that the only pattern ultimately discernible in weather is chaos itself. Weather is very sensitive to initial conditions, as is disease control, the relative value of currency, and whatever else I can come up with. This approach might be used to reduce crime rates. But note: the Greek poets used storms as metaphors for drastic changes in human existence. Proposal: although currently considered impractical, I believe that fractals can be used to predict global sociopolitical patterns. The trick is to determine the degree to which chaos itself is a controlling factor in human life—”

The path split and she automatically chose the high road. The old mine lay at the feet of the Allegheny mountains, and had once been a source of coal and natural gas.

Energy sources and environmental concerns had shifted drastically in the last hundred years. Thanks to the Council, there were probably forty billion tons of coal in the Pennsylvania earth that would never be harvested. How many tons of smog did that translate into? How many square miles of soot-stained lung tissue?

The deserted mine was an atavistic eyesore, a raw, mile-wide slash. Long ago, men had ripped coal from the earth, made it bleed black, carted away its flesh to heat homes and industrial furnaces. Today the Council had decreed cleaner sources: solar satellites, geothermal stations, fusion reactors.

The strip mine lay before Jillian, around her, a barren womb. Its grueling inclines and sudden, twisty depths were a challenge to mind and body, an ideal preparation for the rigors to come.

So lost in reverie was Jillian that she failed to hear Sean’s familiar rhythmic stride until he was ten feet away.

Sean Vorhaus was taller than she, and broader through the chest, with a longer stride. But he was a sprinter, with a sprinter’s power in his upper body. Jillian was built to run miles, not meters. Her other physical discipline added the torso muscle that made them an obvious social item around Pennsylvania Tech.

Sean’s ruddy face glistened with sweat as he came abreast of her. They managed a quick, bumping kiss without breaking stride.

Ah, the glories of coordination.

“How’s the hip this morning?” he asked.

“No more ‘click click.’”

“Any word from Beverly?” He pointed to her Comnet. The Council might try to reach her now, she supposed… but she didn’t expect any contact before noon. Even so, it was comforting to know that whenever or wherever the call came, whatever the answer was, she would know.

Their footsteps seemed to merge. “You know how I feel, Jill.”

She nodded. The grade steepened. They took a seventy-degree sprint up a ridge of ash and shattered stone, breathlessly matching strides, Behind them the morning sun had cast a slender silvery wedge on the western rim of the quarry.

Day was here. Almost certainly their last together. No matter what the Council’s decision, things could never be the same between them. Sean could never again be coach and mentor. Probably not lover. Perhaps not even friend.

A chill swept her, and she focused on the steady rolling stroke of sole against rock.

The incline leveled out. Jillian’s breathing normalized swiftly. The dark, stony earth turned beneath her shoe, but she didn’t stumble. Her ankles were strong. By both nature and nurture, her entire body was as durable and flexible as copper wire. She compensated, caught her balance, and ran on.

Sean brushed a lick of brown hair back from his forehead. “In a couple of hours… you won’t be mine anymore.”

I never was.

The thought reached her lips, but went no further.

Sean saw the tension of restraint, misinterpreted its meaning, and hushed what he thought would be a cloying endearment. “Let’s”-he huffed for air-“not kid each other. Not now. You’ll make the team. And you’re going for the gold. Even… if you come back to Penn Tech, you’ll be different. Linked. Just want you to know”-he puffed, sucking wind as she picked the pace up-“wouldn’t have missed this for the world. All of this—”

She tried to speak again.

“Bullshit,” he said amiably. “Save breath. Need it. Race you to the bikes.”

He broke into a run. As always, she dredged up strength from somewhere in her reserves to follow him, match him. And as always, especially now, on this last of their days together, she was careful not to pass him.

There were classes scheduled at Pennsylvania Technical University, but no one expected Jillian Shomer to attend them. Not today.

She would wait for the word. Yes, or no. Go or stay.

Arm in arm they returned to her dorm room. They took a hot, leisurely shower together, sluicing away the perspiration, soaping each other’s bodies lavishly. Her long hard biceps femoris muscles tingled as the warm pulsing water dissolved knots of tension.

And as they showered, Jillian’s multifunction personal data Simulacrum Beverly analyzed her run. As always, Bev’s critique was merciless and precise. As always, it was given in a cunningly programmed Southern lilt.

“—compensating for the grade, your stride altered to twenty-three inches.”

Jillian waited for the carefully crafted sounds of disapproval.

“Tsk, tsk, Jill. Is this the best you can do? We both know that twenty-five”—Beverly pronounced the number twenny-fahve—“is optimum for your height and present weight.”

Sean chortled. “Bev slays me.”

“Energy,” Jillian called, spitting water.

“Energy metabolism appears adequate…” A pregnant pause. “But you made a little mistake, honey.”