Ted Kosmatka - The Games

“Please be quiet,” Silas said when the blond technician began talking about the wonders of deep-tissue emulsification. He didn’t want to be rude, but he couldn’t force himself to listen to a single second more of her ridiculous pseudo-medical jargon.

But there was nothing pseudo about the buzz. That came on quick and strong. There was no disorientation, no feeling of drunkenness. Just warmth, contentment. He reminded himself to tell Vidonia about this later. She’d love it.

He floated.

“You have a call, Dr. Williams,” the blonde said.

Silas opened his eyes and saw her holding a small videophone out to him. He hadn’t even heard it ring. When he took it, Ben’s face considered him from the little screen, a line of empty cages sprawling away behind him. He was in the catacombs beneath the arena, and he didn’t look happy.

“Yeah,” Silas said.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I really need you to come down here.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t want to explain over the phone.”

“Why?”

“We need a secure line.”

“Just a hint, then?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“That’s a hint?”

“It’s all the hint you’re getting. Trust me, when you get here, you’ll understand.”

“Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Silas closed the receiver and began plucking off the wires that crisscrossed his arms and legs.

“You shouldn’t do that,” the blonde said, and her look of alarm made her face almost comical. “You need a cool-down period first. There can be problems. The cleansing of your tissues is only partially complete.”

“Sorry, I guess my tissues will have to be a little dirty.”

The elevator seemed to take an eternity as it descended, picking up several groups of passengers in its drop to the lobby. It became immediately clear upon his exit to the street that it would be quicker for him to walk the two blocks than to take a cab. Traffic was gridlocked. Somewhere amid his struggle through the humanity-clogged sidewalks, his headache began. It was subtle at first but gathered force as he walked.

Here and there a face would show a flash of recognition when glancing up at him. A few people pointed. But for the most part, he wasn’t noticed, just a tall man with a pained expression. By the time he reached the arena, the headache was like no other he had ever experienced.

Can a head actually explode?

He flashed his badge to the guards, and they let him through. At the elevator he inserted his passkey into the console and pushed B3. Descent again, but this time the motion made him reel with pain. The doors opened, and he followed the dark cement corridor for twenty meters before stepping down a side hall. The familiar zoo smells came again, and if it was possible, his head hurt worse.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Ben whispered, when he saw Silas’s face.

Silas hadn’t realized it was that obvious. “Toxins,” he said.

Ben gave him an incredulous look.

“Don’t worry about it. Tell me what was so important that you dragged me down here like this. And why are you whispering?”

Silas followed Ben’s gaze through the bars to their gladiator. Inside the small enclosure, it looked even bigger than usual, a shining black monster. There was no other word for it.

Its head almost touched the ceiling as it hulked in the back against the iron wall. Two members of their handling crew stood off to the side, arms folded across their chests.

Ben put a hand on Silas’s shoulder and turned his back to the cage, leading them away.

“I think the gladiator can understand what we say,” he said, voice low and soft.

“You think it understands English?”

“Yeah, Silas, I do. I really do.”

“How?”

“I guess it must have picked it up over months of listening to us talk around it. We should have been more careful. We—”

“No, I mean, how do you know it can understand us? Maybe you’re confusing some sort of Pavlovian conditioning for comprehension. Even untrained dogs can learn to associate sounds with food.”

“This isn’t some ringing bell I’m talking about. This thing understands , and I don’t mean just simple words.”

“How do you know?”

“Watch,” Ben said. He turned and walked back to the men standing by the cage. They were young interns from the eastern district cytology schools, and they shared the same sandblasted expression of shock on their faces.

The gladiator moved forward to the edge of the cage. Ben was careful to stay out of arm’s reach.

“Get the zapstick,” he said to the taller intern.

The gladiator moved to the back of the cage again, quickly.

That doesn’t prove a thing , Silas thought. The zapstick had been used as a motivational device by the handlers since their arrival in the city. It was no great leap that the gladiator could have picked up on the word. A golden retriever would have done the same thing.

Ben flashed Silas a look. “Now put the zapstick down,” he said to the intern. “And let’s haul out the feed.”

The gladiator moved to the front of the cage again in anticipation. Its wings bobbed slightly.

Still doesn’t prove anything. It heard “feed” and responded. A simple cue .

The interns hauled out a huge slab of prey food from the supply cart, sharing the red weight of it between them.

“Now, throw the food in the cage.” Ben pronounced each word carefully. “But if the gladiator touches it, use the zapstick.”

The interns heaved the processed-meat slab through the bars, and then one of them picked up the zapstick from the floor. He held the four-foot stick loosely in his hand, just within striking distance of the food.

The gladiator didn’t move.

Its tongue came out of its mouth, and its wings bobbed faster. Its gray eyes crawled over every inch of the meat. But it didn’t make a move.

“Never mind,” Ben said. “ Don’t use the zapstick if it eats the food.”

The handler didn’t move, didn’t change his stance in the slightest, but the gladiator rushed forward and scooped the meat up in a taloned hand. It bit a huge chunk free and swallowed it down whole.

The intern with the zapstick moved forward a step, closer to the bars. The creature was easily within striking distance of the electrified rod, but it still didn’t move away. It looked up briefly at Benjamin and Silas, then returned to its meal.

Holy shit .

The four of them stood and watched the gladiator eat. It was gulping down the last mouthful when finally someone broke the silence. “So what do we do now?” Ben asked Silas.

Silas stared through the bars for a long time before saying anything, and when he did speak, his voice was soft. “I don’t know.”

SILAS WAS numb as he walked back to his hotel. This was something he’d never suspected, this level of intelligence in the gladiator. After all these months, he’d thought he was beyond being surprised. By anything. He’d considered himself immune to the emotion. But this new piece of the puzzle had caught him off guard.

He’d long suspected the thing was smart.… But then a great many animals were merely smart. Merely.

Smart was not such a rare commodity in the animal kingdom. Lions, and wolves, and jackals, and even bears all had their own sort of animal cunning. Most predators did. But this was something different. The thing he’d watched in the cage today had understood , and that was a very rare thing, indeed—to understand spoken language. To understand the intricacies of human speech beyond a short list of commands. There was only one animal known that could do that, Homo sapiens , and it had taken quite a long time to develop the knack.