Bread and the Circus

Chapter 10, Part 1

Chapter 10

After the night we’d had, I expected to be a lot more tired than I was when dawn finally rousted out the fingers of night’s dark caress.  Actually, I felt pretty good, having gotten in another shift at guard duty before Mac took over for the last one.  She was nice enough to let me sleep in even after dawn arrived, but I didn’t stay down for much longer; I guess there’s an instinct about the feel of sun’s light and warmth on your face, because once our little clearing was getting flecks of dappled sunlight from the early morning rays, I was up, yawning and stretching and wishing for something more substantial than the gooey fruity slush in the pods dangling from our big central tree.

At least it started sunny.  As we went about the daily routine (or what I guessed was going to be our daily routine) of eating and thinking, both of us lost in our thoughts for the time being, not really wanting to break the silence with unnecessary chatter, I noticed a little black cloud way off on the horizon.  Then I saw it being joined by other clouds of similar stygian hue.  And then I felt the wind change, saw it blow through the grass, and saw the clouds start to come toward us, rumbling as they rolled, flashes of lightning playing between the clouds of the onrushing storm.

“There’s no bodies,” was what Mac said, breaking me from my watching the weather.  I turned, and discovered that she’d been poking around where we’d fought the squamous hordes of the night previous.  “I can’t even find any drag marks.  Just these.”

She turned toward me, holding up two or three of the little flint knives the creatures were carrying.  Then she blinked, looking beyond me to the plains just outside the confines of our little forest.

“Wow,” she said, awestruck, probably the first time I’d actually seen her honestly affected by something that wasn’t purely practical.  “You can actually see it coming,” she added in more than a little surprise.

This was quite true, actually: the rain came toward us like a literal curtain of water, and you could see the definite line where the rain was falling, and where it wasn’t.  On one side of that curtain, all was bright and sunny, though a little windswept.  On the other, darkness and damp and grass being battered down by the press of the water.

“Like watching the onset of the apocalypse,” I murmured as Mac sat next to me, and we both watched the storm rush over our little forest from the shelter of our friendly central tree.

The storm didn’t last very long, thank goodness: I think Mac might have gotten bored if she’d had to stay in the confines of the copse for too long, and I really don’t want to know what she’s like when she’s bored.  As it was, as soon as the storm thundered on past, letting us watch the curtain of rain continue its path toward the far distant “real” forest to the east, she held up the little knives again, looked at them thoughtfully for a moment or two, then held them out to me.

“This is what we need to start making stuff,” she said firmly.  “Flint’s perfect for making everything we need: weapons, tools, fire.”  She put a lot of emphasis on that last one, and I had to admit, the prospect did get my attention: our firepit had gotten soaked, even under the protective canopy.  “We just need to find out where those lizard-things came from, and go there ourselves to get some of the local rocks.”

“North,” I said immediately, without thinking about it.  “That’s where things start to get more rocky.  It’s also where the river comes from, so I’ll bet it breaks up the ground, making it easier to find exposed rocks…actually, let me check on that,” I broke off, holding up a hand to start scrolling through the HUD floating before my eyes; I was starting to get really good at this!  “Let’s see…it’s a sedimentary rock, found around chalk and other limestone deposits.  The guide here also says that there’s a lot of similar rocks that can work just like flint.  Not having any pictures in these files makes it kind of hard to figure out what we should look for, though…”

“Sedimentary means it’s deposited by water, mostly,” Mac chimed in, looking through the trees toward where we could see the glistening surface of our little stream.  “Explains how those little lizard-things had flint, anyway, if they came from up north, like you’re guessing.  And like I’m guessing too.”  She hefted the little knives, smirking down at them wryly.  “I just hope there are chunks of flint, or whatever, up there that are bigger than these: they’re hardly work using as scrapers, or maybe fire-starters if we really can’t find anything else.”

“Or arrowheads,” I added.  “Well, if we could make a bow, that is.”

“Doable, maybe,” Mac looked around at the clearing in the copse.  “There are some vines here that would work for bowstrings with some splitting and re-twisting, I guess.  But I don’t think we’ve got ideal materials for what I want to make; we’d be better off going to look for something better.  And that means going up north.”

“North it is,” I agreed.  “Guess we’d better get ready, huh?”

Getting ready, as it turned out, was pretty easy.  Mac had already gathered up some nice sticks and rocks (the solid kind, though, not much good for chipping, though excellent for throwing) for self-defense if we ran into more hostile creatures like those squamous slayers (my preferred name for them, even if Mac preferred “lizard-thing”), so that left water and food.  Again, getting these was pretty easy, once Mac showed me how she’d found a way to tie up the leaves of our big, friendly tree to make a sort of big green wallet, or roll them up to make a stopper on the tops of the fruit, either full or empty.  The latter, as it turned out, was a great thing, since once we’d partaken of their contents, and cleaned them out, it was pretty simple to just fill them with water from the little stream running by our clearing, turning them into workable canteens.

“Whoever designed this part of the landscape really paid attention to the needs of their players,” I couldn’t help but comment with a grin after Mac showed me how to seal up the tops of the gourd-fruit with curled-up leaves.  “I suppose they preferred to watch their contestants doing things besides perishing from hunger and thirst.”

“This sort of stuff improves the range we can explore, too,” Mac agreed with a slight nod as we found amazing little “clip points” on our stat suits that I could have sworn weren’t there yesterday, points that were perfect for attaching the hooked stems of our leaf provision wallets.  “And that just improves the amount of danger we can find.  Which is what the Arena’s all about, after all,” she concluded, hefting her shillelagh with a slight curl of her lip, the expression equal parts determination and disgust at whoever might find enjoyment in watching the suffering of others.

“Catharsis, I suppose, is what makes the Arena so appealing,” I posited as I lifted my own stick, the equal to her own, feeling how it seemed perfectly weighted for the business of battle, even though Mac hadn’t done anything to modify it, though she had taken great pains to select only the best sticks of those cast off from the trees of our copse.  “People live such civilized lives, and yet all of us, from every species out there, had ancestors that cowered in the dark and prayed that they would live to see the light of another day, or shivered through the chill of winters, and scraped for every morsel of food.  Now, there’s enough for everyone, even the people who just sell their votes to live, and shelter isn’t a problem when you follow the PGR’s standard city planning.  Those same plans, coupled with their standardized technology, even assure that the ecology of a planet is preserved, letting civilized space and wild space coexist.  But we still have our instincts, and we still feel the need to experience the thrill of the world of nature, red in tooth and claw.”

“Better to have somebody else do it, rather than go out into it yourself,” Mac answered with a light snort, then heaved a long sigh, relenting, even as she started off toward the mountains, following the stream, me just a step behind.  “But I guess it’s illegal to go tromping out in real nature these days, huh?  Outside of some heavily-supervised field trips, or if you’re willing to head to one of the worlds on the border of the Pan-Galactic Republic, anyway.  Even if it’s the best way the PGR’s found to keep people safe, clothed, housed, and fed, I know I’ve felt squeezed by it more than a few times, feeling the lack of options.  Feeling myself forced to play by so many rules, and not make any of my own.”

We were both panning our heads back and forth as we walked, grateful that the tall grass, strangely enough, didn’t grow right next to the stream; I guess it just didn’t like running water, and whoever had designed this part of the world hadn’t bothered to fill in every little niche in the artificial ecology of the Arena.  Whatever the reason, though, it meant that the walking was pretty easy, and we could see if anything decided to leap out of the grass to come at us, since there was about a stone’s throw worth of space on each side, and a lot more than that in front and behind us.  The only really big gaps in visibility came when the stream curved, and so we made sure to go a little slower and be a little more cautious and alert whenever we got to those bends.

“That must be why there’s so many people willing to pay for other people’s votes,” I mused, considering Mac’s words.

“They wanna make the rules that everybody’s gotta follow, so they only get ones that they don’t mind following themselves,” Mac finished my thought, both of us grinning wryly.  “Yeah, that makes good sense.  Sounds like a pretty good motivation for politicians in any age, actually.”  Suddenly she glanced back at me, her face serious.  “Neph, there’s a lot of stuff in that stat suit’s HUD.  Stuff that could save our lives in a pinch, if we know how to use it right.  I’ll keep watch while we walk, and we can both be quiet, make it easier for us both to notice if something’s around.  While I’m on guard, you go through the displays, and figure out as much of what the stat suit’s onboard computer can do as you possibly can.  Then, when you figure it out…”

“I’ll teach everything I’ve learned to you,” I finished, even as I watched Mac shift around one of the leaf wallets, the one where she’d stowed her throwing stones, so that it would be easier for her to reach if a crisis occurred.  “Are you sure, though, Mac?  I mean, two pairs of eyes can see a lot more than just one.”

“This is probably the best chance we’re gonna get for this sort of thing, Neph,” Mac assured me, her eyes still scanning the surrounding foliage, her stick gripped in one hand, one end resting on her shoulder, where she could swing it down with good leverage really fast.  “I think those lizard-things prefer to make their attacks in the dark, when those big eyes of theirs give them the advantage, and we’ve seen nothing else so far.  If we’re right, and this is a beginner’s zone, then right now is the time to figure out everything we can about our available tools.  And our stat suits are the greatest tools of all.”

“I have to admit,” I chuckled, “not having to go to the bathroom this morning was certainly a new experience.”

She chuckled along with me, and then gave me another glance over her shoulder.

“Nice not having to brush our teeth, too,” she agreed.  “I wanna know what else these things can do, though.”

“I’ll see what I can learn,” I agreed, relenting with minimal resistance, for I admit that I was intrigued by the possibilities of the onboard computer myself.  “Who knows?  I might even find an owner’s manual.”