Bread and the Circus

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

All the stuff Frayd Luce said is still churning around in my brain when me’n Neph leave the cafeteria.  What she said about being willing to betray people for fame and fortune, especially, was really bothering me.  Could I do something like that to anybody I knew, if I knew that I’d get lots of money in return?  Could I do that to Neph?  That was why I was there at the Circus, ready to go down to the Arena, after all: to earn money for my family.  But could I look my parents or any of my brothers in the eyes if I knew I’d earned that money doing something dirty?

There were lines of light on the ground, complete with big letters providing directions, and the auto-translator in the stat suit made them blur for just a moment before they turned into plain Earth lingo.  There were still some directions for how to get out of there, to quit the Arena and go someplace safe instead (and some of those took pains to insult anybody who’d ignore the good advice they offered), but both me and Neph ignored those, opting instead to follow the line, bright and glowing gold, that led to this massive auditorium.  That was where we were going to get our final orientation, the directions on the various signs around here said, before we went down to the Arena.  Our last chance to back out, or to pick up those last few little pointers that might keep us alive a little longer.  Long enough to cash in for the folks back home.

You’d probably have thought that there’d be this real press for seats in a packed room like this auditorium was, but whatever else you might say about the Pan-Galactic Republic, they’ve got some pretty incredible but simple ways of handling life’s little problems.  In this case, they handled crowd control by having short rows of chairs that popped out of the floor near the auditorium’s entrance, and when you sat on them, they took you to the next available sitting area, just rolling along until you were where you were supposed to be.  They even had some basic controls, so you could program the chairs to let you sit next to somebody specific, provided you did the request before the chairs of both you and your friend had gotten settled into place.

While Neph went off, being a gentleman (‘cause I felt like letting him play the part, I guess: sometimes I have my moods), getting us some chairs, and while I was still churning all that stuff Frayd had said around and around in my head, trying to figure out what I’d do if money, fame, and glory were on the line, I saw this old guy standing off to one side of the incoming crowds.  He was a Ganhammen, one of these huge, buff lizard dudes, except this one had obviously started that trek over the hill.  I mean, you could see how his once-broad shoulders were now all slumped, and while you could still see how muscular he’d been back in his day through the skintight black stat suit he was sporting, even I could tell that this was one lizard that was well past his prime.

Normally I don’t really like dealing with aliens much.  Guess I’m just used to Humans, having been around them all my life, not having many dealings with things that didn’t come from Earth, except when they showed up to make life inconvenient.  Right now, though, I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t going to be a selfish, greedy, power-hungry monster like Frayd had said we should be.  That I was going to show everybody how great us Humans could be, like some sort of cultural ambassador, or something stupid like that.  So I walked up to the old guy, stepping out of the main flow of traffic in the process, and tried to start up a conversation.

“They kinda ride up, don’t they?” I asked him, and he blinked, tilting his head questioningly, and though the natural expression of his people was kind of fierce, with this big crest and sharp eye ridges, I didn’t get the impression that he was hostile or anything, just curious.  “The stat suits, I mean.”

“Ah,” he said after a pause to process what I’d said, nodding his understanding a moment later.  “Yes.  But you do get used to it after a while.  Actually, you come to appreciate the suits very quickly, after they save your life a few times.”

“Not your first time in the Arena, huh?” I ask, offering my hand, which he takes after a moment’s hesitation (I’d forgotten that not everybody shakes hands as a greeting), his fingers almost engulfing my own, though I still manage to give him a pretty good squeeze and shake before letting go.  “I’m Mac, by the way.”

“You may call me,” he searches for the right word for a moment, “Sarge.  Most of my friends use that nickname, and you can as well.”

“Thanks, Sarge,” I say with a light grin, glad that he’s not the mean sort, at least.  “I guess you’ve been through enough orientation meetings to know the drill.  It’s my first, though.  Maybe you’d like to come and sit with me and my friend?”

“That is all right, Mac,” he said, his scaly lips curling into a pretty close approximation of a smile.  “I have…prior arrangements.  But I do thank you for the thought.  So,” he regarded me quizzically, “you have come for fame and fortune, yes?  The bright dreams of youth.  What plans do you have for the future?”

That made me blink, and then give a short laugh.

“There’s not much point planning for the future now, is there?” I ask, still chuckling.  “I mean, the Arena’s random, mostly.  There’s no way to tell if I’ll even live to see the end of today, let alone the ten days it’ll take before my first pickup.”

“This is true,” Sarge admits with a sage nod.  “But, really, you shouldn’t worry so much.  After all, when your number is up, it is up.  Until then, it is best to just carry on as though you will keep going forever, and have to live with every choice you made along the way, good as well as bad.  Every friendship, and every betrayal; every joy, and every regret.  The good choices are not necessarily to keep you alive longer, but rather to let you enjoy what life you get to its fullest.”

“So you’re an epicurean?” I laugh, amused, but the old guy just gave me this quizzical, tilted-head look again, so I gave him a quick summary about what epicureans were all about.

“Ah,” he nodded, the crest on his head curling up slightly, while his eyes widened a little, movements I started to figure out were his kind’s equivalent of a smile, since he’d done the same thing when he was trying to mimic the Human expression earlier.  “Yes, that does sound like me.  At least, it is how I like to think of myself.  I do have few regrets because of my choices.  I hope you can live similarly, for when you reach your sunset years and have little but time to reflect on what passed before.”  Then he blinked, looking behind me, and I followed his gaze, which led straight to Neph, who was resting both his hands on a pair of the moving chairs, waiting patiently for me to come and sit with him.  “You had better go with your friend,” he said with a gentle smile, the expression strange on his hard-featured reptile’s face, but somehow pleasant as well, obviously one that he’d practiced quite a bit, since smiling was a pretty widely used facial expression among the sapients of the PGR.  “Everyone else is settled now, and the last orientation will start soon.”

We said our goodbyes, and I hurried over to Neph, before we both hopped in the chairs.  Riding them was actually kind of fun, really smooth across the floor and up the incline to the places where we were going to sit.  It was near the back, of course, since I’d taken so long talking to the old guy, and there had to have been at least two hundred people packed in all around us, separated only by the little dividers that spaced out each of the moving seats.

The moment our chairs locked into place, and before I even had a chance to tell Neph about the neat old guy I’d met, the lights dimmed everywhere except for the big stage at the front of the auditorium.  A big screen lowered, and immediately an image of the stage appeared on it, blown up to allow everybody to see clearly as the guy who was supposed to address us walked out onto the stage, tall and slow and stately as he strode confidently to the podium.

It was the old guy, the Ganhammen geezer I’d just been talking to!  Behind him, on the screen, I saw his name spelled out, something with a few too many syllables for my mouth to wrap around without some serious linguistic gymnastics, as well as his title: Circus Armsmaster.

“Oh crap,” I muttered softly.

“Wasn’t that the guy…?” Neph started to ask, and I gave him a quick nod.  “Oh crap,” he agreed.

The Armsmaster was probably the third most important guy in the Circus, the one responsible for providing equipment and assistance to contestants.  He was also responsible for getting contestants out of the Arena when they had an emergency.  If I’d made him upset somehow, and me or Neph needed a pickup to stay alive, I might have just shot our collective chances of survival in the foot.

We didn’t get much time for this to sink in, though: the final orientation started pretty much as soon as the Armsmaster got to the podium.