Bread and the Circus

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

While it hadn’t really hit me before, now that I’m finally starting to look around and think about it, I can’t help but notice: Mac and me are probably some of the youngest people here.  The cafeteria is pretty huge, of course, a brightly-lit hall with smooth floors, long tables, and a few alcoves scattered here and there along the walls for the privacy of the less social diners, so I’m sure I’m not getting a complete picture, but from what I can see, two teenagers really stand out, age-wise.  Obviously most people consider this kind of thing to be adults-only.  Honestly, I don’t really blame them.

They promised us a hot meal, and I can’t complain about them not meeting that part of the deal, but…well, I’m not really sure what it is that the server at the long counter just put on my plate, aside from the fact that it’s steaming with heat.  The stuff isn’t really unappetizing, per se, but it looks a little like a pink gelatin paste with “bits” floating in it.  With that stuff resting next to a green mush with black speckles, and a long yellow thing with bumps all over, I’d guess I have what must be a pretty balanced meal.

“Oh well,” I mutter once me and Mac step away from the serving counter.  “At least nothing seems to still be moving.”

“You got lucky,” Mac laughed, giving the magenta-colored coils on her plate a light nudge with a fingertip; it jiggled unencouragingly.  “I’m pretty sure this stuff just winked at me.  So much for thinking it was pasta!”

“Let’s go over there,” I suggested, pointing toward a booth.  “That looks unoccupied, and I think I’d like at least a little privacy while I figure out how to eat this stuff.”

Well…it was unoccupied, anyway.  Right up until we started to settle down into our seats.  We’d just gotten our places and were just starting to screw up enough courage to try the food (which actually didn’t smell all that bad now that I was paying attention to it), when I became aware of a shadow looming over my tray.

Being honest, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the intruders, except that I was looking at Mac’s face at the time, studying her.  She’s got a “tough girl” exterior, and she talks like she’s right in off the mean streets, but anybody that can talk about old Earth literature with as much facility as Mac has a lot more depth than they’re letting on.  Of course, while I was considering these details, I also came to the gradual realization that Mac wasn’t studying me in turn; instead, she was looking past me, and the look on her face was one that expected trouble.

“Huu-man!” came a booming voice, and I had just barely enough time to scoot my tray closer to the wall, right out from under the ham-sized hand that came slamming down on the table in front of me.  “Hah!  You Huu-mans are tiny!  Everybody talks about you as the hot new thing on the vids, but you look pathetic to me!”

Finally looking up, I saw that we were in some pretty serious trouble.  For starters there were five of them, and every one of them was a lot bigger than any of us.  Besides that, like I’d been noticing before, the five were all adult members of their respective species, while we were still kids for all practical purposes.  I’m sure that Mac could give a good accounting of herself, and I like to think I’m no slouch in a fight, even if I only have a lot of training and academic study of the subject, but even so, two kids against five full-grown and very dangerous-looking beings like these didn’t strike me as good odds.

The guy in front was a Krad.  Krad have these squashed-in faces, which ends up making them look something like a humanoid bulldog.  This Krad, though, had obviously been through some pretty tough situations, because his face was a scarred-up wreck; honestly, I think the battle damage actually improved his looks.

Behind the beefy Krad was a grab-bag assortment of PGR species.  There was a Dixl flanking him, the one race actually composed of two: a tiny six-legged weasel-thing riding on top of a hulking slab of bipedal meat, acting as the brains of the operation while the big-nosed hulk was the brawn.  Then there was the floating gasbag, a Barakind, a one-eyed being which evolved in zero gravity, and hence lacked legs, their lower abdomens instead filled with lighter-than-air gasses, letting them achieve some hovering ability in a proper gravity.  Finally, rounding out the quintet was a Xoranx, one of the few trilaterally symmetrical species in the Pan-Galactic Republic, its head a round-topped dome, all six of its chitinous limbs, arms and legs, ending in nasty-looking claws.  They were all dressed in stat suits, but not ones like ours; these were the stat suits of people who’d earned modifications to them, or so I guessed, because they had colors and interesting designs, armor plates, and some of them even sported company logos, indicating some serious money from sponsorship.  Compared to the basic black I was wearing openly, and Mac had decided to cover up with her street clothes, we just didn’t rate: these guys were veterans of the Arena, the most hostile locale in the Pan-Galactic Republic, and if the stat suits didn’t automatically deactivate their weapons functions when on the Circus satellite, I’d guess that these guys could have splattered us from across the room.

In still other words, we were pretty definitely boned.

“You Huu-mans get all over,” snorted the Krad, bending a little, letting his hot breath steam up my face as his ugly, toothy mouth curled back in an even uglier sneer.  “You worse than gremlins!  Nasty, sneaking, self-righteous fame stealers!  We work hard for what we got, right boys?”  He waited for the ominous rumbles of agreement from his posse before continuing, making sure they really were on board with whatever it was he planned to do to us, starting with me, as the obviously weaker member of our pair.  “I think you Huu-mans need a lesson.  Teach you some humility, remind you who’s better!”

Those ham-hands were just starting to curl up, and I saw Mac rest her hands on her tray, ready to use it as the next best weaponlike object we had available, when a sixth figure stepped up behind the five beings already crowded around the table and cleared her throat.

“Excuse me,” said the slim, black-furred woman, the four thugs behind the Krad moving to the sides without protest as she walked forward, then tapped our scarfaced visitor on the shoulder, “but are you planning to eat here?  Because if not, I’d like to sit down and enjoy my meal with my two guests.”  Her long, slender muzzle turned to indicate both Mac and me, before she turned it back to the Krad, her blue eyes shining in startling brilliance in the midst of that midnight black fur.  “I don’t think there’s room for all of us around this table, Blaag.”

“No,” Blaag grumbled sullenly.  “Guess not.”  Then he glared death and daggers at me.  “You are lucky this time, Huu-man.  We meet you out in the Arena, your luck gonna run out fast!”

He made a motion of his head to his posse, and they cleared out pretty much at the same time Mac moved over to let the L’Dray woman slide in next to her, tray and all.

Huh, wonder where she found the meat and vegetables.  What she’s got on her plate actually looked, well, normal.

“Different menu for us veterans,” the L’Dray answered before I’d even had time to formulate the question.  “You first-timers get the cheap processed foods until you start to earn money for the Circus.  Once you’ve been out for the first ten days planetside, then they’re willing to be a lot more accommodating.”

“Thanks for saving us,” I just sort of blurted out, feeling the heat rush to my cheeks when I said it.  “I mean, well, mostly me, since I guess they were going to rough me up first, but…”

“I wouldn’t’ve let them do that, Neph,” said Mac with an intensity that startled me.  “Not without them going through me first.”

“Blaag and his bunch meant it,” the L’Dray interjected before Mac’s words could lead into a long, awkward silence (because, really, how do you react to a statement like that?).  “About meeting you in the Arena.  Starting placement is pretty random at the beginning of a season, though you do get set back where you left off between ten day sorties, and it’s a really big planet.  What that means is that you’ve got pretty good odds of being able to avoid running back into those five bruisers down where they can hurt you directly.  But if luck doesn’t work your way, I recommend you start thinking strategies for facing off against your fellow contestants, just in case.”

“Why’re you helping us?” Mac asked, trying her first bite of the stuff on her plate, her face openly suspicious at first, but soon turning to a pleased acceptance as she continued to chew: apparently it wasn’t that bad.  “I mean, don’t we hurt your bottom line?  Being ‘the hot new thing’ and all that.”

Mac’s got this direct way about her, and while I like it on the one hand, because it means I know where I stand with her, on the other, it means she’s not exactly the diplomatic sort.  For a moment I worry that we’ve just lost our one obvious ally in this strange place, but all the black-furred foxy woman does is smirk, her blue eyes looking strangely sad.

“I remember what it was like when I first got here, the only L’Drey on the circuit,” she explained, taking a few dainty bites every so often, chewing her food carefully.  “My kind have a reputation for diplomacy, since we’re natural empaths, but not for violence, so of course having a L’Drey show up in the Arena made for pretty hot viewing.  Everybody wanted a piece of Frayd Luce, even if I was only ever a pretty average player.  Too average to save the lives of the friends I made down there,” she added, those beautiful eyes turning away from us in silent shame.

“You’re Frayd Luce?” Mac asked, the name obviously meaning something to her, though I had to admit that, while it was a little familiar, I simply couldn’t place it; I’d never been much for following the Arena, or any sports for that matter, at least not until now that my life hung in its balance.

“For all it’s worth, yeah,” affirmed Frayd.  “I just like the basic black of the starting stat suit: it goes with my fur.”

“It’s certainly fetching,” I tell her, and mean it.

“Thanks,” Frayd responds with a bright smile, and I can’t stop the fierceness of my blush when she leans over and gives my cheek a light kiss, her whiskers tickling my cheek.  “Nice to know I’ve still got it.  But what about you?  What’re your names?  Tell me a little about you, if it’s not too much to ask.  Maybe it won’t matter, but then again, maybe I’ll be asking you for an autograph in a couple years, if you make it big in the real world, or decide to stick around and become Arena superstars like me and Blaag.  Better safe than sorry, you get me?”

“Mac,” says Mac immediately, her expression fixed for a moment, but soon cracking under that blue-eyed gaze.  “MaKayla Carlscrown,” she finally admits.  “Only girl in a big family with a lot of boys.  I was supposed to be the smart one, get this scholarship, bring in lots of money after graduating from some big-name school, but it all fell through.  So I figured I’d bring in money the next way I could think of.”

“Nephele Cerveau,” I answer immediately when it’s my turn to endure those piercing blue eyes.  “It’s…it’s a girl’s name,” I can’t stop myself from admitting out loud, not looking at Mac.  “My mother picked out my name before I was born because she liked the sound of it, and nobody could convince her to change her mind.  It means clouds or thoughts or something like that.  I’m from a family that started out rich, but lost most of it when the last holdouts of humanity finally joined the Pan-Galactic Republic, and the inheritance laws weren’t kind when my father died.”

“Thank goodness you’re not aspiring artists,” Frayd said with a laugh.  “They’re nice enough, I suppose, but they can get so emo, if you take my meaning.”  She waited for us both to nod before continuing with a question: “Would you both like some advice?”

Once again we nodded – after all, who wouldn’t want a few tips from someone who obviously knew their way around the deathtrap where we’d soon be spending our days and nights for the foreseeable future? – trading glances as we did so, making sure we were both together in this.  There’s this natural feeling you sometimes get with some rare and special people, the feeling that you understand each other, even if you aren’t saying anything.  I got that feeling with Mac, and I was pretty sure she got it with me.  While it was still unpolished, since we’d only just met on the flight over, it was there, and I knew that if we lived long enough, that connection could grow into a mighty force.

“Maybe strong enough to keep you both alive,” Frayd said, breaking into our thoughts, making both me and Mac start (which just served as a confirmation that Mac had indeed been thinking the same as me right then).  “Sorry, the empathy kicks in sometimes.  And that’s my first piece of advice: stick together down there.  Blaag and his bunch might be jerks, but they’ve got a winning strategy, and the people in charge of manipulating the random number generators that run so much about life in the Arena like to keep winning teams together whenever possible.  Unless I’m completely off, I’d guess that the two of you are already slated to be put down in the same place, so you can try and survive together: the Ringmaster loves interpersonal drama, and that kind of thing sounds just like what he’d do.

“Second piece of advice: everything that isn’t decided by the Ringmaster at the start, like who you go down with, or maybe where you’re put, is random.  Every day, the computers up here in the Circus decide what the weather will be like in a given locale of the Arena.  The monsters get random impulses to migrate or stay settled somewhere.  Same with what sort of loot you get, since the treasure chests are all placed randomly too, though at least they don’t usually move around.

“Faced with a world of random chance, the best you can do is get good, fast.  Keep an active, survival-oriented mindset, so when bad stuff happens, you’ll be ready to push through the mess and start over from scratch, instead of surrendering to despair.  Learn from your mistakes, but don’t dwell on them, and always keep moving forward.  Don’t stay still.  Any activity is positive activity, and if you stop doing stuff, then the creeping heebie jeebies start to get into you, and once that happens, it’s just a matter of time before it’s all over.

“Third piece of advice: take things at a steady, safe pace.  Always have a few places where you can get shelter.  Keep sources of fire handy whenever possible.  Be on the lookout for food and clean water.  Since it’s not much fun to watch contestants die of dysentery, the Arena’s got plenty of local flora and fauna that’s safe to eat, and even the starting stat suits come with filters to clean the water the moment you drink it, as long as it’s not too tainted, but you’ll still need to actually have the food and water if you want to eat and drink, so keep notes on where you found interesting stuff that might be useful later.  There’s a feature in the stat suit to let you do just that, and I suggest you use it lots.

“Once you’ve got some base camps where you can fall back, you can take the rest of the Arena at your own pace, as fast as you think you can manage without dying.  The more places you go, and the more exciting things you do, the higher your score will be, and that’s money in your pockets, as well as credits to spend on upgrading your stat suits between episodes, but you’ll still get a decent score if you just survive long enough, however boring that survival might be.  So, even if it won’t earn you super-stardom, staying alive needs to be your first priority, not being a glory hound.  That’s especially true if you plan on getting into the entertainment scene after this, doing music or writing or acting or whatever: when you’re an entertainer, most people don’t care much about what you did in the Arena, only that you were there, willing to risk it all for your art.  That’s all the cred you need to succeed, whatever you might decide to do after you retire. Doing more might give you a nice boost in popularity, sure, but that’s all short-term stuff, and it fades pretty fast with time and real success.

“What I’ve just said about earning points counts extra for dungeons, by the way.  Dungeons are pretty obvious, believe me, because they’re almost always indoors, in artificial structures, most of them made up to look like ancient ruins or something similar, from the past history of various cultures in the PGR, or from archaeology on the fringes.  They’re also crammed to the brim with robots made to look like scary monsters…and also a few real scary monsters, ogres they’re called, that are big, strong, cunning, and really dangerous.  Just entering a dungeon and staying there for a little while makes your score skyrocket, besides your chances of finding extra loot just lying around.  But it also makes your chances of survival drop like your homeworld’s stock market once it got bought out by the PGR.  If you wanna get noticed, maybe win yourself some sponsors like Blaag has, or you wanna risk big to earn big, and you’re feeling pretty confident in your base camps and being able to handle the local dangers, then you might try a shorter dungeon or two, but I really don’t recommend it if you plan on playing the long game, instead of the get-rich-quick route.”

Then Frayd’s eyes grew hard, making their deep blue turn to ice.

“Last piece of advice, and then I’ve gotta dash: I’ve got an interview coming up before I head back down,” she said, popping the last piece of her meal into her muzzle, then taking her time to chew it before she continued.  “In the fight up here on the Circus, if you survive the Arena, be ready to sacrifice anything or anyone for success.  What matters most is making it, and in the world of the Circus, with its glam and glitz, that means you should be ready for backstabs, treachery, and betrayal, and be just as ready to dish it out.  Blaag’s been through two teams like his present one already, and believe me, he’s done pretty well for himself.  It’s a pattern I’ve seen a lot, especially in the people who make the most money, accrue the most fame.  If you really want to succeed in the fight outside the Arena, then you’d do well to learn from those examples.  And with that, I’ve gotta break for it: good luck, and catch you on the flipside.”

Standing, leaving me and Mac stunned into silence, Frayd started to carry her tray toward the exit of the cafeteria, and the trash receptacles right by the doors.

“Hey!” Mac suddenly called out, stopping the foxy lady in her tracks.  “Do you really believe what you just said?  About…that last bit.”

I can see the shoulders slump, the head tilting down as Frayd looks at her feet.

“No,” she admits.  “But it’s still good advice.”