Bread and the Circus

Chapter 17, Part 1

Chapter 17

The “LAIR” light is on.  Actually, it’s been on for the last two hours now, according to my suit’s onboard chronometer.  That’s only to be expected, though, considering our latest mad scheme.  Well, it’s Mac’s mad scheme, to give credit where it’s due, but we all worked together to refine it, to turn something utterly impossible into something that we three could possibly manage, as long as we were quick and clever and very, very careful.

After deciding that we wanted to tackle the morlock dungeon next (and for once Mac and I both agreed on a name for something), getting from that plan to our present activities makes fantastic sense, provided you’re willing to connect all the proper dots.

The first dot is the dungeon in question.  We know that dungeons are taxing, tiring, and even tedious with the number of things we might end up having to kill.  They’re also ridiculously lethal, but only after they’ve given you fair warning of just how lethal they’re going to be.  Of course, all of these conclusions are based on the supposition that our first dungeon crawl was typical for such activities.  But we have factored in the likelihood that each dungeon is probably built around a specific theme, like an amusement park, except all the rides are literal death traps, and the besuited mascots are all psychotic robots.

Our next dot comes from the catch twenty-two question “What can we do to prepare for the unexpected?”  After all, we don’t know what the theme for the morlock dungeon is actually going to be, and won’t find out until we’re right in the middle of it.  We know there will be traps and robots, but that leaves a pretty wide margin of variation, to say the least.  So, to answer that question, we simply create a third option, a “spoiler.”

Perhaps you’ve never read the book “Catch-22,” though I’m almost certain you’ve heard the phrase that the book engendered.  Even aliens who have never met a Human have started using the term “catch twenty-two,” after all.  In its common usage, it means a situation where you are caught between two impossibilities.  Specifically, in the book, the main character wants to get out of performing dangerous military missions by pleading insanity due to combat fatigue, but in his case, only an insane person would continue to go on the missions he was forced to endure, again and again and again, so to beg off doing his missions just proves that he’s sane, and thus has to go back out again, and continuing to do them without complaint means that nobody will notice his situation until he dies.  This is the definition of the term that everyone knows.  It’s not the real definition, though.

In “Catch-22,” the real “catch twenty-two” is a situation created by someone in a position of strength, working to bully someone in a position of weakness, thus forcing them to make a choice they don’t want to make.  However, as the book demonstrates through the actions of the main character, when you are being forced to choose between a fixed number of options, you don’t have to take either of them at all: instead, you can make your own third choice.  This always impressed me when I read through the New Testament: Jesus faces almost constant questioning by his opposition, as they presented him with various hypothetical situations to test his knowledge of their religious as well as civil law.  His questioners naturally supposed that he would be forced to select one of the limited options provided to him by the setup of the scenario.  Every time, however, he either sidestepped the issue entirely, or pointed out a flaw in the questioner’s fundamental argument.  A third choice, in other words, when your enemies think that this shouldn’t be possible.

Such is our situation: we are about to enter a lethal deathtrap, and the designers of that deathtrap believe that we should only have two options: win or die, all in a single trip.  They haven’t considered the third way, though: go in for as long as we can, then retreat and recover at a safe location, before returning for another sortie.

(At least I hope they haven’t thought of this third way; if they have, we might be in trouble.)

When we went into the last dungeon, we learned that mobs of the creatures outside the dungeon will start to crowd around the entrance, eager to keep us pinned in.  They don’t move, either, or maybe they just keep rotating their numbers, keeping them constant, all ready to pounce the moment you step back outside.  Either way, Mac and Aleph and myself had to fight our way out, and it was a b****y mess.  Doable thanks to the treasures we’d gained from the labyrinthine depths, but not easy.  So, to counter this difficulty, besides stocking up our little hideaway, we also decided to clear out the local lairs, from which our potential opposition to the attack-and-retreat method of dungeon diving might come.  Right now, that means the squamous slayers, since the scintillatant wolves seem to be confined to the other side of the gulley where we acquired our flint stores.

Hopefully that remains true when we start into the morlock dungeon.

All of that leads to the final dot in our little mental journey: deep in the middle of squamous slayer territory, the “LAIR” light a constant minor presence in the periphery of my vision, Aleph and myself crouched behind some of the copious boulders strewn all around the terrain.  Before, when we’d last been through this region, we’d confined ourselves to the gulley that runs through the middle of Ginchis Deep, as the mapping feature called it.  Now, though, we’d expanded our automaps by quite a bit already, working our way slowly but surely into the territory of the squamous slayers, tackling two or three groups per day, then falling back to recover (and, sure enough, we found that we had only one attack by night since we started, and that was on the first night).  The strategy is one that Mac suggested, as I mentioned, and we all worked together to refine; it’s simple, but elegant, and very, very effective.  In the strategy, Aleph and I hold back in a defensible location – and there are plenty of those among all these rocks overlooking the gulley – ready with our weapons.  While we do that, Mac goes out, and…

“I feel like a steel trap,” Aleph suddenly said, her luminous eyes never wavering from the trail below our lookout point.

“Sharp and ready to spring into action?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow (and unlike her, looking away from my post; I do get distracted sometimes).

“Sitting around, rusting and waiting for something interesting to happen,” she replied sardonically.

Obviously she’s been learning quite a bit from being around Mac and me.

I am a good robot role model.

Setting my lamentations at my own shortcomings aside for the time being, I realize suddenly that I have a rather intriguing question, and Aleph may indeed be the perfect person to answer it.  Outside of the masters of the Circus, that is, but they’re hardly here at the present, and Aleph can access the inner workings of our stat suits at any time we allow it.

“Aleph, I have a question that perhaps you can answer,” I begin, and she actually half-turns her head toward me, fixing me with those beautiful cat’s eyes, though only for a short while; she’s the goal-oriented type, and I can’t help but admire her ability to focus on her necessary tasks.  Left to my own devices, I know I would make a terrible sentry.  Oh, I can manage concentration, certainly, when it’s a task that is both interesting and engaging.  My writing projects, for instance: I’ve certainly got enough snippets of poetry together back in my room back home to make up a decent-sized volume at this point.  But when it comes to tasks like watching a pot to ensure it doesn’t boil over, or standing guard alone, my mind tends to wander.

“I’ll answer anything I can, Neph,” Aleph said finally, breaking into my inner monologue, which I admit had certainly been going on for too long.

“Watching Mac, I’ve noticed that she’s gotten surprisingly good with using two weapons at once,” I explain.  “She’s told me that she’d only seen movies of fighting masters who fought like that.  Oh, she’s got training in unarmed styles, and a little weapon fighting as well, but when she came down here, all she really had was the idea of how to use escrima, or kali, or the two blades of Miyamoto Musashi.  Now…”

“Now she’s almost an expert,” Aleph picked up where I trailed off.  “Well, a talented beginner,” she amended.  “And now she has those flint-headed axes rather than just thorn-studded clubs, making her all the more dangerous.”

“Thanks to you, and showing us those tutorial videos you snatched from the computer networks,” I added with a warm smile that I hoped she could feel, since she only watched me from the corner of one large, lovely eye.  “We’d have never figured out how to knap the stone like that without a lot more trial and error, and I don’t think we’d have ever realized how we could squeeze the axe head into that tiny hole you had us gouge out of the end of Mac’s clubs, then use the sinews to lash it into place, letting their drying action cinch it tightly.  But actually fighting with them effectively,” I shook my head disbelievingly.  “Mac’s become a wonder already, the way she cut down those other two groups of squamous sentries this morning.  Well, with our help, of course.”

“You’re both learning how to fight much faster than is normal, Neph,” Aleph reassured me.  “You can’t see it from the outside, but you’re getting astonishingly good with that spear you took from the big skeleton’s chest.  And we’re all getting good with the bows we made back at camp.”

“You especially,” I said, lightly patting my own bow as I thought of the last engagement we’d fought with the squamous slayers, and how Aleph had sunk an arrow right through the forehead of one of their big commanders.  “You just have  a knack for archery, I suppose.”

“My eyes have  range-finding and targeting reticule features programmed in, and I have software for calculating distance and trajectory,” Aleph explained, absently lifting the bow in her hands as she did so, one of our precious ceramic-tipped arrows knocked in place.  “But for you and Mac, your stat suits are designed to interact with your body memories, helping you to learn kinesthetic skills with vastly increased speed.  The suits were originally made for military purposes, after all, and one of those purposes was to enhance the rate at which a raw recruit could be trained.  Given some subliminal training during sleep cycles as well, and the Pan-Galactic Republic’s officially-sponsored mercenary units can drum up a more-than-credible fighting force in a week or two of training in a safe environment.  In a hazard-rich environment like this, you and Mac are receiving a ‘crash course.’  Every time you survive a confrontation, your suit learns your body’s natural tendencies a little better, and automatically gives you feedback to aid you in doing those same actions better, faster, stronger.  Coupled with its metabolism-enhancing effects, part of the feedback loop it’s created with your body, by the time we finish this first ten-day stretch on the Arena, you’ll both be sporting awesome ‘beach bods.’”  She glanced my way again, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.  “Great for impressing all the ladies.”

Eep!  I…I think I may have created a monster.

Too flustered to respond to that little verbal thrust, I instead let my eyes flick past Aleph, to where I noticed some movement coming from the rough trail we’d been overwatching.  My glance snapped back to Aleph a moment later, and she only nodded, both of us falling instantly silent as we crouched a little lower, our chosen weapons at the ready.

Rushing headlong down that trail (and it was down, as everything above the gulley where the first dungeon lay was up a rocky hillside, which was where we’d been wending our blood-stained path) Mac laughed like a maniac, an ecstatic joy on her face.  She must have had the blood of berserkers somewhere in her ancestry to get such pure delight from the thrill of battle!  Right behind her loped another band of the squamous slayers, a rough dozen by my quick count (Aleph I’m sure knew exactly how many there were with those fantastic eyes of hers, but I had only my human senses, the stat suit not having granted me any real improvement to what came naturally, or at least not yet).

A dozen!  Just five scant days past, when we’d first started out on this adventure, I’d have never considered tackling so many opponents at once; while I might be desperate to save my family from their financial ruin, I’m not suicidal by temperament.  Now, though, after all we’d endured, the violence just seemed to come naturally.  That wasn’t to say I wasn’t still intimidated, mind: combat always carried a terrifying rush with its frenzied pace and cacophonous dim and hew.  Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” conveys a good sense of the confused senses that always seem to accompany a proper charge into the midst of a fight, and I admit that I dislike the sensation…loathe it, really…but I love it at the same time.

Mac, though, she doesn’t seem to suffer from any moral dichotomy.  Not her!  She’s accepted fully that she’s fighting monsters rather than people, creatures fashioned specifically to challenge her and, if they can, to kill her, and feels not the slightest twinge of remorse for her actions.  Can I truly blame her?  No.  In truth, I envy her.  Her peace in violence doesn’t come from any lack of wit, for I judge that she’s easily my equal in intelligence.  No, I think that her state derives from having worked the problem through in her head and her heart, and found a suitable compromise between each of the disparate parts of her psyche.

Or perhaps she’s just not the sort of person who overthinks things.  I…may suffer a bit from such a frailty myself.

Then she’s right beneath the rocks where Aleph and I are crouched, and she’s spinning to face the onrushing squamous slayers, giving a war scream as she raises her stone axes high, each slightly hooked like an ancient francisca from the age of Charlemagne (after we’d found that, yes, heating the rock while working it can allow a very fine edge indeed).  Then I’m joining her war scream with a cry of my own (though far more manly, I sincerely hope), before I launch the sun spear with all my might, its tip blazing as I sink it right through the hulking lepidotinous leader of the squamous slayers, another of the big ones that we’d seen amidst the more common belly-high monstrosities back in the battle in the gully.  The stroke pins the brute to the rocks to his side as it passes right through the gap beneath his armpit when he’d raised his hands high to deliver a swing with his own stone axe, and he shudders a moment, dropping the weapon, then slumping forward and going still.

Not wasting time, I leap down from the rock, one of the flint-tipped spears we’d prepared back at our camp over the last several days clutched in both hands, moving swiftly to back up Mac.  Mac, of course, hasn’t wasted a moment either, stepping right into the charge of the other slayers, both axes swinging, first one, then the other, or alternating with one raising to block a jab from a spear or a swing from a shorter stone axe, both suitably sized for the belly-high brutes, before she brings down the other in a lethal stroke.  The sheer advantage that greater arm length can give in a melee is truly astounding!

Coming up behind her, I thrust around her shoulders and sides, keeping the pressing little beasts off-balance at the worst, and delivering nasty gouges in their scaly flesh at the best.  I simply don’t have the leverage for properly fatal strikes in my present position behind Mac, but my efforts spoil their own attacks, splitting their attention, leaving them far more susceptible to Mac’s own frenzy of blows, and that’s the whole point of the maneuver.

Before we’d even begun advancing, using the narrowness of the path like a shield to our flanks, forcing our enemies to come at us from the front only, or flee, I heard the first twang of Aleph’s bow as she crouched in that strangely boneless manner of hers atop the rock I’d just quitted.  The sound extended as she plucked her bowstring again, and then again, and more still, moving with superhuman speed as she rained down piercing death into the ranks of the little squamous slayers.  While the stiff, rubbery leaves we’d taken from the tree of our home base might not be the first word in fletching, since they had a tendency to wilt after a few days, the fresher ones Aleph was using certainly served their purpose well, almost as well as I’d have expected from a bow with plastic vanes rather than feathers.

And then we were standing alone on the trail, two of the squamous slayers running from us as fast as their short legs could carry them.  I smirked, walking to the sun spear, and squinted my eyes, forcing myself to focus only on its haft and not where it was embedded as I set my foot against yielding flesh, and yanked with all my might.  The spear came out with startling ease, actually, and I nearly lost my balance before I set it butt first onto the ground, using its stability to regain my equilibrium.  Almost the moment it touched my fingertips, I could feel the sun spear interacting with the nano-workings of my suit, becoming one with it.  It was a…pleasant sensation, if I must be honest.  Fulfilling, like a key fitted into the perfect lock.

“They’re not really cowards,” Mac said after a moment watching the wagging tails of the retreating slayers.  “Not back when they first attacked us in our camp, and not now.  They’re practical.”  She glanced at me and Aleph as we came up behind her, then turned her eyes back toward the slope, which I couldn’t help but notice seemed to be coming perilously close to the summit of the rocky hill.  “Little guys know they’re not that strong or smart, so they come in for sneak attacks if they don’t have a huge numbers advantage, or some of those big guys to give ‘em a good edge in the brains department.  That, and the big guys know how to fight.”  She gave me a smirk over her shoulder, then.  “Well, when they get a chance, anyway.  So they’re down to the last two, and those guys go high-tailing it back to the next group.  Which is what I’ve been counting on all along.

“You’ve seen how I like to do things,” she continued, starting to walk up the trail, though not taking too brisk a pace on the very steep slope; we might be getting more muscular as Aleph had indicated, but walking uphill, especially after a fight, is still hard work.  “Hit the main body of those lizard-things hard and fast, with an ambush whenever possible to keep ‘em from getting their act together.  Take out the big ones first of all, scatter the smaller ones, and then let the ones who run get away.”

“I had been wondering about your failure to pursue your enemies,” Aleph agreed as she fell into step beside me, casually plucking still-usable arrows from the fallen as she extended her tentacular arms and fingers in swift, serpentlike snatches.  “I thought you liked to revel in the carnage.”

“A fight’s fun, sure,” Mac shrugged off the light rebuke.  “They don’t have any personality beyond what the computers up on the Circus satellite allow in their bionic brains, so it’s pretty guilt-free for me.  Really, though, I’m playing the long game here.  A few get away, they tell the next crew along – ‘share data’ I guess would be a better way to say it – and then that group gets up and gets ready for me when I show up.  I watch for ‘em, then race back when they spring their ambush attempt.  They figure that I’m running from ‘em in fear like a good little civilian contestant, and now all they gotta do is catch and kill me, since panic makes you weak.”  She nodded in satisfaction, giving me and Aleph a friendly grin as she paused for just a moment, long enough for me to feel a soft, warm glow in my belly and chest from the emotions she shared in that look and in her voice.  “But you’re there, ready to jump into the furball in a heartbeat, and none of us are panicking.  We’re a team, and we’re all a lot smarter’n tougher’n meaner’n these nasty little killers.”  Her tone turned serious, then.  “All of us together, by the way: if I start thinking I can do this alone, I’m as good as dead.  That’s hubris, and I think we’ve all seen enough drama, literary or audiovisual, to know just where that leads; it didn’t work for the Greeks, and it’s just as lethal now.  But you two have my back, and as long as that stays the case, we can’t be beat.”

How do you respond to something like that?  I admit, I really haven’t got any notion myself.  Aleph didn’t seem to have any either, and so we simply hiked in silence for almost an hour, eyes watchful for ambushes set, or places where we could set our next ambush.  Then a thought occurred to me.

“Mac,” I began, then relayed to her what Aleph had told me, with her adding little details that I’d forgotten to ensure we explained what the stat suits were doing fully and properly.  “Why do you think the Arms Master didn’t tell us?” I finished.  “That seems like a rather important piece of information.”

“Probably ‘cause he was saving it for later,” Mac answered with a shrug.  “You heard him at the end of that big speech he gave us: he was waiting to share all sorts of new stuff with the ones who made it through the first ten days.  Didn’t wanna waste his time with quitters, I guess.  I’ll even bet he’d share stuff we learned by trial and error about the dungeons, too, and maybe how to legitimately access those training videos Al dug out of the Circus computer network.”  Then her expression turned wry.  “If they didn’t make us pay for it, that is.  I mean, we’re supposed to be able to spend our points to buy upgrades and stuff.  Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if information is a part of those ‘upgrades.’”

I’d learned to read Aleph’s eyes pretty well, and I could tell she was “chuckling” in her silent way, while I had a more vocal sort of chuckle, though both born of rue and wry.

“I wonder what our reception will be,” I began, glad the trail was fairly free of stones at this point, and guessed that all the major obstacles had been borne downhill by gravity and terraclastic action.  “When we show up with Aleph as part of our crew, I mean,” I added for clarification.  “Probably the first time a sapient robot has ever taken part in the games of the Circus.  And I’ll wager that we’re in a very small association of contestants who have faced the perils of a dungeon before their first ten-day stint was completed, and lived to tell the tale.”

“We haven’t made it the whole ten days yet,” Mac said warningly.  “We’ve done all right, and anybody with Al around’s gotta be lucky, but we shouldn’t…”