Eight Worlds 04 Steel Beach by John Varley

Author:John Varley [Varley, John]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-17T15:12:34.520000+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I wonder if there's a lonelier place anywhere than an arena designed to

seat thirty or forty thousand people, empty.

The King City slash-boxing venue did have an official name, the

Somebody-or-other Memorial Gladiatorium, but it was another case of

honoring someone well-known at the time that sports history has forgotten.

The arena is called, in all the sports pages, in the minds of bloodthirsty fans

everywhere, even on the twenty-meter sign on the outside, simply the

Bucket of Blood.

It was peaceful now. The concentric circles of seats were in shadows.

The sound system was silent. The blood gutters around the ring had been

sluiced clean, ready for the evening's fresh torrents. Some of that new blood

would come from the man now standing alone under the ring of harsh white

lights suspended from the obscured ceiling; MacDonald. I walked down the

gentle curvature of the aisle toward him.

He was nude, standing with his back to me. I thought I didn't make any

noise, but he was a tough man to sneak up on. He looked over his shoulder,

not in any alarm, just curious.

"Hello, Hildy." No shock of recognition, no comment that I'd been male

the last time he'd seen me. Maybe he'd heard, or maybe his eyes just didn't

miss much, and very little could surprise him.

"Do you get nervous before a fight?"

He frowned, and seemed to give the question real thought.

"I don't think so. I get . . . heightened in some way. I find it hard to sit

down. Maybe it's nervousness. So I come up here and re-think my last

fight, remember the things I did wrong, try to think of ways not to do them

wrong the next time."

"I didn't think you did things wrong." I was looking for stairs to join

him in the ring, but there didn't seem to be any. I hopped lightly over the

meter-high edge.

"Everybody makes mistakes. You try to minimize them, in my line of

work."

I saw that he had a partial erection. Had he been masturbating? I

couldn't deal with that just then, had never been less interested in sex in my

life. I put my hand on his face. He stood there with his arms folded and

looked into my eyes.

"I need help," I said.

"Yes," he said, and put his arms around me.

#

He took me down to his dressing room, locker room, whatever he called

it. He bustled around for a while, making drinks for both of us, letting me

regain some of my composure. The funny thing, I hadn't cried. My

shoulders had shaken, there in his arms, and I'd made some funny noises, but

no tears came. I wasn't shaking. My heart was not pounding. I didn't know

quite what to make of it, but I'd never been nearer to screaming in my life.

"You interrupted my crazy little ritual," he said, handing me a

strawberry margarita. It didn't occur to me until later to wonder how he

knew I drank them.

"Nice bar you have."

"They take good care of me, so long as I draw the crowds. Cheers." He

held his own glass out to me, and we sipped. Excellent.

"I hope you're not drinking anything too strong."

"No matter what you may think, I'm not suicidal.

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