Slabscape: Dammit by Baker S. Spencer

Author:Baker, S. Spencer [Baker, S. Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Blip Books
Published: 2014-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

When he found her, she was dancing on a hollow wooden platform and when she spotted him she dragged him onto it and made him dance too. He wasn’t very good at it, but that didn’t matter because she was. She was better than good, she was dazzling. She moved as if she could control gravity by sheer will. He’d already seen the most famous athletic dance troupe onSlab perform an intricately choreographed zero-g interface ballet and that had been breathtaking, but what this woman could do on her own, with nothing to accompany her other than the sound of her shoes hitting a resonant floor, far, far outshone that. This dance was about the thrill of life and exuded a passion for being human that he’d never been close to before. Sure, he thought, Kiki had passion and energy on tap any time she needed it. But it wasn’t the same. Kiki’s enthusiasm felt manufactured and superficial compared to this. This was pure joy. And he still didn’t know her name.

She taught him the steps with a flashing smile and a body as lithe as a whip. She showed him how to leap without changing place, rise without falling and spin without tripping over his feet. He felt like a clown. Compared to her he seemed clumsy, gauche and inept but he loved every minute of it. They stopped for a break and a tankard of sparkling, fermented brew. The locals, having satiated their hunger but not their need for drink or conversation had coalesced into separate groups where jokes were being shared and arguments were flaring and subsiding like flash storms over a tropical sea.

There was a commotion on the other side of the arena as a game of Burley broke out. Spectators formed a moving corral around the two teams as they bumped and jostled for the possession of two head-sized cloth balls and a pair of arm-length poles with a bowl on each end. The primary object of the game was to catch a ball in one end of a pole, which was called a punter, and run toward one of the two A-frame goal posts set into opposite ends of the arena. If the runner was impeded, he had the option of flipping the ball to any teammate who was also in possession of a punter, and the dash for the goal would continue as long as the ball was caught cleanly in the punter’s bowl, or corrie. When a ball was not inside a corrie, it was technically dead or lagged and could not be run with but could be tossed to a teammate as long as he was in full possession of a punter at the time the ball was thrown. Alternatively, and more dangerously, the punter could be thrown to the dead-ball holder, or lagger. Communication between the lagger and the punter bearer was usually made near-impossible by the yelling of the crowd and the opposing sides’ attempts at interfering with the line of sight between them.

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