Steel Beach by John Varley

Author:John Varley [Varley, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Moon, Science Fiction - General, Science fiction; Polish, Polish, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Fantasy, General & Literary Fiction, Modern fiction, General, American, High Tech, Science fiction; American, Space Colonies
ISBN: 9780441785650
Google: pnJbAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: B00AFX4EFY
Goodreads: 49842
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1992-01-01T00:00:00+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.

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