7 Chapter 7: The Arena, Part 1

"Egg chutes me please, human?"

An Oligochaetan family loomed over me. They had amassed themselves into a gestalt humanoid form. It weaved its wormy head from side to side as its mouth squirmed to form the words.

"Do you mean 'excuse me?'" I asked.

"Yes, please, our English is still in-perk-fact. We wish to sit here, in the affront. It is in the shades, and will keep us cool and safe from your nasty, fakery sun."

That was not good. While there were private lounges upstairs, arena seats were sold on a first-come, first-served basis, and I had been there first. However, Oligochaetans were an endangered species, and by law were to be given every courtesy. I needed to sit in the front, but I also needed to not draw attention to that fact. I stood. "What are the odds today?" I asked.

The conglomeration drew back its misshapen head in feigned surprise. "Oh human," it said, "we would not stink to such low, illegritimate gambling on such a fine day."

I snorted. It was no secret that the Iweala family owned all the gambling dens on Ganymede, the arena, the Flopper, and my brother. "How much?" I asked.

It darted its crafted eyes from side to side. "Five to one that Abran gives the Flopper death within four blows," it said in a voice throaty and warbling. "He is not gruel."

It took me a moment to understand. "No," I agreed, "he is not."

I relinquished my seat. The mass of worms poured into it, spilling through the gap in the back before reforming. I wondered if they would lose their coherence when they, along with the rest of the crowd, lost their bets.

It would be a fair fight.

I gazed into a sky half-filled by Jupiter and a handful of its other moons. The rest were blotted out by the glare of JOV-7. Naturalists had protested against terraforming Ganymede, but it turned out alien species were much more adaptable than we were. They were also much less prone to moral outrage. A blind eye was turned in the outer colonies to many things Earth deemed illegal. The arena was one of them, and Abran was very much a part of it.

I stopped climbing. My thoughts had taken me halfway into the stadium, and I needed to be close to the ring. The problem was that there were no seats available below the twentieth row. I looked at my watch. We had fourteen minutes to go. What the hell, I decided as I took a vacant seat by the stairs, I could run.

"Well, Heitor, this is a surprise," purred an alto voice, thick and sweet. "What are you doing up here in the cheap seats?" A hologram flickered into life in the seat next to mine. It was of an elegant woman in her mid-fifties, with piercing eyes the color of midnight. She wore a red dress, and sat with her legs crossed through the seat in front of her. I assumed from her posture that she was in her private lounge, relaxing on a settee. I turned, looked up at her tinted windows, and waved.

"Good afternoon, Adeola," I said. "Fancy meeting you here."

Adeola Iweala grinned, displaying two rows of perfect, bleached teeth. "Heitor, Heitor, Heitor. I hear you're going back to Earth tonight. Don't you like it here on our little colony?" I opened my mouth to reply, but she continued. "The funny thing is, your brother never mentioned it to me. Isn't that funny?"

"Hilarious."

Adeola chuckled. "Don't be cute with me, Heitor," she said, her deep voice soft and friendly. "It would only take a word to have you found in the morning with your throat and testicles slit." I felt a static electric tickle as she caressed my cheek with the back of her lacquered fingernails. "Why won't you work for me? Abran does well, doesn't he?"

He hates you, I thought. Worse than that, you've made him hate himself. "There's a lot of good work back on Earth," I said.

"True," she agreed, "unskilled monkeys can find jobs anywhere. But what really interests me is that you've chartered a private transport with twenty-three hundred pounds of cargo space. That must have been expensive. Much cheaper to sell your belongings and start fresh, yes?"

Something tightened inside of my chest. "My furniture has a lot of sentimental value," I said at last.

"That's sweet," said Adeola. "Maybe I'll have my boys help you move it. You must be packed by now, right?" I didn't reply. She took a sip of something red from a crystal glass. "Are you going to come back and visit Abran and me?" she asked. "He's going to miss you." I remained silent. She sniffed. "I took his shitty little roadside attraction, and made it the greatest show in the outer planets. It was to settle your gambling debts, if I recall. Aren't you grateful?"

I thought of how my brother drank almost every night just to sleep. He could wire the poor creature to only mimic pain and death, but Adeola had insisted that he program it to feel the real thing - because suffering was what people paid to see. I thought of his face week after week as he smashed through the Flopper's clockworks and bellows to the crowd's thunderous applause, of the creature screaming and clawing at its wounds as its gears, wires, and pneumatic fluid erupted from its sides. When Abran delivered the killing blow, his jaw would clench and the cords in his neck would tighten, but only I could recognize the shame in his eyes. And then, throughout the week, he would resurrect his creation. His hands would stroke its aluminum flanks, and polish its lenses and brass finish, only to torture and murder it again come Saturday night.

"Thank you," I said.

Adeola sniffed. "Very good," she said. She squeezed my thigh, her long, exquisite fingers passing through it. "Send me a post card when you get to Earth. I have some friends there. Maybe they'll find work for a pretty boy like you."

The band's overture echoed across the arena. "Maybe," I said.

Adeola clicked her tongue. Before she could reply, the blanket jammer switched on, and her hologram fizzled out. I checked my watch. The fight had started late. We had less than ten minutes.

The crowd roared as a man in his late twenties strode into the ring, his scarlet cape fluttering behind him, his gauntlet clenched about his left fist. The thirty-foot-high screens circling the arena focused on his worn features: his lined mouth, his dark, hollow eyes. I hoped that I was the only one who could see the fear behind his concentration. He turned his stolid expression from left to right as the audience cheered, and pounded their feet. Then he saw the Oligochaetans sitting in my usual seat, and flinched. I knew he could not see me so far back, not with the floodlights in his eyes. It did not matter. The plan was in motion, and nothing could stop it.

The glorious mechanical demon was released, its roar like a knife through my eardrums. It raced onto the field, the pounding of its steel hooves shaking the stadium. Jets of orange fire thrust it a few feet into the sky, just enough to tower over the matador. It swiveled its one glowing eye to focus on him, its pupil swirling down to a pinprick. It roared again.

My brother bowed to it, a fencer saluting his opponent. He unhooked his cape, and swung it from his neck. With the whirring of pistons and gears, the Flopper reared back, and raised its arm. There was the smell of ozone and burning copper as its claw ignited with forks of lightning. Abran leapt to the side, swirling his cape through the air. The thunderbolt burned a flaming path through it. The crowd screamed and applauded. I checked my watch. There were six minutes to go.