twenty-six miles, and will still be twenty-six miles when you and I are long dead. But the gladiator event is
“I thought it was about winning.”
“That above all. But it’s about showcasing a country’s technological advancement. We have to use the newest, best tools at our disposal. It’s not like the hundred-yard dash, where you take the fastest guy you happen to have, push him onto the track, and hope for the best.”
“I doubt Olympic running coaches would appreciate that oversimplification.”
“I doubt I give a damn what they would or wouldn’t appreciate. The gladiator event is more than a test of simple foot speed.”
“And it’s more than some VR sim,” Silas snapped back.
“Yes, it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that Chandler’s computer is capable of design specs that you can’t touch. There’s only one rule in this event: no human DNA. That’s it. That leaves a hell of a lot of room to play, and we weren’t taking advantage of it. Ours was a business decision, nothing more. Nothing less. It wasn’t meant as a reflection on you.”
“If it were a reflection on me, then I could understand it. But my designs have a history of success to back them up. We won. We’ve always won.”
“And the endorsements that go with it, I know. The commission is very thankful for that. You’re a huge part of why the United States has dominated the field. But it could have gone either way last time. You know that.”
Silas remained silent. He remembered the blood. He remembered the swing of guts in the sawdust. The U.S. gladiator had outlived its competitor by forty-seven seconds. The difference between gold and silver.
“I’m not sure that you fully appreciate the pressure that the program is under right now,” Baskov said. “We can’t afford to lose. While you’ve spent all your time sequestered away in your personal little laboratory retreat here, the rest of the program has had to exist in the real world. Or have you forgotten?”
“No.”
“I think you have. The gladiator event is a bloody business—that’s why it’s so popular and why it’s always under attack. The activists have a powerful lobby in Congress this time around, and they’re pushing for a new vote.”
“And they won’t get it.”
“No, they won’t. Not this time. But public opinion is an unpredictable thing. Success has buoyed it up till now, and the commission was informed that we must continue to be successful if the gladiator event is to remain part of the Olympics. We do not have any other option.”
“This competition is not going to be as simple and straightforward as the last,” Baskov continued. “Our sources tell us that China’s contestant will be very formidable. Let’s just say that when we compared your designs to what we know we’ll be up against, your ideas came up lacking. You couldn’t have won with the codes you had in the scrollers.”
“How could you know—”
“You couldn’t have won,” Baskov interrupted. “Our decision wasn’t made lightly.”
Silas’s face drained of expression as he considered the man sitting before him. He wanted to grab him by the lapels, pull him off his feet, and shake him. He wanted to yell in his face,
But he thought again of broken heads, and by slow degrees managed to put his anger in a place he could shut down. In controlled, clipped words, he said, “I understand. Perhaps I don’t have all the information, but I’m still program head. We still have problems that need to be dealt with.”
“I’ve heard. We’ve been aware of the problems. Your reports during the last several months didn’t fall on deaf ears.”
“Then why hasn’t the commission acted?”
“We just decided to wait and see what happened.”
“Would you like to see … what’s happened?”
“I was waiting for you to ask.”
THEY SHUFFLED slowly down the narrow corridor, with Silas consciously shortening his strides to accommodate Baskov’s hobbling gait. He wondered at the anticipation the older man must be feeling. Hell, he was feeling it, too, and he’d already seen the organism, inspected it, held it. The newborn was the most beautifully perfect thing Silas had ever seen.
Baskov broke the silence between them as they turned a corner. “The commission is very troubled by the description we received. It isn’t really humanoid, is it?”
“Maybe. Not really.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“When you see it, you’ll understand.”
“And what about the hands?”
“What about them?”
“Does it really have … well, hands? I mean … it doesn’t have paws or hooves or something like the others?”
Silas suppressed the urge to laugh.
“Are you going to have trouble proving no human DNA was used in the design?”
Silas looked down at the old man. For a moment, he felt his temper rise again. He took a deep breath. With the competition less than a year away, it was a little late to be asking that question now. “Your guess is as good as mine at this point,” he said. “Chandler’s masterpiece didn’t provide us with any sort of explanation for the data in the scrollers, just raw code. I assumed that since you chose his design over mine, you would have some sort of idea what you were getting. You need to ask him. My reports are accurate, and if you read them, you—”
“We read them; we just weren’t sure if we could believe them.”
Silas mulled over several responses to the older man’s statement, but since most of them involved the end of his career and quite possibly his incarceration for battery, he decided to say nothing at all. For the first time, he considered the possibility that the head of the Olympic Commission might be utterly irrational in some aspects of his thinking. Power did that to men sometimes.
They stepped through a set of steel doors and followed the narrow hall around the corner. “I want to remind you that the sponsor dinner is still on for tomorrow night. I need you to be there,” Baskov said.
“I’ll send Dr. Nelson.”
“You’ll be there in person. We need to quell the rumors that have already begun to fly. Image is money in this business. The delegation will leave from the complex at six o’clock.”
They came to a second set of steel doors. A large yellow sign read:
ATTENTION
BADGED PERSONNEL ONLY
BEYOND THIS POINT
Silas carded them through, and Baskov stopped short, blinking against the white brightness of the nursery. A stout, flame-haired man sat against a console near the far wall. There were no windows, but a large glass chamber boxed in the center of the room.
“How’s it doing?” Silas asked the redhead.
“Just fine,” Keith answered. “Been sleeping like a baby for an hour now. Come to show off your little creation?”
“Not mine,” Silas said. “This is Chandler’s handiwork.”
They peered in. The crib was large, and behind the chromed bars, a loosely swaddled shape twisted and bobbed within a cocoon of pink blankets.
