THE ARGUS PROJECT
In 3-D, in small eye-screens, in video implants, on clothes covered with printed displays.
The running commentary on the races sounded through millions of tiny earpieces - for those whose eyes were exhausted from the visual overload of the 22nd century - or for those who lived in the poorest colonial settlements - or those who were too busy to watch.
More popular even than the traveling pygmy-chimp circuses, more loved than the weekly Mutilation Fighting bouts, skysurfing had become the ultimate sport of the age, because the danger was 100% authentic.
One false move, and the surfer was burned to a crisp; if fatigue got to him as he flew down in the thin, windy Martian air, he might fall to his death.
Unlike their predecessors of previous centuries, 22nd-century skysurfers were all obese; this was a necessity. The heavy rider created a stable center in the otherwise very light kevlar board, when the jetstreams of the stratosphere tried to twist and turn it during hours of downward glide-flying from space to ground.
Those few elite surfers who had survived several championships resembled seasoned sumo-wrestlers - with their own codes of conduct, their own communities, and entourages of devoted groupies.
Shortly before the new Grand Prix, ruling two-time champion Ronnie "Big" Mack Hansen died of a stroke, after attempting to bed a record sixteen mistresses in one night (his weight at time of death: 401 kg). Hansen was mourned by an entire Solar System.
Kolya Keaton had mourned too - while inwardly hoping "Big" Mack's untimely demise would improve his own feeble odds for glory.
A skysurfing champion normally wasn't made in one day - which did not deter scores of lesser talents from participating in the big yearly tryouts. There was always space to spare for another hopeful surfer.
Most of them were Terrans, sponsored by Terran wealth, while the smaller planets produced a handful of contenders.
Truth was, every skysurfing champion but one was born on Earth... a source of never-ending resentment among colonists.
***
Guided by the MTCA (Martian Traffic Control Authority), Foss let his aging shuttle slide into a designated orbital slot. There was only a mile between him and other waiting ships on parallel course.
Two thousand tiny beacon satellites formed a ring of lights around Mars, marking out the official tryouts orbit. For the MTCA, stationed on the moon Deimos, the traffic chaos of the Tryouts was only matched by that of the Grand Prix one week later.
When suddenly a new directive was sent from the MTCA, Foss and his crew grew more nervous than usual:
ALL SGP TRYOUT CONTESTANTS ARE TO BE INSPECTED, CONTROLLED AND IDENTIFIED BY THE MSF AUTHORITY UPON LANDING IN THE DESIGNATED GOAL AREAS.
REFUSAL TO ACCEPT INSPECTION UPON LANDING WARRANTS USE OF DEADLY FORCE FROM THE MSF.
SIGNED, GEN. VLADIMIR ZODONG-PETAIN, MSF COMMANDER, TFC, MTCA ADVISOR
"Fark!" Moravia and Keaton spat as one, reading the message repeatedly on their sleeve displays, as they prepared for the race.
Keaton had mounted his board inside the shuttle's cargo bay. Both his board and racing space-suit were garishly painted with the logo of his sponsors. "TIME TO WIN! GOLAN-NORRIS DELTA BOARDS," read the green-and-blue lettering.
Keaton's surf-suit was thicker and better insulated than the training-suits of the previous weeks; Venix's infrared vision couldn't penetrate it.
Venix stood in the airlock just outside the cargo bay, ready to hide in case the shuttle would be boarded, and watched Keaton prepare - alternately through a wall monitor, and through the airlock's porthole window.
Foss watched over his crew from the cockpit. On his orders, Sugar kept Venix with company, so that he could concentrate during the stressful flight.
"My," said Sugar, "there are many of those shuttles in orbit. I hope there isn't a collision, 'cause it would make an awful mess."
"Sugar," Venix asked the wide-eyed leisure droid, less in anger than in curiosity, "I have a... difficult relationship with androids and robots. I get angry with them, especially if they touch me. Relax, I won't hurt you. It's just that... no, how could you understand? You don't have a real brain."
Sugar, whose electronic brain's intelligence was almost on a par with a Bonobo's - only faster and much more articulate - leaned her head to one side and pouted at Venix. Sugar usually said something when she pouted, something cute and vacuous.
This leisure droid, for the occasion dressed in old spaceman coveralls, had curves considerably more voluptuous than those of Venix, and Sugar's showed quite well through her rough clothing.
But, Venix thought, I guess we both have the same type of foam stuffing in our curves, so that we feel more like flesh-and-blood women to the touch. Maybe I could borrow some of hers. Venix quietly steeled herself to endure the dumb-blonde lines that she had come to expect from the android.
"I feel sorry for you, Venix," came the innocent-sounding line. "I can see you're unhappy. I can see in infrared like you, so I can tell how people feel. It's what I was made for, to understand people's needs so I can please them. It took some time for me to adjust my sensors to your cyborg construction, but now I can read you."
"It took you several weeks to figure that out? I feel sorry for you."
"You feel alone, unloved, and you miss someone... very much. You have a hard time connecting with other people who are not cyborgs, and so you turn against intelligent machines... I think it's called compensation, but I'm not very good with those long words."
Sugar kept a respectful distance in the narrow, oblong airlock, and she must have detected the rising tension in Venix, for she held herself close to the exit-hatch.
For a few seconds Venix stared at the monitor and the race preparations, until she couldn't contain herself any longer. She pivoted around and glowered at Sugar. Her voice, though synthetic and well modulated, almost broke.
"Does it make me more human, Sugar? That I hate? How can I know it's a real emotion and not a program? Or am I just playacting emotions, to prove that I'm not a plastic doll made to please? And even if I know I'm a real person and not a machine, how can others know?" Without letting Sugar answer, she added: "Only one person really knows me. Only one man can know."
"Oh... who's that?"
"Please don't ask."
"Well, you should count yourself lucky for that person, Venix. Not many people ever find someone who understands them. I can read you, but I can't say I understand you."
Venix held a finger to her lips, and the android fell silent. The wall screen was showing the many contestants' shuttles, all finally lined up for the race to start.
"This is getting to be a record turnout," Foss told the crew over the internal com-link. "Over fifty contestants are in the clear for takeoff! I can even spot one from planet Mercury. Ready, Keaton? Got the goal point? I'm opening the cargo bay now."
"All clear, Cap! The jetstream readouts are looking good." He wore goggles that enabled him to see the winds in false colors. "I can cut them like a laser through cheese!"
"Surf's up!" Moravia shouted, and the large cargo bay doors began to open. He began to lift Keaton and his board on the shuttle's robotic arm... and stopped it.
"Cap!" he cried over the radio. "Keaton's got a cramp in his left arm. He can't move it. Fark! I told him not to take those shots! I told him they were bad for his heart! Keaton, get off the board right now!"
"I was afraid something like this would happen," Venix said urgently. "Sugar, help me get Keaton inside and take off his suit."
***
Three minutes later, the delayed starting-signal came over the radio.
The string of lights from two thousand orbiting beacon satellites began to blink in unison, creating the illusion of lights running around the planet in a westward direction.
From fifty-one shuttles of varying size from several planets, the surfboards were unhooked from robotic towing-arms. The boards fell forward, carried by their momentum.
Mars' gravity dragged them inevitably down toward the thin, thin upper atmosphere; in just seconds, the boards would get hot from the friction created by their high velocity.
The surfer wearing the Golan-Norris emblem, seemingly as bloated as the other contestants in their garishly painted spacesuits, showed off a little just as the first atoms of atmosphere hit.
By a twist of the legs, the rider made a 360-degree sideways flip - not entirely unlike a water-surfer on Earth.
"Look, Keaton," Moravia said, pointing excitedly at the wall monitor in the shuttle's sickbay. "She made your trademark flip, the one we taught her. And your board is doing great! Everybody will remember Golan-Norris after this race."
Keaton's smile turned into a wince, and his entire frame shuddered. In the weightless, stable orbit the shudder created a rippling, wave-like movement across his free-floating layers of fat.
"Is the heart-bot working?" Foss asked him. "Are you feeling better?"
Keaton nodded, almost imperceptibly, and as he spoke his phrases grew shorter and fainter, on dying batteries:
"Yeah. Fine. But. It's not me. Her. She did it. Best pupil. I ever. Had. Sorry guys. Shouldn't have. Taken those. Shots. You're. The. Be -"
Again he screwed up his hairy, rotund face. It froze up in an expression like worried embarrassment - as if he hadn't wanted to offend his company with this unexpected, fatal heart failure.
"I knew it'd happen one day," Moravia blubbered, clutching his dead comrade's arm. "He was too deteriorated from the long flights and tried to drug himself into shape with bad growth homrmones. I warned him, the fat dumb..."
Sugar hugged the stony-faced Foss and the sobbing Moravia; a skin-display simulated tears on her pale plastic cheeks.
"Look," she said after a while, "Venix is on the screens."
26: Sumo Space Surfers Go to Mars
(NEXT CHAPTER)
THE ARGUS PROJECT INTERNET EDITION (c)A.R.Yngve 1999, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
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