Achilles choice

Ahead of them lay the Rocky Mountains.

Nestled into the foot of those slate-gray peaks was the Rocky Mountain Sports Research Facility, visible from ten miles away as a symmetrical array of domes and cubes. Jillian experienced a wave of dejr vu as they passed an angle identical to that of the airport mural. Then Abner glided on, and the moment passed.

“How are the academic facilities?”

“You’ll find everything that you need. I don’t think you’ll need that p-core.”

“Just the same-“

“Old friends are the best.”

The car delivered them to the gate in four more minutes. It slid open at the silent urging of their guidance unit.

“Have you made a decision about the operation?”

The question was just a touch too innocent. She had been waiting for it, and was only surprised that it had taken so long to arrive.

“First, I want to see how I stack up.” She chose each word carefully. “Just me. No modifications. I’ve been working on some noninvasive techniques of my own, and I’m hoping.”

“Hope,” he laughed. “I remember hope.”

“It’s alive and well.”

“And living in obscurity.”

He pulled up to her dormitory, a three-tiered beige cube. Only a pink and blue trim of hyacinths around the base gave it any semblance of grace. “We’ll have a general meeting in about forty minutes.”

“I’ll be there. And thanks.”

“Thank you,” he said. Something that might have been pride flitted across that ruined face. “Thanks for asking for me.”

“You’re the best I could find, Abner. You were one of the greats.”

“I’m also a dinosaur looking for a tar pit. Some people don’t want me here. Maybe they don’t want to be reminded.” He ran thin fingers through thinner hair. “Anyway. Welcome to the death camp.”

She slid her rucksack out of the back seat, then leaned her head in. “Abner?”

“Yes?”

“You don’t resent it, do you?”

“I knew what I was doing, Jillian. Just..

“What?”

Abner seemed to fight with himself, deciding how much of himself to share. “Well, I had two silvers and a bronze. The guy who beat me in academics delivered a paper on the relationship between illiteracy and crime. He claimed we could cut the crime rate by thirty percent just by rearranging the educational priorities in grade school. He took gold, that’s how impressed they were.”

“That must have hurt.”

“That didn’t.” Some vast and distant pain floated behind his eyes. “The Olympiad is about finding the best and harvesting their knowledge and their genes. What hurt is that he was wrong. He had to have been wrong, because they never used it.”

She stared at him. “Who was he?”

He paused, and then smiled crookedly. “Russian. Name of Pushkin. Dead now. He only took the one gold.”

Ice touched the nape of her neck. And Abner, too. Dying for lack of gold.

They were both silent, and Jillian knew that he was about to leave. Before he could speak, she said, “Abner. The truth, okay? Knowing what you know now, would you do it again? Would you Boost if you were me?”

He leaned back into his seat. The clownish grin disappeared. “Would I have your skill? Your basic talent?”

“Better still. You could have yours.”

“This old man blesses you.”

“Stop stalling. Would you take the Boost?”

He grinned crookedly. “In a hot second.” And the car cruised away.

Jillian lugged her belongings into the building, up the stairs. A tickle of perspiration had wormed its way down her back by the time she reached the second level. Her footsteps echoed emptily in the deserted hallway. She heard distant shouts and thumps of exertion.

She leaned her forehead against one of the windows, and looked out over an outdoor track.

A battery of scanning devices were posted at sixteenth marks on a half-mile oval. Lithe figures jogged, sprinted, leapt. Her heart trip-hammered.

The fifty-foot ribbed dome to the east would be the sports medicine facility. There, her mind and body would be taxed to the maximum.

And over there… a converted dormitory, given nowto…

“That’s the academic center,” a male voice said behind her. She spun to face a young man of perhaps twenty-five years. His massively muscular body strained at a gold-trim warm-up jacket. A soft, round face, with bright green eyes framed by extremely black hair. He was pushing a small covered cart.

“What?”

“That’s the academic center,” he said almost apologetically. “I figured that you were looking at it, and maybe wondering.” He wiped huge hands on his red, white, and blue nylon sweat pants, and offered one to Jillian. “Hi. Jeff Tompkins.”

“Jillian Shomer. I saw you at the last Olympiad. You went bronze, didn’t you?”

His answering smile was shy, a little nervous. “Yeah. This is my last chance.” He bit back some other comment, and muscles along the base of his jaw leapt.

“Ah-what’s in the cart?” Jillian asked. That twitch at his jaw was fascinating. Now that she noticed it, it seemed to pulse regularly, like a little lizard running around under his skin.

He smiled sheepishly again, and lifted the lid.

Jillian sucked in her breath. “You did this?”

He nodded.