She grimaces. "I don't play, myself. It's messy. And I don't like pain."
"Well, neither do I," I say slowly. "That's not the point." The point is that we get angry when we can't remember who we are, and we lash out at first; and a structured, formal framework means that nobody else needs to get hurt.
"Where do you live?" she asks.
"I'm in the"she's transparently changing the subject, I realize"clinic, still. I mean, everything I had, I"liquidated and ran"I travel light. I still haven't decided what to be in this new lifetime, so there doesn't seem much point in having lots of baggage."
"Another drink?" Kay asks. "I'm buying."
"Yes, please." A warning bell rings in my head as I sense Blondie heading toward our table. I pretend not to notice, but I can feel a familiar warmth in my stomach, a tension in my back. Ancient reflexes and not a few modern cheat-codes take over and I surreptitiously loosen my sword in its scabbard. I think I know what Blondie wants, and I'm perfectly happy to give it to her. She's not the only one around here prone to frequent flashes of murderous rage that take a while to cool. The counselor told me to embrace it and give in, among consenting fellows. It should burn itself out in time. Which is why I'm carrying.
But the postexcision rages aren't my only irritant. In addition to memory edits, I opted to have my age reset. Being postadolescent again brings its own dynamic of hormonal torment. It makes me pace my apartment restlessly, drives me to stand in the white cube of the hygiene suite and draw blades down the insides of my arms, curious to see the bright rosy blood welling up. Sex has acquired an obsessive importance I'd almost forgotten. The urges to sex and violence are curiously hard to fight off when you awaken drained and empty and unable to rememberwho you used to be, but they're a lot less fun, the second or third time through the cycle of rejuvenation.
"Listen, don't look round, but you probably ought to know that someone is about to"
Before I can finish the sentence, Blondie leans over Kay's shoulder and spits in my face. "I demand satisfaction." She has a voice like a diamond drill.
"Why?" I ask stonily, heart thumping with tension as I wipe my cheek. I can feel the rage building, but I force myself to keep it under control.
"You exist."
There's a certain type of look some postrehab cases get while they're in the psychopathic dissociative stage, still reknitting the raveled threads of their personality and memories into a new identity. The insensate anger at the world, the existential hateoften directed at their previously whole self for putting them into this world, naked and stripped of memoriesgenerates its own dynamic. Wild black-eyed hatred and the perfect musculature of the optimized phenotype combine to lend Blondie an intimidating, almost primal presence. Nevertheless, she's got enough self-control to issue a challenge before she attacks.
Kay, shy and much further advanced in recovery than either of us, cowers in her seat as Blondie glares at me. That annoys meBlondie's got no call to intimidate bystanders. And maybe I'm not as out of control as I feel.
"In that case"I slowly stand up, not breaking eye contact for a moment"how about we take this to the remilitarized zone? First death rules?"
"Yes," she hisses.
I glance at Kay. "Nice talking to you. Order me another drink? I'll be right back." I can feel her eyes on my back as I follow Blondie to the gate to the RMZ. Which is right beside the bar.
Blondie pauses on the threshold. "After you," she says.
"Au contraire. Challenger goes first."
She glares at me one more time, clearly furious, then strides into the T-gate and blinks out. I wipe my right palm on my leather kilt, grip the hilt of my sword, draw, and leap through the point-to-point wormhole.
Dueling etiquette calls for the challenger to clear the gate by a good ten paces, but Blondie isn't in a good mood, and it's a very good thing that I'm on the defensive and ready to parry as I go through because she's waiting, ready to shove her sword through my abdomen on the spot.
She's fast and vicious and utterly uninterested in playing by the rules, which is fine by me because my own existential rage now has an outlet and a face. The anger that has been eating me up since my surgery, the hatred of the war criminals who forced me into this, of the person I used to be who surrendered to the large-scale erasure of their memoriesI can't even remember what sex I was, or how tallhas a focus, and on the other end of her circling blade, Blondie's face is a glow of concentration and fury to mirror my own.
This part of the remilitarized zone is modeled on a ruined city of old Urth, shattered postnuclear concrete wastelands and strange creeping vegetation shrouding the statues of conquerors and the burned-out wreckage of wheeled cars. We could be alone here, marooned on a planet uninhabited by other sapients. Alone to work out our grief and rage as the postsurgical fugue slowly dissipates.
Blondie tries to rush me, and I fall back carefully, trying to spot some weakness in her attack. She prefers the edge to the point and the right to the left, but she's not leaving me any openings. "Hurry up and die!" she snaps.
"After you." I feint and try to draw her off-balance, circling round her. Next to the gate we came in through there's a ruined stump of a tall building, rubble heaped up above head height. (The gate's beacon flashes red, signifying no egress until one of us is dead.) The rubble gives me an idea, and I feint again, then back off and leave an opening for her.
Blondie takes the opening, and I just barely block her, because she's fast. But she's not sly, and she certainly wasn't expecting the knife in my left handtaped to my left thigh beforeand as she tries to guard against it, I see my chance and run my sword through her belly.
She drops her weapon and falls to her knees. I sit down heavily opposite her, almost collapsing. Oh dear. How did she manage to get my leg? Maybe I shouldn't trust my instincts quite so totally.
"Done?" I ask, suddenly feeling faint.
"I" There's a curious expression on her face as she holds on to the basket of my sword. "Uh." She tries to swallow. "Who?"
"I'm Robin," I say lightly, watching her with interest. I'm not sure I've ever watched somebody dying with a sword through their guts before. There's lots of blood and a really vile smell of ruptured intestines. I'd have thought she'd be writhing and screaming, but maybe she's got an autonomic override. Anyway, I'm busy holding my leg together. Blood keeps welling up between my fingers. Comradeship in pain. "You are... ?"
"Gwyn." She swallows. The light of hatred is extinguished, leaving somethingpuzzlement?behind.
"When did you last back up, Gwyn?"
She squints. "Unh. Hour. Ago."
"Well then. Would you like me to end this?"
It takes a moment for her to meet my eyes. She nods. "When? You?"
I lean over, grimacing, and pick up her blade. "When did I last back myself up? Since recovering from memory surgery, you mean?"
She nods, or maybe shudders. I raise the blade and frown, lining it up on her neck: it takes all my energy. "Good question"
I slice through her throat. Blood sprays everywhere.
"Never."
I stumble to the exitan A-gateand tell it to rebuild my leg before returning me to the bar. It switches me off, and a subjective instant later, I wake up in the kiosk in the washroom at the back of the bar, my body remade as new. I stare into the mirror for about a minute, feeling empty but, curiously, at peace with myself. Maybe I'll be ready for a backup soon? I flex my right leg. The assembler's done a good job of canonicalizing it, and the edited muscle works just fine. I resolve to avoid Gwyn, at least until she's in a less insensately violent mood, which may take a long time if she keeps picking fights with her betters. Then I return to my table.