Catalyst

fiction by michael werneburg

2001.12.09

"What?" I couldn't focus. What was he saying? As much as I'd been fearing this confrontation, I hadn't expected that that Harami would be so violent or Goss so talkative. "Thing?" I asked. Where the hell was Kuan.

"Change," he said with a tight smile. "I approve."

"You do. I thought you made a name for yourself putting down that kind of thing?" I don't even know why I said it, it just came out. Maybe it was the uppers and steroids.

"Once. But no more. Never again."

I nodded in reflection. Or in my burned-out approximation of reflection.

Then Kuan appeared. Springing over the near end of the hedgerow only ten meters away, she was like some extinct species, all muscle and hunger.

"Kuan!" I hissed, and aimed at elbow at Harami's solar plexus.

In the footage afterward you could see Harami fling his knife at Goss from an underhanded position. Goss had dropped like dead weight when I gave my warning, and the knife grazed his arm rather than striking his torso.

Kuan was firing a range weapon. Where the hell were all these weapons coming from! With an agonizing wrench at my scalp, I was free of Harami and running for my life.

But then I all but fell over my bike and in seconds had moving across the grass. I heard another strange sound like a weapon firing but didn't look back. There was screaming behind me as I hit the pavement.

Crashing across a low area with bedding plants, I navigated by feel for a moment and spotted my path to the finish line. Leaning into a broad curve only fifty meters from that place, I saw another rider approach from my left. It was a woman whose face was covered in bright blood. She wasn't moving very fast but she was certainly closing on that finish line. I easily crossed first however, and after that sped away from her bravely crying, "No camera!" It was only when my bike finally cruised to a stop that I realized what had happened. I'd won the goddamn race!

Falling off my bike on the grass I lay there panting in the forty-five degree heat wondering if I might pass out. When I eventually heard footsteps approaching I was too feeble to do anything about it. But it was race officials and they bundled me into a car that was hovering on the beach. Once inside I saw the bleeding woman was there, too. "Congratulations," she told me. Someone was stitching a gash on her forehead with a glue gun.

"And to you," I told her. "Oh, you're Irene Samson aren't you?"

She nodded. "And you must be Cyrus Tilescu."

"In the flabby flesh," I told her. "But you can call me 'No Camera', I'm sure that's how I'll be remembered." I laughed at her, a ragged amphetamine sound.

Samson managed a smile. I could see a fleck of blood in her eye that re-formed with every blink.

"I seriously doubt that," said one of the officials. She was monitoring a screen with headphones on and looked tense. "You two are today's only finalists," she added.

"What happened to Kuan and Goss and Harami?" I asked.

"Kuan and Harami were going at it when some drone turned up. Armed with a .22 caliber rifle. Explosive rounds. Both are dead."

I stared at the woman in shock. "What is that about?"

"Someone wanted the race over. Wanted the killings and violence and destruction over-with."

"The Prince?" I asked, uncertainly.

Two tight-lipped frowning faces regarded me. Not a word was said. I looked back and fretted. What about Goss. It sounded like he'd been left there and I thought that maybe the race officials had miscalculated badly on that score.

"And at the bridge?" Samson asked, as her faced was mopped of most of the blood.

"We've collected the survivors. There weren't many."

"But Bernie?"

He's in intensive care," the woman told Samson. "Wound up at the bridge not long after the microbomb. Got caught in the crossfire between Goss and Kuan."

"But we've got bigger problems," said the fellow who'd been taking care of Irene. "We're getting you to the winner's podium right goddamn now. And when we get there you two are going to stand in front of the cheering crowd and appeal for calm."

"Calm?" I asked.

"You know what's happening in the city!" The woman told me.