27.

Eleven Seconds Behind

Requiem City, late AGH108

Orlo Sen, the dog on the evening receiving crew, pressed the sound rocker with one forepaw, let it rise, and went down the aisle to listen again.

At the receiving station the caller's voice had sounded pleasantly full. Beside the empty third row it had acquired a hard edge, particularly on the word two. Now he sat beside the end chair, where he would watch with Daven. The caller explained the scoring for a third time. This time Orlo could imagine listening through a whole bout without wanting the man moved farther away.

“There,” he said.

Orris Keene looked up from the cue sheet. “Good at the back?”

Orlo trotted between the last row and the wall. “Good here.”

Orris marked the setting. He had moved the sheet to the sloping board where Orlo could read it, beyond the broad starting bar. The smaller controls were on his own side of the desk. Nothing had to be reached across, and the mat beneath Orlo's station had stopped the slow backward migration of his hind feet whenever he worked the rocker. He liked that mat. He had liked it more after the first busy evening, when he found he could forget it was there.

They let the caller finish. The picture filled the cloth stretched at the front of the hall. Two women waited within a pale circle. The human woman wore red, the orc woman blue. One point for making an opponent plant a foot wholly beyond the circle; first to two points won. The interpreter, at her desk to the left of the picture, listened to the recording and tried the last phrase aloud. Then she asked Orris to take it back to the introduction. She wanted to hear a name again before the doors opened.

Orlo checked the low shelf for the next cue. From the side station he could see the entire circle without looking through the audience. He had chosen Daven's end-row seat for nearly the same view, just across the aisle from the crew rail. There was room on the floor beside it, clear of passing feet, and no chair leg between that space and the bottom of the picture.

He had described the evening to his friend in the cloth shop, standing outside the cutting area while Daven finished with a customer. There would be the recorded program, then time to go back over parts of it. Orlo would be working at first, but Orris had agreed to cover his break during the wrestling. Daven had said he could finish in time. Since then Orlo had thought of several things he should have told him about the bout, and had kept every one of them to himself.

He wanted a shout at the finish, Daven turning toward him in surprise, the immediate happy argument about whether they had seen the same thing. There was a whole evening in that imagined turn of the head.

The room began to fill while the interpreter was checking her pronunciation. People came in talking, stopped to read the notice, and then resumed their conversations at a different volume. Below the match's date, RECORDED stood in large letters. The time for discussion and permitted replays was printed underneath. An attendant had put a fresh slip over the name of a withdrawn fighter on the old bill.

“Good evening, Gunnhild,” she said to an elderly woman at the admission table. “The middle row, as you asked.”

The woman paid, took her card and went to the middle row. She sat in the assigned chair, looked toward the picture, then stood and moved two places sideways.

“Is this one taken?”

“I can move you nearer the front.”

“I want to see that corner.” She indicated the bottom of the picture. “The man's shoulder is in it from over there.”

The man in question turned, discovered that he was the shoulder, and began to stand.

“Stay where you are,” Gunnhild told him. “This is better.”

The attendant changed her card. Gunnhild sat and watched the interpreter's final test. When the voice stopped, she said, “Yes. Thank you,” and tucked the card away.

Orlo was checking the date against the cue sheet when Daven arrived. His friend had brushed his coat, but a pale thread still clung to one cuff. He carried the folded bill which Orlo had given him at the shop.

“I haven't missed anything?”

“Only us saying the same thing four times.”

“Then I'm early.”

Daven found the seat. He put his coat over the back and looked toward Orlo's space on the floor.

“Can you see from there?”

“Once you've sat down.”

Daven sat. Orlo looked along the clear strip beside his knee. Both corners, all the floor, even the low score board at the edge of the recorded ring. He was pleased with himself.

“Good?” Daven asked.

“Very.”

“Then stop inspecting it. I'm going to think there's something wrong.”

Orlo returned to the station. The mat caught under his paws in its familiar way. He set himself squarely in front of the starting bar while Orris checked the time.

Orlo's public voice was slower than the one he used across the desk. He gave the date of the recording and told the room when they could ask for passages again. When the interpreter had repeated that, he went on to the change in the billed pair. One of the wrestlers had withdrawn before the recording; the two women they would see had both agreed to the replacement bout. There were a few movements of paper as people found the correction on their bills.

He waited for the interpreter to finish. Then he pressed the bar, and the still women moved.

Red rolled her shoulders once while the official spoke. Blue adjusted the cloth at her waist. They came toward each other with their hands raised and, after a brief touch of palms, began trying to make the other take the first bad step.

Daven had leaned forward.

Orlo allowed himself one look at him, then returned to the picture.

Blue caught red's wrist and tried to draw it across her own body. Red followed far enough to make the pull seem useful, then put her free hand against blue's upper arm and turned out of it. Blue had to move her foot. A small approving noise went through the room.

That was the sort of thing. Daven would like that.

Red tried the same side again. This time blue yielded, then came back into the space red had expected to occupy. She set a palm against red's shoulder and followed it forward. Red gave ground with two quick steps. Her first landed inside the pale line. On the second, the heel hovered over it, and for a moment Orlo could not tell whether she would have to put it down.

Blue kept coming. The whole foot settled outside.

The official lifted one finger toward blue. The caller said something rapidly. At her desk the interpreter began, “The pressure at the shoulder, before the foot comes down, is what...”

“That's how blue gets her second one too,” a man behind Daven said to his companion.

Orlo's attention jumped to him. Daven was still looking at the picture. Perhaps he had not heard.

“Would you like water?” Orlo asked.

Daven glanced down. “No, thank you.”

“It's just there. I could fetch it.”

“I'm all right. What did she say about the shoulder?”

Behind him, the man was still talking. Orlo heard right at the end.

“There's a seat a little farther along,” he said. “You might get the left side more clearly.”

“You just told me this was very good.”

“It is. I meant the sound.”

Daven looked at him properly. “Orlo, I want to hear what they're saying.”

The interpreter had finished. On the picture the women were walking back into the circle. Orlo could hear the recorded audience stirring, and the two men behind Daven could be heard perfectly well.

Orris leaned around the edge of the desk. “Is the sound wrong?”

“No.”

“Anything else?”

Orlo looked at the controls. The setting was where they had put it. Picture and sound were steady. He could think of nothing that belonged to the desk.

“No.”

“Your break, then. I've got it.”

Orlo stepped off the mat and went around the little crew rail. Daven moved his foot to let him through, although there was already enough room. Orlo settled beside the chair with his front legs straight and the cream patch on his chest just clear of the floor.

“The man behind you,” he began quietly.

“Blue wins. I know.”

Orlo turned his head.

“Someone at work saw it. He told me this afternoon.”

“Oh.”

“I was trying to hear how she got that point.” Daven looked back at the picture. “I could see the foot. I wanted to know what made her put it there.”

Orlo looked at the stillness of his friend's hands on his knees and felt foolish.

“She's trying it again,” Daven said.

Red was advancing. Blue had one point and was making her come for the next.

For a while they worked at each other's wrists. Red tugged, released, caught lower. Blue moved back half a step. Red followed without reaching, keeping her feet beneath her, and the distance between them scarcely changed. Then blue's lead foot came forward, just beyond the shelter of her hands.

Red dropped toward it.

She got a hand behind the knee. The other came away from blue's wrist and joined it. Blue's foot rose, and red had the leg drawn against her. Orlo lifted his head. There was the opening: blue balanced on one foot, red's shoulder against her thigh, the line close enough to be useful.

Blue turned on her standing foot. Her knee went outward, carrying red's grip with it. Red's front foot was planted; the other stretched behind her, heel coming up. The turn pulled her shoulders past the foot that was doing the work.

Then she let go.

Blue's foot came down inside the line. Red drew her rear foot forward, raised her hands and went around to the center. Blue followed. They were facing each other again, both balanced, and the official's hands had not moved.

Orlo stared at the place where the lifted leg had been.

“She had it.”

“I thought she could have kept going,” Daven said.

“One more pull.”

“Or turned with her.”

The score remained one to nothing. Orlo wanted red to get the point back. She had made blue move; she had made a real chance. Letting the leg go had looked almost considerate, which could not have been what she meant to do. He watched for her to catch it again.

She did not. Blue kept that foot closer now. When red went low, blue shifted before she could reach it. Red came up empty, but on the next approach she caught blue high instead and made her turn sharply enough to draw a sound from the recorded audience.

Daven made the same sound, a little late.

Orlo was watching the women again when blue seemed to leave a space at her side. Red took it quickly. Her arm reached across; her front foot came down near the line. She was already reaching farther while her rear foot stayed where the rush had begun.

Blue went sideways.

She caught the advancing forearm and carried it across red's front. Red's shoulders followed before the rest of her could turn. Her back foot came swinging around, searching for somewhere to stop her weight.

It landed beyond the pale circle. The whole foot, with a strip of bare floor between the heel and the line.

The official held up two fingers.

“Oh, that was good,” Daven said.

Orlo had felt the finish in his own planted feet. He had been certain there was room for red to get the other one under her until there plainly was not. Blue released the arm. Red looked down at the foot she had put outside, then back at blue. She took a breath and returned to the center.

The official spoke to them. Red answered something Orlo could not hear beneath the recorded crowd. Blue smiled; they touched hands again. When they separated, red bent to retrieve the cloth that had come loose from her waist. Blue waited until she had it before they left the circle together.

People in the hall were talking. Orlo heard several attempts to describe the last movement, one of them accompanied by the scrape of a chair as a spectator tried it while sitting down. Daven had both feet on the floor. He moved one slowly sideways, stopped, and tried the other.

“It wasn't the same,” he said.

“What?”

“When she let go of the leg.”

“No. That time she stopped.”

“I mean, I thought she could have gone with it. I'd like to see where her other foot was.”

Orris brought the recording to its waiting picture. The interpreter finished the last translated sentence before taking a drink. An attendant reminded the room that they had time for questions and passages from this program. Someone wanted the first point. Someone else wanted the finish at once.

Daven looked toward the desk. “Could we have the bit with the leg first?”

“After blue's first point?” Orris asked.

“Yes. Where red catches her and lets go.”

Orlo rose so Orris could see him beside the chair. “From the reach to where they're back in the middle.”

Orris found the place. Red was upright again, blue's foot still too far forward. He checked the interval on the cue display.

“Eleven seconds. That one?”

“Yes.”

Orlo sat back down. He could feel Daven waiting beside him, this time for exactly the thing they had both asked to see.

The picture moved. Red lowered herself and took the leg. Orlo saw how much she had already done before the hold was secure: the forward step, the low shoulder, both hands leaving the work of guarding her upper body. Blue turned. Red's rear heel came up. The release followed so quickly that it was difficult to look at the hand and foot together.

Then they were circling in, and the passage ended.

“There was time,” Daven said, but without his earlier certainty. “If she'd brought the foot...”

“Watch where she gets it back.”

Gunnhild was speaking from the middle row. She had her bill folded across one knee.

“Which foot?” Daven asked.

“The one left behind. After she lets go. It comes forward then.”

“She could have brought it before.”

Gunnhild shifted in her chair to look toward him. “With the other one planted where it was?”

Daven looked down at his own feet. He put one farther forward. His knee came against the chair in front, and he drew it back.

“I'd like the room to try,” he said.

The man on Gunnhild's other side shook his head. “It's the hands. With both of them on that leg, she's got to go round with her.”

“She lets go,” Gunnhild said.

“That's why. She can't stop the turn while she's holding on.”

“I thought you were saying she ought to have held on.”

“No. He was.” The man pointed at Daven.

“I was,” Daven admitted.

Gunnhild turned back to the man beside her and laughed. “Then I agree with you, whoever you are.”

The man told her his name, too quietly for Orlo to catch. She turned her bill over and looked toward the picture again.

Orlo had been trying to reconstruct the turn. He knew the position of the lifted leg; he had kept looking at it because it seemed to contain the point red ought to have won. Everything else had happened around it. At the finish he had watched the shoulders and the searching foot. He wanted to put those two pieces of watching together.

“Again, please,” he said.

Orris looked at him. “The same eleven?”

“Yes.”

The interpreter repeated Gunnhild's observation for a pair of viewers near her desk. One of them asked whether red's heel was off the floor before blue began turning. Orris waited for the question to reach the rest of the room, then started the passage again.

This time Orlo looked at the rear foot from the beginning. The heel stayed down through the reach. As blue turned, the foot lengthened onto the toes, the leg stretched, and red opened her hands. Almost together, but the hands began it. The foot came forward into the space the release had made.

He had missed how soon she chose to stop. He had been waiting for her to keep lifting.

“If she holds it,” Daven said, “she has to go round on the front foot.”

“Or hop after her,” Orlo said.

“And that's the line there.” Daven rubbed his palm once over his knee. “I didn't have blue's turn right. I thought she was going straight back.”

“She could still have pulled her out,” the man beside Gunnhild said.

“She could,” Gunnhild answered. “I wouldn't have wanted to be the one doing it.”

Orlo wanted the finish again. Before he could ask, the woman who had requested it earlier raised her bill. Orris nodded to her and found the place.

Red reached. Her rear foot stayed behind. Blue's sideways step drew an appreciative murmur before the arm had even been redirected, as several people saw what was coming. Knowing did nothing to slow it. Red's shoulders went, and the foot followed too late.

This time Orlo watched blue as well. She had made room in exactly the direction red could not use. He could see why someone would want to try the movement afterward, in a place without chairs.

“There,” Daven said. “She goes after it.”

Orlo nodded. At the earlier chance she had kept herself standing. Here she had gone on reaching. It seemed unfair to red, now, that he had been prepared to blame both choices for the same loss.

The interpreter was answering a question about the caller's last words. The woman with the raised bill asked to hear those with the movement. Orris gave her the passage once more, with sound, and Orlo heard an anticipation in the recorded caller's voice which he had missed the first time. The man had seen blue's step before red's foot came down.

Orlo looked at Daven. His friend was grinning at the picture.

Orlo was glad Daven had come.

By the time Orris brought up the closing notice, people were conducting several separate arguments. A pair near the front agreed about the release and disagreed about almost everything blue had done afterward. The interpreter closed her cue folder, then stayed to answer a last short question from the people who had been nearest her desk. An attendant began with the empty chairs at the far wall.

Gunnhild rose when her neighbor did. She stopped beside the admission table on her way out.

“That was a good place,” she told the attendant. “Thank you.”

“You could see the feet?”

“All of them.”

She went out with the bill still in her hand. Her neighbor followed her through the door, saying something about how far red ought to have stepped.

Daven stood to put on his coat. Orlo moved clear of the chair legs.

“I'm sorry I kept talking while you were trying to listen,” he said.

Daven found the sleeve. “Yes, that was annoying.”

“I know.”

“You missed it too.”

Orlo looked toward the blank picture. “I did.”

Daven pulled the thread from his cuff and wound it around one finger. “The next one's on a day I finish early.”

He pointed to the bill. Orlo went close enough to read it. Another recorded program, another evening showing. The admission table was still open.

“I'm off that night,” Orlo said.

“Good. We can get here together.”

Daven went to buy the seats while Orlo returned to the station. Orris had shut down the sound and was making the last entry on the sheet.

“Anything to report?” he asked.

“No fault.”

“Good. The light chairs, please. Leave the stack to us.”

The attendant had folded the first of them. Orlo took its short carrying loop in his mouth, tested the balance and raised his head. The lower frame came clear of the floor. He carried it along the emptied aisle to the low collection rack, set it down, and released the loop.

Daven came back with the admissions folded inside his bill.

“I wish she'd gone back to the high hold,” he said.

“Before that last rush?”

“Yes. She'd just made blue turn with it.”

Orlo went back for another chair. The attendant folded it and left the loop clear. While he carried it, Daven used his free hand to show where red had caught blue's shoulder.

“She takes that hold again, brings her feet up, then makes blue move. She doesn't have to chase her.”

Orlo reached the rack and put the chair down.

“You think blue was going to give her that shoulder again?” he asked.