Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille (16 page)

“Cruising.” The trail flattened in front of them. Waldemar knew they’d be running through an aspen valley for the next few minutes.

Euthlos ran easily and seemed to be sightseeing now. He looked up, where the sun flickered through the branches, and then scanned the woods to both sides, ignoring the trail.

“You’re
the
Waldemar, aren’t you?” said Euthlos.

“Whatever that means.” Waldemar tried not to sound annoyed. Eventually his reputation caught up to him, and people either thought him an idiot for it, or a hero. It started when he’d organized the “First Unofficial Rerunning of the Historic Boston Marathon.” It meant charting the course as closely as possible to the original one. Much was on intercity beltways, where pedestrians were forbidden, or through toll-trails a runner could hardly stop to pay for. The whole thing was a lark. Fourteen other distance fanatics participated, and they were all arrested for trespass and careless self endangerment. Only he had finished the race, and the word had spread in the small running community. Since then, he’d staged several other “unofficial” runs on historic courses, all of which, of course, were illegal and often dangerous. It was hard to imagine a time when thousands of participants crowded the starting lines for these races.

All in all, he thought, it was a stupid hobby, running the historic courses, akin to parachuting off tall buildings or bungee jumping from bridges, but the romance of the courses and the challenge of avoiding arrest added spice.

“Why do you do it?” said Euthlos.

“Run?”

“Yes.”

Waldemar didn’t answer for a moment. First, he was supposed to be preparing Euthlos for the Olympics, and he wasn’t sure what answer would be helpful. Secondly, he thought about their pace. The heads-up display showed that he was running at 65 percent efficiency, while Euthlos was running at only 52 percent. But at their best pace on the run today, Euthlos hadn’t broken 80 percent. He never broke 80 percent. Creighton would be waiting for them at the end of the run to review the readouts. It would send him into an apoplexy (only in Waldemar’s presence; in front of Euthlos he was quiet and understanding). But the answer to the question seemed obvious. There was no reason to shade it.

“I run for the joy. To run faster than I have before.” He thought a bit more. The trail angled up the valley and they crossed two small wooden bridges that spanned snow-melt creeks rushing downhill. “To compete with myself.”

“I’ve read about you,” said Euthlos. “I saw your time at Boston last month.”

Waldemar laughed. “You must have done some real searching. We don’t publish bandit race results. Most of the organizers and runners were caught and fined.” He remembered the long run up the series of rises called Heartbreak Hill. He’d lost the lead pack miles before and ran alone over the two-hundred-years-old course. The last official Boston Marathon had been thirty years earlier. There were very few citizen road races anymore. Not enough trails that weren’t crossed by the beltways or owned by industry. Too much liability. Besides, most people argued, let the enhanced compete. They’re better at it anyway. Traffic whined by on his left. People stared as they sped past, but he didn’t care. Inside his head, the clock ticked. Time ran and so did he; they raced to the finish.

Euthlos said, “Two hours, three minutes and fifteen seconds. I know about the other bandit runs too. There’s quite a bit about you tucked away for those who know where to look. I found four New York Marathon times, where you were never arrested, and I saw how you got picked up on the Bay to Breakers course twice. You’re no Genotech toady, like that bike racer they roomed with me last year. You’re the real thing. This Boston was your best though, wasn’t it?” The admiration and curiosity in his voice were obvious.

“If I’d known it would have got your attention this way, I’d have told you a week ago. But it’s no big deal; you’ve had a dozen training runs faster.”

“So, why do you do it?”

Waldemar took a deep breath. Since they’d dropped the pace, he felt comfortable and strong. He’d reached that point in a run where he felt he could conquer any distance. He thought about running hard, mile after mile and how the pain goes away. It was as if he’d become a god. Time and distance dissolve, leaving just the effort, and effort alone could transcend. And always, just beyond his fingertips, at a pace a second or two faster than what he was going, waited a great unknown. He ran for that, but there was no way to say it to be understood. Waldemar repeated, finally, as if it were a further explanation, “Because I love it. What about you?”

Euthlos snorted. “It’s in my genes.”

“Why do you hold back?”

Euthlos leaned into a turn, and for a second, Waldemar was afraid he wouldn’t answer. Then Euthlos said, “Give me a reason to run all out, and I’ll show you running.”

Waldemar didn’t know how to respond to that. The young man’s voice was so bitter, so venom steeped, that Waldemar wished he hadn’t asked.

“You know what I think of?” asked Euthlos. “I think of those other enhanced runners pounding out mileage all over the world, and their trainers and doctors and coaches measuring their progress. And I think about the Olympics, all the enhanced ones running packed together—because we’re practically the same anyway—a thousand vid-eyes pointed at us, millions wagering on the outcome, all those company scientists waiting to see what they accomplished, and right at a key point in the race, we jump off the course and run away.” Euthlos laughed. “And you know why I’m telling you this?”

Waldemar shook his head.

“Because you’re the first
real
runner I’ve met.”

“What do you mean?”

Above them, the line of aspen broke at the edge of a rock field, and as they reached it, the trees fell behind. The trail held the line of the ridge. To their left, the valley dropped to the creek that glinted diamond bright through trees, and to their right, rocky outcrops and granite bluffs leaned protectively over them.

“I know about running,” Euthlos said. “What’s
your
goal?”

Waldemar didn’t hesitate. “Two hours.”

“Good goal. St. George?”

“Yes.” The October St. George run in Utah attracted sixty or seventy unenhanced marathoners each year because it was legal, and the course was fast.

They ran silently for several minutes. Talking to Euthlos, who might be capable of a race twenty minutes faster than Waldemar’s best, Waldemar thought about the futility of his own quest for a sub two hour marathon. The enhanced world record over that distance was already thirteen minutes faster, nearly thirty seconds quicker per mile. Running all out, on a track, rested and psyched, he knew he could barely run one mile at that speed. He shook his head ruefully. Breaking two hours in a marathon reminded him of a cartoon he’d seen once of a disconsolate little boy with a baseball bat over one shoulder and his glove dangling from the end of it talking to his dad. Dad said, “So how’d you do today?” And the boy said, “I had a no hitter going until the big kids got out of school.”

The trail broke away from the ridge onto the flat plateau that marked the end of their run. From here, Genotech was four miles distant and generally down hill.

“You know what else I think of?” Euthlos asked. Without waiting for a reply, he said, “It’s exactly fifty miles from Genotech to the end of the Duratrack. Almost two marathons, one right after the other.”

“That’d be a long training run,” said Waldemar. “Too long for marathon speed.”

“Maybe. You ready to pick it up a bit?” said Euthlos, and he pulled in front.

“Sure.”

Euthlos’ long legs pumped effortlessly toward the finish. Waldemar tried to catch his rhythm, which he couldn’t really do because their footfalls were so far apart, but he could mimic the flow of Euthlos’ stride, the frictionless slide down the trail, as efficient and powerful as a gazelle.

Not until they were almost done did Waldemar think about the training visor. By then his thighs flamed from the pace, and his lungs ripped air in giant gulps. He put everything into keeping up with Euthlos. At the end, even the extra effort of blinking the heads up display into existence would have been too much. They crossed the finish line together.

As they had in the days before, they ate dinner together, but now Euthlos was irrepressible. “What’s a restaurant like?” he asked. “How was school?” “What do you spend money on?” “Have you ever been in a fight?” “What is it like to be in a crowd?”

Euthlos kept him talking until a trainer finally had to send them to their beds.

The Ethiopian, Abebe Bikila won both the 1964 and 1968 Olympic marathons. In 1964 he ran a bare-footed two hours, fifteen minutes and sixteen-second race. Four years later he lowered the record to two hours and twelve minutes. He averaged five minutes and two seconds per mile.

Modern training included not only the sessions on the Duratrack trails, but also extensive monitoring of their metabolisms, perfectly designed meals and nutrient supplements, and long sessions in the Race-Imaging Egg, an eight feet by four feet shiny black plastic shell, hinged in the middle, where Waldemar or Euthlos would be strapped for virtual marathons. The attaching of straps, electrodes, bio-feedback sensors and motor-response stimulators took almost an hour, and by the time the egg closed, trapping Waldemar within its dark and pressing interior, he felt panicky and claustrophobic. Then the program would start, transporting him virtually to any marathon course to mentally rehearse winning efforts.

Once he realized the potential, he’d simulated runs on not only the historic Boston course but also every Olympic marathon. He’d simulated a run on Mars, and one on the moon, but the lowered gravities were too realistic and nauseated him.

In his fifth session in the egg, he asked the technician to set up a two man race from the 490 BC battlefield of Marathon to Athens. The technician, an older man whom Euthlos had introduced affectionately as “Dr. Pops,” looked up the parameters of the program and said, “It’s not quite twenty-three miles. Real hot too.”

“I know,” said Waldemar, “and I don’t want to win the race. I just want to run with him.”

When the egg closed, Waldemar wiggled more comfortably into the harness. Then, the familiar sensory confusion as the program kicked it, and soon, he was running down a dusty trail, following a young Greek, no more than sixteen, wearing nothing but a belt. The Greek boy started too fast in the afternoon heat, clearly overjoyed. Behind him, Waldemar knew, the Athenians were celebrating their victory over the Persians. From his studies, Waldemar knew not only was he the messenger carrying news of the Greek victory, he also carried a warning, which explained his haste. The Persians would be coming. One loss would not deter the Persian king, Darius I. No, the Greek runner had motivation to hurry.

They passed a well. On the hills around them, olive trees drooped dispiritedly, but Waldemar knew there would be irrigation water. “Hydrate!” he wanted to shout. However, the program didn’t respond to words, and Pheidippides, the first marathoner, was doomed to run the distance without a drink, to die at the end after announcing, “Rejoice! We conquer!”

Waldemar ran the whole way with him, marveling at the determination, feeling incredibly parched himself, even though a part of him knew his thirst was simulated. In the last miles, the boy staggered, weaving from side to side; falling down, but pushing himself up and back into a broken stride that stumbled into a run. As the sad ending played itself out, Waldemar found himself crying. Athen’s stone walls faded away. He was back in the egg, sobbing.

When the egg cracked open, Euthlos, looking concerned, stood beside Dr. Pops. “You did the Greek one, didn’t you?” Euthlos asked.

Waldemar could only nod. Euthlos put his hand on Waldemar’s arm and gave it an understanding squeeze as he helped the technician extract Waldemar from the egg.

Carlos Lopes of Portugal set the Olympic record with a two hour, nine minute and twenty-one second marathon in 1984. He averaged four minutes and fifty-six seconds per mile.

A week later, Creighton sat behind his solid black desk, scowling at the papers in his hands.

“He’s going too damn slow. The designers say he’s capable of three-fifty-two miles anytime he wants to pop one, and that he can sustain a pace eight to twelve seconds slower than that indefinitely.” He slapped the papers down. “You’re supposed to get him to perform, but I don’t see it in this. A little bit at the end. That’s all.”

Waldemar sat in the barely padded chair in front of the desk. His legs felt pleasantly wooden after the day’s workout. Six miles from where the Genotech copter had dropped them on the far edge of the training area, where the hills were particularly steep and good for strength work, Euthlos had veered off the Duratrack pathway, then took a half mile long trail that ended on a rocky bend in a tiny stream. They’d taken their shoes off and soaked their feet in the iron cold water for twenty minutes. “No vid-eyes here,” said Euthlos after the water had turned Waldemar’s feet numb. “They watch me all the time, you know. Not just while I’m training. In my room. During classes. They monitor my communications in and out.”

“So what do you do?” The reminder of the vids made Waldemar uncomfortable. Creighton irritated him, and he felt no loyalty to him or Genotech, but Creighton would know they’d broken the training routine, vid or no vid, and any deviation would come up in their daily debriefing.

Euthlos smiled like a little kid. Waldemar was struck again by how boyish the man seemed sometimes, and it was hard to remember that he was twenty-two. “Oh, they aren’t as diligent as they think. Right now, the trainers see us on the trail rapping out some five-twenties.”

“You jimmied the system.”

“A man needs a hobby. I know something about vids, yes. It’s electronic sleight of hand, like this.” He picked a rock out of the stream and shook the water off it. “Watch,” he said, and he wrapped his fingers around it and turned the hand over. Then he brought his other hand beside it so he held two fists, knuckles up to Waldemar. “Which hand is it in?”