It was that way in all the events, everyone big and lean and hard-muscled — the new species, Maya thought, feeling small and weak and old. Homo martial. Luckily she had good bones and still carried herself well, or else she would have been ashamed to walk among such creatures. As it was she stood unconscious of her own defiant grace, and watched as the woman discus thrower Sax had pointed out to them spun in an accelerating burst that flung the discus as if shot from a skeet-casting device. This Annarita was very tall, with a long torso and wide rangy shoulders, and lats like wings under her arms; neat breasts, squashed by a singlet; narrow hips, but a full strong bottom, over powerful long thighs — yes, a real beauty among the beauties. And so strong; though it was clear that it was the swiftness of her spin that propelled her discus so far. “One hundred eighty meters!” Michel exclaimed, smiling. “What joy for her.”
And the woman was pleased. They all applied themselves intensely in the moment of effort, then stood around relaxing, or trying to relax — stretching muscles, joking with each other. There were no officials, no scoreboard, only some helpers like Sax. People took turns running events other than their own. Races started with a loud bang. Times were clocked by hand, and called out and logged onto a screen. Shot puts still looked heavy, their throwing awkward. Javelins flew forever. High jumpers were only able to clear four meters, to Maya and Michel’s surprise. Long jumpers, twenty meters; which was a most amazing sight, the jumpers flailing their limbs through a leap that lasted four or five seconds, and crossed a big part of the field.
In the late afternoon they held the sprints. As with the rest of the events, men and women competed together, all wearing singlets. “I wonder if sexual dimorphism itself is lessened in these people,” Michel said as he watched a group warm up. “Everything is so much less genderized for them — they do the same work, the women only get pregnant once in their lives, or never — they do the same sports, they build up the same muscles…”
Maya fully believed in the reality of the new species, but at this notion she scoffed: “Why do you always watch the women then?”
Michel grinned. “Oh / can tell the difference, but I come from the old species. I just wonder if they can.”
Maya laughed out loud. “Come on. I mean look there, and there,” pointing. “Proportions, faces…”
“Yeah yeah. But still, it’s not like, you know, Bardot and Atlas, if you know what I mean.”
“I do. These people are prettier.”
Michel nodded. It was as he had said from the start, Maya thought; on Mars it would finally become clear that they were all little gods and goddesses, and should live life in a sacred joyfulness… Gender, however, remained clear at first glance. Although she too came from the old species; maybe it was just her. But that runner over there … ah. A woman, but with short powerful legs, narrow hips, flat chest. And that one next to her? Again female — no, male! A high jumper, as graceful as a dancer, though all the high jumpers were having trouble: Sax muttered something about plants. Well, still; even if some of them were a bit androgynous, for most it was the usual matter of instant recognition.
“You see what I mean,” Michel said, observing her silence.
“Sort of. I wonder if these youngsters really think about it differently, though. If they have ended patriarchy, then there must necessarily be a new social balance of the sexes…”
“That’s certainly what the Dorsa Brevians would claim.”
“Then I wonder if that’s not the problem with Terran immigration. Not the numbers themselves, but the fact that so many people arriving from Earth are coming from older cultures. It’s like they’re arriving out of a time machine from the Middle Ages, and suddenly here are all these huge Mi-noans, women and men much the same — ”
“And a new collective unconscious.”
“Yes, I suppose. And so the newcomers can’t cope. They cluster in immigrant ghettos, or new towns entire, and keep their traditions and their ties to home, and hate everything here, and all the xenophobia and misogyny in those old cultures breaks out again, against both their own women and the native girls.” She had heard of problems in the cities, in fact, in Sheffield and all over east Tharsis. Sometimes young native women beat the shit out of surprised immigrant assailants; sometimes the opposite occurred. “And the young natives don’t like it. They feel like they’re letting monsters into their midst.”
Michel grimaced. “Terran cultures were all neurotic at their core, and when the neurotic is confronted with the sane, it usually gets more neurotic than ever. And the sane don’t know what to do.”
“So they press to stop immigration. And put us at risk of another war.”
But Michel was distracted by the beginning of another race. The races were fast, but not anywhere near two and a half times as fast as Terra’s, despite the gravity difference. It was the same problem as the high jumpers’ plants, but continuous through the race: the runners took off with such acceleration that they had to stay very low to keep from bounding too high away from the track. In the sprints they stayed canted forward throughout, as if desperately trying to avoid falling on their faces, their legs pumping furiously. In the longer dashes they finally straightened up near the end, and began to scull at the air as if swimming forward from an upright position, their strides longer and longer until they seemed to be leaping foward like one-leg-at-a-time kangaroos. The sight reminded Maya of Peter and Jackie, the two speedsters of Zygote, running the beach under the polar dome; on their own they had developed a similar style.
Using these techniques, the winner of the fifty-meter dash ran the race in 4.4 seconds; the winner of the hundred in 8.3; the two hundred in 17.1; and the four hundred in 37.9; but in each case the balance problems engendered by their speeds seemed to keep them from a full sprint the way Maya remembered seeing it in her youth.
In the longer races, the running style was a graceful bounding pace, similar to what they had called the Martian lope back at Underhill, where they had tried it without much success in their tight walkers. Now it was like flight. A young woman led most of the ten-thousand-meter race, and she had enough in reserve to kick hard at the end, accelerating throughout the entire last lap, faster and faster until she gazelled around the track only touching down every few meters, lapping some of the other racers who seemed to toil as she flew past; it was lovely; Maya shouted herself hoarse. She held to Michel’s arm, she felt dizzy, tears sprang to her eyes even as she laughed; it was so strange and so marvelous to see these new creatures, and yet none of them knew, none of them!
She liked to see women beating men, though they themselves did not seem to remark it. Women won slightly more often in long distances and hurdles, men in the sprints. Sax said that testosterone helped with strength but caused cramping eventually, hampering long-distance efforts. Clearly most of the events were a matter of technique in any case. And so one saw what one wanted, she thought. Back on Earth — but these people would have laughed if she had started a sentence with that phrase. Back on Earth, so what? There had been all sorts of bizarre and ugly behavior back in the nest world, but why worry about that when a hurdle was approaching and another runner advancing in your peripheral vision? Fly, fly! She shouted herself hoarse.
At the end of the day the field athletes, finished with their events, cleared a passageway into the stadium and around the track; and a single runner jogged in, to sustained applause and wild cheers. And it was Nirgal! Starting hoarse already, Maya’s shouting was ragged, almost painful.