I stumbled across the following short story in my archives and thought it was worth sharing. It’s actually an assessment task from my BIOL 139 (Biomechanics) class back in 2002, which was taught by the inspiring Steve Vogel. Steve’s assignment for us was to imagine a world in which the only structural force was tension, and nothing existed in compression—no pillars, bricks, struts, props, or even bones. These sort of thought experiments are the perfect task for science fiction. The Baton Races of Yaz setting was from a half-remembered childhood board game. Engineers are welcome to leave comments on the physics, but no harshing on my prose style please!

When I woke, it had stopped raining. On Yaz, this happens once a year, if you’re lucky. It’s not lucky if you’re a Yazian, though, because the Day Without Rain is when you go to war. Me too. And all because of that stupid Baton.

I extricated myself from the damp pile of dozing Yazians, found my waterproof pack, and crawled out of the tent. It had been built in an excavated hollow lined with groundsheets, and although a ring of bladders had been laid to act as a dike, water had pooled in the bottom in the night. Typical. The Yazians didn’t mind this, but I did. Outside, the rolling expanse of marshes and moors went as far as I could see. To get a better look, I took a running jump at the side of the tent and scrambled up it to the central peak. I still couldn’t see very far, so I climbed up the main support rope for twenty feet or so, using the knots the Yazians had thoughtfully tied the night before. Resting with my foot in a loop just below the balloon, I finally spotted the support balloon of our companions a few miles away; we’d missed them in the night.

I munched an energy bar while the Yazians made the boat. They hauled down the balloon, sat on it, and squeezed the helium into bladders. One cast a net into the stream for breakfast, and collected some floating pods of helium weed to replenish our supply. Our weapons were bundled up in the balloon skin, which was lashed with the bladders into the net. We piled on, and one Yazian swam in front to guide us into the current. We didn’t float very high, and I kept my pack on my knees.

To rendezvous with the other war party, we had to head upriver. The Yazians unrolled the largest square groundsheet, and attached their thinnest five-braided rope, tying it to loops on each corner and the center. Two of them swam it to shore, and ran with it into the freshening breeze until it caught and lifted. For some reason, the wind blows one direction here in the morning and another in the afternoon, which makes for predictable sailing. As it strengthened, we launched two more sail kites, each heavier and stiffer than the one before, until we were moving at a fair speed. When we met the others, we sailed upriver together for a couple of hours, keeping clear of the main current. The Yazians amused themselves by tightly twisting together bundles of elastic fibers and lashing them by their ends the length of the raft. I had no idea why.

Yazian fighting in the old days was throwing mud in your opponent’s face, then sitting on them. Since the Break, things have gotten more sophisticated. The enemy surprised us; suddenly water balloons were exploding all around. Some splashed in my eye and hurt like hell. Luckily, nothing touched my pack. I ducked for cover while the Yazians unslung their stomp rockets in pairs. One jumped on the bladder while the other aimed gobbets of corrosive glue at the charging enemy. Their aim was good: almost always right in the eye. The Yazian beside me was using a slingshot between two of its tentacles, firing what looked like (but can’t have been) some sort of fruit. We counter-charged, throwing sticky knotted bolas at the retreating enemy, entangling one. The Yazians pinned and immobilized their blinded opponents with whips, and strangled them. One they just sat on.

Before long we heard the yelling of a war band, and ran for the raft. The Yazian we left on board had been busy rigging something to the stern. As we piled on board, it yanked five ropes at once, pulling slipknots. The bundles of fibers untwisted convulsively, and there was threshing and flapping in the water behind us. The raft jerked forward into the channel, not for long but enough get clear of a shore filled with livid Yazians. We cowered under a mat as the mother of all stomp rockets dropped hissing blobs into the water near us, until the current caught and we were swept downstream.

I gathered that our sortie had been a diversion. As we rounded a bend into a shallow gully, the river getting stronger all the while, I saw the real target. Suspended above us, straddling the rapids, was a huge clot of tents, sheets, and rope ladders, stretched between four thick hawsers. I could see maybe fifty Yazians climbing over and through it. We beached the raft under a bank of ferns, and picked our way up the slope to the nearest hawser, me lugging my pack. One of the Yazians pointed to the suspended village and whispered to me. “Baton!” he said. In Yazian, of course, but it’s one of the few words I know.

Until forty years ago, the Day Without Rain was the occasion for the famous Baton Race of Yaz. The Baton is, or was, a stick of solid rock, or maybe dense wood, about two feet long. Nobody knows exactly: the Yazians won’t let you near it. Baton is what the first anthropologists called it, of course; its Yazian name means something like “Doesn’t Bend”. It’s the most rigid, and most venerated, thing on the whole planet. Then one day a Yazian (tribe still disputed) decided to test the Baton’s name. They’ve been fighting ever since.

Apparently the pieces were kept in the village above us.

By the time we reached the hawser, we’d been spotted. A howling mob, brandishing whips and slingshots, poured out of the village, and swarmed up a suspension bridge towards us. My companions screamed taunts at them; I caught the chant of “Break you! Break you!” (my other Yazian word). I looked at the hawser; it was as thick as me, and plunged straight into the mud. Apparently, it was connected to a huge mesh of thick rope submerged about two feet deep in the marsh and spreading over a square mile. Even so, it must have been stressed close to its limit.

The mob was getting close. The Yazians all turned to me. ‘Time to earn ten thousand cubic meters of helium,’ I thought.

I opened my pack. And pulled out my chainsaw.

1. Which king died from eating too many lampreys?
2. Which Roman emperor saved a slave from being thrown to the lampreys?
3. What’s the green stuff in the yolk of hard-boiled eggs, and how do you stop it appearing?
4. Where can one see Arnold Schwartzeneggar’s handprints (not just footprints) on public display?
5. What problem does the Scarecrow face when he gets his brain?
6. There’s a science fiction story I read once where a mad scientist operated on crocodiles to repair the imperfect septum in their heart and make it four-chambered. The crocs became frisky, agile, and started putting on weight. What happened to them ultimately?
7. What’s the major scientific flaw in this story?
8. How many Philistines did Samson slay with the jawbone of an ass?
9. Why an ass?
10. When did people stop calling the stuff in your head ‘your brains’ and start calling it ‘your brain’, and why?
11. Do people really eat live monkey brains?
12. Which bit of the cow’s stomach tastes nicest?
13. How can you tell that skeleton on the banner belonged to a bird, and was it a bird that could kick you to death?