Zeroboxer

by Fonda Lee

  “I love watching your fights. You’re so athletic.” An impressive bosom appeared in front of him, attached to a smiling woman with color-changing hair dye. “Will you sign my chest?” She held out a black marker.

  “Sure.” Carr signed the cleavage above the hem of the woman’s scooped neck shirt while her friend captured the whole thing with a cuff-link camera. She was short, creamy, doughy—the opposite of Risha Ponn. She gave him a smothering hug that smelled of vanilla, her hair shifting from sandy blond to auburn red. Carr wondered if his new brandhelm would consider this a “touchpoint” and whether she would approve—then wondered why he was wondering that.

  He reeled in the two people in the Cube—both of them grinning weakly, having valiantly and successfully held onto their breakfasts—and let in the two women, who began whooping and pushing each other off the walls. The next man in line was the one who had raised his hand and claimed to have been in a Cube before. “Carr, I’m Brock Wheeden. I’ve followed your fights closely, and it’s a real pleasure to meet you.” He shook Carr’s hand.

  “Thanks.” The name was vaguely familiar. So was the man’s face: a short orange beard darker than his hair and a slightly squashed nose.

  “I think the young talent in the ZGFA is why you’re seeing the huge growth in viewership. Terran zeroboxing is really taking off. Who knows, maybe the sport will become as popular on Earth as it is on Mars.”

  The name and the face clicked. Wheeden was a prominent zeroboxing commentator on the Systemnet. He hosted a regular series called Cube Talk with Brock. It couldn’t be a coincidence that he was here, could it?

  “You would know more about that than I would,” Carr said. “I like your feed. I’ve used it to research opponents.”

  “You just made my day,” Brock said. “You mind if I quote you on that?”

  Wheeden’s friend, next to him, asked, “So do you think you could beat the Reaper?”

  Carr raised his eyebrows at the loaded question. Thirty-year-old Henri “the Reaper” Manon was the reigning ZGFA lowmass champion. Wheeden and his friend were looking at Carr expectantly; no doubt a juicy bit of trash-talk from the Raptor would make it onto Brock’s feed within minutes.

  Carr hesitated; this wasn’t a press conference, and he wasn’t a title contender, not yet. Gant wasn’t fond of fighters going off script and fanning speculation. “Sooner or later,” he said simply.

  “So you agree with Xeth Stone that the Reaper has slowed down in his last couple matches?” Wheeden pressed.

  Carr smiled. Lighting a match was different from igniting plasma fuel. “Looks like it’s your turn in the Cube,” he said, helping the two women out and motioning the men in.

  What a difference, Carr marveled. Last year, no one stopped him for his autograph or tried to extract pithy quotes from him. Last year, he’d been just another broke, nameless kid on Valtego, like lanky, mop-headed Scull over there, manning the other hatch and occasionally glancing over at him in surreptitious awe.

  “You’re the man of the hour, Carr,” said a voice near his shoulder.

  The man next in line was older than the rest, but Carr could not tell how much older. His gray-blond hair was combed back over a high forehead. He was pale, as if he’d never seen the sun. Even his eyes were pale, like an overcast sky. Multiple age-reversal treatments had given his face an artificially smooth, unblemished appearance, like a piece of wax fruit. “You’re very level-headed about all the attention,” he said.

  Carr shrugged. “Fighting isn’t a popularity contest.”

  After his first four fights, people had started using words like “phenom” and “prodigy,” and he’d let it get to his head. Even with Uncle Polly to keep him in line, there had been new friends, and parties, and girls … heck, he’d only been sixteen. He’d gotten drunk on it all, let himself be lulled into losing a fight he should have won. Then he started hearing words like “flame out” and “one shot.” Now he was on the up and up again. Attention could be good or bad, he decided, but it didn’t really matter.

  The man smiled, as if Carr had said something to make him happy, but there was no real warmth, just a smug rising of the corners of his mouth. “That’s a sagacious comment to make, at your age.”

  Carr gave the stranger a sidelong glance. Something about the man’s overly familiar tone, and the way he kept looking at him, made Carr’s skin itch. His mind prickled unpleasantly with the suspicion that he’d seen this distinctive, whitish face before. Some time ago. Where? “Have we met?” he asked.

  “Not properly.” Small creases appeared around the corners of the man’s eyes. “But I know quite a lot about you. I’m an enormous fan of yours, Carr. Your mother and I met many years ago. So you could say I’m an old family friend.”

  “Funny she’s never mentioned you.” A slimy worry uncurled in Carr’s stomach. He decided he did not like the man. He did not like the way his name sounded in the man’s mouth, the r’s too harsh, and how the man used his name too often, as if he were exercising some right to do so. He helped Wheeden and his friend out of the Cube and said, “Your turn.”

  “Ah, no,” said the stranger, stepping aside politely. “We have much in common, Carr, but your vestibular system is not one of them. I’ll remain a spectator.”

  What an odd thing to say. The curl of worry bulged into mild panic. Carr tamped it down. He had nothing in common with this man; they looked nothing alike. Different eyes and nose and mouth, different build. His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t catch your name, mister.”

  Carr’s cuff went off, playing a rising note in his ear. He looked down at the display. Gant.

  “Scull, take over for a few minutes, will you?” he called, gesturing to his cuff. Scull nodded, and with a wary, backward glance, Carr grabbed the guide-rail and swung himself just inside the hall that led to the locker room. He hooked an ankle around a hallway rung to check his glide, holding himself in place as he accepted the call.

  “What are you doing, Luka? Getting fat and bored out your mind yet?” The Martian sounded like he was walking through a noisy crowd.

  “Just about, sir.”

  “Well, cheer up. I have a headline fight for you. Jaycen Douglas was supposed to go up against BB Dunn, but he just pulled out because of injury. Needs another surgery, the doctor says. You want his spot?”

  Depending on who you talked to you, Douglas was either the second best zeroboxer in the division, or Dunn was. Dunn had a better record, and had beaten Jay Ferrano, but then he’d lost to Douglas in a contested judge’s decision. A rematch between them had been arranged to settle the matter. Now it wasn’t going to happen. “When’s the fight?”

  “Three weeks.”

  Three weeks! A ridiculously short amount of time to train for a new opponent. As much as Carr lived for his next match, he’d expected two to three months to prepare, not three weeks. He was supposed to corner DK’s match in eighteen days.

  He ought to talk to Uncle Polly, think about this, get back to Gant later.

  As if he’d read Carr’s mind, the Martian’s voice slowed, turned measured. “Now look, I’m offering this to you, but it’s your choice whether to take it. You have momentum right now, and I get it, you don’t want to risk losing that. Don’t take on more than you can handle. Play it safe … if you think that’s best.”

  There was a chance Gant’s prudent words were sincere. More likely he knew what buttons to push to arrange the fights he wanted. Whichever it was, the words scraped at Carr’s insides like wire bristle; he grimaced. He remembered the last conversation they’d had—I just bet on you—and imagined the Martian moving chips off Carr’s square.

  He glanced back down the hall at the tour group. Strange; the pale, smooth-faced man was gone. The rest of the group was still milling about, most of them as uncoordinated in zero gravity as elephant seals on land.

  The idea of turning down a f
ight, any fight, seemed wrong. Like a beggar pushing away food, or a plant turning away from sun. Besides, winning this match would make him the indisputable contender for the title. “I’ll take it,” he said.

  SIX

  Go again,” Carr insisted.

  Blake groaned but complied, tackling Carr and pulling him off the wall, wrapping both legs around his waist. Carr hoped never to be caught by BB Dunn in such a compromised position, but he was determined to train for it until he could break the man’s forward control in his sleep. Blake packed a few more kilos than Dunn but had roughly the same proportions and grappling style, which made him a good stand-in.

  Uncle Polly followed them as they battled. “Hands up, hands up,” he reminded Carr. “You’re telegraphing your moves again—he’ll see that coming a light year away.”

  Carr crunched his body and drove the tip of his elbow into Blake’s thigh until he had enough room to twist his hips sideways. They bounced lightly into the wall and Carr grabbed it, using it for stability as he shot one knee up between himself and Blake. He pushed off and swiveled his lower body hard, wrapping his legs around Blake’s neck in a vise and squeezing until the other man tapped.

  “That was good,” Blake said as they hung onto the wall, catching their breaths. “You’re a lot faster with that now.”

  “You’re still relying on the wall and it won’t always be there for you,” Polly said. “You need to be able to do it floating. You’ve got one week to hone your submission game, and if it’s not there, you’re going to have to count on out-flying Dunn. You ready to do that?”

  Carr gritted his teeth. He’d been thinking the exact same thing. Frenzied preparation had thrown him and Uncle Polly into a sort of psychic state, where half the time one of them knew what the other would say before he said it. BB Dunn, they both knew, was no Jay Ferrano. He had grace—that’s how people in the business referred to a zeroboxer who made it look easy, who could cripple you in the absence of gravity and made it look like a beautiful thing of nature. The fighter with grace was the man. BB Dunn was so agile in the Cube he was called “the Earless One.” The pun came from a rumor that he had some vestibular defect that prevented him from ever being disoriented. It also dangerously understated how good the man’s grappling was.

  “One more time,” Carr said, even though they’d been in the Virgin Galactic Center for hours. The sports doctor had warned him that such prolonged zero gravity exposure was going to render his most recent re-mineralization ineffective, but Carr figured if he won the fight, he’d have the money to redo the treatment.

  Blake checked the time on his cuff. “I told DK I’d meet him for land-training and pick up tape and gel for his fight.”

  “Shit, of course. Sorry I forgot. Get out of here.” Carr shook his head. He felt bad enough about having bailed as DK’s cornerman without monopolizing Blake as well. He’d said to DK, “I’ll still do it if you need me to,” but it was only a verbal gesture; they both knew it was ridiculous. DK’s fight was three days before his; Carr couldn’t possibly focus on his friend’s match when he had so little time to train for his own.

  DK had been understanding. “Hey, no worries, I get it, it’s Dunn. You want this one,” he’d said, but Carr knew it was a pain to replace a cornerman on short notice. He still felt guilty.

  As Blake climbed his way over to the hatch, Uncle Polly said to Carr, “You need a break? Or more flying drills?”

  When he’d told Uncle Polly about the Dunn fight, his trainer had shouted, “Three weeks? Three fucking weeks? Damn Gant’s domie hide! What the hell were you thinking when you took it?”

  “You think I should’ve turned it down?”

  “No. It’s BB Dunn! Of course you should’ve taken it. But you should’ve fucking asked me!”

  Carr took the towel that Polly handed him and wiped the sweat from his face. The Cube had begun to feel like a sauna. Without gravity, warm air did not rise, it just stayed in place, growing thicker and more stifling. Thankfully, the ventilation fans built into the walls kicked on automatically, forcibly circulating cooler air into the enclosure. “Flying drills,” he said.

  Uncle Polly lobbed a stuffed bolster the size of a man’s torso through the air. Carr scrambled up the wall, bounded off a right corner and launched himself at it, tackling it hard and rotating his body to control the rebound with his feet. They did the drill again, and again, Polly trying to throw him off, Carr snatching the target out of the air like a hawk knocking a sparrow out in mid-flight.

  DK’s advice had been, “Don’t go crazy and overtrain. You don’t want to burn yourself out.” But Carr didn’t really believe in overtraining. Sure, he’d been warned about burn out and injury, but so far he’d been lucky and hadn’t suffered anything serious. Even without nanos, he always healed quickly from minor issues and seemed to get by fine with five to six hours of sleep per night. Three weeks was nearly four hundred waking hours, quite a lot of time if he made the most of every one of them. He wasn’t going to go in poorly prepared, like he had with Jackson. He wasn’t ever going to do that again.

  Uncle Polly always drew the line eventually. He’d been a trainer for a long time, and he had an instinctive feel for what Carr needed: when he needed to be encouraged, when he needed to be yelled at, when he needed to be pushed harder or reeled back in. “Calling it a night,” he shouted now. “I know you’d keep going if I didn’t.” Then he pointed at the deck, which seemed, because of where they were in space, to be hanging below them. “Looks like you’ve got an audience.”

  Carr tilted his head. Risha Ponn held lightly onto the guide-rail as she walked, seemingly upside down, across the deck. Carr stifled both a smile and a groan. He was in pre-fight monasticism: no alcohol, no caffeine, no junk food, no girls. Risha was distracting as hell: legs that went on and on, chin-length black hair floating in a dark halo around her head, thinscreen tucked under one arm, poised to overwhelm him with information.

  “She’s a bit old for you,” Uncle Polly said, startling Carr out of his thoughts.

  “Coach,” Carr protested, the tips of his ears starting to burn, “I wasn’t going there.”

  “Sure you were,” said Polly. “I was your age once. I’m just saying.”

  Carr couldn’t tell if Uncle Polly intended to be as stern as his voice or as teasing as his eyes. “Even if I was going there, she’s not,” he said. “Not too old, I mean. I’ll bet you she’s twenty-one. Twenty-two at the most.”

  His coach shrugged, lips crooking as if fighting a smile. Carr blew out an exasperated breath and sailed toward the entry hatch, executing a tight flip as he went through. He landed on the deck, facing Risha. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you, obviously, in the place you spend ninety percent of your time,” she replied. “Nice to see you too.”

  Heat crept into Carr’s face. He backtracked and tried to get off on a better foot. “I meant, how did you get in here?”

  “I work for the ZGFA. Same as you, remember?” Risha smiled at Uncle Polly as he came out of the Cube. “Hello, Pol.”

  “Risha.”

  For reasons that Carr could not fathom, Uncle Polly and Risha Ponn had, in a mere two weeks, hit it off rather splendidly. She got away with calling him by his real name, Pol. He, for his part, referred to her as “that domie girl” with a note of grudging affection in his voice.

  “May I take Carr for a couple hours?” she said, as if asking to borrow a vehicle.

  “Sure can,” said Polly before Carr could protest on his own behalf. “We just finished up.”

  “I have a taxi waiting.” Risha led the way back down the hall toward the main docking hold.

  Carr followed her, frowning. He stopped to gather his bag from its magnetic locker. “Is this important? My fight is next week.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.” She moved comfortably and gracefully, without clinging to guide-
rails or tether. He wondered if it came to her naturally. Did she space-dance or play any zero-g sports? When they reached the hold, the waiting car opened when she held her cuff to the reader, and she instructed the vehicle to take them to Mia Terra food plaza in the outer ring. The harnesses tightened, and the car pulled away from the Virgin Galactic Center and sped down the freeway tube. “There will be food at Mia Terra you can eat, I hope?” she said.

  “I have my dinner in my bag,” Carr replied. “So go wherever you like.”

  As the pressure of gravity returned, Carr felt it in his body—more blood circulating to his lower torso and legs, a mild sense of queasiness as his stomach and organs settled downward. His clothes flattened damply against his skin, and it occurred to him that he stank of sweat. He always showered back in his apartment (zero gravity showers were truly awful) and now he would have to reek throughout dinner.

  He glanced over at Risha, in trim white pants and a matching sleeveless top made of some gauzy, cooling material. It probably kept her Martian metabolism—designed for dry, bitter cold and lower oxygen—from overheating, but it also suggested “tropical vacation” and hugged her body in all the right places. He looked back down at himself, in gym clothes thrown over his training shorts. He pulled at the fastening band of his gloves with his teeth, tugging them off, irritated at himself.

  “You’re quiet,” Risha said.

  “Thinking about my fight,” he lied.

  Mia Terra food plaza bustled at all hours with pre- and post-show theater patrons, shoppers wandering over from the main strip of high-end stores, and the usual crowd of casino and hotel customers. Risha made straight for a place with a short line of two Martians and one Terran, which had a single item on the menu. Carr studied it curiously when she returned. It appeared to be a steaming bowl of deep purple stew.