“The … job?”
The little man snorted. “Where have you been? The climactic event of the festival will be a Nullboxing match between Azziz and Thu, the North African champion.”
He remembered the man who lay sleeping in the box. In body, in musculature, they were nearly twins. For a moment he was stupefied, did not hear the babble outside the tent as it flowed around him, and filled him.
His body felt different.
He held a hand up in front of his face, and it seemed a stranger’s hand, not his at all.
“Why?” he said at last.
“If you can win the tournament tonight, you will meet President Swarna. You will shake his hand. And then you will pass him this.”
Jacobs turned over his hand. It seemed to be empty. Aubry looked closer, where Jacobs pointed. He saw a thin wedge of plastic, clear plastic, perhaps half an inch square.
Aubry’s implanted cybernetics whispered to him.
Adhesive, both sides. Nanoassassins encapsulated on the top side and layer of polyacrylic to protect you. It will adhere to his skin, penetrate. Death within seventy-two hours, from apparent heart attack.
Aubry took the tiny chip from Jacobs and studied it.
Death, nestled in the palm of his hand.
Death for Phillipe Swarna. And life for him.
“And all I have to do to shake hands with Swarna?”
“And whip Thu, the sixth-toughest man in the world. By his rules.”
Aubry looked at the invisible thing in his hand, then back at Jacobs. “Piece of cake,” he said.
13
Aubry walked smoothly through the crowd, followed by Jacobs. It parted for him, as if waves before the prow of a great ship. He looked neither to left nor to right, but seemed guided by some internal sensor.
The festival was a celebration of the opening of Swarnaville Spaceport, with clowns, and food stands, and acrobats, and dancers, as well as exhibits of every kind. The Nullboxing was just another dimension of spectacle. There was a part within Aubry that could not understand how anyone could consider it “just another” spectacle.
Two men, locked in the most extraordinary combat, risking life and limb for the entertainment of the people below. He was a warrior, and Thu was a warrior.…
(Although there was a part within him that whispered that, although Thu, a former world champion, was considered in decline, no living man could take a Nullboxer in zero gravity without actual experience. The force vectors were unique to the situation. It was simply impossible.)
He presented his passes at the appropriate checkpoints and was probed by security apparatus. The guards nodded, with grudging acknowledgment, and once, just once, he saw one of their eyes open wide, as if receiving a reading he hadn’t expected.
He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. He was approaching a moment he had awaited for half his life. Today he was a Nullboxer, and no matter what happened later, nothing could ever take this moment away from him.
14
Jacobs closed the door behind them and stripped Aubry’s robe away. He hovered solicitously. He peered into Aubry’s eyes, and examined his body, poking and prodding, and making O’s with his tightly pursed little mouth.
“You’re looking great,” he said, in pidgin Swahili. Then he lapsed into English, almost as if talking to himself.
“You look terrific. Better than ever, you know?” Aubry noticed that Jacobs’s left eye was artificial. “You’re gonna do it. You can take Thu, and when you do, you will get the laurel directly from the hand of the Man himself. I heard it on the grapevine. He’s coming. He’ll be here, regardless of what they say. Wouldn’t miss it.”
Jacobs smiled grimly, as if nurturing a private joke. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Aubry lay back on the table, feeling his body, the machine that was his instrument, as it rested in preparation. There was a cool towel over his eyes, and as he inhaled and exhaled slowly, he felt its weight against the lids of his eyes.
And then he fell deeply asleep.
15
Two hours later, they came for him. There were three Japanese men, with a portable medical scanner, and the suits and other apparatus he would need for the coming journey. They checked all of his vital signs, measured them against his records, and found him in excellent health.
Deep within Aubry’s body, a series of beacons performed flawlessly, providing a false “shadow” to the instruments, adjusting Aubry’s medical signs so that they matched Azziz’s profile.
Jacobs scowled. “My boy is in perfect condition! We don’t need all of this crap.”
The smiling, professional Japanese nodded. Aubry was hooked to a series of neurological testers. One at a time, they fired his voluntary muscle groups, observed the reactions, continued to make him leap and twitch until he was covered with a fine sheen of perspiration.
Then, they again tested his cardiovascular recovery rate, his blood pressure, skin conductivity, and a dozen other indicators, and nodded approvingly.
“Mr. Azziz,” they said in halting Swahili. “You are even better conditioned than your last check. Good luck to you.”
Aubry/Azziz nodded.
He was led down a long narrow hallway, to an elevator. The hallway hummed, as if enormous pressure were upon it from above, and Aubry knew himself to be beneath the shuttle dock.
He stepped into the cubicle, and it began to rise, humming. Aubry and Jacobs were silent, until the little man looked at him, and spoke, his eyes nervous. The little man was talking for the invisible cameras.
“This one is for all the marbles, kid. You get past Thu, and it’s the international circuit, for sure.”
Aubry felt excitement pulsing in his temples. A tiny voice whispered to him, boiling his blood:
How many years have you spent wanting this? Craving this? How many times have you dreamed of entering the cradle of the heavens, of taxing your body and mind against the best that the world has to offer? How many times?
And were there times when you awakened in the middle of the night, and went to exercise, to stretch, or to tax your heart and lungs because on some level you knew that this day would come? Is there a part of you which understood these things?
Are you prescient? Can you see the clouds even now above you, awaiting the steel and ceramic touch of this shuttle—
He was guided along a vertical ladder, and strapped into his seat by a technician, who slapped him on the shoulder.
There was another compartment on the other side of the wall. A compartment wherein rested, reclined, awaited …
Thu. Tradition dictated that the two combatants have no sight of each other until the moment of truth. So the bays were sealed and compartmentalized, each man brought in separately.
He turned, looking back over his shoulder, wondering what Thu was feeling at the moment.
Time passed, as the thousand system checks on the Japanese shuttle were completed. A digitalized monitor in front of him gave the countdown.
Twice, the flow of numbers retreated, as some small glitch was detected that required the attention of the technicians, and then the numbers continued to march onward, toward the inevitable.
In front of him, Jacobs turned around, and gave him a shaky thumbs-up.
“I’m always nervous about now,” he said.
“You and me both.”
The motors roared.
16
In the crowd over a mile away from the launch site, Jenna and Bloodeagle watched as the red and white cylinder of the Japanese Tsunami-style shuttle roared, clouds of white-hot sparks and gas erupting from the boosters. The ground shook as the vehicle climbed, slowly at first as if mounting some agonizingly steep ladder, then growling throatily and leaping into the clouds. An impossibly bright tongue of gas and flame seared Jenna’s eyes.
“There isn’t a damned thing we can do to help him now.”
“Isn’t that the truth.”
Jenna smiled bleakly. “What say I buy you a brew, and we enjoy th
e show?”
Miles laughed and offered her his arm. She hesitated a bare moment, and then slipped her arm through his, and together they went in search of a beer vendor.
17
Aubry felt the acceleration right down to his bones. It was a driving, pulsing pressure that flattened his ears against his head, and the flesh of his cheeks against his skull. In a recessed cavity in front of him, a flat-screen monitor displayed the angle of the ground camera: a sleek ship rising on a tongue of flame, catapulted into the sky.
For a moment, he felt a sliver of fear. So much power! So much—
And then the fear faded, and something very like wonder took over. After the long thrust that carried him up and up, he slid finally into a state where, instead of the constant sensation of pressure, there was …
No pressure at all.
And, in fact, no weight.
If not for the constraints of his belt, he might have floated entirely free.
Jacobs glanced at him. “Wild, huh?” he croaked. “I never get used to it. How are you feeling?”
The little man was talking in idiomatic English instead of Swahili. Aubry dimly understood it, but something kept him from answering. The little man’s face went through a spectrum of changes. Confusion, understanding, a flash of fear, and then adjustment.
“Sorry,” he said in pidgin. “I forget sometime. How are you?”
“Ready,” Aubry said.
He looked back over his shoulder. In the compartment behind them was Thu.
18
Aubry’s muscles ached for movement. It had been seventy minutes since the launch, and they were gliding into docking position. There was nothing to see but the confined space of the capsule. There came a gentle, oh, so gentle bump as the ship docked, and then there was, somewhere distant, a series of clicks and hissing sounds. Pressure equalizing, perhaps.
A door opened to his side. A door in the side of the shuttle? It wasn’t the one he had entered through, and he hadn’t really noticed it.
A metal tunnel loomed beyond it.
Aubry unlocked his belts, and pushed himself very gently, afraid of the lack of gravity. He drifted away, disoriented, senses struggling to adjust. Dammit! Who was watching? Who might expect Faakud Azziz to have undergone extensive zero-g practice?
He pulled himself hand over hand along the passageway, his toes grazing the ground.
Above him, the Earth loomed like a swollen blue teat. A pressure-suited woman on a scooter of some sort hovered just outside the tunnel, videoing for a distant audience.
An audience. Aubry’s audience. Again, something uneasy stirred within him, and he took a moment to study the hazy colors of the globe above him.
Wonder stirred within him, and his eyes, inexplicably, misted up. Why should it move him in such a manner? It was the same planet he had seen a thousand times, in globes and newsfax and holos.…
And yet … and yet …
Something within Aubry’s chest felt as if it were going to tear open. Tears welled in his eyes, ballooning without rolling down his face or breaking free. He blinked hard, and a tiny droplet of water floated free of his face, drifting like liquid smoke.
19
Aubry entered a red-tiled chamber. The door closed behind him. Sets of looped thongs were affixed to the walls. He went hand over hand until he could place his wrists in one set of loops, and allowed Jacobs to place his feet in another. The loops pulled taut, and his manager began to work on him, massaging.
It seemed … so long since he had allowed someone to stroke and touch his body like this. So long. And barriers compressed, even though they wouldn’t disintegrate.
When Jacobs finished with him, he was gleaming with sweat, completely relaxed, and ready. And limp.
Jacobs leaned close, and began to speak.
“You know what this is for?”
Aubry nodded.
“This is for everything. Everything you have worked for all of your life …”
The door opened with a shush, and a stocky Japanese woman in overalls floated in.
“I’m Sawa. Referee. I know that you are familiar with the rules of Nullboxing, but it is still up to me to remind you of them. There will be no biting or scratching. No striking into the joints once the joints are pinned. When I say, ‘Break,’ you will break.
“The fight is scheduled for three ten-minute rounds. More than enough time to die—so be alert, and protect yourself at all times. Good luck to you.” She pulled herself out of the way, exposing the transparent tunnel beyond. It was as wide as Aubry was tall. Plastic ropes attached to its walls ran the length of the tunnel.
A great sense of calm descended upon Aubry as he swam along the lines. The inside of the clear tube was bubbled with some sort of yielding substance. When he bumped against it, it gave spongily.
The entire thing rotated slowly. The Earth was to his side now, a blue-white frosted crystal, vast beyond his imaginings, hypnotic, calming. Concentrating on the task at hand made his temples pound.
The bubble was twelve meters across, and there was a second tunnel leading into it, from the far side, painted red. Aubry’s side was painted blue. There were two robot cornermen, one blue and one red. Nipples extruded from the walls of those corners, through which the trainers could send a variety of recharging fluids.
He could see Thu now, swimming in from the far side. And in his heart, he saw the crowds far below.
This was only a local event. The cargo bays of both shuttles must have been filled with goods to be delivered to one of the space stations or the power satellites. No sporting event, by itself, could justify the cost of a launch. Invariably, it was combined with some industrial payload.
His muscles felt loose and springy. He perspired slightly and was grateful that the air temperature was about seventy degrees. It kept him warm, but not too warm. The exertions to come would take care of that.
The door ahead of him at the end of the tunnel opened to his slightest touch, and he entered.
Thu entered at the same moment. They swam about the bubble, making the customary three circumnavigations, and then settled, Aubry in the blue corner, and Thu in the red.
And then the referee entered the ring.
Sawa was compact and muscular, as she would have to be to cope with the action to come. She bounced around the bubble carefully, and tested walls and handholds.
Thu was a stocky Mongol, almost six and a half feet tall, and broad. Very thick through the body, he still moved like a ballerina.
His arms and legs seemed as flexible and coordinated as a squid’s. They reached out almost on their own, finding the little anchoring loops set into the walls, testing the grips, and turning him around and around. He scrambled about the inner surface of the bubble like a monkey.
Aubry pushed himself off, spinning, coming very close to Thu, who ignored him. Thu bounced off the far side and returned to his point of origin. He nodded with satisfaction, and then came to a rest.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the entire globe vibrated in Arabic. “We present, at the blue station, the regional champion of the PanAfrican Republic, Faakud ‘Suliman the Conqueror’ Azziz!”
Aubry nodded, his eyes riveted on Thu. He had watched the man for three minutes now, looking for a flaw in his psychological or physical conditioning. So far, zip.
Thu looked back at him with the steady, neutral eyes of a machine.
The corded muscle in the man’s arms flexed impressively. His red spandex leotard clung to every muscle of his perfectly conditioned torso.
Aubry pushed himself out toward the center of the bubble. Without a moment’s hesitation, Thu did the same thing.
They floated out toward each other, each on a glide path that minimized tumbling. Neither was fool enough to present his back to a potentially lethal opponent. Their arms were splayed like a pair of cats’. Aubry felt his body cant slightly to the side, presenting Thu with a shoulder.
Shit! That was a gravity move, a move that worked whe
n rapid changes of balance and posture were possible. Tactical advantage to Thu! He tried to scrunch himself into a ball, to increase the speed of his revolution, but Thu was on him in a flash, spun him, and now was coming in behind him. Legs as solid as pillars clamped around his waist, and began to squeeze.
Linked together, they both spun against the wall, and Aubry gripped for one of the handholds, and found it. He torqued his body powerfully, and hammered Thu against the wall. The wall was too soft to do any damage, or even drive the wind from Thu’s lungs, but as he rebounded, Aubry bent back and caught him in the ribs with an elbow.
They broke, drifting toward the sides, spinning. Hands found handles and increased the torque. From the corner of his eye, Aubry saw Sawa flash to the side with uncanny agility, avoiding the thrashing bodies.
Thu caught his wrist, and hammered a powerful leg up into his ribs.
Aubry twisted away, backpedaling, fighting panic. He strove to regain some sense of control, or at least participation. Thu was dictating the pace of the fight, and unless Aubry could steal it back, he was screwed. Smelling blood, Thu swarmed over him, seemingly everywhere at once.
Aubry’s world was dark with confusion and pain. All of his skill was evaporating. His strength, gone. His endurance, caught in his chest like a bird struggling to escape the nest.
Gone.
Thu struck again, directly under the chin, and the world exploded into red. He tasted blood against his mouthpiece. Thoughts came in fragments, reflexes refusing to transfer from brain to limbs. Thu was a machine, coming at him from every conceivable angle, utterly without mercy.
Aubry knew terror. A childlike cry of anguish and—
(Daddy. I’m afraid, Daddy—)
(Shhhh. Daddy’s here. And no one’s going to hurt you.)
And there was another blow, and then Thu was behind him, torquing him around. Aubry knew that he was being maneuvered into position for a merciless hold, and he knew that he was supposed to tense, to spin.
Firedance Page 21