One

by Nancy Kress

  He got to the Gardens an hour ahead of fight time, only slightly hung over. There, sitting on the pavement by the alley door as if they’d been there for hours, were Anne and Gail. Shit. Anne jumped up when she saw Zack. Gail got to her feet more slowly, her eyes on Zack’s face. He didn’t need any new level of consciousness to know what his sister would say.

  “You can’t fight today! The doctor said—”

  “Let me go by, Anne. How did you even know about the fight?”

  “It was in the paper. Zack—”

  Of course it was, but who knew Anne would look at the sports section? No, she hadn’t—Gail had, the interfering bitch. Gently, Zack took hold of Anne’s hands. Fear poured off her like tarry oil. “Don’t worry, Annie. Really. I got it covered.”

  She’s going to make that sister-mouth and hug me.

  Anne did. “You can’t get this ‘covered’ by wish-fulfillment, Zack! Your head isn’t healed yet, you can’t risk getting hit, you—”

  Gail said, “Give it up, Anne. I told you. Anyway, he won’t get hit, will you, Zack? Nobody’ll even lay a glove on him.”

  Zack shot her a glance, trying to remember how much he’d said to Anne, to anybody, when Gail was around. Whatever it was, Gail understood. She knew. Her contempt for him was still there, in spades, but now it was mixed with an uneasy wariness. Behind Anne’s back, Zack shot her the finger.

  He peeled Anne off him, went inside, and shut the door firmly. Jerry waited in a tiny dressing room with fist-sized holes in its peeling walls. One look and Zack knew that Jerry not only expected Zack to lose this fight, but also that Jerry had bet against him.

  Think again, old man.

  The rest of the hour before the fight, as he got dressed and warmed up and heard the crowd fill the Garden, Zack focused on not focusing on anyone. He kept his head down—although even the stance and shifts of people’s feet told him more than he wanted to know about them. Then he was walking, head down, along the aisle to climb into the ring. The corner man, who was also the cut man because Jerry was too cheap to pay for both, spread a thin layer of petroleum jelly over Zack’s face to help control cuts that Zack wasn’t planning on getting.

  “In this corner, weight 171, Zack Murphy!”

  Zack raised his glove.

  “In this corner, weight 173, Thomas Cawkins!”

  Cawkins was taller than Zack, with a longer reach. A dancer, moving in and out, jabbing at the air for effect even before he left his corner. A shit-eating grin.

  He’s going to move in suddenly and fast.

  Cawkins did, counting on his longer reach to punch at Zack’s head. But Zack was already inside, under the jab. Surprise jerked on Cawkins’s face.

  He’s going to step back and bring up his right in an uppercut.

  Zack circled away.

  He’s going to bring up his right—no, it’s a feint, he’s going for a left hook—

  It grazed Zack but only a graze, and now Zack was sure he would know Cawkins’s every move a fraction of a second before he made it. Zack began to attack.

  The crowd was screaming but Zack barely heard it. Rather, he did hear it, but only distantly, like waves crashing on rocks. The ref was there, circling and hovering, but he barely registered on Zack. Only Cawkins filled his senses. Cawkins couldn’t get near Zack, but his defenses were still good, and it took a while for Zack to land a punch. The crowd noise died down: nobody was pounding anybody. A few boos arose.

  Then Zack saw it: the opening he needed. He went in low, looping a left to Cawkins’s side, following it with a right to the head. The fighters closed and Zack held Cawkins tight and began to batter. This had always been Zack’s ace: he was incredibly strong. Cawkins had reach and speed instead of strength, and now both were neutralized. Zack hit him again and again. The watchers screamed.

  When the ref made them separate, Cawkins fell to his knees. He got up, and Zack felt elation lift him onto the balls of his feet. He had the son-of-a-bitch. The bell rang.

  In the next round he played with Cawkins, anticipating his every move, putting on a show for the crowd, enjoying himself immensely. When Zack finally went in for the big hit, Cawkins was bloody and exhausted. Zack didn’t have a mark on him. The medic rushed over to Cawkins. The announcer was screaming what any idiot could see, that Zack had won.

  He walked back down the aisle, savoring the shouts of “Mur-phy! Mur-phy!” In his dressing room, Jerry looked dazed.

  Zack said, “Don’t let my sister in here. And don’t you ever bet against me again.”

  * * *

  To Zack’s surprise, Anne didn’t try to see him again. But she sent him texts every day. He read them, because she was his sister, because she had practically raised him after Mom took a powder and the old man bought it, because he owed her. But he only read each of them once. Like all of Anne’s texts, they were long and written in good English, which irritated Zack. Who texted like that? Only Anne.

  I want to explain this to you, Zack, at least as much as I understand it. Think of a brain like a city. Part of it has houses, part has shops, part of it factories, part of it is a newspaper printing office. Now think of your consciousness like police. The part of the city that has houses doesn’t know every minute what’s going on in the part that has the factories, but the cops can go to any part of the city. Even if they can’t get into the factories or the houses.

  Not without a warrant, Zack thought.

  Somehow, your brain is different. The police DO know what’s going on in the news office. News comes in all the time, huge amounts of it, and you know consciously what it is. The news comes through your senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste. The news is about other people—their body language and facial expressions and so on. Everybody reads other people’s sensory signals, but you do it in a more integrated way than other people do: the input sensory signals and your conscious ability to use them to predict. Does this sound like what’s happening to you?

  Zack didn’t reply.

  You never answer my texts. I just want to know you’re reading them!

  Zack had another beer in a bar on Third Avenue, with older fighters who’d never given him the time of day before now.

  I talked again to Dr. Norwood and there is such a thing as “acquired savantism,” where some kinds of brain damage actually bring out talents in patients that they didn’t have before. It’s even been demonstrated in controlled experiments. Dr. Norwood wants to see you again. Please answer me!

  Zack was surprised by how much he missed Jazzy. One night, he picked up a girl who had seen him fight the night before. He didn’t even have to pay for it. If he was drunk enough, he found, he didn’t get her “sensory signals” and didn’t have to become her. Sex was just sex again.

  Zack, do you understand what I’m telling you? Please answer!

  Zack understood, all right. He understood that Anne was dumbing down everything she told him, trying to make it fit into his slow, stupid, little-brother brain.

  Zack, here’s my last text on this subject. Just think about it, please. Integrated consciousness—a part of the city knowing what other places are doing—might involve other sections of the brain, too. Are you experiencing that? Is anything else happening in your brain besides your being able to predict how people are going to move and feel?

  The non-voices.

  Most of the time Zack had learned to ignore them, just as he’d learned to ignore “sensory input” from people he didn’t want to focus on. Once he’d seen a horse with blinders on so it wouldn’t be spooked by traffic on either side of it. This was like that. He didn’t even like to think about the non-voices, until Anne’s texts made him. Were they another part of his brain trying to get in touch with his police?

  Christ, if he kept on thinking like this, he’d end up as loopy as his sister. No, that wasn’t fair—Anne wasn’t the one going loopy. Frustrated, guilty, overwhelmed—he should answer her texts!—Zack ordered another drink.

  * * *

 
He won more fights, all spring and all summer, each time against fighters rated a lot higher than he was. Going up the ladder. The last fight was even picked up for re-showing by ESPN. For the first time in his life, he had a bank account rather than using the blood-sucking check-cashing joints. There was even money in the account. Jerry was exultant, talking about title fights. In one fight, Zack got hit in the head, which made him afraid that he might lose his “integrated consciousness,” but nothing happened except a blinding headache. Well, it hadn’t been that hard of a hit. The path upward looked dazzling, and Zack was loving every minute of it: the attention, the parties, the girls (after enough booze). He stayed away from the offers of drugs, though. That shit was always the beginning of the end. Zack wasn’t going to have an end.

  Then he saw the dog.

  There weren’t many dogs in this part of this city, just dirty feral cats that lived on rats and garbage and hissed at any human fool enough to approach them. This dog looked out of place. Big, the color of dead leaves, short hair—Zack didn’t know anything about dog breeds. It wore a leather collar with tags and looked well cared for, its fur glossy as it sat in the middle of the sidewalk in front of Jerry’s office building. The animal blocked the crumbling cement steps up to the front door.

  “Move,” Zack said. He didn’t like dogs, especially large dogs. One had bitten him badly when he was four, a monster belonging to a neighbor when he and Anne still lived on Tremaine Street with drunken old Dad, who had only taken Zack to the ER when Anne, eleven, got hysterical.

  The dog stood up and growled at Zack. It didn’t like him, either.

  Zack froze. Was it going to attack? No. How did he know that? He just did. This dog was scared, not mad. Despite himself, Zack took a step forward. It felt like his body moved itself. Weight shifted, spine straight, shoulders squared, breathing even and steady, eyes on the mutt.

  The dog lay down on its belly and put its head on its paws.

  What the fuck? How did he know how to make the dog do that? The mutt was acting like Zack was God, or at least leader of the pack. What pack? What part of Zack’s brain city was integrating with his cruising head cops to produce this behavior?

  Unnerved, Zack stepped over the prostrate dog and went into the building. “Jerry, there’s a damn dog outside and—”

  Jerry wasn’t alone. Two men sat in the soiled armchairs of Jerry’s tiny office; both rose when Zack entered. They wore expensive suits. Jerry wore a dazed look.

  “Zack, this is Mr. Donovan and, um—”

  “Jim Solkonov, Mr. Murphy. May I call you Zack?”

  He’s going to hold out his hand and smile. He’s intensely interested in me. He has something he wants to offer.

  Jerry blurted, “They’re from TV!”

  “USNAF,” Solkonov said. “United Sports Network for America’s Fans. We’re fairly new, committed to bringing America more, and more interesting, choices in sports. Maybe you already watch us. Zack,”—he paused, brought up his hand, smiled widely—“have you ever watched any bouts of ultimate fighting?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Then you know how the sport has been watered down. Twenty-five years ago they started with ‘No rules!’ Then they added in more and more rules until now a fighter can hardly do anything: no headbutting, no elbow strikes, only approved kinds of kicks. Foot stomping out, foot stomping in, gotta wear gloves—it might as well be a dance recital! We want to start something new, a genuinely exciting sport.”

  “Yeah? Like what?” Zack wasn’t sure he liked Solkonov, but the guy was going to offer him something big. It showed in every line of him.

  “We’re calling it ‘level fighting.’ Matches will take place on a stage, not a ring or octagon, with four different levels at varying heights, and no rules at all. I saw you fight, Zack, and you’re uncanny—it’s almost like you can read your opponent’s mind and know what he’s going to do. In that last fight, Saladino never touched you, not even once. You’d be a natural for level fighting.”

  Jerry blurted, “No rules at all? You’ll never get it through. Authorities will shut you down.”

  “Not if the matches take place in another country. We already have an island country that wants us.”

  If that was true, it meant big money was involved. Well, duh—these guys had a TV network. But Zack kept his face neutral. “I’m not a martial arts fighter. Those ultimate fighting guys all have years of training in that stuff.”

  “Yes, we know. But we’re not looking for fancy moves. We want this to feel primitive, like guys in a jungle. The basic aggressive primate.”

  Donavan said, “We’re thinking of animal-skin costumes.”

  “No,” Solkonov said irritably, “we’re not. Nothing gimmicky. This is going to be raw and basic. We think there’ll be a huge worldwide audience.”

  “No rules?” Jerry said. He’s going to scratch his head the way he does when he’s worried, he’s going to lean forward, he’s going to lift his chin …

  “Well, two,” Solkonov said. “No drugs of any kind, and we’re serious about that. Major, state-of-the-art testing. And no killing. But that’s it.”

  Zack said, “What if someone dies by mistake?”

  Donavan said, “Like that never happens in boxing?”

  Zack said nothing, knowing as well as anybody the list of men who had died shortly after matches, from head trauma or internal bleeding. Sisnorio, Alcázar, Flores, Johnson, Sanchez. More. Jerry shifted his hams on his chair; he was going to ask about money.

  “What kind of cash are we talking about here, gentlemen? And prize money with or without signing sweeteners and bonuses?”

  “All the good things, Jerry,” Solkonov said, pulling a paper from his pocket. “Here’s our offer.”

  Jerry took the paper, which had printing large enough for Zack to read it over Jerry’s shoulder. Zack felt his mouth fall open.

  “Listen,” Solkonov said earnestly, “we know that our potential fighters are taking enormous risks. We’re looking for risk takers, because those are the guys who don’t surrender, not even when the situation is dangerous. Those are the guys with courage and balls, am I right? Those are the guys we want, and our backer knows that to get them, he’s got to pay well.”

  Jerry managed to get out, “Who is the backer?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you that. All I can say is that he’s not American, he’s a fan of true courage, and he thinks it should be adequately rewarded.”

  Bullshit. But the money wasn’t. Zack tried to stop his mind from racing ahead to the life he could have with that kind of money. My God, the life he could have .…

  Jerry said, “We need to talk it over, of course. Where can we reach you?”

  “The Plantagenet Hotel. Our number’s on the bottom of the offer, which of course is not a contract—that comes from our lawyer. But we need to know by tonight, gentlemen. We’re talking to other fighters who are close to signing.”

  He wasn’t lying, Zack knew. There were other candidates. Zack was not at the top of their list.

  Jerry said, “We’ll call by tonight.”

  “Great.”

  When they’d left, Jerry turned to Zack. Jerry said nothing; he didn’t have to. His old, paunchy body had become a young kid’s yearning toward a pony.

  Zack said, “I don’t know yet. Don’t crowd me. I need to think.”

  “About what?”

  Zack didn’t answer. He went out, tossing over his shoulder, “Back by six o’clock. Plenty of time.”

  “Zack—”

  “Six o’clock.”

  On the sidewalk, the dog was gone.

  * * *

  The non-voices were stronger now. His own mind, warning him about self-preservation? His ancestors, doing the same damn thing? That explanation was one of the crackpot hits he’d gotten when he’d googled “voices in the head.” Another was “schizophrenia.” Zack stopped googling.

  He headed to the nearest bar, a blessedly dim Irish pub. Th
ree men sat at the bar, spaced well away from each other, drinking away their troubles at two in the afternoon. Zack downed three double Scotches in quick succession, which shut up the non-voices. Then he took out his phone and played with it while he tried to think.

  Good money—really good—just for signing. And if he won fights, more money than he’d ever dreamed of.

  No rules, with all the viciousness that implied.

  His Gift—that was how he thought of it now—which would always tell him what his opponents were about to do.

  Going against fighters who were trained in mixed martial arts, because Solkonov had been lying when he’d said the owners weren’t “looking for fancy moves.”

  More money than he’d ever dreamed of.

  No rules.

  All at once he wanted to talk this over with somebody. Not Jerry, who always followed the money. Not Anne, who would be horrified and would lecture. Not Anthony or Lou, who both had started acting so jealous and huffy that Zack had moved into his own place. His fingers moved almost by themselves to call Jazzy.

  The call went straight to voice mail. He left a message. “Hi, it’s Zack. Will you call me?” And then the thing that, he’d learned as young as fifteen, always worked with women: “I really need you.”

  * * *

  “You can’t,” Jazzy said. “It’s way too dangerous.”

  They sat on either side of a campfire somewhere way the hell up in the mountains. Jazzy was at an off-season ski lodge with, of all things, a bunch of middle-school kids, some sort of volunteer work in a community center. Jazzy did that kind of do-good shit. When Zack had been in middle school, nobody had ever organized a weekend field trip to any damn ski lodge.

  But he’d been able to persuade Jazzy to leave her charges with the other counselors for a few hours. He’d called Jerry and said he’d give him an answer by eight o’clock. He’d borrowed Anthony’s wheezy old Chevy and followed Jazzy’s directions up winding roads, through dark woods that crowded each side of the road, to the ass-end of the world, and then he’d let her lead him away from the lighted lodge to this clearing where they’d have some privacy. He had muck on his shoes and damp on his ass from sitting on the ground, and his side closest to Jazzy’s fire was too hot while his other side was too cold, and after all that, Jazzy said the same thing Anne would have. Although without Anne’s nurse-list of injuries he could get plus all the reasons he didn’t want them.