Master of Formalities

by Scott Meyer

  Every spectator, Frederain included, murmured, “It is the prophecy.”

  7.

  With the reciting of the prophecy completed, the sports commenced. Competitors reported to their mats, and their fathers used the spectator rapid transit system. Loud music was piped over speakers, and the big screen displayed various matches in progress.

  Hundreds of boys and young men, including Rayzo, stood gathered in the many competitors’ lounges—large open rooms next to the arena—wearing their sports shorts, watching the big screen feed, waiting for their turn. At one end of each lounge was a tunnel leading to the arena floor. At seemingly random intervals the music would fade and the announcer would list two numbers and a location. Competitors 3-8-7-2 and 3-8-2-1, report to mat 1-9-3. Repeat: Competitors 3-8-7-2 and 3-8-2-1, report to mat 1-9-3.”

  Each competitor would look at the front of his shorts to see if his number had been called. The rankings were updated in real time, so memorizing your number was useless. When a competitor’s number was called, he would step onto the rapid transit pod that would take him to his ring. In a different lounge, the other competitor would do the same, and up in the stands, both of their fathers would check the official program, which had been delivered to their papers as soon as they entered the stadium. Once each father recognized his son’s most current ranking, he would use the spectator rapid transit to reach the appropriate mat.

  Soon, Rayzo’s number was called. He walked to the pod, acutely aware that every competitor in the lounge was looking at his shorts.

  The pod zipped down the dark tunnel, then emerged onto the chaotic arena floor. The music was deafening. All around him hundreds of sports matches were in progress, just beginning, or just ending. At the speed his pod was moving there was no way to actually see what was going on in any of these matches, not that it mattered. He needed to focus on his own match. Anything else was a distraction.

  Rayzo was relieved to reach the mat and enter the sound-deadening field that kept out the music and the crowd noise, making it possible to once again focus. His pod was the second to arrive, beaten only by the one carrying his competitor’s father, an average-looking man who did a better-than-average job of hiding his terror when His Lordship, Frederain Jakabitus, arrived and sat next to him in the VIP booth.

  Once Rayzo’s opponent arrived, the two competitors took their starting positions on the mat. Rayzo sized up his opposition. The other boy looked slightly older than him, and he was ranked higher, but only by a little over sixty places, which was practically nothing given the number of competitors. While the boy’s father was clearly intimidated by His Lordship, the boy was not intimidated by Rayzo. They were on the mat. Not only was anything that happened during a fair match allowed, this was probably the only chance the guy would ever get in his life to interact directly with a member of the ruling family. He would fight harder to beat Rayzo, just to have the story to tell.

  Sports was a fast game, consisting of only two phases, both of which were strictly timed. It began with the advantage round, where the two competitors battled to see who would start the challenge round with the advantage.

  The advantage round took exactly fifteen seconds, which was quite long enough.

  Rayzo and his competitor stood facing each other at arm’s length in the center of the mat. The mat began to pulsate and display a countdown from five. When the countdown reached zero, the mat turned red, and Rayzo and his competitor started slapping at each other as quickly as they could. Whichever of them landed more palm-first, open-hand slaps on the face of their opponent in fifteen seconds would win the advantage.

  Strategy was involved. One could block, but a blocking hand could not slap, so you had to pick your moment.

  The oil with which all of the competitors were coated made attempted blows and grabs slide off more readily. Long ago it had also been used to conduct a very small current that could be measured to detect a hit. Of course, utilitics made this quite obsolete, but the oil’s conductive property remained useful for other aspects of the game.

  Rayzo and his opponent were both slapping furiously. In the VIP box, Lord Jakabitus was on his feet, shouting, “Slap him, boy! Slap him!”

  The opposing father remained silent, sitting on his hands and looking acutely uncomfortable. His discomfort only grew when the advantage round ended in victory for his son.

  “No! Ngaah!” Frederain said, flopping down into his seat. He took a deep breath, then turned to the other father and said, “Oh, well. Good for you. You must be proud.”

  “Yes, My Lord,” the other man said, sounding as if he had taken it as a command.

  The competitors now had fifteen seconds to prepare for the challenge round. Rayzo’s opponent had the advantage. From his slightly superior height, he sneered down at Rayzo as if he were looking at a bug.

  Good, Rayzo thought. He has no idea that I threw the advantage round.

  “What’s your dominant hand?” the competitor asked, as was his prerogative.

  “Left,” Rayzo lied, as was his prerogative.

  The competitor reached with his right hand and grasped Rayzo’s left wrist firmly. They both bent their knees, hunched their shoulders, and waited for the challenge round to begin.

  Again, the mat pulsated and counted from five. At zero, the mat took on the segmented line pattern of Rayzo’s practice mat back at the palace. The challenge round was on. Rayzo had one minute to either score more points than his opponent or throw him into the gutter.

  Lord Jakabitus was back on his feet, shouting “Beat him, boy! Beat him! Boy!”

  The other boy’s grip on his wrist forced Rayzo into a slightly awkward stance, meaning he had a bit less leverage than his opponent. The two feinted at each other with their free arms, trying to force a mistake. This only went on for a few moments before Rayzo lost traction and fell backward.

  Lord Jakabitus shrieked in horror at the sight of his son tumbling to the mat, but of course, Lord Jakabitus had missed the end of practice. In their post-practice conversation, Hartchar and Rayzo had discussed many topics: subterfuge, strategic withdrawal, feigning weakness to gain the advantage. Rayzo had found it quite enlightening.

  Rayzo’s back hit the mat. He was careful to keep his face pointed toward the ceiling, and was delighted not to hear the tone that signified a point scored for his opponent. Because of the firm grip he held on Rayzo’s left wrist, the opponent was tugged forward by Rayzo’s weight and forced to move his forward leg to remain upright. Of course, the opponent had a choice of where to put that foot—on the mat or on Rayzo. He chose to place it on Rayzo’s chest, pinning him down.

  Rayzo heard his father let out a long, anguished wail. From his father’s perspective, all his worst nightmares were coming true.

  The opponent sneered down at Rayzo. Rayzo smiled up at him, then used his free dominant hand to strike his opponent in the back of his load-bearing knee. The opponent’s leg buckled, and he fell to the mat in a heap. Rayzo moved on top of his opponent and rolled him over. When the other boy’s face made contact with the mat, the segment it touched glowed and a chime played, signifying that Rayzo had scored. Not that he could hear it, or anything else, over the sound of Lord Jakabitus yelling in triumph.

  Rayzo had his opponent pinned down, of which he took full advantage by lifting and lowering the other boy’s head to make his face contact the mat again and again, scoring additional points each time.

  When the minute was up, Rayzo was very much victorious. This was signified in the traditional manner by his father rushing onto the mat, holding his son’s hand high, and proclaiming, as fathers had for generations, “It is the prophecy!”

  Rayzo used the same trick in the next four matches he fought. One of the advantages of there being so many competitors was that it was rare to fight the same opponent twice and next to impossible to watch anyone else compete, so if you found a strategy that worke
d, you could use it all day.

  Rayzo knew he was doing well. You don’t win five matches in a row without noticing it. He didn’t look at his rankings too often. There were many competitors who did, constantly gazing down at their own shorts, but Rayzo found it unseemly. He did notice a profound change in his father’s tone. Lord Jakabitus was still shouting, but instead of commanding him to do things he was already trying to do, he was congratulating him for things he had already done, which was a nice change.

  When Rayzo was called for his sixth and most likely final match of the day, Frederain arrived at the mat first. It had been an eventful meet, and Lord Jakabitus was very tired, but in a buoyant mood. He took his seat in the VIP box and waited patiently for his son to come and defeat another competitor.

  The competitor’s father was next to arrive, a jolly, portly man with a ready smile. He greeted Frederain with a genuinely delighted “Your Lordship,” and a deep bow.

  It was rare for a commoner to take such a cheerful tone upon meeting Lord Jakabitus, but it never failed to delight him. The other father settled into his seat, turned to His Lordship, and asked, “How goes the meet for young Master Rayzo? He’s always seemed a fine lad. He’s doing well, I hope.”

  On the mat, Rayzo was stepping out of his pod. Now they were just waiting for his competitor.

  “Yes, quite well,” Frederain said. “Thank you for asking. And your son?”

  “Today has been hard. His rankings have dropped,” the other man answered, his smile not fading one bit.

  “You seem to be taking it well.”

  “That’s just the way things go. What can one do?”

  “I suppose,” Frederain said.

  The other father looked at him for a moment, then asked, “May I ask an impertinent question, Your Lordship?”

  “We’re in the VIP box. Our boys are about to compete. Feel free. Treat me as you would anyone.”

  “Thank you, Your Lordship. I will. My question is this; Master Rayzo, do you think he’s the one?”

  Frederain looked out at Rayzo. He was jumping up and down to get his blood pumping before the match.

  It was a good question.

  The prophecy stipulated that the one would be nineteen years old, would “stand victorious over all his competitors,” “dominate the sport like none before,” be “famous, wealthy, and powerful,” and that his father would be revered. Those requirements sounded rather specific, but in reality, they weren’t quite specific enough.

  Over the centuries since Dilly Glifton had first uttered his prophecy, many nineteen-year-old champions had dominated the sport, going on to achieve great acclaim and wealth—and the power that comes with those things. As such, all of them (and their fathers, on their behalf) had laid claim to the title of the one. But any hopeful father who could read realized that to “dominate the sport like none before” was a moving target, and all his son would have to do was surpass the preening pretender who was claiming to be the one in order to take his rightful place as the true champion.

  There had been a great many possible the ones. Some of the less gracious off-world sports commentators had gone so far as to suggest that the boys of Apios weren’t competing to be the one so much as they were competing to be the next one, or more to the point, the last one.

  But the question was: could Rayzo be the one? He didn’t stand out as a great competitor. Dominating the sport like none before seemed an awfully ambitious goal for the lad, but that was only one of the prophecy’s conditions. Rayzo was the son and heir of the ruler of Apios. He was already wealthy and famous; one day he would certainly be powerful; and Frederain took it as a given that Rayzo’s father was revered, so that gave the lad a huge head start.

  “He might be,” Frederain said.

  “Yes,” the other man said. “He might be. I suspected you’d say that. You know, my father thought I might be the one. He did everything he could to encourage me and mold me and push me to be the one. I don’t remember a single conversation with him that wasn’t about sports. He wasn’t a bad man. He wanted what was best for me, and he thought that was being the one.

  “Well,” the man continued, “as you’ve no doubt guessed, I wasn’t the one. My old dad died when I was twenty. In our last conversation, we talked about all the time I had spent practicing and competing, all the time he had spent pushing me to excel. His last words to me were, It was all wasted, son. All of our time together, wasted. Then he died.”

  Out on the mat, the man’s son arrived. He was at least two years older than Rayzo, and much more fully developed. The man looked out at his son with obvious pride before returning his gaze to Frederain. “I can’t change the past, Your Lordship, but I can learn from it. I have a son of my own now, and I’m making sure that my time with him is not wasted.”

  Lord Jakabitus nodded sagely. “How are you doing that?” he asked.

  “By making damn sure that he really is the one.” The man stood up from his seat, leaned out as far over the handrail as he could, and bellowed, “You’re late, you worthless clod! Fancy boy there has had plenty of time to get warmed up while you’ve been loafing!”

  Rayzo’s competitor cringed. “I’m sorry, Father. I got in the pod as soon as my number was called. It took a longer route than—”

  “I don’t want your excuses! I want results!” the boy’s father shouted. “Now you get in that ring, and don’t just win. Humiliate him. If that pretty little lad isn’t crying when you’re done, you’ll be crying before I’m done. Understand?!”

  Both his son and Rayzo understood well enough. The father turned back and shrugged at Frederain, as if to say, kids.

  Rayzo lost the advantage round. Rayzo, Frederain, Rayzo’s competitor, and the competitor’s father would all have predicted this, but for different reasons. The only surprise was that when the round was over, the spectators around the perimeter of the arena cheered. Rayzo and his competitor looked at each other, confused, then looked at the VIP box, where both their fathers were staring upward in amazement. They were on the big screen.

  The competitor asked Rayzo about his dominant hand. Rayzo lied. The competitor chose not to believe him, but it mattered little. It only meant that Rayzo would be buckling his opponent’s knee with his nondominant hand.

  They took their positions and waited for the match to begin. In the brief moment of calm before the countdown started, the competitor’s father shouted, “Humiliate him!”

  “You can beat him, Rayzo,” Lord Jakabitus said, sounding confident. “Just use your trick.”

  “Yeah, Rayzo,” the competitor said, also sounding confident. “Use your trick.”

  Rayzo died a little bit inside. The countdown started. He didn’t know what to do, and he had five seconds to decide.

  Hartchar had trained him to analyze his options, and to do it fast.

  I have two choices, he thought. Do the trick, or don’t.

  If I don’t do the trick and I lose the match, Father will say that I should have listened to him. Outcome: negative.

  If I don’t do the trick and I win, Father will say that I would have won faster if I’d listened to him. Outcome: better, but still negative.

  If I do the trick and I still lose, Father will say that I didn’t do it right. Outcome: negative.

  If I do the trick and I win, Father will praise me for winning, or for listening to him. Either way, outcome: positive.

  It was a bad situation, but Rayzo’s only hope for a positive outcome was to stick to the plan. He started to fall backwards. His opponent’s grip on his wrist both slowed his fall and pulled his opponent forward, just as expected. His opponent let go of his wrist, however, which was unexpected. Rayzo fell gracelessly to the mat, then lay there with no wind in his lungs and both hands free.

  All things evolve over time, and sports was no exception. Rules had been invented, introduced, debated, r
epealed, missed, lamented, and reintroduced repeatedly since sports was invented.

  Sports started as a simple form of wrestling where you either shoved the opponent out of bounds or pinned him facedown. Scoring was introduced to eliminate draws. The gutter was introduced to prevent people from claiming they hadn’t gone out of bounds.

  For a long time, slapping during a match was allowed and considered by many to be an important part of the game. It was ultimately judged to be too distracting, so it was outlawed during the challenge round, at which time the advantage round was introduced to placate the slapping enthusiasts. The reward for winning the advantage round, grasping the opponent’s wrist, was also introduced to curtail a serious problem—the fact that the first half of every match had devolved into a desperate attempt on the part of one or both competitors to execute one specific move, a move for which you needed both hands.

  Nobody knows which competitor first grabbed his opponent’s shorts and pulled them down around his knees, but everyone agreed that doing so led to certain victory, as it both restricted the movement of the victim’s legs and paralyzed his brain with embarrassment.

  Pantsing, as it was called, immediately became everybody’s primary goal, until it was outlawed. This led to a long period in which competitors would design moves that would plausibly allow them to inadvertently pants their opponent. Over time, sports meets devolved into bad theater, as the winners of matches were often the competitors who most successfully made pantsing look accidental.

  This problem was solved in a revolutionary manner designed to protect the dignity of the sport. Pantsing was written into the rules as a legitimate strategy, but only if an alternative method was used—one that gave the pantser a similar advantage without forcing public nudity on the pantsed or the spectators.