Away Games: Science Fiction Sports Stories

by Mike Resnick

  “And this is the guy you think can beat Bonecrusher McDade?” I conclude.

  “I just got a feeling about it,” says Pedro defensively.

  “Take your money and your feeling elsewhere,” I say. “The book is closed.”

  They complain a little more, and finally they leave.

  “Where is Milton?” I ask.

  “Where else?” says Joey Chicago in bored tones, jerking his thumb in the direction of Milton’s office, which happens to be the men’s room.

  Big-Hearted Milton is my personal mage, and he has chosen as his office the one place on Joey Chicago’s premises where every Tom, Dick and Harry won’t be able to study and perhaps even memorize his spells. It doesn’t quite work out that way, but at least his spells are safe from being overheard by every Teresa, Doris and Harriet.

  I enter his office, and there is Milton, standing on the tile floor, surrounded by five black candles that have burned themselves down to nubs. He is chanting something in an ancient lost language of the mystics (or maybe French), and suddenly he claps his hands, the flames on the candles go out, and he gives a triumphant laugh.

  “That’ll show her!” he cackles.

  “Mitzi McSweeney again?” I ask.

  He nods his head vigorously. “She slaps my face just because I give her a friendly pinch in the elevator.” An outraged expression crosses his face. “I do not even draw blood.” He dabs at his nose with a handkerchief. “But she does.”

  “What horrible curse have you placed upon her this time?” I ask in bored tones, because in truth Mitzi McSweeney seems to survive Milton’s almost-daily curses far better than Milton survives her almost daily face-slappings.

  “I have added an inch to each of her high heeled shoes,” he says happily. “Next time she wears them out in public, which is every day, she will probably fall on her face.”

  “That is indeed a very terrible curse, Milton,” I say. “So if she falls, some thoughtful gentleman will help her to her feet and brush her off here and there as gentlemen are inclined to do, and doubtless earn her undying gratitude, and if she doesn’t fall but manages to locomote with them she will wiggle even more than usual.”

  “Why don’t I think of that?” complains Milton.

  “I would give plenty of ten-to-one that anyone in the bar except maybe Dugan could tell you, but they are all too polite,” I say. “Now, if you are all through cursing Mitzi McSweeney for today, we have business to discuss.”

  “One minute,” he says, closing his eyes and mumbling another spell. “Okay, Harry,” he says when he is done. “Her shoes are all restored. Instead, I have made her belts too tight, so she will think she is gaining weight.”

  I decide not to tell him that if she does not wear her belt and her skirt or slacks are on the loose side, she will not only be a maiden in distress but also in undress, because past performances have taught me that we can spend all day before Milton comes up with a spell that will have a deleterious effect on anything except Milton’s love life.

  “All right,” says Milton at last. “What is it that could possibly be more important than finding a way into Mitzi McSweeney’s heart?”

  “Maybe if you would stop looking for it in strange places she would stop slapping your face,” I say.

  “She does not slap my face every time,” answers Milton with a chivalrous display of loyalty. Then he grimaces. “Sometimes she kicks my shin.”

  “How do you think Kid Testosterone would do against her?” I ask, subtly moving the conversation back to business.

  “She would take him out in straight falls,” says Milton with absolute certainty, “and she would do it with such grace and style that the referee would award her both ears and the tail.”

  “What if I tell you that Longshot Lamont just placed two large on the Kid to beat Bonecrusher McDade?”

  “I would say that in a field of slow learners, Lamont ranks somewhat behind a crippled snail,” answers Milton.

  “And what if I further tell you that Short Odds Harrigan also puts money down on Kid Testosterone?”

  “Curious,” mutters Milton with a frown. “It is sunny and pleasant out all day. It does not look like the world is coming to an end.” Milton stares at me. “I hope you know a short prayer, because I am not sure you have time for a long one.”

  “Is there no other explanation?” I ask, and I wait for him to calm down, because Milton is an excitable sort.

  “I have counted to 20 and the world is still standing,” announces Milton. “If this is not the End of Days, then there is only one other possible explanation: the hex is in.”

  “Of course the hex is in,” I say. “How else can the Kid win? In the fight against Guido van Gogh last summer, Guido throws a haymaker that misses and the wind knocks the Kid down for a seven count.”

  “I remember the fight, but I think it is Guido Guardino.”

  “That is his moniker before his girlfriend bites his ear off when she catches him cheating.” I stop the sentence right there, because if I go any farther the next three words will be “with Mitzi McSweeney”, and then it will take another ten minutes to get Milton to concentrate on the problem at hand, and a serious problem it is, because there is probably not enough green in all of New York to pay Longshot Lamont what I will owe him if Milton cannot counteract the hex.

  “Well,” says Milton after giving the matter some thought, “at least we know the culprit.”

  “We do?” I say.

  He nods sagely as the overhead light makes patterns on his balding head. “It will take the most powerful spell in the universe and points north to bring the Kid home a winner. There are probably only two magicians alive who can cast such a spell, and I very much doubt that any dead magicians, powerful though they be, really care who wins a boxing match.”

  “Do we know these two geniuses?” I ask.

  He pulls himself up to his full height, which is about five feet eight inches with lifts in his shoes. “You are looking at one of them,” he says with dignity.

  “And the other?”

  “Morris the Mage, of course.”

  “Well, you’ve gone up against Morris before,” I say hopefully. “So can you counteract the spell?”

  “I do not know yet,” says Milton. “How much time do we have?”

  “The main event is scheduled for ten o’clock tomorrow night,” I say. “The Kid is in the wrap-up bout, which they will hold when everyone’s getting up and leaving, as the only point of interest in one of his fights is how many rows deep into the audience will he be knocked this time.”

  “Okay,” says Milton, checking the little hourglass he wears around his neck. “It looks like I’ve got 26 hours to break the spell.” He lowers his head in thought. “I will need two newts, some oil of horned toad, a cup of dragon’s blood, some black mustard seeds, a bat wing with or without the bat, and a bag of jelly beans.”

  “Jelly beans?” I ask, surprised.

  “So I like a little knosh while I work,” he answers defensively. “Sue me.”

  I spend a few hours gathering what he needs while he goes over his ancient books of magic, and I send Benny Fifth Street into Milton’s office every half hour to make sure he hasn’t sneaked a copy of Playboy inside one of the tomes, and finally Milton emerges at about ten in the morning and plops himself down opposite me.

  “So what do you find out?” I ask.

  “It is a real stinker of a spell,” he says wearily. “It couldn’t be cast without a tooth from a tree-dwelling crocodile. Where the hell did he find one in Central Park?”

  “Get to the point,” I say. “Can you break it?”

  “Not today,” says Milton.

  “Breaking it tomorrow won’t do me any good,” I point out.

  “It’s that damned tooth,” says Milton. “It makes the spell absolutely unreversable until midnight.”

  “We are in deep trouble,” says Dawkins, who is munching on a bowl of bar pretzels. “The main event won’t last p
ast eleven, and the Kid can’t last past thirty seconds of the first round.”

  “If we cannot make a deal to buy the Denver Mint before ring time, we are doomed,” says Benny Fifth Street.

  “I have been doomed many time,” offers Dead End Dugan from the back of the tavern. “After awhile you get used to it.”

  “I do not have awhile,” I say, looking at my watch. “I have thirteen hours and forty-two minutes.”

  Milton checks his hourglass. “Fourteen hours and ten minutes,” he corrects me.

  Benny and Dawkins look at their watches.

  “Harry is right,” says Benny. “I have ten eighteen.”

  “Me, too,” says Dawkins.

  Milton looks at his hourglass, then taps it with a finger and sand begins to gush to the bottom. “Damned thing needs a new battery,” he says apologetically.

  “How far away can we get from here in thirteen hours?” asks Benny.

  “We are not going anywhere,” I say, at least partially because I realize it is hard to hide in a crowd if I am to be accompanied by my flunkies, one of whom is no more than a biscuit shy of 400 pounds and another of whom is a zombie. And suddenly a thought occurs to me, one of the few I have in the last hour that does not begin with a picture of a grave and all my friends throwing flowers and unredeemed markers into it. “Milton,” I say, “if the Kid doesn’t fight until midnight, can you break the spell then?”

  Milton grimaces. “I have a chance, at least,” he says. “But even then, I will need the claw of a Subterranean Fish Eagle.”

  “Benny, Gently,” I say, “your job is to bring Milton that claw. We will meet at ringside at eleven o’clock tonight.” I pause. “Milton, go home and get some sleep. I want you at your very best tonight.”

  “And what will you be doing, Harry?” asks Milton.

  “I will be arranging for Kid Testosterone not to enter the ring before midnight,” I say.

  I wait until they all leave, and then I walk over and ask Joey Chicago for his phone. He lays it on the bar and I pull out the bill that Short Odds Harrigan gives me, and I call the number on it. A minute later Bubbles La Tour picks up the phone, and even though I am Harry the Book and am interested only in odds and money, my throat goes dry and my palms start sweating, because as everyone knows Bubbles La Tour is the Secretariat or Babe Ruth of women, an exemplar of the gender who has curves in places where most women don’t even have places.

  I explain who I am, and before I can get any farther she wants to know the morning line on her repeating as Miss Lower South Manhattan next month, and I tell her she is currently a one-to-ten favorite but that the serious money hasn’t come in yet and I expect her to wind up at about one-to-fifty. Finally she asks what I want, and I tell her, and she says that it is an interesting proposition but she can’t do it for free and what will I offer her, and I give her my very best offer which is that I will offer to cross her phone number out on the C note Short Odds gave to me and never call her again, and she says “See you at eleven!” and that is that.

  Then it is just a matter of killing time until the fight. Gently Gently Dawkins also kills four pizzas, a Belgian waffle, two bowls of chili, an 18-ounce steak, and a triple hot fudge sundae (but because he is on a diet, he does not eat the cherry that sits atop the sundae).

  Benny challenges Joey Chicago to an afternoon of tiddly winks, but they start arguing about which came first, the tiddly or the wink, and by the time the dust clears it is eight o’clock and they have both forgotten to eat. This does not seem to be Dead End Dugan’s problem, because he cannot remember whether zombies eat or not and he decides to be on the safe side and do without, though I cannot quite figure out exactly what a zombie can be on the safe side of.

  Big-Hearted Milton wanders in nursing a black eye and a bloody nose, and Joey Chicago grins and says, “I see she is still mad at you.”

  “A vile canard,” says Milton. “I apologize to her when we meet for dinner, and she forgives me.”

  “Then explain the eye and the nose,” says Joey Chicago.

  “I reach out to shake her hand and show her we are still friends,” answers Milton. “I am a little near-sighted, and that is not what I wind up grabbing and shaking.” Suddenly he grimaces. “If you want to see a real fight, put Mitzi McSweeney in the ring against Bonecrusher McDade. I figure she takes him out no later than the fourth round.”

  Benny, who has seen Mitzi in action, opines that Bonecrusher cannot make it through the third round, and that reminds me that we have a fight to watch, and we walk over to the Garden, and arrive there at five minutes to eleven, just as the ring announcer is informing the crowd that Jupiter Zeus has just won a split decision over Murderous Malcolm Malone. Murderous Malcolm congratulates the winner and accidentally kicks a full water bucket onto the three judges as he is preparing to leave the ring. He holds his arms out to proclaim his innocence and that it was an accident, and in the process accidentally knocks out three of Referee Fair-Minded Freddie’s teeth. Then, with a satisfied smile, he climbs out of the ring and heads off to the dressing room.

  “Why have you bought seven seats?” asks Benny as we approach our seats at ringside.

  “Two for Gently Gently,” answers Milton, “and one each for Harry, you, Dugan and me.”

  “That is only six,” says Benny, who is really good with math until he runs out of fingers and toes.

  “Say, that’s right,” replies Milton. He turns to me. “Who is the seventh seat for, Harry?”

  Before I can answer a hush falls over the crowd, and about ten seconds later there is a cheer that is so loud that all the mirrors in the public restrooms shatter, to say nothing of all the eyeglasses being worn anywhere in the arena. We all turn, and undulating down the aisle is Bubbles La Tour, who is wearing something very tight and very revealing that cannot possibly weigh eight ounces total. Finally she stops at the edge of our aisle and waves to the crowd, and there is another cheer, even louder than the first. She bows to acknowledge the cheers, and the seven closest men faint dead away, and everything comes to a halt while we wait for the ambulances to come and cart them off to the cardiac unit. She walks to the door with them, holding one of their hands, then walks back down to still more cheers, though I notice that almost none of the ladies in the audience are cheering, and indeed most are frowning, and a few are dabbing on lipstick and make-up.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Eleven forty-nine,” answers Benny.

  “Milton,” I say, “we need eleven more minutes.”

  “Probably only eight or nine,” replies Milton. “The fighters have to make their way to the ring, and then the announcer introduces them, and then we sing the national anthem (or did we do that already?), and then—”

  “Milton,” I yell at him, “do something!”

  “I could vanish her clothes,” he suggests, “which are about 93% vanished already.”

  “There will be riots and cardiac arrests and police arrests and the fight will never come off, but just be rescheduled, and I cannot use this particular ploy to postpone it an hour the next time,” I say.

  “I’ll think of something,” says Milton.

  Bubbles La Tour reaches our aisle and begins wiggling her way past Dawkins and Dugan and Benny, and then she sidles her way past Milton and utters a shriek and pivots around and slaps his face.

  The crowd screams in outrage, though I get the distinct impression that most of them are outraged that they didn’t get to give her a friendly pinch, and then Bubbles unloads a thousand-word diatribe to Milton, of which at least 17 of the words can be printed in a family magazine, and then she pivots and wriggles her way back to the aisle and stalks out of the arena.

  “Eleven fifty-nine,” announces Benny.

  “See?” says Milton proudly as he wipes the blood from his nose. “Nod eberythig requires magig.”

  A minute later, at exactly midnight, Kid Testosterone climbs up the stairs to the ring. He trips on the top step, as usual, and crack
s his head against the ring post. Usually this would knock him out for the next three hours, but tonight he just smiles a self-deprecating smile, and waves to the crowd. Then Bonecrusher McDade, who looks like a walking ad for steroids, enters the ring, and the referee gives them their instructions—no biting, no kicking, no rabbit punches, no hitting below the belt, and this being Manhattan, no kissing—and then they go to their corners, and a few seconds later the bell rings, and out comes Kid Testosterone, and he doesn’t look any tougher than usual, but Bonecrusher McDade lands a one-two to the Kid’s belly and a left hook to his chin, and the Kid just shrugs it off.

  “Okay, Milton,” I say, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. “It’s past midnight. Do something!”

  Milton mutters a spell, the Kid brushes off a haymaker that should put him to sleep for a week, and Milton tries a different spell.

  “Nothing is happening,” I say as the Kid misses with a left and right, and absorbs three quick punches to the ribcage, and laughs in the Bonecrusher’s face.

  “I cannot break through the spell,” says Milton unhappily.

  “It must be a real doozy,” offers Dawkins sympathetically.

  “It is,” answers Milton. He points to Morris the Mage, who is sitting next to Short Odds Harrigan on the other side of the ring. “Look at that smug bastard,” he growls.

  I do look, and Morris is so caught up in the fight that he’s throwing punches in the air even as he sits there. He is bobbing and weaving just like Kid Testosterone, sneering whenever the Kid sneers at McDade, and I see a way out of our dilemma and turn to tell Milton about it, but Milton has seen it at the very same time, and is already chanting a spell. It goes on for almost half a minute, during which time the Kid is pummeled mercilessly but painlessly, and finally he yells “Abracadabra!” and suddenly the Kid shrugs off a shot to the belly but Morris moans and doubles over in his seat.

  “Watch!” says Milton with a happy smile.

  McDade lands a shot to the Kid’s head. Nothing happens in the ring, but Morris goes flying back out of his chair.

  Morris is knocked down three more times as he tries to get up, and finally we see him turn to Short Odds, and while I cannot read his lips I know what he is saying, which is that he isn’t getting paid enough to take this kind of beating and he is redirecting it back to the person it is being aimed at, and he makes a mystic gesture with his hands, and the next haymaker McDade throws at the Kid knocks him out of the ring and has absolutely no effect on Morris. The referee looks out at the floor to see if the Kid can make it back by the count of ten, but it is obvious that the Kid cannot even wake up by the count of ten to the thirty-seventh power, and that is that and I do not have to pay off any bets, and I resolve to tell all the other bookies never to deal with Short Odds Harrigan again, and then I think why should I make life easier for them, so we all of us except Milton, who sees Mitzi McSweeney in the crowd and goes over to patch things up, return to Joey Chicago’s to celebrate not going broke.