“Moron!” bellowed General Windchime.
“It’s like breathing broken glass. You people are paying for my replacement lungs.”
Windchime tried to slap me. He screamed when I snapped his forearm. His aide went for her side arm. She screamed, too, once I broke her wrist. Some might have considered my response childish, but sucking arseno-hydrocarbon poisons gave me an attitude.
A dozen MPs swarmed me with their electroprods. At least the voltage twitched my spleen back into place.
Matarice waited in my cabin. She expressed no surprise when the uniformed gangsters dumped me at her feet. She patiently bided her time until my spasms subsided. I sat upright and grinned. She kicked my brain loose.
“You were not supposed to kill it!” she screamed, and kicked and kicked.
I recovered enough to parry the final blows. Despite artificial grav, long-term spacing sapped folks’ endurance.
“Is someone dumping steroids in your water supply?” I asked politely.
“I’ll have you up on charges of murder!”
“It was self-defense. They only saw the vid. They haven’t a clue about the reality. If I hadn’t—” I burst out in laughter, a miracle considering the way my lungs crawled into my throat. Arsenic wasn’t a bad buzz, a cross between good pot and a baseball bat upside the head.
“Moron!”
“What? Is that word a Mead tradition?”
“You murdered a non-human! We can’t cover up something like that. We’re trying to save them, not stomp them to death!”
“Yeah, life is a rerun of Star Whatsit, and I’m trashing the prime bloody directive. Beam down to reality, Tiff! Did Baxter and Sloane go meekly to their slaughter? Lookit, we have more important matters to discuss.”
“Murderer!” Her eyes flickered, swirling darker shades of gray.
“These barrel bum are a species known only from these seven thousand religious fanatics. They’re so weirded out that they’ve stopped fixing their ship. They’re trying to blackmail their deity into action! Their wrestlers are killing each other like Aztecs sacrificing to their gods. If they pray hard enough . . . if their performance offerings are sincere enough . . . if, if, if! Those bizarre yerps are—”
“You cannot judge another species. That is racist. Moron! You cannot—”
“Lookit, Tiff, they weren’t too tightly wrapped before they spent the last five generations in space. Why do they broadcast their offerings? They’re telling their deity that they have received the communication and understand—but they don’t. They’re faking it out of desperation. I think—”
“That is one of a myriad exclusive theories, Citizen Scorpio. You are not qualified—”
“To exercise my common sense? They refuse to discuss their religion with you people because they’re waiting for one of us, a pro wrestler, one of their deity’s messengers, to explain the mysteries to them. We’re there Hermes.”
The Gray Woman sputtered. “My peers and I have invested years deconstructing, dissecting every frame of their broadcasts. We have identified their symbology. We have learned their language, and have a good idea about the motifs behind their crypto-TV culture. Yet you dare saunter in, commit murder, and announce your solution!”
“That’s the size of it, meka.” I remoted the TV. The Pek news appeared, the Mead’s masterputer providing awkward English subtitles.
“It was my idea to bring you here,” she said glumly. “The Trade Commission will probably have me fired. The Pek will never listen to us again. Do you have any idea what you’ve destroyed?” The Gray Woman slumped onto a toadstool and stared at the screen.
“If I’m wrong, you can blame Clyde Keller. Just as well, since the coward hightailed out of here on the last shuttle. Just watch the screen. I’ll let the Pek do my arguing for me.”
The anchor-alien wore a blond wig. The Pek spoke of a fire in the warehouse district, a shooting in front of a house of ill repute, and a six-car pileup blocking rush hour. It proceeded as most rituals did—smooth and confident, mimicking the recording of yore without a clue of what repute (sick or well) or a rush hour might be.
“Wrong about what? What are you saying?” she whispered, staring at the screen.
I coughed into my fist, spraying a fine mist of arsenic-laced blood. The coughing came with such intensity that my toes shortened. I’d count myself fortunate if my lungs were the only things requiring replacement.
Clips from my match appeared, intercut with mouthings from the current Messiah. Matarice froze, gray eyes growing wide, glowing in the light of the screen.
“The Messiah never appears on broadcasts. Never! What have you done?”
The alien spoke so rapidly that the subtitles failed to keep pace. But the Messiah called me holy. I could envision my new moniker on the marquee—The Holy Stomper.
I hadn’t expected the xenopologist to throw up on my carpet. Actually, it was an improvement on the fiber’s color. I patted her back.
“What have you done to my Peks?” she moaned. “What kind of maniac are you?”
“I grew up on the wrong side of the trailer park,” I explained to annoy my guest. Anyone who kicked me in the head deserved to be tortured by my life’s story. “My mom was crazy over her God like the Pek are over theirs. That’s why I understand them.”
“I don’t wish to listen to your personal history,” she hissed through clenched teeth, each word intoned as a curse.
“Ah, but from history blooms knowledge! I grew up on the streets. When I was seventeen, Howard ‘The Blade’ Smith took it in his head to kill me. Never did figure why.”
“I know why,” she growled.
“I broke into the Razor’s clubhouse and hid under his bed. When he went to sleep, I crawled out and used the ax I’d been hugging for hours. He had $50K in his pillowcase.
“While I was waiting for the next bus out of town, I took measure of myself. The money was a one-time shot, so I had to strike gold my first time out. I was too lazy for business, not smart enough for college, not vicious enough for crime. I went down the checklist. And, in the end, I went straight from the Chi-town bus station to a cosmetic surgeon and bought a muscle job.
“I own mines on Mars, a paper factory on Nok, and export companies on three different poleis. I could have retired years ago, but I love being silly. It’s my talent, my greatest strength. And people underestimate me because I look stupid—that’s my greatest asset. You people have studied the Pek to death, but you treat them like microbes under a microscope. They might be aliens, but they enjoy being silly, too!
“Believe me, I know what I’m doing.”
She threw up again.
I hadn’t thought about Mom in years. She would have understood ceasing maintenance on a spacecraft to show her faith in God. Her God’s “Plan” called for her husband to abandon her and robbers to rape and butcher her. “His Plan,” she babbled over dinner every night, explaining the latest disaster to overtake her. Her eyes sparkled when she spoke about her deity, the way a junkie’s eyes sparkled after dosing.
Once Matarice left, I gingerly avoided the puddles she left behind on my way to my chip plate. I tapped into the comm system, then tapped a message for my accountants to score everything they could on the Mead’s finances. It felt important to discover why their check had bounced.
When an opponent was too fast, you attacked his legs. When they were too strong, you had to be faster. When they were generals and fuzzy scientists, you had to hire smarter people.
I love my Gold Card!
* * *
There was precious little difference between locker rooms, be they aboard the Pek gen ship or Lunar Square Gardens. Although here, the grotty sock stench was replaced by a grotty arsenic stench.
I squeezed my nose, feeling the tips of my nasal filters; I squeezed my throat, feeling the lump of that filter. A secondary sheet filter I wrapped around my mouth and nose. Three layers was as much as I could do and still breathe. With luck, the wrap would d
ivert my opponent’s attention and keep the alien from yanking out my internal filters.
With luck . . .
“Four scope and seben yeaps,” I said through my mask. You couldn’t wrestle unless you could curse. That was a Law of Nature.
Aliens moved as quietly as Martian muggers. I glanced up to find myself surrounded by half a dozen of the tall Grays—the dangerous ones. Their reek clogged my nostrils, defying the filters. The Pek swayed as they whistled. Wasn’t that the old Lassie theme? I unwrapped my mouth, then replied with the same, earning a round of applause.
“Will you tell us?” asked a small blue Pek, elbowing through the crowd.
I sidled, getting my back against the wall. The Grays kowtowed to the Blue. It smelled different—fill an old tire with roses and ignite it with kerosene. The Grays squatted and slapped their mitts on the deck. It echoed like thunder.
“Will you reveal the Secrets?” the Blue asked in perfect English as it tugged at my sweats.
I winked at the critter. They liked winking. Lacking eyelids, or anything that might pass as eyes, they suffered eyelash envy. “You speak the lingo well.”
“My English is good to the last drop, like the Marlboro House Man,” replied the alien proudly. “Will you share the Secrets?”
“Do you understand the word ‘rigged’?”
Apparently the Blue did, whistling a quick translation to its comrades. I would have sworn it was the theme from The Andy Griffith Show. I snapped my fingers at the appropriate moment. All those video history telecourses I took while on the circuit were paying dividends.
“Predetermined?”
“Close enough. I am told. My opponent is told. The Boss decides who will win the big matches.”
“Told by your Prophet?” The Blue advanced, tilting its body in a querulous fashion. Its limbs made clicking noises. The other Pek grew agitated, stomping their feet as they milled.
“Everything is predetermined. If A, then B. Soap operas are written to a formula. If A, then B. The news is about folks. Folks react in the same way, given the same circumstances. If A, then B. The Boss studies the market demographics and decides who will earn the most money by drawing the largest crowd. If Audience, then Bucks. One way or the other, everything is rigged!”
More Blues appeared. A mob of Grays filled the doorway. Whistling grew in volume until my teeth ached. Limbs waved and whacked. I picked up a container of talc and surreptitiously unscrewed its cap. However feeble, any diversion would be better than none, should the natives decide to make me into a Slim Jim.
“Who is The Boss?” asked the smallest of the Blues. It lacked a leg and two arms, not to mention sporting a massive dent in its barrel body. The veteran must have lost more than a few bouts.
“It depends. Different arenas have different Bosses.”
The maimed Blue eased forward, the others parting to give him/her plenty of room. This Pek wore a massive belt of silver. I intuited it was their current Messiah, despite it not resembling the one I saw on TV. I bowed. My fingers pulled the belt I’d won off the bench. Bowing again, I offered the belt to the Messiah, smiling like a village idiot.
“Every Boss has a Boss. The trick is to find someone who can rig the Boss. Allow me to explain . . .”
The Messiah snapped its arm joints while I spoke. First the Blues, then the Grays, slapped their bodies in unison, in reply. It might have been a happy sound to them. It reminded me of a tray of silver spoons being tossed across a tile floor.
* * *
“What the hell have you done? They haven’t left the Prayer Arena in two days! Intell says—” Matarice excelled at storming into a room.
“Is N. Tell any relation to Willie Tell? I ’rastled him on New Berne once.”
“Intelligence, you lump! They’ve tapped into every system on the ship. They can tell how often the Pek flush their toilets.”
“So much for your putative sense of humor. Huh, come to think of it, there weren’t any toilets in the locker room. Do Peks have bowel mo—”
“I don’t care! What did you tell them? They never cancel a night of wrestling! Now they’ve stopped broadcasting altogether.” She spoke loud and slow, as if I were stupid and deaf.
“I told them the truth, of course.”
I kept one eye on the monitor. Figures marched down the screen in tidy columns. Legions of numbers had been the focus of my attention for hours. My accountants had ordered the Mead’s four previous budgets directly from the Trade Commission’s Depository, then sent me the germane files. My bouncing check had been the source of the original afflatus, but I was light-years beyond that.
“Which truth?” Matarice’s gray face contorted, bringing to mind Reaper McGuire after he’d ruptured himself during a mistimed Boston Squash.
“Which truth, Romney?” This time honey dripped from the question. You would not find her smile in the dictionary under “sincere” unless a shark wrote it.
“Did you know someone is peculating from the Mead’s grant money?” I said. “The hard copy is next to the lamp. Take notice how 17.3 percent of the budget for wages is transferred into a ‘General Accounts’ fund. From there, it is deposited into the account of Citizen Frederick Brooks, FN2914-336-8106 as a consultancy fee. Valid code, but no such person exists—this is one slick crime.”
“What? What qualifies you to—No, money isn’t important. What did you tell the Pek? Stop avoiding the question.”
“You think I’m just another pretty face? I earned a degree in accounting to keep track of my businesses. When you’re always on the road, you have all this time on your hands. Aren’t telecourses great? You people have lost over thirty million, Tiff. Pretty soon, that could add up to some serious money.”
“The Pek! What did you tell them?”
“A basic truth. When the game is fixed, you must hire yourself a Fixer.”
Her face twitched. People with gray-dyed skin should never blush. “Game? Aliens cannot distinguish the nuisances of English. I—”
“You mean nuances. What’s the prob? You have failed for years to find common ground with the Pek. I have. All their praying is begging overtime that their new Champion will win the big match.”
“Champion?”
I scooted away from the gray gamine, mindful of her penchant for painting the carpet with lunch, as well as kicking like a rabid mule.
I grinned. My petition had percolated through the Trade Commission’s Audit Committee by now. The Martian media moguls had digested my revelations and would shortly open the bidding war on the rest of the story. Phil Crockett, aka The Stomper, president of Crockett Construction Ltd., would still be debating whether the profit inherent in the gimmick of the century would offset the cost of building a home for my new clients. Best of all, General Windchime would soon discover that I had bribed one of his officers for an hour’s unsupervised access to the communication center.
All the burners were on high. My pots were boiling. Chief Scorpio was preparing a feast, though I had yet to figure out who I was having for supper.
“If you’re smart, you can use this disaster to your benefit, Tiff. The embezzlements can be blamed for your failure with the Pek. If you and the other scientists come down on the Trade Commission’s side, they will be grateful. As PR-minded as the Commission is, the Mead might even get their research expanded. I, for one, will be requesting your aid. I’ll need your people for another year or two to get everything working properly.”
“What are you saying?”
“You people play the villain, and I play the righteous Champion. We fight—you people lose.”
“What?”
“What do you think 10 percent of a civilization is worth? By the way, we’ll be suing the Trade Commission and your university for malfeasance and social sodomy. Okay, I don’t know the legal terms. That’s why I’ve retained Peterson, Danson, and Grier.”
“But, but—”
“There will be an army of politicians eager to join our cause. Everybody ha
tes the Commission.”
“Suing? But, the Mead—”
“Don’t worry, that’s just for the consumption of the press. We’re going after the deep pockets, not you people.”
“Wa-what?” moaned Matarice.
I smiled at her. “Isn’t that an agent’s job?” I said brightly.
It was going to be a hell of a good fight. And the ratings would be out of this world!
Literally!
STROBOSCOPIC
Alastair Reynolds
Here’s a taut, inventive, and fast-paced story that speculates that the newish realm of computer game design will eventually merge with the field of daredevil exhibitions of the jump-over-a-canyon-on-a-rocket sled sort, to produce a sport where everything can change in the blink of an eye—sometimes with fatal results.
New writer Alastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone, and also has sold to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Spectrum SF, and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space, was widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year. His most recent novel is a sequel to Revelation Space, also attracting much notice, Chasm City. A professional scientist with a Ph.D. in astronomy, he comes from Wales but lives in the Netherlands, where he works for the European Space Agency.
* * *
“Open the box.”
I wasn’t making a suggestion. Just in case the tone of my voice didn’t make that clear, I backed up my words with an antique but functional blunderbuss; something won in a gaming tournament half a lifetime earlier. We stood in the airlock of my yacht, currently orbiting Venus: me, my wife, and two employees of Icehammer Games.
Between us was a gray box the size of a child’s coffin.
“After all this time,” said the closest man, his face hidden behind a mirrored gold visor on a rococo white helmet. “Still don’t trust us?”
“First rule of complex systems,” I said. “You can’t tell friends from enemies.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Nozomi.”
But even as he spoke, White knelt down and fiddled with the latches on the lid of the box. It opened with a gasp of air, revealing a mass of translucent protective sheeting wadded around something very cold. After pausing the blunderbuss to Risa, I reached in and lifted out the package, feeling its bulk.
Future Sports Page 18