Zeroboxer (3 page)

The referee and a doctor navigated over to Ferrano and examined him, then took hold of his arms and carried him back over to his side of the Cube, propelling themselves with handheld mini-thrusters. Residual adrenaline pulsed through Carr's body with each heartbeat; he felt as jittery as a bug as he jogged, on hands and feet, back to his hatch and out onto the deck. As the referee took his arm, Hal Greese's voice boomed, “At four minutes, thirty-eight seconds in the second round, the winner, by knockout—CARRRRR LUKAAA!”

The sweet high of victory swept over Carr, dizzying him more than any gymnastic feat in the Cube. He saw his own face on the suspended screens—red, puffy, and bruised, shiny with pebbly sweat clinging to a layer of gel—and broke into a grin he felt would never stop. The shadowy tiers of spectators rippled with movement, chanting their approval. He was surrounded by people: DK and Uncle Polly hugging him, the doctor coming to check on him, the technician disconnecting his optic cameras and telling him that his cochlear receiver had been jolted and he'd need to get it fixed—that was why in the last seconds of the match he hadn't heard Polly's voice, only a high, distant whining. Sports journalists materialized out of nowhere, their tethers crowding the rails, raising their cuff-links above each other to catch his words. Carr scrabbled distractedly for what he was supposed to say right now.

“I just want to thank Jay Ferrano and the ZGFA for putting on a great fight. I've got to credit my incredible coach and my cornerman. To my mom and Enzo, back home on Earth—I love you guys.” There were more shouted questions, but DK and Uncle Polly ushered him back to the locker room. Carr barely felt the hallway rungs as he floated out of the crush of people.

He looped around the room like a drunken bird, bouncing off the banks of lockers and barreling into DK, who whooped and laughed and threw him into a spin. When he pulled out of it, Carr hooked one foot under a toe bar and leaned back, still grinning stupidly as DK helped him out of his gripper shoes and gloves, toweled him down, and placed a squeeze bottle of electrolyte drink in his hand.

Uncle Polly stood in front of him and leveled a stern finger at his face. “What was that? You were going to stay out of clinch.”

“He wasn't falling for it, coach. I couldn't count on being far enough ahead by the end of the third.”

“Hell of a risk. He nearly choked you out.”

“But he didn't.”

“Don't be smart with me. You were impatient to win and you got reckless.”

“C'mon, Polly,” DK said. “Your boy did good tonight. That knockout is one for the highlight reels.”

Uncle Polly huffed. Then his tough demeanor fell away as a slow, crooked smile brightened his stubbly face. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it sure was.” He put his hands on either side of Carr's face, giving his cheek an approving smack. “Not what I would've done, but damn, it worked.”

Carr relaxed. He didn't want Uncle Polly unhappy with him. He got dressed and no sooner had he put his cuff back on than it vibrated with dozens of messages. Congratulations from friends and teammates, new subscriber stats, media hits … he touched the screen to queue it all, not planning to deal with it until later, but one high priority message flashed insistently. His cochlear receiver was still messed up; when he tried to play the audio tag, it was shrill and jumbled. He saw who the sender was, though, and his stomach did a small, nervous dive, like the final weak aftershock of an earthquake.

Uncle Polly was watching him. “Well?”

Carr looked up and nodded. “The Martian wants to see me.”

THREE

T
he Martian's name was Bax Gant, and he was the co-owner of the Zero Gravity Fighting Association. His business partner, Terran entertainment industry tycoon Bran Merkel, was the money behind the ZGFA but only occasionally seen on Valtego; Gant managed all the day-to-day operations. He was called “the Martian” because he probably
was
the bes
t known Martian on a city-station
that was still overwhelmingly Terran, but also because, in zeroboxing circles, he was the sort of singularly influential personality who merited a
the
when spoken about, such as
the
Bossman or
the
Bastard. The Martian.

Carr stood in Gant's office trying not to look uncomfortable. He'd gone to the clinic for an injection of rehab/repair nanos; between the pricey cell-mending molecules and a dose of ibuprofen, post-fight pain wasn't his main problem. He'd had his receiver fixed too, and he wasn't even badly hungover from last night's after-party. It was just that Bax Gant's office felt like a walk-in refrigerator. Comfortable for a man from Mars, but not for someone raised in balmy Toronto. Carr imagined that Gant must feel the reverse; the whole rest of Valtego probably felt like a mild steam bath to him. No wonder he seemed to live in his office.

“Sit down, Luka,” Gant said. “Coffee?”

Carr was about to decline, then remembered that he had just finished a fight and could eat and drink whatever he wanted to for a while. “Sure, thanks,” he said, sitting down in the chair in front of the desk.

The last time he'd been in Gant's office was the day after his sixteenth birthday. Uncle Polly had sat next to him. The Martian had said, “You're training them from the womb now, are you, Pol?” and then turned a skeptical look on Carr. “The pros aren't like the ammys, kid. You think you're ready?” and Carr had said, “Yes, sir,” though he'd been scared. This morning was different. Uncle Polly had cupped Carr's chin in his hand and said, “You're not a kid anymore. You're a pro fighter with a good record, and you're going to get re-signed or I'll eat my towel. Now go in there and talk to that domie, man-to-man.”

Gant filled two mugs from the pot on the counter and walked back to the desk. He was the shortest Martian Carr had ever seen, barely six feet tall. Decades spent in Valtego's nearly Earth-level artificial gravity had thickened him, rounded him out a little. The faint hint of red in his hair suggested some European ancestry from way, way back. The man could almost pass as Terran, though the telltale sheen of his dark, radiation-resistant skin gave him away.

He set one of the mugs in front of Carr, slipping a coaster underneath so as not to mar the surface of the mahog
any desk. Real mahogany wood, not synthetic. There was a lot of wood in the room—the desk and chairs, the floor, the shelves that held mementos and photos from big fights Gant had promoted. Precious few non-agricultural trees grew on Mars; the man had a borderline obsession with furniture and objects made from natural materials. Behind his desk was a bamboo-framed watercolor print of Olympus Mons at sunset.

“Nice painting,” Carr said. “Have you been there?”

“I'm from Tharsis,” Gant said, sitting down across from him. “Never appreciated the view until I le
ft.”

“Nice place?”

“Used to be. Crowded now. Too many tourists.” Gant snorted at this irony, and Carr wondered what passed for crowded on a planet with a fraction of Earth's population.

The Martian drank from his mug and studied Carr from across the desk. Carr lifted his chin. He could have had his bruised face and swollen jaw fixed up at the clinic, but it was ironclad tradition for zeroboxers to keep their facial wounds for at least a few days—the nastier-looking the better.

“What's your story, Luka?” Gant said finally. “Parents were refugees and shipped off-planet? Father was a drunk and used to beat you?”

Carr shook his head.

“I didn't think so. You're not angry the way some of them are. So why do you fight in the Cube?”

Carr shrugged. “I'm good at it.”

“Hmm. After last night, I don't suppose I can disagree. Five-one; not too shabby for a guy born on soil.”

“The ‘one' got away from me.”

“That's what they always say.” Gant leaned forward onto his desk with folded arms. “What did you think of the crowd last night?”

“It was big.”

Gant nodded, pleased. “Sold-out stadium, and millions more watching on the Systemnet.” He jerked his head back toward the painting behind his desk. “I left Mars twenty-five years ago, saying I was going to grow the sport with Terrans. I was practically laughed off the Red Planet. All the best zeroboxers in the Martian system, the top dogs in the Weightless Combat Championship, you know what they said to me? ‘
Everyone
on the old planet is a planet rat. The most daring and inventive Terrans left generations ago to build Mars and the other settlements. Why would a place with countless gravity-dependent sports want anything different? Zeroboxing'll never catch on.'”

Carr took a swallow of strong coffee. “Guess they were wrong.”

“Guess so.” Gant jutted his lower jaw slightly forward as he sized Carr up like a buyer considering an item at auction. Carr did his best to wait without fidgeting, without thinking too much about how his future depended on coming down on the good side of this man's ruthless business acumen. Whether you loved or hated the Martian was largely correlated with how useful he thought you were.

Gant picked up his thinscreen and tapped it. “Have you looked at your subscriber stats or media hits?”

“Not yet.”

“Good; if your head gets too inflated, you might get the mistaken idea you can weasel a better deal out of me.” He handed the screen to Carr. “This is what you've been waiting for.”

Carr took the screen, suddenly glad that the meat-locker temperature kept his hands from sweating. He read the new contract quickly, then read it again, his eyes lingering on all the key numbers. His heart began to dance a jig in his chest. Three years and ten more fights guaranteed, his pay starting close to double what he'd made on his first six matches and rising steadily if he won. He'd thought Gant might low-ball and make him negotiate, but this was more than Uncle Polly had told him to expect.

His hand hovered over the fingerprint signature box, not quite believing his fortune.

“Show it to whoever you need to—your coach, your lawyer—but I'm not going to bullshit you: it's a good deal.”

Carr pressed his finger to the screen, waited for the confirmation, and handed it back to Gant. “Thank you. Really.” His voice had gone a little squeaky; he cleared his throat. “This is what I want to do. What I've always wanted to do.”

“Your contract isn't a payout. It's an investment,” Gant said. “The ZGFA's investment in you. Don't think for a second this means you've made it, that you don't have to train your ass off harder than ever to keep putting on a good show in the Cube.”

“I don't.”

“Good. Because there are a hundred guys out there who would eat each other alive to take your place.” Gant smiled, not in a cruel way, just
that's the way it is
. “One other thing. You're g
etting a brandhelm.”

Carr's eyebrows furrowed. Marquee athletes had brandhelms, of course, and so did every other famous person from celebrity chefs to CEOs, but Carr was less than a couple of years into a pro career. “I can't afford a brandhelm,” he said. “I mean, the deal is fine, but it's not like I've got extra cash right now.”

“It's your lucky day then,” said the Martian. “Merkel Media Corporation hired heavy on the marketing side and Bran has me convinced we should use the extra manpower up here, promoting our up-and-coming zeroboxers. I'm assigning someone to you.” He drummed his blunt-nailed fingers on the desk. “Like I said, an investment. Just to be clear, I don't do this for every hotshot who comes into my office for his first contract renewal.”

“No sir.”

Gant stood up and Carr stood with him. They shook hands, Carr's fingers numb with cold, Gant's warm and fleshy.

Do it
, Carr urged himself. He had somehow, miraculously, made it into the Martian's good books, at least for now.
Go on. Say it.
“
Another thing,” he said. “Jay Ferrano was the third-ranked lowmass zeroboxer. Now I am.” He steeled his gaze. “I want to fight for the title.”

The Martian grunted. “Every fighter who's ever been in here has given me that line. They all have the same dream that you do. Some of them I bet big on—the way I just bet on you—and they never lived up to their promise.” He eyed Carr, calculating. “You're not special, Luka. Not yet.”

FOUR

F
or the next few days, Carr slept late, indulged in favorite foods (key lime pie from that little caf
é
next to the Infini
ty Grand Hotel—sublime, the best in orbit), returned messages of congratulations, and strode about light with relief that he wasn't going to be shipped back to Earth as a failure.

“Oh man, that fight was STELLAR!” Enzo said when he called. “I've watched it eight times. You know what's funny? Even though I know you won, when I get to that part right near the end, I always feel really worried for a few seconds.”

“But just a few.”

“Like three or four seconds.”

Carr shook his head, awed by the boy's faith. When he'd met Enzo three and a half years ago, the kid had been lying on his back in a weed-choked patch of dirt, his face bruised half purple, shouting and wheezing and swiping for the inhaler that the bigger boy sitting on his chest was waving over his head, just out of reach. After Carr had hauled off the asshole and sent him and his friends home with a promise to make them pee blood the next time he saw them, he squatted down by Enzo and held out the small device, shaking it curiously.

“What is this thing?” he asked.

The boy gasped for breath, high and shrill like a puppy being strangled. He took the inhaler from Carr and sucked on it furiously until he was better. “It's for my asthma,” he said, wiping muddy tears from his face.

“Asthma?” Carr made an incredulous face and the boy dropped his puffy eyes to the ground between his toes. Who in this part of the world still had a defunct genetic disease like
asthma?
Only people with parents too poor to afford even the most basic gene therapy but irresponsible enough to have kids anyways. Low, even by the standards of their neighborhood. School boys would go after such a glaring mark of weakness like hyenas after a lame zebra.

“I'd keep that thing hidden if I were you,” Carr said, with the sage wisdom of his fourteen years at the time. “And next time a bigger kid starts to knock you down, drop to the ground and roll away from him. If he sits on your chest you're in bad shape, little man. You've got to tuck your chin, keep your hands up, and buck your hips hard, like this, see? When he goes forward, roll on top of him fast and nail him a few good ones in the face. With your fist or your elbow. Got it?”

That was how Carr had picked up a short, talkative, seven-year-old shadow. He didn't mind. He liked it, actually. He didn't have any friends outside of the gym, and in the gym, he was always the youngest at his level. Years ago, he'd begged his mom for a little brother; he'd show him the ropes, look out for him, he promised. Of course, she'd said no. After Carr's gym and tournament expenses, they couldn't afford a pet much less another kid. “You're it for me, darling,” she said. “All my eggs in one basket, you could say,” and giggled at her own joke. So Enzo was as close as Carr got. And Enzo was funny and clever, even if he had bum lungs.

Most important of all: the kid was a rabid zeroboxing fan. He made Carr recount the entire match against Jay Ferrano, in blow-by-blow detail, twice through before Carr ended the call to let him run off to school.

In a properly good mood, Carr called his mom. “Hi, Mom,” he said when she answered. “I won my fight. I have a new contract now, a good one. Three years and ten matches.”

“That's super, darling,” she said. “Good for you.”

Carr didn't ask her if she'd watched the fight. Sometimes she did (“That was a good one,” she'd say), sometimes she didn't (“Oh, you've had so
many
, it's hard to keep them all straight—was it the one against that big fellow?”). The truth of it was, he found it excruciating to talk to his mom about zeroboxing. She was always vaguely proud, distantly and unwaveringly supportive, but her interest and knowledge never went much beyond whether he'd won, whether he'd been hurt, and how much money he'd made.

Instead he asked, “How are you doing?”

“Oh, you know me.” She laughed. She had a girlish laugh, like bursting soap bubbles. “The same as always.” Despite this assertion, she continued, “Ginnie, she was a regular, she moved away to Scarborough so I don't see her anymore. And they're taking down those ugly old buildings by the waterfront, so the route has changed and I have two new stops … ”

Sally Luka worked for the Toronto Transit Commission as a bus attendant. It was an utterly superfluous job because the TTC's artificial intelligence system handled all the routing and driving, but the union had managed to preserve the high seniority bus attendant jobs. They argued that people liked to have real humans to greet them, announce their stops, and answer questions if they had any. If they did, Sally would consult the AI, which is what the passenger would simply do themselves if there wasn't a live attendant. Carr's mom had been in her job for twenty-five years. It amazed Carr that she managed to have something inconsequential to say about it every time he spoke to her.

He loved his mom, most of the time, but sometimes he wondered how they could be related.

After he finished talking to her, he sighed in relief and ate a slice of key lime pie. Then he took a look at the money he'd won from the Ferrano fight. He paid overdue rent and bills, stashed away enough to get through the next several months, then transferred the rest to his mom's account. She didn't ask for money, not exactly, but growing up, the lack of it in their lives had been as palpable as a third, ugly family member. So the way it worked now was: she would mention something about the cost of personal data usage going up, he would send money without telling her, she would never acknowledge it, and he never expected her to.

By the fourth day after the fight, Carr was restless. After they'd celebrated the new contract with a trip to Bubbity's all-you-can-eat buffet (where
You're Not Gaining Weight If You're In Space!
), Uncle Polly had told him to take ten days off to let the nanos purge themselves from his body and his bones fully re-mineralize. To Carr, the time felt more like a prison sentence than a vacation. He was most at ease when training hard for an upcoming match. Without one to fixate on, he felt himself sliding into unproductive apathy, which he loathed. He had no interest in or money for the touristy Valtego activities, and while spending a whole day in his apartment playing holovid games or watching Lunar sitcoms (Lunar humor was uniquely, scathingly dark) was a guilty pleasure at first, it made him feel gross, like one of the vacationing planet rats, willingly and constantly trapped in artificial gravity.

Luckily, DK had a fight against Titus “Scorpion” Stockton next month, and Carr had a role as his friend's cornerman to give him something to focus on. DK was all smiles to see him when he showed up at the
ZGFA's land-training gym
. If DK ever felt nervous against a tough opponent like the Scorpion, it manifested itself as cheerful bravado leading into the final weeks.

“Any of your family coming to see you fight?” Carr asked him. They were working the rubber bands, DK leaping off a trampoline launching pad and hitting targets that Carr threw into the air. Elastic cords clipped to his waist tethered him to the ground, giving him extra resistance. A launch strong enough to propel him a short distance in artificial gravity would explode him across the Cube in a fight.

“One of my brothers, and a cousin,” DK said. He grinned his small, pearly toothed grin. “If I got every Kabitain to come to Valtego at once, there wouldn't be enough strippers to entertain them all. They would have to fly in emergency reinforcements.”

DK was among the minority of zeroboxers with a family that seemed halfway functional, not to mention one that was so large: two parents, five older siblings (DK claimed to have been driven to fight as a result of being the smallest and ugliest of the lot), and assorted uncles, aunts, and cousins scattered across Earth, Luna, and half a dozen settlements. All Terran, though; DK insisted that none of his blood had turned domie. His grandparents were Catholic, he said, and had been from the region everyone referred to as Asialantis. They had been fortunate enough to have the money and means to leave the submerging islands of Indonesia and use the relocation stipend to buy their way into seasonal work in suborbital transport.

There were other people in the gym, and every few minutes, someone passing by would say to Carr “Nice fight” or “Hey, congrats.” Adri “Assassin” Sansky stopped by to give him a hug and say, “Hey, hot stuff, I hear the Martian jumped higher than a jackrabbit on Luna to sign you again.” Carr liked how her words weren't tainted by rivalry. Female zeroboxers held their own grudges, Carr knew; maybe worse ones, since there were fewer of them and they ended up fighting each other repeatedly. Adri, though, despite her ripped physique, still seemed to him like a friendly, plain-pretty girl-next-door. “Better watch this kid, DK,” she said, half teasing.

DK punched the final target out of the air and landed, bending his knees to stop his momentum. Carr glanced at him. Though he'd never felt compelled to downplay himself in the Cube before, he said, “It was close. I got lucky.”

“Lucky?” DK unhooked himself from the waist harness and hopped off the trampoline, shaking his head. “Lucky is what happens to those who pay their dues. You could have flamed out after that one bad fight, but you didn't. You came back and trained hard, and you delivered.” He dropped a hand on Carr's shoulder. “Enjoy the attention. You deserve it.”

“Thanks,” Carr said, but he didn't feel at ease with DK's praise. He imagined he heard an edge to it, which was probably unfair, a figment of his own mild discomfort. DK was twenty-two years old, had been on Valtego since he was nineteen, and had a strong, though not spectacular, 9-3 record. He'd taken Carr under his wing early on, given him advice, helped him land gym time and a decent apartment, cornered three of his matches, and been, as DK generally was, an all-around helpful guy. Now, Carr was certain, his new contract placed the two of them on par.

Adri was looking past them toward the front entrance. Her eyes narrowed. “Now what's this?”

A woman had walked in. She was dressed like someone from the ZGFA corporate offices upstairs, but she stood at the front of the training floor and turned her head, eyes roaming around the room as if she was looking for someone. Carr hadn't seen her before. He would have remembered her if he had. She was young, head-turningly attractive, and Martian.

Adri's lips straightened into a line as she crossed her arms. “Domies,” she grumbled. “You see more of them around here every day.”

Carr hadn't really noticed this to be true, but Adri's view of all things Martian had turned bitter ever since her brother had taken the immigration incentives and a quadrupled salary and moved his family to the Red Planet. Now Adri subscribed to
Earth First
, that blatantly pro-Terran protectionism news-feed.

The stranger's searching gaze passed over Carr, then slid back and stopped on him. She strode toward him purposefully. “Carr Luka?” she asked when she reached him.

“Yes,” he said.

She extended her right hand, Terran-style. “I'm Risha Ponn. Your new brandhelm.”

It took Carr a few beats to recover from his surprise and shake her hand. He'd practically forgotten Gant's mention of a brandhelm; the financial terms of the contract had been far more important at the time.

DK and Adri exchanged a glance of barely concealed astonishment. Carr opened his mouth, fumbling for an explanation about how this wasn't his idea, but DK said, “Looks like you've got business, Carr.”

“Yeah,” said Adri. “We'll leave you to it then.”

“The rest of practice … ” Carr protested, but DK raised a hand in a dismissive, backward wave as he and Adri drew away.

Carr sucked the inside of his cheek. Great. The word around here would be (a) he was conceited, and loaded enough to hire a brandhelm mere days after his contract renewal, or (b) Gant was giving him some unprecedented special treatment. He wasn't sure which was worse. He turned back, unsmiling, to the woman in front of him.

She was a little taller and older than Carr, dark and thin the way Martian women were, with high cheekbones and shapely eyes that suggested she was descended from the Asian colonists who'd founded the domed cities all along the Valles Marineris. He realized he was staring with his mouth slightly agape when she said, a little shortly, “Could we sit down and talk?”

He felt a flash of embarrassed irritation. She'd walked into his gym, disrupted his practice, turned him into a subject of gossip, made him blush, and now presumed that he'd drop everything to meet with her. He held up his arm and pointed to his cuff. “Did you think to call?”

“I wanted to see where you spend your time. I'll need to learn everything about you, so I may as well start right away.” There was an offhanded shrug in her voice, the self-assurance bordering on arrogance that he was familiar with from zeroboxers sizing up each other, not from women when they talked to him. He wasn't sure how he felt about this idea of her learning everything about him
.

“There's a noodle place across the street,” he said. “I've got an hour. A Terran hour, not a Martian one.”

“Fine with me.” She walked with him out of the ZGFA building, ignoring the curious looks that followed them. The noodle shop had a dozen tables right beside the street, so diners could gaze up through the sky windows at the stars and the ships in port or get their fill of people-watching, whichever they preferred. Risha wasn't inclined to either, it seemed. She scrolled through the menu for all of five seconds and ordered udon with shrimp. Carr ordered curry udon with a side of edamame, then sat back. He crossed his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits, and looked at her.