Zeroboxer (5 page)

SIX

G
o again,” Carr insisted.

Blake groaned but complied, tackling Carr and pulling him off the wall, wrapping both legs around his waist. Carr hoped never to be caught by BB Dunn in such a compromised position, but he was determined to train for it until he could break the man's forward control in his sleep. Blake packed a few more kilos than Dunn but had roughly the same proportions and grappling style, which made him a good stand-in.

Uncle Polly followed them as they battled. “Hands up, hands up,” he reminded Carr. “You're telegraphing your moves again—he'll see that coming a light year away.”

Carr crunched his body and drove the tip of his elbow into Blake's thigh until he had enough room to twist his hips sideways. They bounced lightly into the wall and Carr grabbed it, using it for stability as he shot one knee up between himself and Blake. He pushed off and swiveled his lower body hard, wrapping his legs around Blake's neck in a vi
se and squeezing until the other man tapped.

“That was good,” Blake said as they hung onto the wall, catching their breaths. “You're a lot faster with that now.”

“You're still relying on the wall and it won't always be there for you,” Polly said. “You need to be able to do it floating. You've got one week to hone your submission game, and if it's not there, you're going to have to count on out-flying Dunn. You ready to do that?”

Carr gritted his teeth. He'd been thinking the exact same thing. Frenzied preparation had thrown him and Uncle Polly into a sort of psychic state, where half the time one of them knew what the other would say before he said it. BB Dunn, they both knew, was no Jay Ferrano. He had grace—that's how people in the business referred to a zeroboxer who made it look easy, who could cripple you in the absence of gravity and made it look like a beautiful thing of nature. The fighter with grace was the man. BB Dunn was so agile in the Cube he was called “the Earless One.” The pun came from a rumor that he had some vestibular defect that prevented him from ever being disoriented. It also dangerously understated how good the man's grappling was.

“One more time,” Carr said, even though they'd been in the Virgin Galactic Center for hours. The sports doctor had warned him that such prolonged zero gravity exposure was going to render his most recent re-mineralization ineffective, but Carr figured if he won the fight, he'd have the money to redo the treatment.

Blake checked the time on his cuff. “I told DK I'd meet him for land-training and pick up tape and gel for his fight.”

“Shit, of course. Sorry I forgot. Get out of here.” Carr shook his head. He felt bad enough about having bailed as DK's cornerman without monopolizing Blake as well. He'd said to DK, “I'll still do it if you need me to,” but it was only a verbal gesture; they both knew it was ridiculous. DK's fight was three days before his; Carr couldn't possibly focus on his friend's match when he had so little time to train for his own.

DK had been understanding. “Hey, no worries, I get it, it's Dunn. You want this one,” he'd said, but Carr knew it was a pain to replace a cornerman on short notice. He still felt guilty.

As Blake climbed his way over to the hatch, Uncle Polly said to Carr, “You need a break? Or more flying drills?”

When he'd told Uncle Polly about the Dunn fight, his trainer had shouted, “Three weeks? Three fucking weeks? Damn Gant's domie hide! What the hell were you thinking when you took it?”

“You think I should've turned it down?”

“No. It's BB Dunn! Of course you should've taken it. But you should've fucking asked me!”

Carr took the towel that Polly handed him and wiped the sweat from his face. The Cube had begun to feel like a sauna. Without gravity, warm air did not rise, it just stayed in place, growing thicker and more stifling. Thankfully, the ventilation fans built into the walls kicked on automatically, forcibly circulating cooler air into the enclosure. “Flying drills,” he said.

Uncle Polly lobbed a stuffed bolster the size of a man's torso through the air. Carr scrambled up the wall, bounded off a right corner and launched himself at it, tackling it hard and rotating his body to control the rebound with his feet. They did the drill again, and again, Polly trying to throw him off, Carr snatching the target out of the air like a hawk knocking a sparrow out in mid-flight.

DK's advice had been, “Don't go crazy and overtrain. You don't want to burn yourself out.” But Carr didn't really believe in overtraining. Sure, he'd been warned about burn out and injury, but so far he'd been lucky and hadn't suffered anything serious. Even without nanos, he always healed quickly from minor issues and seemed to get by fine with five to six hours of sleep per night. Three weeks was nearly four hundred waking hours, quite a lot of time if he made the most of every one of them. He wasn't going to go in poorly prepared, like he had with Jackson. He wasn't ever going to do that again.

Uncle Polly always drew the line eventually. He'd been a trainer for a long time, and he had an instinctive feel for what Carr needed: when he needed to be encouraged, when he needed to be yelled at, when he needed to be pushed harder or reeled back in. “Calling it a night,” he shouted now. “I know you'd keep going if I didn't.” Then he pointed at the deck, which seemed, because of where they were in space, to be hanging below them. “Looks like you've got an audience.”

Carr tilted his head. Risha Ponn held lightly onto the guide-rail
as she walked, seemingly upside down, across the deck. Carr stifled both a smile and a groan. He was in pre-fight monasticism: no alcohol, no caffeine, no junk food, no girls. Risha was distracting as hell: legs that went on and on, chi
n-length black hair floating in a dark halo around her head, thinscreen tucked under one arm, poised to overwhelm him with information.

“She's a bit old for you,” Uncle Polly said, startling Carr out of his thoughts.

“Coach,” Carr protested, the tips of his ears starting to burn, “I wasn't going there.”

“Sure you were,” said Polly. “I was your age once. I'm just saying.”

Carr couldn't tell if Uncle Polly intended to be as stern as his voice or as teasing as his eyes. “Even if I was going there, she's not,” he said. “Not too old, I mean. I'll bet you she's twenty-one. Twenty-two at the most.”

His coach shrugged, lips crooking as if fighting a smile. Carr blew out an exasperated breath and sailed toward the entry hatch, executing a tight flip as he went through. He landed on the deck, facing Risha. “What are you doing
here?”

“Looking for you, obviously, in the place you spend ninety percent of your time,” she replied. “Nice to see you too.”

Heat crept into Carr's face. He backtracked and tried to get off on a better foot. “I meant, how did you get in here?”

“I work for the ZGFA. Same as you, remember?” Risha smiled at Uncle Polly as he came out of the Cube. “Hello, Pol.”

“Risha.”

For reasons that Carr could not fathom, Uncle Polly and Risha Ponn had, in a mere two weeks, hit it off rather splendidly. She got away with calling him by his real name, Pol. He, for his part, referred to her as “that domie girl” with a note of grudging affection in his voice.

“May I take Carr for a couple hours?” she said, as if asking to borrow a vehicle.

“Sure can,” said Polly before Carr could protest on his own behalf. “We just finished up.”

“I have a taxi waiting.” Risha led the way back down the hall toward the main docking hold.

Carr followed her, frowning. He stopped to gather his bag from its magnetic locker. “Is this important? My fight is next week.”

“I haven't forgo
tten.” She moved comfortably and gracefully, without clinging to guide-rails or tether. He wondered if it came to her naturally. Did she space-dance or play any zero-g sports? When they reached the hold, the waiting car opened when she held her cuff to
the reader, and she instructed the vehicle to take them to Mia Terra food plaza in the outer ring. The harnesses tightened, and the car pulled away from the Virgin Galactic Center an
d sped down the freeway tube. “There will be food at Mia Terra you can eat, I hope?” she s
aid.

“I have my dinner in my bag,” Carr replied. “So go wherever you like.”

As the pressure of gravity returned, Carr felt it in his body—more blood circulating to his lower torso and legs, a mild sense of queasiness as his stomach and organs settled downward. His clothes flattened damply against his skin, and it occurred to him that he stank of sweat. He always showered back in his apartment (zero gravity showers were truly awful) and now he would have to reek throughout dinner.

He glanced over at Risha, in trim white pants and a matching sleeveless top made of some gauzy, cooling material. It probably kept her Martian metabolism—designed for dry, bitter cold and lower oxygen—from overheating, but it also suggested “tropical vacation” and hugged her body in all the right places. He looked back down at himself, in gym clothes thrown over his training shorts. He pulled at the fastening band of his gloves with his teeth, tugging them off, irritated at himself.

“You're quiet,” Risha said.

“Thinking about my fight,” he lied.

Mia Terra food plaza bustled at all hours with pre- and post-show theater patrons, shoppers wandering over from the main strip of high-end stores, and the usual crowd of casino and hotel customers. Risha made straight for a place with a short line of two Martians and one Terran, which had a single item on the menu. Carr studied it curiously when she returned. It appeared to be a steaming bowl of deep purple stew.

“
Tzuk
a
chili,” she explained. “Comfort food from the Valles. The most authentic version I've found in Terran orbit so far. You should try it when you're not on a pre-fight deprivation diet.”

Carr snorted noncommittally. “Every zeroboxer has had
tzuka
beans.” They were a staple superfood, designed by Martian agricultural scientists. Red Planet residents relied on the stuff all winter, but it had never been very popular on Earth.

“You haven't tried them like this,” Risha insisted. “Valles cuisine does amazing stuff with
tzuka
beans.” They claimed a small table near the light fountain at the edge of the plaza. Carr unpacked his carefully proportioned dinner: brown rice, chicken breast strips, a cup of chopped kale, and a custom-formulated supplement shake that the label told him included Zinc Ultrahigh, Max Vita, Enzyme Pulse, Adrenal Blast, and a dozen other things including chocolate flavoring. Risha looked at his meal and said, “I'll take
tzuka
chili any day.”

They tucked into their food. “Do you miss it?” Carr asked. “Mars, that is.”

S
he shook her head. “
I left when I wa
s a child. It doesn't feel like home to me anymore.” She looked out across the plaza for a quiet moment
before turning back to him. “But I don't belong on Earth either. I'm not designed for it; I don't fit in.” She gave a helpless shrug. “On
Valtego,
it's never too hot. Martian and Terran ships come through every day. I can eat shrimp or
tzuka
.”

Carr nodded. “Planet life is overrated.”

Her lips moved in the beginning of a smile, parting as if she was going to say more. Then she reached for her thinscreen and unfolded it. “We
do
have business to talk about. Aren't you curious as to what your brandhelm has been up to?”

“I was planning on asking you, eight days from now.”

“You now have InBevMC and Skinnwear confirmed as sponsors, and two others close to signing. The reason I need to talk to you is ImOptix—I'm positioning them as a tentpole sponsor and they want you broadcasting with their newest, highest-resolution optic implants. So you'll need to go in to upgrade, and you can't be hit in the head for forty-eight hours afterward.”

Carr opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I … what? No, I don't have time to go in to upgrade my optics.”

“It'll only take an hour. Two max. Can you do it tomorrow morning?”

“No.”

“Morning after tomorrow, then. Otherwise we'll run out of time. And no head impact for two days, remember.”

“That's crazy. I have a fight in seven days. How do you expect me to—”

“Gant approved my proposed brand campaign. I got your pre-fight interview spot extended from five to ten minutes.”

She was like a verbal zeroboxer, throwing moves too fast to counter. Carr let out a slow breath. How had she gotten so much done in such a short amount of time? “I'm impressed,” he said finally.

“So you'll do it?”

“Do I have a choice? I promised to trust you on all this stuff.” Carr glared. “If I don't win … ”

“Do you think you'll win?”

“I'm not about to jinx myself.”

“I think you will.”

“Based on what special zeroboxing knowledge that you possess?”

“BB Dunn thought he was going to be fighting Jaycen Douglas. Douglas is nothing like you. Now Dunn has three weeks to train to fight you, just like you have three weeks to train for him. But in his mind, he's taking a step down, fighting a consolation match when what he really wanted was a Douglas rematch.” Risha tapped Carr on the bare forearm with her index finger. “You've been training non-stop; he's been trying to salvage the lost hype by trash-talking you. He was just on
Cube Talk with Brock
, saying that he really feels sorry for you, it must be scary for a young fighter pulled in as a replacement, and he looks forward to teaching you a few things.”