Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World (4 page)

"You wish I was a man," she said into the camera. " 'Cause if I was, somebody might have a chance to beat me."

That one live airing moved Sammy's show to new heights, but he never forgave Fera for his humiliation. From then on, each of his shows began with a replay of him smashing her glass image with a hammer. Of course, this only served to make her more popular.

__________

The referee was going over the rules in the middle of the ring when a fight broke out between a man and woman on the floor of the stadium. Women poured down from their exclusive tier and security guards closed in to stop the melee.

When the ref said, "Go to your corners and come out fighting," there were already blows being thrown and blood being spilled.

__________

"This is exciting isn't it, Champ?"

"I don't know, Chet. All I can say is that I'm glad the viewers here in New York can't see this. Even though Jellyroll is shorter, he looks much bigger than Fera."

"I agree, Champ. She looks frightened, fragile compared to him. And you know Jellyroll says that he's not going to go easy on her."

The next voice heard was not one of the announcers but the gravelly deep voice of the exhibition fighter Jellyroll Gregory. "I'm gonna beat her to the floor just like she did to my friend Sammy Rosen. I'm gonna beat her down in the first round. I like to get these fights over quick, 'cause they don't let me eat till after it's over."

The bell rang.

"Looks like the security forces have stopped the brawl just in time for the real fight to begin," Chet Atkinson reported. "Fera Jones comes to the middle of the ring. Jellyroll seems cautious . . . No! He's leaping right at her, both fists flailing. Fera barely avoids getting hit. She falls back. He's jumping again!

He's run right into her. Almost four hundred pounds of man and muscle. She's going down!"

"They're both going down, Chet," Bonner corrected. "The referee, Xian Luke, is calling it a fall. He's rubbing both boxers' gloves off on his shirt."

"We should say that Luke is one of the best refs in the game today," Chet said. "He asked for this job tonight because he said that he didn't want to see anyone get hurt."

"I don't think he was worried about Jellyroll, Chet."

"Me nei--Oh no! Jellyroll throws a roundhouse right that connects with Fera's jaw. She's falling back. She's on the ropes. I think she might have gone all the way down if the ropes hadn't been there to stop her. Jellyroll is on her again. He's throwing everything he's got. Jones is covering up."

"Jellyroll wants to get her out of here quick. He doesn't want to be out there carrying around three hundred and eighty pounds in the later rounds."

"Another fight has broken out in the seats!"

"Forget that, Chet! Fera's coming back! She's jabbing in the center of the ring. Look at the speed of that jab! One, two, . . . six jabs before Jellyroll could get his defense up. His eye, yes, there's a cut open over his left eye! Jellyroll is bleeding. Jellyroll is bleeding!"

Chet Atkinson jumped in to say, "It's like old times. Like back when they fought bare-knuckled. They're swinging in and out of the ring. Fera Jones is going for Jellyroll's spare tire. We can hear the blows here at ringside. He's trying to mount a counterattack. Fera better watch it. She's leaving herself open swinging away like that. Oh! Jellyroll connected to her jaw again."

"That was right on the money," Billy Bonner cried. "Jones is backing up, but she's not going down. Oh!

He connected again. What's holding this woman up?"

"I don't know, Champ. But she's not falling back on the ropes this time. Fera Jones is going to the body. These blows are vicious. It doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman when you get hit like that. Oh shit!" Chet Atkinson never complained about the $10,000 he was fined for cursing on a show with only a V

rating. "She connected with an uppercut! Jellyroll is lifted from the canvas! He's down! He's down!

Jellyroll Gregory is down!"

"And I don't believe that he's getting up," Billy added. "No. Luke is waving Fera away. He's calling the fight over. The parmeds are jumping into the ring. Six of them."

"They'll need that many if they have to carry him out of here."

"Look, Chet. The women are tearing up the stands! They're throwing the chairs into a group of taunting men. Fights are breaking out everywhere."

"You better get in there and talk to the winner, Champ. Before they tear the house down." __________

"So, M Jones," the Eclipse asked amid the hubbub of the crowded ring, "how did it feel in there against a man?"

"I've had harder fights, Billy," Fera said. "But first I want to give thanks to the goddess Diana, and I want to thank my daddy for making me the greatest fighter in the world."

"He hit you pretty hard a couple of times. We thought you were going down once."

"He never hurt me. The first time he hit me I moved back in case he was throwing a combination, but I stumbled and fell into the ropes. He never hurt me."

"Well, you sure hurt him."

"Bring on Zeletski," Fera said. "Bring on your champion."

"What do you think, Professor Jones?" Bonner asked Fera's father/trainer/manager. "Do you want to see her jump up in competition to Zeletski's level this quickly?"

"Fera could beat Zeletski any day. She has the power and she knows how to get it to him. You saw how Jellyroll hit her. I tell you Fera would make Sonny Liston quiver in his boots."

"Thank you, Professor, Fera . . ." An uproar rose. "Someone has just thrown a chair into the ring. There are fights breaking out everywhere. The police are trying to restore order, but I don't even know if the main event will go on. Back to you, Chet."

"There you have it. Fera Jones has an impressive win tonight and her trainer says that she's ready for a championship shot. There would be a lot of money in that fight. But not if a brawl breaks out like this one. I'm being told that we will go off the air while the police regain some semblance of order. This is Chet Atkinson, with the Champ, Billy 'the Eclipse' Bonner, saying--"
2

"But, Daddy, I
am
ready. I can take him. I can. You said so yourself after the fight with Jelly Belly."

"You got the power, Fifi. You got the heart. But you need more experience."

"Nobody's ever beat me, Daddy."

"What about the last fight you had, with Bobo Black?"

"I told you. I was off. I had trouble getting it to him."

"You had trouble because you couldn't get to him, and you couldn't get to him because he was outthinking you in there. If he hadn't'a got tired you would have had your first UBA loss." They were in Fera's permanent suite on the three hundredth floor of the Fifth Business,
the
Broadway hotel. Fera had had eight UBA fights by then. All with men. All ending by KO.

"Zeletski can box better than Black, and he doesn't get tired. He hits hard enough to put you down. We need a little more time. You need a better class of fight. Like this Black. You have to go through a couple of wars. And there's something else."

"What, Daddy?"

"Money, baby. Lotsa money. It's been chump change up till now. We got this suite, but that's just 'cause this hotel wants to brag on you. You lose one fight and we're outta here."

"We've been broke before."

"Yeah, but," he hesitated. "You know with the Pulse I can't take chances. Ever since Congress legalized Pulse you got to have money. You got to have money or you're dead."

The Pulse was a drug dealer's dream. Cooked up at CalTech in the late hours when the professors were in bed. The gene drug altered the structure of the pleasure centers of the brain, temporarily allowing consciousness some measure of control over dreams. With just the right amount, a pulsar, as the users called themselves, could create a complex fantasy, build a whole world and live in it for what seemed like days, weeks. The original intention of the students was to create a time warp in the brain where they could do months of complex research in an evening.

"But the drug gave entrée to the id," Dr. Samboka of NYU explained in the
EastCoast DataTimes
after it was far too late. "And the id has a powerful inclination for sensuality and instinct." Pulsars' minds drifted into passionate love affairs and musical performances that lasted for days. Many lost interest in the world around them, making better worlds in their unconscious minds. And to make matters worse, or better from a profit point of view, it turned out that after four or five uses, the brain collapsed in on itself without regular ingestion of the drug. It was an addiction from which death was the only withdrawal.

The Pulse, named after the heartbeat many addicts reported hearing before slipping into fantasy, was legalized in 2031. Pulse party parlors appeared everywhere. The cost was fixed by the government, but there was no coverage on state medical insurance and no emergency fund for the poor pulsar who went broke. And because the user had to have the drug every three days, there were few job cycles that a pulsar could hold.

Pulsedeath was an everyday event. Almost every user died horribly from a collapsed brain. Only the rich could be sure of long-term supply. And even they died ultimately, their brains like overstretched rubber bands snapping finally from overwork.

"I know it's going to kill me," Rickert Londonne, Pulse proponent and user, proclaimed on prime vid.

"But last night I was the emperor Hadrian. I controlled the Roman empire. I strode the city streets and lived among the people, common and extraordinary. I battled the Vandals, the Goths, and the Persians. I built a world. What did you do last night?"

Pulse had another unexpected impact on the economy. In the days between use, Pulsars read many books of fiction and history to seed their minds with the possibility of dreams. Electronic publishing industry stocks soared.

"We could make a billion-dollar fight if you get the women of the world on your side, Fifi. Get that and I can live a few more years."

"I will, Daddy. And I'll pay to have the MacroCode Gen-Team find you a cure."

"I know you will, baby. I know you will."

3

The night before the Mathias Konkon fight, Pell Lightner came up to the three hundredth floor of the Fifth Business. He whispered his name into the key-mike and the door slid open. He hesitated a moment before entering, took a deep breath, and then walked in confidently, standing to his full five foot nine and a half inches.

"Fifi?"

There was no answer. He went through the entrance area into the living room. The sight of Leon Jones sitting on the long, overstuffed sofa gave Pell a scare, but then he realized that his girlfriend's father was far beyond worrying about him. The elder Jones's eyes were open, and he seemed to be looking right at Pell, but really he was gazing far away into faded Pulsedreams. After years of use the dreams had dwindled into a kind of bleached-out euphoria. The loss of specific dream content was the first sign that a user's brain was near final collapse.

"Hey, baby." Fera was standing at the door to her bedroom, naked. Pell liked it that the musculature of Fera's chest hadn't erased her womanly figure. Her breasts were real breasts, and except for that one evening on the Sammy Rosen show, Pell was the only man to see under her dress nowadays.

All of his young life, Pell had lived in Common Ground, the place for all unemployed citizens. He had learned to appreciate a good thing. He was only nineteen, permanently unemployed and without benefits except for an octangular sleep tube underground and regular rations of rice and beans.

"Take down your pants," Fera said.

Automatically Pell took a step forward. At the same time he pulled down his pants. He leapt toward her and she held him up in her arms. Fera grinned broadly when Pell grabbed her hair to keep his balance. She carried him from the room while her father mused.

Fera had met Pell at a Soul Shack on Middle Broadway. He was strutting around among the Backgrounder girls, acting like the cock of the walkway. She got a hot ribs and yam dinner in a plasbox and then walked up to the group of young Backgrounders. Pell was arrogant and snide, but when she asked him if he wanted to go with her he was in the car as quickly as he could move.

"You remember when we first met?" Fera asked her lover. She was on top of him, grinding her hips.

"Yeah," he coughed.

"Did you love me for my body or my money?" Her coarse blond hair raked his eyes. A look of confusion came over his face. For a moment it seemed as if he had found an answer, but instead he had a powerful orgasm.

"I can't, I can't," he cried meaninglessly.

__________

"Baby, do you love me?" Fera asked Pell in her dark bedroom. Through the open window the spires of upper Manhattan stretched toward the sky.

"We don't use that word underground."

"What do you say, then?"

"I look for you, I see you, I won't turn away."

"That's a lotta words just to say the same thing."

"It's not the same thing. Not at all. 'I love you,' means, 'I need you.' The way I say it means that you can count on me. The way I say it is strong."

"You turned away from your friends to come with me."

"I never told 'em I wouldn't."

Fera laid her big palm on his chest.

"I wish I was like you, Pipi," she said.

"What you mean? Here you up above, butter and cream--and I'm down below, bread and water."

"But you know what you think."

"Huh?"

"If I say something or ask something, you have an answer. Even if you just don't know you sound so sure. All I know is that I love my daddy. That and boxing is all I have. Everything else is a mess. That's why I like fighting, because I get so mad not bein' sure, and hittin' somebody makes me feel better. Even gettin' hit feels good."

"Then that's good enough. It keeps you upover."

"But I want more."

"What?"

"Like you. To look and not turn away."

4

The Konkon fight was the turning point in Fera Jones's career. The night before was the first time Leon experienced a Pulse Reflux episode. It left him bedridden and unable to be in his daughter's corner. She asked Pell to stand in for her father, and the diminutive Backgrounder agreed. He had been sitting ringside for over six months and had some notion of what was expected of a corner man. The only thing he didn't know how to do was stop the bleeding in case of a cut, but Leon had been smart enough to bring in Doc Blevins, the premier cut man of boxing, as a permanent member of Ferocious Fera Jones's corner.