Zeroboxer (15 page)

Blake blinked as if it ought to be obvious. “He just ate a loss.”

“I know it's not just that. Ever since I got back from Earth, months ago, he's been acting like I fucked his mother.”

B
lake raised the cup of water to his lips and drank it in one long swallow. When he was done, he tossed the cup into the dematerializing bin. “What do you think?” he said. “He's the Captain. He was here before you. He took you under his wing, showed you the ropes. Can't blame him for figuring he ought to be the one popping up on holovid ads, getting dedicated Systemnet feeds, racking up sponsors and fans. Instead, it's you. And you haven't looked back, not once.”

Carr felt a rush of anger turn his stomach. Fine. So it was tr
ue—he hadn't been keeping up with his flymates. He'd been obsessed with the title fight, and now, well, there were a lot more things demanding his attention. Blake's words, as blunt and hu
rtful
as a hammer, showed he just didn't understand, any more than DK did.

“Jealous, huh?” Carr said. “Didn't think Captain Pain would be so petty.”

Blake shrugged. “He's trained his whole life for something he's watching you walk away with. How would you feel?”

I'd hate it. I'd be jealous as hell.
“The Cube doesn't work that way,” he said. “It doesn't matter who you are or how long you've trained. It only matters if you win.”

“Doesn't hurt to have a pretty face and a good Cinderella story, does it?”

Carr snarled. “Those things are just noise.
I
won the belt
. That's what matters here.”

“You don't think he knows that? Everyone knows that.”

“I would've thought friends would be happy for each other,” Carr said, but it sounded pathetic even to him.

“I'm happy for you,” Blake said. “Doesn't mean I don't want to kill you sometimes.” He smiled his slow, slack smile, but the reckless twin blue fires of the Destroyer's eyes flared for an instant. He could have been teasing, or he could have been dead serious; likely both. Gathering his towel and practice gloves, Blake turned away. “See you around, Carr.”

Carr was still in a foul mood when he got to Gant's office. Although the ZGFA offices filled two entire floors of the building, the only one he'd ever been in was Gant's. He wondered what all the other people did—they worked away so anonymously. No one ever paid attention to them, never trained a camera on them. They probably did the same sort of thing every day, their lives as smooth as a slow solar yacht cruise, never feelin
g ecstatic highs or crippling lows. It was hard to imagine.

Risha was alone in Gant's office, having a conversation with the invisible person on the other end of her call. “The press release goes out today,” she was saying, “but we hold on revealing the Luka Foundation logo until Carr has approved it. I have to go. Send me the trending stats once you have them.” She touched her cuff to end the call and said to him, “Gant just stepped out. He'll be back in a minute.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” Carr demanded. “Why didn't you tell me Enzo was going to be here? Or about this whole Luka Foundation business? Don't you think I ought to know if I'm getting a foundation named after me?”

Risha looked surprised and hurt by his tone. “Weren't you glad to see Enzo? And to learn about the Foundation? I think it's brilliant. And a worthy cause.”

“It … it is, but I should have been told it was coming, don't you think?”

“If you'd known beforehand, the moment wouldn't have been genuine. That's what you are: genuine. It's why people love you. People are too savvy and skeptical these days; they would know if it was rehearsed. Everyone there could tell how you really felt when you first saw Enzo without his glasses. And they'll understand why the Luka Foundation is important.”

Carr dropped into the chair next to her, scowling. She reached over and rubbed his leg soothingly. He felt the heat of her fingers through his pants. As usual, he was freezing in Gant's office, and she was in a printed, asymmetrical tank top. She'd grown her dark hair long, and it hung over her bare shoulders. Try as he might, it was really hard to stay mad at her.

“When I told you I paid for Enzo's treatments,” he said, “I wasn't offering it up for my brandhelm to use as a media stunt. I was telling
you—
Risha—because … ” He spread his hands in exasperation. “Because I trust you. I thought … I mean … isn't what we have special? I don't want to think that everything I tell you might show up on a news-feed.”

She drew her hand back but leaned in, her delicate features set solemnly. “You
can
trust me. I'm your brandhelm and it's my job to show the world who you are. But I love you, Carr. I would never do anything I thought you wouldn't approve of. I would never hurt you.”

He sighed and reached up to run his hand down her smooth, toned arm. “Why do you do what you do?” he asked quietly. “Why a brandhelm, always promoting someone else?
”

She considered for a moment. “Because I'm good at it.”

“I've heard that line before,” Gant said, stepping into his office and dabbing the sweat off his forehead. “I don't know what's more vicious—zeroboxing or marketing. It's got to say something unflattering about me that I'm eyeball-deep in both.” He poured himself coffee and glanced at the two of them with a smirk. “I didn't interrupt anything, did I?”

“No,” Risha said. “We were just talking about the Foundation and what a worthy cause it is.”

Gant sat down and shook his head. “I don't get Terrans. They ban anything resembling enhancement, but they let poor, uneducated parents mess up their kids lives with bad genetics. You did a really charitable thing, Carr, helping that boy out. But who knows what other problems he has, that he might not even know about yet? He might need therapy his whole life for things that could easily have been prevented before he was born.” He made a sad noise of disgust and pointed an accusing finger at Carr. “This sort of thing doesn't happen on Mars.”

“Why are you pointing at me?” Carr said. “I represent the Terran people now?”

“In this room, I guess you do.” He took a sip of coffee.

“To be fair,” Risha said, “Earth didn't have the luxury of being founded by scientists and engineers. Humans there evolved over millions of years, not a few generations. They never needed genetic technology just to survive on their planet. So there are millions of people who still think it's okay for a person's fate to be determined by some random combining of sperm and ova.” She looked at Carr thoughtfully. “I guess I can see why leaving things up to chance has a certain romantic appeal. Sometimes the results are surprising, and just as beautiful.”

Gant snorted. “You've been off Mars too long if you're starting to see things from their point of view. Though I'm not one to talk. My friends back on the Red Planet think I've gone native out here.” He gestured at all his wood furniture, his mug of coffee.

Carr felt his insides squirming at the conversation's direction. “Can we get back on topic? Who've you got lined up for me?”

“Single-minded, aren't you?” Gant said. “Every time you're in my office, it's ‘who am I fighting next?' You just got off a fight and it's all you want to talk about.”

“Living on a city-station,” replied Carr dryly, “kind of eliminates the weather as a subject of conversation.”

“Look, I don't know yet. It's getting hard to find opponents for you.”

Carr had had two other fights since winning the title. They'd come on fast, from guys eager to take first crack at the new champion. Carlos “Berserker” Diaz's coach had pulled his battered and exhausted fighter after two rounds. Jaycen “Sandman” Douglas had come back from post-surgery rehab raring to prove he was the division contender who should have fought Manon to begin with. He'd challenged Carr against his trainer's advice. Carr had put him back in rehab.

“Jackson,” Carr said. “I told you I want Ray Jackson.”

Gant made a face. “Jackson doesn't want to fight you. Why would he? He beat you before.”

“He doesn't think he can do it again?”

“I'd say he likes his record as it stands.”

“Offer him more money.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

Carr rubbed a hand across his face. “Then take it out of mine. I'll do the fight for half.”

“Are you crazy? That's a ridiculous amount to offer a mid-ranked zeroboxer like Death Ray. Save your money. Move on.”

Carr didn't say anything, just gazed at Gant steadily. That one loss was a glaring blemish on his record, unsightly as a hairy, puckered mole. Every time he saw his stats on a screen, or heard them announced, it was there. He wasn't going to give in.

Seeing this, Gant sighed. “Have it your way. I'll see if the man will jump for a big-enough carrot. But after that, I don't know. If you're ready to move up a mass division and fight welter, I could put you up against Blake Murphy.”

Carr had been a lowmass since he was sixteen, and he'd grown since then; it
was
time he moved up. But fighting his own cornerman in the Cube? He hesitated for a second; then the whole encounter in the gym downstairs sped through his mind and a bitter taste rose to his mouth.
You want to kill me sometimes, do you, Blake? I'd like to see you try. Just try.
“Fine. After Jackson, I'll move up.”

Gant leaned back in his chair and let out a breath that fogged slightly in the cold. “Let's step back and look at the big picture. You're the youngest champion in the history of zeroboxing. What have you got left to prove? Sure, you're going to defend that belt. Maybe you can make it as a weltermass, we'll see. But what else?”

What else was there? Carr furrowed his brow, not sure what the man was getting at. “I'm not going to take up golf, if that's what you're thinking.”

The Martian turned an impatient glare on him. “You're not just a fighter now, Luka. You're a brand. You represent the ZGFA. You're the face of Terran zeroboxing. The marketing campaign and the publicity tour of Earth turned out to be wildly successful, and it sure didn't hurt that you won the title two months later. More Terrans watched that match than have watched zeroboxing in the past two years
combined
. Risha, show him.”

Risha unfolded the thinscreen she practically slept with and scrolled through a series of charts with steeply rising lines. “These are the trending numbers for zeroboxing-related feed hits, viewership, and sponsorship dollars.”

Carr rubbed his temples in a slow, circular motion. “You want me to do another tour? Another movie? What is it?”

“We're taking the campaign in a new direction,” Gant said. “We're thinking of it as Phase Two. Phase One was growing awareness and popularity of the sport. Phase Two is strengthening zeroboxing's emotional relevance for all Terrans. Here's what we've got mocked up so far. It's all preliminary, of course.”

He activated his wallscreen and it came to life with an image of Carr captured in mid-flight, arms spread, poised in the moment before an airborne turn, his tattoo wings stretched across a full shot of his muscled back. The tag line read:
Earth Born, Not Earthbound
. The screen shifted to a new image, of Carr launching straight up, unhindered by gravity.
Super Natura
l
was the copy on that one. Another one was a close-up shot of his taut torso:
Some works of nature can't be improved by s
cience.

“What do you think?” Risha asked.

“Those cameras are amazing,” Carr said. “Do I really look like that?” He noted the light tone in his voice, how it didn't betray the queasy feeling growing in his gut. He read the words on the last ad again and felt the carefully sealed and compressed box stored away inside him tremble under hairline cracks.

“Terran pride is what we're after,” Gant said. “The message you stand for is that Terrans can and should be proud to be what they are. Because that crowded, disorderly, messed-up stew that is the cradle of humanity produces true greatness. Natural greatness, bubbling up to rival anything that comes from the labs of Mars or the other colonies.”

Except that there's nothing natural about me.
Carr watched the flattering ads cycle through again, an awful mix of pleasure and dismay swirling together inside him like oil and vinegar. Only if Mr. R were sitting in this room with him could the irony be more complete. “You sure changed your tune,” he said to Gant. “What happened to ‘I don't get Terrans' and ‘This sort of thing doesn't happen on Mars'?”

Gant waved a dismissive hand. “This is business, Carr. Whatever else I say about Terrans, they're damned good consumers. You know Risha and I are terraphiles at heart.” He swiped the repeating ads off of the wallscreen and scrolled around the interface menu, trying to pull up something else. “I need the two of you to come up with a tactical plan for how you're going to support the new marketing direction with Carr's subscribers and fans.”

“Already working on it,” Risha said at once, tossing her hair behind her shoulders and taking rapid notes on her thinscreen.

“Good,” said Gant, finally finding what he was looking for and flicking his fingers to expand it. “Because next year, this is going to be the biggest thing in zeroboxing.”

Carr startled at the dramatic sound effect of fusion thrusters firing. Words flew out from the center of the screen and stopped with a crashing, colliding sound:

ZGFA and WCC co-present