Zeroboxer (25 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

T
he police lieutenant identified herself as Officer Jin. A no-nonsense, middle-aged Martian woman who towered a head taller than Carr, she ushered him into one of the hotel's small conference rooms while the other two Surya cops handcuffed and carried Rhystok, still unconscious, out to the waiting police car.

The lieutenant tapped her cuff. “I have to make you aware that your responses are being recorded. Do you understand?”

Carr nodded.

“I need you to say yes,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You testify that the man who entered your hotel room this evening confessed to killing a government agent?”

“Detective Van,” said Carr. “He worked for Genepol. His cuff is in the man's jacket pocket.”

Jin looked disturbed. “The detective was last heard from nineteen hours ago. He informed us he had a civilian agent on Surya with an authorized police alert code. I assume that was you.”

“Yes.”

“The man we just arrested—did you know him?”

“Kaan Rhystok. Yes.”

“Did you know he's a fugitive? The Terrans want him on charges of genetic crimes, fraud, and extortion.”

“I know.”

Jin tilted her chin, eyebrows rising under the fringe of her short, severely cut hair. “Why would Genepol involve
you
—a celebrity zeroboxer—as a civilian agent?”

Carr ignored the whiff of condescension. “Rhystok is a … fan of mine. He comes to a lot of my fights. The detective was sure he'd be here on Surya to watch the tournament.”

Jin kept looking at Carr in a way that made him suspect she'd seen his face on a promotional holovid banner and was comparing him unfavorably to a more idealized image, one without the puffy bruises, shadow of stubble, or dark circles under the eyes. “What is the nature of your relationship to Kaan Rhystok, Mr. Luka?” she asked. “Why would he put himself at risk by using a police cuff to enter your room and confess his crimes?”

“I think,” Carr said slowly, “that anything else I say should be to Genepol, with a lawyer in the room.”

The lieutenant's expression grew tight. “I'll remind you that you are under Martian jurisdiction right now, Mr. Luka. If a foreign policeman was killed on Surya, it is entirely
our
concern, and we expect your full cooperation.”

The door opened and Bax Gant strode in with Uncle Polly. Carr's insides contorted, heart leaping and stomach dropping. Uncle Polly had the look of a man jolted from sleep
by the apocalypse—wild-eyed a
nd blank-faced as he tried to decide if what was happening was real. Seeing Carr gave him his answer; he stopped as if he'd walked into a wall. His cheeks and shoulders sagged as if air had been let out of them.

Gant planted his fists and leaned his weight on the top of the small table. He turned his head from the policewoman to Carr and back again. “Is one of my athletes under arrest?”

Officer Jin stiffened at the accusatory tone. “No, but—”

“Then that's all the questioning you're going to be d
oing tonight, officer.”

“Under what authority—” The policewoman drew herself up and said something sharp and affronted to Gant in a Tharsian regional dialect. To Carr, it sounded like a pidgin of two or three Terran languages, and he guessed, from the way Gant's eyes narrowed, that it wasn't flattering.

“Check with your superiors,” Gant said, unmoved. “Everyone from the ZGFA is here under special visiting-athlete status. If you intend to question Carr Luka in connection to a crime—which you haven't established yet, by the way—you'll need to clear it with the Terran embassy on Mars, and he has the right to a consular lawyer.”

Jin glared. “None of you are permitted to leave Surya Station in the meantime.”

“Wouldn't dream of it.”

The lieutenant jabbed her cuff's recording off, turned sharply, and left the room.

Gant made sure the door was firmly closed before he rounded on Carr, thrusting an accusing finger. “Of all the guys on the team, you were the last one I expected to have to bail from the cops. What sort of mess have you gotten yourself into, Luka?”

“Bax,” Uncle Polly said at once, stepping forward, “this isn't his fault.”

“It's all right, coach,” Carr said, putting a hand on Uncle Polly's shoulder and tugging him back. He faced Gant, not allowing himself to hesitate. “The man the cops took is named Kaan Rhystok. He's a criminal on the run from Terran law, and he killed the Genepol detective who followed him here. When I got to my room this evening, he was waiting inside to tell me about it.”

Gant grimaced. “A crazy stalker fan?”

“Kind of. He's a splice dealer. Not the tabloid kind; he's got a high-end, organized gig that's been going on for a while. I'm a custom job of his, and as payout, he's been taking a cut of my winnings.”

Carr had not dared to look at Uncle Polly, afraid doing so would make him lose his nerve completely, but now he heard his coach's soft, hissing intake of breath. It took a couple of additional seconds for Bax Gant's face to pale with understanding.

“You're enhanced.” The Martian's throat bulged. He gripped the back of a chair. “In what way?”

“Reflexes, stamina, temperament, a little of this, a little of that,” Carr said. “Nothing so crazy that it'd be suspicious.”

“Just a notch better in everything,” said Gant. “A perfect athlete.”

C
arr felt as though his words were falling from him like pebbles into a deep, dark crevasse. “When he told me, I was already on contract. You and Risha had sent me to Earth on tour. I was a title contender. I couldn't bring myself to throw everything away, and he knew it.” He paused. “It's not an excuse, but it is
what it is.”

A long, silent minute passed. Then, voice shaded with irony and wonder, Gant said, “Earth's favorite athlete, the hero of Terran zeroboxing, is a custom splice job.” A low chuckle escaped his lips. He tilted his head back and began to laugh, mirthlessly. Carr stood silent and stoic, but he felt hot and ill, his toes curling in shame. The Martian only shook his head and laughed louder.

“Are you out of your warped domie mind?” Uncle Polly's rough voice trembled. “How can you laugh at this?”

Gant wiped his eyes with the knuckles of his thumbs. “Warped? I'll tell you what's warped. If that crook had come to me with whatever gene recipe he used to make you”—he pointed at Carr—“I'd have ordered up another four or five zeroboxers from him. If it wasn't so goddamn
illegal
.”

Carr risked a glance at his coach. A muscle in Uncle Polly's cheek was twitching. “I knew, Bax. I've known for a long time. If you're going to pin the blame for this on someone, pin it on me. It's ten times more my fault
than it is Carr's.”

“I don't give a rat's ass in space about your guilt right now, Polly.” Gant spun and started pacing across the small room. “I've got millions of people, dozens of sponsors, and an ungodly amount of money hanging on a tournament that's supposed to finish tomorrow. The media is already going to town over the Macha fight. I've got politicians on both Earth and Mars calling me. People are rioting.
Rioting
.” Flecks of white spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. “Can you imagine what's going to happen when you don't show up to fight tomorrow, and
this
comes to light instead? Can you?”

A nauseating weight sank into Carr's gut. Come morning, on the heels of the semifinal fiasco, Gant would announce that the ZGFA's star zeroboxer and
War of the Worlds
finalist had been suspended pending an investigation into his genetic legitimacy.

Everything would go absolutely fusion.
Terrans would scream Martian conspiracy. Martians would seize upon Carr to prove the hypocrisy and underhandedness of Earth. Everyone in the solar system
would be cheated out of the most highly anticipated tournament final in the history of zeroboxing, and pissed-off enough to make the previous twenty-four hours seem like a polite garden party.

Gant's eyes were wide and bright with the same awful premonitions. He stopped pacing and leaned his hands back on the table, his frame slumping. “This won't just ruin us, it'll ruin the ZGFA. Ruin the sport.”

Carr opened his mouth, not even sure what he was going to say. Something about how he would do what he could to help, take all the blame and punishment needed, cooperate with Genepol and the Surya police. Before he could choke out the miserable words, the door slid open and all three of them turned toward it. Risha stepped into the room.

Something inside of Carr broke, melted into a relief so great he felt as though the room tilted.

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly, as if apologizing for being late to a business meeting, but with a somberness that let the two words encompass far more. She shut the door behind her. She was in the clothes he'd last seen her in, and her beautiful face was tired and grave. For a second their eyes met, and he read in them something raw and tentative, enough to make his insides writhe with ache and his heart skip with hope.

Risha turned to Gant and Polly. “I found out myself yesterday. I got upset, and didn't think … ” Her voice wavered and steadied. “Well, I'm here now.”

“Fantastic,” said Gant, with an unsympathetic glance. “You can help us figure out what to do about this disaster.”

Risha pulled in a deep breath. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Uncle Polly's sharp tone made it clear he was not about to forgive her so quickly. “That's a strategy?”

Risha's lips were pressed tightly together, but the gaze she turned on Gant was strong and certain. “Don't say anything. In fact, you don't
know
anything.”

Gant's mouth twisted. “Nice try, but I won't get away with
that
line. This story is coming out, one way or another. A Terran cop was killed in Martian airspace, by a renegade gene splicer, who was just carried unconscious from Carr Luka's hotel room. You don't think Genepol, the Martian authorities, and the media are going to descend like a Category Seven dust storm?”

Risha's face went still. She listened in quiet, growing dismay as they gave her the details. Then, shaking her head, she spoke. “It'll take time. At least a day for the Surya police to get in touch with the Terran embassy on Mars and to communicate with Genepol. Even more for the Martians and Terrans to sort out the full story between them. In the meantime,
War of the Worlds
has to go on.”

Carr was nodding even before Risha finished; it had taken only a few minutes for her to strike the vein of truth, to steel his resolve. “I have to fight tomorrow. Doesn't matter if I win or lose—I have to show up.”

Uncle Polly said, stern and sad, “You'll only make it worse for yourself.”

Carr looked around the small room, at the people to whom he owed so much. “I need to go in there. I made a promise. I told a whole planet that I was fighting for them, representing them, that I would do everything I could to live up to that honor and responsibility.” He swallowed, feeling as stripped as a naked wire, his soul laid bare and vulnerable. “Even if I can't ever do that … I can do this. I can give them what they want.”

Gant's incredulity was sharp. “You've been fighting illegally all this time, and now you're asking me to let you do it again?”

“Yeah. I guess I am.”

“Bax,” Risha said, “we're in Martian
airspace.”

Gant went silent. Grim calculation spun in his eyes. “Huh,” he said. “You're right about that.”

“Why does it matter?” Uncle Polly asked.

“On Mars, there's strict control and oversight of genetic design, to ensure consistent adaptive traits,” Risha explained. “Genetic enhancement is not explicitly banned under athletic rules because it's a non-issue. On Surya, there are no laws keeping Carr out of the Cube tomorrow.”

Carr could almost hear the gears in Gant's head whirring. He looked at Carr the way he had once before, deciding whether to place a bet. This time: Fold or double down? Abandon course o
r stay at the helm?

“Great stars,” the Martian finally murmured, half in disbelief, half in dark excitement. “We're actually going to ride this ship into the sun together, aren't we?”

Stay, then. For now.

Risha's gaze reached for Carr like a physical touch across the space between them. With a wrenching pang, he forgave her everything, even without wondering if she could do the same for him. Her voice changed, dropped. “I saw the semifinal fight … and then the news-feeds, and the riots … you were right, this is bigger than us. We set out to strike a chord with people, and we did. Now we have to own what we made. We have to finish the story we promised to tell.”

“And afterward?” Uncle Polly asked quietly.

Inside of Carr, the sealed box had finally fallen open, spilling contents that were no longer sharp and poisonous, but dull and molten, mixing with the rest of him in a cloudy alloy. His smile was leaden. “One fight at a time, coach.”

TWENTY-SIX

R
isha commandeered the hotel conference room and set up an interplanetary link
. By midday Sur
ya time, Carr had released statements on his personal feed and the ZGFA official feed and done an exclusive interview with Enzo. Within minutes of being posted, the interview was picked up by
Cube Talk With Brock
, and from there it sped through the Systemnet like a nuclear reaction.

They'd crafted the message carefully. Carr talked about the semifinal fight; he stood by his conviction that Macha had cheated in the third round, but stated that he placed no blame on the WCC, and while he was going to file a complaint against Macha, he wasn't going to fight the judges' ruling. He thanked his fans for their outpouring of support, but strongly denounced the violence that had occurred and urged it to stop. He promised to do his best in the finals, expressed his respect for Kye Soard, and told everyone that win or lose, this would be his last fight for the indefinite future.

“Everything else can wait,” Risha said. They were alone, finally. Uncle Polly had gone to check on the progress of the tournament and bring them both something to eat. Carr looked down at the last message on his cuff, sent by Enzo a few minutes ago:
Thanks for the interview. Good luck!! Your first and biggest fan, forever and no matter what.

He dared to bring his hand up to Risha's face, then around her neck. When she didn't resist his touch, he pulled her to him, fiercely, and closed his mouth over hers with the desperate relief of a drowning man surfacing for air. She gave in, folding herself against him, and he closed his eyes, moving his hands through her hair and down her shoulder blades and waist, drawing comfort from her warm and familiar contours. He felt wetness on her cheeks and drew back, wiping away her tears with the pads of his thumbs.

“I'm sorry. And I'll understand if you don't stay,” he said, though he wasn't certain he could keep such a promise. “Once we go back to Valtego, you have your own decisions to make.”

Her chin quivered. “I almost left Surya, you know. For Mars, or Phobos, or Ceres—it didn't matter where. I thought I'd lost my career, the future I'd pictured with us together, everything. Then, even though I didn't want to, I watched your fight with Macha … ” Anger lit her face as she touched the sealed gashes across his forehead with her fingertips. “And all I wanted was to be there. I should have been there.”

“No,” he said, putting a hand over her mouth. “You
had every right not to be.”

She drew his fingers away from her lips. “I called you a
lie
.” Water gathered in the corners of her eyes. “You've been lied to. You lied in turn, to me and to others. But
you're
not a lie. You're the truest thing in my life. Even if I have to thank an unscrupulous splice dealer for what you are. You're still all the things I believed in and asked other people to believe in.” She closed her eyes again for a moment, and when she opened them, they were steady. “I'm here because I love you, not because I forgive you. But I do—love you. Walking away …
that
would be the lie.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. Carr's throat was too clogged for him to reply, so he just held her, and kissed her on the eyes and lips and neck, and felt, for the first time, that maybe, just maybe, he could handle anything, even losing the tournament and being stripped of his titles and falling from the highest high to the lowest low, if Risha was there to hold him up.

They stepped away from each other when they heard t
he door opening. Uncle Polly came in. He looked away from their flushed faces and busied himself setting down a foil-wrapped vegetarian burrito for Risha and a pre-fight snack for Carr: a small bowl of whole-wheat pasta, a cup of yogurt, an apple. “That's all you're getting,” he said. “It won't be long now.”

“How's it going in the other divisions?”

“Story of the day is Adri. She pulled off the upset of the tournament and won the women's midmass.”

“That's fantastic,” said Carr, grinning widely for the first time in two days and being reminded of his facial bruises as he did so.

“That's the only bright spot, I'm afraid. Danyo put up a hell of a fight but ended up losing the final on points. Brut got knocked out in the semi, so it's two highmass Martians heading into the Cube now.” He glanced at Carr and they shared the same thought. There wouldn't be another Terran men's champion to deflect any of the attention or pressure off Carr's fight. “Once they're done, there'll be a break. And then you're up.”

Gant had worked some scheduling miracle to push the lowmass final to the end of the day, to give Carr and Risha enough time to do what they had to without sacrificing the few, badly needed hours of sleep Carr had snuck in earlier. Even so, Carr felt as though his body could use three weeks of rehab and daily nano injections. He'd always appreciated his ability to heal quickly, but one night was not enough, not even for him. Twisting his torso to the right brought on a painfully tight hitch in his left side. His face was still swollen, and he suspected a hard blow would open up his gashes again. When a WCC-appointed doctor had come by a few hours earlier to check up on him, he'd smiled through the whole range of movements and the doctor's prodding. “Feels fine,” he'd lied. Uncle Polly grimaced behind the doctor's back but kept his mouth shut.

They ate in silence. Carr's jaw hurt; he chewed slowly. The belly of a Martian passenger ship was gliding across the ceiling window of the hotel's conference room, cutting through their view of the Red Planet. He wondered if the cruiser carried new immig
rants—Terrans who'd given up the natural bounty of Earth, who'd consented to permanently altering their genes and those of their descendants, all to start fresh on a frontier world. “We're so close to Mars,” he mused. “Seems a shame I don'
t get to see it.”

Risha put a hand on his arm. “Maybe you will. I've already gotten half a dozen interview requests from Martian media.”

“You're kidding me.”

A private car arrived to take them to the stadium. Security droids marked their progress all the way along the route to the gravity zone terminal, and when they'd passed the last set of them and were shooting through the freeway tube, Carr looked out and saw the enormous holovid figure of Kye Soard posed along one whole side of the exterior stadium wall. His receiver picked up the audio tag and Soard's cheerful, accented voice started up in his ear. “I'm Kye ‘the Samurai' Soard, ready to defend Martian zeroboxing against all invaders!”

Carr grimaced, stabbing his cuff to mute the ad. The familiar transition to zero gravity tugged on his insides in a way that had not bothered him since he was a boy flying up to Xtreme Xero for the first time, watching his home recede into miniature, feeling terrified and exhilarated to be leaving the security of solid ground for a future anchored to nothing. “Talk to me, coach,” he said.

“You know it all, Carr. You don't need me to yammer at you.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“All right,” said Uncle Polly. “How are you going to stop Soard from pulverizing your legs, like he did to DK?”

“Keep moving, keep my legs under me, and crawl tight. Work my flying game and stay light on the walls.”

“When you close, close
fast
and get deep into his range. How about his reversals?”

“Push him out into the center as much as I can, where he's slower. Cut the corners before he does.”

Uncle Polly nodded. “You can run a corner as fast as he can. He's not going to be expecting that. He's going to be waiting for you to fade in the third round, and you're not going to do that either.”

That was optimistic, Carr decided, since he was going into the match wounded and tired in a way he'd never gone into any fight before. But he kept talking, and answering everything Uncle Polly asked him, and the familiar high-octane verbal back-and-forth of their pre-fight drive was like a tether that a space walker might hang on to, and Risha's warm hand in his was his oxygen supply.

There were half a dozen security guards holding back a crowd that had gathered at the athletes' entrance for his arrival. As soon as he emerged, people started cheering and shouting questions all at once, and Carr found himself unable to even reach the guide-rails. In order to move himself forward he had to push off the crowd itself, as if it were a single amoeba-like organism covering the walls. When they got into the hallway, the guards blocked it off and he breathed easier as they made their way toward the locker room. Where the hall split, Risha leaned in to kiss him, briefly and softly, her hair drifting around both their faces like a breeze. “See you after,” she whispered.

“See you after.”

She drew away, the warmth of her fingers lingering on his jaw. He tried to memorize everything about her face, the sadness and the tenderness, her beauty and her strength. Then she turned toward the stadium, and he pulled himself through the entrance of the locker room.

Scull was waiting for him, with all his gear. Next to him, toes jammed under the stabilizing bar, was DK. When he saw Carr, he pushed himself up and the two of them regarded each other in silence. DK looked nearly as bad as Carr did, his face bruised, moving gingerly after yesterday. “Big fight,” he said. “I wondered if you could use a second cornerman
.”

A thin smile crawled across Carr's face. “Yeah, I sure could.”

He changed into his shorts, leaving his thermal top on. He drank a little water and took a long piss, nerves acting up in a way he almost welcomed. Scull wrapped his hands; DK helped him into his gripper shoes and gloves. As he warmed up, people began to arrive, and soon the locker room was full of his fellow zeroboxers: from the ones who hadn't made it through the first round of preliminaries to Adri, aglow with victory, and Danyo, his eyes dull from losing a hard-fought battle just a few hours ago. None of them said anything; they just gathered around as he got ready, heating the dry, motionless air of the locker room with his breaths. When the five-minute warning came down the hall, Carr pulled himself over to the bench and let his heart rate come down as Uncle Polly helped him out of his top and did a final check on his gloves and shoes.

He'd never been in a locker room that was so quiet before a fight. He remembered, all of a sudden, his first fights on Valtego, being ushered out to the Cube with a lot of pep talk and backslapping:
You're so ready
,
kid
and
Go get 'em
and
Make him float.
Rookie zeroboxers needed that kind of thing. That's how you pumped a guy up, sent a youngster out to battle. Had it really only been a few years ago for him? It felt like a lifetime. Now, with the camaraderie of old soldiers, there was a solemn, expectant respect in the nods and the whispered “good lucks” that piled around him as he pulled himself out toward the bright lights of the stadium.

He didn't shoot through the air and somersault to the deck in a flashy entrance. When he heard his name announced, he drifted out and caught the deck lightly, like a bird alighting. The stands were dark and full, the lights white and harsh, the air thick with the smell of ozone, beer, and the sweat of many bodies. Carr straightened and walked steadily on his grippers, straight to the center of the deck, where he motioned for the surprised announcer to hand him the microphone. He held up a hand to the crowd.

“I have something to say,” he said, then repeated him
self, more loudly. The roiling cheers and boos fell silent. The shadowy crowd rippled forward expectantly. “I have
something to say to everyone here, and to everyone else who's watching, whether you're on Earth or Mars, or a Moon settlement or a city-station.” He heard his voice magnified and echoing back to him disembodied, not sounding like his own at all. He turned in a slow circle, looking out across the tiers of seating, recognizing secti
ons as unmistakably Terran by the huge waving placards of his own bloodied, resolute image.
UNBROKEN.
So many of them.

“I've always said that I'm proud to be Terran. But yesterday, a lot of people were hurt and a lot of things were destroyed because people are looking for something in this tournament that has nothing to do with zeroboxing.
I'm one man, here to compete against another … not because I think I'm better than him, but because we're both trying to be the best we can be, and the other person can make us better. That's how you find out if you have the guts to give everything, to respect the other guy and come back to fight another day.”

They were listening; Carr could even hear the Cube fans whirring. “The real spirit of the Cube isn't about winning against an opponent,” he continued, “but winning against yourself. Whether you're Terran or Martian, cheering for me or for Kye, just please … remember that.”

He handed the microphone back to the announcer. There was a lingering moment of collective silence, and then the noise started up: a wave of murmuring conversation, turning into applause, climbing into alternating, blending chants of “LU-KA! LU-KA!” and “SO-ARD! SO-ARD!” Across the deck, Kye Soard was regarding Carr with a baffled but grudgingly respectful expression. At the referee's call, he came up and they stood before each other.

“Yesterday,” Soard said, “what Macha did. It was a disgrace to Martian zeroboxers. I am sorry for it. I will beat you, how do you say on Earth? Fair and square.”

Carr extended his glove and the Samurai touched it with his own. He sauntered away, lean and graceful as a panther. He looked healthy and rested and confident. He looked like a champion.