Zeroboxer (8 page)

A narrator's deep voice said,
“To win, you have to be faster
.” Video-Carr exploded off the Cube wall, the camera tracking the launch into slow motion.
“You have to be stronger.”
His fist connected with an opponent's face with a sound effect enhanced
crack
.
“You have to be sharper.”
A brilliantly high-resolution image appeared of a single droplet of sweat, spinning in zero gravity, before the final low-angle, high-contrast shot: Carr on the deck of the Cube, hands raised in victory, the stands vibrating with roaring spectators. The screen faded back to the ImOptix logo. “
The new L series from ImOptix. See it all.
”

The screen lightened and turned back into a wall of windows. Light flooded the room again, and Carr's vision returned to normal. He discovered that his heart was pounding. The sight of himself like that in the Cube, the way the camera had made him look so … heroic, like a character in a movie … he felt a shiver run up and down his spine. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits so no one would see his jitters.

“Of course, this ad spot is just a mock-up using existing footage,” Raj said. “As soon as we get the green light, we would arrange a film shoot to get enough of an asset bank to build a full campaign.”

Carr blinked and realized that everyone was looking at him expectantly. His mind felt suddenly blank. All he could think of to say was, “It's not my best fight.”

“Pardon me?” said Raj.

“The shot you have in there, of me hitting Ricky Daluma—it wasn't my best fight.”

Risha leaned toward him. “For the real ad, they'll use the shot you want. You'll see and approve it before it goes live.”

The people around the conference table nodded vigorously in agreement.

Carr nodded slowly. He let out a breath and brought his hands behind his head. “What can I say? It's really good.” He pointed at the windows where the screen used to be. “That was amazing.”

Smiles broke out. He got the very weird feeling that all these people had been waiting for him to say that, and he'd just released a big happy bomb in the room. He wondered if, as soon as he left, they were going to celebrate, and jump on their cuffs to congratulate their underlings, and star
t rolling ahead with budgets and film-shoot schedules and marketing plans.

“How are you enjoying your new optics?” asked a curvy middle-aged woman whose name he'd already forgotten but who had something to do with product development.

“They're great,” he said. “Except for the part about not getting hit in the head for two days after getting them put in. Sort of hard in my job to go for two days without a shot to the head.”

Everyone laughed. Risha stood, and Carr took that as his signal to do the same. “We'll be in touch,” she said as they did a parting round of handshakes.

Alone together in the elevator, Carr looked at her questioningly. “Did that go all right?”

“Better than all right,” she assured him. “They'll come back with their highest offer yet by tomorrow, I'm sure of it.” She turned to him, and her face, which had been as cool as a Martian winter during the meeting, broke into a smile that sent warmth racing up Carr's neck. “You were perfect.”

“What do you mean? I didn't do anything.”

“You looked confident, you paid attention, you were serious but funny, and you didn't act like a prima donna or a jerk. Do you have any idea how rare that is for a sports celebrity?” She pulled the collar of his shirt toward her and kissed him.

It was a long kiss, one that lasted until the elevator slid to a stop at the bottom floor, and it made Carr think that spending twenty days stuck on a planet wouldn't be so bad after all.

He got the call on day eighteen.

They were at Xtreme Xero, the gym he'd practically grown up in. A few years ago, it had been the largest of only a handful of North American orbital gyms. Now, there were more than a dozen. The last time he'd been here, he was fifteen going on sixteen, the youngest and highest-ranked amateur zeroboxer in the Terran system, shit-scared excited that he'd just landed a spot on Valtego and would be leaving everything he knew behind.

Now a reverent hush fell over the gym as he entered.

The place had grown. Looking around, Carr saw a few familiar faces but a lot more unfamiliar ones. There were two training Cubes now, and the climbing area had been upgraded. Uncle Polly had a hand glued to Carr's shoulder and was grinning from ear to ear, steering him around like the prodigal son on a return tour and introducing him to everyone. Uncle Polly's brother Mor, or Uncle Morrie as Carr had always known him, clapped his hands together sharply, and every trainee in the room pulled themselves over to the small gathering space, gripper shoes clinging to the magnetic flooring.

“Now,” said Morrie, “you all know Carr. Some of you personally, others from watching his fights. He's one of ours, of course, the best, and we're real proud he's come home to visit. How old were you when you started here, Carr?”

“Seven,” Carr said.

Morrie clapped a hand to Carr's other shoulder. “Nine years after this kid came up from the surface for the first time, he started fighting on Valtego Station. If you don't know that he just toppled BB Dunn to become the second-ranked lowmass zeroboxer, you got no business being here. When's your title fight, Carr?”

“Don't know yet.”

“Well, it's got to be soon. Good luck to you. We're all looking forward to seeing you with that belt. You hear that, you planet rats? You train your asses off, you might be half as good as Carr someday.”

“Maybe better,” Carr put in with a smile, for the benefit of the awestruck-looking kids in the front row.

“Carr's a busy man now, not like you slackers, so he's only here for the afternoon. Carr, the boys here did a round-robin tourney last weekend to figure out who gets to fly with you. That okay? You got time to fly with a couple of them? It'd mean a lot.”

“Sure, let's do it.” Carr found himself grinning, itchy with anticipation.

The last seventeen days had been a blur. Frankly, he was exhausted from being ferried from one place to another, from one crowd to the next, from media interview to sponsor meeting to fan reception to gym after gym of aspiring zeroboxers. It was nothing like the deep, purposeful fatigue of training, but an exhaustion altogether different, a nagging weariness from being mentally “on” all the time. The only thing that had helped him stay sane were the twice-daily workouts Uncle Polly kept him on religiously and the few times they'd gotten beyond gravity for some weightless work. Being here, though, he felt rejuvenated. Back in his element.

Risha was sitting out in the shuttle, working through an endless list of calls, but Eason and Marc were in the gym, clearing the way for the camera crew to film unobstructed as Carr stripped down to his shorts and donned his gripper gloves. The footage would go into the documentary film, which Gant had now decided would be released in three parts. Having the cameras follow him around had taken several days to get used to, but he barely noticed them now.

Carr swung himself into the training Cube. A wave of nostalgia swept over him; it was like being back in his childhood bedroom. The particular texture of the walls, the feel of the magnetic microgravity, the way the fans on one side were louder than the other …

A lanky black boy of fourteen or fifteen pulled himself in, to the encouraging cheers and applause of his teammates.

“What's your name?” Carr asked.

“Deryk,” said the boy. He looked flush with excitement and slightly terrified.

“Nice to meet you, Deryk. Where are you from?”

“Chicago. I've been taking the lunar bus up here every afternoon for six years. I want to fight in the ZGFA someday, just like you.”

“You won the tourney here last week, huh? You must be pretty good,” Carr said. They touched gloves. “Let's see what you can do.”

He didn't have to go easy on the kid. Deryk was solid. He was a good striker, could climb and fly with agility, and played a confident, if somewhat predictable and limited, grabbing game. Carr hit him a lot, but not very hard, and when the buzzer sounded on six Martian minutes, Deryk was still hanging in there. His friends outside of the Cube burst into cheers and clapping.

“Work on not giving up control when you're in clinch,” Carr advised him. “And mix up the speed and angle of your rebounds—don't fall into a pattern. But you've got a future in the Cube.”

The kid nodded in wordless gratitude as he bent over, catching his breath. Carr wasn't breathing hard yet, had barely broken a sweat. As Deryk made his way back to the hatch, Carr motioned for the next kid to come in. Just then, his cuff vibrated and played a rising note in his ear. He glanced down at it.

His stomach did a small flip. He motioned for a pause and, catching Uncle Polly's eye, mouthed urgently, “It's the Martian.”

Polly shooed the watching kids back as Carr took the call.

“You got yourself a title fight, Luka,” said Gant's voice into his ear.

Carr pulled in a breath that tingled all the way out to his toes.

“Manon's people said yes. But here's the thing,” Gant continued. “They want to hold it this month.”

Carr was speechless. “Bastards,” he finally exclaimed. “They know I'm down here turning into an out-of-shape gravity bum. How am I supposed to fight this month?” He wasn't even in the Cube with Manon yet and he wanted to punch him in the face. What kind of self-respecting zeroboxer proposed a fight on that kind of a condition? Winning only counted if it was fair, not if you stacked the odds against your opponent.

“Yeah, well, don't be surprised they're trying to work the timing to their advantage. Your tour is getting a lot of buzz. You're hot right now, and the Reaper wants to show you up, fight you as soon as you return so he can take the wind right out of your sails.”

“That's crazy,” Carr said. “I can't do it. With Dunn, at least I was coming off another fight.”

“Relax. They're pulling this stunt because Manon's contract doesn't come up for renewal until next year, and in the meantime you're getting more sponsorship and publicity than he is, even though he's the reigning champion. They're pissed and they want me to know it.” Gant sounded unperturbed. Faintly amused, even. “I talked them off the ledge and out to New Year's Day. That's two months from when you get back.”

Carr rubbed a hand across his face. “Hang on a second.” He muted his receiver and drifted over to where Uncle Polly was waiting by the Cube hatch. “New Year's,” he said. “They want to hold it in two months.”

To his surprise, Uncle Polly merely grunted in the back of his throat. “Figures.” He looked at Carr with an oddly measured expression. “Well, what are you going to say?”

“You think I can do it? This is it, coach. This is my title shot. You think I can be ready in two months?”

Uncle Polly pulled himself up so they were face to face. “
You
have to know what you're capable of, Carr.”

Carr looked his coach in the eye. Uncle Polly had controlled pretty much every aspect of his training until now. Just when Carr expected him to be most opinionated, Polly was leaving the decision up to him? He didn't have time to be confused; he touched his cuff to take his receiver off mute.

“You got an answer for me, Luka?”

“You have to promise me that as soon as I land on Valtego, there won't be anything distracting—none of this brand ambassador stuff—until after the match.”

“You got it.”

“Then you got yourself a title fight.”

Carr could almost hear the man's smile. He wondered just how much of the drama over the timing had really been Manon and how much Gant had engineered it, eager to ride the momentum of the tour, to build up the hype of a match between his champion and his rising star. The fight, now set for Valtego's busiest week of the year, was guaranteed to sell out at premium ticket prices. The Martian was a winner no matter who won in the Cube.

“See you when you get home,” Gant said, and the connection went quiet.

Carr floated over to the hatch and hung in its opening. A crowd of faces was gazing at him with held breaths. Uncle Polly and Uncle Morrie were trying to look serious
in attempts to hide their smiles.

“It's happening,” Carr said. “I fight for the belt on New Year's Day.”

The place erupted. Cheering and applause and people beating their fists on the side of the Cube in celebration. Eason and Marc tapped their cuffs frantically, no doubt relaying the news and already making itinerary adjustments for the next three days. The film crew wielded their handheld cameras and head-mounted optic enhancers, trying to capture panning shots of the crowd and close-up shots of Carr, and Uncle Polly, and Morrie, and everything.

Carr let all the noise and excitement wash over him like water running down his back. He was already thinking ahead, his mind starting to whir, laying out a training strategy for a compressed time frame. He had to get his hands on good footage of all the Reaper's matches. And he had to think about who should stand in for Manon in practice bouts, and who would be available to corner for him. Two days. He still had two days on this dirt ball before he could get back to Valtego.

But he couldn't, wouldn't, cut them short, not even for this, because there was still one stop he needed to make.

He had to visit home. See his mother, and Enzo. After two years, he owed them a visit, owed it to them to share the news in person. Then he could get back to where he belonged.

NINE

T
aking the shuttle into Toronto Interplanetary Aerospaceport, Carr marveled at how much the city had grown over the past few years. He'd read somewhere that it was a large city even hundreds of years ago, back when winter had gripped it in freezing cold and snow. Large by the standards of the time, that is. The Great Northern Migrations had swelled it to a metropolis of forty million, with buildings and roads stretching out like an enormous amoeba across the banks of the Great Lakes.

After they landed and made their way to the taxi queue, Risha said, “I'm going straight to the hotel with Eason and Marc.”

Even though the weather felt perfect to Carr—it was a mild fall day—Risha had on a sleeveless cooling top that wicked away the subtropical heat and humidity and showed off a tantalizing amount of her glistening skin. She looked uncomfortable, eager to get into a climate-controlled building as quickly as possible.

Carr drew her away a little and put his hands on her waist. Her sweat had a certain scent he could only describe as warm and peppery. He said, “Come with me. If you want.”

Risha tilted her head coyly, eyebrows raised. “Terran men only introduce their mothers to women they're serious about.”

“Yeah.”

The taxi pulled up and the queue attendant began loading their bags.

“What would she think of me being Martian?”

“Doesn't matter.” To prove his point, Carr pulled her a little closer, so their hips touched. Risha was not the only Martian in sight; there were two businessmen in the line and a family of tourists, but they were the only couple, and they drew stares.

She made a
hmmm
sound and put a hand on his chest. “Unfortunately, I have a staggering load of work to do. Gant won't waste any time making the announcement, which means the whole schedule has to be thrown out. You really need your brandhelm to get to work.” She extricated herself from him and held her cuff up to the reader on the next taxi. As the door slid open and Eason and Marc climbed in, she looked back and said, “Don't broadcast anything, and don't answer any questions until you hear from me. I'll see you in the evening.” She stepped into the waiting vehicle and the door slid shut.

Carr climbed into the other taxi with Uncle Polly and was silent as the car's computer calculated the route. They sped into motion, smoothly entering the freeway. Carr stared out the window, lost in thought.

“You're not going to be distracted from a championship belt by that domie girl, are you?” Uncle Polly asked.

Carr looked up sharply, into Uncle Polly's crooked, teasing smile. “You still owe me something for that bet,” he said.

“You like her a lot.” Half question, half statement.

“Guess so. Yeah.” Carr shifted in his seat, worried that Uncle Polly might ask more questions, or want to have a talk about women, even though that was not the sort of thing they usually discussed. There had been the occasional “chat” in Carr's adolescence, mostly cautionary tales about how doing certain stupid things involving girls, drugs, or cops could destroy a zeroboxer's career. But just in case his coach was on the verge of shoehorning in some surrogate parenting, Carr changed the subject. “You didn't have to come with me to see Sally.”

Uncle Polly's expression did not change, but his eyes tightened at the corners. “Came all this way already. Might as well.”

Uncle Polly always seemed to tense up around Carr's mother. Carr had never understood why, but when he was about nine or ten years old, the two of them had abruptly stopped speaking to each other. They'd patched it up after a few months, but there wasn't a lot of warmth there. It bothered Carr a little because he figured the rift might have something to do with him, but both Polly and Sally pretended not to know what he was talking about if he ever brought it up. (“I've got nothing against your mother.” “Your coach knows best, darling.”) It wasn't a romantic thing—Carr was dead sure of that. There weren't many people less similar than Uncle Polly and Sally Luka.

The car pulled off the freeway and the bustle of the city engulfed them. Dense streams of people, all ages and races, crowded the streets; giant ads vied for attention on the sides of buildings; old skyscrapers poked up in between the gleam of translucent concrete and the lattice structure of nanobuilt towers. Carr leaned against the window, quiet with nostalgia as he took in the sights, some new, some familiar. Fragments of clear blue sky slid past
above them, stark with sunshine.

In a few minutes, they turned into his old neighborhood. It was much the same as he remembered it. Tall palms rose up on either side of the narrow residential streets, and the smell of blooming flowers and ripening fruit mingled with the humid stink of garbage and sweat. The buildings here were small, old, and dirty, and the businesses sketchy: an adult ho
lovid theater, a closed liquid tattoo parlor, a tiny dive of a bar that served gin spiked with sweet dust if you knew how to ask for it.

Sally Luka still lived in the walk-up apartment that Carr had grown up in. As they came to a stop outside, the onboard computer announcing their arrival, he saw the figure of a boy sitting on the front steps. Carr smiled as he stepped out of the taxi. “Enzo,” he called.

The boy shot to his feet and ran down the steps toward
them. He tackled Carr in a hug and they wrestled, laughing as Carr picked his friend up and mock-slammed him into the tiny brown patch of crabgrass that counted as lawn.

Enzo had grown a lot since Carr had left, from an undersized nine-year-old to an ungainly just-turned-eleven, all elbows and knees, messy hair, and big ears. Carr's grin faded as he pulled the boy back up to standing. “What's this, little man?” He flicked the rim of the glasses on Enzo's face with his finger.

“I need them,” Enzo wheezed, “to see straight.”

The frames were round, and unlike Eason's retro style accessories, they had real lenses inside. Carr's heart sank. “Why don't you get your eyes fixed, then?”

He guessed the answer before Enzo lowered his face in embarrassment. “My mom doesn't have the money right now. She said maybe in a few months … ”

A surge of anger brought heat to Carr's scalp. It was bad enough that the kid had an asthmatic wheeze and carried around an inhaler. Now he was half-blind too? What next, a peg leg? Didn't Enzo's mother care that her son walked around with genetic poverty written all over him?

Carr lowered his voice. “How much money do you need?” If he won the title fight …

Enzo flushed, shifting his feet. “Oh no, I didn't mean to sound like I was asking … I mean, my mom wouldn't like that. And the glasses don't bother me really. She says it
won't be for long.” He didn't sound convincing.

Carr forced a smile back into place for the boy's sake. “People are wearing those for style now, did you know that?”

“Really?” Enzo brightened a little. He looked past Carr and said, “Hi, coach.”

“Hi, kid,” Uncle Polly said. Carr wondered if Polly remembered Enzo's name or just recognized him with tolerant amusement as “that little scab”—the kid who always called him “coach” even though the poor boy could never be a zeroboxer himself, never in a million years.

“Why aren't you inside with my mom?” Carr looked up the front steps of the apartment building. “She knows I'm coming, doesn't she? I messaged both of you.” He wondered, with sudden worry, if Sally had already gone through the money he'd sent her after his last fight, if her data had been turned off again.

“She knows,” Enzo said. “She has some guy visiting right now.”

Carr frowned. Some guy visiting? He squatted down on the grass in front of Enzo. “I'm going to go up and see her for a while. I'll come find you afterward, yeah?” He tousled the boy's hair and lowered his voice conspiratori
ally. “I've got some big news to share with you.”

Enzo's eyes widened, comically large behind his glasses, and his mouth dropped open. “Don't shit me, Carr! For real? I've been checking the ZGFA news-feed, like, every five minutes.” He sucked in a breath, so excited Carr was afraid he might start to cough. “When? Can you tell me when?”

“Sixty-three days, little man. Start counting.”

“STELLAR,” Enzo breathed, his face going slack with the transcendence of a religious epiphany.

Carr grinned. “Tell you more later, I promise.” He waved the boy off and climbed the steps to the small foyer and the dim, narrow stairwell. He started up, but had barely made it halfway when Uncle Polly caught him by the arm.

“Carr,” he said, and the tone of his coach's voice made Carr stop and turn. There was a strange and anxious look on Polly's face. “Don't go in there yet. There's something I have to talk to you about first. I meant to tell you on this trip; that's one reason I came along. I thought I'd find the right time, but it just hadn't come along yet, and then, with the title fight announcement, well … ”

Uncle Polly was talking too fast, even for him. Carr couldn't fathom what on earth could be so important that he needed to bring it up right now, of all times. “What is it, coach? Couldn't it wait?”

“If the man who's in there is who I think—”

Just then, the door on the landing above them swung open. “Carr, is that you? I thought I picked up your signal coming through the front.”

“Yeah, it's me, Mom.” Carr took the rest of the stairs up to the apartment door. He paused and stood in front of his mother for a second, then stepped in for a hug. She clung to him tight, as if he were a small child who'd been lost at the mall and returned to her, and he hugged her back.

She seemed smaller than he remembered, and his chin could now rest on the top of her head. There was something different about her too; he realized with some displeasure that she'd cut her hair short and dyed it darker, so it was almost as dark as his. But she still smelled like citrus soap and cherry breath mints, and when she pulled back to look at him, the sight of her sun-freckled face, so full of the soft, placid attentiveness he remembered, brought a lump to his throat. She must have been working earlier today because she was still wearing her black and baby-blue bus attendant uniform, unchanged for as long as Carr could remember.

“How are you, Mom?”

“I'm just fine, darling.” Her voice caught a tiny bit at the end as she spotted Uncle Polly coming up behind him.

“He's here, isn't he?” Uncle Polly's expression was strung tight as a wire.

Seized by sudden, fearful suspicion, Carr pushed the front door open all the way.

The apartment he'd called home was largely unchanged. Ancient LED lights still ran the length of the small kitchen, beyond which he could see his mother's bedroom and his own room, untouched since he'd left. The living room had the same old sofas and the same light green flooring, and his childhood trophies still cluttered the shelves beside the small flatscreen.

What was different was the man standing in the living room. He was studying the trophies with his hands clasped behind his back. He turned, and his lips moved in his smooth, pale face like the mouth of a mannequin come to life.

“Carr,” he said. “Come in. We have a lot to talk about.”