by Fonda Lee
He disagreed entirely; the idea of her “taking advantage of him” was appealing in the extreme. But he kissed her back silently and laid his head next to hers.
“I didn’t plan this, you know,” she said softly.
“Really? You’re so good at planning everything else.”
“Not this.”
There were two sides to Risha, Carr decided, which balanced each other like rock and water in a Zen garden. The sexily intimidating, rapid-fire Risha with her thinscreen, who charged him up, and the Risha who feared the sky, who spoke slower and touched gently, who made him want to do anything for her. “My life has changed so much since I’ve come to Valtego,” this Risha said. “There’s something about living off-planet. It makes you feel like anything is possible.”
Carr understood. “Valtego is more my home than Earth is now.” It sounded true as he said it. He’d lived more, accomplished more, in the past two years than in all his years before; his whole childhood had been mere preparation. Going back to Earth now didn’t feel like a homecoming, just a thing he had to do.
The captain’s voice came on in the cabin to inform them they would soon be landing. Uncle Polly was leaned back in his seat, his eyes closed, but Carr could tell the old man wasn’t sleeping. Polly traveled back to the Greater Earth area somewhat regularly to keep up with the business end of Xtreme Xero, the orbital gym he and his brother owned, where he’d brought Carr and practically raised him since the age of seven. Polly always complained about going planetside. “Have to visit the old dirt ball,” he’d say.
Carr had told him that he didn’t need to come on this trip if he didn’t want to. It was going to be nearly three weeks of nonstop publicity events: meeting people, talking into cameras, being flown from city to city, crowd to crowd. Uncle Polly had made a face as he looked at Carr’s schedule. “Someone has to keep your head above water, make sure the Merkel Media goons don’t let you become a fat piece of waste. I’m going to talk to that domie girl,” he’d said. “You need to fit in an hour of land-training every morning, and another hour in the evening, in hotels if we have to. It’s not too much to ask that you get to an orbital gym twice a week.”
“You’re right, coach,” Carr admitted. “I need you.”
“Damn straight.”
The view of Earth sank into impenetrable white mist. When they emerged, Carr could no longer see the outline of the continent, only the land itself rushing up toward them; it was like zooming in on a holovid. The uncomfortable pressure lifted as they descended over Heathrow Aerospaceport. One night in London, to meet with the ImOptix management team, then on to Paris, Munich, and Moscow before heading to Asia, then North America. Fifteen cities in twenty days.
His head felt heavy at the thought. Growing up, Carr had spent little time on other continents—only brief stops here and there on his way around the amateur circuit of Earth’s few orbital arenas, sleeping in cheap motels and traveling on juddering rocket-planes so old they were nearing decommission.
London was warm, gray, and muggy. As soon as they disembarked, they were met by a chartered van and two men who Risha introduced as Eason and Marc from Merkel Media’s Events Management department. Carr shook their hands. “I’ve never done this sort of thing before. You know that, right? Press conferences, sure, but not this.”
“Just show up and be the star.” Eason sported a British accent and an outlandish, retro sense of style; his cuff had a faux-metal skin and he wore chunky black plastic glasses frames he must have found at an antique store or costume shop. “Leave all the details to us.”
A live attendant took their bags and jackets, settled them into the upholstered seats, offered them drinks, and programmed in their destination before sliding the door shut. As the vehicle glided into motion and merged into traffic, Uncle Polly opened the window, letting in a gust of humid air. He breathed in a deep drag. “Smell that, Carr?” he said. “Real planet air. Not much I like about being earthside, but the air … there’s so much more character to it.”
Carr leaned his head out of the window. Uncle Polly had a point. City-station air was always the same, always bland and manufactured. Sure, they could flavor it all sorts of ways, and the hydroponic greenhouses and gardens on Valtego came close to smelling like planet air, but not quite. Only Earth had air that changed and moved and could be different from day to day, infused with dirt and salt and rain and smog and all the essences of life and humanity. He pulled in a lungful as he drank in the sight of the passing landscape. So much space, so many buildings and trees; the sky as huge and light as space was dark and endless. He was surprised by how it touched him. He had missed it after all.
The van slowed as it entered central London. As they drove past the Parliament building, Carr pointed to the large crowd of people gathered on the green in front of the Palace of Westminster. They were carrying signs, chanting, marching back and forth. A line of security droids blocked the demonstration from the entrance, and behind them, several uniformed policemen kept a vigilant eye on the situation. “What’s going on there?” Carr asked.
“Protesters,” Eason huffed. “They’ve been there for a week. A mishmash coalition of conservatives, Purity Movement, anti-colonization advocates, and marsphobes.”
“What are they angry about?”
Marc, a short man who sounded American, said, “There’s a bill before the European Congress that would amend the Bremen Accord and broaden what genetic modifications are legal.” He touched his neck involuntarily, fiddling with a small gold crucifix that he wore. “If it passes, it could pave the way for resettlement.”
“Pfftt,” was Uncle Polly’s reply. “Comes up every few years, these resettlement efforts. They’ll never happen. Too bloody expensive.”
“Not if we follow the Martian example,” Eason said. “If we could live in extreme temperatures, on far less water, with resistance to tropical diseases—in a few generations, we could repopulate most of the planet.”
Marc was shaking his head. “The Bremen Accord exists for a reason! Sure, gene therapy saves lives, but genetic enhancement? That should never be legal, not on this planet. Not so long as, God willing, people remember that racism, wars, and genocide all spring from the idea of certain people being better than others. You can call it ‘adaptive modification’ like the colonists do, but it’s enhancement all the same. It’s not right.” He looked as though he would say more but snapped his mouth shut instead, darting his eyes over to Risha and away again as he realized he might have caused offense.
But Risha wasn’t paying attention to their conversation. She sat stiffly, her legs crossed, her back so straight that with her height, her head nearly reached the roof of the van. She touched the back of her hand to her mouth, dabbing away the sweat on her upper lip. “Do you mind putting the windows back up?” There was a tight note in her voice. Carr remembered the nightmare she’d shared with him, about the sky crushing her. He quickly touched the control to close the windows.
“Sorry,” he said. He reached a hand over, placed it on her knee. “You going to be okay?”
“Of course. I lived on Earth for years.” She forced a smile, but it was weak around the edges. “It’s just … been a while.” She leaned her head back and took a slow breath. He kept his hand on her leg, tracing her kneecap with his fingers. By the time they reached ImOptix corporate headquarters, Risha seemed a little less tense, more herself.
The van glided to a smooth halt in front of a tall old building made of glass and steel, all smooth sides and sharp corners. Nothing nano-assembled, no carbon fiber—a real relic. It seemed an incongruous headquarters for a cutting-edge company like ImOptix, but you couldn’t deny that there was something truly awe-inspiring about these old European buildings.
“We’ll go ahead to the hotel, get you checked in and a comm link set up,” Marc said. “You have an hour here; you need to leave ImOptix at exactly 16:00 if Carr is goi
ng to eat and prepare before the evening interview.”
“16:30 is probably fine,” Risha said. “I already have his notes prepped.”
She and Carr entered the ImOptix building, crossed its echoing, light-filled lobby, and took an elevator that whisked them up to the fifty-seventh floor.
Carr watched their reflections in the glass rise up through the sky. “What am I supposed to do here?” he asked.
“Just listen and look interested. Not too interested. They were on the verge of finalizing the offer before your BB Dunn fight, and your win has given us a lot more leverage. So I’m working on sweetening the terms.”
The elevator door opened onto a large conference room with a long black table in the center and floor-to-ceiling windows filling one wall. Around the table were a dozen people in suits, who turned in their seats to look at Carr.
A flutter of unfamiliar nerves ran through his gut. He had never been in any place so … clean. It reminded him of some of the five-star hotels on Valtego, whose marble-tiled lobbies he occasionally glimpsed but never went into. Gant’s office was like a broom closet compared to this place. Carr felt conscious suddenly that he was wearing the same clothes he’d flown to Earth in—casual pants, a short-sleeved Skinnwear top—and wondered why Risha hadn’t thought to have him change into something nicer. She was dressed in a fashionable skirt-suit.
Risha took control. “Carr, let me introduce you to the ImOptix management team.” She rattled off the names of each of the people—the VP of this, the General Manager of that, titles that went in one of Carr’s ears and out the other. As they each rose to greet him, he shook their hands and fell back on fight instinct: when you feel out of your league, don’t show fear. Keep your body relaxed and ready, and look your opponent in the eyes, firmly.
“Congratulations on your recent win,” said a tall, dark-skinned man—Raj, the Something-Important-of-Something. “We’re very excited to show you what we’ve been working on.” He gestured Carr and Risha toward two seats at the end of the table. The wall of windows instantly darkened into a smooth screen, and the ImOptix logo appeared across it.
“Our motto here at ImOptix is simple,” Raj said. “Faster. Stronger. Sharper.” The words flashed, one by one, onto the screen. “That’s the ethos that powers the design of our latest generation of optical implants, the L series, which has the highest resolution ever achieved in optical camera technology, the fastest transmission speeds, and better-than-ever visual overlay features.”
Raj talked at length about the ground-breaking advances that had gone into making the new optics, the size and growth of the market, and the branding strategy. Carr forced himself to be attentive, all the while wondering if he was supposed to be remembering any of this, or saying anything, and what any it had to do with him. At last, Raj said, “Nothing showcases ‘Faster, Stronger, Sharper’ and resonates with our savvy young target consumers better than zeroboxing.”
A video started playing on the screen. Carr’s optics picked up the signal and automatically shifted the image into high resolution 3D while darkening the periphery of his vision. He sat up. It was himself, in the Cube, his eyes intense with focus.
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 start 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.
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“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.
