Zeroboxer

by Fonda Lee

  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 Natural 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 science.

  “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

  WAR OF THE WORLDS

  “PREPARE … for the most epic interplanetary sporting event in history,” proclaimed a deep masculine voice. A rousing, theatrical music score began playing as a swift montage of zeroboxers flew across the screen: Terran fighters on one side, Martians—only a few of whom Carr recognized—on the other. The music soared to a rousing climax. Carr and Martian zeroboxer Kye Soard appeared, moving in slow motion, Carr’s body and leg coiled for a kick, Soard’s fist cocked back. The second before the fake collision happened, the screen went to black and the ZGFA and WCC logos faded back in.

  Carr stared at Gant, stunned. “A Terran-Martian tournament?”

  “I’ve been negotiating with the WCC for months, but I’m sure we’re close to an agreement. Once they see the latest revenue projections, they’ll come on board.”

  The apprehensive curdling in Carr’s stomach worsened, but along with it came a surge of excitement. His hard-earned division title, ZGFA Champion of the Universe, was the highest he could get in Greater Earth orbit. But the premier Martian zeroboxing promotion company, the Weightless Combat Championship, was bigger and more established than even the ZGFA, widely followed and considered to have the best zeroboxers in the whole solar system.

  “You think we can go up against the Martians?” he asked.

  “If you’d asked me five years ago, I would have said no. But things have changed. Our talent pool is broader and deeper now.” Gant puckered his mouth slightly and lifted one eyebrow at Carr, his expression an open challenge.

  Carr leaned back, arms crossed, hands tucked into his armpits. Risha and Gant were both looking at him with such expectant enthusiasm and conviction that he felt the uncomfortable urge to laugh. They really believed in what they were selling, in natural-born Terran greatness … in him. He hid a shiver of guilty apprehension. He was the only one here who knew that he was as deliberately engineered as any Martian.

  Hypocrisy aside, though, it would be a stellar tournament. All the best zeroboxers, Martian and Terran, finally together in one event? Who wouldn’t watch it? Winning it would be as big as winning the division title. No, bigger. Carr’s blood began to sing with anticipation just thinking about it. His skepticism evaporated.

  “Do you know who you’re going to field yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Gant said slowly, holding a smug smile in check. “If you have any ideas … ”

  “Who are the top Martian fighters?” he asked, already on his cuff. “Have you got names, and videos?”

  SIXTEEN

  It was the third restaurant they’d passed and Carr was beginning to get hungry. “This place looks fine,” he said. “I like Indian.” His receiver picked up the bistro’s audio-engagement tag and started whispering the day’s lunch specials to him, which only served to make him hungrier. It also told him the place had won a Best of Valtego rating last year.

  Risha made a noncommittal sound and started wandering further down the street. “A post-fight day when you can eat anything? As in, real food? We can’t waste it on any old place.” She glanced over her shoulder, beckoning him with a little motion of her chin. “I know where we should go. The Café Eclipse in the Regency Lagrange. They have the best egg salad.”

  Carr and his stomach both grumbled, but he acquiesced. There were worse ways to spend an afternoon than wandering in search of the perfect meal. As they walked, Risha reached up to touch the purplish lump surrounding his left eye. “You still have this?”

  “I’ve already spent too mu
ch money at the clinic this month,” Carr said with a smile. “Besides, I kind of want to keep this one for a while. Maybe I’ll let it heal on its own.”

  It was the one really good hit Ray Jackson had landed on him during their rematch. Carr had to hand it to him; even though Jackson had to be lured into the Cube by the fattest paycheck he’d ever seen, come fight day he sure hadn’t acted reluctant to defend his distinction as the only man who’d ever beaten the Raptor. He’d put on a good, hard fight, but Brock Wheeden, on Cube Talk With Brock, later commented that Carr had executed the match like a craftsman methodically fixing an earlier, shoddy piece of work. He swarmed his opponent from the start, outflying him, working the corners masterfully, and he broke Death Ray’s nose for the insolence of marring his record. Win, by unanimous decision.

  It had been a good night all around. Gant had billed the Luka v. Jackson rematch as a superfight, and DK’s fight (and win by submission) against Jacoby “the Devil” Bryson had punched up the draw of the undercard. Largest attendance and viewership for a non-title fight to date.

  “That bruise will look good for the interview tonight,” Risha said, “but there’s no way you can have it for the ad shoot this weekend.” She looked about to say something else, but just then, they turned onto the next street and saw the large crowd gathered at the entrance of the Regency Lagrange Hotel.

  People were chanting, shoving signs into the air, butting up as close as they could to the line of security droids blocking the hotel entrance. Carr was instantly reminded of the scene in front of the Parliament building in London during his publicity tour of Earth last year. But this was Valtego, not Earth. What could there possibly be to protest? Overpriced drinks? Sub-par room service?

  “What is going on over there?” he asked. The visual overlay of his optics flashed an information alert into the upper right corner of his vision and he glanced down at his cuff display. The Valtego Hourly had posted, five minutes ago, news of an organized demonstration outside the hotel where a large Martian business delegation was holding its trade conference. Carr looked up and scanned the crowd. He could make out what they were shouting now. A man was leading the protest, yelling questions through a microphone.

  “Who drains jobs and resources from Earth?” he demanded. “Who lures away our children, turns them into freaks?”

  “DOMIES!” came the response, in unison.

  “Who bullies our rights to mine the asteroid belt? Who wants Earth to be weak and poor?”

  “DOMIES!”

  “And do Terran governments do anything about it?”

  “NO!”

  Fabulous egg salad be damned. Carr grabbed Risha by the hand and started walking calmly but swiftly in the opposite direction. He didn’t need to coax her; her face had gone stiff and she kept her head down, her long legs easily matching his pace.

  Too late. Half a dozen people were coming straight toward them. By the excitable look on their faces, and the signs they were holding, he guessed they’d just arrived to join the protest, and he and Risha were caught between them and the main crowd. Carr turned and started to cross the street.

  “There’s one of them right there!” yelled a woman holding a sign that read GOD MADE TERRANS.

  “Hey, where’re you going?” The man next to her drew his arm back and hurled something at Risha. It hit her in the shoulder and she cried out. He shouted, “Go back to Mars, domie bitch!”

  Carr didn’t think. He closed the distance in three strides and drove his fist into the man’s bearded face with a solid crack. The man crumpled at once, and two people screamed. One of the man’s companions stared at his unconscious buddy, then closed his fists and took a wild swing at Carr.

  Carr stepped out of range. Instinct screamed at him to fight, though he felt strange and heavy. He didn’t usually trade blows under so much gravity, with so few directions of movement available to him. No matter. He was going to hand out hurt just fine with any of these assholes.

  Sure, but not all of them, whispered a small, rational part of his brain. The commotion was attracting more people. Already this was on dozens of cameras. Carr backed up. “Your buddy deserved it,” he yelled. “Now leave off!”

  “Domie-loving prick!” the man snarled, and advanced, throwing another swing. Carr slid his face out of the way, punched the man hard in the stomach and shoved him backward.

  Several things happened at once. Risha grabbed his arm. The noisy crowd surrounded them. The man caught his balance, gasping, and came back toward Carr, fists raised. A voice yelled, “Hey, that’s Carr Luka!”

  Several pairs of hands caught the man before he could reach Carr. “That’s Carr Luka, the zeroboxer,” someone else repeated, and the refrain swept through the crowd, stilling them into uncertainty.

  “I don’t care who he is,” shouted the man, red-faced and struggling.

  “You’re a moron,” someone else said. “He’ll kick your ass.”

  “I’ll sue him!”

  Carr eyed the crowd warily. With one arm, he kept Risha behind him, though everyone could see her. A weird, pregnant silence descended. Then one person in the crowd took a small step forward. “Hey man,” he said, “can I get your autograph? My son is a huge fan. He’d think it was the best thing in the world.”

  Carr shot him a look of disbelief. “Someone just went apeshit on my girlfriend, you all look like a lynch mob, and you want an autograph? What is wrong with you people? Back the hell away!”

  To his immense relief and annoyance, two Valtego city policemen appeared with a handful of security droids and shouted, “Clear off! Get off the street!” and started moving through, dispersing the crowd. Those who didn’t immediately obey stumbled back with hands clapped over ears, reacting to the painful warning alarms sent to their cochlear receivers.

  One of the policemen came up to Carr and Risha. He flipped his visor up, revealing himself to be a young man with a still-boyish face. “Are you two all right?”

  “Yes,” Risha answered for them. She looked pale.

  “Were you injured, miss?”

  “I was hit by a spray-paint bottle,” she said, her voice steadying. “It left a bruise, but I’m okay.”

  The policeman pointed at the man Carr had knocked out, who was now sitting up on the ground, cupping his jaw. He and his angry friend glared in Carr’s direction. The officer said, “He’s not sure if he’ll press charges or sue you, but there were plenty of witnesses as to what happened, so he doesn’t have much of a case. I don’t see a reason to detain you. I’d stay clear of this area though.” He indicated the mass of protesters still in front of the hotel.

  Carr nodded, too bothered and angry to say anything.

  “Say,” the policeman said. He shuffled his feet a little. “Can I get your autograph?”

  The interview that night was on a Lunar talk show, and it was supposed to be fluffy, segueing off his decisive win over Jackson into background on his childhood growing up on Earth, his career as a zeroboxer, his plans for the future, that sort of stuff. At the end of it, Carr was going to hint that he hoped to see Terran and Martian zeroboxers in the same Cube soon. That would set the Systemnet buzzing for a few weeks, priming it for Gant’s announcement of War of the Worlds.

  The incident outside the Regency Lagrange changed all that. Carr had said little during the shuttle trip to the Moon’s surface and the complimentary limo ride to the studio. Prepped and waiting backstage, he was still in no mood to chat with anyone. He muttered to Risha, “I told you we should have canceled this.”

  “Definitely not,” she said. “Clips of what happened are already out there. You need to control the story before anyone else does. It’s a lucky thing we already had this interview lined up.” She smoothed Carr’s shirt: the top two buttons undone, cuffed sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms for a deliberately careless appearance. Sporting his still-prominent facial bruise, he lo
oked casual, handsome, respectable, and badass all at the same time. “Your feed has been updated with what happened,” she added, “and all your subscribers have been messaged to watch the interview. You can’t possibly back out now.”

  Carr took her face in his hands. Given what had happened, he felt anxious about letting her out of his sight. “How can you be so okay? After those guys came after you like that? We can screw this interview and go home. You don’t have to be here for my sake.”

  She shook her head. “You keep fighting after you’ve been hit.” A studio person flashed them the two minute signal. She took his hands from her face but held on to them. “You asked me once why I’m a brandhelm.”

  “Because you’re good at it,” he said, remembering.

  “Maybe. But I thought about it, and I think it’s more than that.” Her usual confident smile had been replaced by the vulnerability he knew she allowed only him to see, when they were alone together. The other Risha, the one that made him feel weak and strong at the same time. “I’m half-Terran, designed and born on Mars but raised on Earth. I don’t fit in anywhere, I never have. So the idea that a person can shape their own identity, that you can show yourself to the world in a certain way and stand for what you want to … I guess it fascinates me.”

  She looked into his eyes. “That mob today, all they saw was a Martian. I could have been anyone, no one. That’s the way it is for most people. We pass dozens of people every day without a single thought, without feeling anything as their faces go by. But it’s different for you. You mean something to people. They hear your name, or see your face, and they feel something, even if they’ve never met you.”

  “I’m just a guy who fights inside a giant box for a living,” Carr said. “Just a person.”

  “Then why did they stop? Why did they go from wanting to hurt us to wanting your autograph?”

  “Ten seconds,” the studio person called.

  “Go on.” Risha gave him a gentle but firm push, and Carr walked onto the set and sat down in the comfortable chair opposite Jo Nesta, the host of Off World. He shook hands with her as the melodramatic theme music played and the voiceover declared, “We cover the issues worth spending oxygen on!” The ON AIR light blinked.