Buck Roger XXVC #00.5 Arrival

by M S Murdock

  A couple of low-level gennies had booked the pigsmear quartergym for the after-lunch interval, but Black Barney’s name, upon mention, usurped any and all prior claimants. All other appointments for the day were canceled, and Black Barney was penciled in.

  There once had been a dozen pigsmear quartergyms, but now there was only one on Barbarosa. It was an archaic sport whose vogue had passed, although there would always be a solid constituency for it, especially in the Asteroid Belt. It was a grueling, violent, and primitive game, outlawed in many civilizations and expensive to maintain.

  When Black Barney and Quinta stepped out of the locker room, to enter the pigsmear facility, they were greeted in a small anteroom by Gossamer “Gussy” Gruendziger, the quartergym rulesmaster. Gussy was a sumo-bulk ex-pigsmear professional (from the days when there were intersolar colony leagues) who wore his long, greasy black hair in a two-pronged topknot. He had a double chin and a triple stomach, but otherwise looked as if he could still play as mean a game of pigsmear as he had in his prime.

  When Gussy saw two Barneys instead of just the one on his day log, both his chins dropped and he developed a sudden anxiety as to how he ought to behave. Two Barneys! This was unprecedented! He would have stories to tell his children-if he ever found a lifemate willing to fornicate with the three hundred-pound blubberman who rubbed bear grease on his skin as emollient.

  Gussy still carried his titanic carriage well, and he rose to greet the two Barneys with a self-assured smile that would not belie his churning stomach. He knew of Black Barney by reputation, and though he didn’t know who the other Barney was, he knew this must be some sort of event, for the two of them to have convened for a game of pigsmear. He knew that he ought to tread lightly with his pregame remarks.

  The two players were dressed in regulation blue skimpies, rubber gloves, and Skullcap. Each had a small bottle of pepjuice attached to a thin stretch belt pulled tightly around his hips. Gussy could plainly see what few others could claim to have seen, the purple matrix of scars on Black Barney’s shoulders and back. Gussy noted that Quinto, either out of luck or otherwise, had fewer physical souvenirs of combat. But apart from that, the two Barneys were near-replicas of each other, Gussy thought-although one (Quinta) gave the impression of lean, while the other one (Black Barney) could be said to be, well meatier.

  “Gentlemen.” Gussy began uncertainly. “Of course, you know the rules.“

  Black Barney listened politely while Gussy reviewed the pigsmear rules with the house variants. Quinto looked a little bored. He gazed around the anteroom, chuckling to himself, as usual enjoying some private joke.

  Pigsmear! Quinto was delighted. Why hadn’t he thought of pigsmear? That would really top off the day.

  After Gussy had finished his formal recitation, the two Barneys pivoted and began walking toward the quartergym’s low entrance.

  “Just a moment,” said Gussy, altering his tone. He hesitated to say anything, but it was his job, after all. He did not fear the two Barneys-he was too dimwitted for that, actually-he had spent much of his life vanquishing formidable pigsmear opponents. And he didn’t mind if the rules were to be bent a little for the occasion. But he did feel obligated to ensure fair play.

  Gussy grabbed Quinto’s arm and prodded below the wrist line of the rubber gloves, where he felt the tip of a long, thin blade, inserted just beneath the fold of the skin. Gussy made a “tch-tch” sound. “No weapons,” he said, authoritatively.

  Quinto chortled and glanced at Black Barney for his reaction.

  Black Barney turned his hands toward Gussy and indicated that he, too, had a wristknife handy, secreted away. One for each wrist, actually, as Gussy perceived with wide eyes. Ditto with Quinta. That was a trademark of the Barneys, and they never did anything anywhere for any reason without their concealed wristknives, he knew. Gussy frowned. Well, all things being equal . . . “Okay,” he said.

  Black Barney reached for the door’s spring latch.

  “How long, gentlemen?” asked Gussy, retreating to balance his bulk on a three-legged stool near the time clock, the scoreboard, the pig-release board, and a small communications module.

  “Thirty minutes,” recommended Quinto.

  Black Barney upped the ante. “Forty-five.”

  “Sixty?” asked Quinta agreeably.

  Gussy gave a low whistle and leaned forward to consult his day log. “Twenty is the usual limit,” he felt obliged to mention. No reaction from either of the Barneys. Oh, well. “And it is dependent, of course, on the number of pigs.

  “How many pigs today?” queried Black Barney impatiently.

  Again, Gussy consulted his material. “It’s been a busy day, gentlemen. You can’t expect any more heroics from the morning pigs. If I had known you were coming sooner, I would have put in a special order. . . ”

  “How many?” demanded Black Barney shrilly.

  “Thirteen on hand,” Gussy responded tentatively.

  “Unlucky number: ’Quinto snorted

  “Six is the usual limit,” Gussy felt obliged to mention.

  “All of them,” Black Barney said tersely.

  “Baker’s dozen,” whooped Quinta, and bath Barneys vanished through the doorway, which slid shut behind them.

  Gussy sighed, took a massive piece of cheesecloth out of a drawer, and wiped the perspiration off his brow. This was most unorthodox.

  But so was pigsmear.

  Gussy picked up the intercom and buzzed the central message board in the greeting lobby of Barbarasa. If two Barneys were going to play sixty minutes of pigsmear with thirteen pigs, Gussy knew that there were plenty of others who would want to be in on the historic occasion.

  00000

  The first pig came hurtling down the tumblechute, rear end first, landing with a splat about twenty feet in front of Quinta and Black Barney. The pig, a squat one to start off the competition, took one look at the two Barneys poised to grab it, and made off at a bound toward the farthest perimeter.

  Immediately, Quinta smashed Black Barney in the face with his elbow and lunged in the pig’s direction. Black Barney managed to stick a leg out and trip Quinta to the ground-thereby, scoring a few points-then leapfrogged his clone-brother to take the lead.

  The pig was cowering in a far corner when Black Barney reached it first. But when Black Barney made his move toward the pig, it slithered out from between his legs. Damn slippery pig! Black Barney looked up into the full force of Quinto’s best powerkick, and he was slammed backward. But Black Barney was agile, and he didn’t lose his balance. No points gained or lost.

  In almost the same breath, Black Barney was racing back toward the pig, but Quinto had him matched step for step. Quinto reached over with one arm and snagged his opponent in a crushing headlock. Black Barney returned the favor with the free arm that wasn’t desperately trying to loosen Quinto’s grip.

  Now, headlock in headlock, legs spread far apart so they wouldn’t stumble over each other, the two Barneys lurched toward the opposite end of the quartergym. Both applied extreme pressure to their respective headlocks, and punched and kicked wildly with their free hands and legs. They were an ungainly, four-legged beast as they traded progress up the floor, moving with spastic slowness so that neither would lose his footing.

  The sturdy little pig ran from one end of the short wall to the other, squealing with terror. Quinto and Black Barney shifted back and forth, grunting in lockstep, cutting off its escape, even as both of them considered the situation. The pig was certainly boxed in, but the two Barneys were at a rigid, and one might say painful, stalemate.

  Suddenly, Quinto let loose his hammerlock, taking Black Barney by surprise. Quinto dropped into a crouch, then came up forcefully with his knee crashing into the solar plexus of the world’s most famous Space pirate. “Oof!” Black Barney could not suppress an audible groan, and he tottered, his grip on Quinto momentarily broken. But again he did not fall. No points.

  “Ho! Ho! Ho!” A laughing Quinto m
anaged to stoop over and fasten a hold on the squealing pig, tuck it expertly under his arm--no small feat, considering the pig was writhing like a python-and make a quick dash to the opposite wall and the first touch-button. But the round was not over yet, and Black Barney had already recovered and was in pursuit.

  Quinta made the first touch successfully, pressing the protruding red buzzer in the center of the wall, then turned to make the cross-touch, directly colliding with the onrushing Black Barney. But Quinta was prepared with a forceful straight-arm, and the collision’s effect was practically neutralized. Or at least Quinta managed to keep his grasp of the terrified pig, which by now was of the opinion that it had died and gone to porcine hell.

  Quinta spun off the momentarily dazed Black Barney and dashed across the floor to accomplish the second touch without interference.

  Quinta paused to catch his breath, and the other Barney did the same, moving toward his rival with ominous care.

  Which way would Quinta go next? Black Barney wondered. There were two touch-buttons left, two walls left to tally, and after the first touch-which had to be the transverse wall-any sequence could be made.

  Abruptly, Quinta tucked both arms into his chest, lowered his head, and charged like a ram. Black Barney took it full in the stomach, without flinching, lifted both his powerful arms high in the air, and smashed downward on Quinto’s head. Quinta buckled, but before Black Barney could jump on top of him and claim points (much less wrest the pig free). Quinta rolled to the left; with amazing speed, Quinta then sprang up, faked to the right, and lunged forward to make the third touch. Miraculously, he still held on to the pig.

  After an ululating war whoop to distract Black Barney, Quinta made his move toward the last touch-button, coming on hard and furious, like a locomotive. But he was an off-track locomotive, for he was dodging and weaving, zigzagging, pumping his legs, and gesticulating wildly.

  Black Barney dived for Quinto’s legs, and would have nabbed him if Quinto had not executed a beautiful somersault leap and come down on the other side of his opponent.

  Quinto was only a couple of feet away from the fourth and final touch-button, with a big grin across his face. Black Barney saw the grin, because Quinto glanced over his shoulder, which was a mistake, for it gave Black Barney a moment to roll forward and scissor his legs together and topple Quinto from the ankles. Quinto pitched forward, his trunk immobilized, and though he fell toward the touch-button and reached with one hand outstreched to make the contact, the distance exceeded his reach. He fell just barely short. Indeed, his forehead scraped the wall as the pig squirmed free and bounded off to make its regulation escape through a slot hole opened at the arena’s far end by Gussy.

  Black Barney got up with a wide smile. Quinto, too, showed his teeth good-naturedly. Both took a quick squirt of pepjuice.

  First round to Quinto, announced Gussy. But Black Barney had scored well, too.

  “Swell,” grunted Quinto, short of breath.

  Black Barney nodded in assent. In this, he was sincere.

  They only had time to glance at the score before the next pig came sliding down the tumblechute.

  OOOOO

  Pigsmear was a sort of hybrid of handball, rugby, and rodeo traditions, said to have been devised over a century ago by the prison population of asteroid Zendt, as an alleviation to their boredom and oppression. It had always had a tremendous following among the scurvy underclass of the sentient nations, and mastery of it was a badge of honor for all lowlife of the Rogues’ Guild.

  It was very good aerobic conditioning, as well as the ultimate one-on-one gladiator sport.

  Originally, Zendt prisoners played their pigsmear tournaments without walls or floor padding-they played it on the outdoor craggy terrain or, as conditions improved, on a poured-concrete area set aside for that purpose. But of course they had no choice, as they were die-hard felons, without rights or privileges.

  The Barbarosa quartergym was very modern by comparison. The chutes and entrances were built low and inconspicuously into the walls, which, along with the floors, were coated with a thin rub~ ber cushion. The walls were otherwise unadorned except for the red buzzer prominently centered in each. Time and touch-points were kept by discreet overhead monitors. The high ceiling accommodated a glass-enclosed, soundproof balcony, so spectators could gawk at the action.

  Contestants could score in several complicated ways. “Minus-points” were given to any player who lost footing or fell to the floor. “Plus-points” were awarded to anyone who could hold on to the pig, dominate his opponent, and make the four touches. “Half plus-points” were given for any succession of touches up to three. “Half minus-points” were given to anyone who, having scored at least two touches, failed to complete the third and fourth ones.

  Additional “half-points” were added or subtracted for certain special occurrences, for example, each time the pig was dropped, or there was a “temporary concussion” before the end of a round. “Permanent concussion,” of course, meant that one of the contestants was the winner. The one with the pig.

  One monitor kept track of the amount of time each contestant was on or off his feet, another kept track of how long a player held the pig, and a third tallied the time it took to complete each touch-button round. These three time-scores were computed against each other for the individual time-score.

  It was all pretty impossible to calculate without being an aficionado or professional--which is why Gussy always handled the scoring on Barbarosa. Probably the only people who ever played pigsmear in its pure form, whatever that means-were the prisoners of Zendt. As they were all subsequently exterminated in a failed revolt, the rules had been handed down by opinion and folklore, and could vary from asteroid to asteroid.

  Another obscure rule was that each pig was wetted with a smelly lubricant, called Ooneen-Z, that made it virtually impossible to grasp and hold on to a pig, as if it was not already virtually impossible to grasp and hold on to such a beast. As a game progressed, this Ooneen-Z was of course spread onto the rubber padding of the floors and the walls, and the bodies of the contestants themselves, so that after a while it was hard to say what was more problematic, to hold on to the pig, or to smite one’s opponent.

  Yet another unwritten tradition was that as the rounds progressed, the pigs were to become bigger and heavier (not to mention smellier and greasier).

  The pigs were a rare breed, called stonepigs, raised on Zendt, as it happens, by a small farm corporation that had an intersolar monopoly on their breeding and sale. They were fed a special diet of pine nuts, dried lentils, and black cabbage, which guaranteed that their hide would be as smooth and tough as leather (which, of course, it was), and virtually indestructible during their term of use (the average life span for a stonepig being approximately seven years). The pigs also were virtually indigestible, which, in a sidelight, is one of the reasons why the prisoners of Zendt revolted. The stone pigs were the staple of the prison diet-there were literally hundreds of thousands of them running rampant on Zendt-wand eventually that caused vie lent unrest. Ironically, the Zendt prisoners were wiped out during the subsequent tumult, but the stonepigs, and the game invented by the inmates in their honor, endured.

  It is not quite true that no one ever lasted more than twenty minutes or six pigs. For example, the last surviving warden of Zendt, a contented witness of the weekend contests among his prisoners, wrote an eyewitness account of a fabled match. In his book, Life (and Death) on Zendt, he wrote about the showdown between two behemoth pigsmear champions, one a no parole mass-murderer and another a mentally defective metro-arsonist.

  According to Warden T. Marsh Longenecker, the two prisoners of Zendt played a marathon pigsmear game of seven hours and forty-three pigs. So evenly matched were the two players, so deadly and brutal was the scoring, so terminal their exhaustion, that at the final buzzer they both fell quite truly dead. In his book, the warden, who also was judge of the contest, wrote, “Magnanimously, I ruled the compe
tition a tie.”

  OOOOO

  After the first twenty minutes and the dispatch of four pigs, Black Barney and Quinta were both a little buffed. After the second twenty minutes and the next five pigs, Black Barney and Quinto were moving with obvious discomfort and deliberation.

  Well into the final twenty minutes, the two of them were drenched with the ineffable Oolneen-2, and were covered with streaks of dirt and grime, as well as welts, bruises, cuts, and bloody scratches. Both men were wracked with exhaustion and pain.

  Above them, behind the thick glass shield of the balcony alcove, were the lucky cutthroats and no goods who happened to be on Barbarosa that day-as motley an assortment of solar system scum as you could ever wish not to encounter.

  Quinto and Black Barney, who were rather busy with their own activities, anyway, could not hear the peanut gallery, but it was clear from the throng’s gaping maws and frantic gestures that they were betting plenty of moolah on the match’s outcome. Although it was something of a drawback not to have the slightest familiarity with either of the players, to many in the grip of a gambling fever this was but an added titillation. And little added titillation was necessary to betting on the superior between two Barneys.

  Below, in the pigsmear quartergym, the two Barneys were conserving their energies for the crucial stretch of the final minutes. They did not shout insults or taunts at each other-that would not have been sporting in any case. What did come out of their mouths came in spurts and sputters, bitter asides, sarcastic quips, and muffled cries.

  The score had teetered back and forth from the beginning. Quinto had taken the early lead, then Black Barney had soared ahead, then Quinto had inched back to claim the edge, then Black Barney . . .