by Brian Lumley
“I put her right, added a few tricks, played till my fingers went flat. It took time, but now I’m the best there is.”
What Pavanaz didn’t say was that Ozzie had called round his place a week later and found him playing the machine. He’d flared up, likewise Pavanaz; somehow the latter’s razor-edged knife had contrived to cut the Arcade King’s throat. Living at the edge of one of Gizzich IV’s biggest swamps, it was no big deal. Ozzie had gone down slow but sure in a mile of mud.
The odds against anyone tagging Grint Pavanaz as a killer were in the seven figures bracket, but he’d panicked anyway. He stole a little money, crated the machine, paid for its passage to Earth, then climbed in the crate with the ’Vader….
The 1st Mate snapped his fingers. “The Game Show!” he said. “The big TV tournament, coming in three months’ time. While they watch, twenty-five billion kids match their skills alongside the best in the Federation.”
Pavanaz grinned, blew on his fingernails and polished them on his shirt.
“Is that what this is about?” said the Captain. “You stowed away to Earth to play games?”
“October, 2482,” said Pavanaz. “Eliminations for a month, the quarter- and semi-finals played off on the 29th, finally the Big Game on the 30th. I shall be there, gentlemen…you are looking at the new champion. A million creds in it, a half-million for the runner-up, and a quarter-million for—”
“We get the picture,” the Captain cut him short. “So you’re that good, eh? Care to show us?”
“Sure,” said Pavanaz. “Want to make a small wager?”
Pavanaz was a skinny twenty-one-year-old. Less meat than a mantis, short-cropped black hair that wouldn’t fall into his eyes when he played, fingers like a pianist, and a razor-honed mind. And a slant to his mouth that told of a special sort of cynicism. A brilliant kid, thought the Captain. Most kids were these days, but all wasted. In all the entire list of charted, settled systems there wasn’t enough real work to go round. Oh, plenty of farming out on the new frontiers, lots of dirty fingernail jobs, but nothing for one like Pavanaz. Except one chance in a million that he’d make a million and retire to one of the resort worlds. Cullis was more or less right, that was all Pavanaz wanted: a million credits, a beach and the latest model ’Vader. The problem was, he didn’t care how he got them. Cullis did care, but he was saving it for later.
Pavanaz climbed into the bouncing, swiveling bucket-seat of his machine and sat there with his eyes closed for a couple of seconds. ’Vaders had been around for five hundred years and more. At first they were expensive toys, then trainers for pilots on Mother Earth, finally trainers for pilots off the Earth. For when men moved out into space and found the Khuum waiting, the ’Vaders had been given a new lease on life; but updated, faster, full of tricks that the kids of the late 20th Century never even dreamed of. Trainers, yes—for the guys who lived through, died in, and at last won the Khuum wars. Since when, what with virtual reality and all, they’d evolved, and evolved, and….
“You gone to sleep, kid?” said the Captain. Pavanaz opened his eyes, switched her on, and showed them who was asleep. They didn’t have the con, but they could look round him and cop some of the excitement. And his game was exciting, indeed inspired, a virtuoso performance. Wraparound 3D made it as close to real as possible, and Pavanaz played it that way: no longer a skinny kid but a fighter pilot out among the stars, on patrol, searching for the enemy.
Out there in deep space his hands, eyes and brain were like parts of the computer he controlled, or half-controlled. No one ever “won” one of these games; the machine won; the idea was to last longer than anyone else and rack up a higher score. For no matter how many of the enemy you destroyed, the computer would conjure up bigger, faster, more powerful Khuum ships. The big ones carried the highest score, but before you could reach them you had to kill off all the small-fry who were trying hard to kill you! So in fact you played yourself, because your skill governed the strength of your opponent: the harder you fought, the greater the machine’s efforts against you.
A fleet of Khuum was out there; they spotted Pavanaz and began to pivot; he was into and through them, killing them off fore and aft, port and starboard. They were no match for him. He looked for bigger fish and found sharks! Behind the scattering fleet, a dozen highly conjectural vessels with all the regular Khuum tricks and then some, turned their needle snouts on him. Pavanaz launched into them, zigzagged to avoid their beams, set his bucket-seat fishtailing. Strapped in, he somehow ignored the motion to concentrate on the game in hand.
At first surprised, the aliens burst asunder, blew up in mad blasts of light and sound which were real enough to add to the reality, quickly threw up their shields. Pavanaz discharged shield-scramblers, following up with Takka Beams that homed on the scramblers, like iron filings to a magnet. And once through the disrupted alien screens, then they homed in on the ships. Pavanaz sliced through debris aware that the Khuum had regrouped and were hot on his littered trail.
His score mounted on the monitor; he dripped sweat till his clothes stuck to him; his hands moved like crazed spiders over the controls. The din of exploding ships was deafening as their beams crept ever closer. Pavanaz’s score went up and the computer compensated. A Khuum battle-cruiser swam into view, and behind it a carrier launching mines and missiles. Pavanaz tripped into hyperspace, burned the cruiser with his exhaust, threw all power to his screens and deflected the carrier’s hypermissiles. He tripped back into normal space and found his screen full of heavy metal! The carrier was dead ahead! No one had ever taken out a carrier before!
Pavanaz hit all of his firing buttons simultaneously and chewed a passage right through the carrier’s belly. All around him, white and yellow light blazed like the heart of hell; his earphones were full of the scream of metal warping out of existence; disintegrating debris blinded him…so that he didn’t even see the whirling, buckled girder that smashed his cockpit and ended the game….
His bucket-seat stopped gyrating; Pavanaz hung limp, drenched over the controls; the scoreboard was alive with flashing lights, and his score was 4,202,786.
“Phew!” said the 1st Mate. “Here, let me try.”
“You?” Pavanaz got down, steadied himself against a bulkhead. “You have hands like…like plates of meat!”
“Kid,” the 1st Mate glowered, “I was doing it for real when you were navigating a hole in your Ma’s tights!” He got aboard, switched on, lasted seventeen point three seconds before being blown to hell. His score was 21,002. Which didn’t say much for his war stories. The others didn’t do nearly so well, and Captain Cullis got the lowest score of all. Pavanaz sniggered somewhat, which wasn’t a good move.
“Pav,” said the Captain, “I think you could win.”
“Tell me about it,” said Pavanaz.
“But you won’t, ’cos you’re not going to Earth. Not on my ‘scow,’ anyway.”
Pavanaz looked uneasy, said, “You don’t scare me, Captain. I checked you out. You’ve made a round trip, visited a dozen worlds, picked up cargoes all destined for Earth. Your ETA is end of August, which gives me a month to enter the competition and catch up on current innovations. So…you must mean you’ll hand me over, charge me with being a stowaway. And you know what next? It will take at least three months to bring me to trial, and by then I’ll be the champion. Runner-up at worst. All the worlds love a winner, and you can buy an awful lot of freedom with half a million creds!”
“That’s your other big problem,” Captain Cullis told him. “Next to being full of shit, you don’t listen too good. Let’s try it again. I said: you’re–not–going–to–Earth.”
Pavanaz’s upper lip twitched. “I don’t follow you.”
“Exactly: you won’t follow me. Not from Shankov’s World!”
Shankov’s World, reputed to be one of the wettest planets in the Federation! It lay close by, along the route home. Pavanaz licked suddenly dry lips, shook his head, said, “Eh? But you’re fully loaded. Yo
ur manifesto doesn’t say anything about picking stuff up on Shankov’s World.”
“Who mentioned cargo?” The 1st Mate was all wide-eyed innocence.
Pavanaz glanced slack-jawed at him, then back at the Captain who told him: “You may know your fighters and your Khuum, and all the rest of the computer-generated junk in there.” He sneered at the invader. “But you’re not too hot on these big haulers, are you.” It was a statement not a question.
“Shankov’s?” Pavanaz shook his head again, a little desperately now. “Why would you want to put me down on…” The truth hit him like a thunderbolt. “Fuel!”
The 1st Mate nodded. “Show us a computer that can generate that stuff, you won’t need to play in the games tournament!”
“Meanwhile.” The captain grinned. “We’re just a day out from Shankov’s—and you’re in the brig!” As Pavanaz was led stumbling away, he added: “And kid—I hope you like rain….”
II
Pavanaz didn’t like rain.
Shankov’s World was nine-tenths water. Its sun spent its time sucking water up from one half of the planet and dumping it on the other. When it wasn’t raining it was misty, and vice versa. The other thing Shankov’s World had lots of was lowlife. And fish. Drop a bent pin in the water on Shankov’s, you’d pull out a fish. Put a small piece of something edible on the hook, the water would boil!
Because the living was easy, Shankov’s attracted bums and riffraff. The rich riffraff had greenhouses with solariums and swimming pools and rarely came out, and the bums lived how they could. The young of both sets frequented the area in the vicinity of the spaceport, where “the action” was, and a good many of them played ’Vaders. Pavanaz wasn’t through yet. There were kids here with creds, and his face wasn’t known like back on Gizzich IV. Customs passed him as Human; he paid Visitor’s Tax and a returnable import fee on his ’Vader, borrowed a fork-lift to carry the machine out of the spaceport to the doors of the nearest arcade: “Fat Bill’s Place.” Oh, Shankov’s was real class!
Fat Bill was a blob about sixty-two inches in all directions; he wheezed as Pavanaz and a handful of splashers-by half-dragged, half-carried the ’Vader into an empty corner in the arcade’s front hall. And he waited patiently while Pavanaz used the edges of his hands to squeegee the water out of his shirt and pants. It was “summer” and the rain was warm.
“I’m Bill,” he wheezed when Pav was done. “You should buy yourself a plastimac, Mac.”
“I’m Grint Pavanaz,” said Pavanaz. “And I will.”
“S’funny,” said Fat Bill, scratching his head. “I don’t recall ordering this baby.”
“You didn’t,” Pavanaz informed. “She’s mine.”
Fat Bill narrowed his eyes a little. “In my arcade?”
“Just until I can catch a ship out of here,” said Pavanaz.
Fat Bill’s eyes narrowed more yet. “See,” he said, “I don’t see much in that for me. I mean, there’s a warehouse next door where you can stable this beast. So why clutter up my place, eh?”
“I can explain,” said Pavanaz.
“Make it good,” Fat Bill told him “and fast, before this ’Vader of yours gets headed for one big oxidization problem.” He inclined his head towards the door.
Pavanaz stripped the plastic off his machine in front of a mainly disinterested crowd. They pulled faces at it and moved away. Nothing new here. Pav looked at Fat Bill. “I can pay you three creds a day just to keep her here.”
Fat Bill nodded. “That might be OK—except I like the kids to play my machines, you know? It’s my living.”
“That’s good,” Pavanaz agreed, forking out three credits. “No one plays this one but me. I’ve got the key.” He checked there was no one within earshot. “Listen, this could be good for both of us.”
Fat Bill stepped closer. “Keep talking,” he said.
Pavanaz took out a square of soft cloth with a trace of machine oil, commenced wiping down the ’Vader, removing every last trace of moisture. “See,” he said, “nobody—but nobody—plays these things like I do. So…I wager my game against your top scorers. I bet my money against theirs. And I give ’em good odds. When they lose, we split sixty-forty on each days’ take.”
“You’re short on shekel, right?”
“I need a stake to get to Earth, that’s all.”
“And you’re better than the kids who come in here?”
“Better believe it.”
“Look—Pasternak?—maybe you haven’t noticed, but Shankov’s World is wet. No outdoor sports here, ’cept fishing. The kids round here; they’re experts. You never seen such players!”
“Except on the Games Shows,” said Pavanaz.
“Ah!” The other’s piggy eyes opened wide. “So that’s it!” He laughed out loud, finished up coughing. Bill’s condition and Shankov’s climate didn’t work. “Don’t kill me,” he said. “Every kid who ever thought he could play is putting his mother on the streets to buy a ticket to Earth. What makes you so special?”
Pavanaz scowled. “OK, I’ll show you. Do you have anyone in here right now who can actually play these things?”
Fat Bill looked at him sideways. “In the back,” he finally said. “The ’Vaders are in the back. On Shankov’s we keep as far out of the rain as possible. Centricred machines out front, big stuff in the back. You want players? I’ll show you players.”
Pavanaz followed him into the arcade, through opaque glass humidity doors. And Fat Bill showed him the players.
Pav watched awhile. A couple of the kids were OK, that’s all. Gizzich had guys who could eat the best of these, and Pavanaz had eaten all of them! He told Fat Bill: “Bear with me,” and yelled, “Five gets you fifteen I’m the best there is!”
A crewcut runt who looked much like Pavanaz (except his expression was mainly innocent), turned from the game he was watching and glanced at Pav. The player, the runt, and a crowd of local kids that had been watching cursed loud and vicious as he was blown to bits by the Khuum. He leapt out of the bucket and tore through the spectators, intent on Pavanaz’s throat.
“Was that you yelling?” he snarled, his face purple. “You put me off, ruined my game, you sonofa—”
“Hold it, Kem,” said the one with the crewcut, getting between them. He was fast and moved like silk, and Pavanaz recognized someone who would be a good player. Also someone with authority—among the ’Vader-addicts, anyway.
“What?” Kem was outraged. He was twice as big as the runt but held back. “Aces, this guy cost me a big score! For no good reason he comes in here mouthing off, I’m distracted, and—”
“I saw all that,” said Aces. “Also that you were about to be blown sky-high. So he put you off a little—maybe. So what? Didn’t you hear what the man said? He said five gets you fifteen he’s the best.”
Kem looked past Aces at Pavanaz. “Shit,” he said, “this beanpole doesn’t look like he ever had fifteen!”
Pavanaz waved a wad at them. “I have it,” he said; “and a lot more. But I’m greedy and you suckers are in here spending money that could be mine. So can you play or can’t you? I mean, if you don’t want to try me out—hell, there are other arcades where I won’t be wasting my talent!” He offered them his best come-and-get-it sneer, and began to turn away. But Aces caught his sleeve and stopped him.
Pavanaz looked at the hand on his arm until it was taken away, then said: “Yeah?”
“Kem could probably take you,” said Aces, all soft-voiced. “And if he can’t, I sure as hell can.”
So you’re the big cat around here, are you? But out loud Pav said, “Zat right, Kem? You play good? You can borrow five to go after my fifteen?”
“I don’t borrow shit!” Kem slapped a five into Aces’ open hand. Aces held out his hand to Pav, who stuck three fives in it. “What’s your name, anyway, beanpole?” Kem scowled. “I like to know whose money I’m spending.”
“Name’s Grint Pavanaz,” said Pav, “but you can call me The Man.” Ke
m’s score was still lit up on the ’Vader screen. Nine hundred and eighty-seven thousand was OK—but only just. Pavanaz knew he could beat it without even trying, but he wouldn’t.
“Checking my score?” Kem grinned. “Starting to feel warm?” But then he snarled again: “Remember, it would have been a lot higher if you hadn’t bust in here mouthing off!”
“That was when you were playing for laughs,” Pav told him. “Anybody can make a score when there’s nothing riding. But now it’s for money, which is different.” He bowed sarcastically and offered Kem the bucket-seat. “You want to show me what you’re made of?”
“Brother—Pfefferminz?—do you have things to learn!” Kem grinned and climbed into the bucket, paid for the game, scored almost one and a quarter million before being scrambled. But he was an amateur like the rest of them. They didn’t live it, that was their trouble. And this time Pav wouldn’t either.
He got into the seat, let her roll and was taken out with a score of seven hundred and sixty thousand. Kem was jubilant. He laughed at Pav and yelled, “Hey, you got any more of the green stuff you want to give away?”
The crowd hee-heed and hoo-hooed. Pav scowled. “So you were lucky. Hell, it was the first time I played this model!”
“Excuses, excuses!” Kem snorted, laughing nasally.
Pavanaz scowled harder, yanked out his wad. “Laughing boy,” he said, “I got eighty-seven here, all I’m holding. My eight-seven against yours—or is that too rich for you?”
Aces stood to one side, arms folded on his chest. Not as innocent as he looked, he believed he’d seen all this before. Heard about it, anyway. His eyes narrowed where they followed Pav’s every move. Kem, on the other hand: he obviously wasn’t thinking straight—or maybe he was bloated with success.
