The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “I understand,” said Harry, staring at the Korban, who came up, roughly, to his waist. The Korba were squat, bilaterally symmetrical, apparently muscular, and covered by what appeared to be an infinite amount of overlapping plates and scales. What little information Harry could uncover about the Korban physiology suggested that they were of some sort of amphibious stock, and that they lived some of their lives in water. This would at least explain the “water combat” round. The gathering hall they were in held no obvious water sources, however. Harry wondered if something might not have been lost in translation.

  The Korban began speaking again, and as he spoke and breathed, the plates around his neck and chest moved in a motion that was indefinably strange and unsettling; it was almost like they didn’t quite go back in the same place they started off at. Harry found them unintentionally hypnotic.

  “Harry,” Schmidt said.

  “Yes?” Harry said.

  “You’re all right with the nudity?” Schmidt asked.

  “Yes,” Harry said. “Wait. What?”

  Schmidt sighed. “Pay attention, Harry,” he said. “The contest is performed in the nude so that it’s purely a test of skill, no tricks. You’re okay with that?”

  Harry glanced around the gymnasium-like room they were in, filling up with Korban spectators, human diplomats and Clarke crew members on shore leave. In the crowd of humans he located Ambassador Abumwe, who gave him a look that reinforced her earlier threat of unending misery. “So everyone gets to see my bits,” Harry said.

  “Afraid so,” Schmidt said. “All right, then?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Harry asked.

  “Not really,” Schmidt said.

  “Then I guess I’m all right with it,” Harry said. “See if you can get them to crank up the thermostat.”

  “I’ll look into it.” Schmidt said something to the Korban, who replied at length. Harry doubted they were actually speaking about the thermostat. The Korban turned and uttered a surprisingly loud blast, his neck and chest plates spiking out as he did so. Harry was suddenly reminded of a horny toad back on Earth.

  From across the room another Korban approached, holding a staff just under two meters in length, with the ends coated in what appeared to be red paint. The Korban presented it to Harry, who took it. “Thanks,” he said. The Korban ran off.

  The judge started speaking. “He says that they apologize that they are unable to give you a more attractive Bongka,” Schmidt translated, “but that your height meant they had to craft one for you specially, and they did not have time to hand it over to an artisan. He wants you to know, however, that it is fully functional and you should not be at any disadvantage. He says you may strike your opponent at will with the bongka, and on any part of the body, but only with the tips; using the unmarked part of the bongka to strike your opponent will result in lost points. You can block with the unmarked part, however.”

  “Got it,” Harry said. “I can hit anywhere? Aren’t they worried about someone losing an eye?”

  Schmidt asked. “He says that if you manage to take an eye, then it counts. Every hit or attack with a tip is fair.” Schmidt was quiet for a moment as the judge spoke at length. “Apparently the Korba can regenerate lost limbs and some organs, eventually. They don’t see losing one as a huge problem.”

  “I thought you said there were rules, Hart,” Harry said.

  “My mistake,” Schmidt said.

  “You and I are going to have a talk after all of this is done,” Harry said.

  Schmidt didn’t answer this because the judge had started speaking again. “The judge wants to know if you have a second. If you don’t have one he will be happy to provide you one.”

  “Do I have a second?” Harry said.

  “I didn’t know you needed one,” Schmidt said.

  “Hart, please make an effort to be useful to me,” Harry asked.

  “Well, I’m translating,” Schmidt said.

  “I only have your word for that,” Harry said. “Tell the judge that you’re my second.”

  “What? Harry, I can’t,” Schmidt said. “I’m supposed to be sitting with the Ambassador.”

  “And I’m supposed to be in a bunk on the Clarke reading the first part of The Brothers Karamazov,” Harry said. “Clearly this is a disappointing day for both of us. Suck it up, Hart. Tell him.”

  Schmidt told him; the judge started speaking at length to Schmidt, chest and neck plates shifting as he did so. Harry glanced back over to the seating area provided the Colonial Union diplomats and Clarke crew, who shifted in their rows. The stands were half-sized for humans; they sat with their knees bunched into their chests like parents at a pre-school open house. They didn’t look in the least bit comfortable.

  Good, thought Harry.

  The judge stopped speaking, turned toward Harry, and did something with his scales that caused a wave-like ripple to go around his head. Harry shuddered involuntarily; the judge seemed to take that as a response. He left.

  “We’re going to start in just a minute,” Schmidt said. “Now might be a good time for you to strip.”

  Harry set down his bongka and took off his jacket. “I don’t suppose you’re going to strip,” he said. “Being my second and all.”

  “The judge didn’t say anything about it in the job description,” Schmidt said. He took the jacket from Harry.

  “What is your job description?” Harry asked.

  “I’m supposed to research your opponent and give you tips on how to beat him,” Schmidt said.

  “What do you know about my opponent?” Harry asked. He was out of his shirt and was slipping off his trousers.

  “My guess is that he will be short,” Schmidt said.

  “How do I beat him?” Harry said. He slipped off his shoes and let his toes test the spongy flooring.

  “You’re not supposed to beat him,” Schmidt said. “You’re supposed to tie and then take a fall.”

  Harry grunted and handed Schmidt his pants, socks and shoes. “Am I correct in assuming that there are several species of legume that would do a better job being my second than you, Hart?”

  “Sorry, Harry,” Schmidt said. “I’m flying by the seat of my pants here.”

  “And my pants,” Harry said.

  “I guess that’s true,” Schmidt said. He looked at the nude Harry and counted the number of apparel he was holding. “Where’s your underwear?” he asked.

  “Today was laundry day,” Harry said.

  “You went commando to a diplomatic function?” Schmidt asked. The horror in his voice was unmistakable.

  “Yes, Hart, I went commando to a diplomatic function,” Harry said, and then motioned to his body. “And now, as you can see, I’m going Spartan so a midget can whack me with a stick.” He bent and picked up his Bongka. “Honestly, Hart. Help me out here. Focus a little.”

  “All right,” Hart said, and glanced at the pile of clothes he was holding. “Let me just put these somewhere.” He started off toward the human seating area.

  As Hart did this, three Korba approached Harry. One was the judge from earlier. Another Korban was carrying his own bongka, proportional to his own height; Harry’s opponent. The third was a step behind Harry’s opponent; Harry guessed it was the other second.

  The three Korba stopped directly in front of Harry. The one holding the bongka handed it to his second, looked up at Harry, and then thrust out his hands, palms forward, making a grunting noise as he did so. Harry hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with this. So he handed his bongka to Schmidt, who had just come running up, thrust his own hands forward, and returned the motion. “Jazz hands,” Harry said.

  The Korban seemed satisfied, took back his bongka, and headed toward the other side of the gym. The judge spoke, and held up something in his hand. “He says that they’re ready to begin,” Schmidt said. “He will signal the start of the round with his horn, and will use it again at the end of the round. When the round ends, there will be a few minutes w
hile they set up for the next round. You can use that time to rest and to confer with your second. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, fine,” Harry said. “Let’s get to it, already.” Schmidt responded; the judge walked off. Harry began working with the bongka, testing its balance and warp. It felt like it was made of a hard wood of some sort; he wondered if it would splinter or break.

  “Harry,” Schmidt said, and pointed to where the judge stood, horn raised high. “We’re starting.”

  Harry held his bongka in both hands, chest high, horizontal to the ground. “Any last pieces of advice?” he asked.

  “Aim low,” Schmidt said, and backed off the floor.

  “Great,” Harry said. The judge blasted his horn and moved to the side of the gym. Harry stepped forward with his bongka, keeping his eye on his opponent.

  His opponent raised his bongka, expanded his chest and neck by an alarming amount, emitted a deafening noise somewhere between a belch and a roar, and launched himself at Harry as fast as his little feet could carry him. The Korba in the stands, ringing the gym save for the small section for the humans, cheered mightily in a similar chest-inflating, burping fashion.

  Three seconds later Harry was confronted by the fact that he had absolutely no clue what he was doing. The Korban had set on him with a slashing, dizzying array of bongka maneuvers; Harry blocked about a third of them and avoided the rest by stumbling backward as the Korban pressed his advantage. The Korban was whirling his bongka like a rotor blade. Harry realized that having the longer bongka was not an advantage here; it took longer to swing, block and attack. The little Korban had the upper hand, as it were.

  The Korban lunged at Harry and appeared to overextend; Harry swung his bongka overhead to try to tap him on the backside. As he did the Korban twisted inside the arc of Harry’s attack; Harry realized he’d been played just as the Korban viciously whacked both of his ankles. Harry went down; the Korban jumped back just far enough to begin enthusiastically tenderizing Harry’s midsection as he fell. Harry rolled and blindly thrust his bongka at the Korban; somewhat improbably, it connected, poking the Korban in its snout. The poke fazed the Korban into stopping its attack and taking a step back. Harry poked it back a couple more steps and then stood up, testing his ankles. They complained but held.

  “Keep poking him!” Schmidt yelled. Harry glanced over to snap something back, giving the Korban an opening. He took it, whacked Harry hard upside the head, then reapplied himself to Harry’s ankles. Harry stumbled but kept upright, wheeling in a drunken fashion toward the center of the gym. The Korban followed, swinging merrily at Harry’s already bruised ankle bones. Harry got the distinct feeling he was being toyed with.

  Screw this, Harry thought, and stopped, planted his bongka firmly into the gym mat and hurled himself up the staff. A second later he was doing a handstand at the top of it, balanced by dint of his finely calibrated if disused motor control, courtesy of the Colonial Defense Forces genetic engineering.

  The Korban, clearly not expecting this tactic, stopped and openly gawked.

  “That’s right,” Harry said. “Come whack on my ankles now, you little prick.”

  Harry continued to feel smug about his plan right until the moment the Korban crouched and launched itself into the air with a push of its powerful legs. The Korban didn’t make it as high as Harry’s ankles. He did, however, get right on level with Harry’s face.

  Oh, crap, Harry thought, before the blinding crack of a bongka smashed across the bridge of his nose and robbed him of any further capacity for reaction, commentary or thought. All those things came back to him with blinding pain as Harry’s spinal column compressed into the gym mat as he fell. After that there were a few moments of curiously distant sensation as the Korban’s bongka dug into various parts of his body, followed by an even more distant blast of a horn. The first round was over. The Korba strutted off to the sound of belching applause; Harry propped himself up on his bongka and staggered over to Schmidt, who had found him a water bottle.

  “Are you okay?” Schmidt said.

  “Are you dumb?” Harry said. He took the water bottle and squirted some of the water on his face.

  “I’m kind of wondering what the thinking was on that handstand,” Schmidt said.

  “The thinking was that if I didn’t do something my ankle bones would be a fine powder,” Harry said.

  “What were you going to do then?” Schmidt asked.

  “I don’t know,” Harry said. “I was in a rush, Hart. I was making it up as I went along.”

  “I don’t think it worked the way you wanted it to,” Schmidt said.

  “Well, maybe if I had a second who told me these little bastards could high jump two meters straight up from a squat, I would have tried something else,” Harry said.

  “Fair point,” Schmidt said.

  “Anyway, you want me to lose, remember?” Harry said.

  “Yes, but we want you to lose by just a little,” Schmidt said. “You need to keep it closer than this. Ambassador Abumwe is glaring a hole through the back of your head right now. No, don’t look.”

  “Hart, if I could have made it closer I would have,” Harry said. He drank some water and then stretched, trying to find a place on his body that didn’t hurt. His left instep seemed the most likely candidate. Harry glanced down and was glad the Korban had not seemed aware that human testicles were especially painful when struck; his had managed to escape injury.

  “Looks like they’re ready for the second round,” Schmidt said, and pointed at the judge, who was standing with his horn. On the other end of the gym the Korban was hopping from foot to foot, loosening himself up for the hand-to-hand combat.

  “Swell,” Harry said, and handed the water bottle back to Schmidt. “Words of wisdom for this round?”

  “Mind your ankles,” Schmidt said.

  “You’re a big help,” Harry said. The horn blew and he stepped back onto the gym floor.

  The Korban wasted no time fronting an offensive, charging Harry almost as soon as he was on the floor. A few meters out the Korban kicked and launched himself into the air, claws out; he was aiming for Harry’s head.

  Not this time, you son of a bitch, Harry thought, and pushed himself back and toward the gym floor. The Korban slid just over Harry’s head, slashing as he did so; Harry responded by bringing up a leg and delivering to the Korban’s posterior a truly excellent bicycle kick. The Korban suddenly accelerated head first into the stands, colliding violently into several other Korba, whose refreshments went flying. Harry arched his head from a lying position to see the carnage, then glanced over to Schmidt, who gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up. Harry grinned and picked himself off the floor.

  The Korban burst out of the stands, enraged and refreshment-coated, and launched himself once more and incautiously at Harry. Being suddenly and humiliatingly launched into the stands had apparently simplified the Korban’s attack strategy down to tear the human a new one. Harry didn’t mind.

  The Korban approached and wheeled back to deliver a mighty blow, either to Harry’s midsection or genital region, whichever was closer. Harry responded by holding steady until the last second and then shot out his arm. The Korban’s forward motion smacked to standstill as Harry’s left palm met the little alien’s forehead. It was like stopping a particularly aggressive eight year old. Harry smirked.

  The Korban was not amused at what it registered as a condescending defense maneuver on Harry’s part; it burp-snarled its rage and prepared to shred Harry’s forearm. Harry reared back his right arm to slug the Korban, distracting it, and then quickly retracted his left palm, made a loose fist, and popped the Korban in the face. The Korban snorted in alarm; Harry took that moment to bring his right hook square into the Korban’s snout.

  The scales and plates of the Korban’s face puffed out as if the alien’s head was a flower traumatized into blossom; they settled back as the Korban collapsed onto the ground. Harry kept him on the ground by kicking it viciously
every time it so much as puffed a plate. Eventually the judges got bored with this and blew their horn. Harry walked off the floor; the Korban’s second came and dragged him off.

  “I think you might have overdone the kicking,” Schmidt said, handing Harry his refilled water bottle.

  “You’re not the one whose kidneys were mashed into pâté in the first round,” Harry said. “I was just giving him what he gave me. He was still breathing at the end of the round. He’s fine. And now the contest is closer, which is what you wanted.” He drank.

  A door opened on the side of the gymnasium and a forklift-like contraption drove in, carrying what appeared to be a large kiddie pool full of water. The pool was set down near Harry; the forklift then retreated, to reappear a minute later with another pool, which it set down near Harry’s Korban competitor.

  Harry looked over at Schmidt, who shrugged. “For the water combat round?” He ventured.

  “What are we going to do, splash each other?” Harry asked.

  “Look,” Schmidt said, and pointed. The Korban competitor, now somewhat recovered, had stepped into his pool. The judge, standing again in the middle of the gym, motioned at Harry to step into his pool. Harry looked at Schmidt, who shrugged again. “Don’t ask me,” he said.

  Harry sighed and stepped into his own pool; the water, very warm, came up to his mid-thigh. Harry fought back the temptation to sit down in it and have a nice soak. He looked over again to Schmidt. “Now what do I do?” he asked.

  Schmidt didn’t respond. Harry waved his hand in front of Schmidt. “Hart. Hello?” he said.

  Schmidt looked over to Harry. “You’re going to want to turn around, Harry,” he said.

  Harry turned around, and looked at his Korban competitor, who was suddenly about a foot taller than he had been, and growing.

  What the hell? Harry thought. And then he saw it. The level of the water in the Korban’s pool was almost slowly falling; as it did, the scales and plates on the Korban were shifting, sliding against each other and separating out. Harry watched as the scales on the Korban’s mid-section appeared to stretch apart and the join, as the plates that used to be underneath locked into place with the plates that used to be above, expanded by the water flooding into the Korban’s body from the pool. Harry eyes shifted from the Korban’s midsection to its hands, where its digits were expanding by rotating the overlapping scales, locking them together into a previously unknown dance of Fibonacci sequences.