DREAM FIGHTER
Rowan and his wife had to carry their own cases up three flights of stairs and along a sad brown corridor. Some of the lighting fixtures were broken, and the others served only to create dirty orange smudges on the walls. Jane stopped outside the room the desk clerk had assigned them and looked about her with a mixture of disdain and weariness.
“Some hotel,” she said. “Why do you allow Sammy to book us in to places like this?”
“It’s only for one night,” Rowan told her.
“It’s always only for one night. I can’t go on like this much longer, Victor.”
“We’ll be taking a break soon.”
“I don’t see how. The money you get for one fight these days barely sees us through to the next.”
“It’s better than no money, which is what we’d have if I …” The weight of the cases in Rowan’s hands suddenly became unbearable. “Do you mind if we continue the conversation inside? If we’re paying for the room we might as well make use of it.”
Jane nodded, turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. Just beyond it, in the shabby dimness of the room, stood a grinning, scaly horror – part man, part dragon – which raised a clawed hand in menace. Jane drew breath sharply, but stood her ground.
“Victor,” she said. “Victor!”
“I’m sorry,” Rowan mumbled. He closed his mind, painfully, and the creature vanished into nothingness.
“You’re losing control.” Jane strode forward, through the spot where the apparition had been, and slung her case on to a bed. “Isn’t that a sign it’s time to quit?”
“How in hell can I quit?” Rowan kicked the door shut behind him, dropped the cases, and lay down on the other bed. The soft, walnut-sized bump on top of his head was throbbing, aching, flooding him with disquiet. He cupped his hand over it, feeling the unnatural warmth through his cropped hair, and tried to relax.
“Victor, you’re in no condition to fight.” Jane spoke softly as she knelt beside him. Grateful for the warmth in her voice, Rowan turned to his wife. The years had honed the original prettiness of her face into taut, economical planes which Rowan saw as beauty.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “If I beat Grumman tonight the purse will be enough to let us…” He stopped speaking as Jane began to shake her head.
“Victor, you’ve lost twelve fights in a row. Against third-raters. And Grumman’s supposed to be good.”
“Perhaps he’s not all that good.”
“He’s too good for you.” There was no malice or reproach in Jane’s words. “Five years ago it would have been different, but now… I mean, I can’t understand how Sammy even got you the fixture.”
“You know who to put your money on, then.” Rowan was referring to his wife’s small ritual bet, which lately had become a monetary sacrifice.
“Never,” she said. “Now, you’d better get some rest.” Rowan closed his eyes and courted sleep, but his nerves were charged with awareness of the contest which was only a few hours away. There was an agitation, a restless traffic along all his neural pathways, and his exo-brain – that seat of supranormal power – seemed to crouch on top of his skull like a tiny animal with a disparate life of its own, scheming and dreaming…
The taxi in which Sammy Kling rode down town had been old even before they had ripped out its gasoline engine and put in a battery-powered unit. He perched on the narrow rear seat, staring out at the shabby streets with eyes which had lost some of their usual glitter. How come, he asked himself, that so many good cities got clobbered in the Dust-Up, while dumps like this survived?
He was a flinty little man, normally immune to his surroundings, but he was in a mood of vulnerability brought on by the telephone call he had received some minutes earlier. It had lasted about twenty seconds, consisting of nothing more than a terse instruction from Tucks Raphael, Grumman’s manager, to meet him at his hotel. Raphael had hung up without waiting for Kling’s assent.
The fact that he could be treated in such a manner, Kling realized, was an indication of how far he had sunk in the world. There was a time when he had owned pieces of four good fighters, but one had died and two had burned up. The one who remained, Vic Rowan, was fading fast and should have been put out to pasture years earlier. Kling had, of course, brought on other men, but his judgment was not what it used to be – or the game was changing – and none of them had amounted to anything. Now he was paying the penalty for being a loser – living in cheap hotels, eating synthetic pap, having to go running when men like Tucks Raphael crooked their fingers.
When the taxi dropped him at the Sheraton he paid, without any argument, the exorbitant sum demanded by the driver and went inside. Raphael’s suite was only on the fourth floor, but Kling – too dispirited to walk – paid the elevator surcharge and rode up. Two hard-looking men showed him into the well-lit silvery room where Raphael was lounging in a deep chair and making a telephone call. Raphael had grown fatter and shinier in the years since Kling had last seen him, but Kling’s attention was absorbed by the younger man who was standing at a window. Built more like an old-style boxer than a dream fighter, Ferdy Grumman had pale grey eyes fringed with white lashes. In contrast to the powerful musculature of his body, his mouth was small and womanly, pursed in permanent distaste. His scalp was shaved to reveal the irregular blister of exo-brain centred on top of his skull.
Kling stared at him for a moment, then – as their eyes met – he felt an icy sensation of dread, a fierce projection of hatred, and he knew at once that Grumman was a borderline psycho, a man whose main reason for fighting was that monsters were devouring his soul. He quickly averted his gaze and saw Grumman’s pink lips twitch in satisfaction.
Poor Rowan, Kling thought. Poor, gentle, faded-out Rowan hasn’t a chance. Tonight could finish him.
The thought inspired in Kling a rare flash of guilt about his profession. Several different kinds of mutant had appeared in the human race in the years following the Dust-Up, all of them characterized by the extrusion of extra-cortical tissue through the fontanelle. There were the straightforward telepaths – many of whom had been killed before the UN had extended special protection – and there were the seers, and those with limited powers of telekinesis. Their abilities had proved useful to society in one way or another, and they had found profitable roles, but there had also been a sprinkling of Unclassifiables, including those individuals whose ‘gift’ it was to make others see things which did not exist.
They functioned partly by instinctive control of radiation fields around them – the images they created could be photographed – but there was also an element of telepathy, because the visions were much more realistic and more detailed to the naked eye than to the camera. In a tired and shabby world the opportunity for a new kind of spectator sport had been seized at once, and the trade of dream fighter had come into existence. There were countries where the sport was illegal because of the psychological wear and tear on the combatants, and – in the dreadful presence of Grumman – Kling understood the reasoning…
“Hello, Sammy,” Raphael said, setting the telephone down. “How’ve you been?”
“Okay, Tucks. I’m getting along okay.”
Raphael smiled disbelievingly. “Have you met my boy Ferdy?”
“No. Hello.” Kling nodded towards Grumman and looked away again, unwilling to face the eyes. Grumman did not acknowledge the greeting in any way.
Raphael’s smile broadened. “Right, Sammy, we get down to business. My Ferdy is going to be the next area champion and I’m making him contender before the end of the year.”