“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. Your 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 Bilclass="underline" “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.