Somebody else shoved a clipboard in front of me. “Sign this,” he said. “It’s a release covering Cent Files against any malpractice or damage claims.”
“And there’ll be an extra service charge on your file for emergency reprocessing,” the dancey one said. “You’ll have to sign that, and also an authorization to transfer you to dead storage until your next of kin or authorized agent brings in the Servo data—”
I managed to sit up. “Skip the reprocessing,” I said. “And the dead storage. Just get me on my feet and show me the door.”
“How’s that? You’re going to need at least a week’s rest, a month’s retraining, and complete reorientation course before you can be released in Org—”
“Get me some clothes,” I said. “Then I’ll sign the papers.”
“This is blackmail!” Dancey did a couple of steps. “I won’t be held responsible!”
“Not if you cooperate. Call me a cab.” I tried walking. I was shaky, but all things considered I didn’t feel too bad—for a guy who just committed suicide. Files had kept me in good condition.
There was a little more argument, but I won. Dancey followed me out, wagging his head and complaining, but I signed his papers and he disappeared—probably to finish communing with himself.
* * *
In the cab, I tried to reach Gully again. His line was busy. I tried Lorena. A canned voice told me her line was disconnected. Swell. All my old associates were kind of fading out of sight, now that I was having troubles with the law.
But maybe Gully was just busy getting me a postponement. In fact, he was probably over at the Garden now, straightening things out. I gave the hackie directions and he dropped me by the big stone arch with the deep-cut letters that said fighters entrance.
The usual crowd of fight fans were there, forty deep. None of them gave me a look; they had their eyes on the big, wide-shouldered Tunneys and Louises and Marcianos, and the hammed-up Herkys and Tarzans in their flashy costumes and big smiles, with their handlers herding them along like tugs nudging liners into dock. The gateman put out a hand to stop me when I started through the turnstile.
“It’s me, Harley. Barney Ramm,” I said. A couple of harness cops were standing a few feet away, looking things over. “Let me through; I’m late.”
“Hah? Barney—”
“Keep it quiet; I’m a surprise.”
Where’d you dig up that outfit? On a used-Servo lot?” He looked me over like an inspector rejecting a wormy side of mutton. “What is it, a gag?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you some time. Right now, how’s about loaning me a temporary tag? I left my ID in my other pants.”
“You pugs,” he muttered, but he handed over the pass. I grabbed it.
“Where’s Lou Mitch, the starter?” I asked him.
“Try the Registry Office.”
I shoved through a crowd of weigh-in men, service techs and arena officials, spotted Lou talking to a couple of trainers. I went over and grabbed his arm.
“It’s me, Mitch, Barney Ramm. Listen, where’s Gully? I need—”
“Ramm, you bum! Where you been? Where’d you pick up that hulk you got on? Who you think you are, missing the press weigh-in? Get downstairs on the double and dress out! You got twenty minutes, and if you’re late, so help me, I’ll see you busted out of the fight game!”
“Wha—who, me? Hold it, Lou, I’m not going out there in this condition! I just came down to—”
“Oh, a holdup for more dough, huh? Well, you can work that one out with the promoter and the Commissioner. All I know is, you got a contract, and I’ve got you billed for nineteen minutes from now!”
I started backing away, shaking my head. “Wait a minute, Lou—”
He jerked his head at a couple of the trainers that were listening in. “Grab him and take him down to his stall and get him into his gear! Hustle it!”
I put up a brisk resistance, but it was all wasted effort. Ten minutes later I was standing in the chute, strapped into harness with knots tied in the straps for fit and a copy of the Afternoon Late Racing Special padding my helmet up off my ears, listening to the mob in the stands up above, yelling for the next kill. Me.
7
They can talk all they want about how sensitive and responsive a good Servo is, but there’s nothing like flesh and blood for making you know you’re in trouble.
My heart was kicking hard enough to jar the championship medal on my chest. My mouth was as dry as yesterday’s cinnamon toast. I thought about making a fast getaway over the barrier fence, but there was nobody outside who’d be glad to see me except the cops; besides which, I had a mace in my right hand and a fighting net in the left, and after all, I was Barney Ramm, the champ. I’d always said it was the man inside the Servo, not the equipment that counted. Tonight I had a chance to prove it—or a kind of a chance; an Org up against a fighting Servo wasn’t exactly an even match.
But hell, when was it ever even? The whole fight game was controlled, from top to bottom, by a few sharpies like J. J. Malone. Nobody had ever slipped me the word to take a dive yet, but I’d stretched plenty of bouts to make ’em look good. After all, the fans paid good creds to see two fine-tuned fighting machines pound each other to scrap under the lights. An easy win was taboo. Well, they’d get an unexpected bonus tonight when I got hit and something besides hydraulic fluid ran out.
And then the blast of the bugles caught me like a bucket of ice water and the gate jumped up and I was striding through, head up, trying to look as arrogant as a hunting tiger under the glare of the polyarcs, but feeling very small and very breakable and wondering why I hadn’t stayed in that nice safe jail while I had the chance. Out across the spread of the arena the bleachers rose up dark under the high late-evening sky streaked with long pink clouds that looked as remote as fairyland. And under the pooled lights, a big husky Servo was taking his bows, swirling his cloak.
He was too far away, over beyond the raised disk of the Circle, for me to be sure, but it looked like he was picking a heavy duty prod and nothing else. Maybe the word had gone out that I was in Org, or maybe he was good.
* * *
Then he tossed the cape to a handler and came to meet me, sizing me up on the way through the slit in his mask.
Maybe he was wondering what I had up my sleeve. If he was in on the fix, he’d be surprised to see me at all. He’d been expecting a last-minute sub or just a straight default. If not, he’d been figuring on me wearing my Big Charley packed with all the booster gear the law allows. Instead, all he saw was an ordinary-looking, five-foot-eleven frame with medium-fair shoulders and maybe just a shade too much padding at the belt line.
The boys back at Files had done right by me, I had to admit. The old Org was in better shape than when I’d filed it, over a year ago. I felt strong, tough and light on my feet; I could feel the old fighting edge coming on. Maybe it was just a false lift from the stuff the techs had loaded me full of, and maybe it was just an animal’s combat instinct, an item they hadn’t been able to dream up an accessory to imitate. Whatever it was, it was nice to have.
I reached the concrete edge of the Fighting Circle and stepped up on it and was looking across at the other fellow, only fifty feet away and now looking bigger than a Bolo Combat Unit. With the mask I wasn’t sure, but he looked like a modified Norge Atlas. He was running through a fancy twirl routine with the prod, and the crowd was eating it up.
There was no law that said I had to wait for him to finish. I slid the mace down to rest solid in my palm with the thong riding tight above my wrist and gave the two-foot club a couple of practice swings. So much for the warmup. I flipped the net out into casting position with my left hand and moved in on him.
It wasn’t like wearing a Servo; I could feel sweat running down my face and the air sighing in my lungs and the blood pumping through my muscles and veins. It was kind of a strange alive feeling—as if there was nothing between me and the sky and the earth and I was part of them and they were part of me. A funny feeling. A dangerous, unprotected feeling—but somehow not entirely a bad feeling.