* * *
He finished up the ham act when I was ten feet from him, swung to face me. He knew I was there, all right; he was just playing it cool. Swell. While he was playing, I’d take him.
I feinted with the net, then dived in, swung the mace, missed him by half an inch as he back-pedaled. I followed him close, working the club, keeping the net cocked. He backed, looking me over.
“Ramm—is that you in that getup?” he barked.
“Naw—I couldn’t make it, so I sent my cousin Julius.”
“What happened, you switch brands? Looks like you must of got cut-rate merchandise.” He ducked a straight cut and whipped the prod around in a jab that would have paralyzed my neuro center if he’d connected.
“New secret model a big outfit’s trying out under wraps,” I told him.
He made a fast move, and a long, slim rod I hadn’t seen before whipped out and slapped me under the ribs. For a split second I froze. He had me, I was finished. A well-handled magnetic resonator could de-Gauss every microtape in a Servo—and his placement was perfect.
But nothing happened. There was a little tingle, that was all.
Then I got it. I wasn’t wearing a Servo—and magnets didn’t bother an Org.
* * *
The Atlas was looking as confused as I was. He took an extra half-second recovering. That was almost enough. I clipped him across the thigh as he almost fell getting back. He tried with the switch again, sawed it across my chest. I let him; he might as well tickle me with a grass stem. This time I got the net out, snarled his left arm, brought the mace around and laid a good one across his hip. It staggered him, but he managed to spin out, flip the net clear.
“What kind of shielding you got anyway, Ramm?” the Atlas growled. He held the rod out in front of his face, crossed his eyes at it, shook it hard and made one more try. I let him come in under my guard, and the shaft slid along my side as if he was trying to wipe it clean on my shirt. While he was busy with that, I dropped the net, got a two-handed grip on the mace, brought it around in a flat arc and laid a solid wallop right where it would do him the most good—square on the hip joint.
I heard the socket go. He tried to pivot on his good leg, tottered and just managed to stay on his feet, swearing. I came in fast and just got a glimpse of the electro-prod coming up. Concentrating on the magnetic rod, I’d forgotten the other. I tried to check and slide off to the right, but all of a sudden blinding blue lights were popping all over the sky. Something came up and hit me alongside the head, and then I was doing slow somersaults through pretty purple clouds, trying hard to figure which side was up. Then the pain hit. For a couple of seconds I scraped at my chest, reaching for circuit breakers that weren’t there. Then I got mad.
It was as if all of a sudden, nothing could stop me. The Atlas was a target, and all I wanted was just to reach it. If there was a mountain in the way, I’d pick it up and throw it over my shoulder. A charging elephant would be a minor nuisance. I could even stand up, unassisted—if I tried hard enough.
I got the feel of something solid under my hands, groped and found some more of it with my feet, pushed hard and blinked away the fog to see the Atlas just making it back onto his good leg. I had to rest a while then, on all fours. He stooped to twiddle a reset for emergency power to the damaged joint, then started for me, hopping hard enough to shake the ground. A little voice told me to wait . . .
He stopped, swung the prod up, and I rolled, grabbed his good leg, twisted with everything I had. It wasn’t enough. He hopped, jabbed with the prod, missed, and I was on my feet now, feeling like I’d been skinned and soaked in brine. My breath burned my throat like a blow torch, and all round the crowd roar was like a tidal wave rolling across a sinking continent.
I backed, and he followed. I tried to figure the time until the pit stop, but I didn’t know how long I’d been out here; I didn’t have a timer ticking under my left ear, keeping me posted. And now the Atlas was on to what was going on. I knew that, when he reached for the show-knife strapped to his left hip. Against a Servo, that particular tool was useless, but he could let the cool night air into an Org’s gizzard with it, and he knew it.
Then my foot hit the edge of the paved circle and I went down, flat on my back on the sand.
* * *
The Atlas came after me, and I scrambled back, got to my feet just in time. The knife blade hissed through the air just under my chin.
“You’ve had it, Ramm,” the Atlas said, and swung again. I tried to get the club up for a counterblow but it was too heavy. I let it drop and drag in the sand. Through a dust cloud we were making, I saw the Atlas fumbling with his control buttons. Tears welled up in his eyes, sluiced down over his face. He didn’t like the dust any better than I did. Maybe not as well . . .
I felt an idea pecking at its shell; a dirty idea, but better than none.
The mace was dangling by its thong. I slipped it free, threw it at him; it clanged off his knees and I stooped, came up with a handful of fine sand and as he closed in threw it straight into his face.
The effect was striking. His eyes turned to mud pockets. I stepped aside, and he went right past me, making swipes at the air with the big sticker, and I swung in behind him and tilted another handful down inside his neckband. I could hear it grate in the articulated rib armor as he came around.
“Ramm, you lousy little—” I took aim and placed a nice gob square in his vocabulary. He backed off, pumping emergency air to clear the pipes, spouting dust like Mount Aetna, but I knew I had him. The mouth cavity on just about every Servo in the market was a major lube duct; he had enough grit in his gears to stop a Continental Siege Unit. But his mouth was still open, so I funneled in another double handful.
He stopped, locked his knee joints and concentrated on his problem. That gave me my opening to reach out and switch his main circuit breaker off.
He froze. I waited half a minute for the dust to clear, while the crowd roar died away to a kind of confused buzzing, like robbed bees.
Then I reached out, put a finger against his chest, and shoved—just gently. He leaned back, teetered for a second, then toppled over stiff as a lamppost. You could hear the thud all the way to the student bleachers. I held on for another ten seconds, just to make it look good, then kneeled over on top of him.
8
“But I was too late,” Gully Fishbein’s voice was coming up out of a barrel, a barrel full of thick molasses syrup somebody had dumped me into. I opened my mouth to complain and a noise like “glug” came out.
“He’s awake!” Gully yelped. I started to deny it, but the effort was too much.
“Barney, I tried to catch you, but you were already out there.” Gully sounded indignant. “Cripes, kid, you should of known I wouldn’t let ’em railroad you!”
“Don’t worry about Ramm,” a breezy voice jostled Gully’s aside. “Boy, this is the story of the decade! You figure to go up against a Servo again in Org, when you get out of the shop—I mean hospital? How did it feel to take five thousand volts of DC? You know the experts say it should have killed you. It would have knocked out any Servo on the market—”
“Nix, Baby!” Gully elbowed his way back in again. “My boy’s gotta rest. And you can tell the world the Combo’s out of business. Now anybody can afford to fight. Me and Barney have put the game back in the hands of the people.”
“Yeah! The sight of that Atlas, out on its feet—and Ramm here, in Org, yet, with one finger . . . ”
I unglued an eyelid and blinked at half a dozen fuzzy faces like custard pies floating around me.