There Is No Darkness

  We would win if we had at least one man left after ten minutes. The referees would send a team member off the filed if they judged him severely enough disabled. This meant unconscious, or worse. The match was to be held in one week.

  It was a long week. We worked out constantly. Somehow we had to integrate the fighting styles from four completely different planets. Somehow it seemed to work.

  What we ended up with was mostly a defensive strategy. Since they had so many more people, it was obvious that if we got down to one, the fight would end in seconds. So we worked out a conservative strategy, a waiting game. B’oosa and I would stay back-to-back while Pancho and the Heller worked from our sides. We figured we could hold off almost anything that way. It took a lot to convince the Heller of that. He was more inclined toward the “let’s wade in and bash heads” school of thought. He was felt the quarterstaff was effete, a weapon for sissies. B’oosa took him down a notch or two the same way he’d handled me. There wasn’t any problem after that.

  Lusaka was hot and dusty. Tens of thousands of spectators surrounded the small, hard-baked clay ring. It was obvious who they were rooting for. The match had been billed as “The Earth Against The Off-World Monsters” or something like that. Anyway, we were the bad guys. I was tired of being the bad guy.

  We were introduced in the center of the ring to a rousing chorus of boos and jeers. The Earthies got all the applause. They were small, but there were nine of them. Nine had never seen like such a large number before. We shook hands, took our opening stances. Ten minutes, that’s all. Ten minutes.

  It started.

  We moved cautiously to the center of the ring. B’oosa and I back-to-back, Pancho and Markos at our sides.

  “Here,” said B’oosa and we froze. The Earthies circled us warily, with a dart here or there, a small feint. Nothing serious.

  Pancho started his move. The bolo is a heavy leather-covered ball on the end of an elastic tether, tied around the wrist. Properly thrown, it will wrap itself around a person’s ankle and bring him down. Then the idea was for Pancho to drag him close enough for Markos to reach him with the vibroclub, without leaving the protection of the quarterstaffs. One touch with a vibroclub is enough to produce a temporary disabling paralysis. A blow to the head with one is always serious, sometimes permanently disabling, sometimes fatal.

  The Earthies seemed bewildered and confused. Usually matches like this are a free-for-all, with individual battles taking place right from the start. I don’t think they knew what to do with us.

  Pancho scored first. He caught a staffer by the leg with his bolo and started pulling him in. We covered for him, inching sideways toward the fallen man. Markos hit him and he went out. The referee called time out and they removed the Earthie. Eight to four, now. Time started up again.

  Same strategy. This time Pancho hooked a guy with a club. One of the staffers tried to cover for him, but B’oosa and I easily held him off. The man with the club stiffened as Markos hit him.

  “Like fish in a barrel,” said the Heller. I wondered about that. The only fish I knew on Earth were sharks.

  Time started again. They had regrouped, copied our defense: two staffers covering a bolo and the vibroclub. But that left three men to rotate and they pressed us from the left as the rest of the crew came in a block from the right. Things got pretty busy. I caught a guy with a club in the stomach. He went down, but not out. Deflected a bolo, parried with a staff. I could feel B’oosa moving rapidly behind my back. Something from out of nowhere hit my left shin hard. I went off balance, staggered. A staff swung down at me and I barely knocked it aside in time.

  “Take that, you dightin’ dighter,” said Markos, and another of their staffers fell. The Heller was grinning, though the side of his head was all bloody and it looked like he’d lost a couple of teeth.

  It was six of them to the four of us, and it looked like we had the edge.

  This time they charged the Heller. At least it looked that way at first. Didn’t notice the bolo man until he had worked his way around to the other side and caught Pancho by the leg.

  “Carl,” he shouted. He was being dragged out of the formation.

  We shifted to try and give him some protection, but the others were all over us. B’oosa sent their other bolo player to his knees with a quick jab to the chin. A gentle tap to the side of his head dropped him to the clay. The referee should have called time then. He didn’t.

  Their club man had gotten to Pancho, was really working him over. Where was that referee? All Pancho could do was protect his face. The club man could see that we wouldn’t be able to get over to him and was taking his time, obviously enjoying himself. I heard something crack — ribs, maybe, or a wrist. Pancho was in real pain and would have fallen if the Earthie had let go of him. As it was, the club man held him up, beating him, until a staffer worked his way over. The staffer caught Pancho in the belly and lifted him off his feet. On the return swing, he caught him across the back of the neck. Pancho went down hard and didn’t move.

  Then the referee called time.

  I was really mad. Pancho had obviously been disabled before the staffer got there. I started to protest, but B’oosa and the Heller stopped me.

  “Remember the arm wrestlin’?” asked Markos.

  I nodded.

  “Like that. There ain’t no real rules. Just got to do it.”

  Five more minutes. They had us, five to three. This time they threw everything at me. Guess they figured I was the weakest link. I parried the bolo twice, their staffers kept me pretty busy. B’oosa had trained me well, though. I was holding my own. But I never saw the Earthie with the vibroclub.

  “Springer! Watch that dighter!” Suddenly I felt an elbow push me aside. It was the Heller, throwing himself between me and the Earthie. Then I got the bolo all tangled around my staff and the other staffer came in quick and in the confusion, somehow we got separated. B’oosa and I were still back-to-back, but the Heller was all out by himself, hunched over, facing the Earthie, vibroclub against vibroclub.

  In a one-on-one vibroclub fight between two good opponents there doesn’t seem to be much action, but there is. Everything is position. They circle each other, making small darting movements to try and draw the other off balance, to make him commit to a losing course of action. It’s usually a lot of this and then a quick slice through the opponent’s defenses. The Earthie was good, but Markos was better. He made a complicated movement and tapped the Earthie in passing, dropping him. The referee should have called time then, but didn’t.

  One of their staffers and a club man had Markos surrounded. The staffer flipped the vibroclub from his hand. We tried to move over to help him, but the bolo had me by the leg. I was trying to get untangled and their other staffer was beating me on the shoulders.

  Without a weapon, the Heller didn’t have a chance. They could have finished it quickly and easily, but they didn’t. The clubber waded in and beat the Heller unconscious. Held him up for the staffer who caught him hard on the neck, twice, three times, four. The crowd loved it.

  “He’s out,” I yelled. “He’s out.”

  Something cracked in the Heller’s neck and his head spun around in a crazy direction. They let loose of him and he fell to the ground. They kept beating him.

  We worked our way over to him. I got in a lucky shot and dropped the bolo man when he came too close to me. Then B’oosa stepped on the discarded vibroclub. I could feel the jolt through his back.

  Then the referee called time.

  Things were pretty hectic. They took Markos off the field, along with the two Earthies. I wanted to argue with the referees, but I didn’t get anywhere. I was mad. They ruled that B’oosa should stay in, since a Maasai’pyan on his knees was almost as tall as an Earthie.

  “Carl,” said B’oosa, in considerable pain, trying not to show it. “That’s the only referee we can count on.” He pointed to the large clock at the end of the field. Two minutes ten seconds to go. It started moving
again.

  They came at us, two staffers and a club. On his knees, B’oosa couldn’t handle his staff. I sort of hovered over him, protecting him the best I could. Maybe the sting of the vibroclub would wear off and he could get back into action.

  I tried to use my body as a shield, holding them off as well as I could with the staff. There were just too many of them. One of the staffers came in and caught me across the ribs. Something cracked and it wasn’t his staff. I could barely feel the pain, but I knew something had broken. The staffer, though, was in trouble; he’d come in too close when he hit me. B’oosa might not have been able to use his staff, but he wasn’t helpless. He grabbed the staffer’s leg, pulled him off balance. I gave him a nice tap on the side of the head and he went down. All of a sudden my side really started to hurt. Wish I’d hit him harder.

  A quick time out while they hauled the Earthie off. My side was on fire, a couple of ribs busted, at least. B’oosa tried to stand, couldn’t. They wouldn’t let him use a discarded club or bolo. He could only use the staff or his hands. They seemed pretty quick to enforce the rules that were against us. There was a little over a minute left. I was dead tired, my body was covered in welts.

  They came in for the kill. The staffer kept me busy from the front while the guy with the club attacked from the back. It was all I could do to keep the staffer away and the fellow with the club was tearing into me. He got a good shot at the back of my leg and my muscles went all into knots. I had to lean on B’oosa to stay upright.

  That was when I had the staff knocked out of my hands. Then the guy with the club jumped on my back and started beating my shoulders and head. The staffer came in to finish me off.

  But I wasn’t ready to be finished off yet. I reached over my shoulder and grabbed the Earthie’s arm, flipped him over my head at the onrushing staffer. They got all tangled up, went down in a heap. B’oosa handed me his staff and I started toward them to break some heads.

  Then the gun sounded.

  I hurt so bad, I thought I’d been shot. It took a second for me to realize what that meant. The match was over. I was still on my feet. We’d won.

  I had to help B’oosa off the field. It was almost as dangerous as the fight. There were a lot of unhappy people in the stands and they seemed to be throwing everything that wasn’t nailed down in our direction. Some of them were trying to get on the field and the local police didn’t seem too concerned about keeping them back.

  In the office, however, everyone was all smiles. The match had been a huge success, with holo coverage live on Earth and syndicated to three other planets. I tried to find Pancho and the Heller, but they had been taken to a local hospital and immediately lifted to a regional intensive care center. It was that serious.

  Neither of them was expected to live.

  It was a shock, stunned me. Up to now it had all been some sort of a game. People got hurt, but nobody died. And all for what? For me and my foolish pride. All for nothing.

  I didn’t even notice when they gave us the money. The check just sort of appeared in my hand. I looked at it. Numbers printed on a piece of paper don’t equate with a friend’s life. Everything went sour in my mouth and my stomach churned. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the money, handed it to B’oosa.

  “I’ve got to find them,” I said.

  B’oosa nodded, “Soon enough,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do now. First we have to fix you up.”

  I looked down at my body. It seemed to belong to someone else. I was covered in blood and bruises. I looked like a wild man.

  I felt like a fool.

  XIII

  It was our last night on Earth. B’oosa and I sat in a booth at the Plaza de Gladiatores. Pancho was already aboard the Starschool. In the infirmary, in a body cast from chin to toe. At least he was alive. The Heller hadn’t been so lucky.

  “Not a bad place for local color,” said B’oosa, sipping on a beer. “I can understand why you preferred this to the museums.”

  I just nodded, my beer untouched in front of me. I didn’t feel much like talking. There was something I had to do before we left, someone I had to find. This was the logical place.

  B’oosa was trying to cheer me up. Sure, it hadn’t been a fair fight; but it hadn’t been the worst he’d seen, not by a long shot. We had each entered into it of our own free will, the Heller included. We’d known the risk. All in all, he thought it had been an educational experience.

  “Educational?” I asked. One friend dead, another seriously injured. “What’s the going price on education these days?”

  “Whatever one is willing to pay,” he said, staring off into the darkness of the cantina. “Some risk more than others. Life is never easy. On Maasai’pya that knowledge comes early. My brother was younger than you when he died.”

  “Died? I didn’t …”

  “It was a matter of some importance to him. But to the young, everything is important. It’s possible I could have stopped it; he respected me. But I learned long ago that you can fight no one’s battles but your own. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. He was headstrong and foolish. Yet he had the right to live his own life. And die it, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. Death is part of life.”

  “Carl!” A voice came from the doorway of the cantina. It was Angelo. Little Angelo.

  “Sit down,” I said, pushing back a chair for him. I started to introduce B’oosa.

  “I have seen this man,” said Angelo, shaking B’oosa’s hand. “He was with the quarterstaff at the fight. A brave man.” He paused for a second. “I watched it on the holo.”

  “Your friend, Markos …” I started.

  “He was a good man. An honest man, in a hard sort of way. He had many troubles, but he handled them to the best that he could.”

  “I want you to have this,” I said, passing over a packet.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “It’s your friend’s share of the purse. Markos earned it. I want you to have it.”

  He looked at the package carefully. “There is much that I could do with this money.”

  “Can I offer you some advice?” I asked.

  “Si, amigo. To you I will always be glad to listen.”

  “Forget about being a gladiator. There is no glory there, only deception. This planet is full of men like Mr. Wolfe, ready to take advantage of you. The fights are vicious and wasteful, a circus that only exists to feed the violent impulses of an overcrowded planet. Once it may have been noble, but now it is anything but that. There is no heroism here, only desperation. It’s not like this everywhere. Look around. Find something different.”

  “I think you speak the truth. As many fights as Markos had, he was always talking of going to Perrin to start over. Things were better there, he said. He was one who should know. I thank you. And in the name of my friend, I twice thank you.”

  “I only wish it could be more,” I said. “Enough to buy you passage to Perrin.”

  “I think this should cover it,” said B’oosa., dropping another packet on the table.

  “What?” I said.

  “This is my share and Pancho’s share. He spoke to me of your little friend here. We felt it was the proper thing to do, under the circumstances.”

  “My friends from the stars,” said Angelo. “You are truly rare men. I cannot thank you enough.”

  “It’s only money,” said B’oosa. “And money should serve some useful purpose. I’m glad it found one.” He looked at his digital. “Carl, we had better be going to the spaceport. I’d hate to get stuck on this planet.”

  “May luck follow you always,” said Angelo, embracing us as we rose to leave.

  I didn’t know what to say so I just hugged him, thought of Markos the Heller and wanted to get off this planet as soon as possible.

  As we walked outside into the night air, I turned to B’oosa. “One thing bothers me,” I said.

  ??
?Only one? What is it?”

  “If you believe that a person can’t fight anyone’s battles but their own, why are you helping Angelo? Why did you help me?”

  “I may be logical,” said B’oosa, smiling. “But I don’t have to be consistent.”

  I laughed and we headed own the street. Next stop on the tour would be the planet Hell, but after Earth it would look like Heaven to me.

  HELL

  Curriculum Notes — Hell

  Hell is the fourth planet out from the star Delta Pavonis. Settlement was begun in A.C. 35, originally by Jewish immigrants from Selva. More than 90 percent of the immigrants perished in the first two years, the surviving fraction maintaining a precarious existence in the desert regions, which, though barely habitable, at least are free from most of the terrifying fauna that dominate the rest of the planet’s land and sea areas.

  In A.C. 62 these immigrants sold their charter to the corporation Mercenarios Universal, S. A., a firm of freelance soldiers who wanted to use the desert as a training ground. Over the centuries, the corporation extended its domain to include various subtropical and arctic areas. The scope of the corporation also expanded, to accommodate training military leaders of other planets, and finally to renting out desolate areas of Hell itself, for countries that want to wage war without risking one another’s real estate …

  … students with religious or philosophical misgivings about this part of the Tour will be allowed — indeed, encouraged — to stay in orbit aboard Starschool while the others take the short course.

  The Dean of this second Tour wishes that it be a matter of record that he opposed adding Hell to the curriculum.

  I

  My knees finally buckled and I fell to the sand, hard. I was dizzy, thirsty. My skin felt like dried parchment. I would have given everything I owned for a glass of water.

  They had told us how tough Hell would be and I hadn’t believed them. I did now.