Away Games: Science Fiction Sports Stories (10 page)

And then Amin’s air force dropped its bombs on Tanzania.

• • •

The insanity of it.

Nyerere ducks a roundhouse right, Amin guffaws and winks to the crowd. Ali stands back and wishes he were somewhere else.

Nyerere’s vision has cleared, but blood keeps running into his left eye. The fight is barely two minutes old, and already he is gasping for breath. He can feel every beat of his heart, as if a tiny man with a hammer and chisel is imprisoned inside his chest, trying to get out.

The weights attached to Amin’s ankles should be slowing him down, but somehow Nyerere finds that he is cornered against the ropes. Amin fakes a punch, Nyerere ducks, then straightens up just in time to feel the full power of the madman’s fist as it smashes into his face.

He is down on one knee again, 57 years old and gasping for breath. Suddenly he realizes that no air is coming in, that he is suffocating, and he thinks his heart has stopped but no, he can feel it, still pounding. Then he understands: his nose is broken, and he is trying to breathe through his mouth and the mouthpiece is preventing it. He spits the mouthpiece out, and is mildly surprised to see that it is not covered with blood.

“Three!”

Amin, who has been standing at the far side of the ring, approaches, laughing uproariously, and Ali stops the count and slowly escorts him back to the neutral corner.

The pen is mightier than the sword.
The words come, unbidden, into Nyerere’s mind, and he wants to laugh. A horrible, retching sound escapes his lips, a sound so alien that he cannot believe it came from him.

Ali slowly returns to him and resumes the count.

“Four!”
Stay down, you old fool, Ali’s eyes seem to say.

Nyerere grabs a rope and tries to pull himself up.

“Five!”
I bought you all the time I could, say the eyes, but I can’t protect you if you get up again.

Nyerere gathers himself for the most difficult physical effort of his life.

“Six!”
You’re as crazy as
he
is.

Nyerere stands up. He hopes Maria will be proud of him, but somehow he knows that she won’t.

Amin, mugging to the crowd in a grotesque imitation of Ali, moves in the for kill.

• • •

When he was a young man, the president of his class at Uganda’s Makerere University, already tabbed as a future leader by his teachers and his classmates, his fraternity entered a track meet, and he was chosen to run the 400-meter race.

I am no athlete, he said; I am a student. I have exams to worry about, a scholarship to obtain. I have no time for such foolishness. But they entered his name anyway, and the race was the final event of the day, and just before it began his brothers came up to him and told him that if he did not beat at least one of his five rivals, his fraternity, which held a narrow lead after all the other events, would lose.

Then you will lose, said Nyerere with a shrug.

If we do, it will be your fault, they told him.

It is just a race, he said.

But it is important to
us
, they said.

So he allowed himself to be led to the starting line, and the pistol was fired, and all six young men began running, and he found himself trailing the field, and he remained in last place all the way around the track, and when he crossed the finish wire, he found that his brothers had turned away from him.

But it was only a game, he protested later. What difference does it make who is the faster? We are here to study laws and vectors and constitutions, not to run in circles.

It is not that you came in last, answered one of them, but that you represented us and you did not try.

It was many days before they spoke to him again. He took to running a mile every morning and every evening, and when the next track meet took place, he volunteered for the 400-meter race again. He was beaten by almost 30 meters, but he came in fourth, and collapsed of exhaustion ten meters past the finish line, and the following morning he was re-elected president of his fraternity by acclamation.

• • •

There are 43 seconds left in the first round, and his arms are too heavy to lift. Amin swings a roundhouse that he ducks, but it catches him on the shoulder and knocks him halfway across the ring. The shoulder goes numb, but it has bought him another ten seconds, for the madman cannot move fast with the weights on his ankles, probably could not move fast even without them. Besides, he is enjoying himself, joking with the crowd, talking to Ali, mugging for all the cameras at ringside.

Ali finds himself between the two men, takes an extra few seconds awkwardly extricating himself—Ali, who has never taken a false or awkward step in his life—and buys Nyerere almost five more seconds. Nyerere looks up at the clock and sees there is just under half a minute remaining.

Amin bellows and swings a blow that will crush his skull if it lands, but it doesn’t; the huge Ugandan cannot balance properly with one hand tied behind his back, and he misses and almost falls through the ropes.

“Hit him now!” come the yells from Nyerere’s corner.

“Kill him, Mwalimu!”

But Nyerere can barely catch his breath, can no longer lift his arms. He blinks to clear the blood from his eyes, then staggers to the far side of the ring. Maybe it will take Amin 12 or 13 seconds to get up, spot him, reach him. If he goes down again then, he can be saved by the bell. He will have survived the round. He will have run the race.

• • •

Vectors. Angles. The square of the hypotenuse. It’s all very intriguing, but it won’t help him become a leader. He opts for law, for history, for philosophy.

How was he to know that in the long run they were the same?

• • •

He sits in his corner, his nostrils propped open, his cut man working on his eye. Ali comes over and peers intently at him.

“He knocks you down once more, I gotta stop it,” he says.

Nyerere tries to answer through battered lips. It is unintelligible. Just as well; for all he knows, he was trying to say, “Please do.”

Ali leans closer and lowers his voice.

“It’s not just a sport, you know. It’s a science, too.”

Nyerere utters a questioning croak.

“You run, he’s gonna catch you,” continues Ali. “A ring ain’t a big enough place to hide in.”

Nyerere stares at him dully. What is the man trying to say?

“You gotta close with him, grab him. Don’t give him room to swing. You do that, maybe I won’t have to go to your funeral tomorrow.”

Vectors, angles, philosophy, all the same when you’re the Mwalimu and you’re fighting for your life.

• • •

The lion, some 400 pounds of tawny fury, pulls down the one-ton buffalo.

The 100-pound hyena runs him off his kill.

The 20-pound jackal winds up eating it.

And Nyerere clinches with the madman, hangs on for dear life, feels the heavy blows raining down on his back and shoulders, grabs tighter. Ali separates them, positions himself near Amin’s right hand so that he can’t release the roundhouse, and Nyerere grabs the giant again.

• • •

His head is finally clear. The fourth round is coming up, and he hasn’t been down since the first. He still can’t catch his breath, his legs will barely carry him to the center of the ring, and the blood is once again trickling into his eye. He looks at the madman, who is screaming imprecations to his seconds, his chest and belly rising and falling.

Is Amin tiring? Does it matter? Nyerere still hasn’t landed a single blow. Could even a hundred blows bring the Ugandan to his knees? He doubts it.

Perhaps he should have bet on the fight. The odds were thousands to one that he wouldn’t make it this far. He could have supplied his army with the winnings, and died honorably.

• • •

It is not the same, he decides, as they rub his shoulders, grease his cheeks, apply ice to the swelling beneath his eye. He has survived the fourth round, has done his best, but it is not the same. He could finish fourth out of six in a foot race and be re-elected, but if he finishes second tonight, he will not have a country left to re-elect him. This is the real world, and surviving, it seems, is not as important as winning.

Ali tells him to hold on, his corner tells him to retreat, the cut man tells him to protect his eye, but no one tells him how to
win
, and he realizes that he will have to find out on his own.

Goliath fell to a child. Even Achilles had his weakness. What must he do to bring the madman down?

• • •

He is crazy, this Amin. He revels in torture. He murders his wives. Rumor has it that he has even killed and eaten his infant son. How do you find weakness in a barbarian like that?

And suddenly, Nyerere understands, you do it by realizing that he
is
a barbarian—ignorant, illiterate, superstitious.

There is no time now, but he will hold that thought, he will survive one more round of clinching and grabbing, of stifling closeness to the giant whose very presence he finds degrading.

Three more minutes of the sword, and then he will apply the pen.

• • •

He almost doesn’t make it. Halfway through the round Amin shakes him off like a fly, then lands a right to the head as he tries to clinch again.

Consciousness begins to ebb from him, but by sheer force of will he refuses to relinquish it. He shakes his head, spits blood on the floor of the ring, and stands up once more. Amin lunges at him, and once again he wraps his small, spindly arms around the giant.

• • •

“A snake,” he mumbles, barely able to make himself understood.

“A snake?” asks the cornerman.

“Draw it on my glove,” he says, forcing the words out with an excruciating effort.

“Now?”

“Now,” mutters Nyerere.

• • •

He comes out for the seventh round, his face a mask of raw, bleeding tissue. As Amin approaches him, he spits out his mouthpiece.

“As I strike, so strikes this snake,” he whispers. “Protect your heart, madman.” He repeats it in his native Zanake dialect, which the giant thinks is a curse.

Amin’s eyes go wide with terror, and he hits the giant on the left breast.

It is the first punch he has thrown in the entire fight, and Amin drops to his knees, screaming.

“One!”

Amin looks down at his unblemished chest and pendulous belly, and seems surprised to find himself still alive and breathing.

“Two!”

Amin blinks once, then chuckles.

“Three!”

The giant gets to his feet, and approaches Nyerere.

“Try again,” he says, loud enough for ringside to hear. “Your snake has no fangs.”

He puts his hand on his hips, braces his legs, and waits.

Nyerere stares at him for an instant. So the pen is
not
mightier than the sword. Shakespeare might have told him so.

“I’m waiting!” bellows the giant, mugging once more for the crowd.

Nyerere realizes that it is over, that he will die in the ring this night, that he can no more save his army with his fists than with his depleted treasury. He has fought the good fight, has fought it longer than anyone thought he could. At least, before it is over, he will have one small satisfaction. He feints with his left shoulder, then puts all of his strength into one final effort, and delivers a right to the madman’s groin.

The air rushes out of Amin’s mouth with a
woosh!
and he doubles over, then drops to his knees.

Ali pushes Nyerere into a neutral corner, then instructs the judges to take away a point from him on their scorecards.

They can take away a point, Nyerere thinks, but they can’t take away the fact that I met him on the field of battle, that I lasted more than six rounds, that the giant went down twice. Once before the pen, once before the sword.

And both were ineffective.

Even a Mwalimu can learn one last lesson, he decides, and it is that sometimes even vectors and philosophy aren’t enough. We must find another way to conquer Africa’s dark heart, the madness that pervades this troubled land. I have shown those who will follow me the first step; I have stood up to it, faced it without flinching. It will be up to someone else, a wiser Mwalimu than myself, to learn how to overcome it. I have done my best, I have given my all, I have made the first dent in its armor. Rationality cannot always triumph over madness, but it must stand up and be counted, as I have stood up. They cannot ask any more of me.

Finally at peace with himself, he prepares for the giant’s final assault.

***

The Kid at Midnight

Author’s Note

Of course, not all boxing stories are serious, especially not when Harry the Book, my bookie in a Damon Runyon-esque fantasy New York, is involved. He has become Carol’s favorite of my continuing characters, and after three or four more stories there’ll be enough for a collection. If his nerves hold out after taking bets on a Kid Testosterone fight.

So there I am, sitting in my office, which is the third booth at Joey Chicago’s 3-Star Tavern, sipping an Old Peculiar and trying to come up with a morning line on the big game between the Mainville Miscreants and the Galesburg Geldings, when suddenly Benny Fifth Street looks up from his barstool and announces that he sees some business on the hoof approaching, and sure enough, Longshot Lamont enters the premises a moment later and walks right up to me.

“Hello, Longshot,” I say. “How are you on this fine day?”

“I am well, thank you, Harry,” he says, doing a deep kneebend to prove it, or maybe to pick up a quarter he sees lying on the floor, “and I am feeling very lucky today.”

This is music to a bookie’s ears, which happen to reside on each side of my head, because no one currently old enough to shave can remember the last time Longshot Lamont bets on anything that is less than 100-to-1, and most of them finish about where you would expect a 100-to-1 shot to finish. This is a guy who bets Eleanor Roosevelt to win the presidency as a write-in back in 1992, which is unlikely on the face of it and even more so when one considers that she has been dead and buried for 30 years at the time. This is a guy who bets Secretariat to go Best in Show at Crufts, which doesn’t even allow American dogs, let alone American racehorses. This is a guy who bets that Willie Mays scores more touchdowns than Red Grange.

So when he pulls out a wad of bills and slaps it down on the table in front of me, I immediately try to think of the longest shot in the city on this particular day, but even I am astonished by the next words out of his mouth, which are, “Harry, I am betting two large on Kid Testosterone to beat Bonecrusher McDade in the big fight tomorrow night.”

Benny Fifth Street’s jaw drops down to his belly button. Gently Gently Dawkins, who had just entered, almost chokes on the candy bar he is eating. And from where he is standing at the back of the tavern, Dead End Dugan utters the first laugh I have heard from him since he returned from that cemetery up in the Bronx.

“I must be dreaming!” says Dugan.

“You are not so much dreaming as you are dead, sort of,” says Dawkins.

“I thought I just heard someone bet on Kid Testosterone,” continues Dugan. “But the Kid has never made it to the third round in any of my lifetimes, so I know I must be dreaming.”

“I do not think zombies can dream,” says Dawkins.

“Are you a zombie?” demands Dugan.

“Not the last time I check, no,” says Dawkins.

“Then do not make comments about what zombies can or cannot do until you become one,” said Dugan, folding his arms, staring off into space, and going back to thinking dead thoughts.

“This time the Kid will realize his full potential,” says Longshot Lamont. “I can feel it in my bones, Harry.”

“His full potential has not yet seen him to the third round in 42 tries,” notes Benny Fifth Street, “and this is a ten round fight.”

“O ye of little faith,” says Longshot Lamont. “I will be back after the fight to collect my winnings.” And with that he turns and walks back out into the street.

“Has Lamont ever won a bet with you, Harry?” asks Dawkins.

“Just once,” I say.

“You must have been a long time recouping your losses,” he remarks.

“Not really,” I say. “It is the Godiva Handicap, for fillies and mares, and he puts five C’s on Three-Legged Shirley to win.”

“I remember her,” says Joey Chicago, from behind the bar. “Is she not the reason that Belmont will not allow anything with less than four legs to answer the call to the post?”

“Yes,” I say. “People feel so sorry for her they begin to pool their betting money and start a fund to buy her and retire her to a life of ease.”

“So how does she win?” asks Dawkins.

“She doesn’t,” I answer. “She runs last, beat 937 lengths.”

“Then I do not understand,” he says.

“We are standing side by side at the rail, and as they hit the far turn and she is already a furlong behind the field Lamont turns to me and says very bitterly that he can read me like a book and he bets a C-note I am feeling confident about winning his money. I feel so bad about taking his 5 C’s that I accept his wager, and then admit I am feeling supremely confident. I pay him his hundred dollars as the field hits the homestretch and I write it off as an act of charity on my income tax, but it just so happens that my tax auditor knows Lamont and argues that it is an act of mercy rather than an act of charity and will not allow the deduction.”

“Well, today’s wager will certainly be the easiest two large you ever made,” says Benny Fifth Street.

“And he will need it,” adds Gently Gently Dawkins, staring out the window. “for unless my eyes deceive me, and that only happens after my fourth double hot fudge sundae of the night, I see Lamont’s polar image walking down the street toward us.”

“You see a snowman that looks like Lamont?” asks Joey Chicago, turning to look out the window himself.

“You mean his polar opposite,” says Benny. He turns to me. “It’s Short Odds Harrigan. Doubtless he is about to drop a pile on some one-to-three shot that is moving down in class.”

The door swings open and sure enough, it is Short Odds Harrigan, who has probably bet a five-to-one shot once or twice in his life, but not since the glaciers departed from California.

“Hi, Short Odds,” I greet him. “Are you here for business or to sample some of Joey Chicago’s whiskey?”

“I had some last year,” he says, making a face. “I will lay plenty of one-to-five that it was watered.”

“I resent that!” says Joey Chicago.

“That is your right,” says Short Odds pleasantly. “Just do not deny it or God may strike you dead.”

Benny South Street and Gently Gently Dawkins immediately begin arguing which way Joey Chicago will fall if God strikes him dead, and Short Odds listens for awhile and then turns back to me.

“I need the odds on the big fight tomorrow night, Harry,” he says.

“About three gazillion to one,” I reply.

“I am being serious,” says Short Odds.

“So am I,” I say. “I do not think the computer has been built that can compute the odds.”

“I am a bettor,” he says. “You are a bookie. It is against all the laws of Nature for you not to give me the odds.”

“All right,” I say. “I will give you one to five hundred that he ends it in the first round.”

He considers it for a minute, then shakes his head. “I am not certain he can win in the first round. What are the odds for his winning, period?”

“One to four hundred,” I say.

“So if I put down ten large …?” he begins.

“I will pay you twenty-five dollars when the Bonecrusher wins.”

He frowns. “That is all very well and good, Harry,” he says, “but I am betting on Kid Testosterone.”

I put a finger into my ear, expecting to find it clogged with wax, but all it is clogged with is my finger. “Would you say that again, please, Short Odds?” I ask. “I know it’s crazy, but for a second there I think you say that you are betting on Kid Testosterone.”

“I am.”

“But you have never bet on anything but a favorite since they invented the wheel,” chimes in Benny Fifth Street. “Maybe longer,” he adds thoughtfully.

“I just have a hunch,” says Short Odds.

“You will have to take your hunch to Mars, or maybe Jupiter,” I say. “There is not enough money in the world to cover your bet if the Kid should win.”

“I will take the same odds you were giving me on Bonecrusher McDade,” says Short Odds.

“Joey,” I say, “pull that phone out from behind the bar and call an ambulance. Our friend Short Odds has finally gone off the deep end.”

“I am the same charming and loveable character you have always known,” protests Short Odds. “I do not need all the money in the world, although I admit it would be nice to have. I just need some action, so I will take a mere ten thousand to one odds, and I will bet a single C note.”

“How can we be sure he is not ready for the funny farm?” asks Benny, staring at him.

“Is he foaming at the mouth?” suggests Dawkins, who ignores the fact that he has foam from his beer all over his mouth and dripping down onto his shirt.

“Please, Harry?” pleads Short Odds.

“I will have to think about this,” I tell him.

He pulls a C note out of his pocket, pulls a pen out of his other pocket, and scribbles something on the C note.

“Bubbles La Tour’s private phone number,” he says, covering it with his hand. “
Now
will you take my money or not?”

“If Harry won’t book your bet,
I
will,” says Dawkins.

“It is against my better judgment, but in keeping with my baser instincts,” I say, grabbing the C note. “I will book your bet.”

He gives a triumphant shout that momentarily awakens Dugan from all the dead thoughts he is thinking, and then Short Odds is out in the street, and before I can puzzle out what is happening in walks Bet-a-Bundle Murphy and Pedro the Plunger, and they both want to put their money on Kid Testosterone.

“That’s it!” I say. “Something very strange is going on here. The book is closed!”

“You cannot do this to us, Harry,” says Murphy in hurt tones. “It is your function in life to book our bets.”

“There is something very fishy about this,” I tell him.

“That is just the smell from Maury’s Fish-and-Chips Shop next door,” says Dawkins helpfully.

“It is an honest wager on an honest fight between two evenly-matched masters of the fistic arts,” says Pedro.

“Who would have believed it?” says Benny.

“Believed what?” asks Pedro.

“You manage to cram five lies into an 18-word sentence,” answers Benny.

“Maybe we should give him a door prize,” suggests Dawkins.

“I do not want a door!” yells Pedro, who becomes very literal-minded when he is upset. “I want to lay my money down on Kid Testosterone!”

I look him in the eye—the blue one, not the red one—and I say, “I told you: the book is closed.”

“But
why
?” pleads Murphy.

“Last month the Kid gives an exhibition of shadow-boxing in his training camp,” I say. “His shadow knocks him out in 43 seconds.”

“An aberration,” shrugs Pedro.

“In the fight against Brutal Boris three months ago,” chimes in Benny, “he makes it through the first round. As he is coming back to his corner, his trainer sloshes water on him, and it knocks him down for the count.”

“Last year the referee has him touch gloves with Yamamoto Goldberg and he breaks his hand,” adds Dawkins.

“And this is the guy you think can beat Bonecrusher McDade?” I conclude.

“I just got a feeling about it,” says Pedro defensively.

“Take your money and your feeling elsewhere,” I say. “The book is closed.”

They complain a little more, and finally they leave.

“Where is Milton?” I ask.

“Where else?” says Joey Chicago in bored tones, jerking his thumb in the direction of Milton’s office, which happens to be the men’s room.

Big-Hearted Milton is my personal mage, and he has chosen as his office the one place on Joey Chicago’s premises where every Tom, Dick and Harry won’t be able to study and perhaps even memorize his spells. It doesn’t quite work out that way, but at least his spells are safe from being overheard by every Teresa, Doris and Harriet.

I enter his office, and there is Milton, standing on the tile floor, surrounded by five black candles that have burned themselves down to nubs. He is chanting something in an ancient lost language of the mystics (or maybe French), and suddenly he claps his hands, the flames on the candles go out, and he gives a triumphant laugh.

“
That’ll
show her!” he cackles.

“Mitzi McSweeney again?” I ask.

He nods his head vigorously. “She slaps my face just because I give her a friendly pinch in the elevator.” An outraged expression crosses his face. “I do not even draw blood.” He dabs at his nose with a handkerchief. “But
she
does.”

“What horrible curse have you placed upon her this time?” I ask in bored tones, because in truth Mitzi McSweeney seems to survive Milton’s almost-daily curses far better than Milton survives her almost daily face-slappings.

“I have added an inch to each of her high heeled shoes,” he says happily. “Next time she wears them out in public, which is every day, she will probably fall on her face.”

“That is indeed a very terrible curse, Milton,” I say. “So if she falls, some thoughtful gentleman will help her to her feet and brush her off here and there as gentlemen are inclined to do, and doubtless earn her undying gratitude, and if she doesn’t fall but manages to locomote with them she will wiggle even more than usual.”

“Why don’t
I
think of that?” complains Milton.

“I would give plenty of ten-to-one that anyone in the bar except maybe Dugan could tell you, but they are all too polite,” I say. “Now, if you are all through cursing Mitzi McSweeney for today, we have business to discuss.”

“One minute,” he says, closing his eyes and mumbling another spell. “Okay, Harry,” he says when he is done. “Her shoes are all restored. Instead, I have made her belts too tight, so she will think she is gaining weight.”

I decide not to tell him that if she does not wear her belt and her skirt or slacks are on the loose side, she will not only be a maiden in distress but also in undress, because past performances have taught me that we can spend all day before Milton comes up with a spell that will have a deleterious effect on anything except Milton’s love life.

“All right,” says Milton at last. “What is it that could possibly be more important than finding a way into Mitzi McSweeney’s heart?”

“Maybe if you would stop looking for it in strange places she would stop slapping your face,” I say.