Across the Spectrum (2 page)

The centipede spasmed with rage and tackled Johnnie with a
dozen legs. They fell together to the mat with a
whump
, knocking the
breath out of Johnnie. Before Hog could even rise up on his toes to yell,
Johnnie was on his back under the centipede, the ref was down on five elbows,
peering to see if shoulder blades were touching the mat, and—
slap!
tweeeeeeeet!
—just like that, Johnnie was pinned and the match was over.

The centipede humped its back and drew away from its human
opponent, chittering triumphantly. Johnnie sat up, gasping. The centipede crowd
went crazy rubbing their limbs.

Hog caught Coach Tagget’s eye and turned away, sighing, to
return to the warm-up area. Johnnie had finished in second place. That meant
the honor of Earth, wrestling-wise, rested on Hog. He swallowed, trying not to
think about it. But how
could
he not think about it? He was the only
human left in the finals. All eyes, and cameras, would be on him.

As he was stretching his hamstrings, Johnnie walked past,
shaking his head. “Tough luck,” Hog sympathized.

The Englishman paused, peering at him with dazed eyes. “Are
you the bloke who got that thing as mad as a raving hornet?”

“I—well—” Hog spread his hands. “I was just cheering for
you. You almost made it out, too. Sorry you didn’t—”

“You know what those bastards
smell
like, when
they’re on top of you and they’re mad?” Johnnie wheezed. “Cheeeeeeez-z-z,” he
whispered hoarsely. “That was what damn near killed me.” Johnnie shook his head
and wandered off toward the clutches of the TV interviewers. “It wasn’t the
bloody pin . . . “

Hog saw Johnnie’s coach staring darkly in his direction. He
went back to his warm-ups. Stretch left, stretch right, down, up . . .

“Heyyaaah, earthman krrreeepy-krrreeepy . . .”

Hog turned, wrinkling his nose at a sudden whiff of ammonia.
The centipede was standing beside him, balanced on half its legs, waving the
claws on the rest of its legs in his direction. “Uh—?” Hog managed. “Can I, uh,
help you?”

The centipede’s antennas waved drunkenly. “
Hoho yassss,”
hissed the centipede. “
Krrreeepy-krreeepy earthman sso sssmart! Come sssee
me lataaah.”
Poot.
It made a loud spitting sound. “
Yahh-heyyy?”

Hog backed up a step. “I don’t know what you’re talking
about—”

The centipede chittered with laughter and sauntered away. “
Lataaaah,
earthman . . .”

Hog stared after it in disbelief. He jumped when he felt a
hand on his shoulder. Then he heard the familiar sound of his coach tsk-tsking.

“Poor sportsmanship, Hog. That’s all that is—poor
sportsmanship. What do you expect from a centipede?” Tagget scowled at the
Vegan, who was now parading in front of its fans, waving its arms in triumph.
“Look, why don’t you go on back to the locker room and clear your mind. I’ll
call you when it’s time to come back out.”

Hog nodded with relief. Yes. Back to the locker room. Forget
centipedes. Have a swallow of honey for quick energy.

Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye . . .

He trotted back to the locker room, shaking the tension out
of his arms.

∞

All things considered, it was actually pretty amazing that
Earth had ever gotten nominated to host the IIMAWL tournament. After all, by
2008 A.D., the farthest any human had ever gotten from Earth was the Moon. But
the interworld sporting federation liked to give a boost to newly discovered
worlds. And Earth was among the newest—not yet five years a part of the
interworld community, since the Rigellians had landed and made first contact,
and promptly proposed building factories here to employ the locals. In the eyes
of the Terran promoters, the tournament was not so much a sporting event per se
as a promotion of tourism and general economic opportunity aimed at ETs who
might want to spend money here. And in that respect, it was already successful,
at least to the tune of a new sports complex for Cleveland and a good crowd of
paying ET visitors.

The human wrestling world, on the other hand—the top
wrestlers, the Olympic and AAU winners—had been pretty resistant to the idea,
claiming that it was insane to pit oneself against aliens whose bodies were so
different as to render competition meaningless. Mostly, the sports writers echoed
that position, denouncing the games as blatant sensationalism. Still, there
were some good, if maybe not great, wrestlers who hadn’t seen the obvious—and
had wound up entering the competitions that one wag, as
Time
was so fond of putting it, called the “crocodile
free-for-alls.”

That’s the kind of wrestler Hog Donovan was: not great—but
sharp, determined, and something of an iconoclast. He figured he only had a few
good years of wrestling left in him, and he was determined to make the best of
them. And the way to do that was to enter a competition so new, so outré, that
the mainstream wrestling world hadn’t caught on to it yet. And maybe, Hog
figured, it would
become
recognized,
and maybe it would even give
him
enough recognition so that once he’d hung up his tights and joined the working
world, he wouldn’t have to work on a Rigellian assembly line building
Lotusflower roadsters.

Anyway, that was the reason he’d given his parents and his
coach, though it was really only half the story. The other half was that he’d
sacrificed and sweated blood at this sport for over seven years now, and by
God, he wanted to be the best damned wrestler in the galaxy—okay,
one
of the best damned wrestlers in the
galaxy—even if only for one brief, glorious moment.

To his own surprise, he’d done well, working his way through
four preliminary rounds, and winning the semifinals just yesterday, narrowly
besting a titanium-boned opponent with twice his strength and half his agility
and intelligence. He was proud of that victory and the semiconductor-medal it
had assured him of, and the recognition it brought to his home planet.

But right now, he had to focus on just one thing—and that
was how the hell to wrestle against an Ektra shapeshifter.

∞

He paced in front of his locker and shook the tension out
again. Peering around the corner of the lockers he saw one of the black-skinned
African wrestlers warming up and he gave a collegial thumbs-up of encouragement
before returning to his own spot. Wait a minute! he thought suddenly. There
aren’t
any Africans in the finals.

He heard a loud
crack
. Uneasily, he peered around the
corner again. The black-skinned being, which was
not
human, was
separating its joints as if they were held together by rubber bands. It was
pulling its right forearm out from its elbow, and dislocating its shoulder and
stretching it way behind its neck. The creature grinned a gleaming grin, and
Hog withdrew to his own corner, shivering. A
transformer,
he realized.
Just like the toys that a kid could flex and twist until they’d changed from,
say, a spaceship to an atomic monster. What world was this creature from?

Don’t think about it. Think about your opponent. How are you
going to beat Belduki-Elikitango-Hardart-Colloidisan?

He’d only seen the shapeshifter once, briefly, in a
preliminary round. “
Belduki’s its name, and throttlin’s its game,”
was
how the
Plain Dealer
had put it, in pointed reference to its reputed
predilection for near-strangulation of its opponents. That was obviously an
exaggeration for effect; nevertheless, it unnerved Hog, who devoutly regarded
wrestling as a gentleman’s sport, safe and well regulated. He’d always scorned
so-called “““professional wrestling””” (he always mentally put several quotes
around the phrase, to emphasize his disdain), in which contestants were slammed
to the deck, or thrown against the ropes, or otherwise theatrically mistreated.
Real wrestling wasn’t like that; it was a sport of skill and conditioning and
determination.

It’d come as a shock to learn that in the IIMAWL, there was
not entirely the same sense of careful sportsmanship. Oh, sure, there were some
protections: no contestant could emit chemicals toxic to the opponent, for
instance. But with the contestants so morphically different from one another,
monitoring safety was a lot harder than it was between human wrestlers. One
contestant might turn blue with concentration, another with suffocation. Would
a ref who heard that cracking sound of the transformer recognize it as the
sound of breaking bones in a human? In the end, the IIMAWL claimed to be
keeping the sport safe, but it was Hog’s uneasy suspicion that they mostly
threw up their hands, flippers, and toes, and said to hell with it, let’s
try
to keep them from killing each other, but if a ref misreads a physiologic sign,
what are we supposed to do?

Think about the Ektra,
Hog thought, shooting a
practice takedown in the empty space in front of his locker.
Think about the
Ektra.

The shapeshifter. Actually, he’d been more or less counting
all along on Belduki-Elikitango-whatever being knocked out by Gazoom Gazoom the
Indefatigable Baboon and returning champion, from Veni Five. After his own
victory against Titanium Jimm, Hog had been carefully planning ways to defeat
the baboon . . . ingenious ways, resourceful ways. And then the
stupid baboon had gone and fallen right into the Ektra’s four-armed can-opener
in the third period, and
boom
, right onto his back.
Slap! Tweet!
(Psicry!)
The ref called the fall, and there went all of Hog’s planning,
out the window. And now
he
faced the shapeshifter.

Hog drew a deep breath and blew into his cupped hands. This
was no good—hanging around the locker room, thinking about what could go wrong.
He’d be better off out on the floor, soaking up the psychic energy of the meet.
And where the hell was Coach Tagget, anyway?

Hog reached into his locker, took a long drag from his
plastic honey bear, and slammed the locker shut. For just an instant, as his
hand was about to close the combination padlock, he hesitated. What if he were
knocked unconscious and they needed to get into his locker? Good God, man—stop
it! He squeezed the lock shut with a decisive click.

∞

As he strode up the echoing passageway to the gym, he
heard shouts from the crowd and felt a surge of adrenaline. He broke into a
trot, and darted past a couple of ETs who were half blocking the end of the
passageway, and jogged out toward the end of the arena.

The crowd erupted with a roar of approval. He smiled to
himself, flushing with confidence, then peered over to see what they were
actually cheering about.

Tweeeeeeeeet! Slap!

The 133-pound match had just ended with a pin. An alien that
looked like a huge gerbil got up, shaking, from under one that looked like a
leaf. The ref flagged the leaf as the winner.

And Hog was up next.

Bye-bye baby, baby . . .

∞

Coach Tagget found him just in time to yell something
incomprehensible in Hog’s ear, shake his hand vigorously, and push him onto the
mat with a whack on the rear. Hog shook off his irritation at the coach and
stepped onto the mat with a glance at the ref.

A new referee had come out from the table, replacing the one
who had just tweeted the last winner. This ref looked a little like a centaur
with multi-jointed legs, and big paddle-shaped hands, great for slapping the
mat. Good, Hog thought. The better to signal Hog Donovan winner by fall. None
of this eking out a victory by points. Hog Donovan goes for the whole
enchilada. Starting right now. This is for
Earth
, and this is for
Hog
.
He swung his arms, huffing. Damn straight.

“You can do it, Justin! Tear his lungs out!” screamed a
woman somewhere in the stands. Hog smiled a little. He couldn’t pick her out of
the crowd, but he knew his mother was waving her program wildly, endangering
the eyesight of everyone within reach. His father was just as avid a fan, but
he’d be too busy with the fastcam to spend much time yelling.

A blast of easy listening music filled the gymnasium from
somewhere overhead—a sampler of Earth culture to entertain the ET crowd.

Hog’s opponent streamed onto the mat from the opposite side,
and gathered itself up into something resembling a whiplike tree. Its feet, if
that was what they were, stretched out like roots, and Hog could have sworn
that the roots were embedding themselves in the mat. What the hell kind of
creature was this? Ektras didn’t make up shapes; they always emulated real
species that Ektras had known, somewhere in the galaxy. Hog puffed into his
fist and looked at the ref, determined not to be distracted by unanswerable
questions.

The announcer’s voice boomed: “IN THE ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-
EIGHT POUND CLASS! FROM EARTH: HOG DONOVAN—HUMAN!” There was a murmur of
approval, plus his mother’s shrieks, but not exactly the thunderous roar Hog
had imagined. He glanced up into the crowd, and saw a row of centipedes sitting
on their legs. “AND FROM EKTRA FOUR:
BELDUKI-ELIKITANGO-HARDART-COLLOIDISAN—EKTRA SHAPESHIFTER!” Hog held his
breath, waiting for the cheers for his opponent. What he actually heard was
more like a group indrawn breath of fear.

He noted that the Ektra had sprouted about a hundred suction
cups on the ends of its tree branches. He was going to have a dickens of a time
avoiding
those
. Hog danced in place, thinking hard—and coming up with
very little, strategy-wise.

Fortunately, he was saved from despair by a voice that boomed
out through the general noise: “HOGMAN, YOU PIN THIS WALKING JELLO-SALAD, AND
DRINKS ARE ON ME FOR THE REST OF THE
YEAR!”
Hog grinned despite himself,
and at that moment caught sight of Hermie “Harmin’” Harmon in the front row,
shaking his hammy fists in the air. Harmin’ now worked the graveyard shift at
Lotusflower Assembly, hanging transaaactional warp modules under Rigellian
interstellar roadsters. He hadn’t wrestled in three years, and his physique now
resembled that of a hippopotamus. Was that what was in store for Hog, after his
wrestling career ended? Lotusflower Assembly, with the rest of the guys? Not if
he could help it . . .