Across the Spectrum (3 page)

Hog frowned and stepped into a crouch, facing his opponent.

The shapeshifter waved its branches. The ref gestured with
its paddles, and Hog reached out to grip the nearest branch in a handshake. The
suction cups latched onto his hand, and let go with a
pop
. Hog shook off
the stinging sensation. The ref leveled a paddle-shaped hand between the two
contestants, then jerked it away with a
tweet!
on its whistle. The match
was on.

Hog danced sideways, and forward and back, snatching in
quick grabs at the shapeshifter’s branches. He was just testing, seeing if he
could get the thing off balance. The Ektra waved its branches unconcernedly.
Its feet remained planted. Hog circled, trying to make it lift its feet and
follow. The Ektra didn’t turn at all; it just waved different branches at him
as he circled. Where the hell were its eyes, anyway—on the leaves? And what
would constitute putting this thing on its back? he wondered.

“Cut ’im down, Hog!” he heard, in the dim distance of the
sidelines. Harmin’, cheering him on. His friend sounded as if he were miles
away.

“You don’t have all day, Donovan—go in after him!” he heard
on the other side. Coach Tagget, offering helpful strategy.

Hog shrugged off a negligent grab by one of the branches,
and without thinking launched his attack. He shot forward, low, grabbing for
the base of the shapeshifter’s trunk. It was a purely instinctive move—go for
the single-leg takedown, whether the thing had legs or not. It worked better
than he could have expected: the branches waved madly above him, and some of
the suckers came down on his back. But he got good penetration, and wrapped
both arms around the Ektra’s trunk. He got one knee up under him, and lifted,
hard.

The Ektra didn’t budge. It was holding itself down not so
much by its roots as by a large sucker at the base of its trunk. Hog grunted,
trying to break it free. As he strained, the Ektra’s branches were clinging to
his back, though fortunately the fabric of his tights top kept it from getting
too secure a grip. Grunting harder, Hog dug his fingers under the edge of the
tree’s suction base. He heard his coach’s distant voice: “—the
hell
are
you doing?”

“Gaaaahhhh!” With a roar, Hog pulled up with his fingers.
Sploook.
The Ektra came loose from the mat, and he had it in the air like a heavy
Christmas tree. He staggered, turning with it, trying to tip it over. The tree
was snatching at his back and his arms. Hog lost his balance and went over
sideways, taking the tree with him.

Even as they fell, he could feel the thing changing shape.
By the time they hit the mat, the Ektra was an extremely slippery snakey thing,
sliding out of his hands. Hog tightened his grip, trying to keep it from
getting away. But it was impossible; it had some sort of coating that made it
slick as hell. He scrambled to follow it on the mat, desperately trying to hold
on long enough to get the takedown points.

“Queeeeeee!” whistled the shapeshifter, and with a
convulsive jerk slithered out of Hog’s hands.

“No points!” brayed the ref, prancing alongside.

Hog glanced up in frustration. He was
sure
he’d
earned the takedown points, even if he had to concede a one-point escape. Was
this ref going to be an impossible-to-please type?

The glance was a mistake; it distracted him from his
opponent. By the time he looked back, his opponent was gone.

Whufff!

His breath went out with a gasp, and he felt the snake’s
coils wrapping around him from behind. How could it have moved so fast? he
thought uselessly, as he struggled to jam his elbows down into the coils to
protect his ribs from the rapidly tightening pressure.

“Queee-ee-eeeee!” chortled the snake, in what sounded like a
merry laugh. Prelude to strangulation? Hog wondered. The next coil whipped
around his ankles, and he fell to the mat like a hundred and thirty-eight
pounds of frozen meat.

“Two-point takedown!” whinnied the ref.

“Augggh!” Hog grunted, trying to keep from rolling onto his
back. The snake was trying to get him to do just that, but it didn’t have a
firm enough hold on his legs, and he was able to scissor hard and gain some
leverage, getting himself halfway up to his elbows and knees. “Hunhh!
Uunhh!”
He was struggling just to breathe. He could feel himself sliding a bit inside
the slippery coils, despite the pressure. If only he could slide out . . .

In fact, he was moving a little, squirming in the coils. “
Unhhhh!
Unhhh!”
He inhaled as hard as he could, held his breath a moment, then
gasped it out and jammed his elbows hard against the coils. He pushed them down
by about a foot.

The snake tightened like a vise around his hips. His
progress stopped; the coils were smaller than his hipbones. “Auuughhh!” Hog
groaned, blinking at the sight of the ref leaning close, maybe to make sure he
was still breathing. If he wasn’t turning purple now, he never would be!

He heard a din and a stamping around him. The crowd was
loving it—probably hoping he got squeezed to death.

Coach Tagget was yelling something, but he couldn’t hear
what it was. But another voice reached him through the cacophony: “HAWWWWG—SLAM
’IM TILL HE LETS GO!” he heard distantly.

Hermie. And good thinking. Hog huffed, raising himself on
all fours, lifting the snake’s weight. He suddenly went flat, hitting the mat
as hard as he could, right on the snake’s coils. He felt them loosen for an
instant, and he squirmed frantically . . .

Tweeeeeet!

The snake gave a last squeeze, then relaxed its grip as the
ref halted the action.

“Warning!” brayed the ref. “Slamming is forbidden! Warning
number one against the human!” The ref waved his paddle-hands.

Hog gasped, trying to catch his breath. Warning or not, he
had a fighting start now; they would resume the match from a one-up one-down
position. As the coils unwound, he lumbered to his feet and walked in a brisk
circle to shake off the effects. Then he knelt back down on his hands and
knees.

“Shake it off—shake it off!” he heard his coach yell. “Now
stay out of those coils!”

Hog glanced back to see if the Ektra would take another
shape. But no—he could only change shape while the clock was running. That was
a regulatory concession to the nonshifting wrestlers: the shapeshifters had the
advantage of versatility of form, but they were momentarily vulnerable during
the change, and for a few seconds following, while they “got into” their new
forms.

“No delay!” called the ref. This time it was yelling at the
shapeshifter. The Ektra seemed to be having trouble deciding how to situate
itself on the top position over Hog: it had no hands or feet to place on or
near him. “Rest your head on his back!” the ref instructed.

“Queeee?” protested the shapeshifter.

“On his back,” repeated the ref. “No delay, please.”

“Queeee,” it answered.

Hog felt the snake’s head touch the center of his back. He
glanced over his shoulder and saw that the creature was arching over him from a
base of coils on the mat, and was indeed touching him just on the center of the
back. Good. He just had to move faster than the snake.

Tweet!

Hog launched himself up to a standing position, whirling
away. He felt no resistance. “One point escape!” called the ref. Hog spun
around to face the snake.

“QUAAARRRRRRRRR!” roared the creature that was facing him—no
snake now, but an enormous, maned animal with a mouth full of large teeth.
(TERROR!
TERROR! I’M BIGGER THAN YOU!)
Hog backed away, startled. He tripped on the
heel of his sneaker and fell to his knees. “QUAAAAAAAAAA!” bellowed the Ektra,
charging.
(BARE YOUR GNEEPHITZXX . . . !)
echoed its
psicry.

For an instant, Hog was paralyzed with fear—like a man who’d
stumbled in front of a rabid lion.
Do
something,
he thought.
Get out of its
way!
Then something in him snapped, and instead of using common sense and
fleeing, he leaped straight at the charging beast with a bloodcurdling
Tarzan-yell. “AAAHH-AAAUUGGHHHH!” He was going to meet those teeth, and it
would all be over before the ref could tweet his whistle, but he couldn’t stop
himself.

The Ektra lion halted in midcharge, bewildered by Hog’s
furious yell.

Hog slammed into it, grabbing it around the neck. The damn
thing was all fur and air; it weighed the same as he did, but at three times
his size. The Ektra went over like a bowling pin, perhaps too surprised to
react.

BLAAATTTT!

Tweeeeet!
“No points!”

Hog rolled away from the shapeshifter and leaped to his
feet. “Whaaat?” he yelled. “I had him—”

“End of first period!” called the ref, strutting away on its
four centaur legs, ignoring Hog’s protest. Hog sighed, wheezing for breath.
Damn, this wasn’t looking good. He had to do
something
.

“Ref, you blindfolded nag! If that wasn’t a takedown, what
was it?” came a scream from the sidelines. Hog kept his back to his coach as
Tagget demonstrated proper Earth sportsmanship. Not that Hog didn’t agree with
him.

He turned and stared at the leonine alien, whose unreadable
eyes were just shifting from Hog to the ref.
(I crush you.)
“Quaaaaaa?”
it asked the ref.

“Call the toss!” whinnied the centaur, holding an oversized
poker chip in its paddle-hand. The chip was red on one side, blue on the other.

“Quaaaa,” grumbled the Ektra.

The ref flipped the chip. It fluttered and landed red side
up on the mat. “Up or down?” it asked, pointing to the Ektra, who had
apparently called red.

“Quaaa,” it said, with a shrug of its furry shoulders.

“Ektra up! Human down!” announced the ref, pointing to the
center of the mat. Hog knelt and assumed the position.

“No teeth, shapechanger!” yelled Coach Tagget as the
lion-thing positioned itself with two large paws on Hog’s back and its mouth
open, breathing hot, fetid air straight down on the back of Hog’s neck. “No
biting allowed!” shouted Tagget.

“QUAAAAAAARRRR!” answered the beast with a terrifying
rumble.
(I SQUEEZE YOUR—!)

“Get up and away from him!” Hog heard through the ringing in
his ears.

The ref peered at the two, raising a flat hand.
Tweet!

Hog scrambled, and felt the lion all over him. It felt
heavy, and it was quick, and its breath made him reel. But it had to be tiring
with all that movement, and maybe Hog could wear it out. He soon realized
something, and the lion must have, too. Except for its teeth and claws, which
it couldn’t use, it had no good way to hold onto him other than hugging him in
a smothering embrace and staying on top of him. If Hog could just shoot his
legs out to the side and keep moving . . .

He felt the Ektra changing shape even as he did so. He made
it partway out of the Ektra’s embrace, then lurched to stand up. He turned,
hopping back and away—and was nearly free when he felt a tentacle whip around
his left ankle. He hopped harder, trying to jerk away, but the tentacle was
faster. He managed to turn to face his opponent, and found the tentacle
attached to something that looked as if it had crawled out of a very dark
lagoon. God only knew what planet the original was from. It had a head like a
moldy stump and two squidlike tentacles that sprouted from the head, and it was
trying to snake its other tentacle around Hog’s right leg. Hog hopped madly to
evade it, and the lagoon creature responded by hoisting his left ankle to a
ridiculous height, practically to his chin, with the first tentacle. Hog was
left hopping like a crazed ballet dancer, struggling not to lose his balance.

“Krrrreeeee!” screeched the lagoon-thing.

“F-f-f- . . . says you!” gasped Hog.
No,
don’t talk to it!
he thought.
Save your strength, save your strength.
He jumped, trying to lever his weight downward to break free, but the
tentacle’s grip was tenacious.

“You can do it, Justin!” screamed his mother’s voice, from
somewhere.

“Get yourself out of there, dammit, Hog! How’d you get into
that?” he heard, from another direction. He was completely disoriented with
respect to the room; he could only focus on the mat, and this infernal
creature.

He jumped higher. The tentacle went higher. He still didn’t
break free, and now his leg was up as far as it could possibly go, and his
hamstrings were screaming.

“Krrrreeeeee!” urged his opponent.

“Scree you!” Hog retorted angrily.

Tweeeeeeeeet!
The ref strode forward, breaking the
impasse. It turned to Hog and waved a paddle in his direction, while braying to
the scoring table: “The use of abusive language is prohibited. One point
penalty against the human!”

“What?”
Hog gasped, limping away from the Ektra.

“References to the opponent’s progenitors are strictly
forbidden!” scolded the centaur with the whistle. “Assume the position.”

“Ref—you piece of Arcturan fungus!”
screamed a voice from
the sidelines.
“You mold, you donkey! You wouldn’t know a foul if it came up
and plugged you—you—!”

Hog ignored his coach’s rantings and assumed the position.

The centaur was staring coldly in the direction of the
sidelines, but it said nothing, until the shapeshifter had hunched behind Hog,
its tentacles on his back. A little too
firmly
on his back, Hog
realized. “Ref—wait a min—”

Tweet!

Hog was a moment slow in moving, and the shapeshifter had
its tentacles around his waist by the time he was into his standup. He was on
his feet, but he couldn’t break free, and he began lunging one way and then
another, trying to loosen the thing’s grip. He dug his hands down under the
tentacles to break their hold. Yes—he had them loose! “Aarrrrr!” he snarled,
spinning and bracing his feet outward. If he could just arch, he could complete
the escape . . .