Читать книгу The Mind-Riders - Brian Stableford - Страница 4

CHAPTER TWO

With the magnification turned up full the image filled the cap from the back wall to the central deck. I let the bed down and perched on it, with my legs folded under so I didn’t have to dangle my toes in the fringe of the image.

The window was behind me and the million multicolored eyes of the neighboring capstacks were staring at the back of my head. I didn’t bother with the screen. Sometimes, in between programs or when the chat got too banal to bear, I liked to turn over, make the bed into a bridge between the holo’s fantasy world and the all-too-real city. I liked to look down both ways—into the consumer dream, into the night-ridden street.

I wasn’t ever afraid of the height.

Living on the thirty-ninth floor for the best part of twenty years, in a capsule like a wormhole with one side all glass, is enough to cure anyone of acrophobia—or drive them mad. But I never had it. I liked the height. I guess I’m an acrophile, with no inborn fear of falling. I liked to be high up above the filthy street in 3912 Capstack 232, with the illusion of floating amid the towers of light, suspended in some kind of limbo, in the middle of it all and yet quite apart. Alone.

But for now, it was back to the world and eyes diving into the holo. The viewpoint was hovering over the ringside, looking down and across a neutral corner. The sim that Paul Herrera was running was, as usual, dark-skinned with silver trunks. The challenger, Angeli, wore the white skin and the royal blue gear.

Except for color, the two sims were identical. There was very little of the Negro about the features of the black body—they were the same neutral blend of racial characters as those of the white. The skin color differed only so you could tell the boxers apart with the utmost ease. Pound for pound, inch for inch, the bodies were matched dead equal. The fight was fair—as fair as computer programming and human ingenuity could make it. Even the rules were programmed into the simulation-pattern. Herrera and Angeli could make the sims do just about anything, so long as it was in the rules. If either of them tried to throw a foul punch or hang on when the break was called they would tie themselves in knots. It paid to stay legitimate—trying to make a sim do what it wasn’t programmed to do threw your mind into confusion, and you left yourself open to get hurt. In sim boxing, all fights go by the book.

And the best man always wins.

The best handler, that is.

The bodies in the ring were just patterns of light, but to me and many millions of others they looked real. What’s anybody but a pattern of light on your retina? They looked real, and they behaved as if they were real. To the men handling them they even felt real. They hurt when they were hit. They bruised and they cut, and their nonexistent bones could be broken. Everything was for real, until it was all over—and then Herrera and Angeli could step right out of their battered, agonized, maltreated bodies right back into their own sweet selves. No scars—except mental ones, which don’t show. Sim boxers feel the pain, but they aren’t supposed to get damaged. That’s the theory. As to what goes on inside people’s heads—well, that’s not Network’s business and it isn’t in the retail-indexed package, except for emotional resonance.

In the days when men used to take their flesh with them into the ring it might be the strongest man that won, or the fastest, or the one with the longest reach, or the one who didn’t cut as easily as the next man. But in the sim, all men were guaranteed equal, and the only difference was how well you could use what the machine had given you. A spastic dwarf and a walking mountain could hook up together and fight level. The man who won might be the cleverer, or the more skillful, but most likely he was the man who most desperately wanted to win, who could extract from the sim everything which it was programmed to give, and add the indefinable something extra that sorts out the winners from the losers.

And that man was Paul Herrera. Every time, for as many years as anyone could remember. Except maybe me.

Herrera had been a winner now for eighteen years. It would have been unthinkable, fifty years ago, for a boxer to last so long. Herrera had grown old as champion—but that didn’t matter because he kept the same body with the same abilities. Eternal youth—physically, at least. As long as his mind didn’t begin to crack or fade, as long as his spirit didn’t fail, there could be another eighteen years in Herrera yet. He could keep on getting better, wiser, more skillful. And any novice coming into the game with youthful enthusiasm and high hopes had eighteen years to catch up.

There’d been a time, long ago. when Herrera had had nothing but the will to win. He’d won fights, but without much style, without much real ability in handling the sim. He’d lost a fight, too. But now he had it all. All the skill, all the experience. Year by year, it became more difficult to see anyone being able to take him. Other men who’d been in the game almost as long as he had were maybe just as clever, just as good, but they always had one thing they could never overcome—a psychological handicap. Some time back in their past, Herrera had beaten each and every one of them. They knew it, and he knew it. He was the king.

Everyone looking in, as I was, whether they were using E-link or had the commentary switched on or were just watching, knew that Herrera had to win tonight. No up-and-coming youngster like Ray Angeli, for all his vamp-appeal, could possibly take him.

But Angeli did have vamp-appeal. There could be no doubt about that. While the chat went on and Network’s producers carefully spun out the anticipation, the meter in the corner of the sim showed that nearly thirty percent of the vamps were hooked into the challenger. Thirty percent is a lot of support for a loser. A lot of the thirty would be hitch-hikers, intending to drink what they could out of the kid and then jack him in—get out and leave Herrera to finish him, but there would be some who’d stay with him on the forlorn hope. By the time the writing was on the wall, though, he’d be down to five percent or less—freaks who charged up on negative E and oddballs who hated Herrera so much they’d cling on till the bitter end in the hope of seeing a lightning bolt from heaven split him in two.

I wondered, absently, as the fighters came to the center of the ring which of them Jimmy Schell would be riding. He’d asked me but he hadn’t told me. My guess was Angeli. Angeli had the right qualifications to attract a kid like Jimmy. Jimmy could identify with Angeli’s hopes—maybe tie them in with his own. But Jimmy wouldn’t stay—not for long. He’d have to get out. He’d maybe even switch over to vamp Herrera for the K.O.—a shallow mind like his wouldn’t feel uncomfortable about that. After all, he’d think, it’s only entertainment....

The bell went and Herrera danced away, catlike, and Angeli came forward with too much eagerness, too much hurry. Angeli over-reached, got tapped, clinched, and then came away. He steadied himself, began to jockey for position, threw a couple of poor punches he didn’t really mean, and got jabbed again for his pains. Herrera came in to hustle him a bit, and got in another short-range blow when the challenger tried to clinch. They tested each other’s gloves, measuring one another’s eyes as they settled into the rhythm of the fight. Herrera was taking it easy, coasting, waiting for Angeli to come to him.

The viewpoint swung so we could look first into the champion’s face, then full at the challenger. Already, the difference was showing clear. The identical faces were worked into very different aspects by the minds that were wearing them. Angeli was handsome. Herrera wasn’t. Angeli looked grim. Herrera looked vicious.

They danced, they faced up, waiting for the bell. Angeli threw a couple of punches at Herrera’s head, but they were brushed aside by the dark sim’s gloves. But this time Angeli was good enough to avoid the left hook aimed at his nipple. He was more careful now, more stylish, moving as if he meant it. There was no more clinching.

In the last few seconds of the round Herrera chased him, and couldn’t catch him. In those seconds, Angeli looked good, like a man who could really handle a sim. He must have felt good, too, and his vamps would be getting their belt, sucking him up greedily. But the seventy riding Herrera must have been drowning in the feeling that it was all okay, that this kid was in the bag.

After the bell, neither fighter had really worked up a simulated sweat. The tally flashed the score, the round going to Herrera, but that didn’t matter a lot.

At this stage of a fight, everyone is winning. Both fighters fancy themselves, are in to win. That’s what the game is all about, from Network’s point of view. First the contest, then the kill. It all pulls in the consumers.

In the second, the pattern of the fight began to develop clearly. There was a lot of movement as Herrera used the width of the ring to try and harass Angeli. Herrera moved faster and covered a lot more canvas. Angeli was more economical with his movements, more graceful. He refused to be reached and he didn’t let Herrera steal space. The champion jabbed a lot, landing most of the punches but making no real impact. If only Angeli had been able to beat his opponent’s guard he could have done some good, but style is ninety percent show—Angeli’s brand of style, at any rate.

A couple of times Herrera seemed to be over-reaching, and Angeli went in with long looping rights, but Herrera ran round the blows with almost contemptuous ease. He was barely touched.

At this stage, both fighters were waiting—looking interested but scoring very little. Against a man of Herrera’s proven stamina that seemed like a dangerous way for the challenger to play, especially with Herrera taking points in the early minutes that would have to be won back the hard way. But Angeli wasn’t wearing himself out. He was looking easy.

In the third, though—with the second having obviously gone to Herrera—Angeli began looking to put in a greater quantity of punches rather than sparing himself to put one in that could hurt. For awhile, they looked to trade blow for blow, and for the first time Angeli’s class began to show. He landed a couple of rights, cutting through Herrera largely by aggression, although he got solid raps in exchange. Herrera was content to go backwards instead of sideways for awhile, though his left was always licking round Angeli’s face. In the last half-minute, Herrera was forced into defense while Angeli tested him, but he made no attempt to clinch and slow down. The round went to the challenger by a shade.

The meter showing the B-link balance was as steady as a rock. The vamps were cruising, the excitement carrying them along just nicely. Whichever boxer they were hooked into they were getting their money’s worth, for now. It was all good clean fun. So far.

I was out of it, and glad to be. I even had the commentaries switched off, so that only the sim sound effects were coming through. I was watching the fight, not pretending to live it. I was detached, uninvolved, rational. Clarity of mind is a valuable thing, and I rate it too valuable to risk inside an B-link headdress. The kind of willful damage you can inflict upon your state of mind with drink or cigarettes or psychotropics is something to be very careful of. I saw no pleasure in strategic self-distortion. I tried to keep my interest in the fight an objective one, and tried to concentrate on the art of boxing rather than the guts.

Maybe, I thought, as I tried to fill the empty moments between rounds, my attitude toward height and my distaste for the B-link are related. I felt, somehow, as if I were above the vamps, on a loftier plane—spectating while they clustered round to drink the emotional substance from the orgy of conflict which they had created out of what was once, perhaps, a sport.

Perhaps, I guess, was the operative word.

Angeli took the fourth, again by a shade, and looked pretty good doing it. But we were by no means back to square one. Angeli knew now what he had only half-known before—that Herrera wasn’t slowing down, wasn’t easing up, wasn’t impressed. Angeli was beginning to feel that the sim he was riding needed pushing along, dragging about the ring. The hammered flesh was beginning to weigh on him a little. But not on Herrera. The champ was still making the pace even if Angeli was edging the punches. If the challenger was going to do something real he was going to have to pull out more and keep pulling it out. Herrera still had reserves untapped, and always seemed to have. No one knew how much more Angeli might pull out—he had never been extended to his limit.

The fifth was dead even and even the computer declined to give a decision. The tally counter split the round two ways. Any difference there was in that round was between the minds of the fighters—the way they were taking their punches psychologically. Herrera, I knew, would be soaking it up, just feeding it back to his own gathering fury. Every time you hurt Herrera you made him that little bit better. I couldn’t believe that the same was true of Angeli.

In a sense, Herrera was almost a vamp himself. He fed on emotion like his devoted fans. Where he got it from doesn’t matter—it all welled up inside him, whether he sucked it from the air or his opponents or even his audience. Somewhere in Herrera there was a powerhouse where need was created, in defiance of the law of conservation of energy. They claim that the only kind of telepathy that exists is the bastard kind that exists courtesy of MiMaC, but any really top class performer, of whatever kind, will doubt that. When you’re winning, you can prey on your victim’s mind. You can absorb the flood-tide of feeling that’s somehow always there. Herrera was sucking up Angeli and feeding on him, somehow. He knew he was winning, believed in himself, and he didn’t need the machines to make his mind resonate.

Herrera took the sixth, and for a moment or two as the bell went and the gloves dropped the sim showed Angeli’s face, and found within the eyes just a hint of defeat. Angeli felt he was pulling out the last of his stops, and the champ wasn’t giving. Not an inch.

I could understand something of the doubt that was creeping into Angeli’s soul. The vamps would be too high on his feelings to know or care about what he was thinking—and in any case that’s something MiMaC can’t do, because thoughts are transient, tentative, evanescent, and can’t be captured. But I knew, because I’d been there.

What Angeli was thinking was this:

Herrera is moving faster and further than I am. He’s burning up more energy. But he’s not tiring. He’s hitting just as hard. He doesn’t get hurt. What do I have to do? What has to be done to break through? When and how does that facade ever waver, ever begin to fail.

And Angeli had one thought to fight against.

Eighteen years.

Like everyone else, Angeli knew there had to be a way to crack Herrera. That was a matter of faith, and a logical certainty. Paul Herrera was human, and had human limits. But where were they? And how did you have to go about pushing him beyond them. Angeli was thinking hard, and finding no answers. He’d find a hundred, in time—after the fight—and he’d be able to write off his defeat and carry on. But for now, he was going under. Slowly.

That eighteen years was one hell of a powerful testament to Herrera’s invincibility. It was one hell of a fact to have rebounding in your mind—a thought to destroy your composure, to undermine your confidence.

Ray Angeli had been six years old when Herrera first took the title. He was too young to remember, but he was old enough to know. He knew that Herrera had started winning and never stopped, and that once upon a time he had hurt a man so badly that he had died of shame. That’s hard knowledge to carry around, especially when you come to it so long after it’s happened and become meaningful. It did no good at all for Herrera’s opponents to know that he fought so hard that he had killed a man—not with punches but with sheer humiliation. Herrera was a man who could do damage—psychological damage—to his opponents.

Angeli wasn’t scared. But he knew. And that has to make a difference.

It wasn’t Herrera’s fault, of course. It never had been. He only did what he was supposed to do. He just gave the mind-riders their big kicks. He was a feeler in a million. Maybe he loved winning more than any other man alive. He loved carving people into pieces. He gloried in the way he hurt them. If the vamps are addicts, what does that make Herrera? I don’t know, but it still wasn’t his fault that a man had died after facing him in the ring.

In an earlier age, Paul Herrera would have been a misfit, a crazy man. With his own body he could never have found an outlet for the things inside his mind. But in this age he had become an idol and an institution. He was the champ. That’s the way the cards fall. And that was the way Ray Angeli had to look at them spread out all over his mind.

When they came out for the seventh I expected to see Herrera begin to tee up his man for the hammer. But Angeli was still tough, and he didn’t let go of his style. He hung on in, taking on the champion and preserving the margin narrowly.

Through the seventh and the eighth and the ninth the fight ran on, as if frozen into a fixed regime, with change in abeyance, content to wait in the wings. Herrera was better, but he wasn’t so much better that he could swing things entirely his way. Punches were going both ways—good punches—and it had all the makings of a really tough fight, hard on both men. The sim skins were showing the signs of hurt. Angeli’s white body was staining red, and one eye was looking bad, seeping blood. But the black face was beginning to inflate as the flesh took punishment. Herrera looked uglier by the minute. But nothing dramatic happened in all three rounds. If Angeli couldn’t reach Herrera, he was damned sure he wasn’t letting Herrera get to him.

I knew it had to break some time. I knew there had to come some elusive moment in the dimension of time in which some tiny event, of little intrinsic significance, would finally tip the scales and send them swinging out of true. Once the balance was gone the whole structure of the fight would tumble. It would turn into a massacre.

But in the meantime, Angeli held his vamps. He shored up his own hopes. He stayed on the tightrope, and stayed, and stayed.

The tally counter showed Herrera still ahead at the end of the ninth. Not by much, but enough to hang on to if he wanted to go the distance and take the fight on points. But that seemed unlikely. It wasn’t his style.

Angeli won the tenth—one might almost say a shade luckily, if one accepted that there was any such thing as luck in a sim fight. When the sim zeroed in to show the world his face as he turned for his corner at the end of it that shadow of doubt—the thin lattice of thought that had foreshadowed his eventual defeat—was gone.

I wasn’t fooled. There was nothing happening to rekindle my faint hopes that Herrera was booked for a fall.

By this time, both fighters would be in top gear and coming to the end of their emotional resources. The cruising had gone on long enough, and from the vamps’ point of view it was time to climax. They’d had their ride, now they wanted their crash. By now, Angeli would have stopped thinking. His mind would be frozen over, feeling still, but not doing much else. Thanks to the miracle of MiMaC, however, the resonance link would still be strong—sweetness pouring out of the strong like a hive of bees, into the minds of the weak.

As they came out for the eleventh, I found myself praying that something might yet happen—that the dispelled doubt might be the signal for a change in the wind. It wasn’t reason or experience that was urging me, but desire. I still wanted to see Herrera beaten. I always had. Sometimes, you just can’t help yourself flying in the face of what you know to be inevitable.

I cared. I knew I was going to be disappointed.

In a hypocritical moment, I could tell myself that I wanted Herrera to lose because I disapproved of what he did for the vamps. I could tell myself that I was disgusted by the way they fed on him. And maybe that was true. The thought of countless emotional voyeurs enjoying orgasms every time Herrera threw a K.O. punch was pretty sickening. But in slightly less self-congratulatory moments I had to admit that there was more to it than that. I bore Paul Herrera a grudge.

And in the beginning of the eleventh, I was charging up—not, like the vamps, on the fighters’ emotion, but on my own. I was getting excited, getting involved. Curled up on the edge of the bed I was tensing my muscles in sympathy. I had my fists clenched and held rigid. I wasn’t waving them or pushing them, just holding them. But if Angeli had landed a good punch I would be able to feel it in one of those fists. I would get the tingling in the nerves as he hit Herrera hard.

Only he didn’t.

Under my breath, I was urging Angeli on.

But he was going to pieces.

Herrera, with a burst of sheer power, came through Angeli’s guard like a knife and landed a superb combination—left to the temple, right just above the heart.

Angeli went reeling. His arms went wild, and a third punch, which only glanced off him, put him down. He came up at seven, backed on to the ropes, tried to shield himself and pull Herrera into a clinch. He didn’t make it, and went down to one knee to take eight, still wanting to come back and mix it.

Back he came, but without all the things which had made him into a contender, kept him going for so long. He couldn’t keep the champ out, couldn’t put together his own punches.

The bell came, and Angeli went to his corner to be brought back to life, but it was all over. The tally counter no longer mattered, and the link meter was swinging.

Angeli had held his thirty right to the bitter end, but they were gone now. No one believed in him any more, and most weren’t going to take what Angeli was going to take when he went back to be slaughtered in the twelfth. They were running—flopping back into their chairs in a blind, black drunk, overcharged and ready to let themselves sink. Only the real gluttons would switch to Herrera so late.

When the twelfth began, Angeli was holding just six percent, and even that seemed high. Old ladies hoping for miracles and groovers who lapped up suffering as well as—or instead of—exultation.

While Herrera took him apart, knocking him down for a full count half a minute before the end, I trudged down from the sorry heights of forlorn hope. I didn’t want to watch what was left—I wanted to think about something else, but you can’t switch off your eyes and somehow I couldn’t move towards the controls. I saw it all happen.

There was no real backlash. After it was over, I knew it had always been the same way. I didn’t feel disturbed. I was calm. My unclenched fists were resting easy on the blanket. I just shrugged off the sad adrenalin draining through my bloodstream, and instructed myself not to care.

Herrera had won again. So what.

I finally switched off the holo. Herrera would stay with his sim awhile yet so that the vamps could gorge themselves on his triumph a little time longer. It would slide away from its peak very slowly, ebbing away gently rather than plunging down. The connoisseurs reckoned that a better charge than the best of erotic spasms. Chacun à son goût.

I went to sort through some cassettes, looking for something to take my mind away. Somehow, everything I looked at struck me as being insipid. I found it difficult to choose one.

Then I tested the cut on my little finger, to see if it still hurt.