Futureland. Part 6

"You want me to do this, Pipi?"

"It's not for me, baby," the Backgrounder said. "I ain't n.o.body in this. It's you. You got the professor father, the strength, skills. I just figured if you made enough money you wouldn't have to fight and get brain damage, you wouldn't have to end up in a chair like your old man. You could be somebody."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Anybody you wanted to be. Somebody powerful. Somebody with clout."

"You really think that?"

Pell kissed her on the lips. It wasn't so much a pa.s.sionate osculation as a careless acclaim, a declaration of something that had already come to pa.s.s.

8.

"Well, we're finally here," Billy "the Eclipse" Bonner said to UBA boxing fans around the world.

There was no blackout that night. Every seat in the stadium sold for a thousand dollars or more. Movie stars, political leaders, gangsters, Backgrounders, and thieves were present. More women than men filled the 120,000 seats; 750,000,000 people around the world had paid the one hundred dollar pay-per-view price.

"You better believe it, Champ," Chet Atkinson replied. "This is the most important night in the history of boxing. This is it. The battle of the s.e.xes, the War of the Roses. Lady Macbeth and Don Corleone. D Day. Tonight Fera Jones goes after Travis Zeletski's undisputed heavyweight crown in a fight they said could never happen."

"All the regulars are here tonight, Chet, but there are some who never come to these matches. Lana Lordess, governor of Ma.s.sachusetts and head of the FemLeague, is in attendance, as is the secretary of state. Prince Peter of Great Britain and Premier Hernandez of Cuba are also in the audience. They might do better to have political a.n.a.lysts than two barkers like us."

"That may be, Champ, but we can worry about the world tomorrow. Tonight there's a fight we have to get through. What are the main strengths and weaknesses we should be looking for?"

"Well, the main thing is the body. Both of these boxers bang pretty hard to the ribs and liver. They're both good on the inside. Jones is the taller of the two but only by a quarter of an inch. Zeletski measures six eight and three-quarters. He's got a slight reach advantage at eighty-five inches and he's the heavier of the two by ten pounds. Moscow-born Zeletski has been fighting since he was ten. He has a good solid jab, a shuddering right cross, and a left hook that we haven't seen since the days of Joe Frazier. He's lean and fast and knows how to cut off the ring.

"Fera Jones is the boxer's boxer when she keeps her cool. She can dance and she can sting. Both gloves have knockout power. Her weaknesses are her tendency to cut and her temper. When Fera gets mad she throws caution to the wind, and that's a dangerous att.i.tude when you're facing a wily opponent with knockout power."

"What are Zeletski's weaknesses?" Chet Atkinson asked.

"He's pretty good all around, but the one thing he has to watch out for is the mistake of treating Jones like a woman. She's a female, but so is the lady tiger. If he lets up at all it will be his downfall."

"How do you see the fight unfolding, Champ?"

The close-up of the boxer/announcer's face revealed the scars under his makeup, small mementos of his eighty-seven fights. There were blemishes on the whites of his eyes and one cheekbone appeared flatter than the other. He seemed to chew on each word before letting it go.

"This is going to be a tough fight for both boxers. Jones's new trainer, Pell Lightner, has no real experience in the game. He's a newcomer but he gives good advice. As you know, Fera's father is hovering between life and death at this moment at Staten Island's Neurological Inst.i.tute, going through the preparations to receive a tissue transplant to reverse the effects of a decade of Pulse use."

"Will she be able to put it out of her mind and concentrate on the fight?"

"Only time will tell. But even if she can, it will still be a grueling twelve rounds."

The announcers talked for another forty minutes before the fighters were in the ring, and fifteen minutes more while a fight that broke out on the floor was being stopped. It was a full hour before the first bell rang.

In the years since, the first minute of that round has been discussed, watched over, and compared to other great fights in pugilism history. The only way to see it is in slow motion.

Zeletski came out quickly with his hands up and his jab pumping. He hit Fera's nose seven times in less than five seconds. Each blow jolted her dirty blond hair. Each blow landed because Fera kept her hands down, not protecting herself. Zeletski gained confidence and threw a left hook into Jones's side. The blow could be heard at ringside.

Fera smiled and waved her hands for him to do it again.

He did.

Fera flinched and buckled some but her smile remained.

The referee was worried. The announcers were too.

Zeletski grinned and nailed Jones with a straight right hand. While she fell back he sent a roundhouse left.

That was his mistake.

Or maybe the mistake was getting into the ring that evening. Maybe there was no beating Jones that night.

Fera moved gracefully under the looping left hand and then rose delivering a textbook right uppercut. Most a.n.a.lysts say that that was the end of the fight. The impact threw Zeletski back so violently that his left fist boomeranged, making his own glove the source of the second blow of the combination. The third, fourth, and fifth blows were left jabs, and even though Jones missed the following right cross, she followed with a left hook that Zeletski himself says caused the blindness in his right eye and the loss of hearing in that side's ear.

By that time the referee was jumping to save the Russian's life. Fera Jones's punches were so hard and fast that they kept the now unconscious Zeletski from falling. The referee had to wrestle Fera to the floor to stop her. Pell ran to his aid by sitting hard on his fighter's chest.

She threw them off, but by that time her bloodl.u.s.t was waning. Zeletski lay on the canvas, surrounded by parmeds and bleeding from his ear and mouth. While he was carried from the ring on a stretcher, Fera's hand was being raised in victory.

And when the camera crews came to get her statement, to hear what was next for the invincible Fera Jones, millions around the world and some in the front row froze to hear her answer.

Sweat was pouring down the twenty-one-year-old's face. She was breathing hard and smiling.

"First I want to thank Diana for my strength and Legba for my man . . ."

Lana Lordess rose to leave.

". . . but this win is for my daddy," Fera said.

"I'll be the first to admit that I never thought I'd see this day," Billy Bonner said during the postfight interview. "Zeletski is the best we men have to offer, and you finished him in under a minute."

"It was meant to be," Fera said. She was looking into Pell Lightner's eyes.

"I know that your father is being operated on at this moment. You must be worried about him."

"I'm not worried. I'm a fighter. He is too."

"What's next for you, Fera Jones?"

"Luna Land. I'm going to Luna Land."

9.

At three the next morning Fera and her boyfriend were the only ones in the waiting room outside the operating theater where Leon Jones was having brain tissue transplanted into his cortex. Pell had crawled under a row of chairs where he seemed to be sleeping.

"Pipi," Fera whispered.

The young man opened his eyes. "Yeah?"

Fera went to sit on the floor next to him. "I been thinkin'."

" 'Bout what?"

"About my mom and all those things Lordess said. About you."

"Me?"

"Daddy's always sayin' that boxing is just a metaphor."

"What's that?"

"It's when you call something one thing but really it's something else."

"Huh?"

"Like if I called somebody a worm or a germ or a dog. He's not really, but then again he is."

"I get ya."

"Me boxing is like that. They put me out there to stand for the poor girl who can't fight for herself, guy too."

"So I see you fighting and I feel like it's me out there?" Pell pulled out from under the chairs to sit by his lover.

"Yeah. And as soon as they see that the everyday prod and Backgrounder looks to me they start offerin' me money and power. Lordess did it, Randac too. They make it seem like they're the ones helpin' me, makin' me rich. But really it's me that did it, me and the people who wanted me to beat Zeletski."

"But you took the money, babe," Pell said. "You said you were goin' to Luna Land."

" 'Cause I'm through with boxing. I figure the money they paid me to fight'll pay Daddy's med bills and the Randac money'll pay for our new fight."

"What's that?"

"People look at me to fight and win because I'm a woman and men think they're better. People wanna see the underdog win. Everything and everybody in my life is that. You--"

"Me?"

"Yeah. When you saw the chance to get outta Common Ground you made it strong. Daddy's fightin' right now against the Pulse. The government wants to make money off his addiction and let him die, but he won't.

"But most of all I think about my mother. All she ever was was a prisoner. Trapped with those other girls. Made in some laboratory. But she still got away and made a life for herself even though the whole world was against it."

Tears sprouted from Fera's eyes. Pell squatted down next to her and hugged her head to his chest.

"That's what I been thinkin', honey. When people see me fight they feel good, but it doesn't help 'em. I keep thinkin' that I should get out there and fight for real, like you and Daddy and my mom. I could use Randac's money and the FemLeague lovin' me so much to run for some office, to go against the people usin' me to keep people sufferin'."

"Be easier livin' on Madagascar," Pell said.

"You could go there, baby," Fera said. "I'd understand if you wanted to take it easy."

"No, Fera," Pell said, kissing the knuckles of her right hand. "I'm with you down to the nub, down to our last dollar and dime."

She was the first woman to make a man bow down for sure, Groucho T, the Internet philosopher, said. He never got back up again.

Doctor Kismet.

1.

"Welcome, M Akwande," the monocled man said with a bow. He stood atop an enormous ornately carved dais made from a single block of pure green jade.

"Thank you, Doctor," Akwande said, nodding graciously.

"It's so good of you to come to my humble Home." There was a momentary flash of light behind the darkened monocle lens. Kismet's robe was deep green like his throne, its hem reaching his bare feet.

"Home is beautiful beyond compare, Doctor. But no place which serves as both residence and sovereign nation could be called humble."

Kismet descended the six stairs from the dais down to Fayez Akwande's level. Two naked young men rushed to a.s.sist but he dismissed them with an almost imperceptible gesture. Immediately the s.e.xually enhanced Nordic teenagers genuflected and moved backward in the same fluid motion.

The monarch spoke.

"Less than fifteen miles in any direction, Home is smaller than many cities in size. Add that to the puny population and you have the smallest, weakest nation in the world."

M Akwande noticed that Kismet did not claim poverty for the large island off the western coast of Mexico. It was rumored that the eccentric CEO of MacroCode International paid a trillion international credits for the island, created in the great earthquake of 2006, and its claim of nationhood.

"Between the salt.w.a.ter crocodiles and the patrols by land and air I'd venture to say that Home is the most secure nation in the world today." On his part Akwande was all in black--his loose cotton pants and shirt, his skin. The only flashes of white on the guest were his teeth, his eyes, and an uncarved bone pendant, about three inches long, that depended from a silver chain around his neck. The day before in New Jersey, his wife Aja had placed the pendant on him, a queen knighting her people's savior.

"Are you hungry, sir?" Kismet asked, his visible eye losing interest in speculation about his domain. "Maybe a drink?"

"A drink would be nice."

"Then, come."