Chapter 9:
- Cormick Enters the Cantina; A New Career is Discussed
Scene
Cormick was the last of the quadry to arrive at the cantina where they regulared. For the first time in seven years, the doorkeep of Marta’s waved him through without a tip. Marta was on the roster for offshipment tomorrow; so she was widecasting for all the business she could find on her last night. To judge by the crowd blocking the foyer inside the door, she wasn’t doing badly, either.
Cormick shouldered between the bodies into the twilit cavern beyond. The cantina was typical, if big for a town like Chandier. Centered beneath the large dome, a circular bar swarmed with waitresses, eager patrons, and probably a couple of blood-scenting sharks. It was difficult to see much further; the room was dark and hazy with a mist that bore fertilizer for the flora covering the walls, and a very mild hallucinogen for the patrons – just enough to promote slight euphoria. Cormick had long ago trained his chemical scrubber to let Marta have her way. He breathed deeply, and his head lifted from his shoulders.
Cormick’s gamma adjuster began to brighten the room, but he enjoyed the atmosphere, and set it back to default. Marta’s only light came from the ambients hidden in the sloping walls, the displays at the bar, and the big holofield blossoming up from the stalk in the center of the bar. Once – many years ago – the holofield had been the cantina’s main attraction. Everything under the dome focused on it. Now the field was somewhat off-color and grainy, and too translucent too be impressive. But what point was there in fixing it? Marta had conspiratorially suggested it might ‘break’ in the move off-planet.
In the meanwhile, the holofield was good enough to watch Battle – even with the picture problems, it was better than a flat display. Cormick took note of the time: another half an hour before tonight’s match would start.
For the moment, the field slowly cycled through random patterns, keeping time to the music of the house band – otherwise known as Marta’s twin nieces. Cormick remembered the first time he’d heard them play; they had taken the gig just to get out from behind their aunt’s bar, and they were pretty awful. But in the six years since, they had become reliably … decent. They brought in a crowd of regulars, and they did have a knack for filling the dance floor. More importantly to Cormick, at least one of them was usually game for a snuggle with a lonely snowboy between sets. The only problem was keeping them straight – Cormick couldn’t tell them apart unless one of them had their mouth open. He passed by the alcove stage where they were playing for a quick hello, but they were deep into their music. It sounded like Pear crooning the downtempos; so that was Apple behind the pile of equipment driving the beat. The latter glanced up from her soundboard, and he caught her eye. She grinned; he winked a greeting and moved on.
Most of the regulars were military or spaceport staff. The two crowds complemented each other well, both in character and timing – each kept to themselves, and each could be counted on for at least a trickle of thirsty off-duties any time of day or night. Marta must have paid with her backteeth to get the license on this business pad, right on the strip running between the two districts, and facing a bus plaza that serviced both. The mix of people meant that Marta’s tended to settle out into cliques – military to the left, spacies to the right, with pilots and snowboys mingling in the back. Non-regulars – or tourists – were there in plenty, but they mostly stayed to the front with the band.
Cormick wound his way toward the bar and found a spot where he could lean on the marbled slab. The hollow in the center was sunken and dark, obscured further by the lights of the displays around the stalk of the holofield. Cormick shaded the field from his eyes to see the black-clothed bodies bustling around behind the taps and the bouquets of crystal glassware. A politely smiling face appeared before him, but the eyes were turned downward, still focused on the cleanup from the previous order. The face had been pretty years ago; and it still was, in the frame of dark hair and behind a layer of paint that filled in the creases. “What for you?”
“Hoi, Marta.”
Marta looked up, and her smile broke into a grin. “Oh! Hoi there, Boy! I didn’t see you for a tick – lean over and give me some lips.” She caught the collar of his jacket and pulled him over the bartop for a peck. She didn’t release him until she had lifted his hat, looked him over, then dropped the hat back in place.
While Cormick tucked his forelock back beneath the brim, Marta twisted over her shoulder toward the mousy woman at the tablet in the middle of the bar. “Tell the girls to take a quick break after they finish this song, yeah? Then run that newsie piece again on the display.” Marta grinned back at Cormick. “Kurtie gave us a bundle of her clips from today – she worked ‘em into a nice little piece. We ran it when the rest of your boys came in, but now that the whole crew is here, we’ll run it again, eh?”
Cormick raised his hands in protest. “Hey, don’t show it on my account. If I didn’t know better, woman, I’d think you wanted to embarrass me.”
“Embarrass you? I’m trying to get you a bedwarmer for tonight. That, and business picks up each time we show it.”
“Well, I won’t stand in the way of business.”
Marta wiped her hands on a rag while she smiled and selected a cup for Cormick from the arrangement in front of her.
“So, the juice for me, put a round on my account for my table, and angle me in their direction. Are we mil or privates tonight?”
“Privates. They’re back there at the booth in the corner, and keep your grams – I’ve had so many people buy your table rounds tonight that I’ll owe you kids a credit wherever it is Marta’s touches down. Of course, I don’t tell any of your benefactors that you’ll all be sloshed out of your socks before I make it through the queue to their order. Bad for business. But, come look me up once we set down again, Boy. I promise to make good on your credit. You and I can drink through it in some dark corner together. Speaking of which, where is Blackbie sending you? Do you know yet?”
Cormick glanced over his shoulder and found his table through the milling bodies. They had apparently found him already; everyone at the table was watching him. Roger said something to the table, and they all laughed. At him, no doubt. “No.” He turned back to Marta. “I mean, they retired us.”
“Retired you? But you’re all so young and tender.”
“Twelve years out of the service this year.”
“Well, seasoned and gamey, maybe. But not throwaways.”
Cormick shrugged. “Blackbie’s paying us full benefits, so I’m not complaining. We just have to figure out what to do to keep ourselves busy.”
“If you listened to me, you’d put your stake and those moves of yours into Battle. I know you’d be living like royalty within a season.”
“If I listened to you, I’d be a toy in your belt pocket. Toss me to the twins when you were through with me.”
“Maybe so, Boy. Except I don’t think there would be much left for the twins when I got through with you.” She set a cup filled with a dark, swirling liquid on the bar and nudged it toward him. “Here, give me another kiss, in case I don’t see you on your way out. One to last me for awhile.” She caught Cormick with a hand on either side of his face and held him in place while she leaned over the bar, bringing her lips to his. Her eyes closed, but her kiss was tender and chaste. She leaned back to look him over once more, rolled his earlobe between the fingers of her glove, gave him a light pat on the cheek, and began tapping the list of drinks that had piled up for her.
Cormick scooped up his cup, sipping off the top so it wouldn’t spill as he wound his way toward the table. He had to cross the dance floor to get there, and that could get a bit raucous, depending on the twins. But they finished their song and went silent. Uh-oh. He knew what was coming. First he heard the Channel Three audiologo, then Kurtie Brook’s voiceover. Over his shoulder he saw stock footage of Eggs on the display, and a wideshot of sector 165. He ducked his head and pushed harder through the crowd toward the table. Marta would like nothing better than to catch him out in the middle of the floor when his face appeared in Kurtie’s bundle. Hell, Marta would probably turn a spotlight on him to see if she could make him blush. With the song over, the dance floor stilled, and he hurried to the other side.
He broke through to his table. “Hoi. Full house, eh?”
Cormick made quick nods of greeting all around before looking for a place to sit. But they hadn’t left one for him. Damwick sat right on one end of the crescent bench, and Glenda, his steady, sat close beside him and had a leg up in his lap. She regarded Cormick with a raised brow that dared him to ask them to move in. At the other end of the bench, Shon had one thigh half-off the seat, and Roger was pressed right up against her. Byrie and Tetva sprawled at the back of the crescent, spreading to cover as much room as possible between the others.
Cormick bumped Damwick with his knee as he set his cup down. “Slide over, Gunder.”
Byrie flicked his head at Cormick. “Bench is full, Greene. Looks like you’ll need to order up a chair.”
“You have the table controls right there.”
“Oh… Well, now. they seem to be broken. Why don’t you go talk to Marta about a chair?”
Cormick shook his head and cast a glance over his shoulder. The displays on the bar were already showing headshots of the quadry. “Come on, Major. Make some room. You know they’re going to-”
“-MAJOR BYRIE HAROLD … LEFTENIN MINOR DAMWICK GUNDER … LEFTENIN MINOR ROGER JASPER … LEFTENIN – PLOOS – CORMICK – GREENE!”
Ploos? Cormick didn’t recall having that pip on his shoulder.
A halo light above the table crowned the quadry as Kurtie’s voiceover listed the heroes of the day. A soft spotlight from the peak of the dome rolled over the crowd to find Cormick, casting his shadow over the table while Kurtie’s voice drew out his name. He turned from the table to see top-down footage of his egg wading through a sea of Squishies (probably super-enhanced feed from the HFO’s array). The cameras followed his egg until it was the last one standing in a vast writhing puddle of Squishies and Squishie parts, until it picked up the RSU and flung it over the outcropping, until it shelled and disappeared in the white noise of the compressor bomb. The video continued to an interview with Korie Morefield, but the cantina crowd had begun breaking away from the displays to applaud, or – to Cormick’s sighing chagrin – to follow the spotlight over toward the table.
For the next quarter hour, Cormick was bustled around the tangle of people that had gathered by the table. Bustled and bussed. Since he was the only one of his quadry standing, he took the brunt of the attention and affection. “Thank you.” “Thanks.” “No, it wasn’t too scary.” “Not very often.” “Yes, thanks.” “Just a part of our job.” “No.” “Sure – maybe later?” “I’m not sure.” “No… yes! I mean Yes.” “Thank you.” Gah – it seemed like most of the femmes were wearing transferable lipstick; he’d already smudged off more than a dozen colors.
Even when the crowd spoke to the seated members of the quadry, they bounced the attention back at him, grinning all the while. “Yes, that was his Egg there on the screen. The one at the end that saved the RSU.” “No, no – he’s the single one.” “I think he dances even better. You should ask him.” “I’ve got one right here, thanks, but I don’t think Leftenin Greene’s had even one drink yet tonight.”
The crowd began thinning to normal proportions once all the femmes and half the women had been kissed – the other half were satisfied with a squeeze or a shaken hand. A few of the men wanted to grip his shoulder and quiz him about the military, but most of them left with a femme, telling her about that one time he had run into a couple of Squishies… no, it was at least a half-dozen of them.
Cormick turned, mouth drawn, back to his table, where he found everyone holding back laughter with various degrees of success. “Thanks for that.”
Byrie flashed Cormick a wicked grin while he keyed an order into the table. A pair of chairs slid out of the ground, filling in the gap in the crescent. “There we go. I seem to have fixed it.” Once Cormick had expressed the requisite wry thanks, Byrie continued, “Actually, we got the better part of Marta’s attentions when we got here; we just didn’t want you to miss out. Now have a drink and a sink, Greene. You’re blocking my view of the display, and the Battle is about to start.”
Cormick leaned over toward Glenda and Damwick as he half-turned to face the holofield. While Kurtie’s bundle finished and the ambient light in the room began dropping by degrees, he kissed Glenda on the cheek and tapped his cup against the Damwick’s. “Who’s on tonight, Gunder?”
Damwick answered in a lower voice, since the noise in the cantina had dropped as the field flickered and re-synchronized at double size, filling the open air beyond the diameter of the bar. “The main show is a multi – all non-humans. I don’t think any of them are supremals, though, or there would be better billing. The opener backed out this morning, I guess, so Marta bought a Tiger repeat.”
Cormick nodded and sipped. A black ‘Skinned waitress passed in front of him, distributing food orders. Cormick didn’t recognize her – she was probably a last minute replacement. A lot of people and their jobs were heading off-planet on different schedules.
An ebb of appreciative murmurs rolled through the cantina when the title announcing the historic Tiger match spiraled around the holo for all to see. Models of the two Battlers appeared on either end of the field, while pointers guided by disembodied voices – only occasionally embodying to show their celebrity faces – discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each of the combatants.
Tiger was Ohida’s champion, but she was the favorite of all mankind, on-planet or not. She had appeared in the sport shortly after the war, and had worked her way up through the ranks the long, hard way – by winning match after match. She entered the interstellar majors already top-tier-ranked … and as one of the wealthiest and most idolized individual humans in any sport. Celebrity news had her as the matriarch of an anonymous plenigamy that included more than a few corporate royalty. Her face was a cliché in the stories, both licensed and unlicensed, though the difference between the two was hardly distinguishable any more. She was a stunner – a natural for the sport and the stories: seven feet tall (bordering on the limits of non-Brute genes), strangely voluptuous and lean at the same time, and with the gracious features of an Angelblood. She wore the same costume in every match: her famous unarmored tiger-striped ‘Skin, matching Junga gloves and boots – each with two serrated six-inch claws – and long hair pulled back into a knotted pony-tail, which only a few opponents had made the mistake of trying to grab. Tiger fought only death matches in the majors, and her career lasted only a single season – not because of loss, but because she ran out of willing opponents, and would not accept the unwilling ones.
The match Marta had bought was Tiger’s last; Cormick remembered it had been very short. The voiceovers had tried to stretch the match time with commentary and repeat video, but had eventually completed the hour with highlights from her season.
Her opponent had been a Gouh Hwar with some unpronounceable name. She was an average size for a supremal species – twenty feet from end to end, and probably a metric half-ton in weight. She was roughly the shape of a tail-less, ear-less rat, if rats were covered with spiny scales and had jaws that opened wide enough to swallow themselves. Rumor had it she was not particularly bright, even for a Gouh Hwar, but she was the hope of dignity for the races that couldn’t accept their defeat at the hands of the “hairless grub”. Rumors aside, Cormick recalled that she had learned the common language of Man just for the taunt session. And according to the commentators, she had a history of wins in the Southern Cross stretching back years before Tiger was born.
The odds had been slightly in the favor of the Gouh Hwar. The odds went even more in her favor when Tiger announced she would not change her gear, in spite of her claws being too short to reach between the Gouh Hwar’s scales, and despite her Second Skin offering no significant crush protection.
The Battle repeat was unedited from the first broadcast: Tiger immediately rushed the scaled rat and flicked a quick prick toward her nostril – one of the few unprotected spots on her body – before flipping herself up and over her opponent. The Gouh Hwar reared – much faster than anyone thought she could move – and Tiger arced straight into her jaws, obliging the beast even further by pushing off a long fang and plunging straight down her throat. What happened over the next twenty seconds could be guessed by the convulsions and contortions of the Gouh Hwar; apparently Tiger went down fast enough to avoid both her snapping jaws and her row of back-trap teeth, dropping straight into a stomach pouch. The supremal stumbled and slumped to the ground, limp but not dead, and Tiger cut her way out of its belly. At the live crowd’s insistence, she returned to the creature’s innards to issue the coup-de-grace.
The audience in the Cantina was respectfully silent during that minute or so, repeat though it was, and began cheering only when the commentators started on the analysis, which now included a cut-away extrapolation of what had actually happened inside the Gouh Hwar’s belly.
Byrie thumbed the controls at the table, and the booth was bathed in the ambient hum of reversed noise. Then the sound from the display was allowed in, but quieter than Marta had it set; all other sound from the Cantina was muted. “Do you think you could beat her?”
Cormick turned back to the table; Byrie was looking right at him.
“Who – the Gouh Hwar?”
“Tiger, of course. She killed the Gouh Hwar, remember? And none of your fake, stammering modesty, Greene. We need a straight answer. Money could be involved.”
Cormick frowned. What was this – a conspiracy? “Maybe. I suppose it would be a pretty even fight. Though I don’t like death matches – not starring me, anyway. Not profitable. Doesn’t leave much room for a rematch.”
“But if you could win, then why don’t you? Death matches aside. Though of course you know your whole stint with Blackbie and Severin and Mother Military before that makes you the liar with those.”
“Major – are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Quite the opposite. I’d rather stake the quadry fund on you and ride you to retirement. So why don’t you go and make us all rich? You have the skills. You have A’lah’s favor, eh?”
Cormick frowned. “I think you know the answer.” It wasn’t the first time Marta had tried to enlist him, but he didn’t understand why Byrie was quizzing him about it. Especially when he knew why Cormick was late tonight. They already had a business plan. “I might have some moves, but I don’t have charisma.”
Glenda beat Damwick to the retort, “Marta might disagree.” Damwick added on, “And half the cantina. They’d put you on the dessert menu if the kitchen was still here tomorrow to serve you.”
Cormick shook his head. “You couldn’t get Humanity behind a male Battler. I’m not empathetic – not commercial enough. You all know that. I’d win some matches – sure – but they’d never put me in the majors.”
“Leftenin, do you know what Tiger’s given name is?”
“No. Major.”
“Greene. Siobhan Greene.”
“What of it?”
“She shares your Mother. You two are … cousins. From the same crèche. And she only graduated two years ahead of you. You’d have bumped shoulders for sure if you’d stuck to the Gladiator Track.”
“Major, I have thousands of cousins scattered in every Empire, and I wouldn’t recognize more than a handful. Two of the other quadries here on Chandier have Greenes in them.”
“But the fact is, you share genos with Tiger. Whatever charisma you think you don’t have just hasn’t had the ring to shine in. You’re more than a match for her in every other way.”
Cormick shifted uncomfortably “With all respect to you, and to the quadry’s finances, you’ll have to trust me that I’ve done the equations. The derivative is: no Battle for this Greene.” He stared at Byrie for some explanation, but received only the same searching gaze in return. “So, why the quiz, Major? Especially after what we talked about today.” Especially since Byrie knew what errand had made him late.
It wasn’t as though they’d never discussed it before. There was plenty of money to be made outside the majors, even outside of death matches. Charisma or no, Cormick did have the aptitude. Or at least Mother Military thought so, anyway – she had drafted him after his first year of quadry training for the Gladiator track, and only let him go, one demerit shy of permanent mop duty, after he failed out of the program. For the third time. For intentional losses.
Cormick was simply an exceptional fighter. His reflexes were predictable only in that they were very fast and very effective. He had far more natural talent than Mother had expected from his breeding program, and he absorbed whatever training she gave him like a sponge in a bucket. But he didn’t enjoy doing it – not the killing, anyway.
He wasn’t angsty about the death. He knew as well as anyone that souls re-incarnated – a particular body was just another change of clothes. And those species that didn’t re-incarnate? Well, he was no assassin – if they were fighting him, they were soldiers and their death was a possibility they had already accepted.
“Because you, Leftenin Ploos Greene, of all of us, have the greatest reason and opportunity to break the quadry. We’re already doing what we do best. You… we all know you get offers, whether or not you bring them to us. I have no doubt you’ve already seen a transfer offer sent after Blackbie cancelled, right? Buy you out, plus twenty percent? If you’re going to be parting ways with us, now would be the time to say it.”
If Roger or Damwick were slighted, they didn’t show it. They never had. They simply waited attentively on Cormick’s response.
Ahh… Byrie was watching the other two as well. Cormick nodded slowly. He answered Byrie, but his eyes flicked between the two Lef-Minors. “I’d be the last one to break the quadry, Major. Everyone knows that. I’m a lifer.”
That was the truth. And in terms of a career as a Battler, that was his problem, too. As best as Cormick could tell, Mother Military had done too good a job of bonding him with his quadry, or too poor a job providing him with other family hooks. It wasn’t ability in the sport he lacked – it was desire. He didn’t really want the fame, he didn’t really want the fortune, and so far he had done passingly well at finding a bedmate as often as necessary to keep him happy and healthy. What he wanted was a family – brothers and sisters – and the quadry was the best he’d found so far.
Byrie smiled, nodding approvingly at his response, but Cormick frowned into his cup. He lifted the cup, swirling the dark juice inside along the powder-frosted rim, then sloshed back the mixture. It was too early in the night and not deep enough into the glass to be thinking about family. He reached a hand into his belt pocket and flipped the little button there.
