Blackfish City(5)

The city would not go away. Kaev’s mind throbbed with it, with the pain of so much life surrounding him. So many things to be afraid of. So many things to want. He kept his lips pressed tight together, because otherwise he would scream.

Somewhere in the crowd, Go was watching him. She’d have one eye on her screen, but the other one would be on him. And she’d smile, to see him step forward, to watch her script act itself out.

Kaev leaped to the next beam. His opponent stood still, waiting for Kaev to come to him. Cocky; clueless. The poor dumb thing thought he was smart enough to anticipate what would happen when. He had no idea who Go was, how much energy and money went into making sure the fight played out a certain way.

America has fallen and I don’t feel so good myself.

The news had stuck with him in a way news didn’t, usually. Because what was America to Kaev? Just one more place he might have come from. Every Qaanaaq orphan had a head full of origin stories, the countries they fled, the wealthy powerful people their parents had been, the immense conspiracies that had put them where they were. Kaev was thirty-three now, too old for fantasies about what might have been. He knew what was, and what was was miserable. He ran along the length of the hanging log, hands back, spine straight and low, trying to push it all out of his head.

And as he drew near to the kid, the fog lifted. The din hushed. Fighting was where the pieces came together. The kid jumped, landed on the far end of the hanging log. A roar from the crowd. Kaev couldn’t hear the radio broadcaster’s commentary, but he knew precisely what he would say.

This kid is utterly unafraid! He leaps directly into the path of his opponent, landing in a flawless horse stance. There’s no knocking this guy into the drink . . .

Kaev always listened to his fights after they were over, a day or two later, when the buzz had faded altogether. Hearing Shiro describe his own efforts, even in the brisk, empty language of sports announcers, brought him a certain measure of peace. A flimsy, lesser cousin of the joy of fighting.

Instants before colliding with his opponent, Kaev leaped into the air and whirled his legs around. Smirking, the boy dropped to his knees and let Kaev’s jump kick pass harmlessly over him—but did not turn around fast enough. In the instant Kaev landed he was already pinioning around, delivering an elbow to the boy’s back. Not rooted, not completely balanced, nothing to cause real damage, but enough to make the kid wobble a little and stagger a step back.

A different kind of roar from the crowd: begrudging respect. Kaev was not their favorite, but he had gotten off a good shot and they acknowledged that. The imaginary Shiro in his head said, I think Hao will proceed with a little more caution from here on out, folks!

Now the younger fighter pursued him away from the center of the arena. At the outer ring of posts Kaev turned and kicked, but Hao effortlessly swerved to the side. At the precise instant that the momentum of the kick had ebbed, he leaned into Kaev’s leg and broke his balance. Anywhere else and he would have been finished, but at the outer ring the posts were close enough that Kaev could stumble-step to the next one.

Yes. Yes. This!

He bellowed. He was an animal, a monster, part polar bear. Unstoppable.

In his dreams, sometimes, he was a polar bear. And lately he’d been having those dreams more and more. He’d spent six hours, the day before, wandering up and down the Arms in search of the woman who was said to have come to Qaanaaq with a killer whale and a polar bear, but found nothing.

He sniffed the air, his head full of pheromonic information from his opponent, and charged.

A dance. A religious ritual. Whatever it was, Kaev was free for as long as he fought. He wasn’t thinking about how the spasms were getting worse, until he could barely speak a normal sentence. He wasn’t worrying about how the money wasn’t coming in the way it needed to, and pretty soon he’d have to move out of his Arm Seven shipping container and sleep in an Arm Eight capsule tenement or worse. He wasn’t thinking about Go, and how much he hated her, and what an idiot he’d been for being so in love with her once.

He was one with his opponent and the attention of the crowd. And the whisper of cold salt water, thirty feet below.

They grappled until the gong sounded, and they separated. This was not some savage skiff-bed fight, after all. The Yi He Tuan Arena beam fights were Qaanaaq’s most distinctive and beloved sport, and their champions won by agility and balance and swift punishing blows, not the frenzied grappling of street fighters. Kaev weighed more and his reflexes were better, but the kid had grace, had speed; Kaev could see why everyone liked him, why he’d been set out on this path to stardom.

Stars make money, Go had said five years ago. People pay to see someone they recognize, someone they can root for. And you can’t make a winner without a lot of losers.

Which is how Kaev’s life as a journeyman fighter began. The guy who other fighters fought when they needed to learn the ropes and build a lossless record at the same time. Not the worst career. Journeymen had a much longer shelf life than the stars, who usually fizzled out fast from one thing or another, but the stars tended to have handsome bank accounts to fall back on when they went bust. Journeymen were lucky to have a month’s rent as backup.

He didn’t mind the losing. He loved the fights, loved the way his opponent helped him step outside himself, and something about the fall into freezing water provided an almost orgasmic release.

What Kaev minded was the hunger, the anger, the empty feeling. What he minded, what he could never forgive Go or the crowds or the whole fucking city of Qaanaaq for, was that he hadn’t had an option.