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There Is No Darkness
By Joe Haldeman, Jack C. Haldeman II OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1983 Joe Haldeman and Jack C. Haldeman II
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4291-8
CHAPTER 1
I was obviously supposed to be impressed: loincloth, beads, two meters of hard black Maasai'pyan. Mr. B'oosa walked up to me with two quarterstaffs over his shoulder: hollow shafts of aluminum not quite as long as he was tall. He was a lot shorter than me.
"Mr. Bok," he said. "A friendly challenge?" The expression on his face was not friendly.
"Busy. Sir." I was trying to get some useful exercise out of a weight machine built for people half my size.
"The challenge doesn't interest you?"
I sighed and let the weights rattle back to home position. "I can't fight you, Mr. B'oosa. I outweigh you by fifty kilos ... and besides —"
"Besides, you're a hardy Springworld pioneer? And I'm just a rich man's son?"
"And a head shorter than me and five or six years older. Homicide doesn't attract me, thank you sir."
"Oh, but that's exactly the point." He tapped the floor with the two quarterstaffs. "With these, the match will be more than fair."
It would be fun to take him down. But when you're a giant among pygmies, you learn to hold your temper or be branded a bully.
A small crowd was gathering around us. It was between classes and Starschool's high-gravity gym was packed with students getting in shape for planetfall.
"Come on, Carl; never the wrong time to teach a ricon a lesson." That was Garcia Odoñez, another scholarship student. I think he was studying to be a bad example. "You aren't afraid, are you?"
I just looked at him; what I hoped was a withering glance.
"Have you ever used one?" B'oosa held a staff out to me. I tested it. It twisted easily and I smoothed it back into shape, more or less.
"No sir." I could tie the damned thing around his neck. "A Springer fights fairly or not at all." I tried to hand it back to him but he wouldn't take it.
"An impressive display of brute strength, Carl." He flipped his staff easily from hand to hand. "But strength counts for nothing with the quarterstaff. The request stands."
"Perhaps you could tell me why — why you're challenging me out of nowhere — and I might go along with it. I can't see that I have any quarrel with you." No real quarrel with him personally. But he was a ricon and the ricones had not made life pleasant the past year.
"You misunderstand. This is not a personal thing ... I just want to settle a wager. One of my colleagues" — colleagues! — "Mr. Mengistu believes I can best him at the quarterstaff mainly because of longer reach and greater strength. I contend that skill alone determines the winner. If I can beat you, he agrees, size and strength mean little."
"How much are you betting on this little contest?"
He shrugged. "Five thousand."
My father once made P4000 on a crop several years ago. Bad weather had driven the price up. The harvest cost him two fingers and almost killed him.
"All right. But be ready to lose more than a few pesas. Teeth, for instance."
"I doubt it. Where would you like to have the match?"
"Anywhere it'll be easy to clean up the blood. Right here, if these people will clear away."
The crowd shuffled back, making a rough circle four or five meters in diameter. Didn't look like much room to me, but B'oosa nodded and stepped to the other side of the circle.
I'd never used a quarterstaff — Springers don't have time to learn how to beat on each other with sticks — but I had seen a few matches at the public combats on Selva, during the month while I was waiting for Starschool to pick me up. It didn't look all that difficult. You use the staff for both offense and defense, trying to block and attack at the same time.
I swung the staff in a fast arc, getting the feel of it. It made a sound like a spear whipping through the air. The circle widened a bit. "If this were more solid you'd be a dead man. Sir."
"It isn't and, no, I wouldn't be. Take your guard."
"My 'guard'?"
"Take your guard. Prepare to defend yourself. Like this." He spread his feet and held the staff at a slight angle, protecting his body. I did recognize the position and copied it. I had more body to protect, though.
"Are there any rules?" I asked.
"It's ungentlemanly to aim for the eyes. If you knock out a person's eye you must be careful not to step on it."
His own eyes looked calm and suddenly very old. His whole manner changed as he began to advance crabwise toward me, somehow gracefully. Relaxed yet tense, like an animal stalking.
My reflexes had to be better than his; he was a city man and I grew up on a planet full of fast hungry predators. His confidence got to me, though. I decided it would be safest not to play around. Get in there fast and first.
I tried to copy his slow shuffle. Go for the groin? Hell, I didn't want to kill him. Solar plexus; that would put him down. I stood my ground and waited for him to come into range.
It seemed to all happen in a fraction of a second. He suddenly danced in and rapped the knuckles of both my hands, so hard I dropped the pole. Reached down to pick it up and he banged me a good backhand to the top of my skull. I shook my head to clear the dizziness, scooped up the staff and drove straight for his solar plexus. He tapped it aside easily with one end of his staff and the other end whistled around to the side of my head —
I woke up lying in my bunk with a coldpack strapped over my left temple. I sat up and, man, fireballs started to tear my head apart.
"Are you all right, Carl?" It was Alegria, a pretty little girl from Selva.
"Sure, just fine. Great. Nothing like a little workout." I swung my feet down to the floor and blocked out the light with one hand. "How long have I been out?"
"All night and half the morning. You came out of it before we got you to the infirmary" — yeah, I could remember that, barely — "but the medic gave you a pill and you were out again, so we carted you back down here. You weigh a ton."
"One hundred-sixty-two kilograms, anyhow." It's not true that I'm sensitive about my weight. People are always exaggerating.
"In case you're interested, you don't have a concussion or anything."
"Feels like I've got concussions to spare. Be glad to share 'em with that little son —"
"Hush, Carl. The Dean thinks it was an accident."
"Accident? Why should I cover up for that ricon —"
"Think straight, you big farmer. We aren't covering for him!"
Of course ... giant Springer bully picking on ... oh, Christ. I leaned back on the pillow. Gently.
"You missed three classes, last night and today. I put your assignments on the table there."
"Thanks, Alegria, you're sweet." A pity she wasn't a meter taller. I felt her hand on my forehead and opened my eyes again, just a squint.
"Want me to get you some wake-up pills? You've got to get your classwork done before we get to Earth." Otherwise they keep you in quarantine until you catch up academically. "You don't want to miss part of the tour."
Far as I was concerned, Earth could go to Hell. "How long before we get there?"
"Less than three days and you've got four days' work. Pills?"
"Just some analgesics."
"On the table, next to your books." The bed creaked a little when she got up and I heard the door slide open. "Study hard, Carl." Then she was gone. I took the headache pills, then lay on the bunk another ten minutes, feeling miserable, before I got up and looked at the books. All of them Earth history, geophysics, customs and so on — not exactly a joy to read even if they'd been in English. But of course, most of them were Spanish and Pan-swahili, both of which I should know better than I do.
My head was still aching when they parked Starschool in orbit next to Earth's Customs Satellite. All spindly and spiderlike, the starship-university is great for punching holes through space, but it isn't equipped for landing on planets at all. The lightest gravity would cause crushing torques, tear it apart. We always orbit planets and shuttle down. But first we have to go through the cinta roja. "Red tape," you figure it out.
First a team of Earthie doctors came aboard Starschool and poked and prodded us to make sure we weren't bringing any nasty alien bugs down to their precious planet. Then we had to fill out a lot of forms. I got writer's cramp from signing my name so many times. Finally we transferred over to the Customs Satellite and stood for a long time in two lines. The line I was in was for everybody who weighed over seventy-five kilograms. It was a short line.
The Dean, Dr. M'bisa, walked over. He was arguing with a little Earthie in a light blue uniform.
"We signed a contract, Mr. Pope-Smythe, a legal contract that said nothing about this idiotic tax! It guaranteed all of our expenses while —"
"Please, Professor. I didn't say there was anything wrong with your contract. But that's strictly between you and Earth Tours, Limited. None of our business at all. Perhaps you can get them to reimburse you ... but there's no way any of your students can be allowed to make planetfall until every overweight person has paid the Extraweight Alien Tax."
"You know as well as I do that Earth Tours will never —"
"Again, Professor, that's your problem. My problem is that all of these people have to pay the Extraweight before I can go to lunch. The tax probably isn't covered in your contract because it wasn't in effect until last Avril — but you still have to pay it; the Alianza's laws don't make exceptions for agreements between private, profit-making organizations. Besides, the tax isn't that much — only ten or twenty pesas for all but a couple of these people."
"And for them?"
"Well, it goes up quite a bit for those over ninety kilos. How much do you weigh, son?" He was talking to me.
"One hundred-sixty-two kilograms." All of it muscle, too, goddammit.
"That much? Oh, dear. Let me see." He riffled through the tables in the back of a pamphlet. "That would come to P16,800."
The Dean exploded. "That's outrageous!"
"It's the law." Mr. Pope-Smythe shrugged and held the pamphlet out for him to see.
"Oh, I believe you." He waved the book away. Then he snatched it back and checked the figures.
"Dr. M'bisa," I said, "I don't want to go to Earth that badly. Not P17,000 worth." P17,000! A small fortune on Springworld. My father's biggest crop had brought P4000. "Besides, I don't have a tenth that much."
"It's not your decision, Carl." He looked sour. "Nor your money. That's what the General Fund is for, unforeseen emergencies."
"But it's more than half my tuition!"
"I well know that. Your planet is getting a real bargain."
People weren't going to like this. The General Fund was also used to add unplanned side trips, and to make certain purchases for scholarship students. Without it, only ricónes could afford souvenirs from places like Nuovo Colombia. "It's too big a bite. It's not worth it."
"Perhaps not," he snapped, then continued, more mildly. "You have no choice in the matter, and neither have I. The Hartford Corporation signed an agreement with your government detailing the benefits you would receive from Starschool. You may elect not to land on Hell or Thelugi. You will at least set foot on every other planet. If you don't, your government could sue Hartford for breach of contract."
"I'm willing to take the responsibility."
"How good of you. Unfortunately you cannot. The Regents of Starschool stand in loco parentis to you until your twenty-first birthday. Until then, you have only limited legal responsibility for your own actions."
He put his hand on my arm. "As you say, it is a big bite. But we do have to make allowances for foreign customs, foreign laws, even when they're unreasonable. People will understand."
Somehow it sounded all right when the Dean said it. But after everybody got weighed, all but one of the others was under ninety kilos. Their total tax was P1130, not even a tenth of mine. The only other one over ninety was Mr. B'oosa, who had to pay P1900. He just whipped out his checkbook and paid it himself. Hell, why not? He had five thousand extra for knocking me flat the other day.
The total tax took over half of what was left in the student expense fund. That made me one real popular fellow, having accounted for more than nine-tenths of it.
Piling insult on insult, they organized us alphabetically for the Tour, in groups of three. I had to share rooms with good old Mr. B'oosa and another ricón by name of Francisco Bolivar. I could tell it was going to be a long Tour.
But even before we got on the shuttle down to Earth's only spaceport, Chimbarazo Interplanetario, I had figured out a plan. A simple plan.
I hoped.
By the same genetic engineering that made me a giant, all Earthies were midgets — nobody weighed more than forty kilograms.
Somewhere on this beat-up planet there had to be a job — a high-paying job — that called for a man, a boy if you want to get technical about it, who weighed more than four Earthies and stood two and a half meters tall. I swore I would earn back that P16,800, every pesa of it. And get off everybody's list.
CHAPTER 2
Chimbarazo Interplanetario was just another spaceport. It was big, but who's ever seen a small one? We had a half-hour to kill before getting on the Tour flyer, so I found the nearest newsprojector, slid a demipesa into the slot and pushed the button marked "English."
"Section, please," the machine said.
"Let me have the wannads section," I said.
"Wannads? Query? We have no wannads section."
What did they call wannads on Earth? Wish I'd hit the books a little harder those last three days. "How about jobs?"
"How about jobs?" it echoed. Goddamn dumb machine.
"Do you have a 'jobs' section?"
"Jobs? Query? We have no jobs section."
Employment. "Do you have an 'employment' section?"
"Yes, we have an employment section." Click. "Your time has expired. Please deposit two demipesas."
"But I already paid, you stupid —"
Click.
I gave up and slipped it another two demis. A list of jobs came on the screen. Turning a knob, I started to scan them.
It didn't look very promising.
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Chimbarazo-Macro-BA Area
ABSTRACOTYPIST, senior, 30K, gd wrk cond, 314-90343-098367.
ACETOGRAPHER, degr only, 12K, 547-23902-859 430.
ACTOR, sal var, feelie-sens, exp only, no minors, 254-34290-534265.
AEROSPACE ENG, PhD only, 38K, cisplan envir spec pref, Lun office, 452-78335- 973489.
... and so on. Didn't even know what half of them meant. I must have scanned a hundred before one caught my eye:
GLADIATORS, prizes to 20K, taxfree, esp vibroclub. 8 indiv, 75 team openings. Some animal work. 738-49380-720843.
I wrote down the number and ran to the flyer, just barely making it in time. The Dean scowled at me as I strapped myself in, feeling guilty for taking up a whole row of three seats. On our way to the art museum in Macro-Buenosaires, I studied the city map and found a large arena, not far from the museum. As soon as the Tour landed, I slipped away. So much for culture; I had work to do.
I'd seen a couple of gladiatorial matches before; not on Springworld, of course, but places like Selva and Nurodesia. They don't have to fight their planets so much, so they fight each other in the arena. On Earth it turned out to be quite different, and even more popular.
I bought the cheapest ticket and found my way to a bleacher area. Everybody was cheering and yelling at once; a solid roar like thundersurf. Hard to see what they were so excited about. Two men were slugging it out down in the arena, but from the bleachers you could hardly tell what they were doing. I rented a scope from a robot vendor.
Don't think either of them were Earthies. One was tall and black like B'oosa, probably a Maasai'pyan. The other was tan and shorter, but seemed to have a weight advantage. They were fighting with short clubs, each with his left hand taped behind his back. It was exciting, and looked kind of hard; lots of fancy footwork and dodging back and forth.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from There Is No Darkness by Joe Haldeman, Jack C. Haldeman II. Copyright © 1983 Joe Haldeman and Jack C. Haldeman II. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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