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
