Shapeshifter Finals Part 1

Shapes.h.i.+fter Finals.

by Jeffrey A. Carver.

The crowd roared as the first pair of wrestlers engaged in compet.i.tion out on the center mat. "Aww-riiiiii-choooo-guyyyys!" "HUGGA-HUGGGA-HUGGGA-HUGGGA!" "Wickety-(psicry!)-wickety- (psicry!)-wickety-(psicry!)" Hog Donovan peeked over in the direction of the match, but tried not to get drawn into watching it. Neither of the contestants in the ninety-three pound cla.s.s was human, and better he should keep his mind on his own upcoming match.

"Gaaiiee! Gaaiiee!" "Brackit-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it!" "Wheeeooop-ooop-ooop!" The a.s.sortment of cries from the stands was d.a.m.ned disconcerting, the crowd being over half extraterrestrials. It was the opening bout, finals round, in the 57,463rd Annual Games of the IntraGalactic Interworld Multicultural Amateur Wrestling League--and the first games ever to be hosted by Earth. Hog Donovan prayed that the human fans could drown out all the ETs when he got to the mat himself. He was as nervous as a laboratory rat on speed, and he was going to need all the psychological boost he could get.

Hog paced the warmup area in his tights and warmup jacket, trying to still the b.u.t.terflies in his stomach. It would be at least forty minutes yet before they called him to the mat, for the hundred thirty-eight pound finals. An eternity! Hog threw himself into his warmup exercises and tried to blank out everything else.

Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye... The refrain of a popular song repeated mercilessly in his head, warring with the cheers of the crowd.

Hog grunted, working up a good sweat. Hog indeed! He was long and whiplike, and bore his nickname only because his old heavyweight friend, Hermie "Harmin'" Harmon, had dubbed him "Hog" in retribution for his jokes about Harmon's rhinolike neck. Those were the old days, but the name had stuck...

The crowd roared, and Hog was startled to realize that the first match was over--the victor a mercurial-skinned creature from Tau Ceti. The next weight cla.s.s was up, and--hey!--this was the only other human finalist, a wiry little Brit named Johnnie Johnson, up against some sort of centipede from the Vega asteroids.

Hog ducked through to the sidelines to yell encouragement. "Give 'im h.e.l.l, Johnnie!" he hollered as the Earthman trotted onto the mat. His voice was drowned out by a loud buzzing. Up in the stands, a large contingent of centipede fans were rubbing their upper limbs together, en ma.s.se, cheering on their fellow Vegan.

Hog suppressed a shudder as he watched Johnnie engage the centipede from a standing position. All those legs. And they were so...insectlike. And quick. With a chitter and a blur of speed, the centipede caught Johnnie's left ankle with several of its legs, and tripped him for a two-point takedown. The crowd buzzed in appreciation.

"Get up! Keep moving!" Hog yelled.

Tap tap. Hog started at the rap on the top of his head, and turned to see Coach Tagget urging him away from the sidelines. "But coach--"

"Hog, go warm up. Don't fret over Johnnie, you're just scaring yourself." Tagget rapped him on the skull again. "Don't forget--"

"I know, I know, the brain is the most important muscle," Hog repeated by rote, as he turned back to the warmup area.

"Think about your match. Think," Coach Tagget urged, as Hog resumed his stretches. After a moment, satisfied with Hog's progress, the coach left to go watch Johnnie himself.

Think, right. Think about the fact that he was about to wrestle an alien named Belduki-Elikitango-Hardart-Colloidisan, an Ektra shapechanger capable of a.s.suming about a thousand different multiworld multicultural body configurations. He was thinking about it, all right. And he was having trouble keeping his knees from shaking.

Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye...

He remembered how smug the Earth promoters had been when the IIMAWL rules committee had offered to make terran rules the norm for this tournament, in honor of the hosting world. Of course, none of the promoters had even thought about the fact that Earth's wrestlers would be competing against sentient bugs, snakes, gorillas...and shapes.h.i.+fters...except that they'd finally decreed a return to the more modest, and protective, tights in place of skimpy singlets. In other respects, the referees' interpretation of Earth's rules had turned out to be a tad subjective, to say the least.

"Johnnie--NO!"

The single shout from the Brit's coach was drowned out by a rising buzz from the crowd. Hog jumped up, trying to see what was happening. The centipede buzz crescendoed. Hog ducked through an opening in the sidelines crowd to get a better view.

Uh-oh. Johnnie was in big trouble. The centipede had him halfway onto his back, with about six legs pus.h.i.+ng his shoulders toward the mat. Hog knelt on the sidelines, twisting and arching sympathetically as Johnnie struggled against the inexorable leverage of all those limbs. Johnnie's coach, a wiry little man, was screaming, "Scoot out! Scoot out!" and making futile sweeping gestures with his arms.

Hog cupped his hands and screamed, "PULL HIS ANTENNAS! PULL HIS ANTENNAS!"

The match seemed to freeze abruptly, as the centipede c.o.c.ked its head and glared across the mat at Hog with all four eyes. Its hairy antennas bristled. Hog gulped, regretting his impulsive yell. The thing looked as if it might just abandon the match and come on over and stomp him for his remark. It appeared to have completely forgotten its opponent.

Johnnie seized the opportunity. For an instant, it looked as though he might actually grab the thing's antennas--which would have been a definite foul--but instead, Johnnie managed to get an elbow inside the thing's legs and knock out several locked joints, loosening the centipede's grip. The crowd buzzed, and the centipede turned back to its opponent, but Johnnie was already wriggling quickly out of its arms.

"That's it! That's it! That's it!" screamed the coach, waving wildly.

Johnnie was frantically trying to complete his escape. He had one leg out now and was up on the other knee. The human crowd was screaming.

The centipede spasmed with rage and tackled Johnnie with a dozen legs. They fell together to the mat with a whump, knocking the breath out of Johnnie. Before Hog could even rise up on his toes to yell, Johnnie was on his back under the centipede, the ref was down on five elbows, peering to see if shoulder blades were touching the mat, and--slap! tweeeeeeeet!--just like that, Johnnie was pinned and the match was over.

The centipede humped its back and drew away from its human opponent, chittering triumphantly. Johnnie sat up, gasping. The centipede crowd went crazy rubbing their limbs.

Hog caught Coach Tagget's eye and turned away, sighing, to return to the warmup area. Johnnie had finished in second place. That meant the honor of Earth, wrestling-wise, rested on Hog. He swallowed, trying not to think about it. But how could he not think about it? He was the only human left in the finals. All eyes, and cameras, would be on him.

As he was stretching his hamstrings, Johnnie walked past, shaking his head. "Tough luck," Hog sympathized.

The Englishman paused, peering at him with dazed eyes. "Are you the bloke who got that thing as mad as a raving hornet?"

"I--well--" Hog spread his hands. "I was just cheering for you. You almost made it out, too. Sorry you didn't--"

"You know what those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds smell like, when they're on top of you and they're mad?" Johnnie wheezed. "Cheeeeeeez-z-z," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "That was what d.a.m.n near killed me." Johnnie shook his head and wandered off toward the clutches of the TV interviewers. "It wasn't the b.l.o.o.d.y pin..."

Hog saw Johnnie's coach staring darkly in his direction. He went back to his warmups. Stretch left, stretch right, down, up...

"Heyyaaah, earthman krrreeepy-krrreeepy..."

Hog turned, wrinkling his nose at a sudden whiff of ammonia. The centipede was standing beside him, balanced on half its legs, waving the claws on the rest of its legs in his direction. "Uh--?" Hog managed. "Can I, uh, help you?"

The centipede's antennas waved drunkenly. "Hoho ya.s.sss," hissed the centipede. "Krrreeepy-krreeepy earthman sso sssmart! Come sssee me lataaah." Poot. It made a loud spitting sound. "Yahh-heyyy?"

Hog backed up a step. "I don't know what you're talking about--"

The centipede chittered with laughter and sauntered away. "Lataaaah, earthman..."

Hog stared after it in disbelief. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Then he heard the familiar sound of his coach tsk-tsking.

"Poor sportsmans.h.i.+p, Hog. That's all that is--poor sportsmans.h.i.+p. What do you expect from a centipede?" Tagget scowled at the Vegan, who was now parading in front of its fans, waving its arms in triumph. "Look, why don't you go on back to the locker room and clear your mind. I'll call you when it's time to come back out."

Hog nodded with relief. Yes. Back to the locker room. Forget centipedes. Have a swallow of honey for quick energy.

Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye...

He trotted back to the locker room, shaking the tension out of his arms.

All things considered, it was actually pretty amazing that Earth had ever gotten nominated to host the IIMAWL tournament. After all, by 2008 A.D., the farthest any human had ever gotten from Earth was the Moon. But the interworld sporting federation liked to give a boost to newly discovered worlds. And Earth was among the newest--not yet five years a part of the interworld community, since the Rigellians had landed and made first contact, and promptly proposed building factories here to employ the locals. In the eyes of the terran promoters, the tournament was not so much a sporting event per se as a promotion of tourism and general economic opportunity aimed at ETs who might want to spend money here. And in that respect, it was already successful, at least to the tune of a new sports complex for Cleveland and a good crowd of paying ET visitors.

The human wrestling world, on the other hand--the top wrestlers, the Olympic and AAU winners--had been pretty resistant to the idea, claiming that it was insane to pit oneself against aliens whose bodies were so different as to render compet.i.tion meaningless. Mostly, the sports writers echoed that position, denouncing the games as blatant sensationalism. Still, there were some good, if maybe not great, wrestlers who hadn't seen the obvious--and had wound up entering the compet.i.tions that one wag, as Time was so fond of putting it, called the "crocodile free- for-alls."

That's the kind of wrestler Hog Donovan was: not great--but sharp, determined, and something of an iconoclast. He figured he only had a few good years of wrestling left in him, and he was determined to make the best of them. And the way to do that was to enter a compet.i.tion so new, so outre, that the mainstream wrestling world hadn't caught on to it yet. And maybe, Hog figured, it would become recognized, and maybe it would even give him enough recognition so that once he'd hung up his tights and joined the working world, he wouldn't have to work on a Rigellian a.s.sembly line building Lotusflower roadsters.

Anyway, that was the reason he'd given his parents and his coach, though it was really only half the story. The other half was that he'd sacrificed and sweated blood at this sport for over seven years now, and by G.o.d, he wanted to be the best d.a.m.ned wrestler in the galaxy--okay, one of the best d.a.m.ned wrestlers in the galaxy--even if only for one brief, glorious moment.

To his own surprise, he'd done well, working his way through four preliminary rounds, and winning the semifinals just yesterday, narrowly besting a t.i.tanium-boned opponent with twice his strength and half his agility and intelligence. He was proud of that victory and the semiconductor-medal it had a.s.sured him of, and the recognition it brought to his home planet.

But right now, he had to focus on just one thing--and that was how the h.e.l.l to wrestle against an Ektra shapes.h.i.+fter.