Knife Fight and Other Struggles (28 page)

They gave him a shot of something to wake him up for the welcome-back party, and whatever it was it certainly did the trick—Max was so alert that he felt like he could kill every one of the thirty-seven houseflies crawling in and out of his ears if he wanted to, with nothing more deadly than the rock-hard tip of his newly rigidified tongue. He walked into the retrofitted mess hall unaided and sidled up to the bar.

Max looked around the room for some conversation, but he was a little dismayed to realize he recognized almost no one in the room. Max sighed and took careful sips from the drink the barkeep placed in front of him. It could have been anything from mineral water to goat’s urine to his drug-benumbed taste buds.

It was actually okay not knowing anybody to talk to; Max was in no mood for conversation anyway. All he would get would be some armchair-producer critiques of Jim’s last season on
Wylde’s Kingdom
; or, worse, some liposucking fanboy gushing over just how dangerous a giant squid really was, reeling off statistics and little-known facts about how big their beaks were and how long their tentacles could reach, and marvelling at how much balls Jim—they would call him Jim, not Max, always Jim, because Max was a nobody and in their formative years Jim had been the next best thing to a positive role model—just exactly how much balls Jim had going up against the kraken, and not just one, but seven . . . ten . . . a hundred—Christ, who knew how many?
Did he have a plan?
, they’d ask.
Would this be Jim’s last hurrah?

“Sure’y no’,” said Max to himself, his tongue about as agile as an ice-splintered tree stump. He must have said it louder than he’d intended; he drew uncomfortable stares from nearby conversations. Max took another sip of his drink.

He began to wonder what he was doing here in the first place. It was true, there wasn’t really much he could have done to resist the AbSucker attack, and he could be excused for a certain amount of lassitude in its aftermath, as they ferried his sagging skin to the shuttle pad. And once on board the shuttle it would have been tricky for him to do anything, really, but wait until they landed. And once on board the
Minnow
Jerry had tricked him with lights and cameras, so, even had he wanted to, there wasn’t anything to be done then either.

But now—was he going to wait until Jerry dropped him into a nest of giant squid, or whatever it was he was planning for him, before he took some kind of decisive action?

Action.

Max spotted two exits: the one he’d come in from, which led to the dressing rooms and studio after a few turns and ladders; and the washrooms, which Max recalled had a second exit leading through to an old barracks room, which, after some doing, led to the main deck and the lifeboats.

Max made up his mind. He swallowed the last of his mysteriously flavoured drink, got up, and headed for the washrooms, trying his best to look nonchalant. It must have worked—not a soul even looked up as he left his party. Once out of the room, Max hurried along the narrow corridor, past the doors with the stick-figure sign and through to the barracks room. It was being used as a storeroom for the bar and was filled with crates of whiskey and beer and Pepsi. Max stepped gingerly around them and hurried down the hall. He took a deep, optimistic breath. Things were going smoothly—just up a ladder down this corridor, through a galley—or maybe a studio—and there he was: right next to the exit.

Once on deck, it would be a simple repetition of his last escape: into a lifeboat, row like the devil’s behind you and, after a couple of hours, make with the flare gun and hope for the best.

Max’s optimism flagged for an instant at that thought.

The last time he’d tried this stunt hadn’t actually gone that well. A Japanese fishing trawler had picked him up after two days at sea, and the crew had recognized him instantly. Initially, Max had thought that was a good thing—Jerry had always led him to believe that
Wylde’s Kingdom
was universally revered: the only real critics were the fanatics at GET, said Jerry. But the truth was more complicated. The crew of this trawler were indeed regular viewers of the show, but as it turned out there were sharp divisions of opinion on just what kind of contribution Jerry and Jim were making to the world of televised entertainment and, following from that, the world in general. The long and the short of it saw Max barricaded on the bridge with a half-dozen rabidly loyal fans while the majority of the crew gathered mutinously below decks. The more reasonable of their number merely demanded the captain conduct a trial-at-sea for crimes against the planet. Others were ready to go so far as scuttling the ship, if it meant ridding the world of even a portion of the evil
Wylde’s Kingdom
franchise.

Max was better off with the fans, but only marginally. The captain had damn near shattered Max’s elbow in a marathon arm-wrestling match, and the cook had been agitating for a karate tournament—the
Wylde’s Kingdom
website apparently claimed that yellow-belt Jim was a black-belt world champion, and the triple-black-belt cook wanted to try him out.

Max had been lucky: the trawler was part of a Sony-owned fleet, and
Wylde’s Kingdom
still had enough cachet that Max was more valuable to the company’s media division alive than dead. So the Sony security forces squashed the mutiny, rescued Max from his fanboy-allies, and moved him to a Tokyo hotel suite, all within a few hours.

Max found the ladder that led up to the kitchen or studio and paused.

The ratings of
Wylde’s Kingdom
being what they were these days, Sony would not be as quick to pull Max’s fat from the fire a second time.

“Fug i’,” said Max. He scurried up the ladder and came out in one of the galleys. It was busy, all steam and sizzle and shouting, as Jerry’s craft services team prepared tray upon tray of the particularly bland cheese and fish canapés that Jerry favoured. One of the chefs there did notice Max, and for a moment he feared he was discovered. But the woman took Max’s arm, led him to one of the doors, and kindly explained that Jerry had declared craft services off limits to him until after the show.

“Sorry, Jim,” she said. “I’ll make you up a nice fish broth later if you like.”

“’Kay,” said Max, relieved. He stepped out the door, and then opened another door, and then he was on deck. Lightning flashed at him in greeting, and the hard rainwater drenched him immediately. He walked stiffly out into the dark storm.

There were no lights in which to hide here, no trickery to bring about his transformation into Jim. Max was alone with his thoughts. A bank of lifeboats swung in the wind, and he thought about lowering himself in one of those. He thought about the two days or more he would spend in his stolen lifeboat. He thought about the Grand Banks fishermen who plied these parts, and the
60 Minutes
segment he’d seen on them last year. He thought about the prospects of being rescued by one of their boats and just what they’d do to him when they found out who he was. And he thought about giant squids, and what they’d do to him by comparison.

“Fug i’,” said Max.

He stepped back through the hatch and shut it behind him.

Max took a deep breath and headed for the
Minnow
’s aft decks—where last he remembered they kept the gymnasium, the infirmary, and his old training maze.

Max had been working out for barely an hour before Jerry showed up with the med team and the video crew. The intrusion pissed him off: three days was a hopelessly short time to train to begin with. He couldn’t afford to be doing live segments with Jerry today if he were supposed to be doing live segments with giant squid in three days. When the unit producer sidled up to the thigh-sculptor machine to tell him he was on in five, that was what he told her.

“Don’t worry,” said the producer, a woman with a horse-long face and thinning red hair. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You with me, Jim?”

Max sighed and mentally stepped back.

“I’m with you,” Jim said.

Jerry was standing slack-faced in the arch of the entryway sipping from a bottle of vintage spring water. He nodded when the producer signalled him, then came over by Jim’s side. The videographer followed him. Max could tell that they started rolling: Jerry’s slack features came alive, with the same demon-jester grin that adorned all his merchandise.

“Jim,” he said. “Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim.”

Jim started another set of extensions, wincing at the pain of tearing muscle and stretching ligament as the hydraulics hissed in the bowels of the machine. “Hey, Jerry,” he said.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” said Jerry, and turned to the camera. “Jim is preparing for the fight of his life. So he doesn’t have time for idle chit-chat—isn’t that right, Jim?”

“Right,” said Jim.

“Shh! Every extension, every contraction of those atrophied muscles of yours puts you one tiny step closer to being a match for the kraken, and I don’t want to stand in your way—so shh!” Jerry put his finger to his mouth. “Shh! Remember, Jim, the giant squid is probably the fastest animal on the planet—it’s got nerves as big around as your little finger, and that’s a bandwidth to beat. And its suckers? They have little ridges of chitin around them that work like drill bits on your skin.” Jerry made his hand into a claw and turned it back and forth like he was unscrewing the lid of a jar. “Let one get ahold of you, and it’ll bore a hole into your flesh. So be strong, Jim! Be strong!”

Jim nodded. “You got it, Jerry.”

“Okay,” said the producer, “cut it. How was that, Mr. Wylde?”

Jerry’s face sagged. “Fine,” he muttered. “Send the team over. Time to juice him up.”

Max barely felt the injection when it pricked his arm. Jerry and the TV crew walked out as the steroidal spasmodics kicked in. The med team stayed behind, putting a roll of padding between Max’s teeth and helping him onto a restraining stretcher so he wouldn’t injure himself in the early stages of the muscle-building phase.

“You rock, Jim,” said one of the medics. “I just wanted to say that before your hearing goes.”

“Temporarily,” added the one who’d administered the injection.

Max’s back arched in hyper-orgasmic fervor as the spasmodics went to work on the weakened muscles in his lower back. He made happy death-throe noises through his clenched teeth as the ringing started in his ears.

The spasmodics worked and kneaded Max’s musculature for about six hours before they let him go, and at the end of it Max felt exhausted but good: the AbSucker had over-depleted him, but the spasmodics set the balance right. This cocktail was better than anything he’d used before; Jerry had obviously found a better supplier. These new drugs left his face and back smooth and acne-free, while strong, telegenic muscles rippled and twitched along his arms and legs and abdomen.

“I’m ready for anything,” said Max. “Even your ridiculous squid, with their finger-thick nerves and their suckers that remove chunks of flesh like a drill bore.”

Mimi ran a razor-nailed finger appreciatively along Max’s left pectoral.

“That’s the spirit,” she said. Mimi had shown up about an hour earlier, on the spasmodics down curve, as his hearing was beginning to return, to talk about the shooting schedule and go over the equipment Max would have at his disposal. He hadn’t been able to ask questions during the briefing, but there wasn’t any need to: aside from the military-issue dive armour, everything on the list was gear that Jim had used many times before. The explosive-tipped spearguns; the razor-wire net pellets; the hum-knives and trank-spears and suit-mounted mini-torpedoes.