Part 3

When the first Mechanical Pugilist was made, the Fight Commission made a number of demands. First, through each robot's sight-mechanism, it was established that each machine should be equipped with cameras by which they would record the activity of their opponent in the ring. If a foul was committed which had escaped the judges, the proof would thereby be recorded on the camera-tapes, which could easily be confiscated by the Fight Commission.

Secondly, there was a co-ordination system in each machine which could not be slackened without a noticeable difference in the conduct of the fighter, thus acting as a safeguard against the Trainer-Owner's voluntarily slowing their fighters down for illegal purposes. However, there were ways to slow a pug down. There were circuit-shorting devices, reflex-sabotaging devices, analysis-pattern disturbances, muscle-flexibility tensions--all of which cut down the fighter's efficiency to some degree. The trick, of course, was to do so without exposure, since all fighters were examined moments before they entered the ring, and were subject to further investigation if the Judges deemed a fight suspiciously under expectation-level.

The machines then were constructed, so that, in essence, they were totally 'honest', and every part in them was recorded in a master plan, filed with the Fight Commission, so that nothing could be added, and certainly, nothing be subtracted from them, since their balance depended completely on very essential parts.

They were also constructed so that they had their weakness-points in exactly the same places men had theirs. If a machine struck hard enough and exactly enough on the point of its opponent's jaw, it would jar wires and electrical contacts badly enough to stop its operational function--thus the "knockout".

To all intents and purposes the fighting machine was constructed as much along human lines as was possible, even to the point of corruptibility. They all had a desire to be great fighting machines, and to go down in the annals of fight history. They were, each and every one, made for the purpose of practicing a deadly, brutal art by which men could sublimate the brutality that nested like a sleeping tiger in their own persons. Provision had even been made for the sight of flowing blood. The tough rubber skin that made the robots appear human contained the red oil that lubricated the steel "innards", and if the rubber skin split the more the bloodthirsty members of the audience were satisfied.

What Charlie Jingle did, when he operated on the Tanker, was what might be called, in human terms, "over-conditioning" him. He tightened and sped his reflexes, shortened the length of his wires so that electrical responses had shorter distances to travel, sped up his Analysis-Pattern, hyper-toned his muscle-flexibility, and generally made him a nervous wreck.

Then, as a final touch, he ran the tapes he had promised to run, striving to bring the truth to the Tanker.

* * * * *

"How do you feel?" asked Charlie as he watched Tanker Bell sit up, his face twitching.

"Like a damn screwball!" said the Tanker.

"Did you get the message?"

"Yeah. Hammerhead never fought like the way he fought me in his life! Wha'd they do to him?"

"Fixed him," said Charlie Jingle soberly.

"The Contender too?"

"Well you saw the tapes. They're all stuck away in that memory bank of yours. Whatta you think?"

Tanker nodded, his head jerking up and down uncontrollably.

"Fixed him too. But I don't get the picture yet. Do you, Charlie?"

"Sure, I get it. The night I called the Arena to match you against the Contender because Kid Congo got squashed in that accident, they had a fix workin' between them. Kid Congo was supposed to upset the Contender, see? But they must've both been fixed a little to fool the Judges. So there's this accident, see? This throws the whole plan into a panic--Congo's out, it's too late to un-fix the Contender. If the Auditorium puts in a fighter who's strictly legitimate, everybody will know it was a fixed. I call. They figured I had a Tank, maybe you'd look pretty bad in there, and nobody would know the difference. Okay, what happens? You nail the Contender, because, after all, you ain't that bad--does it figure?"

"Boy! Does it!" said the Tanker, his head jerking. "Why can't you go to the authorities, Charlie?"

"Because this fix is piled a mile high, Tanker, in all directions."

"Whadda you mean?"

"I mean I can't go to the Commission."

"What we gonna do? Just get belted around?"

"We got no choice," said Charlie Jingle with a shrug.

"The hell we ain't! If you think I'm gonna go into a ring and get mauled, you're off your rocker!"

"We can't call the bout off," said Charlie Jingle dejectedly.

"Well who said anything about callin' it off?" shouted Tanker.

"I did the best I could! I tuned you up. I timed you. I jazzed you up good--"

"But you _still_ don't think we can beat that Iron-Man Pugg!"

"That's right."

"So whattam I supposed to do when I go inter the ring tonight? Throw down my hands and give it up?"

"You do what I did. Do your best."

"Alla while knowin' I don't stand a chance?"

"If I did it, you can do it."

"You know what you don't have, Charlie? You don't have faith!"

Charlie Jingle snorted in disgust.

"Who hatched you? Some preacher?"

"No, no, that's the truth, and you know it!"

"The truth," roared Charlie Jingle in a white rage, "The truth is that everything's a lie! The truth is that everything's fixed from the word go, from the bottom up and the top down. That's the goddam truth for you!"

Tanker shook his head stubbornly.

"Boy, you sure are singin' a different song, all of a sudden. I dunno what the hell happened to you, but you don't even sound like yourself!"

"Okay! Okay! Wait and see when they klobber you with it tonight, Tank, my boy! Wait and see when it hits you square between the eyes."

The Tanker leaped up from the bench, jerking his fists in the air uncontrollably.

"I'll murder him!"

"No you won't. Listen, I been fighting against fixes and fixers all my life, Tanker. I never believed, and I never wanted to believe, that they had it sewed away, that the big operators had us tucked away into their pockets. Now I'm convinced! They sold me their dirty bill of goods. I'm sewed in with the rest of them."

The Tanker shook his fist under Charlie Jingle's face. Oil had drained from his system up into his face and head, lubricating his head-mechanisms as protection from strain, as his head-parts were being overworked. His "skin" looked blotchy.

"Charlie! After this is over, I want quits with you! You hear me? I want quits!"

"Suits me fine," said Charlie Jingle.

"I'll bet--" began Tanker Bell, "--I'll bet you ain't even gonna bet on me! Are you?"

"Sure! I'm gonna bet a thousand on you in the open market. Then what I'm gonna do is let Hannigan bet five thousand for me on the sly on the Champ. That way, at least I'll come out with somethin'."

"Even Belok's better than you! At least he's got guts enough to fix fights. You ain't even got guts enough to fight one!"

Charlie Jingle walked to the door.

"You better rest up," he said, and swung the door open.

"Don't worry about me," said the Tanker. "I can take care of myself!"

Charlie Jingle looked at him a moment, a cloud of inexpressible something in his eyes.

"See you later," he said quietly, and shut the door.

* * * * *

Charlie Jingle strode, shoulder to shoulder with Tanker Bell, down the long cluttered corridor of Golum Auditorium toward the roped ring. There swelled, to either side of them, the surging roar of the crowd, and it seemed to Charlie that the sound lifted the bitterness of his expression from his face and floated it forcibly toward the rafters overhead, for all to see, and to know that Charlie Jingle had given up the good fight, Charlie Jingle was tired, had been had, was through, inside and out. The fix was in. There was no way to stop it. That was the way the bugle blew.

They climbed into the ropes and the roar of the crowd boomed and grew, electric with the mood and feel of battle. Swiftly Charlie disrobed the Tank, sat him on a stool, and looked over at the Champion's corner. Iron-Man Pugg was already seated. On his face, as on Tanker's, there was the brooding look of combat, of dead-sure certainty that he, and he alone would win. And Charlie felt a jolt of sick depression in his stomach, because he knew it was true.

The robot-referee came into the ring, and the crowd immediately hushed. A dime-sized microphone on an almost invisible wire dropped down from the batteries of overhead lights (this was more in the line of tradition than need, since the robot-referee had a built-in mike of his own), and the referee held up his hands for complete silence. The crowd shushed itself to a murmer, and the referee went through his introductory piece. After each fighter had received the crowd's roar of approbation, the referee signalled for them to come to the center.

They went back to their corners. Charlie shook the robe from the Tanker's back as a hum of excitement charged through the crowd. The buzzer sounded and the fighters rose, ready. Charlie stepped through the ropes, slapped Tanker on his back.

"Do your best, Tank."

The Tanker looked at him, face grim and solitary, shut away from Charlie.

"My best ain't enough, Charlie. I'll do more than my best."

Charlie Jingle was about to say something else when the bell banged away. He scooped the stool out of the ring and watched the Tanker shuffle into center to meet the Champion.

* * * * *

Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines. Thirty rounds of fighting, at five minutes per round, is one hundred and fifty minutes, two and a half hours, of solid, shattering labor. A machine overheats the way a man does under constant stress. It's joints expand, its lubricant thins, things begin to stick, friction wears parts. While a fight-machine's body works against time, its opponent pounds it, jars it, jolts it. Wires loosen. Gears slip. Tubes shatter. The machine slows, becomes gawky. Its timing is a split second off. Its flexibility, its speed, are worn down.

When its pattern-analysis system becomes damaged, it cannot decipher the feints, the systems and combinations of its opponents' strategy. An eye is shattered, and the Trainer replaces it, since he carries a spare pair. The same one is smashed again, and he cannot replace it, because the Commission only allows a single replacement during a fight. Its "skin" is split and the colored oil flows, the life-blood of the machine. The Trainer is allowed one vulcanizing skin repair job per bout. If it happens again, the fighter must go on, fighting against the time when the loss of oil will endanger his operating efficiency.

Sometimes the machines strike each other with such deadly impact, they dent the inner frame-work of the body, putting strains on a section of wiring or electrical tubing. Then the damaged machine must fight defensively to protect its weakened section. The offender will work out elaborate punch-patterns to trick the defender into somehow thinking he understands the aim of each pattern of punches and where the final concentration will be. And suddenly, with uncanny craftiness, the offender switches its attack to an unexpected area.

This is the function of the pattern-analysis system in each fighter. To map, plan, digest the opponent's habits of fighting, then compute them, set up a given system of punches itself which will clutter the opponent's memory banks, and then radically change the mode of attack and system of fighting. The process is mathematically complex. It is the process of the human brain operating at high speed.

The first fifteen rounds of fighting are generally devoted toward "faking" patterns. Each fighter labors to out-fox the other. In a sense, the first fifteen rounds of fighting are preliminary. They give the fight fans an opportunity to warm up to what is coming. Then it begins. The lightning-fast pace shifts, becomes slower. The fighters seem to be gliding through water. Then one unleashes an attack, sets an impossibly fast pace. The game has started....

* * * * *

Charlie Jingle gripped the edge of the ring hard, digging his hands into the canvas, straining and twisting in tortured anguish with every slashing blow that struck the Tanker. He watched the two fighters weave, jerk, dart--bodies and arms flashing blurs, smashing blows one to the other in sequences that were too complex for the eye to follow in detail. He groaned, cursed, hoped, bellowed, roared and screamed along with two thousand nine hundred and seventy four other human beings in the arena.

The round was the twenty-sixth. This was the stretch. The final, ineradicable stretch. The bell banged away and the fighters parted under the glare of the lights, dancing away from each other to their corners. Charlie shot the stool into the ring and went through the ropes. Tanker dropped like a chunk of hot lead onto the stool.

"How do you feel, boy? How do you feel?" prompted Charlie, pumping the cooling-fluid into Tanker's insides.

"Hot," rasped the Tanker. "Hot as hell."

"Want me to throw in the towel?" asked Charlie, working fast, working the pump up and down quickly.

"No, goddamit. Wrap it around your eyes if you can't take it."

Charlie worked the body, stimulating the free flow of oil through the system.

"How'm I doin'?" asked the Tanker grudgingly.

"Well at least you're still in there."

"By God, Charlie! Fighting Machines ain't supposed to be too emotional, but if anybody gets me sorer than you do so help me, I'll murder him!"

Charlie Jingle worked the body fast, checked the heated joints for too much strain.

"Favor the right. The elbow's gettin' creaky. And save the fight for the Champ. You'll need it."

The buzzer sounded, Charlie shoved his tools through the ropes onto the edge of the deck, climbed out, and holding onto the edge of the stool, he said, "Watch his Three-Six combo. He's gonna angle for your jaw pretty soon."

Tanker turned, looking down at him.

"You don't trust me at all, do you?"

The bell banged and quickly Tanker was on his feet, moving in his curious, side-long motion.

* * * * *

By the end of the twenty-seventh, Tanker came back to his corner lame. The Champ had dented his forehead.

"How is it?" asked Charlie Jingle.

"Fine," said Tanker thickly. "It's fine." There was a slur to his voice, which tipped off what was beginning to happen. Tanker's co-ordination system had been damaged.

"He's crackin' down, now. He's got all his power behind them punches. You can see it when he pivots."

"Yeah? Well _I_ kin feel it when he punches," said the Tanker.

Charlie pumped him up with cooling fluid, worked his body. In the pit of his stomach was a sickness, a feeling of helplessness because Tanker's trouble was not where he could reach it, now. Now it was inside.

"He's gonna knock your head off, this one, Tank. You got a dent in it."

"I know I got a goddam dent. You don't hafta tell me."

Charlie put his gear out of the ropes.

"I told you it was a fix. Don't blame me for nothin'."

"Yeah. You wash your hands of it. Just like that guy in the whuddayacall...."

"Bible," said Charlie Jingle.

"Yeah," said Tanker. The bell sounded and he sprang to his feet.

* * * * *

At the end of the twenty-eighth, Tanker was dragging his feet, hanging on by a thread of will, except of course that there was no will in a fighting machine except the mechanistic desire to be a great fighting-machine.

"He'll nail you this one," said Charlie Jingle.

"Thass what you think," challenged Tanker.

"That's what I know. The fans are already going to the windows to collect their bets."

"Yeah? They got another guess com--Why ain't you collectin'?"

"I gotta stick it out, you know that!"

"You mean to say you really bet on Iron Man?"

"Sure," said Charlie Jingle, pulling a ticket out of his shirt pocket. "See?"

Tanker bent close, scrutinizing the ticket. He looked up into Charlie's face, his own blotchy with color.

"Five thousand dollars you bet on that bum?"

Charlie Jingle laughed.

"He don't look like no bum from where I am."

The buzzer sounded, drowning out the string of curses the Tanker loosed at him. Charlie calmly shoved his equipment out of the ring.

"Make it look good right to the end, you hear?"

The bell banged. Tanker Bell got up slowly, moving in a clumsy waddling gait toward the Champion, arms hanging like stiffened lead weights by his sides, head bulled forward, shoulders hunched. He did not spring, did not dance. He shuffled forward, shoulders rocking from side to side.

Iron-Man Pugg saw the stance of the beaten fighting-machine. He knew the dead-locked expression in the face, knew the shuffling, springless walk that indicated that the opponent was cold, was dead on his feet, jammed away inside, locked and frozen. But there was always the suspicion of trickery in him when he saw it.

He danced in lightly, speared the Tanker's head with a long series of jabs, chopped away at his mid-section, and then, as if he himself were absolutely cocksure, lowered his guard just a fraction of an inch out of the Tanker's reach. Nothing happened. The Tanker moved toward him, dead on his feet, arms limp. The Champion had to blast him back with a murderous right to prevent a head-on, chest-on collision. The Tanker staggered back, wobbled, his knees threatened to unflex and buckle, then the built-in instinct to go on picked him up, and he straightened.

Iron Man could hear, behind and around him, the swelling roar of the crowd. He knew it was for him. He had won. A hard, good fight. He had won. It remained now for him to put the trimmings on the package. Artfully he flirted in and around the Tanker, jabbing him lightly, ripping powerful right-hand shots to his head, toying with him. The crowd was roaring for blood. They wanted the finish. The Champion moved forward, wound up. He started his famous knockout sequence of punches, landing the first and second carefully, playing to his audience so that they could see what was happening and appreciate from the beginning what was about to happen. The Champion was enjoying himself. He worked with flash and flourish, and the crowd began to love it.

Then Tanker Bell came alive. The Champion was first to see the expression of his face, and a split-second before it happened, he knew he had been tricked. He would forever remember that expression. It was almost human. It was an expression of hatred. Of murderous, long-controlled rage, diabolical and lethal.

Tanker Bell ripped a blow to his jaw so well-set, so precise, so accurate, that when the Champion's head snapped back, the cable at the back of his neck broke. The Champion fell over on his back, striking the deck like fallen thunder. The Champion was not only 'out'--he was 'dead'.

There was a great, still silence in the arena as Tanker Bell strode back to his corner. It was as if the air, and sound, and people had been frozen. The Referee came to his senses first, stood over Iron-Man, and counted, with long strokes of the arm. At the last stroke, chaos broke loose. Fans and officials swarmed into the ring. The spectators roared. But Tanker Bell had eyes for one single human being in that arena. Charlie Jingle.

When he turned, Tanker saw Charlie Jingle doubled over the ropes, laughing.

A reporter pulled Tanker to the middle of the ring before he could get to Charlie. While they quizzed him and prodded him, Charlie Jingle remained doubled over the ropes in a violent fit of hysteria.

Finally they drew Charlie Jingle into the circle at ring-center. Had he had any doubts that Tanker would win?

"Never!"

Did he know that Tanker was faking toward the last? Certainly, came the laughing reply.

How much money had he bet on his fighter?

Ten thousand dollars, came the uproarious reply, and Tanker Bell bellowed, "He's a liar! He never bet a thing!"

The Press was astonished.

The Officials perked up their suspicious noses.

What did Tanker Bell mean?

"Ask him!" accused the glaring Tanker.

Did Charlie Jingle have the bet ticket with him? After all, Mister Jingle--news.

Charlie Jingle, laughing, with a flourish, produced a ticket from his shirt pocket.

Tanker Bell stared at it, goggle-eyed.

What would Charlie Jingle do with the money from the proceeds?

"Ruin Pugs, Inc.," said Charlie Jingle. "Me and a California Rabbit are goin' into business together. Ruinin' Pugs, Inc."

"Psychology," growled the Tanker. "The bum used his goddam psychology on me."

What was Tanker Bell referring to?

"Leave him alone," said Charlie Jingle, putting his arm around Tanker's shoulders. "Can't you see he's punch-happy?"