The Greatest 
1
"Ladies and gentlemen!" veteran ring announcer L.Z. Scappelli proclaimed. "Now you're in for a treat. For the first time anywhere the Universal Boxing Authority has sanctioned a pro heavyweight bout between the sexes."
A whole tier of seats taken up by women rose in loud acclaim in the vast underground complex of Manhattan's Madison Stadium. So boisterous was their cheering that the boos and hisses from elsewhere around the arena were drowned out. Women hooted and screamed; they rose to their feet and pounded the plastic backs of their chairs.
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"It's quite a scene tonight, isn't it, Billy?" said audiovid announcer Chet Atkinson. The fight was blacked out in the Twelve Fiefs of New York City because the main event--Brigham versus Zeletski--hadn't sold out the 120,000-stadium seats by fight time.
"You better believe it," Billy "the Eclipse" Bonner, onetime UBA lightweight champion, replied. Each word seemed to roll around on a bed of marbles before leaving his mouth. "The ladies want to see blood."
"What do you think about Fera Jones stepping into the ring against a man, Champ?"
"Well, Chet, I'm old-fashioned. I don't like to see ladies with the gloves on. I mean, even the WUBA is too much for me to watch sometimes. But there's no denying that women have been becoming more competitive. They hit harder and move faster every year."
"So do you think she has a chance tonight?"
"I don't think she'll get hurt too bad," Bonner replied. "Jellyroll is more of an act than he is a fighter. They set him up with opponents that have no chance against him. I mean, the crowd loves it, I do too, but Jellyroll tipped the scale at almost three-eighty at weigh-in, and he doesn't have a knockout punch."
"Three-eighty," Chet agreed. "And six seven. But Fera Jones weighs an impressive two-sixty and stands six foot nine. She has the reach, age, and height advantage over Jellyroll. And she looks like she was molded from iron. I mean, just look at the muscle definition on those legs."
"Nice legs, I'll agree with that, Chet. But this is a brutal sport. Man is the warrior. I don't care how much the Radical Feminist Separatist movement wants to play with genetics, a man will always come out on top in one of these wars."
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It was never proven that Fera Jones was the product of SepFem-G, an outlawed genetics program that came out of the feminist studies department at Smith College. Actually, there was evidence to the contrary. Fera lived with, and was managed and trained by, her father, Leon Jones, a onetime history professor at U. Mass. Not that there weren't lots of questions about them.
Leon was Negro, medium brown with thick, kinky hair, generous lips, and a broad nose. Fera was a natural, if dirty, blond, with skin too dark to be Caucasian but not exactly the right coloring for Negro, either. Her mother was unknown to the public. Fera claimed that she didn't know anything about her mother.
"Your father must have known who she was," a woman's magazine journalist once suggested in an interview.
"If I bring it up I can see the hurt in him," Fera replied. It was the most she ever said about her mother publicly.
There were plenty of questions about Fera Jones. She was tall enough to play men's basketball and strong enough to compete in a strongman contest. She'd run through the Women's Universal Boxing Association's list of contenders in one year--all wins by knockout. In twenty-four fights she'd gone to the second round only once. That was against Slippery WandaJoe Williams. WandaJoe managed to avoid Fera's haymakers for the first three minutes, but ninety-one seconds into round two she caught a fist that was what Fera called her tooth decay preventative.
"If the tooth is out it can't get decay," she joked with Billy Bonner after the bout.
Fera was so proficient that many said she was actually a man trying to make it by pretending to be a woman. The WUBA had performed DNA tests proving Fera's gender (also disproving the theory that she was the product of a separatist test tube). But the public was not convinced by computer graphs and petri dishes. So Fera went on the X-rated people's access vid show Behind Sammy Rosen's Blue Door.
Sammy's usual guests were porn performers who had special talents and fan clubs, marital aids to hawk, or a performance schedule that needed advertising. Fera had only one thing to prove on Sammy's show. When he tried to kiss her she pushed him to the floor and held him down with her bare foot. Then she pulled off her dress and told the vidder to get close-ups of her breasts and genitals.
"You wish I was a man," she said into the camera. " 'Cause if I was, somebody might have a chance to beat me."
That one live airing moved Sammy's show to new heights, but he never forgave Fera for his humiliation. From then on, each of his shows began with a replay of him smashing her glass image with a hammer. Of course, this only served to make her more popular.
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The referee was going over the rules in the middle of the ring when a fight broke out between a man and woman on the floor of the stadium. Women poured down from their exclusive tier and security guards closed in to stop the melee.
When the ref said, "Go to your corners and come out fighting," there were already blows being thrown and blood being spilled.
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"This is exciting isn't it, Champ?"
"I don't know, Chet. All I can say is that I'm glad the viewers here in New York can't see this. Even though Jellyroll is shorter, he looks much bigger than Fera."
"I agree, Champ. She looks frightened, fragile compared to him. And you know Jellyroll says that he's not going to go easy on her."
The next voice heard was not one of the announcers but the gravelly deep voice of the exhibition fighter Jellyroll Gregory. "I'm gonna beat her to the floor just like she did to my friend Sammy Rosen. I'm gonna beat her down in the first round. I like to get these fights over quick, 'cause they don't let me eat till after it's over."
The bell rang.
"Looks like the security forces have stopped the brawl just in time for the real fight to begin," Chet Atkinson reported. "Fera Jones comes to the middle of the ring. Jellyroll seems cautious . . . No! He's leaping right at her, both fists flailing. Fera barely avoids getting hit. She falls back. He's jumping again! He's run right into her. Almost four hundred pounds of man and muscle. She's going down!"
"They're both going down, Chet," Bonner corrected. "The referee, Xian Luke, is calling it a fall. He's rubbing both boxers' gloves off on his shirt."
"We should say that Luke is one of the best refs in the game today," Chet said. "He asked for this job tonight because he said that he didn't want to see anyone get hurt."
"I don't think he was worried about Jellyroll, Chet."
"Me nei--Oh no! Jellyroll throws a roundhouse right that connects with Fera's jaw. She's falling back. She's on the ropes. I think she might have gone all the way down if the ropes hadn't been there to stop her. Jellyroll is on her again. He's throwing everything he's got. Jones is covering up."
"Jellyroll wants to get her out of here quick. He doesn't want to be out there carrying around three hundred and eighty pounds in the later rounds."
"Another fight has broken out in the seats!"
"Forget that, Chet! Fera's coming back! She's jabbing in the center of the ring. Look at the speed of that jab! One, two, . . . six jabs before Jellyroll could get his defense up. His eye, yes, there's a cut open over his left eye! Jellyroll is bleeding. Jellyroll is bleeding!"
Chet Atkinson jumped in to say, "It's like old times. Like back when they fought bare-knuckled. They're swinging in and out of the ring. Fera Jones is going for Jellyroll's spare tire. We can hear the blows here at ringside. He's trying to mount a counterattack. Fera better watch it. She's leaving herself open swinging away like that. Oh! Jellyroll connected to her jaw again."
"That was right on the money," Billy Bonner cried. "Jones is backing up, but she's not going down. Oh! He connected again. What's holding this woman up?"
"I don't know, Champ. But she's not falling back on the ropes this time. Fera Jones is going to the body. These blows are vicious. It doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman when you get hit like that. Oh shit!" Chet Atkinson never complained about the $10,000 he was fined for cursing on a show with only a V rating. "She connected with an uppercut! Jellyroll is lifted from the canvas! He's down! He's down! Jellyroll Gregory is down!"
"And I don't believe that he's getting up," Billy added. "No. Luke is waving Fera away. He's calling the fight over. The parmeds are jumping into the ring. Six of them."
"They'll need that many if they have to carry him out of here."
"Look, Chet. The women are tearing up the stands! They're throwing the chairs into a group of taunting men. Fights are breaking out everywhere."
"You better get in there and talk to the winner, Champ. Before they tear the house down."
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"So, M Jones," the Eclipse asked amid the hubbub of the crowded ring, "how did it feel in there against a man?"
"I've had harder fights, Billy," Fera said. "But first I want to give thanks to the goddess Diana, and I want to thank my daddy for making me the greatest fighter in the world."
"He hit you pretty hard a couple of times. We thought you were going down once."
"He never hurt me. The first time he hit me I moved back in case he was throwing a combination, but I stumbled and fell into the ropes. He never hurt me."
"Well, you sure hurt him."
"Bring on Zeletski," Fera said. "Bring on your champion."
"What do you think, Professor Jones?" Bonner asked Fera's father/trainer/manager. "Do you want to see her jump up in competition to Zeletski's level this quickly?"
"Fera could beat Zeletski any day. She has the power and she knows how to get it to him. You saw how Jellyroll hit her. I tell you Fera would make Sonny Liston quiver in his boots."
"Thank you, Professor, Fera . . ." An uproar rose. "Someone has just thrown a chair into the ring. There are fights breaking out everywhere. The police are trying to restore order, but I don't even know if the main event will go on. Back to you, Chet."
"There you have it. Fera Jones has an impressive win tonight and her trainer says that she's ready for a championship shot. There would be a lot of money in that fight. But not if a brawl breaks out like this one. I'm being told that we will go off the air while the police regain some semblance of order. This is Chet Atkinson, with the Champ, Billy 'the Eclipse' Bonner, saying--"
2
"But, Daddy, I am ready. I can take him. I can. You said so yourself after the fight with Jelly Belly."
"You got the power, Fifi. You got the heart. But you need more experience."
"Nobody's ever beat me, Daddy."
"What about the last fight you had, with Bobo Black?"
"I told you. I was off. I had trouble getting it to him."
"You had trouble because you couldn't get to him, and you couldn't get to him because he was outthinking you in there. If he hadn't'a got tired you would have had your first UBA loss."
They were in Fera's permanent suite on the three hundredth floor of the Fifth Business, the Broadway hotel. Fera had had eight UBA fights by then. All with men. All ending by KO.
"Zeletski can box better than Black, and he doesn't get tired. He hits hard enough to put you down. We need a little more time. You need a better class of fight. Like this Black. You have to go through a couple of wars. And there's something else."
"What, Daddy?"
"Money, baby. Lotsa money. It's been chump change up till now. We got this suite, but that's just 'cause this hotel wants to brag on you. You lose one fight and we're outta here."
"We've been broke before."
"Yeah, but," he hesitated. "You know with the Pulse I can't take chances. Ever since Congress legalized Pulse you got to have money. You got to have money or you're dead."
The Pulse was a drug dealer's dream. Cooked up at CalTech in the late hours when the professors were in bed. The gene drug altered the structure of the pleasure centers of the brain, temporarily allowing consciousness some measure of control over dreams. With just the right amount, a pulsar, as the users called themselves, could create a complex fantasy, build a whole world and live in it for what seemed like days, weeks. The original intention of the students was to create a time warp in the brain where they could do months of complex research in an evening.
"But the drug gave entrÃ©e to the id," Dr. Samboka of NYU explained in the EastCoast DataTimes after it was far too late. "And the id has a powerful inclination for sensuality and instinct."
Pulsars' minds drifted into passionate love affairs and musical performances that lasted for days. Many lost interest in the world around them, making better worlds in their unconscious minds. And to make matters worse, or better from a profit point of view, it turned out that after four or five uses, the brain collapsed in on itself without regular ingestion of the drug. It was an addiction from which death was the only withdrawal.
The Pulse, named after the heartbeat many addicts reported hearing before slipping into fantasy, was legalized in 2031. Pulse party parlors appeared everywhere. The cost was fixed by the government, but there was no coverage on state medical insurance and no emergency fund for the poor pulsar who went broke. And because the user had to have the drug every three days, there were few job cycles that a pulsar could hold.
Pulsedeath was an everyday event. Almost every user died horribly from a collapsed brain. Only the rich could be sure of long-term supply. And even they died ultimately, their brains like overstretched rubber bands snapping finally from overwork.
"I know it's going to kill me," Rickert Londonne, Pulse proponent and user, proclaimed on prime vid. "But last night I was the emperor Hadrian. I controlled the Roman empire. I strode the city streets and lived among the people, common and extraordinary. I battled the Vandals, the Goths, and the Persians. I built a world. What did you do last night?"
Pulse had another unexpected impact on the economy. In the days between use, Pulsars read many books of fiction and history to seed their minds with the possibility of dreams. Electronic publishing industry stocks soared.
"We could make a billion-dollar fight if you get the women of the world on your side, Fifi. Get that and I can live a few more years."
"I will, Daddy. And I'll pay to have the MacroCode Gen-Team find you a cure."
"I know you will, baby. I know you will."
3
The night before the Mathias Konkon fight, Pell Lightner came up to the three hundredth floor of the Fifth Business. He whispered his name into the key-mike and the door slid open. He hesitated a moment before entering, took a deep breath, and then walked in confidently, standing to his full five foot nine and a half inches.
"Fifi?"
There was no answer. He went through the entrance area into the living room.
The sight of Leon Jones sitting on the long, overstuffed sofa gave Pell a scare, but then he realized that his girlfriend's father was far beyond worrying about him. The elder Jones's eyes were open, and he seemed to be looking right at Pell, but really he was gazing far away into faded Pulsedreams. After years of use the dreams had dwindled into a kind of bleached-out euphoria. The loss of specific dream content was the first sign that a user's brain was near final collapse.
"Hey, baby." Fera was standing at the door to her bedroom, naked.
Pell liked it that the musculature of Fera's chest hadn't erased her womanly figure. Her breasts were real breasts, and except for that one evening on the Sammy Rosen show, Pell was the only man to see under her dress nowadays.
All of his young life, Pell had lived in Common Ground, the place for all unemployed citizens. He had learned to appreciate a good thing. He was only nineteen, permanently unemployed and without benefits except for an octangular sleep tube underground and regular rations of rice and beans.
"Take down your pants," Fera said.
Automatically Pell took a step forward. At the same time he pulled down his pants. He leapt toward her and she held him up in her arms. Fera grinned broadly when Pell grabbed her hair to keep his balance.
She carried him from the room while her father mused.
Fera had met Pell at a Soul Shack on Middle Broadway. He was strutting around among the Backgrounder girls, acting like the cock of the walkway. She got a hot ribs and yam dinner in a plasbox and then walked up to the group of young Backgrounders. Pell was arrogant and snide, but when she asked him if he wanted to go with her he was in the car as quickly as he could move.
"You remember when we first met?" Fera asked her lover. She was on top of him, grinding her hips.
"Yeah," he coughed.
"Did you love me for my body or my money?" Her coarse blond hair raked his eyes.
A look of confusion came over his face. For a moment it seemed as if he had found an answer, but instead he had a powerful orgasm.
"I can't, I can't," he cried meaninglessly.
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"Baby, do you love me?" Fera asked Pell in her dark bedroom. Through the open window the spires of upper Manhattan stretched toward the sky.
"We don't use that word underground."
"What do you say, then?"
"I look for you, I see you, I won't turn away."
"That's a lotta words just to say the same thing."
"It's not the same thing. Not at all. 'I love you,' means, 'I need you.' The way I say it means that you can count on me. The way I say it is strong."
"You turned away from your friends to come with me."
"I never told 'em I wouldn't."
Fera laid her big palm on his chest.
"I wish I was like you, Pipi," she said.
"What you mean? Here you up above, butter and cream--and I'm down below, bread and water."
"But you know what you think."
"Huh?"
"If I say something or ask something, you have an answer. Even if you just don't know you sound so sure. All I know is that I love my daddy. That and boxing is all I have. Everything else is a mess. That's why I like fighting, because I get so mad not bein' sure, and hittin' somebody makes me feel better. Even gettin' hit feels good."
"Then that's good enough. It keeps you upover."
"But I want more."
"What?"
"Like you. To look and not turn away."
4
The Konkon fight was the turning point in Fera Jones's career. The night before was the first time Leon experienced a Pulse Reflux episode. It left him bedridden and unable to be in his daughter's corner. She asked Pell to stand in for her father, and the diminutive Backgrounder agreed. He had been sitting ringside for over six months and had some notion of what was expected of a corner man. The only thing he didn't know how to do was stop the bleeding in case of a cut, but Leon had been smart enough to bring in Doc Blevins, the premier cut man of boxing, as a permanent member of Ferocious Fera Jones's corner.
Mathias Konkon was a wily boxer. He avoided the brunt of Fera's initial onslaught. He rolled with some blows and picked others off with deflecting gloves. He had a solid chin, too, and so whenever Fera was accurate enough to land a hard punch, she was surprised with a series of left hooks and right uppercuts in answer.
Over six rounds she had lost all but one.
In between rounds Pell begged his boxer to box.
"Stick and run, Fifi," he pleaded. "Let him come after you. Let him come after."
"I can get him," Fera declared. "All I need is one shot and he'll cave in."
Each round she went out streaming sweat and oozing confidence, but at the bell she came back another point down on the scorecards.
In the seventh Konkon let loose. It was toward the end of the round and Fera was breathing hard. She'd thrown her full artillery at the slippery Fijian. If she had connected with anything, the announcers were certain that Mathias would have wound up in the hospital. But the shorter boxer had figured out just the right crouch to avoid a haymaker. When he saw that his opponent was temporarily winded, he threw a full-fledged attack at her head.
"Jones is in trouble!" Atkinson exclaimed at ringside.
"He'd do better to attack the body," Bonner added conservatively. "Kill the body and the head will fall."
At that moment, Mathias connected to Fera's jaw with a jolting right cross. Fera Jones sprawled out on her back, unconscious from every indication. But while the referee was waving the exultant Konkon back to his corner, Fera Jones opened her eyes and willed herself to her feet.
"She's cut!" Bonner yelled. "She's cut over her right eye!"
The blood was cascading down the right side of her face. But Fera Jones didn't even dab at it with her glove.
The referee asked her did she want to go on.
She nodded.
He asked her another question.
She answered to his satisfaction.
He waved for the fight to continue, but the bell rang before another blow could be thrown. Doc Blevins was in the corner with his steel compressor and cotton sticks, ready for his charge. His bald head was painted black and red for the colors of Jones's trunks. There was a bright green stripe painted across his forehead for his Irish mother.
The ring doctor stood at the side, watching the procedure closely. Pell stood over his fighter, his fists clenched as if he wanted to hit her himself.
Instead he pinched the flesh at the tip of her chin, hard. Her eyes, vacant until then, cleared.
"He's gonna beat you, you stupid cow. He's gonna beat you 'cause you out there fightin' like a girl. Like a fuckin' girl." Every word was broadcast around the globe on VIN, Video International Network. "You're the best fighter that ever lived and you're throwin' it away 'cause you don't want to do what you're supposed to do."
"I can get him," she said.
"Not if you don't jab. He's got you so girly out there that you forgot how to box. He's made a fool outta you, and look at you. All blooded up and ugly. It's over. I'm throwin' in the towel."
Pell reached for the towel. He picked it up.
"No, don't," Fera said, more like a child than a machine of destruction. "I can do it. I can do it."
Pell paused, towel in midair there between him and his fighter. Over a hundred million people around the globe watched.
"One round, Fera. One round to prove that you can do what's necessary."
The bleeding had been stemmed. Certainty returned to Fera's eyes. She nodded and fifty million women around the world felt their hearts thrum and galvanize. Groucho T, the Internet philosopher, later said, "The whole world changed between the seventh and eighth rounds."
Konkon never had a chance after the seventh. In rounds eight and nine Fera's left jab turned his face into hamburger. In round ten she knocked him to the canvas six times before the referee gave her the win.
"I want to thank Diana for my victory," Fera said to the Eclipse, "with a nod to Legba for sending me his trickster friend, Pell Lightner."
The Radical Feminist Separatist Party of Massachusetts declared that the next day would be a floating holiday, called Fierce Woman Day, and closed down the state. Women around the world bought T-shirts with the images of Fera and Pell on them. The president came to visit Fera in her suite at the Fifth Business, and Time magazine named her Woman of the Century.
Leon Jones had been hospitalized, and was undergoing deep neuronal therapy for severe reaction to Pulse. But he left his bed to come to the victory party thrown in Madison Stadium in honor of the tremendous victory over Konkon.
"I always knew you had it, baby," he told his daughter.
"It was Pell, Daddy. He brings out something in me, something more than boxing."
"What do you mean, Fifi?"
"I don't know, Daddy. I don't even know that it's something I can know."
5
The celebrations that followed the Konkon fight were spontaneous. It wasn't a championship fight. The Fijian was only ranked eighth in the world. But there was something about Fera's heart and about her man, Pell. Everyone watching the fight knew how much he loved her. They saw how deeply his passions went.
THE MAN BEHIND THE WOMAN, the cover of Sports Illustrated announced, displaying the photograph of Pell's contorted face between rounds at the Konkon fight. Sixty Minutes did a fifteen-minute piece on the vulnerability and valor of her drug addict father and Backgrounder friend, Pell. Fera was being asked to speak at political fund-raisers and feminist luncheons around the world.
"But what do I have to say to these women?" Fera asked Selma Ho, publicist for the Green Party and SepFem sympathizer.
"You don't have to say anything, dear."
"Why invite me if they don't want me to say anything?"
"People talk to explain things, to prove a point. You are the proof, M Jones."
Lana Lordess, governor of Massachusetts, head of the vote-strong FemLeague, came to visit Fera at the Fifth Business three days before the Zeletski fight.
"It would be better if we talked alone," Governor Lordess said as she sat on the overstuffed couch. Pell sat on the edge of the stone fireplace. Leon reclined in his portable electric chair, shocks jolting his thin frame every forty-three seconds. It was one of many therapies he was to try in order to stave off the collapse of his brain.
"This is my family," Fera said.
Lana Lordess was only five foot four, but her presence was large. Even if Fera had not seen pictures of Lordess on the news every night, even if the FemLeague wasn't the third largest party in the Congress, even if Lana had not personally led a march of ten million women in Washington, D.C., even if Fera had never heard of this small, overall-wearing woman, she would have still felt the power of those eyes.
Leon's shoulders jerked.
Pell stared at the floor.
"I don't discuss woman-business in the presence of men without having my lawyers present," Lana said.
"Then get the fuck out," Fera replied.
Lordess's security guards both stiffened. They were big women with chemically enhanced muscles. Fera knew the black one from the ring.
"Watch yourself," the black guard said.
"While I do I suggest that you count your teeth."
Pell snorted out a laugh.
A shock went through Leon. His head twisted and shook.
"I don't want to fight," Lordess said, reaching out with both hands.
"No, you don't," Fera assured her.
"Can we have a word?" Lana asked.
"My father always taught me to make my presence known from the first second I'm in the ring," Fera Jones said. "If you lose the first few seconds, he always says, then the fight is lost until you make up ground."
"I come here as a friend."
"You came here 'cause I won fights against men."
"That makes us allies."
"I never saw you out there with me. I never saw you when me an' Daddy were poor and down."
"But I'm here now."
"I'll tell you what," Fera offered. "You send the girl guards out in the hall, and I'll ask Daddy and Pell if they'll wait in the kitchen."
"As leader of the FemLeague I am bound to defend myself from harm. I cannot be left unprotected."
"Then there's no more to say," Fera said firmly.
Lana Lordess rapped her knuckles upon a denim knee, her dark eyes staring straight into those of the boxer. But Fera Jones was not worried. She'd stared down men who had threatened to beat her to death in the ring. They had tried and failed.
"The FemLeague wants you for our pinup girl." Lordess fell right into the discussion when she realized that she could not expel the men. "Women all over the world adore you. Your heart and spirit and strength are examples for all of us. Millions of women on the line between their false male consciousness and their true self-interests will flock to you. Join our party and you join a real fight, the fight for true equality and for sanity. We will stem the corporations, we will end the senseless starvation, we will stop the insane militias. Your help, just yours, Fera, will make the difference for the future of womanhood."
Fera had heard the same words, except for her name, on the vid three weeks before. They were even more moving in person. She believed in woman power. She wanted the world to be different.
"Will men have a political voice in your new world?" Fera asked.
"All qualified citizens will have their say over the condition of the nation," Lordess answered. "Honest, hardworking citizens will be our guiding members."
"I'll think about it," Fera said.
"We must strike now, sister. Now, just before your greatest trial. Join us and then defeat Zeletski, your words will be diamond."
"I said I'll think about it."
"Can I call on you tomorrow, then?"
"I'm in training, M Lordess. Talking distracts me. I need to concentrate on the fight."
"But we need an answer. Is there nothing I can say?"
"No." Fera had a dim notion of what she should do. But the idea was still totally submerged, rising only slowly, like a slumbering whale from the darkness of the deep.
"What if I could tell you the truth about your mother?"
"Ungh!" Leon Jones grunted. His head flailed back and a foot lashed out.
Fera and Pell ran to his side.
"We'll have to talk later," she said to the governor. "My father is going through deep neuronal therapy."
"Hear me out," Lana said.
"Leave," said Fera, a threat and a command.
6
". . . I never told you about her because it hurt me too much," Leon was saying. "She was just about seventeen when she came into my adult school intro to history class. She looked all crazy. Eyes different-color browns, skin just a touch'a green under eggshell tan. Little and weakly, sharp as a pin. She came to every class like she was burnin' to know something, who knew what?" A shock went through Leon, and he bit his lip. "Whenever I tried to talk to her, to get to know what she was about, she'd shy away. If she hadn't had to sign up I wouldn't have known that her name was Nosa an Letona."
"Nosa an Letona," Fera mouthed.
"I told the class on the first day that each and every one had to come to my office to defend their final paper. I told them that without that they couldn't get credit." Fera dabbed her father's bloody lip with a fiber napkin. The next shock made his hands jump. "I didn't think I'd see her even for a passing grade, but she showed up. Her paper was full'a Fem-Lib stuff. How women were the first citizens and how men tricked them over and over again. She talked about genetic plots and the purpose of gender. When I asked her how old she was she said she didn't know."
"She must'a known near about," Pell said. "Even White Noise kids know near about." White Noise kids, the children of unemployable Backgrounders, lived under the city, in Common Ground. Without taxpaying parents they could get no education and lived by their wits.
"She said that she didn't remember being a child. All she knew was an all-girl orphanage. When I asked her did she run away she said that she was there to talk about the paper. I told her that it was very well written and that I liked how clear her ideas were and how strong the language was. She asked did I agree with her ideas and I told her that nobody knows history--"
"--because history doesn't really exist except in the leaky jars of our heads," Fera said, finishing the words that she had heard from childhood.
Leon grinned at her memory and then grimaced from an electric shock.
"When I said that, she blinked, blinked like she had just seen something that she had never suspected was there. After a minute she crawled into my lap and put her arms around my neck. That's when I realized that she was hot. Not sex, but her body temperature was way up there. I thought she was sick but she said that that was normal for her. I'm ashamed for what I felt for that child but I refuse to be sorry. I asked her where she lived and she said in a hole that she dug under a bridge just outside of the town. A hole in the dirt. I took her to my house. What else could I do? I didn't mean to do anything. She was a child. She needed to be held, wanted it. I held her and held myself back at the same time. We never stopped touching for the next few days. If I let her go she got nervous and shaky. We ate side by side and even went to the bathroom together. It wasn't like sex. It wasn't sex at all. It was more like puppies or kittens all on top of each other all of the time.
"I missed my classes. We ate outta plastic cans. Finally I told her that she needed more clothes and that I would buy her some, but she told me that she had another dress in a shelter she had built just outside town. I drove her out there. I remember it so well because I was miserable in that car. That young thing reached out to my heart and I was helpless.
"I was wrong. I crossed the line into unemployment and lawlessness and I didn't even remember making a decision.
"The hole had been torn up pretty bad but only one thing was gone."
"Maybe it was an animal," Pell argued.
"But there wasn't an animal mess, and the only thing missing was her record book from the orphanage. Someone who didn't want her records to be public had gone in there. If she hadn't been at my house they might have taken her too."
"RadFems?" Fera asked.
"I never knew and neither did Nosa." The hunching of his shoulders was deepened by a therapeutic shock. "All she knew were the sisters and a book full of charts and graphs that she was supposed to keep with her at all times.
"She was so scared that it infected me. She said that some of the other girls had disappeared. Nosa said that when her friend Titania had gone missing she decided to go out in the world and look for her. The teachers had taught them that the world was an evil place and that if a girlchild was lost out there the man-demons would destroy them. Men would break them open and bleed poisons into their guts. Then they would torture them with slavery, brutality, and brainwashing. The sisters told them that a girl tainted by the world would have to be put to sleep in order for another girl to come alive. She said that a few girls had disappeared and that they were always replaced by somebody new."
"What did you do?" asked Fera.
"Well that was twenty-one years ago, but even then the government of Massachusetts, especially out in the west, was dominated by the FemLeague. I didn't know what to think and so I drove us to New York City. I cashed all my accounts and drove away from every bit of security I had ever known. I was forty then and it was the dumbest thing by far I had ever done. I had an ex-wife. I had a family. But I left all that behind. We were married. Nosa had you and then she died."
"What did she die of?"
"The doctors thought it was natural causes. You see, Nosa was the product of genetic tinkering. She was grown in a laboratory."
"But the doctors who tested me said that I was normal," Fera protested.
"You are. One generation down and being coupled with natural DNA and you're fine. Better than fine. You're the most perfect woman in the world. You're my girl." A long thrumming shock went through Leon then, but he never lost his smile or his eye contact with the strongest woman in the world.
7
"My sources tell me that you are due to get ten billion dollars from tomorrow night's fight," Allison Laurie told Fera Jones.
Fera heard the words and understood them but there were too many other things on her mind.
"You know that I represent Randac Corporation. We aren't the largest company in the world, but on the island of Madagascar we're the big dog. We have five seats in the parliament and a place on the prime minister's advisory cabinet."
"So? Good for you."
Pell sat nervously at Fera's side. He had begged her to take this meeting even though she was due to fight Zeletski in less than six hours.
"Of course you've heard of our theme park."
"Uh-huh. Luna Land. Pipi and I wanna go one day."
"If I can get you to say that to the cameras after you win the fight tonight, we will give you another ten billion dollars."
Even the haunted images of her mother from the three small photographs that Leon had kept dimmed slightly at the mention of so much money.
"Ten billion?"
"Paid in Madagascar, where there are no personal income taxes."
"Why? I mean how can you? I mean . . ."
"It's advertising, Fera," Pell said. "Millions of people will plan their vacation hoping to see you or to be where you were. You'll make it look like something really important if you just say the word."
"That's right," Allison added. "Women and men all over the world look up to you. You're an example for everybody."
It wasn't until after the Luna Land rep left that Fera remembered.
"That's almost exactly what Lordess said."
"What, Fifi?"
"That stuff about people lookin' up to me. It's almost exactly what Lordess said."
"Only," Pell pointed out, "Randac will pay ten billion on the nail."
"You want me to do this, Pipi?"
"It's not for me, baby," the Backgrounder said. "I ain't nobody in this. It's you. You got the professor father, the strength, skills. I just figured if you made enough money you wouldn't have to fight and get brain damage, you wouldn't have to end up in a chair like your old man. You could be somebody."
"Who?"
"I don't know. Anybody you wanted to be. Somebody powerful. Somebody with clout."
"You really think that?"
Pell kissed her on the lips. It wasn't so much a passionate osculation as a careless acclaim, a declaration of something that had already come to pass.
8
"Well, we're finally here," Billy "the Eclipse" Bonner said to UBA boxing fans around the world.
There was no blackout that night. Every seat in the stadium sold for a thousand dollars or more. Movie stars, political leaders, gangsters, Backgrounders, and thieves were present. More women than men filled the 120,000 seats; 750,000,000 people around the world had paid the one hundred dollar pay-per-view price.
"You better believe it, Champ," Chet Atkinson replied. "This is the most important night in the history of boxing. This is it. The battle of the sexes, the War of the Roses. Lady Macbeth and Don Corleone. D Day. Tonight Fera Jones goes after Travis Zeletski's undisputed heavyweight crown in a fight they said could never happen."
"All the regulars are here tonight, Chet, but there are some who never come to these matches. Lana Lordess, governor of Massachusetts and head of the FemLeague, is in attendance, as is the secretary of state. Prince Peter of Great Britain and Premier Hernandez of Cuba are also in the audience. They might do better to have political analysts than two barkers like us."
"That may be, Champ, but we can worry about the world tomorrow. Tonight there's a fight we have to get through. What are the main strengths and weaknesses we should be looking for?"
"Well, the main thing is the body. Both of these boxers bang pretty hard to the ribs and liver. They're both good on the inside. Jones is the taller of the two but only by a quarter of an inch. Zeletski measures six eight and three-quarters. He's got a slight reach advantage at eighty-five inches and he's the heavier of the two by ten pounds. Moscow-born Zeletski has been fighting since he was ten. He has a good solid jab, a shuddering right cross, and a left hook that we haven't seen since the days of Joe Frazier. He's lean and fast and knows how to cut off the ring.
"Fera Jones is the boxer's boxer when she keeps her cool. She can dance and she can sting. Both gloves have knockout power. Her weaknesses are her tendency to cut and her temper. When Fera gets mad she throws caution to the wind, and that's a dangerous attitude when you're facing a wily opponent with knockout power."
"What are Zeletski's weaknesses?" Chet Atkinson asked.
"He's pretty good all around, but the one thing he has to watch out for is the mistake of treating Jones like a woman. She's a female, but so is the lady tiger. If he lets up at all it will be his downfall."
"How do you see the fight unfolding, Champ?"
The close-up of the boxer/announcer's face revealed the scars under his makeup, small mementos of his eighty-seven fights. There were blemishes on the whites of his eyes and one cheekbone appeared flatter than the other. He seemed to chew on each word before letting it go.
"This is going to be a tough fight for both boxers. Jones's new trainer, Pell Lightner, has no real experience in the game. He's a newcomer but he gives good advice. As you know, Fera's father is hovering between life and death at this moment at Staten Island's Neurological Institute, going through the preparations to receive a tissue transplant to reverse the effects of a decade of Pulse use."
"Will she be able to put it out of her mind and concentrate on the fight?"
"Only time will tell. But even if she can, it will still be a grueling twelve rounds."
__________
 
The announcers talked for another forty minutes before the fighters were in the ring, and fifteen minutes more while a fight that broke out on the floor was being stopped. It was a full hour before the first bell rang.
In the years since, the first minute of that round has been discussed, watched over, and compared to other great fights in pugilism history. The only way to see it is in slow motion.
Zeletski came out quickly with his hands up and his jab pumping. He hit Fera's nose seven times in less than five seconds. Each blow jolted her dirty blond hair. Each blow landed because Fera kept her hands down, not protecting herself. Zeletski gained confidence and threw a left hook into Jones's side. The blow could be heard at ringside.
Fera smiled and waved her hands for him to do it again.
He did.
Fera flinched and buckled some but her smile remained.
The referee was worried. The announcers were too.
Zeletski grinned and nailed Jones with a straight right hand. While she fell back he sent a roundhouse left.
That was his mistake.
Or maybe the mistake was getting into the ring that evening. Maybe there was no beating Jones that night.
Fera moved gracefully under the looping left hand and then rose delivering a textbook right uppercut. Most analysts say that that was the end of the fight. The impact threw Zeletski back so violently that his left fist boomeranged, making his own glove the source of the second blow of the combination. The third, fourth, and fifth blows were left jabs, and even though Jones missed the following right cross, she followed with a left hook that Zeletski himself says caused the blindness in his right eye and the loss of hearing in that side's ear.
By that time the referee was jumping to save the Russian's life. Fera Jones's punches were so hard and fast that they kept the now unconscious Zeletski from falling. The referee had to wrestle Fera to the floor to stop her. Pell ran to his aid by sitting hard on his fighter's chest.
She threw them off, but by that time her bloodlust was waning. Zeletski lay on the canvas, surrounded by parmeds and bleeding from his ear and mouth. While he was carried from the ring on a stretcher, Fera's hand was being raised in victory.
And when the camera crews came to get her statement, to hear what was next for the invincible Fera Jones, millions around the world and some in the front row froze to hear her answer.
Sweat was pouring down the twenty-one-year-old's face. She was breathing hard and smiling.
"First I want to thank Diana for my strength and Legba for my man . . ."
Lana Lordess rose to leave.
". . . but this win is for my daddy," Fera said.
"I'll be the first to admit that I never thought I'd see this day," Billy Bonner said during the postfight interview. "Zeletski is the best we men have to offer, and you finished him in under a minute."
"It was meant to be," Fera said. She was looking into Pell Lightner's eyes.
"I know that your father is being operated on at this moment. You must be worried about him."
"I'm not worried. I'm a fighter. He is too."
"What's next for you, Fera Jones?"
"Luna Land. I'm going to Luna Land."
9
At three the next morning Fera and her boyfriend were the only ones in the waiting room outside the operating theater where Leon Jones was having brain tissue transplanted into his cortex. Pell had crawled under a row of chairs where he seemed to be sleeping.
"Pipi," Fera whispered.
The young man opened his eyes. "Yeah?"
Fera went to sit on the floor next to him. "I been thinkin'."
" 'Bout what?"
"About my mom and all those things Lordess said. About you."
"Me?"
"Daddy's always sayin' that boxing is just a metaphor."
"What's that?"
"It's when you call something one thing but really it's something else."
"Huh?"
"Like if I called somebody a worm or a germ or a dog. He's not really, but then again he is."
"I get ya."
"Me boxing is like that. They put me out there to stand for the poor girl who can't fight for herself, guy too."
"So I see you fighting and I feel like it's me out there?" Pell pulled out from under the chairs to sit by his lover.
"Yeah. And as soon as they see that the everyday prod and Backgrounder looks to me they start offerin' me money and power. Lordess did it, Randac too. They make it seem like they're the ones helpin' me, makin' me rich. But really it's me that did it, me and the people who wanted me to beat Zeletski."
"But you took the money, babe," Pell said. "You said you were goin' to Luna Land."
" 'Cause I'm through with boxing. I figure the money they paid me to fight'll pay Daddy's med bills and the Randac money'll pay for our new fight."
"What's that?"
"People look at me to fight and win because I'm a woman and men think they're better. People wanna see the underdog win. Everything and everybody in my life is that. You--"
"Me?"
"Yeah. When you saw the chance to get outta Common Ground you made it strong. Daddy's fightin' right now against the Pulse. The government wants to make money off his addiction and let him die, but he won't.
"But most of all I think about my mother. All she ever was was a prisoner. Trapped with those other girls. Made in some laboratory. But she still got away and made a life for herself even though the whole world was against it."
Tears sprouted from Fera's eyes. Pell squatted down next to her and hugged her head to his chest.
"That's what I been thinkin', honey. When people see me fight they feel good, but it doesn't help 'em. I keep thinkin' that I should get out there and fight for real, like you and Daddy and my mom. I could use Randac's money and the FemLeague lovin' me so much to run for some office, to go against the people usin' me to keep people sufferin'."
"Be easier livin' on Madagascar," Pell said.
"You could go there, baby," Fera said. "I'd understand if you wanted to take it easy."
"No, Fera," Pell said, kissing the knuckles of her right hand. "I'm with you down to the nub, down to our last dollar and dime." 
__________
 
She was the first woman to make a man bow down for sure, Groucho T, the Internet philosopher, said. He never got back up again.