Short Fiction by Mack Reynolds (ready to read books .TXT) 📕

The book was Glossary of Ancient Terminology. I thumbed through it and finally found my words.

“Stuffed shirt!” I yelped indignantly. “A stuffed shirt! Me?”

Ten minutes later I was in the Gladiator Room of the Spacenter Building and already had three or four slugs of woji under my belt.

“A stuffed shirt, yet. Me! Solar System Champ.” I grunted sarcastically and made with a curt flip of my hand to the bartender. He was a Venusian spiderman, who of course, make the best barkeeps in the System.

“Another woji,” I ordered.

A guy drifted down to me from the other end of the bar. “Hanging one on, Champ?” he asked. “You must be out of training.”

I looked him up and down. I’d never seen him before. However, in my position you have to be nice to the fans.

I said, “Woji doesn’t bother me. I train on it.” Suzi’s words were still burning. I added, out of the side of my mouth, “If you really got it, you got it, and if you haven’t you haven’t and all the training in the world won’t give it to you.”

I flexed my muscles. “Woji isn’t going to hurt a man like me.”

He blinked in admiration. “Guess you’re right at that, Champ,” he said. “It’s the second-raters that have to be watching everything they eat, everything they drink, everything they do.”

“Right,” I told him, condescendingly.

He climbed up on the stool next to me.

“Have a woji?” I asked him. I was glad to have his company; at least it’d keep my mind off Suzi.

“No thanks,” he said, shuddering. “But I wouldn’t mind a bloor.”

So I ordered him a bloor and another double woji for me.

My new friend said hesitantly, “Champ, what’d ’ya think of these visitors, explorers, or whatever you want to call them, from Centaurus?”

How is it that when you become a celebrity⁠—no matter in what field⁠—your opinions on every subject seem noteworthy to everybody else? I’d read a little about the Centaurians, seen an item or two on the viziscreen, but I didn’t know anything about them worth mentioning. I was too busy with my own rapidly developing affairs to spend much time keeping up with Solar System news.

“What about them?” I asked, noticing that my tongue was at last beginning to get a bit thick. I ordered another drink. The bartender started to protest, but then shrugged six of his shoulders and began mixing it.

“Didn’t you hear the latest?” the guy asked. “They’re looking for room for colonization and the Solar System attracts them.”

It was shortly after this that the fog rolled in, and it didn’t roll out again until the following morning when my manager gave me a dealcoholizer.

He was hopping mad. And when I say hopping mad I mean just that since Mari Nown, my manager, is a chicken-headed Mercurian Bouncer. A nationalized citizen of Terra, of course, but a Mercurian with all their characteristic excitability.

When my head cleared, he was jumping up and down in front of me and waving a sheet of newspaper he’d torn off the recorder on the viziscreen.

“Simmer down,” I told him. “My head still aches, and besides, I can’t understand what you’re yelling about.” I added nastily, “In fact, I can’t understand how anything could happen that you’d yell about. All you do is sit around and let ten percent of everything I make roll into your pockets. You’re probably the richest gladiator manager in the system and⁠—”

He stopped hopping long enough to fix me with a beady eye. Finally he became coherent. “And that’s exactly what I want to remain!” he shrilled. “You stupid makron, what’re you trying to do, get yourself killed?” He waved the news sheet again.

I began to catch on to the fact that I must have done something the day before while under the influence of⁠—ugh, I couldn’t even think of the word without my stomach churning.

“All right,” I said. “What is it? I don’t remember.”

He was prancing again. “You don’t remember! I’ll say you don’t remember! If you did, you’d be hiding under the bed.”

That got to me. I raised up indignantly. “Hiding under the bed? Me? I don’t have to hide from anything. I’m champ!”

“That’s pronounced chump,” he whistled nastily. He tossed me the news sheet.

The headline read: Interplanetary Champ says issues between Solar System and Centaurus should be settled in the arena.

“Did I say that?” I said interestedly. “When?”

He was almost hopping again. “To that cub reporter in the Gladiator Room, you stupid makron!”

“Don’t swear at me,” I growled. “I didn’t know he was a reporter. Besides, what’re you so excited about? Maybe it’d be a good idea.”

“Look at that next head,” he shrilled.

It read: Centaurians accept challenge of Jak Dempsi.

“Hey,” I said, “that ought to be quite a fight. Who do you think we’ll have representing the Solar System? A Slaber from Jupiter would be a good bet. He⁠—”

There he went again. He screamed, “Of course! Of course, a Slaber would be best, but you’re the champion! A stupid idiot⁠—but champion!”

I gaped at that, then let my eyes go down to the news account. He was right. As champion, I was scheduled to meet the Centaurian gladiator. On the outcome would depend the fate of the System.

“Well,” I said slowly. “Guess it makes sense at that. I am the best gladiator in the System.”

He closed his little bird eyes in anguish.

I added, “As a matter of fact, I could use the exercise. I haven’t had a meet in months.” I eyed him accusingly. “What kind of a manager are you? Here I am, Solar System Champ and you haven’t got me a fight since I won the Interplanetary Meet. The biggest drawing card in⁠—”

He’d got to the point where he was so mad he wasn’t hopping any more. Just breathing real deep.

He said, “The reason you haven’t had any meets since you became champ is because I’d rather have a live champ making a good living endorsing Callipso Snak-goat Cheese⁠—and