But I was shaken. His sharp claws had brushed my belly. An inch more and I would have been bleeding my life out, red on the green of the gamesward. I felt nauseated. The noise of the crowd was like the surf, rolling in over me, but dirty, filled with garbage. _Barbarians!_ I thought. Suddenly I didn't want to win. I didn't want to die, either, but the price for that was to kill this other man with whom I had no quarrel. * * * * * He was facing me again, his ear hanging down grotesquely, and throwing a series of orthodox feints with his left to set me up for a right cross. He had a strange expression on his contorted face. "... television," I heard him grunt. It was clearly that word--that Earth-word. I had to give him a word he'd recognize in turn as non-Uru. "What channel?" I said. "What channel was that on?" He looked at me in surprise. "Any channel that had one," he said. "I was telling myself how I used to scream for blood when I watched fights on television. Crazy. Who the hell are you?" I swung a slow-motion left that missed by eight inches. He sent out an uppercut that missed by as much. "New York," I said. "I wish I was back." "Me too, pal," he said. "Chicago was never like this." "Rome was, though," I said, doing fancy footwork and throwing punches at the air. "And one of us is going to be carried out." "I was looking for _yage_ on South State Street." He weaved and shadow-boxed, not touching me. "And they gave you _uru_. The big fix. We're fixed, all right." "It's the least, Dad," he said. "Believe me." There was a voice inside my skull. "Boru!" it said. It was Joro's, or Jones's. "The Man is complaining," I said to Chicago. "The Man named Jones, an _uru_ pusher. Thinks we're not giving the customers their money's worth." I crouched and tapped him lightly on the chest. "Bleed on the bleeding customers," he said, nudging me gently on the shoulder. "English expression." "Boru!" the voice in my skull said again. "_Barry!_ What has happened? Fight, man, for the honor of Urula!" "He wants me to kill you," I told Chicago. "But maybe he can't make me." I had thought Jones was in complete control. "Mine, too," Chicago said. "Pusher name of Robinson. He's popping his cork but I think I can stand him off." I got a light punch in the ribs and retaliated with a caress to the jaw. "Sorry about the ear," I said. "Forget it. Where do we go from here? We can't waltz forever." The crowd was catching on. I'd heard boos like that in the Garden and Ebbets Field. They must have known by now that the big fight was a fake and that the boys in the ring were a couple of bums anxious to get to the showers.