Fair Game
Authors: Alan Durant
Titles in Teen Reads:
FAIR GAME
ALAN DURANT
HOME
TOMMY DONBAVAND
KIDNAP
TOMMY DONBAVAND
MAMA BARKFINGERS
CAVAN SCOTT
SITTING TARGET
JOHN TOWNSEND
THE HUNTED
CAVAN SCOTT
THE CORRIDOR
MARK WRIGHT
WORLD WITHOUT WORDS
JONNY ZUCKER
Badger Publishing Limited, Oldmedow Road,
Hardwick Industrial Estate, King's Lynn PE30 4JJ
Telephone: 01438 791037
Fair Game ISBN 978-1-78147-563-8
ISBN: 9781781476628 (Epub)
ISBN: 9781781476635 (Mobi)
Text © Alan Durant 2014
Complete work © Badger Publishing Limited 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
The right of Alan Durant to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Publisher: Susan Ross
Senior Editor: Danny Pearson
Copyeditor: Cheryl Lanyon
Designer: Bigtop Design Ltd
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
PENAL COLONY 156
My name is Billy B. The B stands for Balentine but no one ever calls me that. In the year 2074 I was sent to prison for a computer crime. I crashed the state betting system for a week with a virus. I served my time on Penal Colony 156 in Deep Space 7. That's no holiday resort. Deep Space 7 is a wilderness of dead stars. Penal Colony 156 is its black heart. Only the worst criminals end up there. The judge sent me there to teach me a lesson.
I learnt a lesson all right. A year later I came back to Earth a changed man. But not in the way the judge had hoped. On Penal Colony
156 I learnt, for the first time, the thrill of real, live sport. We boxed, we raced, we threw⦠but, best of all, we played football. Nobody I knew on Earth had ever played football. We'd gamed it on screen with simulators, yes. But not on a pitch, kicking a real ball. No one did that any more. It was stupid, violent, dangerous⦠That's what we were told, anyway. But what I found out in prison was that it was also wild, amazing, fun. And I couldn't get enough of it.
It's all thanks to Danny Marconi. He's a lifer on Penal Colony 156. His grandad was Tony Marconi, a famous football star when it was the most popular game in the world. Thousands of people used to go to stadiums to watch it. That was back before simulators took over. There are no simulators in prison. You have to make your own fun. So Danny started games of football.
The football on Penal Colony 156 wasn't like the game I'd played on screen. It was hard and tough. The ball was a pig's bladder. The goals were chalked on the prison yard walls. You
couldn't handle the ball (unless you were the keeper), but you could handle your opponent. It was like a cross between football, rugby and wrestling.
I lost count of the times I was thrown to the ground the first time I played. I was grabbed every time I got the ball. I ended up with a mass of cuts and bruises. But I learnt fast. The secret was to keep one step ahead of your opponent. You had to think fast and move with speed. I was quick on my feet and I had skill too â a lot of it. I could go past a man with ease. And I had a good shot on me. I could score with my right or left foot from a long way out. After only a few games I was the prison's star player. Every team wanted me on its side.
I got offered âgifts' to buy my services. My work duties were covered. I was given the best food. My bedding became luxurious. Other prisoners looked out for me. I made some good friends. But I made some enemies, too. Pablo Martinez, for example. He'd been the star player before
I showed up and he didn't like me being better than him. He didn't like it at all. More than once he'd threatened to kill me. I knew it was only talk, though. He wouldn't dare harm me. Danny Marconi would have killed
him
. I liked Danny. He was good to me even before he saw how good I was at football. He liked my spark, he said. Most of the prisoners on Penal Colony 156 had lost their spark years ago. I didn't blame them. If it hadn't been for football, I'd have lost my spark pretty fast. The football made life OK.
I was glad the day my sentence was up. But I knew I'd miss the football and the friends I'd made â Danny, Mitch Brown, and my cellmate, âCog' Lorenzoâ¦
“See you around, Cog,” I said when I walked out the cell door.
“I hope not,” Cog said grimly. “You don't want to come back here.”
I smiled and raised my hand.
Little did either of us know just how soon I'd be back.
BORED
I found it hard to settle back on Earth. I was given a place to live. There were no jobs but I had my state bounty. Every citizen had one â a sum of money to live on. I had no family â my parents and my two sisters had died in the Great Plague of 2069. I'd had a few friends but I couldn't get back into my old life. I'd been happy to spend my days at the X-Dock before I went to jail. We'd played on the simulators all day and tried to think up new virtual games. But when I came back it all seemed so empty, pointless, a waste of time. I wanted action, exercise. I
wanted to play football. My friends just laughed at me when I told them.
“Why would anyone want to kick a pig's bladder?” they said. They thought the whole idea was ridiculous. They thought I was nuts. Maybe I was. A year on Penal Colony 156 was enough to turn anyone crazy. But I didn't feel crazy. I felt full of life and energy. I didn't want to spend my life sitting in front of a screen. I wanted to get out in the open air, to play a game with physical contact. I wanted to play proper football.
I was bored. Every day was dull as dull could be. I even started to wish I was back in prison. I thought of Danny and the others on the Penal Colony, playing football, and I envied them. Why was everyone on Earth so boring? Why didn't they want to get out and play, like me? Surely, I thought, there must be other people who felt the way I did? I sent out some blogcasts asking if anyone was interested in playing real football. I said what fun it was and what good exercise, too.
I looked up some sport organisations on the net. There was one called âReal Sport'. I called them up on my videobox. A young guy answered. I told him about my interest in playing real football.
“What do you mean âreal football'?” he asked.
I laughed. “You know, kicking a ball around a pitch. That kind of real football,” I said.
He looked at me like I was mad. “You call that real football?” he said with a smirk.
“Yeah. I've played it before. I'd like to play it again.”
“Where exactly did you play?” he questioned.
I told him. His smirk slipped and turned into a scowl. The videobox went blank.
These organisations said they were into real sport. But they weren't. Well, not my idea of real sport anyway. They were just betting syndicates. Gambling was run by the state.
Private gambling was banned. But there were lots of illegal gambling sites and clubs. You could bet on anything if you wanted to. Betting on virtual sporting contests was a big thing. To some people, sport was only real if you had a bet on it.
I hated gambling. My dad had lost all his money gambling. We'd been poor as hell for the last couple of years before the plague came. We had to keep moving because Dad owed money to gambling gangsters. I went to bed every night scared that we were going to be killed in our sleep. It was almost a relief when the plague came. At least the fear was over⦠We all got sick. I thought we'd all die. The others did, but somehow I survived.
It was after the plague that the state took over gambling. They started their own betting system. It made me angry. I hated gambling and I hated the state for encouraging people to do it. I swore I'd do something about it. And, eventually, I did. I hacked into the system and planted a virus I'd
created. It caused havoc. In the end, they traced it back to me. But I didn't really care. I'd made my point. I hadn't expected to be sent to Penal Colony 156, though. That had been a bit of a shock.
I'd just about given up on âreal sport' organisations, when I got a call. I couldn't see the caller's face because the room he was in was dark.
“Is that Billy Balentine?” he inquired.
I told him it was.
“I hear you're interested in playing some real football?”
“That's right,” I nodded.
“Come and see me tomorrow at ten,” he said. He gave me the address and rang off.
Maybe things were looking up at last, I thought.
TWO ENCOUNTERS
The man called himself Gull Reeves. He leaned across the desk and shook my hand.