THE ALL-PRO (22 page)

“Oh, wow, they
dance
? Why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place, on account of how much I love ballet.”

“
You
love ballet?”

Quentin closed his eyes and held his hands over his heart. “Oh,
yes
, I so love it. Sometimes I skip practice so I can watch ballet holos and wear my three-three.”

Kimberlin closed his eyes. “
Tutus
, Quentin. Ballet dancers wear
tutus
.”

“Mine is one better than theirs, I guess. You know, because I love dance just that much.”

“Oh,” Kimberlin said. “You’re being sarcastic.”

“Who, me? Look, I’m just not interested in Prawatt
culture,
okay?”

“Are you interested in their sports?”

Sports? Quentin had a sudden vision of devil’s rope playing volleyball with a severed Human head. “Okay, I might be interested in that.”

Kimberlin rubbed his eyes. “The greatest cultural achievements of the millennia could be there for you to discover and you — of course — only hear the word
sports
.”

“Sports
are
the greatest cultural achievement of the millennia. Come on, what do they play? Hoops? Football?”

Kimberlin reached for the messageboard. “It is somewhat more gladiatorial than that. The Prawatt body structure allows them to take damage in a different way, so the game is not lethal for them. For the other races, however, it’s quite deadly.”

“Other races? I thought the Prawatt kill anything they see. What other races want to
play
with that?”

“Adventure seekers,” Kimberlin said. The messageboard cast up a holo, something that resembled a walled Dinolition pitch: oblong, with a small circle in the center. But this stadium seemed strange. The stands seemed to ...
move
 ... like waving sea anemones.

Kimberlin reached out, closed his thick hand on the floating holo, then made a throwing motion at the living room’s holotank. The room computer turned on the holotank and played the same image.

Low resolution and static made for horrible image quality, but the holotank’s larger picture explained the anemones-like motion — tens of thousands of jittering, spindly, curved arms of the repulsive Prawatt. The creatures were packed in tight, as tight as Purist pilgrims marching around Landing Site. The Prawatt horde’s glossy black arms waved with the same reverence as those swaying, flagellating Pilgrims. Quentin couldn’t make out individuals, although he could see that there were many different, vague and indistinct shapes in that mix.

The jittery, low-quality holo zoomed in, showing Prawatt down on the pitch.

“The devil’s rope,” Quentin said in a whisper. His people had good reason to think the Prawatt were demons — they looked like no other living species. From a distance, they resembled a fourlegged spider. Long, two-sectioned arms/legs led back to a tiny body. As the camera closed in, he could see that the leg sections weren’t rigid, like a insect’s, but more flexible, like two springy tubes. Even in the low-quality footage, Quentin could see
through
the legs in some places.

“Michael, are you
sure
that’s not a demon? ‘Cause if you ask me, I would say a demon probably looks a lot like that.”

“The Prawatt are unique in the galaxy. Tiny machines link together to form larger structures.

The holocam image pulled back. Three elevated rings stood on either end of the oblong pitch. On the pitch itself stood fourteen beings — seven wearing ribbons of red, seven wearing ribbons of green.

Two teams.

But not all the players were Prawatt.

Quentin squinted, as if that would help bring resolution to the holographic image. “On the red team, is that a Ki? And that, a Sklorno?”

Michael nodded. “Adventure seekers. Or captured merchants, we don’t know. The Prawatt consider any violation of their borders as an act of war. If sentients enter their space — intentionally or accidentally — those sentients are usually executed.”

“Wow,” Quentin said. “Makes you think people would pay attention to their maps.”

“Space is a fluctuating thing. It is easy to lose one’s bearings, even with the complex navigational technology most ships possess.”

“So, some players are
forced
to play?”

“That’s what experts think,” Kimberlin said. “Apparently, some sentients have earned their freedom by winning.”

“What about the others? The adventure seekers?”

“Those that value excitement more than life have been known to intentionally cross into Prawatt space, just to play this game.”

Quentin saw a Quyth Warrior on the green team. Something about that one, something ... familiar. “Hey, wait a minute. Holy crap, Mike! Is that Leiba the Gorgeous?”

Kimberlin nodded. “That’s how we have this holo. This is the only known recording of the sport.”

“What’s it called?”

“No one knows,” Kimberlin said. “Until Leiba somehow made this recording, the game was the stuff of legend and rumor.”

The contest began. The holo’s terrible quality made it hard to understand, but the object seemed clear — put a ball through the rings on either end. A goalie defended the rings. The teams tore into each other, hitting hard and trying to advance the ball, passing it around like a nonstop form of football. Or maybe this was a kind of soccer where you could use your hands and actually
hit
people, not the sissy game where you couldn’t touch anyone. Through the static and the jiggering images, Quentin thought he saw more balls in play. Soccer with three balls where you could use your hands and actually hit sentients?

The red team seemed to break through the green team’s defenses. One Prawatt, red ribbons streaming behind it, took the ball forward and
jumped
. The green goalie also jumped, an insane leap that brought the two alien machines together some twenty feet off the pitch. The red player took the hit, but twisted, throwing the ball through one of the rings. Both competitors fell to the ground, landing as lightly as cats.

“Wow! Did you see that?”

“Just wait,” Kimberlin said. “I don’t think you’ll be quite as excited about the next part.”

Quentin squinted again, trying to make out the action on the field. So hard to identify anything with this horrible image quality, but there
was
more than one ball. The two extra balls seemed to fly around randomly — it made no sense.

The first ball, the one that they’d used to score the goal, bounced free. The two teams converged. The red-team’s Sklorno player leapt to wrap her tentacles around it, but she was met in the air by two green-team Prawatt. They tackled her, the three of them falling hard to the ground. The Sklorno landed head-first. Even through the scratchy image, Quentin knew a fatality when he saw one.

The ball bounced free. Just seconds later, Leiba the Gorgeous closed in on it. A Prawatt came at him from behind, diving at his legs. Leiba’s lower-left leg snapped at the shin, blood spraying onto the pitch.

“High One,” Quentin said. “This game is, uh, violent.”

Seconds later, one of the randomly flying balls slammed into the Ki’s face. The big creature fell to the pitch, twitching madly.

And then the holo blinked out.

“Hey,” Quentin said. “I want to watch the rest of it.”

“That is all there is. The only known recording.”

Quentin stared at the blank holoscreen, his heart racing. It didn’t seem to matter what the sport was — if it was a game, it excited him like nothing else in life. He let out a long breath, calming himself, dealing with the fact that he would never know if that Ki lived or which side won the game.

He turned to face Kimberlin, whose big arms were once again crossed over his chest. Quentin’s eyes flicked to Kimberlin’s right ring finger. As always, there was no ring. Quentin had ignored this question last season, but he could restrain his curiosity no more.

“I gotta ask you something,” Quentin said. “You were with Pine when the Jacks won two Galaxy Bowls. Why don’t you wear your rings?”

Kimberlin looked down. “Because I did not earn them.”

“Because you didn’t start? You were still on the team, man.”

“You don’t understand, Quentin. I ... I
could
have started. Back then, I was not as level-headed as I am now.”

Quentin tried to imagine Michael Kimberlin as anything other than the hulking-but-calm force that he was, anything other than a rock of reason. That image refused to crystallize.

“Let me guess,” Quentin said. “You got all crazy and mixed white milk with chocolate milk? You are such a wild thing, Mike.”

Kimberlin smiled, but there was little humor in it.

“Unfortunately, it was more severe than that. The details are not a story to be told now, not when we must focus on the coming season.”

“Crazier than mixing milk? Did you stay up past midnight or something?”

Kimberlin stared off into the distance. “I am no stranger to death on the football field.”

Quentin hadn’t expected that. He instantly felt bad for poking fun, for unknowingly making light of something that serious.

Kimberlin closed his eyes for a second, seemed to gather his thoughts, then opened them again. He stared at Quentin in a calculating, emotionless manner. From whistle to whistle, Michael Kimberlin was a scary piece of work. Any time other than that, however, he seemed to have all the passion of a broom.

“My irresponsible actions resulted in uncorrectable consequences,” he said. “What I have done ... one cannot take back.”

Quentin wondered what could be so bad that Kimberlin wanted to push it down, hide it somewhere inside. Had he killed another player?

“If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t push,” Quentin said. “But sentients die on the football field, Mike. It’s the life we have chosen. I don’t see what that has to do with you not wearing a ring that you earned.”

“It wasn’t during a game,” Kimberlin said. “And it was my own teammate.”

“It happened in practice?”

Michael shook his head. “No. Not in practice. Off the field.”

Off the field.
Michael Kimberlin had killed his own teammate, another member of the Jupiter Jacks. Whatever the cause of that action, Kimberlin bore the responsibility.

“That incident changed me,” Kimberlin said. “It taught me that one needs to think things through. One needs to see the big picture. One needs knowledge. I am with a new team now. I want to earn a championship and wear
that
ring. It is the focal point of my existence.”

“I thought you said there’s more to life than football.”

Kimberlin nodded, then smiled — and this time, there was a bit of humor in the expression. “There is more to life than football. Just not
much
more.”

QUENTIN SAT ON THE BENCH
in front of his locker, slowly fastening his shoes. The rest of the team had already headed out to the field for Media Day. Only Don Pine remained behind, waiting for Quentin to finish getting ready. Both men wore their black home jerseys: the word KRAKENS and their numbers in white-trimmed orange, the Krakens logo on both shoulders, white-trimmed orange numbers on the sleeves. No armor, no pads, just the jerseys.

Messal the Efficient entered the Human locker room. He spotted the two quarterbacks and walked straight for them.

“He looks agitated,” Quentin said.

“He does,” Don Pine said. “Can you blame him? We might be a whole thirty seconds behind schedule.”

Messal stopped in front them, shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Elder Barnes, Mister Pine, I must not have properly communicated the schedule to you, for which I apologize immensely. I do hate to disturb your conversation, but the media is out on the field. The rest of the team is already present and the reporters are awaiting Ionath’s star quarterbacks.”

Quentin sighed and looked away. “Sorry, Messal, I don’t feel like attending Media Day.”

Messal’s eye turned crimson — one of the fear colors. He started to shake. “But ... Elder Barnes, we are due on the field! If we don’t— “

“Messal,” Don said. “He’s just messing with you. We’re ready to go.”

Messal’s eye color shifted to green. “Messing with me?”

Quentin stood and gently slapped Messal on his middle shoulder. “Yeah, just giving you a hard time. Don’t have a heart attack, okay?” Quentin reached into his locker and grabbed a slip of paper. “Messal, you can get whatever the players need, right?”

Messal’s eye went clear, but he again started hopping from foot to foot. “Yes, Elder Barnes, within reason. Some of Mister Tweedy’s requests have been well,
unreasonable
.”

“I can imagine.” Quentin handed the Quyth Worker the slip of paper. “Here you go. I need you to get these things for me.”

Don leaned in to read it. “What you got goin’ on there, Q?”

“Nothing but a little courtesy, Purist Nation style,” Quentin said. “The Ki were kind enough to invite me to dinner. I’m returning the favor.”

Messal opened the slip of paper and read. “This request is most unusual, Elder Barnes. But I will do my best.”

“When do you think you can have all that?”

“If I can find what you’re looking for, I imagine it will arrive before we leave for Yall in Week Two.”

Quentin nodded. “That’ll work. Now can we go? I mean, come on, Messal, I want to stay on schedule and you’re making us late.”

Messal stared for another second, then turned and walked out of the locker room. Quentin and Don followed.

“Q, that’s not very nice,” Don said. “Messal takes these things pretty serious.”

“Gee, Don, ya think? Come on, the little guy needs to lighten up a bit.”

The three walked down the tunnel of Ionath Stadium, heading for the field. A year ago, Media Day had filled Quentin with dread. This season he wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but he was resigned to the process, prepared for it. As team leader, this was part of his responsibilities.

“Need any more coaching, Q?” Don asked. “Any tips?”