A Planet for Rent (13 page)

This is my team.

I look at them, proud. They’re as much mine as they are Gopal’s. First-class human beings. Faces of steel, pure determination. Faces like those of the agents on the Planetary Security recruitment holoposters. Earth’s soldiers. Faces like that of the stone-jawed worker whose enormous hologram is floating now over the Metacolosseum, broadcasting his message, “If you have to send a package, there’s nothing like Planetary Transports Inc. It’ll get there safe, it’ll get there today, any day.” As he says it, he crudely hugs the topheavy blonde smiling at his side, an image brimming with subliminal messages of virility and patriotism.

Except the face of this worker, and those of the Planetary Security agents, are just computer-generated forms. My team is real.

That’s the difference.

The League guys must think they’ve demoralized us by taking out Arno. Think we’ll start playing defense. Which is what we ought to do, by any logical criteria.

They can’t expect us to attack. Especially not to run a play as suicidal as the Chinese box.

Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it’ll surprise them.

And all these years of taking synthetic steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to transform my metabolism completely, of consuming stress relief drugs and neurostimulants that have driven me all but crazy, haven’t been in vain.

And all the aches on rainy days, reminders of the hundred fractures I’ve accumulated and the two autoclonings I’d prefer to forget, haven’t been in vain.

And all the time I’ve gone without having an erection that wasn’t electronically induced, without a normal girlfriend, without any friends or family other than one Voxl team or another, hasn’t been in vain.

Maybe everything will turn out okay. And then this will all have been just an investment. Risky but intelligent, in the end.

A sort of long-term deposit, so I’ll have a pile I can count on later for a secure old age without deprivation.

So I won’t end up, like so many others, joining the ranks of ruined former Voxl players. Dragging around the withered, useless remains of my oversized thighs amid moans of pain. Pining for a roof over my head and a plate of food, forced to rent out myself for a pittance to Body Spares, or falling into the underground male social work network to get by for a couple more days.

I watch Jonathan from the corner of my eye. He’s still trembling, and rightly so. He’s practically an old man, and he hardly knows how to do anything but play Voxl. If he doesn’t make it now, he’ll never get a second chance. The end of his playing career is near... terribly near.

Today he’ll be a hero or nothing. Shameful failure or total triumph. He’ll be playing the most difficult position for a welterweight like him: subbing the defensive back. I know he’ll go out there and give it his last drop of sweat, his last gram of effort.

I look at Mvamba. Calm. At his age, barely at the start of his sports career and already a member of the Team Earth that hit double digits against League players, he’ll be showered with contracts. For him, old age is still a faraway menace. And compared with the Sydney where he grew up, that inferno of violence and filth, every day of his current life is a paradise. Whatever might happen, he’s already won, and he knows it.

The fact that he still wants to bet it all on the Chinese box, risking serious injury, speaks well of the fetish worshipper. He has great heart, this African ex-aerobus driver.

But maybe at the last minute his survival instinct will make him hold back... I’ll trust him ninety percent. Not a hundred.

Yukio is inscrutable as ever. He never joins in. He belongs and doesn’t belong to the team. When we go out on the town as a group, he prefers to head off on his own. I don’t feel he’s totally mine. If he didn’t play so well, I’d distrust him. What’s a superrich shareholder in the Planetary Tourism Agency doing here, sweating blood and risking his life with the scum of the Earth that we are? Playing for playing’s sake—I don’t get it. For honor? What honor do we humans have left?

What, other than survival at all costs, does a race that has been defeated and humiliated on every front have left?

The days of samurais and warrior glory are long gone. Contact came and changed everything. Now, Yukio Kawabata, the pathetic descendent of the feudal lords of Japan, is trying to wrap his nakedness and frustration in the tattered cloth that does such a poor job of covering us: dignity.

Ha. A human Voxl player, dignified? Like a passionate Centaurian, an educated rat, or a kind grodo. Absurdities. And if Yukio believes in them, he’s a dumb idealist.

But in the long run, it’s his business. Dumb or not, something tells me I can trust him absolutely. He’s made from the same material as the kamikaze pilots in World War II. Even when they knew the Japanese Empire had lost, they flew to their deaths in the face of Yankee artillery fire, shouting “Banzai!” in their explosive-filled Zeros.

Yukio would have been one of them, if he had lived then. He won’t fail me.

And the Slovskys? I watch their faces, flushed from debating the plays they’d made. Jan and Lev, nearly indistinguishable. Their cheeks still covered with peachfuzz, not a shadow of a beard. They’re kids. And at the same time, they’re like thousand-year-old men who’ve seen it all before and have lost interest in everything. Robots specially programmed to play Voxl, that’s how they’ve chosen to appear. But, I wonder, what lies beneath?

Do they hate the tyrannical father, the coach who forced them onto the court almost before they learned to talk? Do they hate me for making them face off against their idol, Tamon Kowalsky? Or do they love me for giving them a chance to play, though on opposite sides, with the beloved captain of their Warsaw Hussars?

But beyond the game, what are they? Or is it just that they aren’t anything else? They seem happy, arguing about Voxl all the time. Breathing Voxl. Sunk knee-deep in the shit of Voxl and enjoying it more than anyone. What was that old saying my mother always told me when I was a kid?

For a man who dies doing what he likes, even death tastes like heaven.

Lies. Heaven, shit. For the Slovskys, like for all the rest of us, death and defeat are going to taste like shit.

I can count on them to the very end, too. Deep down, their supposed lack of interest in everything but the game is just a mask to hide their infinite shyness and clumsiness outside the Voxl universe. Their shame at knowing they’re just humans. They aren’t so different.

We are the champions.

The best of the best.

The salt of the Earth.

We’re going to wash away the shame of Contact. Take revenge for that xenoid humiliation on the only field where we’re almost equals.

Inside the cuboid court, it doesn’t matter how many planet-sized battleships we humans can put into orbit, or how many millions of credits we can call our own in infobanks around the galaxy.

Or does it?

Because, can’t this League team count on medical monitors a thousand times better than ours? Simulators and training systems we can’t even imagine?

Sports equality is a pipe dream.

Otherwise... why hasn’t any Team Earth
ever
won one of these matches?

Until today.

Today is different. I can feel it in the air. Today... who knows.

Because we are the champions.

The best sextet of humans who ever rebounded off a Voxl field.

The great human hope.

The secret weapon of revenge—closer now than ever.

End of half-time commercials. Teams, take the field.

The pink-and-blues and the magentas are returning to the fray.

“Let’s see how well you move now, little Latino,” is Kowalsky’s whispered insult, his idea of a greeting before he turns on his helmet.

Sure, renegade. Let’s see how you handle it. Let’s see if the cunning in your human brain is a match for all six of ours. There’s a good reason why the League team wanted at least one Homo sapiens in their lineup. The Centaurians invented the game... but we’re the most creative now. And everybody in the galaxy knows it—that’s why they record all our World Championships and study them, to steal our strategies.

Sure, Kowalsky. You’re going to see how well I move now. Let’s see if playing in the League has taught you any new tricks—or just made you forget most of what you used to know.

It’s our serve. “Chinese box,” I remind my guys over the vocoder.

There’s the voxl, red now instead of green. Second half. How long has it been since a human team saw this color in a match against League players?

Dear Virgin, do not forsake me at this decisive hour.

Yukio diverts it without letting it touch the ground. A nicely controlled play. The Cetian clones take off to catch it.

Jonathan risks a collision with their full force and stops the voxl cold before the Cetians arrive. We wait. Kowalsky hesitates, then finally sends the Colossaur after us.

Now.

I rebound off Mvamba and wrap myself around the voxl. I can’t hold it, yet it can’t get out of the cage I’ve formed with my limbs, head, and body. I’m left defenseless; now everything depends on my team.

The Colossaur reaches me and I tense up—but the Slovskys shunt him aside before he can do me any damage. Well, what happens next is useful to us. His slight contact is making me float up slowly, and I suddenly arch my back, propelling the voxl against the ceiling.

First bounce.

As if in slow motion, Jonathan reaches it and wraps around it. I join the Slovskys: we have to immobilize 650 pounds of Colossaur! Mvamba stops one Cetian and the slippery Yukio gets Kowalsky and the other Cetian entangled. Jonathan reaches the floor, still wrapped around the voxl, which he frees almost tenderly.

Second bounce.

Jonathan took a big risk by squeezing the voxl with all his strength against the wall. Now it shoots off—fortunately, in the perfect direction. Back at the ceiling. God exists, He is here with us, and He guides our voxl. Thank you, sweet Virgin.

The Colossaur makes an all-out effort to reach it, sweeping the twins aside, but I pin his tail between my back and the wall. One second, two... He’s wriggling away, he’s too strong. And there’s hardly any friction between the force fields of our suits. The magenta mound reaches out with his tridactyl hand and...

Too late!

Third rebound!

This one was for you, Arno...

Seventh goal scored by Earth!!! Earth takes the lead on the scoreboard! Sixteen to fifteen! Earth, Earth, Earth!

See now how well I move, renegade?

I can almost feel the court shaking. Out there, the Metacolosseum of New Rome must bursting with joy. Collective hysteria.

In here, we are the champions, and we’re going to win.

Going to take revenge for Earth’s humiliation, forever.

Going to earn a place in glory.

The next goal decides it all.

Our serve.

We salute Centaurian-style, with the tips of our fingers, arms outstretched.

And go on the attack.

For the first time in a quarter of a century, Earth is winning.

Mvamba—Yukio. The Slovskys show off with a swift bounce off the demoralized Colossaur’s chest, and they keep control. The court is ours.

Kowalsky tries to snatch it and fails, but the Cetians act in coordination and steal the rebound that Jonathan was about to capture...

There’s no escape: Mvamba steals from them and passes to me. I’ve got it: one, two... The Colossaur sweeps the Slovskys aside and messes up the play. He dominates. The twins neutralize him again but now the voxl is Kowalsky’s. The clones block me doggedly.

I slip away from the Cetians and thumb my nose at Tamon Kowalsky. The twins are controlling the Colossaur.

Tension. It’s a battle for the deciding goal.

Muscle fatigue. Adrenaline pulses into my blood.

Virgin of Caridad del Cobre, give us this goal.

The Cetians take Yukio out of circulation, hurling him into Mvamba. It doesn’t matter, he’ll get over it. I dodge the charging rhinoceros of a Colossaur and make a long pass to Jonathan.

He catches it between his legs and goes for the bounce: one, two...

An unguarded Cetian intercepts it and rebounds off the other one.

Kowalsky hems me in.

One bounce, two...

Sweet Virgin, don’t abandon me now!

Yukio still dazed. Mvamba moves in, but erratically. He hasn’t entirely recovered...

My soul freezes when I see there won’t be enough time.

Now something is burning inside me. It can’t end like this!

I shout over the vocoder: “Revenge! Everybody on Kowalsky!”

...and three.

Eighth and final goal, for the League. Eighteen to Fifteen. League wins. League Captain Tamon Kowalsky injured.

And we lose.

But it was too much for the Warsaw Hussars’ old captain. Jonathan, Mvamba, the Slovskys, and me, piling on him.

When they turn off the field and gravity goes back up from 0.67
g
to our normal terrestrial 1.0 g, Tamon Kowalsky lies sprawled across the floor of the court, looking like a broken doll. The paramedics take him away without even turning off his suit. They only take off his helmet, which rolls across the floor.

“That’s Voxl, schmuck,” Jonathan mumbles, dealing it a splendid kick, angry tears in his eyes. “That’s for Arno—and don’t you ever insult a human player again.”

I look at him, astonished. How could he have known?

He shrugs, a stricken look on his face, and points to his vocoder. It isn’t the official model at all—it’s had a lot more than “slight modifications.”

“Sorry, Daniel,” he whispers. “Electronics is another hobby of mine. I thought if I knew what you and Gopal were saying I could play better. I placed a microphone in your helmet...”

“Forget about it, doesn’t matter anymore.” I pat him on the back, trying to seem nonchalant. “Hey... so, what are you going to do now?”

He smiles and shrugs again. “Well, I’ll manage somehow. I can always go back to teaching deaf kids. See you around—someday, I hope. Take care, captain.”

He leaves. A good guy, that Jonathan. Too bad.