Away Games: Science Fiction Sports Stories (2 page)

As we entered the playoffs we felt we had the advantage. The Reds, the Gunslingers and the Eagles all had robots, too, but we’d had Ralph a couple of weeks longer, and had had more time to create plays that utilized his special abilities. It didn’t matter much against the rest of the league, but against the teams that had robots as big and strong and quick as he was, we thought it would prove to be the difference.

We won the first two games by 38 and 44 points, and headed into the quarter-finals. Then the holo-networks, which are never happy, started complaining that Ralph never changed his expression. Seems the audience couldn’t identify with a player who didn’t look happy when he hit from 3-point range with a couple of guys hanging on his arms, or who didn’t act like he’d had an overdose of testosterone when he slammed the ball down through the hoop.

So they took him away for a few hours, and when he came back he had a happy smile on his face. Problem was, it never changed. He scored 66 points and pulled down 25 rebounds against Birmingham, and all we heard from the networks and press is that he looked like an idiot with a permanent grin on his face.

So the day before the semi-final game against Fargo, they took him away for a full 24 hours. I was lying on the bed, looking at a three-dimensional center-spread, when he walked into the room.

“Hi, Jacko,” he said. “It’s good to be back.”

“Hi, Ralph,” I said.

“Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”

I started at him. “You don’t sound like yourself. What did they do to you?”

“Remember my first day here when we were discussing emotions?” said Ralph. “Well, now I know what I was missing. I couldn’t comprehend it then; it was like describing colors to a blind man.”

“They gave you emotions?” I asked.

He nodded his head happily. “Yes. I can never thank the press enough. If they didn’t criticize that smile I had against Birmingham, I might never have been able to feel
this!”

“What
do
you feel?” I asked curiously.

“I feel a tingle of anticipation at the thought of playing against the Gunslingers tonight. I feel concern for Fishbait McCain, who is worried about how I’ll perform against Jerry-56. I feel friendship for you.”

“They gave you all that overnight?”

“I’ve studied myself extensively since I was activated, and I am convinced these feelings are too complicated to have been installed in a single day. I think they were always here, and what happened yesterday is that they simply unblocked them.” He could barely contain himself. “Damn! I’m ready to go! You want to get there early and put in an extra hour of practice?”

I frowned. “You never practice.”

“That was then. This is now. I crave the excitement of being on the court, of becoming a cog in a perfectly functioning machine called the Montana Buttes. Jerry-56 is no pushover. He’s two inches taller than me, and they say he’s faster. I have to be ready for him.”

“You’re
sure
you want to go over to the stadium now?” I said dubiously.

“Absolutely.” He glanced at the center-spread. “A new member of the team?”

I chuckled. “No.”

“Are we considering drafting her?”

This was how I knew there was at least one emotion they hadn’t given him.

We showed up early, but they were cleaning the court, setting up cameras, doing all kinds of things, so we stayed in the locker room. As each player came in, Ralph greeted him like a long-lost brother. He even threw his arms around Scooter, who at 6 feet 2 inches was our smallest player and practically vanished from view.

Fishbait came in at one point, told us we could do a ten-minute shoot-around to warm up, and then, when we came back into the locker room, he gave us an impassioned speech that would have worked a little better if he hadn’t given us the same one, almost word for word, before the last two playoff games.

Then it was game time. We emerged from the locker room, walked out between two high school bands that practically deafened us, got hit with the brightest lights I ever saw when they introduced us one by one, and finally stood at attention, hands on hearts—well, on chests; I don’t think Ralph or Jerry-56
had
hearts—during the national anthem, and then the starters went out onto the court for the tip-off. Jerry-56 actually won the tip. I couldn’t believe it; it was the first time I’d ever seen anyone out jump the Big Guy.

Jerry-56 passed it to a teammate who put the ball up. It hit the rim and Ralph grabbed the rebound. He saw Scooter way down the court and hit him with a line-drive pass. Scooter laid it up and in, and no one cheered louder than the Big Guy. As they were getting back on defense, he reached over and gave Scooter an encouraging pat on the back.

Now that the two robots had proven they were team players, they began taking over the game. We were down 55-52 at the half, by which time Jerry had scored 38 points and Ralph had 32.

It was tied at the end of the third quarter, and Fishbait put me in at power forward to spell Jake Jacobs. Suddenly I heard a whistle, I looked around, and they had called a foul on Ralph.

“What happened?” I whispered as Jerry walked to the free-throw line. “You haven’t committed a foul all season.”

“The son of a bitch deserved it,” said the Big Guy. “He damned near killed little Scooter with a moving screen, and the idiot ref didn’t call it.”

He didn’t sound like the Ralph I’d come to know, but I didn’t say a word, because somehow he was playing at an even higher level. In the end, we won by six points, and if you’d asked me why, I’d have said it was because Ralph wanted it more than Jerry-56 did.

He never showered with us, because he didn’t sweat, but after our semi-final win he did, because he said he wasn’t going to miss out on the camaraderie for anything. He was still on a high when we boarded the plane and flew to Providence for the championship game.

When I came back from lunch I thought maybe he’d stopped functioning. He was just sitting them, absolutely motionless, staring off into space. I reached out and shook him by the shoulder.

“You okay, Big Guy?” I said.

“I’m fine, Jacko,” he replied.

“You had me worried for a minute there. I thought maybe your power supply was running down or something.”

“No,” he said. “I was just analyzing.”

“The Reds? We’ve played them before. You know everything they’re likely to do. Hell, you’ve even seen Sammy-19 before.”

He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t analyzing the Reds.”

“What
were
you analyzing, then?” I asked.

“Emotions,” he said. “They are remarkable things, are they not?”

“I never thought much about it,” I said, “but I guess they are.”

“That’s because you’re used to them,” he said. “But the feeling when the final buzzer sounded and we had won the game—it was indescribable. Or the feeling in the locker room, when the whole team celebrated and almost seemed to fuse into a single entity! Or the feeling when I was able to fake Jerry-56 out of position. Or …”

“I’ve got a question,” I interrupted him.

“What is it, Jacko?”

“Why are you analyzing all these feelings? Why aren’t you just enjoying them?”

“I told you once,” he said. “I have a compulsion to learn. If I am to experience the entirety of each emotion—elation, triumph, camaraderie, whatever the feeling—I must fully comprehend it.”

“Well, if you ever comprehend Fishbait’s screaming at the refs when he knows they made the right call, let me know about it, okay?”

“I will,” he said seriously. “You know, I was mistaken when I said that value judgments were what separated us from you. I see now that it is emotions.”

“If you say so,” I replied. I checked my watch. “We won’t leave for the stadium for about four hours,” I said. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me if I sleep past five o’clock.”

“Yes, Jacko.”

I walked over to one of the beds, laid down, and I’ll swear I was asleep within half a minute. I woke up at about 4:30 to use the bathroom, and saw that Ralph was still motionless, still staring at something only he could see, still analyzing each emotion he’d felt.

I decided not to go back to sleep, so I just turned on the holo and watched some sports news. It didn’t bother the Big Guy. Nothing bothers him unless he lets it, and he was too busy studying his feelings.

We caught the bus at 5:30, reached the stadium at 6:00, got into our uniforms, had a quick shoot-around, and then came back to the locker room. Fishbait gave us the usual speech, and then, just for emphasis, he gave it to us, word for word, two more times.

Then it was game time. They said that more than 20 million viewers would be watching in America, and almost 300 million worldwide. We were slight underdogs, since we were playing on the Reds’ home court and Sammy-19 was a slightly later model than the Big Guy.

We went through the whole opening ceremony rigmarole, and I noticed that no one on our team sang the Star-Spangled Banner more passionately than Ralph. Then all the preliminaries were over, the rest of the season was behind us, and we were playing for that Holy Grail every team in every sport aspires to—the championship.

They got off to a quick lead. It was strictly because they were playing at home. No, the crowd’s screaming and cheering didn’t enter into it. But there were a couple of dead spots on the floor, and a very live spot on our backboard; they knew where the spots were, and by the time we learned their locations the first quarter was over and we were down 34-25. But we believed in ourselves, and especially in the Big Guy, and we clawed our way back into the game. We were down 61-54 at the half, and 94-89 after three quarters.

The Big Guy was playing better than I’d ever seen him play. It was as if he’d found a way to use those newly-found emotions, to funnel them into his play. He was heading toward a 70-point 30-rebound game, which would break every record in the book, and we were riding him to the title.

But the Reds had been a good team before they got Sammy-19, and they were a great team now—and they weren’t going to roll over and play dead for us. We got a one-point lead with six minutes to go, but Sammy came right back with a pair of buckets and a blocked shot, and suddenly we were down three only half a minute after we’d taken the lead. And that’s the way it stayed until the final minute of the game.

Then Scooter stole a pass, got it into Ralph’s hands, he stuffed it, and we were only a point down with 38 seconds to play. We triple-teamed Sammy, and since one of the defenders was Ralph, they knew they couldn’t get the ball to him, so one of their guards took a shot and missed.

Ralph grabbed the rebound and brought it up the court himself.

“No one else touches it!” yelled Fishbait from the sidelines. If they fouled one of us, he wanted to make sure it was Ralph.

There were ten seconds to go, then eight, then six, and finally Ralph drove to the basket. Everyone knew he was going to do it. Sammy-19 had too much control of his body to foul, but one of their forwards reached in, trying to slap the ball away. Everyone on the court heard the
clang!
when he got a piece of Ralph’s wrist.

They were already over the foul limit, and that meant that even though he hadn’t yet been shooting, Ralph was going to get two free throws. And
that
meant the game, and the championship, was in the bag. Ralph hadn’t missed a free throw, in practice or in a game, all season.

I glanced at the scoreboard. It showed Reds 122, Buttes 121, with two seconds to go. I saw Fishbait signal Scooter and Jake to go down court, because they’d surely have Sammy hurl the ball with that superhuman strength of his after Ralph made the free throws, and we had to be guarding whichever player he threw it to.

Ralph walked up to the line, looked at the basket, bounced the ball a couple of times, then put it up—

—and missed.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. He’d
never
missed. I walked over to him.

“Just stay calm,” I said. “Sink this and we’ll beat them in overtime.”

“I
am
calm,” he said, and he certainly sounded like he was. What he
didn’t
sound like was a man who couldn’t believe he’d finally missed a free throw.

The crowd started screaming, weaving their arms, doing anything they could to distract him. It had never worked before. It wouldn’t work now.

Ralph took the ball from the referee, calmly studied the basket, and put the ball in the air again.

And missed again.

Sammy-19 grabbed the rebound, and that was it. Rhode Island had won the championship.

Nobody said anything to Ralph in the locker room. There were no recriminations about the missed free throws. I mean, hell, he was the only reason we were there in the first place. But damn it all. Three seconds before the game was over we
knew
we had it, and then it all slipped away. I’ve never been in a quieter, more dejected locker room in my life.

Our plane wasn’t leaving until the morning, so the bus took us back to the hotel. I stopped in the bar for a couple of drinks, then went up to the room, where Ralph was sitting on the desk chair, an inscrutable expression on his face.

“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “You scored what, 66 or 67 points? No one could ask for more. No need to be depressed.”

“It’s exquisite,” he said.

“What’s
exquisite?” I asked.

“This depression. This knowledge that I let down my teammates and destroyed the hopes of all my fans. I believe it was once described as the agony of defeat.” He paused. “I am comparing it to last night’s elation. They are fascinating feelings, polar opposites and yet alike in a way.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Missing the free throws,” he said. “I told you I had a compulsion to learn.”

I frowned, confused. “What are you getting at?”

“If I had made them, my feelings would have been identical to last night. I would have learned nothing new.”

“You mean you missed them on purpose?” I demanded.

“Certainly. How else could I experience failure? How else could I destroy the happiness not only of myself, and my best friend”—he gestured to me—“but of tens of millions of fans?”