Stackpole, Michael A - Shadowrun (22 page)

I frowned. "Ruth ever face Fitzsimmons in real life?"

Spike shook his head. "Careers overlapped, but Ruth was mostly American League and Fitzsimmons was entirely National. Only place they could have faced each other was in the World Series, but they missed each other by a year. That's what's so sharp about how the game's played now—greats and near greats can face each other again, to decide what might have happened once upon a time."

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Kane spat brown juice into a corner. "Ruth would have creamed him. Fitzsimmons never did well in series play."

"Let's hope that's true, statistically speaking." I watched Babe stalk toward the plate. He had the tight little walk down and seemed as natural there as the shouts of hotdog vendors and the smell of popcorn in the park. A couple of Lords' fans—standing out easily in their kelly green and teal jerseys, yelled insults at Babe as he gently tapped dirt from his spikes with his bat.

"Fat suet-sack, you couldn't hit if they delivered the ball on a tray!"

Ken smiled the way Babe Ruth would have, then pointed his bat toward centerfield. That brought a cheer from our fans and derision from the Lords side. Then Ken set himself, drew the bat to his shoulder, raised it a bit, and waited.

Bobby swore and kicked the bench beside me. "No! No, no, no! Of all the stupid .. ."

"What?" I looked at Jimmy, but he just pointed at the Megatron. It showed Ken's face as big as could be and his eyes were plainly closed. "What's he doing?"

Jimmy shook his head. "It's how he shows contempt for the pitchers."

"It's how he shows contempt for the manager." Bobby spat more tobacco juice into the corner. "Fine to do when we're a dozen runs ahead and he's hitting into a stat curve, but now?"

Jimmy shrugged. "Gotta believe, skipper."

Kane growled. "I believe I'm going to kick his butt over the fence if he strikes out."

The first pitch came in and Babe swung at it. He didn't get all of it, but he got enough to foul it off into the stands. He smiled serenely and got set again, then took a pitch that came in high. A second pitch was outside and he didn't go for that one either, which puzzled me.
How does he know?

The Old One growled deep within me.
It is his nature to know, Longtooth. As you know when
trouble comes, he
knows
what is good and what is bad.

Somehow I doubted that. "He must be peeking." Jimmy turned and winked at me. "Doesn't see much through those lashes of his, but sees enough."

The fourth pitch came in and Babe nailed it pretty hard. It skipped off the infield between short and third.

The leftfielder picked it up and threw to second, but Ken had barely rounded first and danced back to the safety of the bag. There he raised his hands and accepted the adulation of the crowd, tossing his batting helmet to the first-base coach and pulling on his uniform cap. He continued to smile and wave, then turned toward his image on the Megatron, doffed his cap, and began a bow complete with cap flourish.

He never straightened up from the bow and instead plowed face first into the infield dirt. Laughter started as if this were some joke, then his body twitched as if he'd landed on a high-power cable. He flopped over onto his back, his cap flying from nerveless fingers. Froth formed at the corners of his mouth, then another seizure shook him and he lay still.

Bobby and our trainer streaked from the dugout and joined the first-base coach standing over Ken's
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body. Bobby turned and waved urgently to the dugout, sending our chip coach scurrying onto the field, then from the bullpen I saw a golf-cart with a stretcher coming out. The dwarf chip coach pulled the statsoft from the chipjack, causing Ken to convulse one last time, then the trainer and Bobby lifted Ken onto the stretcher. The chip coach traveled with him off the field.

Bobby came jogging back to the dugout and pointed at me. "Take off your jacket, Wolf. You're pinch-running."

I blinked at him. "Me?"

"You."

"But. . ."

He waved me out of the dugout and draped an arm around my shoulders. "Look, you're fast, you can run the bases."

"So can anyone else." "Yeah, but you're not being ridden by some byteghost."

I felt a chill run down my spine. "What are you talking about?"

Bobby shivered. "I've seen that reaction one time before, in the minors. Someone had hacked a statsoft and that's what happens to the player when he's running bad code."

"But Ken went through verification."

"Right, something else caused the failure. Don't know what, but until I do, you're running for him." Bobby slapped me on the back. "Chance to live a dream, kid. Don't let us down."

"Nothing fancy, I remember."

"Well, that was for Babe.
You I
need in scoring position. Watch the signs and do what the coaches tell you to do."

I stripped off my jacket, tossed it into the dugout, and ran over to first base. The public address system announced, "Now pinch-running on first, Keith Wolfley7."

Had it not been for two wildly enthusiastic female voices, the singsong mantra of the hot dog vendors would have drowned out the cheer that went up for me. I got on first and smiled at Red Fisher, the first-base coach. "What advice you got for me?"

The grizzled old man narrowed his eyes. "Don't get out."

"Do my best." I took a little lead off first, slightly emboldened by the fact that Fitzsimmons had his back to me. I saw Bobby wave me out another step and heard Red growl, "It's called a lead for a reason, kid.

Edge of the carpet."

I centimetered my way back out there, then jogged back to the sack after Fitzsimmons delivered a ball to Jimmy. I smiled at the first baseman, but he just spat at my feet. As the pitcher set himself again, I took a lead.

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7That's the name they had me play under because it had parts close enough to my real name that I'd catch it, and it fit on the back of a jersey real easy.

Even though only 27.43 meters separated the bags, second base looked a full light year away.

/
can give you warp speed, Longtooth.

I snarled at the Old One, and resolved never again to fall sleep in front of the trid when watching reruns of old shows. The Old One's grasp of technology faded about the time man began to make tools out of something other than stone, but occasionally he latched on to make-believe stuff. Someone once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic8, and proof of that was the Old One fully accepting as real the technobabble science pedaled as entertainment by the media. Of course, he thought of those shows as "Shamans in Space"—they were chock full of special effects he saw as magic—but the ratings folks never asked his opinion anyway.

A quick yip from the Old One warned me a half-second before I saw the pitcher step off the rubber and begin to turn toward me. I pushed off with my right foot and dove back to the bag. Dirt sprayed up into my face and my hands felt canvas as above me I heard the pop of the ball in the first baseman's mitt. A split second later the first baseman slapped me across the head with the ball, the resulting thud all but drowning out the umpire's call of "safe."

I suppressed the Old One's urge to bite the first baseman and stood slowly, always keeping in contact with the bag. I brushed some dirt off my shirt. "Fitz has a nice move to the bag."

The first baseman sneered at me. "Ear still ringing?"

"Yeah, but I've got call forwarding." I took a one-step off the bag. "I'll take it at second."

"Right, pal." The Lord shook his head. "In your dreams."

My dreams, your nightmare.Bobby flashed me the sign to steal. At least, I was pretty sure it was the sign to

8Raven said that was Arthur C. Clarke, some old guy who wrote way back when, back when they used ink and stuff.

steal. It made perfect sense—on second I'd be in scoring position, and I did have good wheels. In fact, the only thing that spoke against my stealing second was that I'd not stolen a base since before my age was in double digits.

I almost expected my life to flash before my eyes at a moment like that, but I got nothing quite so serious. What did happen was that every conversation I'd ever had with Valerie concerning baseball ran back through my mind. She was just full of pithy bits of baseball lore, including the very applicable, "You don't steal on the catcher, you steal on the pitcher." I took another step worth of lead, then, as Fitzsimmons started to throw, I was off.

My vision kind of tunneled in on the bag. I saw the second baseman cutting in toward it, raising his glove to grab the catcher's throw. I could feel my spikes like talons, digging into the carpet. My legs pumped, my arms swung. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I watched the base, prepared to dive beneath the second baseman's tag, and I even grinned at the prospect of sliding head first.

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Then I heard the crack of the bat and a rising roar from the crowd. Nothing quite as clean and crisp and pure as the sound of a wooden bat catching all of a ball and then some. I saw a bit of blurred white to my left, then turned my head to the right and picked up this tiny pellet getting smaller and smaller by the second. It arced high through the Dome's darkened upper reaches, then rocketed down, over the wall in dead center.

Fireworks shot up from behind the Scoreboard and the Megatron, exploding brilliantly. Below, the score-board's graphics likewise put on a light display. The fireworks cannonade fill the Dome with red, green, gold, and blue sparks that drifted down as the Megatron showed a replay of Jimmy's hit. As the explosive echoes of the fireworks died, the pulsing cheers from the stands washed out over the fields, and I found myself howling with delight. I made sure to step fully on second, third, and home, then turned to welcome Jimmy home. He slapped both of my hands, then we butted chests and started laughing as the rest of the team collapsed in toward us. An army of hands and arms reached past and around me to congratulate Jimmy.

I managed to slip back out of the crowd and felt curiously alone as the team amoeba moved toward the dugout and locker room. I was as happy as anyone with the win—the Seadogs were as much my team as they were anyone else's—but I wasn't really part of the team. Yes, the run I'd scored helped lift us past the Lords, but I felt like I was poaching. I hadn't earned a place there, I didn't have a right to celebrate the way the rest of them were.

Yet being there, alone, was not the same as being lonely. I held myself apart not because I felt I wouldn't be welcomed, but because I didn't want to intrude. They had a camaraderie born of their battles the way I did with Raven and Stealth and Tark and Val; even with Zig and Zag. I respected what they had too much to want to impose myself on it. I was happy for them, happy for what they had done and happy to have contributed to it, even in a minor way. That was fine for me.

I drifted into the dugout as the last of the players squeezed into the tunnel back into the locker room.

Bobby Kane stopped me with a hand on my chest. "Your attempt at stealing second .. ."

I winced. "I got the sign wrong, right?"

The manager shook his head. "You read it right, but that sign meant you could go if you wanted to. We needed you in scoring position, but I wasn't going to force you to go." He brushed some dirt from my jersey. "You got heart, kid. Sometimes, with all these wired guys muling for math-ghosts, it's easy to forget that's what's needed for playing this game."

"Thanks." I gave him a quick smile. "Any word on Ken?"

"Took him off to the hospital. He should be okay, but they'll want to balance out his electrolytes, get him some rest. Given that we've got the Jags coming in, and the nonsense that passes for Ken's lifestyle, having him bedridden for two days is a good thing."

"True, but he'll be vulnerable there. I'll call Raven. He can take a look at him and put some protection in place." I narrowed my eyes. "Assuming this was an attempt to take him out of more than just this game, I don't want to give whoever did this another shot."

"Amen to that." Bobby slapped me on the back. "Hey, Wolf, just in case no one else thinks to say it, thanks. And, welcome to the show. You scored a run, you're a statistic."

"Sure, someday someone will be using me as a Legacy player."

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We both laughed and I headed into the locker room. I peeled off my uniform and hit the showers. I parked myself under a nozzle back in the corner, not out of any sense of modesty, but because that was far enough away from the entrance that random cool breezes and giddy players with towels spun into rat-tails couldn't easily get at me. The hot water felt good and even the Old One stopped growling when we heard the occasional snap of a towel and the resulting yelp of pain.

After much too short a time, I came back out and toweled off. A low growl and a shot of silver eyes kept a couple of jokers away from rat-tailing me on my way to my locker. I dropped down on the bench next to Jimmy and started dressing. "Nice shot."

"Thanks." He smiled at me. "Sorry to rob you of your stolen base, but when you went, Fitz hurried his delivery. Came in a bit higher than I like . .."

"Not that you could have noticed from the hit."

His grin broadened. "Yeah, I suppose. I did kinda nail it, didn't I?"

The pure, unadulterated joy in his question brought a big smile to my face. I nodded and tightened my kevlar vest. "I'd bet one side of that ball is squashed flat."

"Maybe. All that counts, though, is that we won. Best the Jags can do now is tie us and we have a playoff to move into the pennant series."

"I'll slot that and run any day." I pulled my turtleneck on. "I'm thinking of heading over to see how Ken is. Want to go with me?"