THE ALL-PRO (18 page)

This year, the Krakens faced a new problem — defensive secondary. The first string could still do a good job against most passing attacks, but if any of the four starters suffered injuries, the Krakens were in trouble. Standish’s pregnancy had thinned the defensive backfield. Saugatuck and Rehoboth, the backup safety and free safety, respectively, were nowhere near first-string caliber if any starters got hurt. Stockbridge, the third cornerback on the depth chart, was a solid player, but Tiburon, another backup safety, looked terrible. She had slowed considerably in the off-season. Quentin wondered if she would even make the team at all.

The Krakens had been counting on a pair of rookies to flesh out the defensive backfield, but Gladwin and Cooperstown had been signed by the Wabash Wolfpack. So it was either free agency or pray that the starters stayed healthy for the regular season
and
for the playoffs.

Seven Sklorno defensive backs milled about at midfield. They wore practice whites. Quentin didn’t recognize any of them. Two years ago he couldn’t tell one Sklorno from the next. Now, he knew the species well enough to know he’d never seen these players before. No star defensive backs in the bunch, to say the least. The fact that they were here at all meant they were either Tier Three players not good enough to be taken as rookies, Tier Two players looking for experience, or they were Tier One veterans who had been cut from other teams.

A hundred yards away in the black end zone, Quentin saw offensive linemen as well as Alexsandar Michnik and Ibrahim Khomeni, the starting defensive ends. They were working with the only other free agent candidate, a defensive end named Cliff Frost who had played two seasons for the T3 Idaho Titans, then a year with the T2 D’Wy Piranah before D’Wy cut him due to a punctured lung that didn’t heal fast enough. Then, just last year in the 2683 T2 season, Frost signed on with the Madhava Pi. A foot injury, apparently, had sidelined Frost, then the Pi cut him loose. His career riddled with injuries, no one knew Frost’s real potential.

Last year, the Krakens had two backup defensive ends — Ban-A-Tarew and Wan-A-Tagol. The Orbiting Death snagged Ban-A in free agency, so he was gone. Unexpected, but not a crisis as long as the Krakens found a quality player to fill that backup role. Gredok had already signed rookie defensive end Rich Palmer. If Frost also made the team, then Wan-A’s days might be numbered.

Quentin had nothing to do with the defensive roster. His job was to try and make these defensive back prospects look like idiots. Those who
didn’t
look like idiots might land a contract for the season.

Hokor’s floating golf cart flew overhead. “Barnes! Huddle up, let’s get started.”

Quentin held up his hands and waved his fingers inward, calling to his receivers. Milford, Hawick and Halawa ran to him. They wore their orange practice jerseys.

“Okay, ladies, we need to see what these defensive backs can do. I want hard cuts, so we can see their reaction time. If you can put a shoulder pad into them, do it, but don’t take any big hits this close to the regular season. If I throw too high, just let it go.”

The three receivers shuddered.

“But Quentin Barnes,” Milford said. “To not catch your pass is to
sin
. We are all worthy to catch your glorious passes!”

He sighed. Even in a stupid drill, the Sklorno didn’t know how to go easy.

“As your ... deity, or whatever, I am ordering you all to only catch the
good
passes, understand? Bad passes are, uh, they are a
test
. Get it?”

Milford stared, her four armored eyestalks twitching atop her glossy black helmet. “Yes! Yes oh Quentin Barnes, you are testing our ability to follow your holy will!”

“Whatever,” Quentin said. “Just don’t get hurt. Now line up.”

Quentin stood and walked to the 50-yard line. Hawick lined up wide left, Milford near-right and the much larger Halawa to the far right.

Hokor’s amplified voice rang through the stadium. “Vacaville, Breedsville, take the corners, woman-to-woman coverage. Fairgrove, safety. Rosebush, free safety. Basic two-deep defense. Give it your all, women, you won’t get any chances to make a mistake.”

No surprise that Hokor immediately poured on the pressure.

Quentin bent, then slapped the ball in his hands for the fake snap. He dropped back five steps as his receivers shot off the line. He waited only a second and a half before seeing that Halawa had Breedsville beat and that Rosebush would be slow to pick up the open receiver. Quentin fired the ball downfield. It hit Halawa in stride at the 15. She cruised into the end zone untouched.

Quentin should have been happy about that, but this wasn’t about succeeding at offense. He wanted to see these defensive backs make stops.

“Again!” Hokor screamed. “You worthless defensive backs are embarrassing my beautiful field!
Run it again!
”

• • •

TOO BAD IT WASN’T A REAL GAME
. Quentin and his receivers shredded the seven defensive back candidates. There was a reason these players hadn’t been signed or drafted.

Quentin, Halawa, Milford and Hawick were at the 50, standing at the side of Hokor’s cart, which had dropped down to the blue field. Hokor was paying them the ultimate honor — asking their opinion about the abilities of the free agent defensive backs.

“Rosebush?” Hokor said.

“Unworthy,” the three Sklorno said in unison.

“Vacaville?”

The three receivers looked at each other, something they could do simultaneously courtesy of their free-moving eyestalks.

“Possible,” Hawick said. “She isn’t worthy of looking directly at the holy visage of Quentin Barnes, but possibly she could stand in shame on the sidelines and pray for more talent.”

Quentin laughed and shook his head. The Sklorno had such an interesting way of saying things.

“I agree,” Hokor said. “Vacaville isn’t a starter by any stretch, but we have roster room. What about Fairgrove?”

“Unworthy,” Hawick said.

“She should be killed,” Milford said.

“And eaten,” Halawa said.

Hokor entered some data into his messageboard. “Fairgrove, no.”

“Oh Holy Great Hokor,” Hawick said. “May I be so insolent as to offer an opinion without one being asked of me by one as great as you, by one so elevated above the cosmos that stars shrink away in fear, so amazing that—”

“Just say it,” Hokor said. “Yes, you may speak.”

“Breedsville is slightly more worthy than Vacaville. She should still be banned from looking directly at the Quentin Barnes, but she is suitable for a backup.”

Hokor typed. “Fine. And the rest?”

“Unworthy,” Hawick said.

“They should be killed,” Milford said.

“And eaten,” Halawa said.

Hokor gave the Quyth Leader equivalent of a heavy sigh. He slid his messageboard into a slot inside the cart. “Your input is appreciated, players. That is all.”

Hokor’s cart lifted without a sound, then floated to the black end zone where Cliff Frost was still fighting his way through drills.

Quentin walked off the field, unable to shake the pessimistic feeling that the Krakens were in trouble. If the starting defensive backs didn’t get hurt, they would be okay, but no way could all four Sklorno defensive backs go a full season without suffering at least some kind of injury. Gloria Ogawa’s tactic to sign the rookie backs that Hokor wanted had been a devious-yet-brilliant maneuver.

Quentin wondered if that move would pay off for the Wolfpack in Week Nine, when the Krakens traveled to Wabash. If Ionath lost to its archrival for the second year in a row, Quentin knew that Gredok would have a Sklorno-like opinion — that the Krakens were unworthy, they should be killed, they should be eaten.

Excerpt from
Earth: Birthplace of Sentients
written by Zippy the Voracious From
Chapter Seven: Rise of the Machines

Sentients often tell me that Sklorno are the most
alien
intelligent life form they know. When I hear that, my answer is always the same —
then I guess you’ve never met a Prawatt
.

Not that many civilized sentients have. Encounters with that species are rare and usually result in — at best — exploding ships and thousands of deaths. At worst? Encounters with the Prawatt can lead to entire planets being rendered devoid of life and even the total extinction of sentient races.

STARTING SMALL

Members of the Prawatt species are created, initially, in a small, fist-sized structure known as a
root factory
. Because root factories begin their existence pre-packed with as many as a million tiny, life-emulating machines know as
larvids
, some exobiologists compare these structures to an egg sac. I say
some
exobiologists because others compare factories not to egg sacs, but to insect queens. After disgorging the initial compliment of larvids, root factories are capable of fabricating ten million to a hundred million more, depending on available resources.

Root factories are also capable of movement, which they use to find places with the most mineral-rich soil. Once a factory finds such a location, it plants itself in the ground, grows roots, then begins to activate the larvids.

Larvids quickly grow into the tiny creatures known as
minids
. These four-legged, insectile automatons weigh slightly less than one milligram. By way of comparison, the average adult Human tooth weighs about two grams. That means that a typical tooth weighs more than 2,000 minids.

The first wave of minids creates tunnels, chambers and mechanisms that help bring raw materials to the root factory. Many of the minids
link
together (see below for information on
linking
) to create larger organisms capable of defending the nest. In the species’ native state, after these fundamental needs are satisfied, the next wave of minids starts to build dormant, self-contained root factories. The cycle is ready to be repeated.

This process — root factories building root factories — creates an exponential growth rate that, left unchecked, could cover any planet’s surface in a matter of months.

Fortunately for the galaxy, however, that native state rarely happens. Minids show a natural tendency to link together. This
linkage
forever changes the minids via a process known as
fusing
.

THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN THE SUM OF THE PARTS

A minid is quite comparable to the Earth insect known as an “ant,” upon which the minid’s structure and function are based. Individual minids are not sentient, self-aware, or even intelligent for that matter. Minids are
automata
, pre-programmed machines that perform repetitive actions. The more minids you have working together, however, the more complex structures and astounding tasks those combined actions can create.

The structure of minids allows them to lock their tiny limbs and coordinate muscle movements as if they were parts of a single entity. When this happens, the minids are no longer individuals — they are cells of a collective organism. At some unknown point, triggered by some unknown signal, millions of linked minids achieve stasis — a self-sustaining state of existence — and
fuse
together to permanently become a larger being. Minids build internal organs that include structural support, fluid pumps, material fabrication centers and even additional factories that create new minids to replace those that wear out.

Prawatt biological organization seems to only go
up
 — once a minid fuses into a larger whole, it undergoes memory-and processing-related physical changes that preclude it from operating ever again as a single “ant.”

When minids link up physically, they also combine their dataprocessing power. The more data a larger organism can process, the more complicated tasks it can perform and the better it is at self-preservation.

In summary, individual minids link together and become cells of a larger organism that is perfectly comparable to any number of biological animals, be they rats, geraniums, Occam-bulls or even Humans and the other sentient races.

SENTIENCE

Each minid’s control center, or “brain,” has about 80,000 microscopic processors. Scientists consider each processor equivalent to a Human brain cell. These processors work together to handle sensory input, determine reaction to that input, then send signals to the musculature that drives the minid to perform a physical action.

A Human brain has approximately 10 trillion cells. Since each minid has 80,000 “cells,” this means that 125 million minids roughly equal the raw processing power of a Human brain.

Scientists do not know the exact point at which a fused Prawatt achieves sentience. This surprises many laymen, but it is consistent with our level of understanding of sentience in general. To date, no one can define what, exactly, shifts an organism from
non-sentience
to
sentience
.

What is known, however, is that the Prawatt typically become sentient when they are comprised of about 110 million minids. Like other organisms, levels of intelligence vary wildly within the sentient Prawatt community.

The few encounters with Prawatt that did not involve them trying to kill every sentient they found (or every sentient they found trying to kill them, which is just as common) determined that the species has increasing levels of self-awareness. All peaceful encounters that occurred determined that the most “Human-like” interaction occurs with Prawatt that weigh approximately 110 to 160 kilograms. Below 110 kilograms, there are very few recorded instances of self-awareness. As for Prawatt
above
160 kilograms, there are no recorded encounters. Exobiologists believe that the Prawatt get bigger — much,
much
bigger — but at these larger sizes they cease to think and act in a way that Humans can understand.