THE ALL-PRO (26 page)

The Krakens gathered in the central locker room. Coach Hokor walked to the holoboard.

“Final depth charts and active squad,” he announced to the team. “If your name isn’t on the board, come to my office immediately.”

Hokor tapped the screen. The names flashed up and that was that. No apologies,
no thanks for trying
. The GFL was an unforgiving business — you were either good enough to play or you weren’t.

Quentin watched the players rather than the board. The starters, like John and Ju, didn’t even bother to look. Their positions were assured. Like the Tweedy brothers, half of the team simply filtered into their species-specific locker rooms.

The remaining players moved forward.

There were unabashed sighs of relief, body language cues showing that the players had found their name on the active roster. These reactions came first because those names were near the top of their positions.

Next came the response of those who were still on the team but hadn’t made the active roster. Some of these players showed excitement — they had thought themselves gone but now had a second chance to prove their abilities. For others, the news came as a shock. Even if they had felt it coming, there was always an element of denial, that feeling of
it can’t happen to me
.

Wan-A-Tagol was the first. He’d been a second-string left defensive end behind Aleksandar Michnik. The thought had been that Wan-A would develop and become the starter when Aleksandar’s skills faded due to age. Only Aleksandar’s abilities
hadn’t
faded. If anything, Aleksandar had only gotten better. Then the Krakens had picked up rookie Rich Palmer and the free agent Cliff Frost. Both of them were better than Wan-A and apparently Hokor didn’t see the need to dress the team’s fifth-best defensive end.

Wan-A’s career had just been dealt a setback. He was now on the practice squad. Wan-A was twenty-six — damn near a baby by Ki standards. He could bounce back, but it would depend on how hard he worked.

For Mezquitic, however, all the hard work in the world couldn’t change her downward slide.

Last season, the Sklorno defensive back had already begun to shown signs of slowing. Her vertical leap had dropped a half-inch coming into last year then
another
half-inch coming into this season. Too many hits had taken their toll.

Quentin watched her, knew when she saw her name listed on the practice squad. He knew that moment because she started to shake. Her eyestalks sagged, drooping like wet spaghetti. Her raspers unrolled, dragged on the floor. She dropped to the ground and quivered.

The other players simply stepped around her, looking to the board to find their own names. Quentin wanted to go to her, try to cheer her up, but he knew that would only make things worse. No one could help Mezquitic. She would deal with it and contribute to the team any way she could, or not deal with it and be cut altogether.

The last players to react were those who hadn’t made the team at all. They were last because they read the list of names over and over, the emotional side of their brain trying to see if the logical part had made a mistake, that their name was on the final roster but somehow they had just missed it.

They hadn’t missed it. They were just gone.

Tiburon didn’t find her name. Her career with the Krakens had come to a shattering, sudden end. Curiously, she seemed to handle it better than Mezquitic. Maybe Tiburon could catch on with another team, but at her age, it was unlikely. Twenty-three years old, a five-year veteran and the Sklorno’s time in the GFL was over.

She didn’t bother walking into the Sklorno locker room. Instead, she walked to the main exit, undoubtedly headed straight for Hokor’s office. There, she would get a ticket for the next transport to Sklorno space.

Quentin looked back to the board, saw Tom Pareless standing there, nodding his head slowly. Tom hadn’t made the roster. He smiled, nodded again, then sniffed. He wiped at his right eye.

Quentin walked up to the older man. “Tom? You good?”

Tom looked up, smiled. He started to talk, then closed his mouth. He swallowed.

“I knew it was coming,” he said finally. “My ankle never healed right. I was good enough to hold onto the starting spot for most of last season, but Becca is just plain better. I knew the writing was on the wall when Gredok brought her in last year. This just ... this just came on so fast, you know?”

Quentin nodded. A year ago at this time, Tom Pareless had been the starting fullback for the Ionath Krakens. Today? Cut from the team altogether, a discarded player. It could — and did — happen just that fast.

“Sorry, man,” Quentin said. “I mean, I would have thought that you still had an edge on Kopor the Climber.”

Tom shook his head. “Naw, I’m not too proud to realize that Kopor is getting better. He’s only twenty-four, Q. He’s got his best years ahead of him. I’m thirty-seven years old.”

“You going to try and catch on with another team? You’re still better than ninety percent of the Tier Two fullbacks out there.”

Tom shook his head again. “I don’t think so. The way I’ve been moving, playing ... I might catch on for a season, but I also might mess myself up even more. After fifteen years, my body is beat up enough. I’m already going to have a lot of pain as I get older. So will you.”

Quentin nodded.

“I’m out, Q,” Tom said. “
Fifteen years
I played pro. You know how many sentients can say that? Not very many. Fifteen shucking years. Time to move on to something else.”

Quentin tried to think of another career, something to say that would give Tom least a little encouragement, but in the moment he couldn’t conceive of a job anyone would want to do after football. “Like what?”

Tom peeled off his shoulder armor and dropped it on the floor. He rolled out his neck, sniffed again, then smiled. “Maybe front office. All I know is football. Well, it’s time for me to go see Hokor.”

“Aren’t you going to shower first?”

“Hell no,” Tom said. “Just because this has to be done doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy on him. Let him smell my stink one last time.”

Tom offered his hand. Quentin shook it.

“This is the life we have chosen,” Tom said. “I put in fifteen years, I can still walk and I can eat things other than soup through a straw. I’m lucky.”

“Shuck that,” Quentin said. “You have those things because you were
good
. You were one of the best.”

Tom slapped Quentin on the shoulder, then walked out of the locker room.

Everyone filtered away from the board, leaving only two Ki standing there, staring. Per-Ah-Yet and Roth-O-Lorak. Per-Ah-Yet, a backup defensive tackle, was seventy-five years old. Old even for the Ki, who often played into their late sixties. Roth-O-Lorak, however, was only thirty. Roth-O, a backup center, just plain wasn’t good enough. If he kept playing, he might catch on in Tier Two or could likely wind up all the way down in Tier Three.

Hurt radiated off of the two Ki. They stared at the board for another minute, then together they turned and scuttled toward the door.

Quentin watched them go. Just like that, four careers had ended. Someday,
he
would be staring at that board, looking for
his
name over and over again. And no matter how many championships he won between now and then, it would crush him.

He walked to the Human locker room. Teams changed. That was life. What mattered for now was that the Krakens were his team. His coach believed in him. His team owner backed him up. All his friends were here and soon the galaxy would see that the Krakens were a team to be feared.

The only variable was time.

• • •

THE GRAV-CAB STOPPED
in front of John Tweedy’s apartment building.

This time, however, Quentin wasn’t there to see John.

Choto the Bright stepped out of the cab, looking up and down the street as he’d done dozens of times before. That was also the same, but also different — now he was looking for reporters.

Choto leaned back into the cab. “It is clear. Come on.”

Quentin got out, trying to ignore Choto’s coldness. Their friendship, their bond as teammates, it felt weakened if not gone altogether. Quentin’s insistence that the Quyth Warriors accept Tara the Freak had strained relationships to the point of breaking. He hadn’t thought it would be easy to integrate the Warriors, but even so he’d drastically underestimated the cultural response.

Pizat the Servitous waited by the open door.

Quentin and Choto walked inside. The door shut behind them. Choto immediately moved to a lobby chair. He pulled an object out of his pocket. The linebacker spent most of his money on historically accurate reproductions of ancient dead-tree books. Choto sat and started reading — now that he had done his job and seen Quentin safely inside the guarded building, he was done.

“Mister Elder Barnes,” Pizat said. “Welcome back. We are honored to have you as always. Shall I ring up to Mister Tweedy?”

Quentin shook his head. “I’m not here to see John. What apartment does Don Pine live in? And don’t call him to tell him I’m coming up. This visit is a surprise.”

• • •

QUENTIN IGNORED THE BUZZER
. He wanted to hit something. Banging his fist on Don Pine’s apartment door did little to diminish that urge.

“Don! Open up.”

No answer. He banged again. “Open the damn door, Pine! We need to talk.”

Quentin had waited for days for Pine to come and apologize, to take responsibility. That hadn’t happened. Pine should have talked to the press, taken the blame for the things that he had done, the things that had turned Quentin into a media pariah. Quentin shouldn’t have had to seek Pine out.

At the same time, Quentin could try to guess Pine’s state of mind. If Quentin had done something for which, say, John Tweedy had taken the blame, then John got into trouble for it, Quentin would have felt shame and guilt. Don had to be feeling those things right now. Maybe it was hard to face a friend when you had done that friend wrong.

Quentin focused on that thought, tried to calm himself. This had to be difficult for Don. He probably thought Quentin wanted to kill him. As soon as Quentin could show Don that there would be no retribution, no hatred, then Don would obviously do the right thing.

The door opened. Don wore a strange apron-thing, splotched with bits of color both wet-new and faded-old. His face showed his age now more than ever, a haunted look in the eyes that revealed his pain, his guilt.

Don stepped aside and held the door open. Quentin walked in.

The apartment design was identical to that of John’s — a long entryway that led to a living room beyond. In that living room, paintings covered the walls. Only a few were framed. Most were rectangular canvases resting on the floor, hung at odd angles or tacked up haphazardly. All of the paintings showed images of football players. Some were quite striking. Hard, abstract lines seemed to be colored gibberish, but almost immediately Quentin recognized John Tweedy, Michael Kimberlin and several other players. Other paintings showed grotesque versions of a Human face — blue skin, staring eyes, dark shadows.

Self-portraits of a man that didn’t like himself very much.

A new painting, gleaming wet, sat half-completed on an easel in the middle of the room. Only the outline and the eyes were done. So dark. The same haunted expression Quentin had seen when Don opened the door.

“You’re a painter?”

“Can’t put one past you, Quentin.”

Quentin turned to look at his mentor. “This is why you don’t have anyone over? You embarrassed about this or something?”

Don shrugged. “My space is my space. I don’t need to justify it to anyone. But ... yeah, stuff like this, it’s not really how the team sees me, you know?”

Quentin nodded. The team didn’t see Don like this at all. They saw a champion, a leader, a man that exuded confidence and support at all times. Quentin instantly understood why Don didn’t invite anyone in — team leaders weren’t supposed to be cauldrons of self-hatred.

“Well? Did you read Yolanda’s article?”

Don nodded.

“You see the press conference?”

Don nodded again.

Quentin waited, trying to be patient. It wouldn’t be easy for Don to step up and reveal that he had been the one shaving points, throwing games, selling out for Mopuk the Sneaky.

Don said nothing.

“Don, it’s time. You have to come clean.”

Don closed his eyes. His fingertips pressed hard into his temples, circling there like small drills trying to punch through his skull and into his brain. A bit of black paint on his left index finger smeared across his left eyebrow.

Still Quentin waited. Patience. No need to rush things, no reason to lose his temper.

His friend didn’t say anything.

“Don? You okay?”

The older quarterback shook his head. “How can I be okay? That article crucified you, man. It’s my fault.”

“Only the drug-smuggling part,” Quentin said. “And the gambling. And throwing games.” The words didn’t sound as helpful as he had thought they would.

“I feel real bad,” Don said. “Honestly, Q, I can’t even tell you how awful I feel about all this.”

Don stopped rubbing his temples and stared at the floor. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. It took Quentin a moment to read Don’s body language. He’d never seen Don act like this before, never seen him act ...
indecisive
.

Quentin waited. Tense silence filled the room. Don looked up, met Quentin’s eyes for a moment, then he looked away, staring at one of the self-hating paintings on the wall.

Quentin felt a crawling feeling of shock. Slowly, not wanting to believe it for a second, realization set in.

“You’re
not
going to fess up? You’re
not
going to tell Yolanda?”

“Like that bitch would do anything to fix this.”

“Fine, then not her.
Any
one else. There’s a hundred reporters waiting to hear the truth, Don.”