The Outpost (7 page)

Well, 52 hours into the playoffs we’re down three games to none, and we’re just one game from elimination, and not a one of us has reached base yet, and McPherson’s record in the series is 3-and-0, and he’s pitched back-to-back-to-back perfect games, and instead of getting tired he seems to be as strong as ever, and one of the local newscasts announces that they’ve timed his pitches and they’re
averaging
287 miles per hour, and that his hummer was clocked at 303.

That night, while I’m drowning my sorrows in the hotel bar and wondering what to do with myself in the off-season, which figures to start sometime around mid-afternoon the next day, I see Einstein sitting by himself, lifting a few and jotting down notes on his computer. I recognize him from his holos, and I figure if anyone can help me, it’s got to be him, so I walk over and introduce myself.

He doesn’t respond, and that’s when someone tells me he’s blind, deaf and mute, and I ask how anyone ever talks to him, and it’s explained to me that I have to get
my
computer to talk to
his
computer and then he’ll respond.

I go over to the hotel’s registration desk and rent a pocket computer and then return to the bar and have it tell Einstein’s computer who I am and how much I admire him, and that I’ve got a little problem and could he help me with it.

He taps away at his machine, and suddenly mine speaks up: “What is the nature of your problem?”

I ask him if he knows anything about baseball, and he says he knows the rudiments, and I explain my problem to him, that McPherson’s high hard one clocks in at 303 miles an hour, and that even at an average of 287 none of us can even see the ball when Iron-Arm lets loose.

He does some quick calculations in his head, takes about two seconds to verify them on his computer, and then sends me another message: “The human arm is incapable of throwing a baseball at more than 127.49263 miles per hour.”

“Maybe so,” I answer back, “but they clocked him at more than twice that speed.”

“The conclusion is obvious,” sends Einstein. “The baseball is not being thrown by a human arm.”

And suddenly it’s all clear to me. Here’s this kid who’s already got an artificial knee and a replacement eyeball as a result of injuries. Why not get a step ahead of the game by buying himself a prosthetic arm
before
he can develop bursitis or tendonitis or whatever? And if he was going to buy a new arm, why not the strongest, most accurate arm that science could make?

I thought about it for a while, until I was sure I was right, and then I told Einstein that I agreed with him, but that didn’t help solve my problem, which was that whether McPherson was using his real arm or one he’d gone out and bought, no one could even hit a loud foul ball off him.

“It’s an interesting problem,” responded Einstein. He began tapping in numbers and symbols, and pretty soon his fingers were almost as hard to follow as one of McPherson’s fastballs, and after about five minutes he quit just as suddenly as he started, with a satisfied little smile on his face.

“Are you still here?” his machine asked.

“Yes.”

“I am going to transmit a very complex chemical formula to your computer. In the morning, print it out and take it to the laboratory at the local university—they’re the only ones who will have everything that’s required—and have them mix it up as instructed and put it into a titanium vial. Then rub it onto your bat.”

“And then what?” I asked.

“Then don’t trip on third base as you turn for home plate.”

I thanked him, though I didn’t really believe anything could work against McPherson, and I went to the lab in the morning, just like he told me to, and got the vial and poured the entire contents onto my bat and rubbed them in real good about an hour before game time.

I wasn’t real thrilled when the home plate umpire cried “Play ball!” and Iron-Arm McPherson took the mound for the fourth day in row and I had to step into the batter’s box, but the only alternative was to get myself thrown out again, so I sighed and trudged up to the plate and stood there, waiting.

McPherson wound up and reared back and let fly. I’m not sure exactly what happened next, except that I heard a
crack!
like a gunshot, and suddenly the ball was soaring into the left field bleachers and I was jogging around the bases with a really dumb grin on my face, and McPherson was standing there, hands on hips, looking like he couldn’t believe that I’d belted his money pitch out of the park.

He struck out the next eight batters, but when I came up again with two out and nobody on in the third inning, he leaned back and gave me his zinger, and I pickled it again. I nailed another in the sixth, and I led off the ninth with my fourth homer of the day. I looked at the scoreboard as I rounded third, and saw we were still down 7 to 4, and there wasn’t any activity in the Demons’ bullpen (and why should there be? I mean, hell, he was still pitching a four-hitter), and before Shaka Njaba left the on-deck circle and went up to take his raps, I crossed home plate and kept on running until I came to him and told him that if he wanted to win the game he should use my bat. I didn’t have time to tell him
why
, but Shaka’s as superstitious as most ballplayers, and he jumped at the chance to use my lucky bat.

McPherson rubbed the ball in his hands, hitched his pants, fiddled with the peak of his cap, toed the rubber, went into his motion, and let fly—and not only didn’t I see the ball come to the plate, but the bat moved so fast I didn’t see
it
either. But I heard the two meet, and I saw the ball go 19 rows deep into the center field seats, and I passed the word up and down the bench that everyone should use my bat.

The next six hitters took McPherson deep, and when his manager finally came out and took the ball away from him and sent him to the showers (for the first time all season), we were winning 11 to 7. I figured our bullpen could hold onto the lead, so I took my bat back before someone broke it, and sure enough, we won 11 to 8.

McPherson was back on the mound the next day, but after we hit his first five pitches into the stands for a 5 to 0 lead, he was gone again, and we didn’t see any more of him in the series.

We won that afternoon, and the next two nights, and became the champions. I sought out Einstein to thank him, but he told me that he’d gotten 30-to-1 odds against Spica II when we were down three games to none. He’d bet a few thousand credits, so he felt more than amply rewarded for his efforts.

As for Iron-Arm McPherson, getting knocked out of the box in front of all those millions of fans was—to borrow a baseball expression—his third strike, after messing up his knee and his batting eye. There just wasn’t a place in the game for a pitcher who couldn’t get anyone out, even if he
could
burn that that hummer in there at 303 miles an hour.

“What became of him?” I asked.

“Last I heard, he was running a spaceship wash at one of the orbital stations out near Far London,” answered Big Red.

“So that’s how you managed to hit those homers off him!” said Bet-A-World O’Grady. “I’ll be damned!”

“You saw the game?” asked Big Red.

“I’m the guy who gave Einstein 30-to-1 that you couldn’t win!” he laughed.

“Just goes to show what happens when you bet against Einstein.”

“Same thing usually happens what you bet against
me
,” said O’Grady.

“I’ll bet you’ve been involved in some big-money games,” offered Three-Gun Max.

“I’ve been in my share of ‘em,” agreed O’Grady.

“I heard about the time you put up three agricultural worlds against the Tamal Jewels on one roll of the dice,” put in Nicodemus Mayflower.

“And I remember reading that you lost a whole solar system in a card game out on Tevarius IV, and then won it back the next night,” added Sahara del Rio.

“Absolutely true,” said O’Grady.

“What was the biggest bet you ever made?”

“You really want to hear about it?” asked O’Grady with the air of a man who couldn’t be silenced by much less than a lethal blow to the head.

“That’s why we’re asking,” said Max.

O’Grady walked up to the bar, then turned so he could face his audience.

“Then I guess I’ll tell you,” he said.

The Night Bet-a-World O’Grady Met High Stakes Eddie

For almost five years (said O’Grady) people had been trying to arrange a game between me and High Stakes Eddie, who was supposed to be the best gambler in the Belladonna Cluster. At one point I even had a couple of banks willing to back me in a one-on-one poker game with him, and I heard tell he had a Korbelian prince on the line to pick up his tab if he lost to me.

Still, we almost didn’t get together at all. He spent nearly three months breaking an upstart called the Lower Volta Flash in a nightly game, and then when he was ready, I found myself embroiled in a winner-take-all game for the ownership of the Willoughby system that went on for the better part of ten weeks.

Then one day I got a hand-delivered engraved invitation that read as follows:

Bet-a-World O’Grady is cordially invited

to the gaming world of Monte Carlo IV as

the guest of High Stakes Eddie Strongbow.

All expenses except for gambling losses

will be paid by his host.

“Will you be coming back with me, sir?” asked the young woman who had delivered it.

“Yeah, why not?” I said, making up my mind on the spot. “If we’re going to decide once and for all who’s the best, I might as well let your boss pay for my transportation and drinks.”

“He was hoping you’d feel that way, sir,” she replied.

“By the way, where the hell is Monte Carlo IV?” I asked.

“Out by the Lesser Magellenic Cloud,” was the answer. “Mr. Strongbow won the entire Cromwell system on a single flip of a coin last year, and officially renamed it about two months ago.” She paused. “May I help you pack?”

I patted the pocket that held my wallet, and the one that held my lucky dice.

“I’ve got everything I need,” I announced.

“You might want a change of clothes,” she suggested.

“I’ll buy some new clothes on Monte Carlo IV and charge them to your boss.”

She shrugged and took me to her ship. The crew consisted of three other women in addition to the one who’d delivered the invite, and they called themselves the Queens of Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades, though truth to tell I never could tell which was which. I think they changed names every few hours just to keep me confused.

It was a long flight to the Monte Carlo system, so I went into DeepSleep a few hours into the trip and had them wake me when we were about an hour from our destination. I’m always famished when I come out of DeepSleep, and that always surprises me, because as often as they explain it to me, I keep forgetting that my systems don’t actually stop, but just slow down to a crawl—and when you haven’t eaten in a few days, even with your metabolism working at one percent speed, you’re still hungry.

By the time I finished eating, we’d touched down, and I was transported to a penthouse suite atop the biggest, glitziest hotel on the planet, which befitted a high roller like myself. There were maybe half a dozen bedrooms, and three of them came equipped with their own women, and there were eight or nine bathrooms and a bunch of fireplaces and holo screens and two well-stocked bars and a robot bartender (but not as friendly as Reggie) and even a library filled with real honest-to-goodness books rather than tapes and disks and cubes. I’d been in a few nicer suites in my time, but I had to admit that it was pretty impressive for as far outside of the Monarchy as it was.

I’d just finished looking around and introducing myself to the three women when the Queen of Hearts (or maybe it was Diamonds) told me that my host was waiting for me downstairs. I bade the other ladies goodnight and followed her. There was a huge, elegant casino on the ground floor. It not only had the usual human and alien games, but it had real cards, real dice, and real live dealers and pit bosses—none of those computerized holographs that you see on worlds like New Vegas and Little Monaco. We walked right through the place without slowing down, and then came to a studded metal door that had guards the size of Catastrophe Baker standing on each side of it.

“This is Mr. Strongbow’s private gaming room,” explained the Queen of Hearts as they opened the door for us. “It is reserved for himself and his personal guests.”

High Stakes Eddie was sitting on a leather chair at the far side of a felt-covered mahogany table, a drink in front of him, a smokeless Brandeis VII cigar in his left hand. He was smaller than I’d expected, bald as a billiard ball, and wearing an outfit that couldn’t make up its mind what it wanted to be. One moment it looked like a toga, then it changed into a military uniform, then a Bendorian tuxedo (you ever see one of those things? The sons of bitches glow in the dark!), and then back to a toga.

His outfit may have been the height of fashion, but his room was an anachronism. The chairs didn’t adjust to your body, they actually rested on the floor, and the lights were in the ceiling instead of floating over your right shoulder. Still, it was his place to decorate any way he wanted. “Bet-a-World O’Grady!” he said with a smile. “You can’t imagine how much I’ve looked forward to making your acquaintance. There were times when I truly thought we’d never meet.”