Year's Best Scifi 5 Part 6

"Well," said his mother, "he is awfully active."

"In a good way," the father cautioned.

"I believe it. I do!" Marlboro grinned, noticing that Mom looked awfully sweet in a tired-of-motherhood way, and it was too bad that he couldn't make a play for her, too. "Let me tell ya what I'm offering," he boomed. "A free ride. For the boy here-"

"Alan," Mom interjected.

"Alan," the coach repeated. Instantly, with an easy affection. Then he gave her a little wink, saying, "For Alan. A free education and every benefit that I'm allowed to give. Plus the same for your other two kids. Which I'm not supposed to offer. But it's my school and my scholars.h.i.+ps, and I'll be d.a.m.ned if it's anybody's business but yours and mine!"

The parents squeezed one another, then with a nervous voice, the father made himself ask, "What about us?"

The coach didn't blink.

"What do you want, Mr. Wilde?" Marlboro smiled and said, "Name it."

"I'm not sure," the father confessed. "I know that we can't be too obvious-"

"But we were hoping," Mom blurted. "I mean, it's not like we're wealthy people. And we had to spend most of our savings-"

"On your little Alan. I bet you did." A huge wink was followed with, "It'll be taken care of. My school doesn't have that big college of genetics for nothing." He looked at the infant again, investing several seconds of hard thought into how they could bend the system just enough. Then he promised, "You'll be reimbursed for your expenses. Up front. And we'll put your son on the payroll. Gentlefolks in lab coats'll come take blood every half-year or so. For a healthy, just-under-the-table fee. How's that sound?"

The father seemed doubtful. "Will the scientists agree to that?"

"If I want it done," the coach promised.

"Will they actually use his blood?" The father seemed uneasy. Even a little disgusted. "I don't like thinking of Alan being some kind of laboratory project."

Marlboro stared at him for a long moment.

Never blinking.

Then he said, "Sir." He said, "If you want, they can pa.s.s those samples to you, and you can flush them down your own toilet. Is that good enough?"

n.o.body spoke.

Then he took a different course, using his most mature voice to tell them, "Alan is a fine, fine boy. But you've got to realize something. He's going to have more than his share of problems. Special kids always do." Then with a warm smile, Marlboro promised, "I'll protect him for you. With all my resources and my good country sense, I'll see that none of those predators out there get their claws in your little Alan."

Mom said, "That's good to hear. That's fine."

But Father shrugged, asking, "What about you? It'll be years before Alan can actually play, and you could have left for the pros by then."

"Never," Marlboro blurted.Then he gave the woman his best wink and grin, saying, "You know what kind of talent I've been signing up. Do you really think I'd go anywhere else? Ever?"

She turned to her husband, saying, "We'll sign."

"But-?"

"No. We're going to commit."

Marlboro reconfigured the appropriate contracts, getting everyone's signature. Then he squeezed one of his recruit's meaty feet, saying, "See ya later, Alan."

Wearing an unreadable smile, he stepped out the front door. A hundred or so sports reporters were gathered on the small lawn, and through their cameras, as many as twenty million fans were watching the scene.

They watched Coach Jones smile and say nothing. Then he raised his arms suddenly, high overhead, and screamed those instantly famous words: "The Wildman's coming to Tech!"

There was something about the girl. Perfect strangers thought nothing of coming up to her and asking where she was going to college.

"State," she would reply. Flat out.

"In what sport?" some inquired. While others, knowing that she played the game on occasion, would guess, "Are you joining the volleyball team?"

"No," Theresa would tell the latter group. Never patient, but usually polite. "I hate volleyball," she would explain, not wanting to be confused for one of those glandular, ritualistic girls. And she always told everyone, friends and strangers alike, "I'm going to play quarterback for the football team. For Coach Rickover."

Knowledgeable people were surprised, and puzzled. Some would clear their throats and look up into Theresa's golden eyes, commenting in an offhand way, "But Rickover doesn't let women play."

That was a problem, sure.

Daddy was a proud alumnus of State and a letterman on the famous '33 squad. When Theresa was born, there was no question about where she was going. In '41, Rickover was only an a.s.sistant coach.

p.e.n.i.ses weren't required equipment. The venerable Coach Mannstein had shuffled into her nursery and made his best offer, then shuffled back out to meet with press and boosters, promising the world that he would still be coaching when that delightfully young lady was calling plays for the best team to ever take any field of play.

But six years later, while enjoying the company of a mostly willing cheerleader, Coach Mannstein felt a searing pain in his head, lost all feeling in his ample body, and died.

Rickover inherited the program.

A religious man driven by a quixotic understanding of the Bible, one of his first official acts was to send a letter to Theresa's parents, explaining at length why he couldn't allow their daughter to join his team. "Football," he wrote, "is nothing but ritualized warfare, and women don't belong in the trenches. I am sorry. On the other hand, Coach Terry is a personal friend, and I would be more than happy to have him introduce you to our nationally ranked women's volleyball program.

"Thank you sincerely.

"Coach."

The refusal was a crus.h.i.+ng blow for Daddy.

For Theresa, it was a ghostly abstraction that she couldn't connect with those things that she truly knew and understood.

Not that she was a stupid child. Unlike many of her 1-1-2041 peers, her grades were respectably average, and in spatial subjects, like geometry and geography, she excelled. Also unlike her peers, Theresa didn't have problems with rage or with residual instincts. Dogs and cats didn't mysteriously vanish in her neighborhood. She was a good person with friends and her genuine admirers. Parents trusted her with their babies. Children she didn't know liked to beg for rides on her back. Once she was old enough to date, the boys practically lined up. Out of s.e.xual curiosity, in part. But also out of fondnessand an odd respect. Some of her boyfriends confided that they preferred her to regular girls. Something about her-and not just a physical something-set them at ease. Made them feel safe. A strange thing for adolescent males to admit, while for Theresa, it was just another circ.u.mstance in a life filled with nothing but circ.u.mstances.

In football, she always played quarterback. Whether on playground teams, or in the various midget leagues, or on the varsity squad in high school.

Her high school teams won the state champions.h.i.+p three years in a row. And they would have won when she was a senior, except a mutant strain of parvovirus gave her a fever and chills, and eventually, hallucinations. Theresa started throwing hundred meter bullets toward her more compelling hallucinations, wounding several fans, and her coach grudgingly ordered her off the field and into a hospital bed.

Once State relinquished all claims on the girl, a steady stream of coaches and boosters and sports agents began the inevitable parade.

Marlboro Jones was the most persistent soul. He had already stockpiled a full dozen of the 1-1-2041s, including the premier player of all time: Alan, The Wildman, Wilde. But the coach a.s.sured Theresa that he still needed a quality quarterback. With a big wink and a bigger grin, he said, "You're going to be my field general, young lady. I know you know it, the same as I do...!"

Theresa didn't mention what she really knew.

She let Daddy talk. For years, that proud man had entertained fantasies of Rickover moving to the pros, leaving the door open for his only child. But it hadn't happened, and it wouldn't. And over the last few years, with Jones's help, he had convinced himself that Theresa should play instead for State's great rival. Call it justice. Or better, revenge. Either way, what mattered was that she would go somewhere that her talents could blossom. That's all that mattered, Daddy told the coach. And Marlboro replied with a knowing nod and a sparkling of the eyes, finally turning to his prospect, and with a victor's smile, asking, "What's best for you? Tour our campus first? Or get this signing c.r.a.p out of the way?"

Theresa said, "Neither."

Then she remembered to add, "Sir," with a forced politeness.

Both men were stunned. But the coach was too slick to let it show. Staring at the tall, big-shouldered lady, he conjured up his finest drawl, telling her, "I can fix it. Whatever's broke, it can be fixed."

"Darling," her father mumbled. "What's wrong?"

She looked at her father's puffy, confused face. "This man doesn't want me for quarterback, Daddy.

He just doesn't want me playing somewhere else."

After seventeen years of living with the girl, her father knew better than to doubt her instincts. Glaring at Marlboro, he asked flat out, "Is that true?"

"No," the man lied.

Instantly, convincingly.

Then he sputtered, adding, "That Mosgrove kid has too much chimp in his arm. And not enough touch."

There was a prolonged, uncomfortable silence.

Then Theresa informed both of them, "I've made up my mind, anyway. Starting next year, I'm going to play for State."

Daddy was startled and a bit frustrated. But as always, a little bit proud, too.

Coach Jones was, if anything, amused. The squirrel eyes smiled, and the handsome mouth tried not to follow suit. And after a few more seconds of painful silence, he said, "I've known Rickover for most of my adult life. And you know what, little girl? You've definitely got your work cut out for you."

Jones was mistaken.

Theresa believed.

A lifetime spent around coaches had taught her that the species was pa.s.sionate and stubborn and usually wrong about everything that wasn't lashed to the game in front of them. But what made coaches ridiculous in the larger world helped them survive in theirs. Because they were stubborn and overblown, they could motivate the boys and girls around them; and the very best coaches had a gift for seducingtheir players, causing them to lash their souls to the game, and the next game, and every game to follow.

All Theresa needed to do, she believed, was out-stubborn Coach Rickover.

State had a walk-on program. Overachievers from the Yukon to the Yucatan swarmed into campus in late summer, prepared to fight it out for a handful of scholars.h.i.+ps. Theresa enrolled with the rest of them, then with her father in tow, showed up for the first morning's practice. An a.s.sistant coach approached. Polite and determined, he thanked her for coming, but she wasn't welcome. But they returned for the afternoon practice, this time accompanied by an AI advocate-part lawyer, part mediator-who spoke to a succession of a.s.sistant coaches with the quietly smoldering language of lawsuits and public relations nightmares.

Theresa's legal standing was questionable, at best. Courts had stopped showing interest in young ladies wanting to play an increasingly violent sport. But the threat to call the media seemed to work.

Suddenly, without warning, the quarterback coach walked up to her and looked up, saying to her face, "All right. Let's see what you can do."

She was the best on the field, easily.

Pinpoint pa.s.ses to eighty meters. A sprint speed that mauled every pure-human record. And best of all, the seemingly innate ability to glance at a fluid defense and pick it apart. Maybe Theresa lacked the elusive moves of some 1-1-2041s, which was the closest thing to a weakness. But she made up for it with those big shoulders that she wielded like dozer blades, leaving half a dozen strong young men lying flat on their backs, trying to recall why they ever took up this d.a.m.ned sport.

By the next morning, she was taking hikes with the varsity squad.

Coach Rickover went as far as strolling up to her and saying, "Welcome, miss," with that cool, almost friendly voice. Then he looked away, adding, "And the best of luck to you."

It was a trap.

During a no-contact drill, one of the second-string purehuman linebackers came through the line and leveled her when she wasn't ready. Then he squatted low and shouted into her face, "b.i.t.c.h! Dog b.i.t.c.h!

p.u.s.s.y b.i.t.c.h! b.i.t.c.h!"

Theresa nearly struck him.

In her mind, she left his smug face strewn across the wiry green gra.s.s. But then Rickover would have his excuse-she was a discipline problem-and her career would have encompa.s.sed barely one day.

She didn't hit the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, or even chew off one of his fingers.

Instead she went back to throwing lasers at her receivers and running between the tackles.

Sometimes her blockers would go on vacation, allowing two or three rushers to drag her to the ground.

Yet Theresa always got up again and limped back to the huddle, staring at the stubborn human eyes until those eyes, and the minds behind them, blinked.

It went on that way for a week.

Because she wouldn't allow herself even the possibility of escape, Theresa prepared herself for another four months of inglorious abuse. And if need be, another three years after that.

Her mother came to visit and to beg her daughter to give it up.

"For your sake, and mine. Just do the brave thing and walk away."

Theresa loved her mother, but she had no illusions: The woman was utterly, hopelessly weak.

Daddy was the one who scared her. He was standing over his daughter, watching as she carefully licked at a gash that came when she was thrown against a metal bench, her leg opened up from the knee to her badly swollen ankle. And with a weakling's little voice, he told her, "This isn't my dream anymore.

You need to reconsider. That, or you'll have to bury me. My nerves can't take any more twisting."

Picking thick golden strands of fur from her long, long tongue, Theresa stared at him. And hiding her sadness, she told him, "You're right, Daddy. This isn't your dream."

The war between player and coach escalated that next morning.

Nine other 1-1-2041s were on the team. Theresa was promoted to first team just so they could have a shot at her. She threw pa.s.ses, and she was knocked flat. She ran sideways, and minotaurs in white jerseys flung her backward, burying their knees into her kidneys and uterus. Then she moved to defense, playing ABMback for a few downs, and their woolly, low-built running back drove her against the juicecooler, knocking her helmet loose and chewing on one of her ears, then saying into that blood, "There's more coming darling. There's always more coming."

Yet despite the carnage, the 1-1-2041s weren't delivering real blows.

Not compared to what they could have done.

It dawned on Theresa that Rickover and his staff, for all their intimate knowledge about muscle and bone, had no idea what their players were capable of. She watched those grown men nodding, impressed with the bomb-like impacts and spattered blood. Sprawled out on her back, waiting for her lungs to work again, she found herself studying Rickover: He was at least as handsome as Marlboro Jones, but much less attractive. There was something both a.n.a.lytical and dead about the man. And underneath it all, he was shy. Deeply and eternally shy. Wasn't that a trait that came straight out of your genetics? A trait and an affliction that she lacked, thankfully.

Theresa stood again, and she limped through the milling players and interns, then the a.s.sistant coaches, stepping into Rickover's line of sight, forcing him to look at her.