Blue Adept

by Piers Anthony

  The Rifleman assumed the position of quarterback. His animals lined up. The play commenced. Stile’s line charged in, but the Rifleman reacted with poise, making a neat, short bulletlike pass to his receiver on the sideline. It was complete; the pass had been too accurately thrown for the receiver to miss, too swift for the defender to interfere with. The Citizen had a net gain of eight yards.

  The Rifleman—now Stile appreciated how this applied to football, too. The Citizen was a superior player of this arcane game, better than an android passer. Therefore he had a superior team—while Stile had an indifferent team.

  Stile substituted in another pass defender—but the Citizen brought in another receiver. Stile could not double-cover. Those passes were going to be trouble!

  They were. The Rifleman marched his team relentlessly downfield. Not every pass connected, and not every play was a pass, but with four tries to earn each first down, the offensive team had no trouble. All too soon the Rifleman scored. Then the Rifleman substituted in his own place-kicker and let him make the extra point. The score was 7-0, the Rifleman’s advantage.

  Complete team substitutions were permitted after a touchdown. It was a new game, with Stile receiving again, except that he was now in the hole. Five playing minutes had elapsed.

  Stile’s team received the ball and attempted a runback. His animal got nowhere. Stile had his first down on the twelve-yard line.

  It was time to get clever. If he could fool the defenders and break an android free, he might score on a single play. But this could be risky.

  He set up the play: a fake run to the right, and a massive surge to the left, with every android lineman moving across to protect the runner.

  The result was a monstrous tangle as stupid animals got in each other’s way. His runner crashed into his own pileup, getting nowhere, and the referee imposed a fifteen-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness, holding, and offensive interference. Half the distance to Stile’s goal line.

  Second down, long yardage, from the six-yard line. So much for innovation! Stile tried to complete another pass, this time to himself; maybe the Rifleman wouldn’t expect him to expose himself that way, and the surprise would work. A long bomb, trying for the moons, double or nothing.

  The play commenced. Stile ducked through the line and charged straight downfield. The Rifleman cut across to guard him. Together they turned at the fifty-yard line, and Stile cut back to the appointed spot to receive the pass, and the Rifleman cut in front of him and intercepted it while it remained too high in the air for Stile to reach.

  “Sorry about that, friend,” the Citizen said as Stile hastily tackled him and the whistle blew to end the play. “Height has its advantage.”

  It certainly did. Stile had lost the ball again without scoring. He heard the roar of reaction and applause from the filling audience section of the stadium; the Rifleman had clearly made a good play. Now Stile would have to defend again against the devastating passing attack of his opponent.

  He was not disappointed. Methodically the Rifleman moved the ball down the field until he scored again. This time he passed for the extra points, and made them. The score was fifteen to nothing.

  The first half of the game was finished: fifteen minutes of playing time. Stile had tried every device he could think of to stop his opponent from scoring, and had only managed to slow the rate of advance and use up time. The Rifleman had averaged a point per minute, even so. Stile had to move, and move well, in the second half, or rapidly see the game put out of reach. He needed a dramatic, original system of defense and offense. But what could he do?

  Surprise, first. What could he do that really would surprise his opponent, while staying within the clumsy rules of this game? He couldn’t run or pass or kick the ball away—

  The kick. It was possible to score on the kick. Field goals, they were called, worth three points each. Except that he had no kicker other than himself. That was only slightly better than nothing, considering his near bungle of his first attempt to punt. The moment he set up for a placekick instead of a punt, those Black armored animals would be upon him. Even if he got the kick off, even if he somehow scored, he would wind up crushed at the bottom of the pile of meat. There was not any great future in that. If by some fluke he scored several field goals, enough to win, he would still be so battered he would be at a serious disadvantage in other Games of the Tourney. It would really be better to forfeit this one; it took two losses to eliminate an entrant, so he could afford that gesture.

  No! He was not about to forfeit anything! If he lost, it would only be because he had been fairly beaten.

  Still, the kick seemed to be his best chance. A surprise punt on first or second down, catching the Rifleman with his guard down. Then an attempt to force an error, an interception, or a fumble. Playing for the breaks. It would take nerve and luck and determination, but it was a chance.

  Stile’s team received the kickoff. This time the ball bounced into the end zone, and was brought out to his twenty-yard line for play.

  Stile called for the punt, after a fake pass. His quarterback would simply fade back and hand the ball to Stile, then serve as interference to the tacklers while Stile got the kick off.

  It worked. Stile got a beautiful—for him—punt off, escaping unscathed himself. The ball was low and fast, skimming over the heads of the animals, bouncing, and rolling rapidly onward. No one was near it.

  The Rifleman, playing the backfield, was first to reach the ball. But the thing was still hopping crazily about, the way an unround and pointed ball was apt to do, as if it were a faithful representative of its crazy period of history, and it bounced off the Citizen’s knee. Now, according to the peculiarities of this sport, it was a “live” ball, and Stile’s onrushing animals had the limited wit to pounce on it. There was a monstrous pileup—and Stile’s team recovered the football on the thirty-yard line of Black. A fifty-yard gain!

  “Nicely played,” the Rifleman said, smiling. “I was beginning to fear the game would be unconscionably dull.”

  “No Tourney Game is dull,” Stile said. “Sir.”

  Now he had the ball in good field position—but could he seize the opportunity to score? Stile doubted it. He simply did not have the ability to advance the ball consistently.

  So he would have to attempt to score from this range. That meant a forty-yard field goal. No, Stile doubted he had the power or accuracy for that. He would merely be throwing the ball away, unless he could get closer to the goal. His androids evidently couldn’t do that, and Stile himself was too small to carry it; the pass interception had shown that. This was one game where no advantage could be achieved from small size.

  Or could it? These android brutes were accustomed to dealing with creatures their own size, and were slow to adjust. An agile, acrobatic man his size—why not show them some of the tricks he could do? Stile was small, but no weakling, and the androids were programmed not to hurt real people. He just might turn that into an advantage.

  In the huddle he had specific instructions for his center. “You will hike the ball to me—make sure you get it to me, for I am smaller than your regular quarterback—then charge forward straddle-legged. I clarify: hike the ball, then block forward and up, your feet spread wide. Do you understand?”

  Dully, the android nodded. Stile hoped the creature would follow orders literally. These androids were the match of real people physically, but science had not developed their brains to work as well as the human kind. Androids cast in petite female forms were said to be quite popular with some men, who considered their lack of wit to be an asset. Specialized androids were excellent for other purposes such as sewer cleaning. It just happened that in this Game, Stile had to push to the intellectual limit of the type. In a real game of football, as played on Earth centuries ago, such an android would have been fully competent: this was not that situation.

  The creature did as ordered. Stile took the ball, ducked down—and charged forward between the animal’s spread
legs. The slow-witted opposing androids did not realize what had happened; they continued to charge forward, looking for a ball carrier to tackle. Stile scooted ahead five, ten, and finally fifteen yards before the Rifleman himself brought him down. “Beautiful play!” the Citizen said as they bounced together on the turf, their light armor absorbing most of the shock of impact. With a fifteen-point lead, he could afford to be generous. But the growing stadium audience also cheered.

  Stile had his first down on the fifteen-yard line, but he knew better than to try the same stunt again. At any rate, he was now in field goal range, for his kicking ability—except that he still did not relish getting crushed in the blitz that would converge on the placekicker.

  Then he dredged from his memory an alternative: the dropkick. Instead of having the ball held in place by another player for the kick, the kicker simply dropped it to the ground and kicked it on the bounce. A dropkick, unlike a punt, was a scoring kick. Its disadvantage was that it was less reliable than a placekick, since the bounce could go wrong; its advantage was that it could be done on extremely short notice. Short enough, perhaps, to surprise the androids, and enable Stile to complete it before getting tackled and buried.

  He decided to try it. He took the ball as quarterback, faded back a few yards, then dropped it for the kick. The ball bounded up, and the androids ceased their charge, realizing that this differed from a punt.

  Stile watched with gratification as the football arced between the goal posts. It was wobbly and skewed but within tolerance. The referee signaled the score: three points.

  “The drop kick!” The Rifleman exclaimed. “I haven’t seen one of those in years! Magnificent!” He seemed more pleased about it than Stile was.

  But now it was Stile’s turn to kick off to the Rifleman. He decided to gamble again. “Do you know the onside kick?” he asked his teammates.

  Blank stares were returned. Good—the animals had not been programmed for this nuance. Probably the other team’s androids would not know it either, so could reasonably be expected to flub it. The Rifleman would know it—but Stile intended to kick the ball away from him.

  He tried it and it worked. Stile’s team had possession of the football at midfield. “Oh, marvelous!” the Rifleman exclaimed ecstatically.

  Back in the huddle. “Number One will field the ball,” Stile told the animals, referring to the Rifleman’s shirt designation. “Charge him, box him in, but do not tackle him. I will tackle him.”

  Uncomprehending, the androids agreed.

  Stile punted on first down. This time he had the feel of it, and hung the ball up high, giving his players time to get down to it before it landed. The Rifleman, alert to this play, caught the ball himself, calling his own players in around him. Thus the two groups formed in a rough circle, Stile’s animals trying to get past the Rifleman’s animals without actually contacting the Rifleman.

  Perplexed by this seeming diffidence, the Citizen started to run with the ball. That was when Stile shot between two of his own players, took a tremendous leap, and tackled the Rifleman by the right arm where the football was tucked. He made no bruising body contact, for that would have brought a penalty call, but yanked hard on that arm.

  As the two twisted to the ground, the ball passed from the Citizen’s grasp to Stile’s. Stile was of course adept at wresting control of objects from others; he had specialized in this maneuver for other types of games. Once again, his team had possession of the ball.

  “Lovely,” the Rifleman said, with slightly less enthusiasm than before.

  The ball was now just inside the twenty-yard line. Stile drop-kicked another field goal. Now he had six points. And eleven minutes remaining in the game.

  He knew he would not get away with another onside kick. The Rifleman would already have alerted his team to that. This time Stile would have to play it straight, and hope to stop the Citizen’s devastating drive.

  Stile kicked it deep, and it went satisfyingly far before being fielded by a Black android. Stile’s androids were alert to this routine situation, and they brought the carrier down on the twenty-yard line.

  Now Stile had to stifle the passing attack. He decided to concentrate on rushing the passer and hoping for an interception. He himself would cover one of the Rifleman’s receivers, while double-covering the other with androids.

  This seemed to be effective. The Rifleman faded back for his pass, did not like the situation, but did not want to run or get tackled. So he overthrew the ball, voiding any chance for an interception. According to the quaint conventions for this sport, all parties knew exactly what he was doing, and it mandated a penalty for deliberate grounding, but none was called. Because if deliberate grounding of the ball was done with discretion, it was presumed to be a throwing error instead of what it obviously was. Presumably this sort of thing added luster to the game.

  On the second down the Rifleman tried a pass to the double-covered receiver, but two androids were better than one and again it went incomplete. Good: one more such failure and he’d have to turn over the ball on a kick. Stile was at last managing to stifle the Citizen’s passing attack.

  On third down, the Rifleman rifled the ball directly to the receiver Stile was covering. He aimed it high, to be out of Stile’s reach, but reckoned without Stile’s acrobatic ability. Stile leaped high to intercept it—and was banged aside by the receiver, who had not realized what he was going to do. No android would have leaped like that. A referee’s flag went down.

  The penalty was offensive pass interference. Stile’s team had the ball again. This time the Rifleman’s congratulation was definitely perfunctory.

  The ball was on the Black thirty-five-yard line. Time remaining was nine minutes. Those incomplete passes had expended very little time. Still, Stile was getting nervous; he really needed to break loose and score a touchdown.

  “Number 81—can you receive a lateral?” he asked.

  “Yuh,” the animal agreed after a brief pause for thought.

  “Then follow me and be ready.” Stile turned to a lineman. “When the ball is hiked, you turn, pick me up, and heave me over the Black line.” He seemed to remember an ancient penalty for such a trick, but it was not part of the Game rules.

  “Duh?” the android asked. The concept was too novel for his intellectual capacity. Stile repeated his instructions, making sure the animal understood what to do, if not why.

  When the ball was hiked, Stile tucked it into his elbow and stepped into his lineman’s grasp. The android hurled him up and over. Stile had been given such a lift in the course of gymnastic stunts, and was pretty much at home in the air. He flipped, rolled off a lineman’s back, landed neatly on his feet and charged forward toward the goal line.

  This time, however, the Rifleman had a couple of guards in the backfield, and they intercepted Stile before he had gone more than ten yards.

  Now Stile lateraled to Number 81, who was right where he was supposed to be. What these creatures did, they did well! The android caught the ball and bulled ahead for eight more yards before being stopped.

  They were within kicking range again. Stile decided not to gamble on another running play; he drop-kicked another field goal. The score was now 15–9, with eight minutes remaining. At this rate, he could do it—provided he had no bad breaks. Unfortunately, he was overdue for one of those. He had been playing extremely chancy ball.

  Should he try another onside kick? No, that would only cost him yardage at this stage. He had to make the Rifleman travel as far across the field as possible, so that he had the maximum opportunity to make an error. So Stile played it straight.

  This time he managed to put the ball all the way into the end zone. The Rifleman put it into play on the twenty-yard line. This time, wary of passing into Stile’s double coverage, he handed it off to his runner. But the android proceeded without imagination and was downed at the line of scrimmage. Any play left purely to the animals was basically wasted time; the capacities of the androids had eviden
tly been crafted for that. The human players had to make their physical and/or mental skills count.

  Now Stile was sure the Citizen was beginning to sweat. The Rifleman knew that if he failed to move the ball, he would have to turn it over—and then Stile would find some devious way to score. A touchdown and extra point would put Stile ahead in the closing minutes. But the Citizen was unable to advance the ball. What was he to do?

  What could he do? He risked another pass to his double-covered android receiver. It was perfectly placed, threading between the defenders to reach its target. How that man could pass! But one defender managed to tip it, and the receiver did not catch it cleanly. The ball squirted out of his grasp, bounced on the ground, and one of Stile’s animals, not realizing the ball was dead, fell on it.

  It was obviously an incomplete pass. But the referee signaled a fumble. Now it was Stile’s ball on the thirty-two-yard line.

  “Now, wait,” Stile protested. “That’s a miscall. The receiver never had control of the ball.”

  “Aren’t you aware that these referees are programmed to make at least one major miscall per game?” the Rifleman called to him. “That’s to emulate the original style of play, back on crazy Earth. You happen to be the beneficiary of that error.”

  The referees were robots, of course; Stile hadn’t noticed. They could be set at any level of competence. “But that’s luck, not skill!”

  “There’s an element of luck in most games. That lends a special fascination. The human species loves to gamble. Play, before you draw another delay-of-game penalty.” The Rifleman did not seem upset, perhaps because this change-of-possession was obviously no fault of his own.

  Hastily, Stile played. He accepted the hiked ball, faded back for a pass, found his receivers covered, saw three huge animals bearing down on him, dodged them all, circled behind one and safely overthrew his covered receiver. The moment he released the ball, he hunched over as though still carrying it. The turning android saw that and grabbed him, not having seen the ball go.