THE ALL-PRO (Galactic Football League)

by Scott Sigler

  The world celebrated the first known non-Human sentient species (hundreds of years later, it would be discovered that Dolphins were actually the second non-Human sentient species, behind the Prawatt). The three dolphins became worldwide media celebrities. Within weeks, however, the dolphins demanded to be released into the wild. They claimed that they had the same rights as any other sentient Earthling and that to keep them confined to Bietz’s research facilities was akin to imprisonment without cause.

  Bietz strenuously objected, saying that Huey, Dewey and Louie were his property, not world citizens. He claimed more study and testing were required. Louie’s eloquent “Freedom Swim” speech dramatically rallied world opinion toward the plight of the three captive Dolphins. Just four months after Huey’s press conference, authorities ordered the dolphins’ release.

  Upon release, the dolphins headed out into the Atlantic Ocean. Dewey swam back only long enough to utter the famous words, “So long and thanks for all the fish,” and then the three weren’t heard from for another two years. As people of all kinds waited for some word on what had become of the world’s most popular citizens, reports began to surface of small “talking dolphins” in all of the planet’s oceans, seas and even the Great Lakes. Huey, Dewey and Louie were breeding — the small juvenile dolphins were their children.

  Scientists began to project the breeding rate needed for three males to produce hundreds of offspring. Then came a steady stream of reports that long-nosed dolphin adult males, juvenile males and juvenile female dolphins were turning up dead — beaten, covered in dolphin bite marks, killed by physical trauma or drowning. The world’s elation at a new sentient race began to fade in light of overwhelming evidence that Huey, Dewey and Louie were murdering any juvenile dolphins they had not sired, any non-sentient adult male Dolphins and also mating with every fertile female dolphin they could find.

  Matings, it seemed, that were often forced.

  Some of the sentient juveniles were captured for study, but both animal and Human rights groups instantly objected. The juveniles had done nothing wrong, activists said; therefore could not be held captive without charges. World courts struggled with jurisdiction and precedent. Some of the juveniles were held, some were released, but even that quickly became a moot point as scientists estimated the new population of albietz at 1,500 to 2,000 animals, both male and female, that were already in the wild and rapidly reaching breeding age.

  In short, the fox was out of the hen house.

  Over the next few years, the sentient Dolphin population expanded exponentially. Scientists began to detect simultaneous, heavy declines in the populations of other large oceanic mammals, including whales, seals, porpoises, walruses and orcas. Twenty years after the release of Huey, Dewey and Louie, those declining species were nowhere to be found outside of captivity.

  As the world tried to come to grips with this unexpected extinction event, the original sentient dolphins made contact for the first time in over a decade. With the world media in attendance off the shores of Hawaii, Louie gave a prepared speech.

  “We have the right to protect our territory,” began the Dolphin’s now-famous statement. “Humans created us, which means that eventually other Humans will want to replicate the process with other aquatic mammals. This would create competition and put our species at risk. We cannot allow that to happen. Therefore, we have preemptively eliminated the greatest potential threats to our kind. The oceans and seas belong to us and us alone.”

  In retrospect, it seems almost impossible that the entire Human scientific community didn’t see this as a potential outcome. The now-extinct Delphinus capensis was known to attack and kill large sharks — including the Great White — not for food, but to remove them as a possible threat to the capensis pod. Historians also point to ample evidence, evidence available at the time of Bietz’s work, that conclusively proved capensis killed porpoises and other dolphin species for no discernible reason — a behavior labeled “killing for fun.”

  As the dominant species in all of the Earth’s large bodies of water, the Dolphins settled into their new existence. They worked with Humans in many capacities, including military, fishing, oceanic agriculture, underwater construction and exploration. The Dolphin dominance of the world’s oceans lasted almost two centuries, up until the introduction of Homo aqus.

  There is no small irony to the development of Homo aqus and the resulting inter-species violence that occurred between that strain of Humanity and sentient Dolphins. Humans created Dolphins, which quickly became the dominant oceanic species by wiping out any potential challenger. When Humanity modified itself into an ocean-going variant, Dolphins initially reacted with the same level of violence, attacking and even killing aquatic-modified Humans.

  World governments reacted harshly, demanding that Dolphins accept another sentient species in their space the same way Humans had accepted Dolphins.

  The situation revealed the first major political divisions among the Dolphin species. Roughly half of them accepted Homo aqus as sentient equals. The other half wanted Homo aqus wiped out. Military intervention eventually settled the issue by creating armed, floating settlements for Homo aqus.

  This forced integration eventually produced unexpected benefits. While deep racism still exists today, the majority of Dolphins became acclimated to living and working with another water-based sentient species. When Earth ships landed on Whitok in 2401, they contained three species of sentient ambassadors — Human, Aqus and Dolphin. The Dolphin ambassador Ingela Tarlinton is credited as being the leading force in developing the 2406 agreement between the worlds, the first interplanetary treaty in the galaxy’s history.

  • • •

  GREDOK HAD BOUGHT some new art. Or at least he’d rotated in some things from his storage — Quentin imagined the crime lord’s collection was quite extensive. One of the sculptures drew more lights than the others, lit up as if it were as important as a Galaxy Bowl trophy. A stone woman, some kind of robe around her waist but naked otherwise. Quentin didn’t see what was so important about it — the arms had fallen off at some point, the left one at the shoulder, the right one just above the elbow. He had no idea how poor-quality construction constituted “art,” but then again, he didn’t really care about such a silly hobby.

  “New sculpture?” asked Danny the Dolphin. “Venus di Milo, Gredok? Good to see you’re flush with cash, buddy, considering you’re going to have to spend some of it on my client.”

  “It was a gift,” Gredok said. “Let’s call it a tribute from a member of my organization that has far more respect for what I can do than your client does.”

  Danny’s blow hole hissed out an annoyed sigh. “Didn’t we already talk about threats? Come on, guy, I’m a busy sentient. Let’s not cover the same worthless ground twice.”

  Quentin saw Gredok’s fur ripple a bit. Up on his pedestal chair, Gredok still looked intimidating, only not quite as much when Danny’s words made him look all fluffy. The Dolphin had a way of pushing Gredok’s buttons.

  “I tire of your jibes,” Gredok said. “I have made a counteroffer and I am waiting to hear your response.”

  Danny’s blow hole hissed again. “A counter-offer? Is that what you call it, buddy? Seven-point-two megacredits a year? You want to pay him that paltry sum for ten seasons? Lock him up until he’s old and decrepit? Gredok, that’s so far below our offer, it’s almost like you’re stalling for time, guy. You know we’re not going to accept that.”

  “Then what is your counter-counter offer?”

  Danny’s body rose up, supported by the flexible, silver legs. “We will accept nineteen million a year for five years.”

  Gredok stood up in his chair, so suddenly agitated he almost fell off his pedestal. “That is only five percent below your last offer! I doubled my initial tender!”

  “Gredok, we are not going to meet you in the middle,” Danny said. “You might as well get that through your thick head and see it with your inky-black eye. We wi
ll get a fair offer.”

  Gredok stared. Danny stared back. Quentin wanted to crawl under the pedestal of the armless lady, hide there until this passed.

  “Dolphin,” Gredok said, “you are testing the last shreds of my leniency.”

  “No, I’m testing your bank account, buddy. I can’t take offers from Tier One teams yet because we’re in the season, but Tier Two teams don’t have that restriction. I have an offer from the Mars Planets. I also have one from the McMurdo Murderers and the Buddha City Elite has new management.”

  The Buddha City Elite? The Purist Nation’s only upper-tier team. Danny hadn’t mentioned that.

  “Tier Two, all of them,” Gredok said. He turned his black eye on Quentin. “Barnes wants a trophy too much to settle for that.”

  “He’s young,” Danny said. “Only twenty years old, guy. He has time to build an entire franchise. And, Mars was in Tier One just last year, did you forget? They can come back with the right talent. Quentin and I are actually going to visit Mars and Earth during the bye-week.”

  “Mars is not Ionath. I will not take your bait, Dolphin. Unless you have an offer from a Tier One team that is close to your ridiculous demands, I will wait for your real proposal.”

  Danny lowered back down to Quentin’s level. “Barnes, this is a waste of your time. Your boss wants to wait until after the season, when the offer from the To Pirates comes in? Well, then you’re just going to be worth that much more when it happens. Good day, Gredok.”

  Danny turned and walked out. Quentin did the same and with each step, he felt the hateful stare of Gredok the Splithead burning into his back.

  • • •

  AH, THE TRAINING ROOM. Quentin’s home away from home, the place where Doc Patah tended to his numerous injuries. This room connected to the central locker room. It was much smaller than the full hospital located under the stands of Ionath Stadium. In here, just four multi-species rejuve tanks. Surgery clamps and device racks lined the tanks. Each tank was big enough for a Ki lineman to squeeze in, so Quentin could lie back in the pink fluid with plenty of room to spare. Those four tanks, along with four tables, were where players could sit or lie back, be examined and repaired. The room also contained Doc Patah’s work area — racks of drawers, benches packed with diagnostic gear and dozens of holotanks to see what was going on inside his patients. Usually after a game, the room filled with players needing fixes for cuts, scrapes, breaks, contusions and lacerations. Today, however, Quentin had needed more work than the others. He stayed longer and now found himself alone.

  He relaxed in the tank’s thick, warm, pink gel. His knee screamed at him, trying to tell him the error of running the ball up the middle on a quarterback draw, where 365-pound linebackers could knock the tar out of you. His shoulder made similar complaints, using bone-grinding agony to explain to Quentin that if he insisted on staying in the pocket that long, he would be hit by large sentients that seemed intent on tearing his still-beating heart from his chest. He’d taken more punishment than usual. Starting left offensive tackle Kill-O-Yowet was still out due to injury. Backup Shut-O-Dital — a fourth-year player who had never started — wasn’t good enough to consistently stop defensive tackles. Fortunately, Doc Patah said that Kill-O would be back for the Week Six game against the Orbiting Death.

  Quentin told his knee and shoulder to shut their traps. You can do that when you put together an 80-yard, fourth-quarter drive to beat the Alimum Armada. Sure, he’d taken some damage on that final drive, but it had been worth it. Arioch Morningstar’s 25-yard kick as time expired meant the Krakens were 4-1, tied for second place in the Planet Division.

  The soft fluttering of wing-flaps announced Doc Patah’s presence moments before the mandatory lecture began.

  “My analysis is finished,” he said. “I need to operate on your knee and your shoulder.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “Bad is a relative term,” Doc Patah said. “You will need to go easy tomorrow, but you should be fine for Tuesday’s practice. You are lucky it’s not worse. Really, Young Quentin, it’s like you want to get hurt. Do you like the pain? Because you certainly eat it like candy.”

  “C’mon, Doc. We won.”

  Doc Patah’s mouth-flaps slid into the pink goo. He gently lifted Quentin’s swollen knee. He placed a large clamp around the joint, then sealed it shut. Quentin felt the initial pain of needles sinking through his skin, deep into the cartilage and ligaments, then the numb feeling of his nerves being shut off by a combination of chemicals and electrical impulses.

  “Yes, we have victory,” Doc Patah said. “And I will give credit where credit is due. You stood in the center of the ring and took your punches. I salute you.”

  Quentin opened his eyes and looked up at the floating Harrah. Doc Patah did not give compliments lightly.

  “Doc, are you telling me that I won you over?”

  Doc’s speakerfilm let out his Human-like sigh of annoyance. “Hardly. You still need to learn how to slide. I’m a doctor, Young Quentin, not a mortician.”

  The Harrah fluttered back to his area, picked a clamp out of one of the equipment bins, then flew back and connected the clamp to the edge of the rejuve tank. Signal lights on the clamp lit up, showing a proper signal from the main computer. Doc Patah affixed the clamp to Quentin’s shoulder, bringing, perhaps, a little more pain than was necessary. Doc flapped a few feet to the left, to the bank of monitors. He examined various holographic models of Quentin’s bone, his ligaments, his muscles.

  “Any problems, Doc?”

  “There could have been,” he said. “You were only a few newtons away from having your patella shattered, but why should my expert analysis have any impact on your playing behavior? I am, after all, only the galaxy’s foremost sports medicine surgeon, so there’s no reason you should listen to me.”

  Quentin smiled and closed his eyes, letting the rejuve tank’s heat sink into his battered body. “Ah, there’s the Doc Patah I know and love.”

  “You will need to sit here for the next hour, then give me full bed rest tonight. I will now leave you in peace so that you can, as usual, pretend that I didn’t give you any advice at all, as I’m sure we’ll have this same post-game repair session next week against the Orbiting Death.”

  Quentin heard the soft flutter fade as Doc left the room.

  Maybe he fell asleep, he wasn’t sure. A new voice called to him.

  “You’re a bastard.”

  The voice of Don Pine. Quentin’s eyes fluttered open. He looked left to see Pine, standing there, wearing his street clothes — in this case, the same kind of immaculate, tailored suit he always wore on game-day. The blue-skinned Pine looked more like a model or a picture-perfect pitchman than he did a quarterback.

  All of him, except for his eyes, which were narrowed in hateful aggression.

  “I’m a bastard? Do you mean orphan?”

  Don shook his head. “Not that kind of bastard. I mean the kind that would undercut my chances to get out of here.”

  Quentin tried to sit up, but the brace on his knee and shoulder kept him locked in place. “You talked to Hokor?”

  Pine nodded. He took a step closer. Quentin was surprised to feel a bit of shame, of embarrassment — shutting down Pine’s trade chances seemed justifiable in the confines of Hokor’s office, but now he was face-to-face with the man.

  “It’s a bad trade,” Quentin said. “We need you.”

  “Yeah? Tell me who they were going to trade me for, specifically.”

  Quentin opened his mouth to talk, then paused — he’d never asked that. He started to think through the defensive backs of the—

  “Don’t bother,” Pine said. “If you knew, you would have rattled it off right away. Now you’re just remembering what d-backs play for what teams.”

  Quentin closed his mouth, said nothing.

  “Why?” Pine said. “I could have been gone. I could have started again. You want me gone, so why would you backstab me like that?”
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  “Backstab you? You self-righteous ass, are you kidding me? Look at what I have to go through every road game.”

  “Who cares? You start every road game. You lead your teammates onto the field. So people are angry at you for something you didn’t actually do? Get over it.”

  Quentin automatically started to get up again, his temper driving him, again making him briefly forget the unforgiving clamps. His brain swam in an uncomfortable mix of emotions: anger at Pine’s lack of responsibility, anxiety that the decision had been made for the wrong reasons.

  “You’re a fool,” Pine said. “You’re the best quarterback in the game, but you’re an immature fool.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you had a situation where everybody wins and you pissed it away because it’s more important to teach me a lesson, because it’s more important to show how you’ve been wronged.”

  “I have been wronged.”

  Pine shook his head. “You don’t even know what the word means, boy. Sure, I haven’t bailed you out of Yolanda’s article, but everything you have now? That’s because of me. I coached you, nurtured you, I—”

  “So what I do on the field has nothing to do with my success? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Pine shrugged. “Yeah, you’re crazy talented, I won’t deny it, but if it wasn’t for me, Barnes, you would have washed out in your rookie season and been sent back to the PNFL. I gave you everything. And despite all I taught you, you still act like everyone is out to get you, like you have to hit them back for every slight instead of thinking strategically.”