Future Sports

by Gardner Dozois

  Her high school teams won the state championship 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 assured 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 crap 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 passionate 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 seducing their 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 outstubborn 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 scholarships. Theresa enrolled with the rest of them, then with her father in tow, showed up for the first morning’s practice. An assistant 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 assistant 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 passes 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 damned 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-contract drill, one of the second-string pure-human linebackers came through the line and leveled her when she wasn’t ready. Then he squatted low and shouted into her face, “Bitch! Dog bitch! Pussy bitch! Bitch!”

  Theresa nearly struck him.

  In her mind, she left his smug face strewn across the wiry green grass. But then Rickover would have his excuse—she was a discipline problem—and her career would have encompassed barely one day.

  She didn’t hit the bastard, 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 passes, 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 AMBback for a few downs, and their woolly, low-built running back drove her against the juice cooler, 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 com
pared 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 bomblike 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 analytical 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 assistant coaches, stepping into Rickover’s line of sight, forcing him to look at her.

  “I still want to play for you,” she told him. “But you know, Coach . . . I don’t think I’ll ever like you . . .” And with that, she turned and hobbled back to the field.

  Next morning, a decision had come down from On High.

  Theresa was named the new first-string quarterback, and the former first-string—a tall, bayonet-shaped boy nicknamed Man o’ War—was made rocketback.

  For the last bits of summer and until the night before their first game, Theresa believed that her little speech had done its magic. She was so confident of her impression that she repeated her speech to her favorite rocketback. And Man o’ War gave a little laugh, then climbed out of her narrow dormitory bed, stretching out on the hard floor, pulling one leg behind his head, then the other.

  “That’s not what happened,” he said mildly. Smiling now.

  She said, “What didn’t?”

  “It was the nine of us. The other l-l-2041s.” He kept smiling, bending forward until his chin was resting against his naked crotch, and he licked himself with a practiced deftness. Once finished, he sat up and explained, “We went to Coach’s house that night. And we told him that if we were supposed to keep hurting you, we might as well kill you. And eat you. Right in the middle of practice.”

  She stared at her lover for a long moment, unsure what to believe.

  Theresa could read human faces. And she could smell their moods boiling out of their hairless flesh. But no matter how hard she tried, she could never decipher that furry chimera of a face.

  “Would you really have?” she finally asked.

  “Killed you? Not me,” Man o’ War said instantly.

  Then he was laughing, reminding her, “But those linebackers . . . you never can tell what’s inside their smooth little minds . . . !”

  * * *

  Tech and State began the season on top of every sport reporter’s rankings and the power polls and leading almost every astrologer’s sure-picks. Since they had two more 1-1-2041s on their roster, including the Wildman, Tech was given the edge. Professional observers and fans, as well as AI analysts, couldn’t imagine any team challenging either of them. On the season’s second weekend, State met a strong Texas squad with its own handful of 1-1-2041s. They beat them by seventy points. The future seemed assured. Barring catastrophe, the two teams of the century would win every contest, then go to war on New Year’s Day, inside the venerable Hope Dome, and the issue about who was best and who was merely second best would be settled for the ages.

  In public, both coaching staffs and the coached players spouted all the hoary clichés. Take it one play at a time, and one game at a time, and never eat your chicken before it’s cooked through.

  But in private, and particularly during closed practices, there was one opponent and only one, and every mindless drill and every snake run on the stadium stairs and particularly every two-ton rep in the weight room was meant for Tech. For State. For glory and the championship and a trophy built from gold and sculpted light.

  In the third week of the season, Coach Jones began using his 1-1-2041s on both sides of the line.

  Coach Rickover told reporters that he didn’t approve of those tactics. “Even superhumans need rest,” he claimed. But that was before Tech devastated an excellent Alabama squad by more than a hundred and twenty points. Rickover prayed to God, talked to several physiologists, then made the same outrageous adjustment.

  In their fourth game, Theresa played at quarterback and ABM.

  Not only did she throw a school record ten touchdowns, she also ran for four more, plus she snagged five interceptions, galloping three of them back for scores.

  “You’re the Heisman frontrunner,” a female reporter assured her, winking and grinning as if they were girlfriends. “How does it feel?”

  How do you answer such a silly question?

  “It’s an honor,” Theresa offered. “Of course it is.”

  The reporter smiled slyly, then assaulted her with another silliness. “So what are your goals for the rest of the season?”

  “To improve,” Theresa muttered. “Every Saturday, from here on.”

  “Most of your talented teammates will turn professional at the end of the year.” A pause. Then she said, “What about you, Theresa? Will you do the same?”

  She hadn’t considered it. The UFL was an abstraction, and a distraction, and she didn’t have time or the energy to bother with either.

  “All I think about,” she admitted, “is this season.”

  A dubious frown.

  Then the reporter asked, “What do you think of Tech’s team?”

  One play at a time, game at a time, and cook your chicken . . .

  “Okay. But what about the Wildman?”

  Nothing simple came into Theresa’s head. She paused for a long moment, then told the truth, “I don’t know Alan Wilde.”

  “But do you think it’s right . . . ? Having a confessed killer as your linebacker and star running back . . . ?”

  The reporter was talking about the Wildman. Vague recollections of a violent death and a famous, brief trial came to mind. But Theresa’s parents had shielded her from any furor about the 1-1-2041s. Honestly, the best she could offer this woman was a shrug and her own smile, admitting, “It’s not right to murder. Anyone. For any reason.”

  That simple declaration was the night’s lead story on every sports network.

  “Heisman hopeful calls her opponent a murderer! Even though the death was ruled justifiable homicide!”

  Judging by the noise, it made for a compelling story.

  Whatever the hell that means.

  After the season’s seventh week, a coalition of coaches and university presidents filed suit against the two front-runners. The games to date had resulted in nearly two hundred concussions, four hundred broken bones, and thirteen injuries so severe that young, pure-human boys were still lying in hospital beds, existing in protective comas.

  “We won’t play you anymore,” the coalition declared.

  They publicly accused both schools of recruiting abuses, and in private, they warned that if the remaining games weren’t canceled, they would lead the pack in a quick and bloody inquisition.

  Coach Rickover responded at his weekly press conference. With a Bible in hand, he gave a long, rambling speech about his innocence and how the playing fields were perfectly level.

  Marlboro Jones took a different tack.

  Accompanied by his school’s lawyers, AI and human, he visited the ringleaders. “You goddamn pussies!” he shouted. “We’ve got contracts with you. We’ve got television deals with the networks. If you think we’re letting your dicks wriggle free of this hook, you’re not only cowards. You’re stupid, too!”

  Then he sat back, letting the lawyers dress up his opinion in their own impenetrable language.

  But the opponents weren’t fools. A new-generation AI began to list every known infraction: Payments to players and their families. Secretive changes of title for homes and businesses. Three boosters forming a charity whose only known function was to funnel funds to the topflight players. And worst by far, a series of hushed-up felonies connected to the 1-1-2041s under his care.
/>   Marlboro didn’t flinch.

  Instead, he smiled—a bright, blistering smile that left every human in the room secretly trembling—and after a prolonged pause, he said, “Fine. Make it all public.”

  The AI said, “Thank you. We will.”

  “But,” said Marlboro, “here’s what I’ll take public. You pussies.”

  With precision and a perfect ear for detail, the coach listed every secret infraction and every camouflaged scandal that had ever swirled around his opponents’ programs. Twenty-plus years in this industry, and he knew everything. Or at least that was the impression he gave. And then as he finished, he said, “Pussies,” again. And laughed. And he glared at the Stanford president—the ringleader of this rabble—telling that piece of high-born shit, “I guess we’re stuck. We’re just going to have to kill each other.”

  Nobody spoke.

  Moved, or even breathed.

  Then the president managed to find enough air to whisper, “What do you propose?”

  “Tech and State win our games by forfeit,” the coach told them. “And you agree not to play us in court, either.”

  The president said, “Maybe.”

  Then with a soft, synthetic voice, his AI lawyer said, “Begging to differ, but I think we should pursue—”

  Marlboro threw the talking box across the room.

  It struck a wall, struck the floor. Then with an eerie calm, it said, “You cannot damage me, sir.”

  “Point taken.” The coach turned to the humans. “Do we have a deal? Or don’t we?”

  Details were worked out; absolutely nothing was signed.

  Near the end of negotiations, Marlboro announced, “Oh, and there’s one last condition. I want to buy your lawyer.” He pointed at the AI. “Bleed it of its secrets first. But I want it.”

  “Or what?” Stanford inquired.

  “I start talking about your wives. Who likes it this way, who likes it that way. Just so everyone knows that what I’m saying is the truth.”

  The AI was sold. For a single dollar.