Away Games: Science Fiction Sports Stories Read Free Page B

happened?” I whispered as Jerry walked to the free-throw line. “You haven’t committed a foul all season.”
    “The son of a bitch deserved it,” said the Big Guy. “He damned near killed little Scooter with a moving screen, and the idiot ref didn’t call it.”
    He didn’t sound like the Ralph I’d come to know, but I didn’t say a word, because somehow he was playing at an even higher level. In the end, we won by six points, and if you’d asked me why, I’d have said it was because Ralph wanted it more than Jerry-56 did.
    He never showered with us, because he didn’t sweat, but after our semi-final win he did, because he said he wasn’t going to miss out on the camaraderie for anything. He was still on a high when we boarded the plane and flew to Providence for the championship game.
    When I came back from lunch I thought maybe he’d stopped functioning. He was just sitting them, absolutely motionless, staring off into space. I reached out and shook him by the shoulder.
    “You okay, Big Guy?” I said.
    “I’m fine, Jacko,” he replied.
    “You had me worried for a minute there. I thought maybe your power supply was running down or something.”
    “No,” he said. “I was just analyzing.”
    “The Reds? We’ve played them before. You know everything they’re likely to do. Hell, you’ve even seen Sammy-19 before.”
    He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t analyzing the Reds.”
    “What were you analyzing, then?” I asked.
    “Emotions,” he said. “They are remarkable things, are they not?”
    “I never thought much about it,” I said, “but I guess they are.”
    “That’s because you’re used to them,” he said. “But the feeling when the final buzzer sounded and we had won the game—it was indescribable. Or the feeling in the locker room, when the whole team celebrated and almost seemed to fuse into a single entity! Or the feeling when I was able to fake Jerry-56 out of position. Or …”
    “I’ve got a question,” I interrupted him.
    “What is it, Jacko?”
    “Why are you analyzing all these feelings? Why aren’t you just enjoying them?”
    “I told you once,” he said. “I have a compulsion to learn. If I am to experience the entirety of each emotion—elation, triumph, camaraderie, whatever the feeling—I must fully comprehend it.”
    “Well, if you ever comprehend Fishbait’s screaming at the refs when he knows they made the right call, let me know about it, okay?”
    “I will,” he said seriously. “You know, I was mistaken when I said that value judgments were what separated us from you. I see now that it is emotions.”
    “If you say so,” I replied. I checked my watch. “We won’t leave for the stadium for about four hours,” I said. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me if I sleep past five o’clock.”
    “Yes, Jacko.”
    I walked over to one of the beds, laid down, and I’ll swear I was asleep within half a minute. I woke up at about 4:30 to use the bathroom, and saw that Ralph was still motionless, still staring at something only he could see, still analyzing each emotion he’d felt.
    I decided not to go back to sleep, so I just turned on the holo and watched some sports news. It didn’t bother the Big Guy. Nothing bothers him unless he lets it, and he was too busy studying his feelings.
    We caught the bus at 5:30, reached the stadium at 6:00, got into our uniforms, had a quick shoot-around, and then came back to the locker room. Fishbait gave us the usual speech, and then, just for emphasis, he gave it to us, word for word, two more times.
    Then it was game time. They said that more than 20 million viewers would be watching in America, and almost 300 million worldwide. We were slight underdogs, since we were playing on the Reds’ home court and Sammy-19 was a slightly later model than the Big Guy.
    We went through the whole opening ceremony rigmarole, and I noticed that no one on our team sang the Star-Spangled Banner more passionately than Ralph.