*****
As Coach Wildsnap paced across the office, hands locked behind his back, Thal had a hard time keeping his eyes from wandering to the hippo pacing along behind him.
"End of the road, Thal," Wildsnap said grimly, shaking his doughy head. "I guess you already knew that, though."
Thal couldn’t stop looking at the hippo, so he cast his eyes down at the floor. "You’re trading me?" he said, though he knew that wasn’t what the coach had meant.
"No trade," said Wildsnap. "Welcome to civilian life."
"And yer out!" barked the hippo. "Strike twelve! Hit the showers!"
Thal glanced up. The hippo was waving both of its stumpy arms at him and sticking its purple tongue out from its enormous, lipsticked mouth.
"But it was just one mistake," said Thal. "After all I’ve done for this team over the years, don’t I deserve another chance?"
"After all I’ve done, don’t you mean?" said the hippo.
"You know better than that," said Wildsnap, pushing up the brim of his ballcap. "You’re done in this league. If you ever set foot on the field again, the crowd’ll eat you alive...literally. As we speak, they’re burning all your memorabilia in Citydome Center. They’ve already toppled your statue in the Hall of Gods."
"Holy shit," said Thal.
"Don’t get me wrong," said Wildsnap, removing a framed photo of Thal from the wall. "I feel for you, buddy. I mean, your life isn’t worth a plug nickel from now on. But what the hell were you doing out there tonight? Were you hyperstoned or something?"
"Tell him, Thal!" shouted the hippo. "Clear your good name!"
Thal sighed. If he told the coach he’d been victimized by a Choker, he could erase the doubt of his playing skill...but he would open up a can of worms that he couldn’t afford to open. The fact was, he’d somehow been imprinted by a Choker he himself had activated years ago; Chokers were so illegal, if this one was traced back to him, he would face consequences far worse than ejection from the league.
"I don’t know what happened," said Thal. "It was just one of those things."
Wildsnap stomped over and tore the player number from Thal’s red and green jersey. "With the DNA you’ve got, it’s never ‘just one of those things.’ Not that it makes any difference now. You’re done, my friend."
"Time to stick a fork in you, Thally!" said the hippo, doing a soft-shoe across the office.
"What about the farm team?" said Thal. "Send me away till things cool down."
Wildsnap leaned down, pushing his face close to Thal’s. "Earth to Thal," he said. "You lost the World Series. Things are never going to cool down for you."
"This is bullshit," said Thal, jumping up out of the chair and shoving his way past Wildsnap. "Total bullshit! I’m the top player in the league! I have the best career stats in history! I hold the single season and career home run record! You can’t just cut me loose!"
"Listen, Thal," said Wildsnap, taking a seat behind the desk. "This is the twenty-second century. You know how it is. Never been a better time to be an athlete...unless you make the kind of colossal fuck-up you just made. Your career stats went up in smoke the second you missed that pitch."
Thal thumped his fist against the wall. "You owe me!" he said. "I made the Bio Threats the top team in the world! I made Bio Threats Citydome billions of dollars!"
With a wave, Wildsnap brought the holographic computer interface to life over the desktop in front of him. "You’re right," he said as he brought up the team’s roster and erased Thal’s name from it. "I do owe you. That’s why I’m going to save your life, my friend."
Thal stormed over and kicked the front of the desk, putting a hole in it. "Save my life?" he said. "How about saving my career!"
"Lost cause," said Wildsnap. "Now do you want your life or not?"
The hippo was standing behind Thal, whispering in his ear. "Choose life, Thally!" he said. "I’m not done with you yet!"
"Screw you," said Thal. "I’m the wealthiest athlete in the country. I can take care of myself."
Wildsnap wiggled his fingers over the holocomputer’s control field. A financial statement appeared in front of Thal, packed with columns of numbers.
"Here’s a list of all your assets, Thal," said Wildsnap. "Bio Threats Citydome has confiscated everything and frozen all your accounts."
Thal scanned the statement. A chill flowed through him as he realized it looked like Wildsnap was right. "Wait," said Thal. "They can’t do that, can they?"
"You should’ve read the fine print on your contract," said Wildsnap.
"Why didn’t my agent catch this?"
Wildsnap snorted. "It’s a no-brainer, Thal," he said. "Your agent gets a percentage of what Citydome confiscates. You can’t expect her to go down the toilet with your career, can you?"
"That’s all right," said Thal, brushing away the holographic statement with a sweep of his hand. "I’ve got a little something stashed away for a rainy day."
"They got that, too," said Wildsnap. "Every offshore account and wad of fifties stuffed in your mattress. And your family’s in protective custody lockdown, so you’ll get no help there, either."
Thal glared at Wildsnap, wanting more than anything to snap his neck at that moment. Instead, he spun around, picked up the leather chair, and smashed it to pieces against the wall.
"That’s it, Thally!" hollered the hippo, doing a step-kick, step-kick as if he were a chorus line dancer. "Let it all out, buddy! Show ‘im those anger management classes really paid off!"
"Face it," said Wildsnap. "You’ve got nothing left. Everybody in Citydome wants you dead. I’m your only chance at survival. Now do you want a ticket or not?"
"A ticket?" said Thal.
"For the underground railroad," said Wildsnap. "Your only way out. Leave right now, and you might make it."
Thal felt as dazed as if he’d just taken a beanball to the head. "What, just leave?" he said. "Can’t I at least go pack some things?"
Wildsnap brought up an image of a burning luxury apartment on the holocomputer screen. "There’s your penthouse," he said. "Any more questions?"
At that moment, the lights dimmed, and a siren began to whoop. Eyes wide, Thal gaped out the office door into the locker room; he thought he heard a steady, distant pounding under the siren.
"What’s going on?" he said.
"I believe the villagers would like a word with you," the hippo said in his ear. "And your head on a pike."
Wildsnap checked readouts on the holographic display and popped up out of his chair. "They’re storming the compound," he said. "You’re out of time. You want to ride the railroad or go try to talk some sense into them?"
The pounding got louder. Thal’s stomach twisted like taffy, and his palms started to sweat. He looked from Wildsnap to the locker room doors and back again.
If there was another way out of this predicament, he couldn’t see it at the moment.
"Get me out of here," he said. "What do I have to do?"
"Attaboy, Thally!" shouted the hippo Choker. "Run, baby, run!"
Wildsnap smacked his palm down on the desktop. A circular hatch in the wall, invisible until then, irised open. "Follow me," he said, stepping over the threshold into the darkness beyond. "And make it snappy."
Without hesitation, Thal leaped into the opening. He didn’t hear the hippo following him, but he knew without a doubt that he was there.
*****
Hungry, freezing, and up to his knees in sewage, Thal slumped against the tunnel wall as his guide went ahead to meet the guard at the next checkpoint.
He wasn’t sure how long they’d been on the run through the sewers, but it seemed like days. It seemed like it had been a lot longer--months or years--since he had stood on the turf of Bio Threats field and seen the pitcher wind up for the throw that had changed his life forever.
Sometimes, as he trudged through the muck behind the dark-cloaked man who served as his guide, Thal had wondered if what he was experiencing was re
ally happening. It didn’t seem possible that he, a world-famous sports superstar, idol of billions, full-fledged god in the Church of Champions, could have been reduced to fleeing through the excrement of the very people who had once worshipped and adored him. It didn’t seem possible that his goals had been diminished from winning a third consecutive World Series to reaching the opposing team’s citydome before his own former fans managed to tear him to pieces.
Unfortunately, the stench and the cold and the wet always left him no doubt that what he was living was harsh reality.
The pink hippo kept reminding him, too.
"Bet you’re tired, huh?" said the Choker, floating on his back on the rancid current. "Could use a nice juicy steak, too, couldn’t you?"
Thal wiped his face on the hem of his jersey. Over the past few days (hours? weeks?) he had started to appreciate just how crazy a Choker could make someone. It was one thing to see the effect it had on another person, but another thing entirely to endure its abuse himself.
It was always with him, but he was the only one who could see or hear it. It wasn’t real, but it looked and sounded as if it were undeniably solid and alive. He couldn’t touch it or silence it, and it would never leave him alone.
Increasingly, he was coming to understand what his victims had gone through...the other players he’d sicced the Choker on to clinch wins and eliminate competition.
"My heart bleeds for ya, buddy," said the hippo, pretending to wipe to wipe away a tear. "But hey, look on the bright side. At least ya got me! I’ll never leave ya, pal!"
Three years ago, when Thal had placed his order with the Choker techie, he had thought it would be funny to program the mental gremlin in the form of a ridiculous pink hippo. Now that the thing was haunting him personally, he found himself wishing that he had picked any template but a pink hippo.
The sound of splashing echoed down the tunnel then, and Thal turned to see his guide slogging through the sewage toward him. The cloaked man stopped midway and waved his torch, summoning Thal to follow him.
When the two of them sloshed around a bend in the tunnel, Thal saw light emanating from an opening some yards away. The guide went through first, reaching for rungs outside the opening and climbing down.
Peering out, Thal saw that the tunnel gave way to a huge, circular chamber. All around the chamber, falls of sewage poured down from pipes and tunnels opening out of the walls at all levels.
The falls dumped into a wide trench that ringed the space and fed out through a gap along the base of the walls. A river of waste rushed out of the gap, roaring as it crashed down the channel to points unknown.
Looking down, Thal saw a cluster of men gathered at the base of the ladder that the guide was descending. They stood on a stone shelf many feet below, torches flickering as they gazed up at him.
Reaching out, Thal grabbed one of the rungs set into the wall. He swung a foot onto a lower rung and climbed down, taking care because the cold metal rungs were slippery with moisture.
The pink hippo floated down alongside him, apparently held aloft by a tiny red parasol. "Easy does it," said the hippo. "Wouldn’t want you to fall and break your neck."
For the first time, Thal talked back to the creature. "Shove it up your ass," he said...and as soon as the words left his mouth, he wondered if he was finally starting to lose it, talking to something that wasn’t there like that.
*****
"These men have all traveled the railroad like you," the guide told Thal when he’d reached the shelf. "They will take you to your next stop."
Thal looked around at the three dirty faces surrounding him. One of the men, a tall, bony guy with curly red hair and a beard to his chest, looked familiar.
"Are you going, too?" Thal said to the guide. Though he’d never gotten a clear look at his face under the hood of the cloak, and the two of them had hardly said a word to each other the whole trip, Thal felt comfortable following the guide and wanted him to go the rest of the way.
"Good luck," said the guide, and then he scaled the rungs in the wall and disappeared back into the tunnel.
"So," said the red-haired man. "We’d better get moving. We’ve got a long way to travel tonight."
Thal stared at him searchingly, becoming more convinced that he had seen him before. "Do I know you?" he said, trying to imagine what the man would look like without his long beard.
The red-haired man’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. "That’s a good question," he said, and then he turned and hiked off along the shelf.
The other two men followed, and Thal trailed after them, still combing his memory for a trace of the red-haired man. For some reason, Thal had a feeling it was important he remember who the man was.
The hippo confirmed it. "I know who he i-is!" the Choker sang tauntingly.
"Who?" whispered Thal, trying to keep his voice low enough that the men couldn’t hear.
"That’s for me to know," said the hippo, "and you to find out!"
Then, the hippo bobbed in with lips puckered and planted a sloppy kiss on Thal’s cheek. Though he knew full well that the creature was only imaginary, Thal felt the smack of the lips as if they were real. When he wiped his cheek, he could have sworn that his hand came away dripping with slimy slobber.
*****
Hours later--it seemed like hours, anyway--Thal found out who the red-haired man was...and quickly wished that he hadn’t.
He made the discovery when the four of them (five, counting the hippo) stopped for a rest in the desert foothills they were crossing. It was the first break they had taken since leaving the sewers many miles ago, and Thal was grateful for the chance to sit down, even if all he had to sit on was a boulder.
As Thal slouched in an exhausted daze on the rock, the red-haired man walked over and offered him his canteen. Thal was so parched that he couldn’t refuse.
"Still can’t quite place me, can you?" said the man as Thal took a drink. "Maybe you could use a little hint."
Thal lowered the canteen and took another good look at the guy. "All right," he said. "Like what?"
The red-haired man leaned closer, eyes twinkling in the moonlight. "Pink hippo," he said, lips curling in a smirk under the shaggy beard. "Does that ring a bell?"
Thal frowned, realizing that he must have known the man even better than he’d thought. If he knew about the hippo, he had to be one of a very select group.
"He’s one of the guys you screwed over," the Choker whispered in Thal’s ear. "Talk about a blast from the past!"
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," said Thal, trying to hide his growing nervousness.
"I’ll give you another hint," said the red-haired man. "The home run duel of 2125."
Thal shook his head, though it had dawned on him who the guy was. Even if he hadn’t recognized the red-haired man’s features and build, he would have remembered him after that last hint. There was only one man who had battled him for the record for most runs in a season in 2125...and that man would certainly have knowledge of Thal’s pink hippo.
Because Thal had set it loose on him to ruin his chances of topping the record.
The red-haired man laughed. "You know," he said. "I know you know who I am!"
Thal shrugged and took another drink from the canteen.
"Casey Talisman, stupid!" said the hippo.
"Casey Talisman, stupid!" said the red-haired man. "You’ve gotta remember Casey Talisman!"
Thal considered continuing to play dumb, then decided against it. The other two guides had drawn in close; he was all too aware of how vulnerable he was at that moment, genetically engineered or not.
"Long time no see, Casey," said Thal, handing back the canteen. "What’ve you been up to?"
"Helping my fellow ex-professional athletes," said Casey, smiling and nodding. "The ones who have to get out of town quick because they struck out or fumbled or tanked the three-pointer at the worst possible moment. I’ve helped save a lot of lives over the past two
years, my friend."
"That’s great," said Thal.
"I guess I oughtta thank you," said Casey. "You’ve sent a lot of business my way."
Thal looked away and said nothing. The pink hippo danced into his line of sight, doing a jitterbug.
"He should’ve thanked both of us, Thally," said the hippo. "You couldn’t have done it without me, after all!"
Casey gave Thal a playful punch on the arm. "You’ve been a busy guy, all right," said Casey. "I’ll bet ninety percent of the baseball players who’ve come through here over the past two years blame you for killing their careers. They all talk about how it’s such a big coincidence that every time one of them got one up on you, this pink hippo Choker showed up to mess with their heads."
"That’s me! That’s me!" hollered the hippo.
Thal shook his head. "They’re wrong," he said, staring Casey in the eye. "If I was running a Choker, I wouldn’t’ve lost the World Series single-handed. I sure as hell wouldn’t be out here on the run right now."
"You know what I think?" said Casey, sitting down on the boulder beside Thal. "I think your Choker finally backfired. I think that’s why you’ve been talking to thin air tonight when you thought we weren’t looking."
"Thally, you dope!" said the hippo. "Some secret keeper you are!"
"I was talking to myself," said Thal. "It’s been a long couple of days."
"Sure, sure," said Casey, wrapping an arm around Thal’s shoulders. "I understand. You’re in the clear. It’s all good." Casey gave Thal’s shoulders a squeeze and patted his back. "There’s just one problem."
Warily, Thal looked over at him.
Casey leaned close and spoke softly in his ear. "The hippo told us he was working for you."
"Woopsie!" squealed the Choker.
"He told all of us," said Casey. "After he made us choke, when we were running for our lives like you are right now, he told each and every one of us that you were the son of a bitch who ruined our lives."
The hippo cleared his throat loudly. "Don’t believe a word he says! Lies, all lies!"
Scifi Motherlode Page 15