by IGMS
I stuck a medallion in the bowl of his drilling arm, and it instantly transformed to an envelope overflowing with cash. Musahan counted it and bowed, the football dropping from the tip of his oil rig, bouncing now at my feet. He disappeared.
It had taken surprisingly little -- only a few weeks wages. That should have made me suspicious, I suppose. But I figured the Saudis were all so dirt poor, he just hadn't thought to ask for more.
I navigated out through the security layers and took off the glasses. The same set of tourists were still crawling across the Harbor Bridge.
I felt no guilt, of course. Only frustration that I'd been forced to resort to this, and regret that I hadn't done it sooner.
I was the best forward from Western Australia in more than a century. From grade school through university, my teams lost a total of four games. I was the captain, the leading scorer, a throwback, they said, to team-oriented, disciplined football. I made the regional squad at twenty-two, the National Team before I was thirty. And then I ran into Ribaldi.
In the old days, football players lasted ten, twenty years tops. They aged, they accumulated injuries, and younger players took their spots. A natural progression. Evolution. But now, old superstars hang on forever -- even lazy, selfish mongrels like Ribaldi -- and the young never get their chance.
I am better than Ribaldi. I've known that for twenty-five years. And the next three weeks proved me right.
In the opening round of the Dues Cup, we swept our group, beating Polynesia, New Zealand, and Burma by a combined score of 8-1. I scored only one goal in group play, but I made none of the defensive lapses that plague Ribaldi's game. In the second round, we beat Indochine, and in the third, we smashed Thailand 4-1, avenging last year's embarrassing exit.
The commentators were duly impressed, though of course none credited me. Most cited better team discipline, better balance on McDermott's double-flank attacks. (Well of course -- without Ribaldi hogging all the chances, the double-flank attack actually had two flanks!)
In the fourth round, we beat Japan 2-1, and I scored the equalizer. A smattering of commentators finally wrote that the team was better without Ribaldi, though not because I was the superior player.
It was in the fifth round, against Korea, that I fully arrived.
We had already clinched a multiplier of 1.0. If we won two more games, we would qualify for the Large Cap rounds, a chance to play against the Europeans, the North Americans, the Chinese. Ribaldi's Brazilians. A chance to play for a tax-free year.
We faced Korea in the new grand stadium in Pyongyang, before 120,000 screaming fans. The pre-game headline was that Ribaldi was back. He claimed his right leg was fully re-grown, though it appeared a bit smaller than his left, and the new ligaments were likely still stiff. McDermott announced that Ribaldi would be available to play, but would start the game on the bench, as a reserve.
The Koreans played with ferocious speed and energy -- suspicious energy, I thought. They took an early 1-0 lead on a free kick from just outside the box. It was lucky we were playing in Pyongyang -- back home, the crowd would have begun chanting for Ribaldi. He fidgeted impatiently on the bench, scratching his pasty new leg.
In the 67th minute, I tied the score off a corner kick, my narrow head directing the ball sharply to the side of the goal. It would be the defining image of the game -- my mouth open, my red hair flying, my toes pointed horizontal as I laid out for the ball.
And then, in overtime, I scored the game winner on a solo breakaway. My celebration was the same as always, a few quick claps, though this time, there was no teammate to point to, since I'd scored the goal without any assist. After the game, I was first in line to shake hands with the drugged-up Koreans.
We were now one win away from the Large Cap tourney, and a chance to play for a tax-free year for all of Australia. Our final opponent would be Iran.
I took the subway home from the airport, chatting with a dozen grateful taxpayers, buzz-cameras swarming us. During the walk to my flat, I granted several interviews, discussing each of my goals in detail. I would never be an icon like Ribaldi, but I would be respected. People love winning.
I left the buzz-cams behind at the entrance to my building, removed my glasses and rode the lift to my suite.
Standing next to my worn sofa, waiting for me, was Musahan, the Saudi defender I'd paid to take out Ribaldi. Seated next to him was a scrawny man with a mustache and small, dark eyes.
I froze. "How did you get in here?"
Musahan pointed out my picture window, at the Sydney Harbor Bridge. "I read they will tear it down," he said, in thickly accented English. "More apartment. Would be shame."
I slipped my glasses back on, checked my flat's perimeter defenses, found the breach, sealed it. I snooped Musahan and his scrawny friend for bugs. Clean. I took off the glasses.
"How dare you barge in here! Were you seen?"
"We come for payment," said Musahan. "Payment for my help."
"I paid you already."
Musahan waived his hand dismissively. "In next round, you play our benefactor." His eyes darted to the small man seated on the sofa. I studied the man's face, his silk suit, the cow-leather shoes. He was Persian. Rich. And judging by his piercing beady eyes, probably government. "You make sure Iran win."
Double-crossing bastard. I should have known. Nothing is ever easy for me.
"And if I won't?"
Musahan smiled. "I expose you." He held up a small chip. "We have recordings. You second string again."
He was bluffing. I'd taken precautions. Dozens of precautions. And yet, he and the Persian had managed to enter my flat. Could they have traced me?
No. They were bluffing. They had to be.
"Get out," I said softly. "If you don't, I'll summon security. I'll tell them you broke into my apartment, threatened me. Who do you think they'll believe?" I held my glasses in my hand, halfway to my face. Now I was bluffing.
The little Persian stared at me, his face passive, maybe amused. I held his gaze. He had no readers, so he couldn't tell my pulse was racing, couldn't sniff the sweat building in my palms, under my armpits. The corners of his mouth twitched into a thin smile.
"It's better this way, no?" he said. "No war, no spies. Only football. You agree?"
I stayed silent. He stood slowly from the couch, nodded at me, and walked to the door. Musahan followed.
"We help you," Musahan said. "After."
And they were gone.
We played Iran in Baghdad Stadium, one week later. It was the only international match scheduled for the day and had the attention of the entire football world. Two hundred-thousand live fans jammed the stadium, mostly wearing Iran's traditional white, with scattered pockets of Australian green. Hundreds of buzz-cams swarmed above the field, at least two tracking each player. A dozen tracked me. Players and coaches from the large caps, including Brazil and Europe and China, sat in the near decks, glasses perched on their foreheads, scouting the small cap wildcards. This was the game I'd dreamed of for forty years.
McDermott started me at left striker, of course, but in a grand gesture, had Ribaldi announced as the "twelfth starter." Ribaldi forced a toothy smile, waved to the pockets of green in the stands, shuffled his feet in a Samba dance, and sat down on a metal folding chair. He stared at me, his hands locked behind his bald head, eyes filled with jealousy, bitterness, anger. Emotions I knew all too well.
I'd seen videos of the great Pele in the American leagues, when he was too old for real football. He would waive to ignorant fans, show flashes of his former genius, but mostly, he was a symbol, not a player. For a moment, I felt sympathy for Ribaldi, and wondered if he might suffer a similar fate.
Then the game began, and I forgot all about Ribaldi.
Iran has six times Australia's population and perhaps three times its GDP. Their defenders are bigger, their forwards faster, their keeper a gazelle. But this was Australia's year, and we were up to the challenge.
We took
a 1-0 lead early in the second half, on a curling free kick by our brilliant midfielder, Jackson. We then went into a defensive shell and tried to hold on.
I stayed mostly in our end, content to clear the ball deep when it came my way. Unlike Ribaldi, I would not place my stats above the team and risk allowing the equalizer. Perhaps the Iranians knew that, and that was why it happened.
In the 72nd minute, an Iranian fullback sent a lazy pass across midfield, to my territory. It was meant for their left midfielder (or so I thought), but the pass was too far in front, and I reached it first, clearing it safely into Iran's zone.
I never saw the Iranian forward.
He arrived the moment after I cleared the ball, sliding into me from behind, kicking me squarely behind my left shin. I went down.
My leg throbbed and turned numb. Just a bruise, most likely, but a bad one. Play stopped. On the sidelines, our surgeon picked up the team's new portable leg mender and trotted onto the field. The Iranian forward glanced down at me, at my shin, and quickly jogged away.
Then I saw Ribaldi. On our sideline, he'd stood from his folding chair, and had begun rubbing warm-up oil onto his legs. His eyes tracked the leg mender, slowly making its way toward me.
When I first began playing football, I discovered that I have a rare gift, a gift shared by all the great strikers. At critical moments, the game slows down for me. When I break through a defense, leading a rush on goal, the other players freeze in place, like chess pieces, giving me time to think, to plan. Do I take the ball in myself, deke the keeper? Do I pull up and shoot on goal? Pass to a teammate? Abandon the attack and force a corner? Where others just react, I can stop, look around, and plan.
Time had stopped for me now. I saw the surgeon, frozen mid stride, cradling the new leg mender, her expression focused, professional. The Iranian who'd kicked me, running back towards his teammates, calling for a huddle. Our Manager, McDermott, frowning, glasses lowered over his eyes. And Ribaldi, old Ribaldi, rubbing on oil, eyes glued to the leg mender.
Had I underestimated Ribaldi? Could he do what I had done? Had the Persians found him? Paid him? Perhaps. But unlike Ribaldi, I would not play the fool.
I pushed myself to my feet, testing my bruised leg, and waved off the surgeon. She stopped, halfway onto the field, confused. "Go back!" I shouted. "Go back! No mender! I'm fine!" She shrugged and turned around. Ribaldi froze, one hand squeezing his half-oiled thigh. McDermott raised his glasses and glared at me, arms crossed in front of his chest.
I signaled the referee to begin play and jogged back to my position. Each step sent a surge of pain through my calf and knee, and my body dipped whenever I put weight on my left foot. "Limping," it was called. The old-timers played hurt all the time, so I could, too.
In fact, I remembered that Pele and Marguso used to pretend they were injured worse than they actually were, to fool the other team into lethargy. So I exaggerated my limp, hanging around the center line, wincing.
It worked. Iran's right fullback left me, joining the attack. I was alone in a wide swath of territory.
One of our defenders gained possession of the ball, deep in our zone, and I raised my hand, shouting. He lofted the ball past me, into the open terrain abandoned by Iran's fullback. I raced forward. I had only one man to beat -- an out-of-position midfielder -- and I'd be alone on the keeper. I had the angle! I'd score our second goal! The clincher! We'd advance! We'd play the Brazilians!
But I'd miscalculated. I was injured. I could manage only three-quarters speed. And the Iranian midfielder was fast. Faster than Ribaldi, even. He beat me to the ball, turned, and cleared it up field, to the fullback I was supposed to be guarding.
In horror, I watched Iran's attack unfold in slow motion, like a choreographed ballet. Jackson left his post to challenge the open fullback. The fullback passed to a midfielder. The midfielder one-touched to a striker in the corner. The striker turned, lobbed the ball back toward the net, straight to the forehead of the charging fullback I'd left unguarded. A classic give-and-go. Our keeper never had a chance.
As the Iranians celebrated, I leaned forward, my hands on my knees, all weight on my good leg. A buzz-cam hovered directly in front of my face. I swiped at it, swearing. (The picture it took -- my hand swinging in the air, my teeth bared, my soaked red hair strewn chaotically over my forehead -- would be on the front page of every Australian net for the next two days.)
I heard McDermott shout my name.
Ribaldi was jogging toward me, holding the substitution card. He slapped it onto my chest, gave me an open-palm pat on the rear, and winked at me. I "limped" slowly off the pitch, and Ribaldi reclaimed his post at left striker.
And so, when Ribaldi scored his 4,201st career goal, I was watching, on the sideline, seated in my little metal folding chair.
My new uniform is scratchy -- some kind of synthetic cotton -- and it traps sand underneath the shoulders and waistband. The logo is a Phoenix, rearing from the ground, its wings spread over a pair of pyramids.
My new stadium holds about fifteen thousand, though it's rarely filled. There are bleacher seats on both sides of the pitch, but the areas behind the goals are open to the desert. The field is green, nicely kept, but when the wind kicks up, sand from beyond the goals will blow into the face of a charging forward.
Alone in the locker room, I'm dressing for a qualifying match against Aswan. I stare at my unfamiliar face in the locker's mirror. It's an important match, I remind myself. Tens of thousands of fans depend on me.
Despite Ribaldi's heroics, Australia lost the match to Iran in an overtime shootout. The day after, the blame focused squarely on me. Why did I wave off the surgeon? How could I put my ego above the team, above Australia's taxpayers? And how could I abandon my post in our defensive shell, when I knew I couldn't move at full speed?
And then, one reporter suggested a connection to Ribaldi's injury and called for a new investigation of the malfunctioning leg mender. One of my neighbors reported seeing two Arabs, a scrawny, beady-eyed one and a tall athlete, enter my building before the match. And the speculation began. Nothing was proven, of course, or ever would be, but I was finished in Australia.
Musahan and the Persian tracked me down and honored their promise to "take care of me, after." (Evidently, they thought I'd thrown the game on purpose. I didn't persuade them otherwise.) They whisked me from Australia, changed my hair, my skin color, my face (the gap between my teeth is gone), and planted me in Wadi-Halfa, in the Egyptian League, where the teams play only for local taxes. The name on my jersey says "Khalif."
I never found out if Ribaldi had altered the new leg mender -- it was replaced after the match, exchanged for a fancy new Chinese model. And I never asked Musahan or the Persian if they'd orchestrated my injury. It didn't matter.
I close my locker and trot onto the field with my teammates. It's a windy day, so I wear plastic sunglasses, strapped to my head with elastic.
This isn't the International League, but it's football, real football, and I'm my team's leading scorer. Everyone in Egypt knows Khalif, and his tricky right foot, his mysterious western style. Everyone knows he's nobody's backup.
I will get back to the Dues Cup. I will choose my moments carefully, patiently, but I will get there, even if it takes me sixty years.
And I will never be second string again.
Command Transfer
by Darren Eggett
Artwork by Dean Spencer
* * *
It was supposed to be the last time James Clintock woke up for the next six hundred years. He'd been out of Deep Slumber for far too long and he knew it. His body knew it. Three years out, they said. Three years awake, serving the colony, and then he could hibernate again. Well, his shift was finally ending. He'd done his part and more. Someone else could watch over the ship. Someone else could take a turn. He rolled over on his bed. It was time.
So why was he so nervous?
The voice of Pandora, their ship, whispered through his ear
piece. "I have prepared a portion of the rations, sir. They are waiting for you in the hopper."
He rarely answered Pandora anymore. When his shift first started, James would chat aimlessly with the computer, reminiscing about his childhood, his marriage; anything to help pass the time, to make him feel less lonely. It hadn't taken long to realize it was pointless. The A.I. was no substitute for another person.
Granola waited for him in the hopper. He cursed. What wouldn't he give for eggs and sausage? This was his last meal, for crying out loud. He choked it down as he made his rounds through the ship, all the while wondering why the shift change made him so uncomfortable.
He made no noise as he canvassed the decks. Black insulating foam sheathed every surface. The helmet-mounted light was so close to his eyes he could barely see shadows. Together, the foam and viewpoint lamp messed with his sense of perspective. Sometimes it felt like he wandered forever in blackness, never reaching the end of his route because it seemed he never left.
His first stop, as usual, was the dormitories. At the start of his shift, when he realized Pandora failed the Turing test of his first several months awake, he had come here and found his wife. Nadia was two hundred forty-three paces down the hallway to his left. James peeled back the black foam from her hibernation tube and brushed his fingers across the glass over her face.
She looked so young.
When they were first married, he loved to watch her sleep. Sometimes he would get so caught up in her closeness, holding her in his arms, feeling her body softly rise and fall as she breathed, that he'd forget to sleep. She was so innocent; so vulnerable. He was amazed that anyone could trust him so completely.
Then the war broke out. Nadia's father and sister were killed. James barely made it back from his tour of duty.
She never slept well after the war started. She talked in her sleep, cried out for him when she flew awake. He couldn't stand the look of fear in her eyes, as if she couldn't believe he was really there.