The Outpost (6 page)

“I’d give a purty to see that painting,” said Catastrophe Baker. “Or even the model, for that matter. Especially if she’s the richest woman on New Rhodesia.”

“She was something, all right,” agreed Little Mike. “If art mirrors life, then you have to start with something like her to wind up with something like my painting.”

“Got a question for you,” said Max, who always seemed to have a question for everyone who told a story.

“Sure.”

“What’s your real name?”

“I thought I told you: Michelangelo Gauguin Rembrandt van Gogh Rockwell Picasso.”

“I mean your birth name,” said Max.

Little Mike paused for a long minute. “Montgomery Quiggle,”he said at last, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

“So like the rest of us, you came out to the Inner Frontier and took a name that suited you?”

“You have some objection to that?”

“Nope, but like I said, I got a question. I understand naming yourself after all them famous painters, but why
Little
Mike? Why not just Mike?”

“Because I’m little, and I’m not ashamed of it.”

“No reason to be,” agreed Max. “Course, it ain’t nothing to brag about either.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Big Red, who’d been an all-star in a number of the usual sports, but made his real reputation as maybe the greatest murderball player of all time. His body was covered top to bottom with scars, which he wore proudly.

“Yeah?” said Max. “And what do you know about it?”

“Enough.”

“You’re a pretty big man yourself,” observed Max, looking at Big Red’s tall, muscular frame, “and I know you used to be a pro jockstrapper. So suppose you tell me: now that race horses are extinct, what athlete would rather be small than big?”

“Right now, today?” replied Big Red. “The greatest of them all.”

“And who is that?”

“You probably never heard of him.”

“Then how great can he be?” insisted Max.

“Trust me, he was the best I ever saw. Hell, he was the best
anyone
ever saw.” Big Red sighed and shook his head sadly. “The brightest flames burn the briefest time.”

“His career was cut short by injury, huh?”

“His career was cut short all right, but not by injury,” said Big Red. He shifted in his chair, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable. (It’s well-known that murderballers wear their old injuries like medals, and refuse all pain blocks and prostheses.)

“So are you gonna tell us about him or not?”

“Of course I am. I might be the very last person who remembers him, and if I stop telling his story, then it’ll be like he never existed.”

The Short, Star-Crossed Career of Magic Abdul-Jordan

Nobody knew his real name (began Big Red), but that didn’t matter, because by the time he was ten years old they’d already renamed him Magic Abdul-Jordan, after three of the greatest ancient basketball players. There wasn’t a shot he couldn’t make, and oh, how that boy could jump! He was quicker than a Denebian weaselcat, and nobody ever worked harder at perfecting his game.

When he was twelve, he stood seven feet tall, and his folks moved to the Delphini system, where they still played basketball for big money. Hired him a private tutor, and let him turn pro when he was thirteen.

First I ever heard of him was when word reached us out on the Rim about this fifteen-year-old phenom who stood more than eight feet tall and could reach almost twice his height at the top of his jump. A year or two later his team ran out of competition and went barnstorming through the Outer Frontier, and wherever Magic Abdul-Jordan went, he filled the stadiums. I don’t think that young man ever saw an empty seat in any arena he ever played.

Nobody knew why, but the kid just kept on growing and forgot to stop. By the time he was seventeen, he was nine feet tall, and they changed the rules to try to make things a little fairer. The baskets were raised to a height of fifteen feet, and he was only allowed two of those spectacular dunks of his per half; anything more than that was a technical foul.

But none of that bothered him. He kept honing his skills and working on his moves. I finally got to play against him on Ragitura II, when he had just turned twenty. By then no closed arena could accommodate the crowds that wanted to see him, and he played all his games in outdoor stadiums. I think maybe two hundred thousand Men and about half that many aliens showed up to see him that day.

When he came out onto the court, I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was close to twelve feet tall, but he had the grace of a dancer. Don’t tell me about the square-cube law. I was there; I saw him. This kid could have stuffed the ball if they’d hung the basket twenty feet above the floor, and he was so quick he led his team down the floor on every fast break.

I was the best player on our team, so I got the dubious honor of guarding him. The rule changes had allowed each of his opponents ten fouls. I ran through all ten of mine in something like six minutes, at which time he’d already put 37 points on the board. When the game was over, I did something I’ve never done before or since: I walked up to an opponent and asked for an autograph.

He seemed like a nice, modest young man, and everyone predicted a great future for him. I made up my mind to keep an eye on him as his career developed, but that was the only time I ever saw him.

Next I heard of him was a little over a year later. He was up to fourteen feet tall, and it was getting hard to find anyone to play against him. They kept changing the rules, and he kept growing past all the changes. Pretty soon they had the basket so high that he couldn’t dunk anymore—but none of the other players could even throw the ball that high.

Another year passed, and he was eighteen feet tall and still growing. They had to construct a special ship to accommodate him, but then one team after another canceled their games. They gave all kinds of reasons, but the simple fact was that no one was willing to play against him anymore. He was just too big and too good, and finally, faced with imminent bankruptcy, the team had to cancel his contract.

That was the last anyone ever saw or heard of the poor bastard. Every now and then I’ll hear about a real tall, middle-aged phenom playing in some pick-up league, and I’ll fly halfway across the galaxy to see if it’s him, but invariably it’s some guy who’s seven feet tall and starting to go a little bald.

Anyway, that’s why you never saw him or heard of him. But trust me—no one who ever had the privilege of watching Magic Abdul-Jordan in action will ever forget him. He’s probably out there somewhere, towering above his world like an attenuated mountain, still working on his moves, hoping and praying that they’ll ask him to come back for one last game so he can give a new generation of fans one final thrill.

But of course they never will.

His story finished, Big Red pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose noisily.

“This guy really existed?” said Three-Gun Max.

“I just told you so, didn’t I?”

“I thought maybe you made it up. I mean, hell, true or false it makes a good story.”

“It
is
a good story,” agreed Big Red. “But if I’d made it up, I’d have held him to three points and picked up only one foul in 40 minutes.”

“A telling point,” agreed Catastrophe Baker. “That’s sure the way
I’d
have made it up.”

“Well, I guess he was the most famous athlete that no one ever heard of,” agreed Max.

“Yeah,” said Big Red, “I had the privilege of playing against the greatest unknown jockstrapper in the galaxy, and the greatest known one, too.”

“You played against McPherson?” said Max dubiously.

“You ever hear of a greater known one?” was Big Red’s answer.

“Boy, I remember flying all the way to the Pilaster system to see him!” said Nicodemus Mayflower with a nostalgic smile on his face.

“Even
I
heard of him,” chimed in Catastrophe Baker, “and I’ve been too busy with Pirate Queens and Temple Virgins and the like to pay much attention to children’s games.” He paused. “Old Iron-Arm. They say he was something else.” He turned to Big Red. “Whatever became of him, anyway?”

“Well, that’s really Einstein’s story to tell,” answered Big Red. “But since he can’t communicate in any language that isn’t full of numbers and strange symbols, I suppose I’d better tell it for him.”

And so he did.

When Iron-Arm McPherson Took the Mound

I still remember him when he was just a kid (said Big Red), making a name for himself out in the Quinellus Cluster. They said he was the fastest thing on two feet, and that he’d break every base-stealing record in the books.

I took that kind of personally, since I’m pretty fast myself—or at least I used to be, before I blew out my left knee and broke my right thigh and ankle during my next-to-last season of murderball. (I’ll bet you didn’t know it, but I took my name from two of the greatest racehorses ever, Man o’ War and Secretariat. The press gave each of them the nickname of Big Red.) Anyway, I made it my business to head out that way and see if this McPherson kid was as good as his press clippings.

First time up, the kid bunted and beat the throw, then stole second, third, and home, and he was still looking for more bases to steal when the roar of the crowd finally died down. Did the same thing the second time he was up. Bunted his way onto first base a third time—and then it happened. There was a pickoff play that got him leaning the wrong way, and suddenly he fell to the ground and grabbed his knee, and I knew his base-stealing days were over.

I didn’t think much about him for the next couple of years, and then I heard he’d come back, that he was hitting home runs farther than anyone had ever hit ‘em, was averaging more than one a game, so I went out to take a look. Sure enough, the kid drilled the first pitch he saw completely out of the ballpark, and did the same with the next couple.

Then they called in Squint-Eye Malone from the bullpen. Old Squint-Eye took it as a personal insult any time someone poked a long one off one of his teammates, so he wound up and threw a high hard one up around the kid’s chin. The kid was a really cool customer; he never flinched, never moved a muscle. Malone squinted even more and aimed the next one at the kid’s head. The kid ducked a little too late, and everyone in the park could hear the crunching sound as the ball shattered his eye socket, and I figured with that even with the artificial eyes they make these days, it would have to affect his timing or his depth perception or something, and it was a damned shame, because this was a truly talented kid who’d been done in not once but twice by bad luck and physical injuries.

And that was it. I never gave him another thought. Then, about four years later, word began trickling out that there was a pitcher out in the boonies who could throw smoke like no one had ever seen. The stories kept coming back about this Iron-Arm McPherson, who supposedly threw the ball so hard that batters never saw it coming, and I vaguely wondered if he was any relation to the McPherson kid I’d seen who’d had all that talent and all those troubles.

Well, he was too good to stay where he was, so they sold his contract to the Cosmos League, and before long he got himself traded to the Deluros Demons, and you can’t get any bigger than that.

I was playing for Spica II at the time. We won our division and headed off for Deluros VIII for the playoffs, and I got my first look at Iron-Arm McPherson, and sure enough he was the same player I’d seen those other two times. I was batting leadoff, and I figured he couldn’t run too good after that knee injury, and I didn’t think he could have fully adjusted to his new eye, so I decided I’d bunt on the right side of the infield and I should have no trouble beating it out, and when my teammates saw how easy it was, why, we’d bunt the poor bastard out of the game, maybe even out of the league.

So the game starts, and I walk up to the plate, and Iron-Arm winds up and lets fly, and I hear the ball thud into the catcher’s mitt, and the umpire calls it a strike, but I’ll swear I never saw it once it left his hand.

He winds up and throws again, and again it comes in so fast that my eyes can’t follow it, and then he does it a third time, and I’m out of there, and I realize that everything I’ve heard about Iron-Arm McPherson is true.

He strikes out the first eighteen men he faces, and then I come up for a third time to lead off the top of the seventh inning, and he rears back and gives me the high hard one, and I can almost feel it whistle by me even though I can’t see it, and I toss my bat onto the ground in disgust and start walking back to the dugout.

“Hey, Red,” says the umpire, “you got two more strikes coming.”

“I don’t want ’em,” I say.

“Are you gonna come back here and play, or not?” demands the ump.

“Not,” I say. “How the hell can I hit what I can’t see?”

“All right, you’re outta here!” yells the ump, and I get ejected and take an early shower, which suits me fine since the alternative is being humiliated up at the plate again.

We all breathe a sigh of relief when the game’s over, because it means we won’t have to face McPherson again for another three or four days—but when we come out onto the field the next afternoon, who’s waiting for us on the mound but Iron-Arm McPherson!