The League…
The League is like Mecca and Valhalla put together for any Voxl player. The League is where teams of every race meet and compete. The armored, incredibly agile insectoid grodos versus the polyps of Aldebaran, slow to move on their wide, muscular single feet, but with hundreds of whip-fast tentacles to make up for their speed. The hulking, red-carapaced Colossaurs versus the rapid, svelte Cetians.
The League means astronomical salaries, unimaginable bonuses, the ability to travel anywhere in the galaxy. And an entourage of publicists trying to get you to use their expensive, sophisticated gear. Being a player in the League is almost better than being a god.
The League is the dream of every human player. It’s only there that Colossaur, human, and polyp can play on the same side, no difference, no racism. At least in theory.
Jonathan, our veteran player, has told us the story a thousand times. He was there, at the top. But then he fell. He’s never told us how or why, and we’ve never asked him. The first rule of group life: respect everybody else’s secrets if you want to have a private life of your own. That’s the only way the team can eat, travel, sleep, and play, always together, without killing each other. Follow that rule, and you avoid the unnecessary expense of psychologists and counselors. Ignore it—and they’ll still be a useless expense, because they won’t prevent or even delay the inevitable explosion of violence.
Jonathan must be busy with his medical monitor, as he is before every game. He keeps obsessive track of his blood pressure, pulse, erythrogram, temperature, and the hormone levels in his blood. I get the impression he’s taking it too far. His expulsion from the League must have broken something inside the complex machinery of his mind. But who cares, so long as he plays as well as he does. And his fixation on keeping in top physical condition has brought about the miracle that maybe even he no longer believed possible: At the age of forty-two, he’s been given a second chance. After eight years, three of them without setting foot on a Voxl court, he’s made it. He’s the only human who’ll have played for Team Earth twice. If he doesn’t make it now, I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. And I don’t want to be around when it does.
The situation of the Slovsky twins is totally different. They’re only eighteen, and they’ve been playing practically since before they learned to walk. The sons of Konrad Slovsky, the famous coach, Jan and Lev were already famous when they were kids, before I ever touched a voxl. This is their first year as pros, and they don’t look nervous. They are two bundles of muscles and sinew trained to perfection. And as if that weren’t enough, the two of them play together with the sort of perfect coordination I’ve only seen in holovideos of Cetian clone teams.
They’re all engrossed in their holographic simulator. Sometimes I feel sorry for them. They never talk about women or holofilms or even drugs. Maybe it was their father’s fault: he’s nearly turned them into robots, superspecialized Voxl-playing machines. If something or someone stopped them from playing, it would be like keeping them from breathing. Their life is about getting better and better at it. For them, no training is ever hard enough. If Gopal ever wakes up with the unlikely idea of going a little bit easier on the team, Jan and Lev will probably protest and accuse him of treason against Earth or something like that.
Monomania seems to be an essential condition for becoming a good Voxl player. At least if you’re human.
Sometimes I wonder whether I’m still me. Whether I haven’t gone crazy, sacrificing my whole life to this game…
Sometimes I also wonder what I’m doing here.
But much more often I’m amazed at myself. At how far I’ve come, starting from as far down as I did. In five years, from petty street pickpocket to high-performance athlete. From failure to triumph. From anonymity to fame.
If my mother could see me now. Her always telling me I was a bum, a lowlife criminal, no good for anything but Body Spares. And my father. I hardly remember him; lost in space with his homemade starship, trying to make an unlawful escape. Running away from poverty when I was just two…
Or María Elena, the first girl I made love with. At sixteen I was more scared than she was, and she was eleven. She was running away from boarding school to be with me. Where could she be now? Probably drowning in the swamp of social work. An orphan girl doesn’t have too many options. At least her physique should help her: she was always pretty, and you could tell she was going to have a great body. She was already practically a little woman at eleven: tall, slim, coalblack hair, cinnamon skin, jet-black eyes.
My mother, who kept telling me about my future in Body Spares, was the one who ended up there because of a fight with her neighbors. She always had a bad temper, and in the end the cheap rum had made it worse. By month two she was dead; an Auyar picked her to be his “horse.” But thanks to the measly enough death benefit I got from the Planetary Tourism Agency, I was able to buy my first set of Voxl gear, second-hand but functional. And I started playing.
It was an all or nothing bet. Like my whole life has been. An orphan boy doesn’t have too many options…
Yes, I’ve been lucky. But I need to keep on being lucky.
I kiss my cross with the image of the Virgin of Caridad del Cobre, blessed by Cardinal Manuel Castro himself. When he gave it to me a week ago, he said I was the pride of his diocese and my people’s hope.
Protect me, dear Virgin. Keep my rebounds on target and my throws perfect. Free me from all wounds and give victory to your most faithful son: me, Daniel Menéndez. You, who can do everything…
The pilot drives the aerobus languidly. We pass between two walls of floating hologram ads, grazing them. We could have flown straight through them without trouble, but that would have meant dealing with a hailstorm of complaints from the advertising companies. Not even Earth’s heroes are above commercial laws.
Past the titanic holoposters, there it is. All ours.
There’s supposedly room for three quarters of a million people in the Metacolosseum of New Rome. Six levels. Sixty gigantic holoscreens. Enough airconditioning for a mid-sized orbital city. Entrances large enough to let in small asteroids.
Today it’s full to bursting. The tickets for this game are always sold out nearly a year in advance.
We float through the main entrance, above the sea of people, dotted here and there with silvery bubbles. The force fields of the prime box seating of the richest and most paranoid xenoids. Other extraterrestrials, more confident about their tourist immunity, prefer to risk getting their data cards lifted in order to enjoy the jubilant atmosphere of the human throng. The authentic local color. The incomparable emotion of being one more person in the audience at the Voxl game of the year—Voxl, the galactic sport, as the reporters and advertisers like to say.
We set down on one of the two empty towers that lead straight to the playing court. We all look at the other tower and think the same thought: who will our opponents be this time?
We’ve faced players from every race in the simulations. We know the strong points and weaknesses of every species, their tricks, their skills… but not even the best holograph can be more than a pale reflection of reality.
As soon as the landing gear of the aerobus touches down, the hemisphere of the force field closes above us, hiding us from the public and the public from us. Gopal is the first to leap down, and half a minute later I’ve got the whole team lined up in front of him.