I didn’t wait for the damned robot to start his pitch. He had the ball, he was on the mound, nobody had called time out. I broke for the plate.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I could see the surprised expression on Pedro’s face. But he was a pro; he hung in there and swung at the pitch. Missed it. The catcher had the ball in his mitt and I was still three strides up the line. I started a slide away from him, toward the pitcher’s side of the plate. He lunged at me, the ball in his bare hand.
I felt him tag my leg. And I heard the umpire yell, «Out … no, safe!»
I was sitting on the ground. The catcher was on top of me, grabbing for the ball as it rolled away from us both. He had dropped it.
Before I could recover from the shock, he whispered from behind his mask, «You ween. Now we have to play another series. In the States, no?»
I spit dust from my mouth. He got to his feet. «See you in Peetsborgh, no?»
He had dropped the damned ball on purpose. He wanted to come to the States and play for my team, the Pirates.
By now the whole USA team was grabbing me and hiking me up on their shoulders. Nixon was already riding along, his arms upraised in his old familiar victory gesture. The fans were giving us a grudging round of applause. We had won—even if it took a deliberate error by a would-be defector.
In the locker room, news correspondents from all the Latin American nations descended on us. Fortunately, my Spanish was up to the task. They crowded around me, and I told them what it was like to live in Miami and get the chance to play big-league baseball. I told them about my father, and how he had fled from Cuba with nothing but his wife and infant son—me—twenty-three years ago. I knew we had won on a fluke, but I still felt damned good about winning.
Finally the reporters and photographers were cleared out of the locker room, and Nixon stood on one of the benches, a telegram in his hand, tears in his eyes.
«Men,» he said, «I have good news and bad news.»
We clustered around him.
«The good news is that the President of the United States,» his voice quavered a little, «has invited all of us to the White House. You’re all going to receive medals from the President himself.»
Smiles all around.
«And now the bad news,» he went on. «The President has agreed to a series against a Japanese team—the Mitsubishi Marvels. They’re all robots. Each and every one of them.»
RE-ENTRY SHOCK
Normally I write my stories from a male point of view. My protagonists are almost always men. Caucasian men, at that. Chet Kinsman. Keith Stoner, of the Voyagers novels. Jamie Waterman, the protagonist of Mars.
I have written about male characters who are black or Asian; Jamie Waterman is half-Navaho, although his Navaho heritage is pretty deeply submerged beneath his white Western upbringing. I have written about women characters, some of them quite strong enough to be the protagonists of their stories.
But I’ve always found it difficult to see women characters (or non-Caucasian male characters, for that matter) from the inside. That’s what I need to be able to do, for my protagonists. I have to be able to get inside their heads, deep into their souls, to make them work as protagonists.
So when I started writing «Re-Entry Shock,» the protagonist was male. And the story wasn’t working. Something in my subconscious mind was resisting the story as I was trying to write it. Then a very conscious thought struck me. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the most literate market in the field, had just acquired a new editor: Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I knew Kristine slightly; she is a fellow writer, and practically every writer in the field knows every other writer, at least slightly. It occurred to the business side of my brain that Kris might prefer stories with women protagonists. H’mm.
Purely as an exercise in writing—and marketing—I went back to «Re-Entry Shock» and changed the protagonist to a woman. To my somewhat surprised delight, Dolores Anna Maria Alvarez de Montoya stepped onto the center of the stage and took over the story as if she had been meant to be its protagonist from the beginning of time.
Which, of course, she had been.
«The tests are for your own protection,» he said. «Surely you can understand that.»
«I can understand that you are trying to prevent me from returning to my home,» Dolores flared angrily. And immediately regretted her outburst. It would do her no good to lose her temper with this little man.
The two of them were sitting in a low-ceilinged windowless room that might have been anywhere on Earth or the Moon. In fact, it was on the space station that served as the major transfer point for those few special people allowed to travel from the Moon to Earth or vice versa.
«It’s nothing personal,» the interviewer said, looking at the display screen on his desk instead of at Dolores. «We simply cannot allow someone to return just because they announce that they want to.»
«So you say,» she replied.
«The tests are for your own protection,» he repeated, weakly.
«Yes. Of course.» She had been through the whole grueling routine for more than a week now. «I have passed all the tests. I can handle the gravity. The difference in air pressure. I am not carrying any diseases. There is no physical reason to keep me from returning.»
«But you’ve been away nearly ten years. The cultural shock, the readjustment—the psychological problems often outweigh the physical ones. It’s not simply a matter of buying a return ticket and boarding a shuttle.»
«I know. I have been told time and again that it is a privilege, not a right.»
The interviewer lifted his eyes from his display screen and looked directly at her for the first time. «Are you absolutely certain you want to do this?» he asked. «After ten years—are you willing to give up your whole life, your friends and all, just to come back?»
Dolores glanced at the nameplate on his desk. «Yes, Mr. Briem,» she said icily. «That is precisely what I want to do.»
«But why?»
Dolores Anna Maria Alvarez de Montoya leaned back in the spindly plastic chair. It creaked in complaint. She was a solidly built woman in her early forties, with a strong-boned deeply tanned face. Her dark straight hair, graying prematurely, was tied back in a single long braid. To the interviewer she looked exactly like what the computer files said she was: a journeyman construction worker with a questionable political background. A problem.
«I want to be able to breathe freely again,» Dolores answered slowly. «I’ve lived like an ant in a hive long enough. Hemmed in by their laws and regulations. People weren’t meant to live like that. I want to come back home.»
For a long moment the interviewer stared at Dolores, his Nordic blue eyes locked on her deep onyx pools. Then he turned back toward the display screen on his desk as if he could see more of her through her records than by watching the woman herself.
«You say ‘home.’ You’ve been away nearly ten years.»
«It is still my home,» Dolores said firmly. «I was born there. My roots are there.»
«Your son is there.»
She had expected that. Yet she still drew in her breath at the pain. «Yes,» she conceded. «My son is there.»
«You left of your own volition. You declared that you never wanted to come back. You renounced your citizenship.»
«That was ten years ago.»
«You’ve changed your mind—after ten years.»
«I was very foolish then. I was under great emotional stress. A divorce …» She let her voice trail off. She did not mention the fierce political passions that had burned within her back in those days.