Pine nodded and hobbled away on his crutches. Quentin stood and finished removing his armor. He pulled on a robe, then hit the service button in his locker. Messal appeared as if out of thin air.
“You rang, sir?”
“Messal, I’ve had it with these nannite showers.”
“Is there a problem, sir?”
“No problem some steaming hot water won’t fix. Get Shizzle here immediately, then take me to the Ki locker room.”
“YOU SURE you want to do this?” Shizzle asked as he flew small circles around Quentin’s head. “They have been known to eat Humans, you know.”
“Just be quiet until I need you to translate.”
Messal led them into the Ki locker room. “Ki eyes take in a larger spectrum of light than Human eyes. Consequently, only a few purple lights provide any illumination. So watch your step.”
The Ki locker room was dark. And hot. And humid enough to compete with the geothermal steam baths back on Stewart. Goodwill or no goodwill, there was no denying that the place stank. He’d thought pre-game Ki odors were bad, but his nose let him know those were nothing compared to the post-game scents. Smelled like rotten fish mixed in with decomposed chicken guts. Quentin ignored the smell and followed Messal to the back.
Quentin heard the hiss of water jets, and his skin tingled in anticipation. He suddenly realized it had been weeks since he’d had a real shower.
Messal opened a door and bowed as Quentin passed. Steam billowed out of the open door and up onto the ceiling, making hazy purple clouds where it crossed in front of the dim lights. Quentin stood at the open door for one second, swallowed, and walked through.
One step inside the door, he stopped cold. If he had somehow accidentally stumbled upon a scene like this, he probably would have turned and ran. This was far worse than any Holy Man propaganda horror holo he’d seen back home.
A deep pool of water sat in the middle of the circular room. The low lights made the water look black. Dozens of showerheads ringed the ceiling, angling water down to the mass of creatures bundled up in the pool’s center.
They sat there, a giant, entwined ball of worm-like bodies, multi-jointed legs, pinkish mouths lined with black teeth, muscular multi-jointed arms, orangish skin without end and thousands of reddish-brown spots of enamel, each wet and glistening like a black ruby. They looked like a coiled, multi-headed dragon straight out of the Holy Book.
As a kid, Quentin had seen educational movies of snakes. There was a strange mating practice for some snakes, where hundreds of them twisted into a giant, writhing pile of skin and scales and mucus. That’s what the Ki cluster reminded him of, only these snakes were twelve feet long and could bench-press 1,300 pounds.
They didn’t turn their heads to look when he came in — they didn’t have to, their unblinking black eyes let them see everything at once. The ball of bodies seemed to move, to slide just a bit, and one figure slithered out of the pack. The long, thick body splashed water out of the pool and onto the tile floor as it moved slowly towards Quentin.
Oddly enough, he instantly recognized the oncoming Ki. Maybe they didn’t all look alike after all.
Great, he thought. Mum-O-Killowe as the Welcome Wagon. The temperamental rookie walked up until he was only a few inches from Quentin, then barked out words in his guttural language.
Messal translated. “He wants to know what you think you’re doing here.”
Quentin swallowed. There was a whole room of them, and he was dressed in just a robe. He wanted to leave… but he wanted to win more. Two losses were enough.
“This is the only room with water showers,” Quentin said. Shizzle started translating before the second word was even out of his mouth, and he finished only a fraction of a second after Quentin stopped.
Mum-O-Killowe barked again.
“He says that you should go.”
Quentin stepped to Mum-O-Killowe’s right, gently shouldering past the huge Ki as he did. The boldness of the move seemed to surprise Mum-O, for it was a full second before Quentin sensed the lineman reaching out for him. Quentin avoided the multi-jointed arms by quickly diving into the water.
The water was almost scalding. It felt miraculous against his skin. He arched and swam upwards, his face breaking the surface only a few feet from the giant ball of alien linemen. Mum-O-Killowe roared something and started to splash towards Quentin, but Kill-O-Yowet, the left tackle, barked one short, definitive syllable.
Mum-O-Killowe stopped short of Quentin, stared at him for a second, then slithered back into the ball.
“Kill-O-Yowet says you can stay,” Shizzle said. Quentin kicked back to the pool’s edge. He draped his arms on the tile and his body sank in up to his chest. Water sprayed down on his closed eyes and smiling face. The wet heat felt wonderful on his bruised body. Maybe his effort to bond with the Ki linemen would work, maybe it wouldn’t, but at least he’d get a decent shower out of the thing.
THREE HOURS AFTER the game, the Ionath Krakens began shuttling back up to the Touchback. Yassoud had managed, somehow, to cram in two hours worth of partying. He and Tom Pareless showed up in time for the last shuttle, drunk enough that they could barely walk, but not so drunk that they couldn’t sing “My Girl from Satirli 6” at the top of their lungs.
Quentin felt sore all over, and he knew it was only a harbinger of things to come the next morning, yet the hot soak in the Ki pool had lifted his spirits.
It’s a game, he thought to himself. What goes on off the field is as much of a game as what happens on the field. He’d been thinking about it all wrong. He hadn’t needed to bond with his teammates back in the PNFL, because he’d been good enough to win games almost single-handedly. But in the GFL, even at Tier Two, everyone was good. These players were the best a galaxy had to offer. The game, his new game, would be making them play as a team.
He stood on the launch platform, gazing up at the twilight sky of Port Whitok. He sensed someone approaching. Quentin turned to find himself facing the squat, powerful form of a Quyth Warrior. Shayat the Thick, the backup right outside linebacker. He played behind John Tweedy, which meant that he didn’t play much at all. Tweedy rarely came out of the game, thanks to his skills at defending both the run and the pass.
“You played well,” Shayat said. It was, Quentin realized, the first time Shayat had ever spoken to him.
“Thanks,” Quentin said. “It wasn’t enough.”
Shayat’s carapace was a deep, silvery black. A painted unit insignia adorned his left shoulder. Under the insignia were horizontal lines, each of which, Quentin had learned, represented a combat mission. Shayat’s lines ran from his insignia almost to his wrist. Enameled graphics covered his carapace — the most prominent of which was a Krakens’ logo emblazoned across his midriff. On his back was an Earth crab wearing a crown and holding a football — the logo of the Yucatan Sea-Kings, a Tier Three team. A ring of white surrounded Shayat’s single eye, making him look even more bug-eyed than Hokor or any of the other Quyth. But they didn’t call him Shayat the Thick for nothing: layers and layers of powerful muscles graced his frame. His pedipalps were so heavy they looked like John Tweedy’s arms, and Shayat’s arms were so thick they might have been Tweedy’s huge legs. Shayat wore a backpack that looked to be completely stuffed.