“I thought you wanted to get off this ‘dirtball’?”
Jones shrugged. “If I can go home with higher ratings, I’ll wait. Besides, that redhead at the embassy is OK, once you get to know her.”
“You mean Delores?” It surprised Ray that anyone could like her. On the other hand, he mused, maybe Jones could drive a wedge between Nyquist and his henchwoman. The day was looking better and better.
“Delores, right,” Jones said. “We’re having dinner tonight, unless Nyquist pulls something rotten. You heard from him yet?”
“No.”
“I’m worried,” she said. “He doesn’t seem like the sort of man who submits to blackmail. What’s he got up his sleeve?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ray said. “I’ll handle him.”
Jones looked dubious, but the cameraman flashed her a thumb’s-up before she could comment. “And we’re back at you, live from Kya,” she said, putting her headset back on.
Out on the field, the three teams had resumed their positions around the bag. Vrekle and one of the other teams had combined forces, and their line swept away the third team’s players as their carriers dragged the bag over a goal line. It all looked like a mountain on the move, but that sight was nowhere near as imposing as the spectacle of Nyquist, forcing his way through the throngs of kya spectators toward Ray. “Well, Bennett,” he said cheerily as they came face to face, “Sorry I had to miss the start of the game, but I had to do a little housekeeping.”
“ ‘Housekeeping’?” Ray repeated.
“I had to clean your clock.” Nyquist smiled nastily. “I found out that Jones never sent a taped interview to Earth, and GSN doesn’t report on anything but sports. You bamboozled me into letting you broadcast this game, but I guarantee it’s the last trick you’ll pull. You’re being deported. You’ll leave on the next ship.”
“Don’t say good-bye just yet,” Ray said. “You’ll be coming with me. Watch.” Ray drew his notepad from his pocket and played back a recording. A simulacrum of Nyquist’s office appeared. “This had better be good, Bennett,” Nyquist’s image said as he entered his office. “What have you got? Some kya complaining about UN policies?”
“Let me show you,” Ray’s image said. The Ray-image produced a notepad and placed it on the ghostly desk.
Standing on the grass before Nyquist, Ray smiled as he turned off the notepad. “I painted over its record light before I came to your office, so you couldn’t know I was taping our meeting. There you are, submitting to blackmail, to protect yourself. What do you think will happen if the UN sees that?”
After a chilly moment Nyquist returned Ray’s smile. “I’ll lose my job. You’ll go to jail for blackmail. It might be worth it, Bennett.”
“I wouldn’t go to jail unless I returned to Earth,” Ray said. “So I’ll stay here. After all, my work is here, and my fiancée likes it here.”
“ ‘Fiancée’?”
Ray gestured toward the field, where Elizabeth was trading sides on the bag with another player. “I’ve had a lot of good ideas lately,” he said. “Now, I doubt you want to lose your job, so why don’t you just back off?”
“And let you ruin this world?”
“How do you ruin a world?” Ray asked him. “I’ve figured out something, Mr. Ambassador. Things change.”
“Is that supposed to be brilliant?”
“Understanding it is,” Ray said. He gestured at the field. “Thousands of years ago, that was how they fought over food. Now it’s just a game, because they developed agriculture and don’t have to fight over food any more. Or should they have preserved their culture and stayed in little nomadic herds that fought over scraps of food? That’s as unrealistic as saying Neolithic humans should have stayed in the caves.”
“You really don’t care how much harm you do here, do you?” Nyquist asked in disgust. “You’re just rationalizing everything.”
“I’m trying not to,” Ray said. “I’m only saying that change is part of everyone’s culture, and so is learning how to deal with change. I’m saying—”
Nyquist spoke an undiplomatic word. “You’ll get away with it this time,” he said, “but next time, I’ll nail your hide to the wall.” He turned and started to stomp away, then looked over his shoulder, determined to have the last word. “And you’ll still destroy their world.” He vanished into the crowd of kya.
No, I won’t, Ray thought. There was a secret to surviving the hazards that change brought on. Elizabeth had survived her allergies by coming to Kya. Zelk had learned to bend the rules when Faber brought on his crises. Ray had managed to hold things together despite the curves that Mcllvaine and Nyquist had thrown him. The secret of surviving in an unpredictable universe was to keep your wits about you. Simple, he thought, but Faber and Nyquist hadn’t managed it.
The crowd cheered a play on the field. Returning his attention to the game, Ray saw that Vrekle now had sole possession of the bag. Over the crowd’s rumbling gronks he heard Jones shouting out the score—eight, eight and six, with Vrekle tied with Bnurx and in a position to score the winning point, what a game, you poor geeks oughta be here—while on the field, the opposing two teams lined up to take the bag away from Vrekle.
Ray could barely watch as Elizabeth and seven teammates pounded toward their home goal. The opposing teams charged them en masse, a stampede which he thought would have sent John Wayne running home to his mommy. Vrekle’s defensive line went down under the onslaught, and the offense swept over the bag.
Ray looked for Elizabeth while the referees charged into the confused, milling players. He expected to see her removed from the field on a pizza platter, but when a knot of players moved out of the way he saw her still clutching the bag with one hand, while she waved her other fist in the air. The crowd went wild, and over the din Ray heard Jones shout something about Vrekle retaining the bag. Apparently, Ray thought, a team kept possession if even one player kept a grip on the bag—and Vrekle was now within yards of its own goal line.
What came next baffled Ray. The outrunners scurried around the field, and in a moment Vrekle had given up sole possession of the bag. “What’s going on?” Ray asked the nearest kya.
“We’re sharing the bag with Flerk!” she said in excitement. “What a play, what a play!”
“I don’t get it,” Ray said.
Ray didn’t get a response, as the play began and the crowd went wild. Out on the field the offensive and defensive lines collided, and the bag carriers plowed through the chaos to plunge across the goal line Vrekle shared with Flerk. Time ran out then, and the crowd surged onto the grassy field to celebrate the end of the game. Jones shouted out the score—ten, eight and eight—while her co-anchor, overcome with excitement, gronked incoherently in his own language. As Ray forced his way through the mob toward Vrekle’s bench area, he wondered if Vrekle had won. None of the fans had the dejected air of losers he would have seen on Earth.
Whatever had happened, the Vrekle players were ecstatic as Ray caught up with them. “Are you all right?” he asked Elizabeth as he got hold of her.
“I’m fine,” she gasped. “I could— get to like—doing this.”
“How did you manage to hang onto the bag in that one play?” Ray asked.
She started to get her breath back. “I just grabbed my handle like it was Nyquist’s throat,” she said. “After that, it’s like explaining how a Republican can get elected President. It defies all logic, even when you see it happen.” One of the Vrekle players had overheard their talk. “Bouncing into me, I absorbed most of her momentum,” he explained. “Good playing, Shev-ield, and it let our outrunners negotiate a classic play, just classic!”