SHORT STORY AT THE SPORTS BOOK by E.S. Max Aronov I It’s ten p.m. and I’m drunk, still looking for a winner. My talent seems to have deserted me. Down to my last twenty credits, I need to lose quickly so I can get back up to my hotel room and take a sonic shower. I know that I smell bad because no being, not even the noxious Kvell, will sit next to me at the sports book. When they do, they quickly move away to somewhere else in the casino. I’ve been here all day, my now bleary eyes barely focusing on the reflection in the mirror above me. I see coarse, gray hair and a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard crawling over a radiation-scarred face. It is a face with faded blue eyes that had once been more human. Ever since my “retirement” from the Planetary Remote Viewing Corps I’ve done nothing but go to the races. I go to the tracks on a dozen different worlds to see all sorts of creatures compete; Sand-dogs here on Mars, the Fire-beasts on Trump’s Planetoid, the Mermen on Atlantis; anywhere I think I can make a score. In the years before she passed my wife would scold me for the gambling. I always insisted I had not only earned the right to do it but was, in fact, trained to do it. Despite the McMoneagle proscriptions on mind-altering substances, and counter to the Targ Paradox of Psychometric Wagering, I have continued to earn more than enough to live a nomadic life on an interplanetary scale. That is, until recently. As much as I try to blame some new, anti-RV weapon in the casino’s arsenal for my current losing streak, deep down I know it’s just the laws of metaphysics and addiction catching up to me. As I wearily scan the racing form before me, suddenly, for a moment, I am a new recruit on Mars, age 18, pinned down and getting blasted by the Arcturan Cybs. I am a 57 year old butcher in New York, on Old Earth, hacking away at a side beef as if it were an ancient enemy. I am being born, terrified, gasping for my first breath. Involuntarily, I have multi-located all over the timeline. I’m everywhere and everything I’ve ever been. I can’t remember what I’ve been drinking, but it’s that good. Or maybe it’s a residuary effect of my training. Perhaps it’s both. Suddenly snapping back to the here and now, I look up to the monitor and see that I have three minutes until the last race. As I scan the names of the Sand-dogs I see one called Loser’s Paradise. The name seems meaningful to me but I’m so out of it I don’t remember if I’ve worked the protocols on it or not. Sighing, I slowly heave my corpulent bulk up out of the chair and shuffle unsteadily to the betting window. Dropping the sweaty crumpled twenty on the counter I hear my own raspy voice ask for the number four dog in the last race. The Martian clerk never bothers to look up at me, and I limp back to my seat, receipt in hand. The damned unstated arrogance of the three-eyed monstrosity and the aching of my old wounds are both annoying as Hell. It is as if my misery is insufficient to please the God I no longer believe in. The race starts and my dog goes off at 70 to 1. As always, I begin to feel just a wee bit alive as I watch the sleek, brown creatures speed their way around the three-mile oval arena. Alternately arching through the air like dolphins and then piercing the sand like missiles, they use their incredible array of tentacles and pods to achieve impossible velocities. As I rise to my feet with growing excitement, the words from the blurb printed at the top of the Racing Form flash across my mental blackboard: “Reared in captivity from the moment they are harvested from the Martian sands, the Sand-dogs are genetically manipulated to race with just one purpose in life, to win. Determined, mindless creatures, they sacrifice their lives gamely, win, lose or draw, for your gambling pleasure. Indeed, it is a small price to pay for the quality of action enjoyed by the discriminating sportsman.” Damn right! Heart pounding faster, I am almost conscious as they come down the stretch. Go, go, go! Shit! I slump back into my seat as Loser’s Paradise loses by a nose (or its equivalent) to a dog named Stargate. After a few moments I slowly rise and steady myself, disgusted and relieved all at once. It is finally time to begin the long, lonely journey across the immensity of the casino to the emptiness of my room. I know that somewhere, off-camera at the racetrack, the dogs are dying. They are the lucky ones. They have not foreseen the moment of their death, nor do they fear or anticipate it. They just race and die. II It is the tenth hour of my shift and I am bored, waiting for the last drunken Earther to make its last foolish bet on the last lousy race so I can close down shop and go back to my nest. At times like these the day seems to go on forever, with no end in sight in this or any other lifetime. It is far better to be busy, like on Derby Day. With nothing else to do, my eyes fix on the Earther as it holds the tattered racing form far too close to its face to possibly read. Stifling a growing urge to yawn through my gills, I automatically begin taking inventory of this wreck of a human with its trembling hands and glassy eyes. It is a big creature, twice my height and three times my mass. And it smells bad. Its red-scarred face, blushed further by the power of the stimulants it has absorbed, contrasts brightly with its cap of gray hair, cropped short human military style. It could be one of the soldiers who murdered the soul of this planet 60 cycles ago under the pretense of defending it from the Arcturans, but I can’t tell; they all look the same. The Earther is a mess by any life-form standard. It breathes with a rattle in its body that would wake the sleeping gods. It walks with a limp so bad that it seems doubtful that, even sober, it could take another step. The glow of its psychic power, once strong, grows dim. By the spirit of Blataar, the human looks to be near end-time. Where are its Companions of the Time? Who will net its anarp, its life-force, before it is lost? But then again, why should I care? It is only a human. The Earther shifts its weight around and seems ready to get up to place the last bet of the night. Finally, light at the end of the tunnel of my hellish servitude, at least for this day. I will soon be in the close comfort of my nestling-mates. With some difficulty it rises, swaying from the effort before steadying itself into an upright position.It glances one last time at the monitor, then makes its way slowly towards me, now seeking eye contact. I deliberately look down and continue to do so, even after it arrives. All I see is the balled up twenty-credit note hit the desk before me. All I hear is its raspy voice asking for Number Four in the last race. I process the bet and surrender the receipt to the unsteady hand that has appeared in my field of vision. I do not look up until I sense it has turned away and then see its back moving spasmodically away, its limp even more pronounced. Wincing in pain it sits and looks up to the monitor to follow the action. While the race is running a strange thing happens to the human. For a few brief seconds, I see the agony of years lift from its face as it rises to its feet, caught up in the excitement of the competition. As the racers come down the stretch it has a long, drawn out moment of ecstasy, like a prolonged kass of reproductive energy . . . and then its bet just barely loses. Suddenly the agony returns and the creature slumps down into its chair like a bag of wet sand. It takes a few moments before it can get up, gather itself together and shuffle away to who knows where. I do not care, I am anxious to get home to my nest. Tonight we will conceal another clutch of eggs in the desert, with the hope that, this time, they will not be found. It saps our anarp to watch the seeds of our race die while we participate as accomplices in the human’s sickening enterprise. But we must be ever vigilant in our efforts to preserve our future and endure the sacrifices that must be made. The Earthers do not realize, nor would they care, that they are causing our extinction. If we complain, they will seize the few remaining viable nests and make them breeding grounds for the arena. With what little freedom they allow us gone, we will all be made slaves to what they call “Sport”. Inevitably, as it becomes ever more dangerous and difficult to hide the children from the harvesters, it becomes more difficult for the remaining Elders to foresee any future for us other than that of a dead civilization. As the Earthers say, “You can bet on it.” Copyright © 2000, 2001  PRINT THIS ARTICLE Privacy Statement Copyright © 2001, H.R.V.G. All rights reserved.

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