Michael Stackpole - Wolf and Raven

I centimetered my way back out there, then jogged back to the sack after Fitzsimmons delivered a ball to Jimmy. I smiled at the first baseman, but he just spat at my feet. As the pitcher set himself again, I took a lead.

7That's the name they had me play under because it had parts close enough to my real name that I'd catch it, and it fit on the back of a jersey real easy.

Even though only 27.43 meters separated the bags, second base looked a full light year away.

/can give you warp speed, Longtooth.

I snarled at the Old One, and resolved never again to fall sleep in front of the trid when watching reruns of old shows. The Old One's grasp of technology faded about the time man began to make tools out of something other than stone, but occasionally he latched on to make-believe stuff. Someone once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic8, and proof of that was the Old One fully accepting as real the technobabble science pedaled as entertainment by the media. Of course, he thought of those shows as "Shamans in Space"-they were chock full of special effects he saw as magic-but the ratings folks never asked his opinion anyway.

A quick yip from the Old One warned me a half-second before I saw the pitcher step off the rubber and begin to turn toward me. I pushed off with my right foot and dove back to the bag. Dirt sprayed up into my face and my hands felt canvas as above me I heard the pop of the ball in the first baseman's mitt. A split second later the first baseman slapped me across the head with the ball, the resulting thud all but drowning out the umpire's call of "safe."

I suppressed the Old One's urge to bite the first baseman and stood slowly, always keeping in contact with the bag. I brushed some dirt off my shirt. "Fitz has a nice move to the bag."

The first baseman sneered at me. "Ear still ringing?"

"Yeah, but I've got call forwarding." I took a one-step off the bag. "I'll take it at second."

"Right, pal." The Lord shook his head. "In your dreams."

My dreams, your nightmare.Bobby flashed me the sign to steal. At least, I was pretty sure it was the sign to

8Raven said that was Arthur C. Clarke, some old guy who wrote way back when, back when they used ink and stuff. steal. It made perfect sense-on second I'd be in scoring position, and I did have good wheels. In fact, the only thing that spoke against my stealing second was that I'd not stolen a base since before my age was in double digits.

I almost expected my life to flash before my eyes at a moment like that, but I got nothing quite so serious. What did happen was that every conversation I'd ever had with Valerie concerning baseball ran back through my mind. She was just full of pithy bits of baseball lore, including the very applicable, "You don't steal on the catcher, you steal on the pitcher." I took another step worth of lead, then, as Fitzsimmons started to throw, I was off.

My vision kind of tunneled in on the bag. I saw the second baseman cutting in toward it, raising his glove to grab the catcher's throw. I could feel my spikes like talons, digging into the carpet. My legs pumped, my arms swung. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I watched the base, prepared to dive beneath the second baseman's tag, and I even grinned at the prospect of sliding head first.

Then I heard the crack of the bat and a rising roar from the crowd. Nothing quite as clean and crisp and pure as the sound of a wooden bat catching all of a ball and then some. I saw a bit of blurred white to my left, then turned my head to the right and picked up this tiny pellet getting smaller and smaller by the second. It arced high through the Dome's darkened upper reaches, then rocketed down, over the wall in dead center.

Fireworks shot up from behind the Scoreboard and the Megatron, exploding brilliantly. Below, the score-board's graphics likewise put on a light display. The fireworks cannonade fill the Dome with red, green, gold, and blue sparks that drifted down as the Megatron showed a replay of Jimmy's hit. As the explosive echoes of the fireworks died, the pulsing cheers from the stands washed out over the fields, and I found myself howling with delight. I made sure to step fully on second, third, and home, then turned to welcome Jimmy home. He slapped both of my hands, then we butted chests and started laughing as the rest of the team collapsed in toward us. An army of hands and arms reached past and around me to congratulate Jimmy.

I managed to slip back out of the crowd and felt curiously alone as the team amoeba moved toward the dugout and locker room. I was as happy as anyone with the win-the Seadogs were as much my team as they were anyone else's-but I wasn't really part of the team. Yes, the run I'd scored helped lift us past the Lords, but I felt like I was poaching. I hadn't earned a place there, I didn't have a right to celebrate the way the rest of them were.

Yet being there, alone, was not the same as being lonely. I held myself apart not because I felt I wouldn't be welcomed, but because I didn't want to intrude. They had a camaraderie born of their battles the way I did with Raven and Stealth and Tark and Val; even with Zig and Zag. I respected what they had too much to want to impose myself on it. I was happy for them, happy for what they had done and happy to have contributed to it, even in a minor way. That was fine for me.

I drifted into the dugout as the last of the players squeezed into the tunnel back into the locker room. Bobby Kane stopped me with a hand on my chest. "Your attempt at stealing second…"

I winced. "I got the sign wrong, right?"

The manager shook his head. "You read it right, but that sign meant you could go if you wanted to. We needed you in scoring position, but I wasn't going to force you to go." He brushed some dirt from my jersey. "You got heart, kid. Sometimes, with all these wired guys muling for math-ghosts, it's easy to forget that's what's needed for playing this game."

"Thanks." I gave him a quick smile. "Any word on Ken?"

"Took him off to the hospital. He should be okay, but they'll want to balance out his electrolytes, get him some rest. Given that we've got the Jags coming in, and the nonsense that passes for Ken's lifestyle, having him bedridden for two days is a good thing."

"True, but he'll be vulnerable there. I'll call Raven. He can take a look at him and put some protection in place." I narrowed my eyes. "Assuming this was an attempt to take him out of more than just this game, I don't want to give whoever did this another shot."

"Amen to that." Bobby slapped me on the back. "Hey, Wolf, just in case no one else thinks to say it, thanks. And, welcome to the show. You scored a run, you're a statistic."

"Sure, someday someone will be using me as a Legacy player."

We both laughed and I headed into the locker room. I peeled off my uniform and hit the showers. I parked myself under a nozzle back in the corner, not out of any sense of modesty, but because that was far enough away from the entrance that random cool breezes and giddy players with towels spun into rat-tails couldn't easily get at me. The hot water felt good and even the Old One stopped growling when we heard the occasional snap of a towel and the resulting yelp of pain.

After much too short a time, I came back out and toweled off. A low growl and a shot of silver eyes kept a couple of jokers away from rat-tailing me on my way to my locker. I dropped down on the bench next to Jimmy and started dressing. "Nice shot."

"Thanks." He smiled at me. "Sorry to rob you of your stolen base, but when you went, Fitz hurried his delivery. Came in a bit higher than I like…"

"Not that you could have noticed from the hit."

His grin broadened. "Yeah, I suppose. I did kinda nail it, didn't I?"