"I still want to play for you," she told him. "But you know, Coach...I don't think I'll ever like you...."

And with that, she turned and hobbled back to the field.

Next morning, a decision had come down from On High.

Theresa was named the new first-string quarterback, and the former first-string-a tall, bayonet-shaped boy nicknamed Man O War-was made rocketback.

For the last bits of summer and until the night before their first game, Theresa believed that her little speech had done its magic. She was so confident of her impression that she repeated her speech to her favorite rocketback. And Man O War gave a little laugh, then climbed out of her narrow dormitory bed, stretching out on the hard floor, pulling one leg behind his head, then the other.

"That's not what happened," he said mildly. Smiling now.

She said, "What didn't?"

"It was the nine of us. The other 1-1-2041s." He kept smiling, bending forward until his chin was resting against his naked crotch, and he licked himself with a practiced deftness. Once finished, he sat up and explained, "We went to Coach's house that night. And we told him that if we were supposed to keep hurting you, we might as well kill you. And eat you. Right in the middle of practice."

She stared at her lover for a long moment, unsure what to believe.

Theresa could read human faces. And she could smell their moods boiling out of their hairless flesh.

But no matter how hard she tried, she could never decipher that furry chimera of a face.

"Would you really have?" she finally asked.

"Killed you? Not me," Man O War said instantly.

Then he was laughing, reminding her, "But those linebackers...you never can tell what's inside their smooth little minds...!"

Tech and State began the season on top of every sport reporter's rankings and the power polls and leading almost every astrologer's sure-picks. Since they had two more 1-1-2041s on their roster, including the Wildman, Tech was given the edge. Professional observers and fans, as well as AI a.n.a.lysts, couldn't imagine any team challenging either of them. On the season's second weekend, State met a strong Texas squad with its own handful of 1-1-2041s. They beat them by seventy points. The future seemed a.s.sured. Barring catastrophe, the two teams of the century would win every contest, then go to war on New Year's Day, inside the venerable Hope Dome, and the issue about who was best and who was merely second best would be settled for the ages.

In public, both coaching staffs and the coached players spouted all the h.o.a.ry cliches. Take it one play at a time, and one game at a time, and never eat your chicken before it's cooked through.

But in private, and particularly during closed practices, there was one opponent and only one, and every mindless drill and every snake run on the stadium stairs and particularly every two ton rep in the weight room was meant for Tech. For State. For glory and the championship and a trophy built from gold and sculpted light.

In the third week of the season, Coach Jones began using his 1-1-2041s on both sides of the line.Coach Rickover told reporters that he didn't approve of those tactics. "Even superhumans need rest," he claimed. But that was before Tech devastated an excellent Alabama squad by more than a hundred and twenty points. Rickover prayed to G.o.d, talked to several physiologists, then made the same outrageous adjustment.

In their fourth game, Theresa played at quarterback and ABM.

Not only did she throw a school record ten touchdowns, she also ran for four more, plus she snagged five interceptions, galloping three of them back for scores.

"You're the Heisman front-runner," a female reporter a.s.sured her, winking and grinning as if they were girlfriends. "How does it feel?"

How do you answer such a silly question?

"It's an honor," Theresa offered. "Of course it is."

The reporter smiled slyly, then a.s.saulted her with another silliness. "So what are your goals for the rest of the season?"

"To improve," Theresa muttered. "Every Sat.u.r.day, from here on."

"Most of your talented teammates will turn professional at the end of the year." A pause. Then she said, "What about you, Theresa? Will you do the same?"

She hadn't considered it. The UFL was an abstraction, and a distraction, and she didn't have time or the energy to bother with either.

"All I think about," she admitted, "is this season."

A dubious frown.

Then the reporter asked, "What do you think of Tech's team?"

One play at a time, game at a time, and cook your chicken...

"Okay. But what about the Wildman?"

Nothing simple came into Theresa's head. She paused for a long moment, then told the truth. "I don't know Alan Wilde."

"But do you think it's right...? Having a confessed killer as your linebacker and star running back...?"

The reporter was talking about the Wildman. Vague recollections of a violent death and a famous, brief trial came to mind. But Theresa's parents had shielded her from any furor about the 1-1-2041s.

Honestly, the best she could offer this woman was a shrug and her own smile, admitting, "It's not right to murder. Anyone. For any reason."

That simple declaration was the night's lead story on every sports network.

"Heisman hopeful calls her opponent a murderer! Even though the death was ruled justifiable homicide!"

Judging by the noise, it made for a compelling story.

Whatever the h.e.l.l that means.

After the season's seventh week, a coalition of coaches and university presidents filed suit against the two front-runners. The games to date had resulted in nearly two hundred concussions, four hundred broken bones, and thirteen injuries so severe that young, pure-human boys were still lying in hospital beds, existing in protective comas.

"We won't play you anymore," the coalition declared.

They publicly accused both schools of recruiting abuses, and in private, they warned that if the remaining games weren't canceled, they would lead the pack in a quick and b.l.o.o.d.y inquisition.

Coach Rickover responded at his weekly press conference. With a Bible in hand, he gave a long rambling speech about his innocence and how the playing fields were perfectly level.

Marlboro Jones took a different tack.

Accompanied by his school's lawyers, AI and human, he visited the ringleaders. "You G.o.dd.a.m.n p.u.s.s.ies!" he shouted. "We've got contracts with you. We've got television deals with the networks. If you think we're letting your d.i.c.ks wriggle free of this hook, you're not only cowards. You're stupid, too!"

Then he sat back, letting the lawyers dress up his opinion in their own impenetrable language.But the opponents weren't fools. A new-generation AI began to list every known infraction: Payments to players and their families. Secretive changes of t.i.tle for homes and businesses. Three boosters forming a charity whose only known function was to funnel funds to the topflight players. And worst by far, a series of hushed-up felonies connected to the 1-1-2041s under his care.

Marlboro didn't flinch.

Instead, he smiled-a bright, blistering smile that left every human in the room secretly trembling-and after a prolonged pause, he said, "Fine. Make it all public."

The AI said, "Thank you. We will."

"But," said Marlboro, "here's what I'll take public. You p.u.s.s.ies."

With precision and a perfect ear for detail, the coach listed every secret infraction and every camouflaged scandal that had ever swirled around his opponents' programs. Twenty-plus years in this industry, and he knew everything. Or at least that was the impression he gave. And then as he finished, he said, "p.u.s.s.ies," again. And laughed. And he glared at the Stanford president-the ringleader of this rabble-telling that piece of high-born s.h.i.t, "I guess we're stuck. We're just going to have to kill each other."

n.o.body spoke.

Moved, or even breathed.

Then the president managed to find enough air to whisper, "What do you propose?"

"Tech and State win our games by forfeit," the coach told them. "And you agree not to play us in court, either."

The president said, "Maybe."

Then with a soft synthetic voice, his AI lawyer said, "Begging to differ, but I think we should pursue-"

Marlboro threw the talking box across the room.

It struck a wall, struck the floor. Then with an eerie calm, it said, "You cannot damage me, sir."

"Point taken." The coach turned to the humans. "Do we have a deal? Or don't we?"

Details were worked out; absolutely nothing was signed.

Near the end of negotiations, Marlboro announced, "Oh, and there's one last condition. I want to buy your lawyer." He pointed at the AI. "Bleed it of its secrets first. But I want it."

"Or what?" Stanford inquired.

"I start talking about your wives. Who likes it this way, who likes it that way. Just so everyone knows that what I'm saying is the truth."

The AI was sold. For a single dollar.

Complaining on and on with its thoughtful, useless voice, the box was thrown into the middle of Tech's next practice, and nothing was left afterward but gutted electronics pushed deep into the clipped green gra.s.s.

Tech's and State's regular season was finished. But that turned out to be a blessing as far as school coffers and the entertainment conglomerates were concerned. Hundred point slaughters weren't winning the best ratings. In lieu of butchery, a series of ritualized scrimmages were held on Sat.u.r.days, each team dividing its top squads into two near-equal parts, then playing against themselves with enough skill and flair to bring packed stadiums and enormous remote audiences: All that helping to feed an accelerating, almost feverish interest in the coming showdown.

Sports addicts talked about little else.

While the larger public, caring nothing for the fabled gridiron, found plenty else to hang their interest on. The contrasting coaches, and the 1-1-2041s, and the debate about what is human, and particularly among girlfriends and wives, the salient fact that a female was the undisputed leader of one team.

Sports networks and digital wonderhouses began playing the game of the century early, boiling down its partic.i.p.ants into algorithms and vectors and best guesses, then showing the best of their bloodless contests to surprisingly large audiences.

Eight times out of eleven, the digital Tech went away victors.Not counting private and foreign betting, nearly ten billion reconst.i.tuted dollars had been wagered on the contest by Thanksgiving. By Christmas Eve, that figure had jumped another five-fold. Plus there were the traditional gubernatorial wagers of state-grown products: A ton of computer chips versus a ton of free-range buffalo.

Theresa spent Christmas at home with parents and grandparents, plus more than a dozen relatives who had managed to invite themselves. If anything, those cousins and uncles and a.s.sorted spouses were worse than a room full of reporters. They didn't know the rules. They expected disclosures. Confessions.

The real and dirty. And when Theresa offered any less-than-spectacular answer, it was met with disappointment and disbelief.

The faces said as much. And one little old aunt said it with her liquor-soddened mouth, telling her niece, "You're among family, darling. Why can't you trust us?"

Because she didn't know these people.

Over the past eighteen years, she had seen them sporadically, and all she remembered were their uncomfortable expressions and the careful words offered with quiet, overly cautious voices.

Looking at her, some had said, "She's a lovely girl."

"Exotic," others volunteered.

"You're very lucky," to her parents.

Then out of pure-human earshot, they would ask, "What do you think is inside her? Dog? Dinosaur?

What?"

Theresa didn't know which genes went into her creation. What was more, she hadn't felt a compelling need to ask. But whatever chimerical stew made up her chromosomes, she had inherited wonderful ears that could pick up distant insults as well as the kindest, sweetest words.

She was trying to be patient and charitable when one idiot leaned forward, planted a drunken hand on her granite-hard thigh, then told her with a resoundingly patronizing tone, "I don't see what people complain about. Up close, you're a beautiful creature..."

Daddy heard those words, their tone.

And he detonated.

"What are you doing?" he screamed. "And get your hand off your niece!"

Uncle John flinched, the hand vanishing. Then he stared at his brother with a mixture of astonishment and building rage, taking a deep breath, then another, before finding the air to ask, "What did I say?"

"Why? Don't you remember?"

The poor fool sputtered something about being fair, for G.o.d's sake.

The rest of the family stood mute, and stunned, and a few began asking their personal clocks for the time.

"Leave," Daddy suggested.

To his brother, and everyone else, too.

He found the self-control to say, "Thank you for coming," but then added, "my daughter isn't a freak.

She isn't, and remember that, and good night."

Christmas ended with a dash for the coats and some tenth-hearted, "Good lucks," lobbed in Theresa's direction.

Then it was just the three of them. And Daddy offered Theresa a sorrowful expression, then repeated his reasoning. "I've been listening to their contemptuous c.r.a.p for nearly twenty years. You're not a monster, or a possession, and I get sick, sick, sick of it."