Away Games: Science Fiction Sports Stories by Mike Resnick Read Free Book Online Page B

unconditional releases to linemen Jumbo Smith, Willie the Whale McPherson, Hannibal Cohen, Mountain O’Mara, and Tiny Tackenheim.
    All five players expressed hope that they could start new careers in the World Wrestling Federation.
    ***

Malish
    Author’s Note: Racing
    I like most sports, but the one I love is horse-racing. I don’t bet, but I’ve been known to fly to New York to watch Seattle Slew take on Affirmed, or Dr. Fager go up against Damascus, and I wrote a weekly racing column for over a decade. When Marty Greenberg invited me into a horse anthology, I figured anyone who chose to do a racing story would write about Man o’ War or Secretariat, so I chose to write about an obscure horse who gained some brief notoriety in the 1930s.

    His name was Malicious, and you can look it up in the American Racing Manual : from ages 2 to 4, he won 5 of his 46 starts, had seven different owners, and never changed hands for more than $800.
    His method of running was simple and to the point: he was usually last out of the gate, last on the backstretch, last around the far turn, and last at the finish wire.
    He didn’t have a nickname back then, either. Exterminator may have been Old Bones, and Man o’ War was Big Red, and of course Equipoise was the Chocolate Soldier, but Malicious was just plain Malicious.
    Turns out he was pretty well-named, after all.
    It was at Santa Anita in February of 1935—and this you can’t look up in the Racing Manual , or the Daily Racing Form Chart Book , or any of the other usual sources, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it—and Malicious was being rubbed down by Chancey McGregor, who had once been a jockey until he got too heavy, and had latched on as a groom because he didn’t know anything but the racetrack. Chancey had been trying to supplement his income by betting on the races, but he was no better at picking horses than at riding them—he had a passion for claimers who were moving up in class, which any lout will tell you is a quick way to go broke—and old Chancey, he was getting mighty desperate, and on this particular morning he stopped rubbing Malicious and put him in his stall, and then started trading low whispers with a gnarly little man who had just appeared in the shed row with no visitor’s pass or anything, and after a couple of minutes they shook hands and the gnarly little man pricked Chancey’s thumb with something sharp and then held it onto a piece of paper.
    Well, Chancey started winning big that very afternoon, and the next day he hit a 200-to-1 shot, and the day after that he knocked down a $768.40 daily double. And because he was a good-hearted man, he spread his money around, made a lot of girls happy, at least temporarily, and even started bringing sugar cubes to the barn with him every morning. Old Malicious, he just loved those sugar cubes, and because he was just a horse, he decided that he loved Chancey McGregor too.
    Then one hot July day that summer—Malicious had now lost 14 in a row since he upset a cheap field back in October the previous year—Chancey was rubbing him down at Hollywood Park, adjusting the bandages on his forelegs, and suddenly the gnarly little man appeared inside the stall.
    “It’s time,” he whispered to Chancey.
    Chancey dropped his sponge onto the straw that covered the floor of the stall, and just kind of backed away, his eyes so wide they looked like they were going to pop out of his head.
    “But it’s only July,” he said in a real shaky voice.
    “A deal’s a deal,” said the gnarly man.
    “But I was supposed to have two years!” whimpered Chancey.
    “You’ve been betting at five tracks with your bookie,” said the gnarly man with a grin. “You’ve had two years worth of winning, and now I’ve come to claim what’s mine.”
    Chancey backed away from the gnarly man, putting Malicious between them. The little man advanced toward him, and Malicious, who sensed that his source of sugar cubes