The Outpost by Mike Resnick Read Free Book Online

seventeen million credits, the governor’s hand-picked judge awarded him five million in damages for the emotional distress I had caused him, and he had then fixed my bail at twelve million credits.
    So that’s the story. I don’t even know if the painting still exists. They’re still using my banknotes—not on Solomon, where the governor outlawed them, but on New Rhodesia, where my model had married the richest man on the planet and then inherited all his wealth when he unexpectedly choked to death on a mutated cherry pit a month later. But it seems a crime that the rarest and greatest banknote of all will never been seen again.

    “I’d give a purty to see that painting,” said Catastrophe Baker. “Or even the model, for that matter. Especially if she’s the richest woman on New Rhodesia.”
    “She was something, all right,” agreed Little Mike. “If art mirrors life, then you have to start with something like her to wind up with something like my painting.”
    “Got a question for you,” said Max, who always seemed to have a question for everyone who told a story.
    “Sure.”
    “What’s your real name?”
    “I thought I told you: Michelangelo Gauguin Rembrandt van Gogh Rockwell Picasso.”
    “I mean your birth name,” said Max.
    Little Mike paused for a long minute. “Montgomery Quiggle,”he said at last, looking decidedly uncomfortable.
    “So like the rest of us, you came out to the Inner Frontier and took a name that suited you?”
    “You have some objection to that?”
    “Nope, but like I said, I got a question. I understand naming yourself after all them famous painters, but why Little Mike? Why not just Mike?”
    “Because I’m little, and I’m not ashamed of it.”
    “No reason to be,” agreed Max. “Course, it ain’t nothing to brag about either.”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Big Red, who’d been an all-star in a number of the usual sports, but made his real reputation as maybe the greatest murderball player of all time. His body was covered top to bottom with scars, which he wore proudly.
    “Yeah?” said Max. “And what do you know about it?”
    “Enough.”
    “You’re a pretty big man yourself,” observed Max, looking at Big Red’s tall, muscular frame, “and I know you used to be a pro jockstrapper. So suppose you tell me: now that race horses are extinct, what athlete would rather be small than big?”
    “Right now, today?” replied Big Red. “The greatest of them all.”
    “And who is that?”
    “You probably never heard of him.”
    “Then how great can he be?” insisted Max.
    “Trust me, he was the best I ever saw. Hell, he was the best anyone ever saw.” Big Red sighed and shook his head sadly. “The brightest flames burn the briefest time.”
    “His career was cut short by injury, huh?”
    “His career was cut short all right, but not by injury,” said Big Red. He shifted in his chair, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable. (It’s well-known that murderballers wear their old injuries like medals, and refuse all pain blocks and prostheses.)
    “So are you gonna tell us about him or not?”
    “Of course I am. I might be the very last person who remembers him, and if I stop telling his story, then it’ll be like he never existed.”

    The Short, Star-Crossed Career of Magic Abdul-Jordan
    Nobody knew his real name (began Big Red), but that didn’t matter, because by the time he was ten years old they’d already renamed him Magic Abdul-Jordan, after three of the greatest ancient basketball players. There wasn’t a shot he couldn’t make, and oh, how that boy could jump! He was quicker than a Denebian weaselcat, and nobody ever worked harder at perfecting his game.
    When he was twelve, he stood seven feet tall, and his folks moved to the Delphini system, where they still played basketball for big money. Hired him a private tutor, and let him turn pro when he was thirteen.
    First I ever heard of him was when word reached us out