“Do not blame him,” Michael said when he could talk again. “That is a remarkable talent he has, and the ball eluded me time after time. Pete is right: I think he does pitch like I hit.”
“Remarkable, my left one,” Wes snorted. “You okay?”
“Yes, yes.” Michael sounded impatient. It was about time to play; we started crowding into the dugout. Michael slapped me on the back. “Congratulations. I doubted your people could do such a thing.”
“Huh?” I said, but just then Stuart tied out, and Michael had to go out on deck. When he came up, he singled between second and first-nobody’d got him out since he had joined us. He promptly scored when Wes’ brother, Joe, boomed one past the center fielder. He tried to stretch it into a triple, slid hard into the Mother Truckers’ third baseman, and they started wrestling. Joe’s all right off the field, but he plays rough. He picked on somebody his own size; that third baseman had “Whale” lettered on the back of his shirt. Both benches emptied. We managed to pry ‘em apart without any punches getting thrown.
In the fun and games, I forgot about Michael’s peculiar remark. I didn’t make anything much of it, anyway. He had the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of weirdness as any other Gator.
Sure enough, he ended up going 3 for 3, two rollers and a humpbacked liner nobody could reach. We won; I think it was 8–5.
At Shakey’s afterward I remembered again. “Hey, Flush,” I said, and looked around for him.
“He took off, man,” Ted told me. “Gulped a beer and split. Probably afraid you were gonna clunk him some more.”
“Smartass. Something I wanted to ask him. Oh well, if I think of it, I’ll catch him with it next week.”
But when next Tuesday rolled around, Michael didn’t show. He hadn’t called; he hadn’t left word. He just wasn’t there. Wes cussed me up one side and down the other. He had no more idea than I did whether it was my fault, but he took no chances. And when we lost-nobody hit a lick-he reamed me all over again. He plain hates to lose.
Michael didn’t come back, either, and it took us a couple of games to get used to having him gone. We lost one of those, and then lost to the Tomcats again, and ended up tied for third with Snafu. Lord, Wes was furious.
We played in two summer leagues, then a fall one, then took a rest for winter-Sun Belt or not, it’s too damn cold. Life went on. Joe got married (again); Wes got divorced (again); Ted’s wife had twins; Pete got busted for drunk driving and spent a night in jail.
We were going to get together last week for our first spring practice, but it got canceled, of course-that was the day the aliens showed up. God knows how they did it from somewhere out around the orbit of Uranus, but they sent every country their message in its own number one language.
Naturally, you saw the one who was talking to us here m the States the same way I did. Humanoid, sure, but not from here, even if he did wear a pin-striped three-piece suit (to reassure the natives, I suppose): not with elephant-gray skin and bright blue hair. Those first few awful seconds, with everyone wondering whether they were going to blow us away, I was too freaked to notice that he corn-rowed it.
Then I saw a couple of the others going back and forth behind him. They were a little out of focus, but brown skin and brick-red hair isn’t a combination you forget in a hurry. “Ohmygod,” I said, all one word.
The one in front started talking. His English had the same raspy accent as Michael’s, but he knew how to handle himself in front of a camera. “I greet you in peace,” he said, and you believed him. He had a presence Dan Rather would kill for.
“I greet you,” he said again, “And congratulate you, and extend to you the invitation of the Confederacy of Sentient Beings to join our ranks. You have fulfilled the three criteria for membership. You have gained control of the atom. True, you use it in war, but your national struggles are over now. Yes, and this ship itself is armed. That is only proper: danger must be guarded against.
“You seek to explore space. A race without the curiosity to step outside its cradle is not worth knowing.
“And you have at last begun to master your own minds and use them directly, not merely through the clumsy mediation of the body.” He glanced at something on the desk in front of him: whatever an alien uses for a paperweight, maybe. It lifted up about six inches and hung in the air. I didn’t think it was special effects. What I thought was more like, No wonder Michael was such a good place hitter.
“Of the three,” he went on, “this last is the key, for without control of the mind, no race can truly be said to be mature. We searched for it long in you, and began to fear you lacked it. Then one of our investigators”-remember how the picture cut away to a redheaded black man in a Gators cap? That’s Flush, all right-”found a member of your folk using the talent in one of your games. Where it exists, it can be trained. We shall do this for you: it is the least we can do to welcome you among us. We will be landing soon, my friends. You are no longer alone.”
The screen went blank after that, right? And you’ve seen the broadcasts since, everything we’ll gain by joining this Confederacy of theirs: the trade, the ideas, far horizons when we’d almost forgotten what that meant. Everybody’s going nuts celebrating the end of war, the end of poverty, the end of everything bad. I sure hope they’re right.
But I’m a little worried. That “mature” thing Grayface was talking about. All I’ve been thinking of is that goddamn knuckleball and what it must have looked like to Michael, especially when he was used to shoving things around with his own mind and looking for evidence we could do it, too.
Well, ”soon” is tomorrow now. But their ship is armed. They said so. I wonder what happens when they realize we can’t.
Like I said, I’m a little worried.
GLADLY WOLDE HE LERNE
What could be more important for any society than making its next generation better and smarter people than the current one? Yet to whom do we entrust so much of the task of raising our children? All too often, to day-care workers who can’t find work much above the minimum wage and to teachers who majored in education because it was easy. We get what we pay for, though, here as anywhere else. The probability of “Gladly Wolde He Lerne” reflecting reality is effectively zero. Too bad.
Only the cold, green-blue glow of mercury vapor lamps lit the campus lot when Ted Collins pulled in. He had to park a long way from the lecture hall. He hauled his attach? case off the front passenger seat and locked the car. Then, already weary from a full day’s work, he trudged over the asphalt toward the hall.
It was more than half full when he came in. Even so, it was quiet; the rest of the educators there were as worn as he was. Some of the superintendents, administrators, program specialists, and supervisors looked fresh out of college. Others, like him, were a few years older, already experienced in managing school district affairs.
Whatever their backgrounds-Collins himself was an assistant superintendent for education planning and research-they all had one thing in common. They were all ambitious enough to go to night school to learn what they needed to know to advance in the educational bureaucracy.
Professor Vance walked in. She strode briskly to the podium and tapped at the microphone to make sure it worked. Collins took out his notebook and a pen. He’d heard from people who had been through this course that Vance didn’t believe in wasting time.
She didn’t. As soon as she found the mike was live, she plunged straight into her lecture: “Anyone can be a success at the district level. Policies are blurred there, responsibilities vague; very often you never see the actual clients who depend on you for educational services. If you hope to go farther in education, you’ll have to lose that pervasive vagueness. You got by with it at the university, you can get by with it at district offices, but it’s a fatal handicap in an actual school setting. Here’s what I mean…”