'23kpc' Chapter 37: Throwing a Match, Winning the Day

Sometimes the best info can come only from a nemesis. Tip: use a pro to get it!

[The old movie PIs always seemed to have convenient allies in the right places. When they didn’t, they had a knack for finding — and using — sources, even disreputable ones, who had just the right info, just the right access… Nathan Swarthout does not herein literally step in something gooey. (Or have it spilled on him, for that matter; the AI’s capacity for weird misinterpretation of plain English remains unrivaled.)]

Reminders:
(1) The ‘23kpc’ Reader’s Guide
(2) The complete ‘23kpc’ story to date

Last week:

Guy and Missy’s Pooch, Durwood, had been finally located: apparently, when Pooches sense that their remote-control “leashes” aren’t working properly, they automatically migrate to the ship’s Pooch-maintenance shop. So Durwood’s humans were happy to have it — and a new remote — back with them.

But the reunion wasn’t perfect. Durwood wasn’t exactly, well, Durwood: its pace seemed somehow a little off; its voice had changed; it didn’t seem curious anymore. Could Durwood’s altered behavior be yet one more facet of the ship’s recent “electronic things going wrong” pattern?

For help figuring out what might be wrong with Durwood — and simply understanding Pooches better — Guy and Missy have come up with a plan. It involves an old acquaintance of theirs, separately, from back on Earth: one Dr. Nathan Swarthout, now aboard the Tascheter in the capacity of a “Pooch veterinarian.” Specifically, he’s a Pooch neuropsychiatrist¹ — a specialist in electronics, knowledgeable about how and why Pooches behave (or seem to behave) as they do.

There’s just one problem, i.e., Guy loathes Swarthout. But there’s happily a corresponding solution: Guy will throw a tennis match with Swarthout, get him gloating, but also — because Swarthout fancies himself a gentleman — incline him to offer information and maybe other assistance.

We’ll see about that. But Guy now continues:

Chapter 37: Swarthout, Ambushed

I do not, by nature, compete. I lose at word games because I think with words, right?, and those words make me think of other words and the things they mean, and before you know it I’m wandering, dazed, in a maze of my own thoughts. Put me at a table with three other poker players, known to me or otherwise, and you may hear a lot of good-natured joshery coming from my direction... but it’ll be regularly punctuated by my agreeable folding of so-so hands.

Aggressive competition makes for social trouble, in my book. Sometimes humiliating social trouble, and who needs that when even an easygoing life already offers plenty of humiliation?

But tennis, for some reason, tweaks the beast in my otherwise peaceful heart. Even shipboard tennis, with the muted sound effects and the virtual bright-yellow holopenns² — it just exhilarates me. Missy will no longer play with me, even as doubles partners, because my on-court mood oscillates as much as the head of my racquet: back this way, slice that way, wham the other way. It exhausts her, says my otherwise inexhaustible better half.

Which makes my assigned duty — losing to Swarthout — a rotten deal for me. I know why it’s got to be that way, and yes, there will be satisfaction at the other end of it, but I can’t say I look forward to the assignment.

Still, I’m a big boy. So I park Durwood in a Pooch cradle set into the wall of the court, and get down to it.

---

The first set I play just this side of sloppy. I don’t want Swarthout to suspect an ulterior motive; he’s played with me before, and surely knows what I’m like on the court. So I’ve got to lose convincingly, despite my habit of happily, almost offhandedly beating him. I make him work a little bit but finally, with what I can only describe as panache — a masterful string of double faults — I hand it to him on a plate. 6-3.

“Tough one, old bean!” he exults, the sweat coursing down his face.

I suppress a grin, because I already know what’s going to happen in set #2: I’m going to thrash him mercilessly. And a little while later, indeed, message delivered: 6-0.

But now we’re on the unfamiliar ground of a third set.

I know I’m going to lose it, because I have to. (The alternative: disappointing Missy, and skulking in guilt around our cabin whenever the slightly-off, damaged Durwood drifts into the room and bangs into a wall, yipping in surprise.) I don’t know exactly how to do this, at first. But then I realize that winning this set is something Swarthout himself really, really wants and in fact is determined to pull off. So, then, a rhythm: some grand sweeping backhands into the net, then a barrage of ace serves, then a few blooping lobs just past the baseline…

It feels like it drags on forever. At the end, we’re both panting, both soaked, both sore. But it’s 15-13, and I’m on the right side of the hyphen, and that’s all I care about today.

Next time out, I tell myself, Swarthout will pay for this — and for the drinks after that subsequent match. Today, however, is my turn. As we emerge, refreshed, from our respective shower chambers, and don our likewise renewed athletic clothes, I can tell he’s getting ready to sail off into a day without me… but I head him off:

“Let’s get a drink,” I say. “Missy and I found this great little place down in SloGo…”