Chapter Six

It turns out that ‘Ballyball’ is a very interesting sport that is only really playable as something interspecies. According to what Byron informed me, it started like this, I left the room, and they made a bet on who could find me first. Byron with his tracking ability and understanding of how to use terrain, and Boatswain relying purely on his sense of smell, and all three of us were three sheets to the wind.

I went to the place known as ‘Cherokee Park’ which was large enough to take an hour or three to walk in its entirety, I don’t know ‘exactly’ how I got there. But dlamisa are fairly swift, so I can only presume that I ran part of the way. I can guess ‘why’ I went there, after all Fauve had a habit of throwing the ball there, I likely wanted a good time, and I didn’t realize that my human wouldn’t just ‘be there’.

Byron’s vehicle was capable of self driving, so according to him… well I will relay what they said in their words as best I can, having heard the story from both of them, admittedly that this is cobbled together, and their memories are not dramatically better than mine, but it will have to do…

“How does a dlamisa just vanish on this goddamn planet?!” Byron groused while Boatswain’s head hung out the passenger side window.

“I don’t know, but you’d think I’d smell him by now, it’s been twenty minutes, why did I suggest that much of a head start?!” Boatswain groused in turn, “He smells like he bathed in bourbon, I should be able to find him with ease!”

“Do you know what city you’re in? Louisville is famous for its bourbon, even more so than for its baseball bats. It’s the best stuff in the world!” Byron smacked his lips together, the taste of the stuff still on his tongue despite having none in hand while the car drove on.

“Still!” Boatswain protested and let his tongue loll out the side of his head while he bit and sniffed at the air in search of the smell of drunken dlamisa college student.

“Still nothing, you probably smell liquor on yourself too. That can’t help.” Byron remarked as the car went down the quiet streets at half the normal speed limit.

“Maybe, but if you hadn’t insisted on bringing all that…” Boatswain didn’t need to say what he was talking about, on the back seat there were bags full of liquor bottles from absinth to tequila, “we might have caught up with him by now.”

“Would you rather I left it behind?” Byron asked, and Boatswain immediately shook his head.

“No!”

“Alright then.” Byron said with what could only be described as a smug little smirk, to which I will add, he objected to Boatswain’s characterization of it as ‘smug, knowitall, and cocky’.

“Okay, so you’re a drunk dlamisa that has wandered off, your favorite human isn’t around, where are you going to go?” Byron asked.

“If he’s really drunk, the house and to bed. If he’s not quite that far gone… where he thinks he’ll have fun. He seems like a fun lover to me. Very undlamisa-like.” Boatswain remarked.

“Squeak. Squeak.” Byron remarked.

“Okay, fair enough.” Boatswain acknowledged.

“The park then, the one close to the house.” Byron suggested, and when Boatswain didn’t object, he pulled up the map, plugged in the location, and the car began to drive toward the new destination.

The route on foot was a lot easier than the route by car, so they had time on their hands while they tracked me to my destination, and when silence passed between them for a while, Boatswain finally asked, “So, he left you something?”

“Yeah.” Byron answered, he stared ahead, briefly forgetting to look for me when he thought of ‘the old man’ and instead focusing on his memories.

“What was it?” Boatswain asked, his ears flattening at the side of his head, one eye flicking toward his human comrade.

“Credits, energy enough to jumpstart my own power plant if I want. Enough to retire off of. And… a few mementos.” Byron answered, and for a little while longer there was quiet, just the hum of the car. It might have been tense if there were two humans involved, but because one was a human soldier and another a dlamisa of the same field, things were easier. The tension that sometimes exists between two human males does not seem to be present between the two across species, perhaps humans and dlamisa are uniquely compatible races, or perhaps there is a natural ambassadorial trait in the primate species. Whatever the case, when Boatswain chose to ask…

“Why?”

Byron chose to answer.

“His kids.” Byron answered.

“You’re his son?” Boatswain asked.

“No. I took a bullet for his granddaughter.” Byron answered, even though he wasn’t driving, his fingers closed around the steering wheel and went knuckle white.

“Zenti?” Boatswain asked, and Byron spat out the window.

“No. Those are wimps. Crunchy wimps. I have no idea why anyone was ever so scared of those. Years ago… look… maybe on your world everybody gets along and everything is hunky-dory, but we’re kind of contentious, and every now and then there’s a little flare up. Percival’s son, his wife, and their daughter got into the family business. There was a politician that was rattling off some paranoid nonsense about an alien invasion, a politician was accused of facilitating an ‘invasion’ because he wanted to streamline the process of securing visas as part of a trade agreement. Once the wild stories spread, he hired a media consultant.”

“Percival Barnum.” Boatswain guessed.

“Yeah. He assigned his son and daughter-in-law to the consultation, his son was very hands on, a lot like his father. Brash, loud, bold, a real charmer, he really took after his old man. His wife was a good match, less eccentric, level headed, collected, organized, but also incisive and very take-no-prisoners. They decided to do a public session. Nobody expected it to go down the way it did. There was a bombing… the politician was killed, hell, half the damn building blew up. I got lucky, I was in the shitter. Phineas, his son… he was killed instantly, his wife managed to live long enough to protect their daughter. And then the gunfire got going. I took a half a dozen rounds in the back, but I ran Teresa out of there and provided suppressing fire. Terror attacks are two stage affairs and I had an exit planned… we still might have died, but I had some of the best protective gear on the market.”

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Boatswain processed that quietly, “Then what?” He asked.

“Percival is what. After his son and daughter-in-law were buried, he spent millions of credits on revenge. He might have appeared to be a sweet old man, but if you ever see an old man in a profession where people die young or quit early, beware. He unleashed a media blitzkrieg on every politician even remotely associated with anyone in any affiliated group ever. I never could prove it, and didn’t want to try, but I suspected he got the EIB and a lot of other alphabet soup organizations involved. Blasted names, faces, home addresses, he even organized protests that went to politicians’ homes. They couldn’t eat in peace at a restaurant. They couldn’t sleep in bed, and when they tried to involve the law, suddenly there were investigations of corruption… he might not have killed anyone. But they were no less destroyed.”

“The legislation passed, of course, that’s how ‘our quarry’ got permission to come here after all. And those little xenophobic shits are on the Barnum ‘hit list’. Rumor has it anytime somebody associates with the xenophobes, their funding dries up or their opponents get some surprisingly large donations from friendly cooperatives.”

Byron had a little smile on his face when he talked about that, like the revenge was a fond memory, and Byron went on, “I got a medal, which I tossed in the river, turned down a promotion, turned down a chance to work for Percival directly, but he visited me in the hospital, and we stayed in touch ever since. He always promised he’d pay me back one day when I couldn’t say no. I guess leaving me something after he died was his way of keeping his promise.”

“So are you going to quit now?” Boatswain asked, “You’re rich, right?”

“Yes, but… I don’t think I’ll quit just yet. I’ll probably make this my last job, at least like this, maybe start my own security cooperation. With more alien contacts, maybe I could start hiring other species, Louisville is a pretty cosmopolitan city, and it’s only a matter of time before-”

Byron’s further conversation was cut off when they reached the park and they saw me shouting something into the phone.

It sounded something like, “Baaaaallllll” but exactly what I was saying was unclear, they parked the car, and rushed over to me.

In between their exchange of words with me, they argued over who was responsible for finding me, in short, who ‘won’ their little wager, and it was just then that the ball squeaked in Byron’s pocket.

I said before that this ‘new sport’ can only be played ‘interspecies’ and the reason is that humans have a broader range of motion than dlamisa, they can throw farther and from more angles than we can, but at the same time, we’re also much faster over short distances than almost any human, since we can go from bipedal to quadrupedal in no time.

The game began when Boatswain and I immediately stared at his pocket where the ball seemed to call to us. I have no idea why it has this effect on our species, but with all three of us at least somewhat drunk, it was even harder to resist.

Without thinking, Byron took it out and chucked it as hard as he could, far across the park, Boatswain and I went for it at the same time… and I landed on my face.

Which isn’t to say that I stopped. Every time it was returned, I tried again, until the dlamisa ambassador… and half the damn embassy security showed up. Not even the gods of men could tell us exactly what I said, but the dlamisa ambassador was so out of sorts that he chose to track my location himself and showed up with a security team.

Finding me on the ground with a human standing over me, I can only imagine what the ambassador must have thought, but before another international incident could kick off, Boatswain was seen running toward them with the squeaking ball in his mouth, and every single eye of my people honed in on that noisy little object.

He dropped it into Byron’s hand, and explained the situation.

“I can hardly believe some mere ‘liquid’ could do something like that…” He said, looking down at my goofy face with my lolling tongue and slowly struggling self while I tried to rise with very little success.

“It’s true, sir, if you’ll just try some… It is the logical thing, we know it’s been vetted, and besides, there’s a human here who is happy to share, it would be undiplomatic to refuse, logic dictates that we participate to make amends for our near disastrous misunderstanding. Especially given recent events.” Boatswain protested, and the ambassador, finding no counter argument coming to mind, agreed.

“Fine, retrieve some, then explain that,” he pointed to the squeaky ball, “to me.”

“Of course, sir. Right away.”

“I’ll get the liquor, you explain the rest, and… take your time.” Byron offered, and went back to the car while Boatswain did his best to provide some kind of explanation for the activity to the dlamisan security detail.

While he was gone however, Byron also made a phone call of his own. It didn’t take long for the results, as he popped open bottle after bottle of bourbon, whiskey, rum, spiced rum, absinthe, tequila, vodka, and the gods of men know what else, and began to pour them into some opaque plastic cups, a large black van pulled up and some plain clothes gorillas hopped out. Human security officers familiar to Byron, but dressed for their off hours.

Like they’d coordinated it beforehand, each one reached into their front pockets, and ‘squeezed’. The squeaks that went up raised every dlamisa ear, and given that we have multiple ears… that was a lot of ears.

The reactions to alcohol were quick, with cocked heads, sniffing snouts, and suddenly wagging tails, even the ambassador, a stern sort even by our standards, seemed interested in something called ‘Irish Cream’. “Take it, a gift from me to you, to apologize for any inconvenience.” Byron said, and the ambassador snatched it away like he was afraid the offer would be withdrawn.

“Ahem, I accept this on my people’s behalf and we will… forget this little inconvenience.”

“Sure, sure… but we could make it interesting… maybe you could leave with some more, if we play a little game.” Byron suggested, and then before anyone could ask what he had in mind, every human held up the ball, made it squeak, and then chucked it as hard as possible.

The dlamisan security officers… and the ambassador, charged over the grass after it before they knew what they were doing, splashing over the shallow water, each one striving to get to the squeaky green balls before the other.

The confusion on their faces when they got back, according to Boatswain, would stay with everybody for the rest of their lives, they dropped the balls from their mouths, most of which bounced off of some part of me as they tried to work out exactly what they’d just done, and for a moment everybody was quiet.

“A game. Humans line up side by side, and try to throw the ball as far as possible. One point per every three meters. Each of us partner up with a dlamisa who retrieves the ball, and then the humans try to stop every dlamisa but their partner from crossing the line again. First team to twenty-one points wins… and every round, whoever crosses first, that team takes a shot. Top three teams take a bottle of their choice home. Plus one for the ambassador, if you’ll referee… sir.”

The ambassador’s tail could have cooled the desert summer.

“I suppose I must agree.” He said with very obviously false disinterest.

I was dragged out of the way, and the game began. Human throwers had rocket arms it seemed, and at first it was hard to score, the fastest dlamisa got back first, but were tackled by multiple humans, whose considerable muscle and their unique range of motion made them difficult to out maneuver.

Slowly, strategies evolved, as human throwers mixed their distance goals with an attempt to time the return of others, so they didn’t throw as far, but forced the other humans to pick and choose who to try to stop. Thus nobody fell ‘too far’ behind, particularly as everybody got drunker as the night went on.

The ambassador chose to take a shot with ‘every’ win, and refereeing was soon forgotten.

Before the night was done, half the humans and all the dlamisa save Boatswain were passed out, and Byron was forced to go and check just to make sure nobody was left behind. His human counterparts were strewn about the park or stumbled back to the van to sleep it off, and by the time he came back, the dog catcher was ready to add me to the truck where the rest of my people were sleeping.

Thus ‘Baileyball’ or as it came to be known, ‘Ballyball’ was born. As more of my people came to Earth it became a popular sport that was transmitted back home, professional leagues emerged, and the players became famous across multiple worlds.

Somehow I think Mr. Barnum would have been pleased that he ended up doing a lot more than just putting the ‘fun’ into funeral, and would have appreciated the use of his alcohol.

But as for me, that morning, all I really wanted to do was remove my brain so that it would stop pounding for a few minutes.