A Planet for Rent by Yoss

simply put, he only knows how to give one hundred percent. Obviously he’ll do his very best.
    Yukio Kawabata is here and not here. Though his body is present, the Zen Buddhist trance he’s been in for nearly an hour has probably sent his spirit back to the imperial Edo of his samurai ancestors. From the way he plays it, Voxl is obviously just a modern equivalent of Bushido for him. Yukio is an idealist through and through. He can afford that luxury; he’s rich enough already. His family owns a nice block of shares in the Planetary Tourism Agency. That’s why he doesn’t care how much he makes or whether he wins or loses. He plays well, better than anyone else; that’s his obsession. And he’s a terrific right center, with reflexes and fast legs that are the envy of lots of professionals in the League.
    The League...
    The League is like Mecca and Valhalla put together for any Voxl player. The League is where teams of every race meet and compete. The armored, incredibly agile insectoid grodos versus the polyps of Aldebaran, slow to move on their wide, muscular single feet, but with hundreds of whip-fast tentacles to make up for their speed. The hulking, red-carapaced Colossaurs versus the rapid, svelte Cetians.
    The League means astronomical salaries, unimaginable bonuses, the ability to travel anywhere in the galaxy. And an entourage of publicists trying to get you to use their expensive, sophisticated gear. Being a player in the League is almost better than being a god.
    The League is the dream of every human player. It’s only there that Colossaur, human, and polyp can play on the same side, no difference, no racism. At least in theory.
    Jonathan, our veteran player, has told us the story a thousand times. He was there, at the top. But then he fell. He’s never told us how or why, and we’ve never asked him. The first rule of group life: respect everybody else’s secrets if you want to have a private life of your own. That’s the only way the team can eat, travel, sleep, and play, always together, without killing each other. Follow that rule, and you avoid the unnecessary expense of psychologists and counselors. Ignore it—and they’ll still be a useless expense, because they won’t prevent or even delay the inevitable explosion of violence.
    Jonathan must be busy with his medical monitor, as he is before every game. He keeps obsessive track of his blood pressure, pulse, erythrogram, temperature, and the hormone levels in his blood. I get the impression he’s taking it too far. His expulsion from the League must have broken something inside the complex machinery of his mind. But who cares, so long as he plays as well as he does. And his fixation on keeping in top physical condition has brought about the miracle that maybe even he no longer believed possible: At the age of forty-two, he’s been given a second chance. After eight years, three of them without setting foot on a Voxl court, he’s made it. He’s the only human who’ll have played for Team Earth twice. If he doesn’t make it now, I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. And I don’t want to be around when it does.
    The situation of the Slovsky twins is totally different. They’re only eighteen, and they’ve been playing practically since before they learned to walk. The sons of Konrad Slovsky, the famous coach, Jan and Lev were already famous when they were kids, before I ever touched a voxl. This is their first year as pros, and they don’t look nervous. They are two bundles of muscles and sinew trained to perfection. And as if that weren’t enough, the two of them play together with the sort of perfect coordination I’ve only seen in holovideos of Cetian clone teams.
    They’re all engrossed in their holographic simulator. Sometimes I feel sorry for them. They never talk about women or holofilms or even drugs. Maybe it was their father’s fault: he’s nearly turned them into robots, superspecialized Voxl-playing machines. If