Page 64 of Night's Reckoning
“So the game is chance. Like dice or stones.”
He shook his head. “It’s not chance.”
Tenzin bounced the ball. “Humans think that work and preparation can predict outcome.”
“Can’t they?” His uncle was a fan of both preparation and work. “Talent aside, the player who practices the most has an advantage.”
“Who decides who may practice and who must work?” Tenzin said. “It’s not always the players. What about players who don’t have the same facilities? What about a player whose diet is poor, so they cannot build muscle mass as well as a better-fed player?” She bounced the ball toward him and Ben caught it.
“So you’re saying who wins in basketball is whoever has the most advantages going in?” Ben bounced the ball back. “It has nothing to do with hard work and talent?”
“I’m saying that success is built by many factors, and most of them are out of yours or any mortal’s hands.” Tenzin bounced the ball twice before she sent it back to Ben.
“Chaos theory.”
“In a sense.” Tenzin walked toward the basket and threw the ball in a perfect arc, just as Ben had taught her. A foot above the rim, the ball stopped. “I practiced throwing the ball—”
“Shooting a basket.”
She raised one eyebrow. “I practiced shooting a basket exactly as you taught me. I practiced many hours.”
“And?”
Tenzin flew up to the basket and floated next to her ball. “I thought about strength and speed. About angles and velocity.”
“And your shot will go in.” Ben walked across from her. “Look at it. It’s perfectly lined up.”
Tenzin kept her eyes on Ben. She pursed her lips and blew as she released the ball. The basketball, thrown slightly off trajectory from her tiny breath, hit the rim, bounced back and forth three times, tottered on the edge for a fraction of a second, then fell to the floor, never making it through.
“You blew on that,” Ben said. “Doesn’t count.”
“It’s the only thing that counts,” she said. “A butterfly flaps her wings and all your preparation and work mean nothing.”
“So what’s the point of playing the game?” Ben asked, thinking about the perfect arcs he’d seen when he first walked in. “What’s the point of any game?”
“The point,” Tenzin said, “is winning.”
“And if you can’t win fairly, cheat?”
She landed on her feet. “Cheating implies someone else makes the rules, Benjamin. And I make my own rules.”
“And expect everyone else to follow them too?”
“No. I expect peoplenotto follow them. That’s what I prepare for. The inevitability of human selfishness. A tornado of butterflies.”
“Human selfishness? Not vampire?”
She smiled. “Our selfishness is the most human thing about us.”
Ben’s head hurt. “I hadn’t planned to stay down here debating the ethics of cheating in basketball. But just be aware that the ball can be heard outside and at some point they may ask you to stop so they can listen. Please don’t kill them when they do that. Also, Kadek’s human crew will need to get at those pallets eventually.” Ben nodded to the stacked provisions near the rear bulkhead. “So if I come with some extra humans, don’t assume they mean harm.”
“Fine.” She walked back to the ball and started bouncing it again. “How goes the search?”
“They think they found it. Or at least part of it.”
“The university people? Or Kadek’s people?”
“Both I think.”
