Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World by Walter Mosley

said, suppressing the urge to add, you motherfucking bastard.
    "But you are my guest."
    "But you are my elder."
    Akwande did have a preference, but he wanted to give his opponent a sense of control. You could never beat him under normal circumstances, John Robinson, his coach, told him. But if you play to his weakness . . .
    "Clay, then," Kismet said. "Last night I sent a representative to your home and asked your wife for this." Eye came up with Akwande's college tennis racket.
    "I had it restrung," Kismet said. "Test it to see if it is to your liking." Eye proffered a basket of bright orange tennis balls.
    Akwande hit a few balls and nodded his satisfaction.
    "What did Aja say, Eye?" Kismet asked.
    "Tell Fayez that I hope he wins," Eye reported.
    Akwande wondered if the hairless beauty had gone to his home.
    "Are you ready to lose, citizen?" Kismet smiled.
    "Never, Ivan." The chemically enhanced glands of Akwande's body were beginning their strength cycle. It was all he could do to restrain himself from attacking Kismet physically.
    "Scores will appear on the board," the Dominar announced loudly as if there were an audience. "Top and bottom of the screen will reflect the players' positions. When the game is over the winner's name will appear on top."
    __________

    After winning the toss of a coin Kismet took the first four games on the strength of his serve. Another man might have lost heart, but Fayez Akwande, in the depths of his walking meditation, was aware only of the ball and of Kismet's legs. He managed to return a serve for the first time in the fifth game. A volley ensued and the radical leader fell into the hours of training he had gone through. He returned the ball to the opposite end and watched Kismet's easy gait on the returns. The absolute monarch was playing with him, but he didn't mind.
    Akwande lost the first set in straight games. He lost the second set winning only one. But one game into the third set Kismet stumbled. He was moving for an easy return toward the front of the court when his right leg seemed to jam or stiffen.
    Akwande put the next ball to Kismet's right side. Again he had trouble with the leg. Like a boxer going for a cut eye, Akwande made Kismet work his right side. Through the third set he won his serve. Kismet came back strong, compensating for a slight limp. The doctor lost that set seven to nine. Kismet took the first three games of the fourth set, but that was his last hurrah. Akwande kept the ball a step away on the dictator's right side. The stiff leg turned into a slight limp; the limp soon became a stumble.
    Akwande took every game of the fifth and final set. He tired badly in the last two, but by then Kismet was all but lame. Eye and the Dominar witnessed their master's humiliation. Akwande wondered if there was some sharpshooter in the woods who might kill him before the last point could be registered. Kismet was trembling when they shook hands.
    "You've beaten me," he said with equal parts of surprise and malice.
    "Surprise," Akwande said, "is the secret to survival." 3
    In less than thirty-six hours the electronic media around the world were reporting on FauxPetro, the new fuel oil developed by Blue Zone Enterprises, a division of MacroCode International. The most surprising development was the fact that MacroCode allowed Mali exclusive rights to production of the new fuel oil without any conditions.
    "He could have bought into the British Parliament with a cash cow like this," Letter Philips said on that evening's Last Words.
    __________

    One morning, a week later, Fayez Akwande bought his daily carrot/apple/ginger juice at the Good Grocer chain store near RadCon's Jersey City office. By noon he felt ill. Not sick, but utterly exhausted. It was only on the second day that he had returned to work at the headquarters of RadCon6.
    "You look like hell," Rhonda Joll, his executive aide, said.
    "Is that a way to talk to the man who saved western Africa, M Joll?"
    "We still got