Qualify (27 page)

Someone, for the love of God, please slap me!

“Now, you,” he says. “Keep your body pliant and flowing, and do not tense your limbs. Nothing should be tense. Your muscles should not be locked but relaxed. Knees and elbows bent slightly.”

He comes around to check me while I widen my stance on wobbling knees and try to copy his hands. My arms are shaking from tension, muscles unused to so much relentless exercise.

“Keep still,” he says, then adjusts the placement of my arms in the Form. At his light touch I feel a blush exploding across my face. I struggle to maintain my stance and my composure.

Okay, what
is
it with these Atlanteans, and the oozing sex appeal?

H
alf an hour later, it is over. I’ve been taught five Forms, and I’m to practice and repeat them on my own time, as homework. Somehow I survived Xelio’s hot proximity, and managed not to melt into a useless hormonal girl puddle. Lucky me, it occurs to me, I got one-on-one lesson time with an amazing Instructor, while the rest of the class had each other and Keruvat’s barking commands.

We are dismissed and it’s dinnertime.

As I pitifully stagger up the stairs in exhaustion, and emerge in the Common Area lounge on the first floor, there’s my brother George. And Gordie is right behind him.

“George!” I say in surprise, wiping sweat from my forehead and adjusting the wisps of hair sticking out from my messy ponytail. “And Gordie! What are you guys doing here?”

George looks pretty awful himself. His grey T-shirt’s got sweat stains and his dark brown hair is sticking up in awful messy spikes as if he hasn’t been combing it at all, like
ever
. And Gordie is not much better, a sweaty mess, and in addition he’s got a purpling bruise around the bridge of his nose and upper cheek. At least his glasses are in one piece.

“Let me guess, you just had Combat or Agility, Gee Two? You look great, babe. Yeah, I know, we look great too. And, sorry if we reek.” George makes a tired half-grin thing with his face.

Gordie just waves, then continues the hand motion to rub his bruised cheek with the back of his hand and finally moves his glasses up his nose. Ah, my baby brother, always the economy of movement.

“You guys are alive,” I mutter with relief. “Glad we all made it through day two.”

“Yeah, just barely,” Gordie says. “Only fifty-eight more days to go.”

“What’s with the shiner on your cheek, Gordie?”

“Nothing. . . . Accident in Agility Training.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I believe, his face connected with someone’s fist,” George elaborates. “But—he can tell you all about it at dinner. Let’s go grab food, I’m starving, and we can catch up.”

I pause in confusion. “How are we going to eat together? Aren’t you guys supposed to eat in your own dorms?”

George raises one eyebrow and wiggles it. “Who’s going to notice or care?” And when he sees my doubtful expression, he continues, “No, really, I checked with the Dorm Leaders, they say we can eat in any cafeteria we like, any time, as long as it’s within the grounds of this compound. So take your pick, Gee Two—your dorm or mine, or even this pisshead’s here—” and George snaps Gordie’s forehead with his fingers.

“Hey!” Gordie makes a quick avoidance twisty motion that’s actually kind of sleek.

“Whoa!” I say. “You’ve learned some new moves there, Gordon Lark! Looks like all that Atlantis training’s paying off with positive results. Way to go, bro!”

“Yeah, a whole two days’ worth of it.” Gordie rolls his eyes. But he appears pleased.

As I consider our next move, I see Laronda. She’s coming down the stairs, probably from the fourth floor classrooms. She waves at me.

I wave back then turn again to my brothers. “What about Gracie?” I say. “Have you guys seen her? Should we go get her?”

“Gracie’s decided to skip dinner and get her beauty sleep.” George glances at Gordie. “What did she say to you exactly?”

Gordie shrugs. “I went to her dorm and she was right there, hanging out in the lobby, looking beat. She was just about to go in the Red cafeteria with some people and grab food quickly. Then afterwards she was gonna nap, she told me.”

“Okay, so no Gracie,” I think out loud.

Laronda comes up to us. There’s another girl trailing her, a slim younger teen, probably a freshman, with waist-long black hair, dark eyes and light brown skin. “Hey,” I tell Laronda. Then I turn to my brothers and introduce everyone. “This is Laronda Aimes, a friend from my dorm,” I say. “Laronda, these are my brothers, George and Gordie Lark.”

“And this is Dawn Williams,” Laronda tells us. “She’ll be hanging with us for dinner. So, where are we eating? Here, or Blue or Green?” She glances at the blue and green tokens lit up on my brothers’ shirts.

Dawn says “Hi,” in a soft, reserved voice then stays quiet, leaving the tough decision making to us.

“Hmm.” I look at everyone. Great, it’s like that eternal “where shall we eat” idiot game that people play when a whole bunch gets together and no one can agree on a restaurant.

“Decisions, decisions,” George says, reading my mind. “Shall it be Chez Yellow or Le Bleu, or Frou Frou Greenz, or Trattoria Rouge?”

“How about none of the above?” Gordie swipes his purplish bruise again. “I want to go check out the big Arena Commons building. There’s supposed to be a cafeteria there too, I think.”

“Hey, not a bad idea,” George says. “It’s neutral ground, where all the Four Quadrants can come together and mingle in a perpetual bliss state of cease-fire, all hostilities forgotten, everyone all kissy-lovey—”

“George, huh? What are you talking about?” I raise my eyebrows at him. “What hostilities?”

“Oh, come, Gee Two, didn’t they tell you all about it in your Culture class yet? The Four Quadrants are all supposed to be rivals, way hardcore. And this super duper rivalry, it’s some kind of eternal ongoing thing in Atlantis society. Real classy and honor-bound, sure, but still hardcore.”

I blink. “Okay, no. Our class didn’t exactly get to it. We’re still on the Atlantis Grail part.”

“The Atlantis what?”

“
Grail
,” I repeat.

“What’s that?” George is staring.

“It’s a cup, George. A round thing you drink from. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table had a holy thing for it. Well, not for
it
, to be precise, but for another grail, but same idea. Except, less holy.”

Gordie chuckles, then quickly evades George who once again tries to finger-snap his forehead.

I pause and glance at Laronda. She rolls her eyes then says, “It’s the annual Atlantis Olympics. Except, it’s not. It’s this freakish evil Games-to-the-Death thing, and if you win, you get citizenship and everything else you’ve ever wanted—you basically hit the life lottery jackpot.”

“Yeah, that’s one way of calling it.”

“And if you lose, you kind of
die
.”

George snorts. “Great!”

“We’ll talk about it on the way, meanwhile, let’s go, I’m starving!”

Right on cue, Gordie’s stomach rumbles in confirmation.

W
e get out of Yellow Dorm Eight and head for the big adventure that’s the Arena Commons super structure. It’s still light outside, but bluish twilight’s starting in the east. The air is cool and crisp, and we’re all underdressed in our sweaty T-shirts, but no one absolutely cares.

There are other Candidates walking about, and a few campus guards on patrol, moving to and fro. The Arena Commons looms several buildings ahead. At about six stories, it is considerably taller than the other four-story buildings around it. I squint and see a four-color Square Logo in the distance. The roof of the Arena Commons appears to be a dome made of glass panels, kind of like the ceiling of an enclosed indoor shopping mall.

“Oh, look!” Dawn Williams says suddenly, pointing in the opposite direction, against the sunset sky.

We turn, and there are two dark spots rising in the burning orange sky, as sleek silhouettes of Atlantean shuttles fly upward beyond the outer buildings. The sonic booms hit us right after, and the shuttles disappear above the clouds, briefly becoming points of searing light as the setting sun hits them at the angle when they are no longer in the Earth’s shadow.

“Wonder what they’re doing?” George says.

“More VIPs?” Laronda, walking in front of me, glances at him. “They’re probably checking us out and reporting on our progress back on their Mama Starships.”

“Maybe they’re just rotating Instructors,” I say. “Some finish their shifts and go back up, others come down in their place.”

“Yeah,” Gordie snorts. “Or maybe they can’t digest Earth food or breathe our atmosphere for too long, so they have to go up and replenish their bodies with some kind of special Atlantis nutrients and drugs—”

“That’s right, Gee Three,” I say. “They probably suck blood up there, or eat big bowls of live crawling worms harvested from the green hills of Atlantis—”

“Hey, you never know.” Laronda shrugs.

W
e arrive at the Arena Commons and go inside past the tall glass doors, moving through throngs of Candidates wearing token IDs in all four colors.

A comparison with an indoor shopping mall promenade is not at all off base here. At least it seems so for the length of the first small entry corridor, that resembles a mall nook, minus the inviting storefronts.

And then you turn the corner, and whoa! It looks like a small sports stadium.

The bulk of this area, domed off with a glass ceiling, encloses a sizeable oval sports arena, with an Olympic-style running track along the inner perimeter, and various sports scaffolding and truss structures taking up sections of the middle.

The outside walls are taken up with five story-levels of balcony walkways that circle the perimeter, and appear to have offices or other commercial looking doors and window displays running around the entirety of the structure.

“What the heck is this place?” Laronda cranes her head up.

“Better to ask, when did they have time to build this thing?” George retorts, looking around. “Must’ve taken months! It’s like a decent-sized ballpark!”

“Looks like my idea of purgatory,” I mutter, glancing at the running track and the various scaffolding in the center. “I’m guessing at some point we Candidates are going to have to go in there and use all that equipment. Otherwise, why else would it be here?”

“Hmmm, you could be right, sis,” George says. “For Qualification Semi-Finals, maybe? Or even Finals?”

“Ugh,” Dawn says with a shudder. I am guessing she is not all that athletic either—though I could be wrong, since she looks the least sweaty of all of us.

Gordie points to one end of the sports arena, in the very back. “Hey, there’s a pool!”

And he’s right. Way toward the rear, barely visible through the thicket of metal scaffolding, there’s a stretch of shimmering blue that sparkles under the overhead lights. I think I even see a diving board. The pool does not look overly large, but it’s probably long enough for some basic twenty-five-yard laps.

“Ya-a-y, pool,” George says in a semi-enthusiastic manner. “I could go for a swim later. But first, feed me! Let’s go, ladies!”

We follow a minor crowd to the interior wall side of the structure where there’s something resembling an open food court. It’s definitely another cafeteria, and we get our trays and get in line. They are serving what looks like American diner food basics.

At this point, I find that I’m starving. I point out my choices and the server in a gray uniform with a rainbow armband gives me a burger and a slice of pizza and some mashed potatoes. Then, at the self-serve bar I pile veggies in a salad bowl and get two glasses of some kind of unidentified fruit punch. Gordie is jostling after me, and I see his tray is even more loaded than mine, with corn and coleslaw, a ton of fries, and three burgers.

“Yeah, girlfriend, go for it. We’ve burned up enough calories to eat a whole cow,” Laronda says, seeing my guilty pause at the dessert bar as I consider adding a slice of cherry pie to my tray. I turn and she’s got a mountain of food on her tray also.

“Let’s find a table,” Dawn says, balancing her own full tray with one hand and an ice cream cone in another. “Oh, there’s an empty one there. . . .”

We head for the table and park there, before other Candidate groups grab it.

As we settle in, it appears we’ve picked a busy walk-through area, good for people watching. Our table is at the edge of the food court, close to the overhanging balcony of the first upper level, so we can see the walkways overhead all the way up to the top floor.

“Hey, this is good. . . .” Gordie is speaking with his mouth full of burger.

“Easy there, please chew!” Laronda swallows a long French fry with a ketchup-smeared tip, and raises one brow at Gordie with amusement. Meanwhile on both sides of me my brothers dig into their burgers.

Candidates are walking all around us in large and small groups and it’s getting loud, and tables are filling up. I guess everyone else had the same idea and decided to check out this Arena Commons place for dinner. Interesting, looks like many people from the same Quadrants seem to be sticking together—Green with Green, Red with Red, Yellow with Yellow, et cetera.