The Hound of Rowan (20 page)

“What kind of scenarios do we have?”

“The scenarios you encounter are dependent on various inputs. The most important input is the floor you choose here in the elevator. The floor indicates the difficulty level, and at Rowan, we have nine. Very few students progress beyond Level Six. Once on the appropriate floor, you can program any number of scenario variables: environment, objectives, opponents, et cetera. The possibilities are endless.”

“Cool,” muttered Connor, elbowing Max.

“After each scenario you complete, the Course will assign you a score based on your performance,” Mr. Vincenti continued. “That score is calculated from various factors: strategic approach, objectives achieved, time elapsed, and such. Scores range from zero to one hundred. Score above a seventy, and the analysts might store your performance in the archives and use you as an example in the screening rooms—”

Mr. Vincenti paused as the elevator doors abruptly opened. Several sweaty students emerged. To Max's dismay, Cooper stepped out of the elevator after them, dressed all in black and breathing heavily.

“Ah!” said Mr. Vincenti. “As you can see, the Course is a busy place. Students, faculty, and alumni may use it at any time. How'd it go, ladies and gentlemen?”

“We all got creamed,” bemoaned a boy among a group of Third Years. “Level Three's a
killer
—they got us right before we solved the Mayan puzzle. We couldn't even use Mystics!”

“How about you, Cooper? Haven't seen you down here in years! Good to have you back.”

Cooper nodded in greeting, quietly crossing to the other elevator that would take him back to ground level.

“He went down to Level Eight!” gasped a wide-eyed Second Year. “I asked one of the analysts—she said he got, like, a seventy-five!”

“Well, what do you expect from one of our finest Field Agents?” beamed Mr. Vincenti.

Max watched Cooper step inside the other elevator; the Agent towered over the students filling in around him. The elevator doors shut, and Mr. Vincenti cleared his throat.

“Well, that gives you a little taste!” he said. “Let's go down to Level One.”

Mr. Vincenti held the door of the other elevator as the students filed in.

The doors closed and the elevator eased down, far more slowly and smoothly than their trip from the ground level. Sarah stood close to Max, smiling. Moments later, the doors opened onto another octagonal room, paneled in pale yellow wood. Into each wall was set a numbered green door.

“So,” said Mr. Vincenti, hopping out, “let's say you've got an extra half hour on your hands and want to squeeze in a bit of practice. Once you arrive at the appropriate level, you've got basically two choices: to practice a scenario or review and analyze past scenarios in the screening room. Let's start with a scenario.”

Mr. Vincenti led them to a smooth silver control panel set into the wall next to door one.

“Okay,” he said. “To register for a scenario just tap the touch screen here to get started—there we go. Now, you'll register your identity with a retinal scan and select your variables from the options menus—or else leave them for the Course to define. The details are in your binders.”

A mischievous twinkle entered Mr. Vincenti's eyes.

“Any brave soul care to try a scenario as an example we can use in the screening room?”

Sarah stepped forward.

“Excellent,” said Mr. Vincenti, smiling. “I hate it when I have to draft my volunteers.”

Mr. Vincenti tapped the screen again and quickly selected the variables.

“All right, Sarah,” he said. “You have only one objective on this scenario: to try and touch the opposite wall any way you can. Got it?”

Sarah nodded and swallowed nervously.

“Whenever you're ready,” said Mr. Vincenti. “Just head on through the door.”

Max and the rest started cheering for Sarah as she opened the door and disappeared inside. The door closed solidly behind her.

“She's brave!” breathed Cynthia. “You'd have needed a gun to get me in there!”

“I wanted to go,” whined Jesse, who was immediately beset by several doubters.

Max read the readout on the bright white screen:

         

S
ARAH
A
MANKWE
: L
EVEL
O
NE
, S
CENARIO
0A02

T
IME
E
LAPSED
: 00:00:14:57

         

When the time elapsed reached two minutes, the monitor started flashing. A moment later, Sarah emerged from the door, breathing heavily and leaning forward with her hands on her knees.

“It's awesome!” she crowed as the others greeted her with cheers and anxious questions.

“Now,” said Mr. Vincenti, smiling, “you'll want to study up on your performances now and again and get some feedback. For that, you use the screening room. Let's take a peek at how Miss Amankwe fared….”

Miss Boon opened a walnut-paneled door, revealing a large room with many computer monitors stationed at dark wood cubicles. Several older students, including Alex Muñoz, sat at the monitors, studying the screens intently. Alex merely glanced over at them without interest. Mr. Vincenti said a polite hello to a middle-aged woman before taking a seat at a large display. He beckoned for Sarah to take the seat next to him and activated the screen with a touch of his finger.

“Well, let's take a look at how you did,” said Mr. Vincenti. “Everyone gather around and try to get a peek.”

Max looked over Omar's shoulder and got a glimpse of the display. It showed a very nervous-looking Sarah at one end of a large rectangular room. The opposite wall was blinking bright green. Sarah had started crossing the room when the floor changed suddenly to a number of conveyor belts whizzing away from the blinking wall at various speeds. She was hurtled backward against the starting wall with a loud bang. She took a moment to gather herself and seemed to be gauging which conveyor belt was slowest. She started running up one positioned near a side wall. As she did so, enormous rubber balls started bouncing around the room from every direction. Time and again Sarah would approach the wall, only to be knocked off her feet and conveyed rapidly backward. Max was impressed by her perseverance, although the scenario ended without her touching the wall.

Sarah smiled as several girls cheered and hugged her.

“It does not surprise me that a girl volunteered first,” said Lucia, glancing at Jesse.

“Doesn't surprise me that a girl failed it,” he shot back.

“Now, now,” said Mr. Vincenti. “The Course is all about
personal
development—it's not a competition. Sarah did very well for a first attempt. You can see here that the Course awarded her an eleven, which may sound low but is very good for a first try. The recommendations listed below are pretty generic—they'll be more meaningful once the Course has more of your performances to analyze.”

Several students giggled as they read the recommendations listed:
AVOID BALLS, MOVE FASTER, SHARPEN TIME AWARENESS.
Each recommendation was coupled with two or three activities that Sarah could follow to hone the necessary skills.

“For complex scenarios, the feedback can be pages long,” said Mr. Vincenti, standing again. “Each quarter you'll receive a booklet profiling your performance on the Course along with some commentary and feedback from a team of analysts. Any questions?”

“When can we start doing scenarios?” asked Connor.

“Today,” said Mr. Vincenti, chuckling. “I'm a big believer of jumping in with both feet. Anyway, the system won't let you screw things up too badly.”

David came over to Max once the students had left the room and begun gathering near the elevator.

“Pretty cool, huh?” said David. “I've got to go feed Maya. Want to come?”

Max shook his head immediately, eyeing one of the silver control panels.

“No,” said Max with a smile. “I think I'm going to stick around here a bit.”

“I thought you'd say that,” said David, grinning as he stepped inside the elevator.

                  
11                  

A
LL
H
ALLOWS'
E
VE

B
y the weekend of All Hallows' Eve, Rowan was bustling with alumni who had returned for the celebration. They had arrived from all over the world: ancient crones in wheelchairs, well-dressed men and women, and handfuls of college students wearing the sweatshirts of their respective universities. Max was surprised to see some familiar faces: several politicians, a world-famous scientist, even a movie actress who was a favorite of Mr. McDaniels's.

Max slipped past several alumni in the great hall and ducked down a back stairway. Tomorrow, the First and Second Years would play one another in a Euclidean soccer match, with the rest of the school and alumni as spectators. The First Years were convening on one of the Manse's sublevels to choose their team.

The scene was a nightmare, and Max soon had a headache. The First Years were permitted to have twenty players on the team, but each of the five sections seemed to think they had ten worthy candidates. Max and David sat off to the side while the arguments persisted, leaving the negotiations for their section to Rolf, Sarah, and Connor. Rolf and another boy were in the midst of arguing when David quietly got up and walked to the front of the room.

“Excuse me—” said David.

The arguments persisted and David began coughing.

“Excuse me—” he repeated.

Max breathed a sigh of relief when Cynthia stepped in to rescue him.

“Everybody shut up!”
Cynthia bellowed, clamping a hand over Connor's mouth to interrupt an unintelligible stream of Dublin slang. “David's got something to say,” she concluded.

David turned bright red as all eyes focused on him.

“Well,” he said, his voice barely audible in the large room, “we'll never get anywhere this way…. We have twenty spots and five sections. Each section should choose their best four players and that will be the team.”

“But that might not be the
best
twenty players,” scoffed a boy from Brazil.

“Well, you can argue for as long as you want,” said David. “The game starts tomorrow at nine and I want to have a team to cheer.”

David sat back down next to Max while the debate continued.

“Remind me
never
to do that again,” David groaned.

That night, Max could hardly sleep. He paced the room in anticipation of the match against the Second Years. Rolf, who had been chosen captain for the First Years, decided on a lineup that would emphasize the First Years' strengths, one of which was Max's rapidly blossoming speed.

“Get to bed early, Max,” Rolf had urged at dinner. “I'm counting on your legs. You may be playing most of the game.”

Max had promised and hurried through his visit with Nick, who was visibly annoyed. Getting to bed early made no difference, however, and Max tossed and turned for an hour before finally creeping downstairs to fetch one of his Mystics texts. He spent the next few hours conjuring small orbs of dark blue flame and concentrating on making a pencil roll back and forth on his book. Near dawn, he caught his image reflected in a dark glass pane of the observatory dome. A small sphere of blue flame still flickered about his hand before disappearing altogether.

“You're changing,” he whispered, and collapsed into bed.

         

David was already dressed in his navy Rowan uniform when he shook Max awake. Max bolted upright, knocking the Mystics text off his bed onto the floor.

“You have to be at the field in ten minutes for warm-up!” said David, running to get Max's soccer shoes.

Max leapt out of bed and threw on his navy jersey. A minute later, he raced to the athletic fields, passing by the Second Years' team as they ran through drills in their white uniforms. The First Year players were all stretching at the far end of the field—except for Rolf, who stood with his arms crossed. Max tried to ignore his captain's purple face, focusing instead on his stretches and a pair of scarecrows that had been placed as spectators in the stands.

David brought him some toast.

“Here you go. Better to be late this morning than tonight…,” he said with a smile.

Max narrowed his eyes as David started giggling and ran off to the stands. His roommate had enjoyed teasing him ever since Sarah had finally accepted Max's invitation to the festival.

It was a crisp autumn day with a pleasant breeze scattering fallen leaves into golden drifts. Students and alumni were already filling the stands, settling down with thermoses and spreading cotton throws on their laps. After the stretches, Sarah tapped Max on the arm, pointing over his shoulder with a giggle: Nolan was leading the players' charges across the grounds from the Sanctuary. The enormous shedu, Orion, clopped out in front; a white sheet painted with victory slogans had been thrown over his back. Max wondered how Rolf had managed to cajole the proud shedu into serving as a billboard.

Max sighed as he saw Nolan abruptly scoop up Nick to prevent the lymrill from running out on the field. Nick was entrusted to a somewhat nervous-looking pair of alums, and Nolan assembled the other charges to watch from the grass.

M. Renard strode out on the field and raised his arms to quiet the crowd. Max's stomach felt queasy. Several thousand spectators clapped and chattered with one another as they perused little programs and matched names and numbers to faces. Max's attention shifted as M. Renard's voice boomed out, magically amplified.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this year's All Hallows' Eve match between Rowan's young Apprentices!”

The crowd erupted in enthusiastic cheers. Max saw that Nick was shaking so wildly that Nolan had to retrieve him from the alumni couple. The man scowled and removed his camel's-hair coat, holding it up to examine its shredded sleeves. Wincing, Max turned back to M. Renard, who seemed to enjoy the crowd's attention as he gestured at the First Years with a dramatic flourish.

“It was only two months ago that these little globules arrived here, fat and squishy like little pats of butter!” said the Games instructor.

The crowd chuckled as Max blushed with his teammates.

“You should not laugh!” scolded M. Renard. “I see several pats of butter in the crowd. Remedial training may be in order for some of you,” he deadpanned, wagging a finger in the direction of several plump women sharing a tartan blanket. One of them stood and shook her fist, shouting, “Never again!” to the delight of the alumni.

The instructor continued. “Yes, only two months ago did they arrive, but as you shall see, they have learned a thing or two. Please give them a warm Rowan welcome.”

Max squinted in the morning sun, trying to make out more faces as the crowd issued a friendly round of applause.

“And our Second Years,” said M. Renard, trotting over to the other team. “Who can forget them? Ah, the ‘middle children' of Rowan. I sympathize with them in this match—always cast as the scoundrels, the villains, the bullies, as they compete against our poor, innocent First Years…. It's not fair, is it?”

The Second Years laughed and shook their heads.

“Yes, well, while it is not fair, it is life, is it not?” M. Renard sniffed. “Good luck to both teams. Play hard and be good sportsmen. And, eh, Happy Halloween!”

The crowd cheered as trumpets sounded, blown by a quartet of satyrs stationed at the far end of the stands. Max took a deep breath and trotted onto the field, adding his hand to the huddle as Rolf rallied the troops. Rolf mentioned something about “pride” and “they're only a year older,” but Max's main focus was on trying to overcome his nerves. He saw Alex Muñoz take the field with the Second Years, chatting with his teammates as he leaned to the side and stretched. Alex caught Max looking and shook his head, as if with pity.

The field buckled as soon as M. Renard blew the whistle. Max was jostled off balance as a Second Year raced by with the ball, passing it quickly to a wing. The wing knocked the ball down and began to pass it around, probing for a seam in the defense. Alex Muñoz ran up from midfield in time to catch a sharp pass and line up a shot on goal before Rolf came hurtling in to knock the ball away.

Once the game had begun, Max forgot his jitters and watched the action. He was playing midfield, but Rolf asked him to focus on the defensive side of things, anticipating that the Second Years would seek to demoralize them early.

Rolf was right. The Second Years struck twice in quick succession on a visibly frustrated Cynthia, who was an excellent goalie but unaccustomed to such sudden, speedy shots. The First Years, however, rallied when one of their forwards scored an improbable goal due to a sudden shock wave in the field that knocked the opposing goalie off his feet. The crowd roared its support when the First Years threatened again, but Alex stole the ball away from Sarah and launched a long pass downfield that quickly resulted in another score. Before play resumed, Alex jogged over to whisper something to Sarah with a nasty look on his face. Max thought she might lose her composure and go after him, but Rolf quickly substituted another player for her.

Despite their lead, the Second Years began squabbling with one another as the half progressed. Max got the impression that a margin of 3–1 was embarrassing. They sniped at one another or cursed whenever the First Years managed a steal or controlled the ball for any length of time, drawing cheers from the crowd. Max noticed a definite change when he converged on the ball with two Second Years and was elbowed hard to the side by one as the other dribbled away, hurdling a series of uphill bumps that tilted to the right. Max chased after the girl with the ball when M. Renard's whistle sounded and the half came to an end.

“You can't get pushed out of the way like that,” panted Rolf, running up to Max as they herded with the rest toward one goal. “You have to be more aggressive or I'm going to pull you.”