Compete (2 page)

How weird and horrible we must have looked to
them
—my pinched, pale, exhausted face, Gracie’s tear-streaked, red-nosed mess, Gordie’s non-typically serious stare from behind smudged glasses—all of us still covered in mud and filth from the Finals, our heads three feet tall, and taking up the whole living room wall, looking out at our parents from the outdated smart-surface, badly in need of an upgrade, and dotted with bad pixels on the bottom. . . .

I don’t know why I keep thinking of that dratted old smart wall even now. Maybe it’s just another example of unfinished business back on Earth, calling me. I am so
not
done with Earth. . . .

Because there’s Mom and Dad and George.

All three of them are waiting to die, together with the rest of the population of Earth who did not Qualify or simply were not eligible for Qualification.

I do not accept it.

It has been my mantra, running through the back of my mind every waking moment, like an earworm song stuck in my brain. Except, unlike an earworm, this is never going to go away.

But—back to that initial time in the shuttle. . . . After Gracie had wept her heart out and cried some incomprehensible stuff, after Gordie mumbled, I remember saying, “Mom . . . Dad,” in a blank voice that did not—still does
not
seem to belong to me. It isn’t me speaking but another seventeen-year-old girl whose arms are no longer skinny and weak sticks, but have some muscle definition, whose face is leaner, older somehow, with sunken cheeks and dead eyes, framed by dark, stringy, dirt-covered hair that hasn’t been washed since before the 34-hour insane Qualification Finals ride through the subterranean tunnels underneath the Atlantic Ocean. . . .

I remember seeing Mom’s lips quivering as she tried so hard to maintain that artificial empowering smile for our sake, while tears pooled in her eyes, then started sliding down her cheeks in long glistening trails, while she smiled, smiled, smiled at us. . . .

“Gwen, honey,” Mom had said at some point in a voice hardly above a whisper, and then put her hand over her mouth at last, to stop the quivering.

I can see it now, branded into my memory. Dad putting his arm around Mom’s shoulder in that moment, fingers squeezing her gently, while he speaks to me—is speaking now, and will be always.

“We love you, Gwen, sweetheart, and we are absolutely
proud
of you and Gracie and Gordon, and . . .” Here is where Dad’s voice also cracks, as he is about to say, “George,” and he can’t.

“Take care of each other, sweethearts. Gwen, take care of your sister and brother, you just keep doing what you can, being strong and wonderful, and the best sister to them, as you have always been, as you are! Gordie, you stay strong and take care of your sisters! Gracie, you keep growing and don’t let Gwen do everything, okay, sweetie?”

“Stay smart! So, smart, my boy, my girls!” Dad adds, finding his voice again. “And Gwen—we watched you during the—what did they call them, ‘Semi-Finals’ in Los Angeles, and you were amazing! My goodness—Shoelace Girl!” And Dad laughs, shaking his head in wonder.

“Oh, God . . . you saw that . . .” I mumble. And in that moment my frozen mask of a face breaks down and I am a gusher, as I too begin to shudder with deep sobs like Gracie, wiping my face with the back of my hands . . . sharp motions, angry shaking hands.

The Atlantean sitting silently next to us uses the moment to say very gently and quietly, “Five more minutes.”

I nod at him—because I know our fifteen minutes are almost up, and the next teenager needs to call their loved ones on Earth. Everyone in the transport shuttle gets five minutes per call, and we lucked out—since we’re all calling the same place, and there’s three of us, we get fifteen.

I think of these stupid incidental things. . . . And then I return to the video display. My hungry gaze tries to absorb everything, every tiny beloved detail, my parents, my living room in my home, the sofa, the wooden bookshelf I can barely see behind Dad, the big potted plant in the corner. . . .

“How are you feeling, Mom? How is the weather?” I say stupidly, with a forced smile that’s even more fake looking than the one Mom tried to maintain for our sakes.

“Weather’s warm, and getting hot, lots of green coming up, soon your Dad will be riding the lawnmower every weekend—”

Gracie makes a little noise, desperately stifled. I smile and sniffle. “Mom, how are you feeling?”

“Oh, I’m fine!” Mom says, eyes blinking wide, making another huge effort. “The pain is much less these few days, and I think the new meds are working, keeping things under control—”

She speaks and I listen, and my mind just whirls like a dumb thing, not registering her words.

“Mom!” I blurt suddenly. “The Atlanteans have this amazing medical technology—it can fix whatever is wrong with you, with anyone—”

And then I go silent and close up. Gordie and Gracie are both staring at me. I cannot raise false hopes, even now, it would not be fair. And yet—

“Is—is George—is he going to be home soon?” I say instead.

Dad’s face darkens. “Last we heard when he called, he’ll be home in less than six hours. The rioting and civil unrest is quite serious in the larger populated areas, not exactly safe to travel, so he is taking the long and careful roundabout route. He is either taking a connecting flight to New York, or—”

“Time is up,” the Atlantean interrupts softly.

“Mom! Dad! Oh God!
Oh God!
I love you! Gracie and Gordie and I, we’ll be okay! Both of you, and George, you must
stay alive!
” I chatter uselessly, making every second count, while Gracie does the same thing, and Gordie whispers sullenly, “Bye, Dad, bye Mom . . .” so that we end up speaking in a muddled Lark family chorus.

“Love you always! Love you!” Mom and Dad say almost in unison, and I see the way Mom collapses with weeping against Dad’s chest, just as the screen goes dark and the video connection with our home in Vermont is severed.

T
hat was five days ago.

I know that later that same night my brother and sister and I, Logan, and a whole bunch of Qualified Candidates were finally allowed to exit our shuttle and emerge into a great, brightly lit space within the starship hull interior that had to be the docking bay—an endlessly long round tunnel expanse split in the center by a concave channel tube running along the floor and ceiling, like a subway track between two platforms, through which I assume we had flown in. The oval cutaway shape of the channel tube easily accommodates the largest of the freight shuttles.

Neutral lukewarm air hits us with a blast. . . . No smell, all is clean, sterile. And yet, somehow I know beyond doubt I am breathing
alien
air onboard a spaceship—in its nothingness there’s a hint of otherness, a
scent of the stars
.

There is however nothing unusual about the gravity, and it feels just as though we are back on Earth, inside a vast depot.

Except, this place is all pristine cream and off-white, the gleaming hull lined with occasional panels of grey material with gold flecks that must be orichalcum.

It is then that, for the first time since setting foot on the Atlantean mothership, I suddenly think of Command Pilot Aeson Kass.

No—I need to think of
him
from now on as Aeson Kassiopei, son of the Imperator.

An Imperial Crown Prince of Atlantis.

. . . 
You matter to him, Lark
 . . .

Great ovoid shapes of transport shuttles fill the bay, parked at even intervals along the channel tube on both sides, as far as the eye can see, and crowds of Qualified Candidates and Atlanteans among them, take up most of the area on the floor. . . .

I guess I also need to stop using the designation “Candidates” at this point. We’ve all Qualified, so officially we’re no longer mere Candidates.

So then, what are we? What other word should be used to describe us? Immigrants? Intergalactic refugees?
Homeless?

Urgent speech and desperate stressed chatter comes from all directions, in all the languages and dialects of Earth—strange foreign vocal inflections, rising and falling tones, harsh gutturals and soft sibilants. . . . Momentarily I am reminded of the Tower of Babel.

There are so many of us! Young people are everywhere, moving or idling, some exiting into smaller tunnels and doorways leading out into the deeper portion of the immense starship around us. Robot vehicles move silently past us, hovering a few feet above the floor, carrying loads of cargo.

Occasionally a great gust of turbulent air comes tearing through the long channel tube section, as from the distance we see another freight shuttle approach at great speed, moving silently and only preceded by the wind tunnel that it generates, cutting the air ahead of itself. The shuttle comes to a smooth hover stop, then rises from the channel and parks itself on either platform side. This happens again and again periodically as more shuttles continue to arrive, while others depart, rising suddenly from their parked spot along the platform, entering the recessed channel and shooting off into the boundless receding distance where I assume somewhere in the end is the exit.

It seems well orchestrated, yet it occurs to me, it’s a wonder they don’t collide with each other. But I suppose there must be some serious air traffic controlling involved in all this. My head reels. . . .

After a while, none of it matters or makes any sense; all of it is chaos. . . . We mill around, watch the shuttles, watch the crowds, watch each other. We wait, follow directions from bland and expressionless Atlantean officers who scan us, check our token ID data against their hand-held devices. Then we are told to line up and wait some more, are scanned again. . . . All directions are repeated in English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Russian. . . .

It occurs to me, where are my friends? Where’s Laronda, Dawn, Hasmik, Blayne, and the others? Are they also emerging out of one or more of the great transport shuttles along this same huge shuttle bay, equally dazed and lost, overwhelmed with tragedy and exhaustion? Or are they onboard some other great starship? For that matter, did they even make it?

All throughout, I remember sickly chills riding up and down my limbs, along my clammy dirty skin that is still prickling at the feel of the soggy fabric of my uniform, my hands feeling cold as ice after the subterranean ordeal of the Finals. I see Gracie’s equally dirty tear-smudged cheeks smeared with eyeliner, her terrified eyes looking at me constantly—looking for support and strength that in that moment I don’t have to give—and Gordie standing awkwardly next to us, filthy and tousled.

Logan Sangre is also nearby, his usually gorgeous dark hair and face a mud-stained mess. For the first time he looks uncertain himself, no longer a confident hotshot high school senior, but very young, a teenage boy lost. And then as though reading my thoughts, Logan gathers himself and closes up emotionally, then casts grim looks around us, while we all scan the crowds for familiar faces and find none.

Get a grip, Gwen Lark
, I tell myself silently, over and over.
They need you, you can’t afford to fall apart now.

Just . . . Get. A. Grip.

At some point we finally leave the shuttle bay and are taken through mind-blowingly endless hallways opening into decks and then into more convoluted passages with pale walls etched with ancient looking linear designs of hair-thin gold, beautiful and austere. The ship appears to be immense, so I lose track of any direction very quickly. We are herded in groups of about twenty at a time, regardless of our color Quadrant designations, into long narrow chambers filled with nothing but rows of narrow bunk beds along two walls, four levels high, all the way up to the ceiling, and simply told to take a bed and go to sleep.

“These are not your permanent bed assignments,” an Atlantean of indeterminate youthful age with the typical long metallic-gold hair tells us. “This is simply for tonight and the next few days until you are sorted and assigned to your Quadrants and decks, and in some cases, other ships. So, don’t worry and don’t get too comfortable. Your personal belongings will be located and distributed starting tomorrow. You will also be informed how to have your uniforms cleaned.”

“What about getting
ourselves
cleaned? And what about bathrooms?” several Candidates say.

The Atlantean nods and points to the back of the long chamber. “Lavatories with toilets and sinks are at the end of the room, self-explanatory. Showers are somewhat more complicated, but there are pictorial instructions. They resemble your own Earth-style cabin enclosures, but use recycled high-pressure water mist. . . .”

At the same time, another Atlantean crewman walks the rows of our bunks distributing what looks like food energy protein bars and drinking bottles. “These are high-calorie meal rations to give you strength. Eat them now, and then tomorrow for breakfast. Fill these bottles with water from the lavatory sinks—it is sterile and perfectly clean for drinking purposes as well as any other—and keep them with you always—”

“Wait! What is this?” a girl says plaintively. “Aren’t we getting real food at some point?”

The Atlantean looks at her sympathetically, but also with a no-nonsense expression. “Yes, you are. And yes, I realize you just went through a tremendous ordeal and require solid sustenance. But for now, this is what you eat and drink. Tomorrow, you will learn more about your ship, and you will learn where we eat real food, what the rules of conduct are, and how we live and perform our duties.”