Qualify (14 page)

At least this one is relatively simple.

Oalla Keigeri calls down six hoverboards. Once again she uses musical tones, singing a pattern of notes that I find curiously pleasing. One by one they come down from the top of the scaffolding near the ceiling, where they are apparently being stored.

Each hoverboard is the same—about six feet long, with tapered oval ends, and made of that same matte charcoal and slate grey material. Oalla directs them into a lineup, side by side, stretching across the hall, at a level “Ready” position six inches off the floor.

“All right. You remember the English commands you were taught yesterday, during Preliminary Qualification?” She points to the boards. “Well, today you will get to use them again. All this week you will be allowed to continue to use verbal commands to control the boards. But, starting next week, you will have to use tones, the same way we do on Atlantis. That would be in a different class. For now, English is fine. Now, I want you to get on a board and ride all the way to the end of the room and back on this horizontal starting level. For now, I want to observe your posture, so we will not lift the boards any higher.

Janice Quinn, who is standing up with difficulty while favoring one foot, raises her hand. “I am sorry, but I think my ankle got hurt. . . . What should I do?”

Oalla turns in her direction, and there’s silence.

“After class, you may go to get a bandage and medical care. There’s a doctor on the first floor near the Cafeteria. Ask at the info desk.”

“But—” Janice looks frightened. “What should I do
now?
”

The Atlantean girl gets a cold, blank expression. No sympathy, no emotion, nothing. “Do you want to Qualify?” she asks. “If so, then get on a board and ride. Or get a demerit. Your choice.”

Janice bites her lip and nods.

“Bitch . . .” someone mutters quietly.

Oalla pauses, then slowly turns in the direction of the whisperer. “Who said that? If I hear another such outburst from any one of you, that person will be
Disqualified immediately
.”

Silence. You can hear a pin drop. Suddenly everyone is looking down and away.

“Now then, I want to see you all ride. Prove to me that you are half as good as Blayne Dubois who’s been hoverboarding all the while we were doing the laps and the climbing.” Oalla turns as though nothing happened. She glances around then spots him and points to the other end of the hall. There we see the “wheelchair kid” lying on his stomach atop a board and gliding smoothly around in laps, six inches above the floor.

We line up behind each board and take the basic “Go! Stop! Reverse! Go! Stop!” two-way ride along the Training Hall. Even Janice Quinn with her sprained ankle manages somehow—though her face is deathly pale, and a sheen of pain-sweat covers her forehead.

By the time my turn comes, I am shaking in exhaustion, but maybe it’s what makes it easier, since by this point my muscles are too tired to be stiff—which in my experience is normally the cause of all my “clumsy.” I put my right foot up on the board, then the left one behind me in my usual “goofy” stance, and balance without much difficulty. Since no heights are involved, I feel no need to crouch down, so I ride upright all the way, balancing on my feet, and amazingly I don’t fall off.

I also don’t get a demerit.

“Class dismissed,” Oalla tells us soon enough. “See you next time. Be warned, you will be very sore tomorrow.”

Chapter 7

M
y second class is Atlantis Tech. I wonder what in the world that means as I climb up the stairs all the way to the fourth floor, pretty much dying on the way, after the physical exertion I’ve just endured. Admittedly, it’s not really that bad—at least not for a normal athletic teen. But I’ve managed to avoid P.E. or take the easiest classes possible, for years. And now it’s all catching up with me . . . at the worst time possible.

The fourth floor landing is identical to the others, brightly lit and sterile. But instead of double doors leading to one ginormous room the size of the Training Hall or the sleeping floor, this one leads into a corridor with many classroom doors on all sides. My schedule said “Room 17,” and so I go down the hall past a stream of other students—no, wait, I need to stop thinking of everyone here as just students. No, we’re Candidates. Candidates for Qualification, fighting for our lives. And we are all sporting our yellow tokens, which suggests to me that our classes are likely going to be Yellow-Quadrant-only, or maybe even limited to our own Dorm Eight, whatever it really means.

And for a brief moment I wonder how my brothers and sister are doing. . . . I’ll have to go look for them as soon as the classes for the day are over. My chest feels a sudden constriction, a pang of nerves on their behalf.

But first, Atlantis Tech.

Inside, the classroom is filled with Candidates. I am one of the last arrivals, so I get a lousy seat in the back. The front of the class has a usual teacher’s desk and on it is some kind of equipment. There is also a large whiteboard.

The Instructor is a middle-aged man, definitely not Atlantean. He’s wearing a plain grey suit and a yellow armband. He has a balding head and a mild and somewhat abstracted expression.

“Good morning everyone, I am Mr. Warrenson. I will be one of your Atlantis Tech Instructors.” His voice is pleasant and he looks over the packed room kindly. “I’m sure you’re all wondering what this is all about. Well, to be honest, when I got the intensive crash course on the basic principles of their technology, I was pretty much stunned—all the scientific community was. But their technology is so different from our own, so original, the principles of physical interactions of wave and particle mechanics, heat and energy transfer—”

I see the kids’ eyes starting to glaze over. At the same time I watch the excitement gathering in the way this man is starting to slur his speech together, and recognize he is a nerdy science type who got tasked with teaching us some advanced stuff that’s unfortunately going to go over many of the teens’ heads.

But not mine!

“Anyway, the main initial point I’m trying to get across,” Mr. Warrenson says, motioning with his hand at the spread of unrecognizable objects on the desk before him, “is that Atlantis technology is
based on sound
. To be precise, it is based on the interactions of various tones and frequencies and the opposing bombardment of sound waves from different directions in order to conduct, transfer and convert sound energy and in the process create physical movement and other tangible manifestations in the physical world.”

Mr. Warrenson pauses and stares at us, as if to give us time to let it sink in.

Everyone mostly kind of stares back at him, blank faced, expectant, uncertain.

“Huh?” a boy mumbles.

Me? I’m kind of getting blown away.

Disappointed in our lack of reaction, the Instructor continues. “Let me put it this way. It’s sound, it’s music!—tones and notes—that make those amazing hoverboards levitate! Sound is what makes the bulk of their technology work! It’s mind-blowing! Oh, if only we had more time! More time to get a thorough in-depth look at the functionality, the things I could tell you—But in any case, what’s important is that the one solid reason why you all passed Preliminary Qualification, a reason I can reveal to you now, is that all of you here can more or less
carry a tune.
Or at least you can replicate auditory signals correctly. Which means you are prime Candidates for being able to use Atlantis technology!”

This time the class is paying a bit more attention.

“So.” Mr. Warrenson picks up one of the weirdo gadgets on the table. “What we’re going to do in the very brief time we have, is learn how to use their technology, their computers, their engines, their mechanisms. We—or better to say,
you
—won’t know how or why it works, but at least, by the time we’re done here, you will all know how to use it!”

A curly-haired girl raises her hand. “Okay, does this mean we’re going to be singing in this class?” she quips.

“Actually—” Mr. Warrenson smiles. “You’re not too far off.”

And then he kind of launches into a rambling lecture on music theory. In a nutshell—and believe me, even I am a little bored with the thick overload of
theory
and mega-rambling in this one—in a nutshell, different notes, scales, tones, and progressions of sound waves create real usable energy.

“The Yellow Quadrant,” Mr. Warrenson tells us, “is directly related to sounds and musical notes that are classified as
sharp
. That’s one of the four sound divisions within their system—with the Green Quadrant representing
flat
notes, Red Quadrant referring to
major
musical keys, and Blue Quadrant related to
minor
musical keys. Supposedly they all have special functions and very important roles and meanings in Atlantean science and physics. But all we need to know is how to make the correct musical sounds at the appropriate times and in the right places.”

So, we are going to be singing indeed.

I feel myself freezing up on the inside. . . .

I haven’t mentioned it previously, but
I don’t sing.

And I don’t mean I cannot form notes—I can, reasonably well, otherwise apparently I wouldn’t have passed Preliminary Qualification. What I don’t do is sing for pleasure or for entertainment or for
anything
. I used to love to sing, when I was younger, a tiny little kid, singing along in delight to her opera singer Mom’s arias and solo repetitions. If I can even remember any of it, I think I was even kind of good at it. . . .

But none of it matters.

Not anymore. Not since Mom got cancer and it metastasized to her lungs, and caused her to stop being able to make the gorgeous mezzo-soprano notes, and forced her to quit her musical career and then stop working altogether. At that time something weird happened to me also. I don’t know what it is, and no, I am not being dramatic or a pretentious jerk.

It’s just . . . something.

So, I don’t sing. My brothers and my sister, sometimes they still sing a little, the way we used to do all together, and they still play their instruments—but I don’t.

And so, as Mr. Warrenson starts explaining Atlantean audio gadgets to us, and then makes us echo the notes he makes in a chorus, demonstrating random levitation and other fascinating mechanical functionality, I keep as still as possible, and barely open my mouth.

This class is going to be hell after all.

A
t noon, we break for lunch.

I get up and follow the stream of jostling Candidates downstairs. Some of us stop at the girls or boys dormitory floors to grab our stuff, or a fifteen minute nap, or check our belongings to make sure nothing has been taken from our beds, whatever—not that it would be, considering the immediate threat of Disqualification, and all the supposed security cameras (I haven’t seen any beyond ordinary yet, but it doesn’t mean they’re not there).

I don’t bother. As if anyone is going to steal my books or my cheap trinkets. And I’ve never been one for naps, not even when dead-tired.

Instead, I go directly to the Common Area on the first floor. On impulse I consider skipping lunch and instead heading out in search of Gracie and my brothers right now, right this moment, to see how they’re all doing. Poor Gracie, I can’t imagine how she must be dealing with Agility Training. . . .

As I come down the last flight and enter the landing, still thinking about taking off, I notice a freight elevator right around the corner. It dings, its wide door swings open and I see Blayne Dubois in his wheelchair. There’s no one else in the elevator with him. He uses his hands to rotate the wheels but a wheel appears to get stuck on the small ledge between the elevator and the ground floor.

He looks up, and I see his intense expression.

Normally I’m the last person to stick my nose into other unfamiliar kids’ business, but something prompts me to pause. Especially since in that moment, no one else is around in this spot—all the noise is coming from the Common Area and the cafeteria, and there’s a brief lull as, in the last thirty seconds, no one else has come down the stairs behind me. . . .

“Hi,” I say, and start moving toward him. “Need some help?”

His gaze flits in my direction, and I meet his dark blue eyes.

“No!” he says, just as my hands connect with the back of his chair at the handles.

I freeze, and at the same time the heavy elevator door starts closing in on us, then bobs open again.

“No! I don’t need any help!” he repeats, with a frown. His voice is stubborn, not at all faint or reedy. It sounds stronger than I remember from the auditorium last night, or the Training Hall gym an hour earlier. Since I am already halfway in the elevator, and this is a weird situation, I say, “Oh. . . .”

And then, because the elevator starts to close again, I grip the wheelchair from the back, and give it one small shove. “I’ll just push it over this part here,” I say.

He bites his lip, and up-close I see his angular chin, his pale skin, and the brown wisps of hair falling over his eyes. He appears my age or a little younger, but I’m not sure.