Qualify (77 page)

Aeson Kass is up there right now.

He has Gracie’s fate in his hands.

A
few minutes later, I am in the large business office area of CA-2. Laronda and Dawn have gone, to get George, to get me food—Laronda insisted—and Mia went back to Gracie’s dorm to see what’s happening there.

After inquiring at the front desk, I am told that Office #7 is right around the corner and down the hall, one of the first ones on this floor, which is the VIP area.

“But, we are closing for the night, hon, and sorry, but you cannot stay here,” a woman guard tells me. I need to lock up this floor. The Atlanteans work late sometimes, but we cannot have any unauthorized personnel here—”

In a dead voice I explain to her what has happened with my sister. And then, “I am just going to wait in front of his office, until Command Pilot Aeson Kass comes in,” I say. “I can sit on the floor. Please!”

But the woman shakes her head. “I’m really sorry, we cannot let anyone stay here after hours, not without permission—”

“But he knows me!”

“Sorry, no, we can’t do that. Go on now, dear, come back first thing tomorrow morning. . . .”

I turn around and exit the building.

And then I start pacing at the front entrance.

My mind is an absolute, swirling, numb mess. I—the girl who always comes up with solutions—I suddenly have none.

I don’t know how much time goes by, and then I see the entrance doors open and someone exit. Probably an office employee or guard, leaving for the night.

I glance up with a clouded gaze, and it’s Nefir Mekei. I recognize his somewhat shorter-trimmed metallic hair and Atlantean features, the slightly blunt chin with a dimple, and his skin tone that’s the dark red hue of river clay.

My Atlantis Culture Instructor from Pennsylvania!

He pauses, looking directly at me, and then there’s recognition. “Candidate Gwen Lark!” he says with a shadow of a smile. “Glad to see you passed Semi-Finals.”

“Oh, Instructor Mekei!” I exclaim. “Please, maybe you can help me! It is urgent, I need to see Command Pilot Aeson Kass!”

And then I explain to him what happened.

Nefir listens to me with an expression that is so hard to read, as always. And then he nods. “I don’t have a direct line for him, but a general one to his command deck. I will relay a message to Command Pilot Kass for you. He may not get the message until tomorrow morning, when the regular ship-to-ground relays are opened, but at least it will be there waiting for him.”

“Thank you!” I say. “Thank you
so much!
”

Nefir takes out some kind of gadget, and then punches what looks like Atlantean text into it. I recognize the strange hieroglyphic-and-phonetic-alphabet hybrid that is Atlantean script, which looks remotely like Ancient Egyptian and Sanskrit rolled into one. In moments he is done, and hits their equivalent of “send.”

If I weren’t in such a state of mind right now, I might have gotten a kick out of seeing someone texting into orbit.

Instead I nod, looking at him numbly.

“It’s done, Gwen,” Nefir says. “Now I suggest you get back to your dorm and get some rest, and then come back here in the morning. Six-thirty to seven should be a good time to catch him. Kass is never late.”

I thank him again, and start walking.

Overhead, twilight has deepened into night, but down here it is dispelled by the bright street illumination of the compound.

T
he rest of the night is a mess. I remember almost none of it, only that I get back to my dorm and go directly to bed. I don’t think Dawn ever finds George. And Laronda leaves a small plate of food next to my cot before heading over to her own that’s on the other end of the large girls’ dormitory hall of Section Fourteen.

I wake up with a start, just before dawn, and get dressed in the dark, pull my hair into a messy ponytail, then slip out and downstairs, then outside.

The sky is turning to pale silver on the eastern edges, as I quickly walk through the street. Soon, my walk turns into a jog. I run in the crisp dawn air, and in about fifteen minutes I am back at the farthest end of CA-2.

It’s just after 6:00 AM. . . . Should I risk checking the airfield first? His shuttle might be landing soon.

Or maybe I need to head directly to the offices and wait at the door of Office #7. . . .

I grow still for a few instants of painful indecision. And then I decide not to waste any time and head directly to the airfield.

Around the corner, the CA-2 structure ends. Immediately beyond the building is an open street space and then the endless row of hangars begin, interrupted only every hundred feet or so with alley passageways between each structure. On the other side of the hangars, the airfield stretches into an immense paved expanse fading in the distance into a tall imposing wall that marks the edges of the NQC compound.

I pause again, considering my next move. Should I linger here and watch for
his
arrival, or advance forward and walk through the hangars?

To my luck, as I watch the lightening skies, already I can see several Atlantean shuttles approaching. They fall from heaven—grey pinpoint specks that resolve into vaguely oval saucer shapes—and their purple plasma underbellies glitter like cabochon jewels.

Please be on one of them, please be on one of them
, I chant silently.

I walk quickly forward, moving through the narrow walkway space between two nearest hangars, past a solitary guard who glances at me but does not stop me.

The first of the shuttles lands, then hovers lightly several feet above the ground, but does not pull inside the hangar. It is one of the smaller models, exactly like the one I entered on that fateful day of the sabotage explosion. . . .

I hold my breath, clutching my fingers until my knuckles are bloodless with tension.

This has to be his,
I tell myself. It’s the one closest to his office. It would make sense he would park it here.

The shuttle hatch opens and the auto-stairs descend. It’s open in the opposing side facing the airfield, so all I can see are booted feet descending, then someone coming around.

A man emerges, and I can see long metallic blond hair, but it is not
he
—the armband is red, and the face, when he turns toward me, is Atlantean but unfamiliar. Meanwhile more people descend, and I stare as two pairs of booted feet come down.

The next one is a woman, also Atlantean, tall, slender, typically beautiful, but not anyone I have seen before. She wears a green armband.

The third man is Aeson Kass.

My heart does a very painful, hard, extreme lurch, so that my throat closes up, and at the same time it feels like I am going into cardiac arrest. . . .

I see him come around, with his usual controlled and confident posture. I see the crisp lines of his uniform, the fall of his pale metallic hair, and the half-turned lean jaw-line with its hollowed cheeks and darkness of kohl-outlined lapis-blue eyes and dark brows.

Once again the crazy myth-thought comes to me,
he is Phoebos Apollo descended from the skies in his divine chariot
. . . .

And then Phoebos raises his face and looks directly at me.

For a moment he pauses.

And then his face becomes like stone, and he walks toward me.

At the same time I start to race toward him, meeting him halfway from the hangar to the shuttle. And then I stop right before him, breathing hard, and I know my eyes, my expression, it is absolutely crazed, wild. . . .

“Command Pilot Kass!” I exclaim. “Please, I must speak to you! It is urgent! It is about my sister—”

“Candidate Lark.” His cool voice interrupts me. “I received your message.”

“Oh, thank God!” I find that I am trembling.

“We’ll talk in my office.”

Aeson nods to the other two Atlanteans, curtly acknowledges the guard’s greeting, and begins to walk quickly toward the CA-2 building. I hurry at his side, barely able to keep up with his long stride.

We move in absolute silence, crossing the short distance to the offices, and he never once looks at me but stares directly ahead, while I throw quick desperate glances at him, and also say nothing.

It’s as if, for some reason, all of a sudden, cat’s got my tongue. . . .

We walk through the front area lobby, past the guard—a different one—who buzzes the security glass door open as soon as he recognizes Aeson Kass. I follow him, almost stumbling on the anti-static floor mat because I am not watching my feet.

At the doors of Office #7, Aeson takes out a key card and opens the door.

“Come,” he tells me, flipping on the overhead lights. I see basic office space with various consoles similar to what he had back in Pennsylvania, except there is no lounge area here, nowhere to sit but his one high-backed chair behind a wide desk. The console panels line the walls behind him. It’s basically a desk inside a machine room.

I take a step inside.

“Close the door,” he says.

I do as I’m told, and then turn toward him and stand with my hands at my sides, shaking with fine tremors. My hands—what a horrible betrayal of me. . . .

I am suddenly terrified.

Aeson Kass goes to his desk and sits down in the chair. He leans forward, puts his hands on the desk surface, palms down.

What surprises me, in that surreal moment of intensity, is that I can sense
he is tense
also, by the way he holds his hands—straight, composed, under such an excess of control.

Too much control.

“Speak,” he says. And he looks directly at me.

I begin to talk. Strange halting words come out of me, stumbling phrases. . . . Logic out of order . . . a torrent. “My sister Gracie—Grace Lark—she is only twelve, and she is an
idiot
. I mean, a complete little fool, trying to impress a boy. She did not mean—she is just a kid who screwed up, was part of a prank that went horribly wrong—no, okay, I mean she wasn’t really part of it, of anything. She just made the wrong decision, and she is completely innocent—”

“Innocent?” Aeson Kass interrupts me and his voice cuts like a blade. “Innocent implies true ignorance. I reviewed the circumstances of her case just now, and she knew
exactly
what she was doing. Her Disqualification is the direct result of her criminal action.”

“But she is just a
stupid little
twelve year old girl! A kid! I swear to you, she did not mean to harm anyone!” I exclaim, and my voice starts to lose its resilience. . . . I feel a painful lump gathering, and I know that in seconds I am going to crack, and I am going to bawl. “That chip—she only handled it after getting it from someone else—someone who was really responsible! She dropped it in Laronda Aimes’s pocket, and she didn’t even think how much trouble it would cause for everyone. Can’t you see that it was not malice? It was
not
intentional! You cannot Disqualify her for something like that! She does not deserve such—”

“Do you know how many other teens—kids just as young as your sister, and far more deserving—have been Disqualified already, when they simply did not pass the Semi-Finals? And what about all those millions of younger children who did not meet the age requirements for Qualification? Or the older ones? Or the rest of the adult population of your Earth? What have any of
them
done to
deserve
being excluded from rescue and left behind to
die?
” Aeson speaks with measured precision. His eyes are tragic.

“
No one
deserves to die!” I say in a voice that ends on a whisper. “And yes, I
know
. I know exactly what you’re saying. But—this is
my sister
. Do you understand? All justice, all fairness, all comparisons can go flying out the window! Because
I don’t care
. All I know is, I am not going to let my sister go, and I will do whatever it takes to save her!”

He looks at me silently, and the intensity between us is unimaginable.

“I am sorry,” he says. “There is nothing that can be done. She is Disqualified and she is returning home.”

“No,” I say, and my voice rises in strength.
“I do not accept that.”

But as soon as I speak, I can feel it—a prickling sensation along the surface of my skin—I can tell something is different.

There is something definitely strange going on. . . . My voice, it sounds
tangible
somehow. As though the acoustics of it cause a ripple in the air and a reverb in the walls.

Aeson Kass frowns. He then turns his head slightly, while his gaze remains locked on mine. It’s a strange automatic response, as if he’s shaking off an invisible touch. . . .

“Candidate Lark, what did you just do?”

I frown. “I—what?”

“You just used a
compelling
power voice on me?” he says, in amazement and rising anger.

“I don’t know what you mean!”