The Other Eight (18 page)

“Look,” Nonsensica said.

Suspended above the plank, a short distance
past the pivot point but well out of reach, hung the third
flag.

“Simple enough. I’ll go first, then you weigh
down this end, and I’ll rise up and grab it. Hold on to it so I
don’t drop like a rock when I step on,” she instructed.

He nodded and dropped to the platform,
hooking an arm underneath the plank and bracing it. She stepped
onto the plank, and when it seemed that her partner would be able
to manage her weight, she made her way toward the center. Eyeing up
the location of the flag, she nodded to him.

“Okay, take it slow, I don’t want to get
launched,” she said.

“You sure?” he asked, supporting himself on
the platform and slowly putting weight on the plank. “It’d make for
a good highlight for the cameras.”

“If there’s going to be a highlight, let it
be my victory dance,” she said, eyes locked on the flag as it
neared her reach. “More… more… a little more.”

“That’s it,” he said. “I’m bottomed out. Can
you reach it?”

Nonsensica stretched as much as she could,
but the flag was still a few inches out of her reach. “Oh, this is
blatant height discrimination,” she growled. She tried to jump, but
the shift in weight just pushed her side of the plank down slightly
and robbed her of any reach.

“We could swap places, but I don’t know if
you’re heavy enough to tip me up.”

“Nope, it looks like its going to be a launch
after all.”

“That was a joke, Nonsensica.”

“Yeah, well, joke’s over. Reach up to the
platform, pull yourself up a little, then push down hard when I
say.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes! Clock’s ticking!”

He grabbed onto the platform, which was now
about shoulder height, and heaved himself up.

“Ready… now!”

He pulled down again, and at the same time,
she jumped. “Launch” was a charitable word for it, but the
combination was just enough to get her the height she needed to
snag the flag. She came down hard on the plank and stumbled
forward. Slipping on a slick of water left by a prior run, she
nearly went tumbling into the pool below, but she managed to string
step after out-of-control step together until she collided with Non
Sequitur, who steadied himself against the platform and wrapped an
arm around her to keep her from going off the side.

“
Oof
, good catch.” She looked up at
his face, pausing with his arm around her just long enough for the
two of them to become self-consciously aware of it. “Come on!
That’s three flags down, can’t be much more to go.”

With great care, they made their way up, then
down. The next platform was only a few inches above the water. It
was half as wide as the pool of water, and at either side was a
wooden rail, four inches square, ten feet long, and tilted at a
forty-five degree angle. This obstacle must have given the others a
great deal of trouble, because each rail was slicked with the water
of countless splashes. The rails were far enough apart that
straddling the gap between them
might
be possible for him,
but certainly not for her, and regardless, taking a step would be
awkward if not impossible. Worse, dangling in the air over the
center of the run was the fourth flag.

“Okay, so… I balance-beam along this one,
then jump in the middle from one side to the other and grab the
flag on the way, then balance-beam the rest of the way,” she
offered. “Sound like a plan?”

“If you were an acrobat, sure,” he said.

“I can do it! Here, watch,” she said.

She steadied herself on his shoulder and
placed her boot on the rail. The instant she put any weight on it,
her foot slipped out from under her, and if not for him pulling her
back, she would have taken a plunge.

“Okay, maybe not,” she admitted. “So what do
we do?”

He glanced over the obstacle, judging the
distance between the rails. “Uh…”

“Think faster!”

“Okay, okay!” he said. “Uh… here’s what we
do. Grab my arm, and you go over there, I go over here, and we lean
on each other across the gap. That way our feet are against the
wide part of the rail, right?”

“Sounds good, let’s do it. Time’s a-wasting,”
she said.

They each grabbed the forearm of the other
and walked to their respective rails. Steadily they leaned their
weight forward. It took a bit of shifting before eventually bracing
themselves with stiff arms and hands clutching shoulders, but they
found themselves in a precarious but stable configuration.

“Okay, one, two, step. One, two, step,” Non
Sequitur directed.

The pair worked their way sideways along the
rails.

“You know,” Nonsensica grunted, “is it just
me, or has the US Army started taking cues from Japanese game
shows?”

“It’s not just you,” he replied. “Okay.
There’s the flag. You want to grab it, or shall I?”

“All yours, but make it quick. Supporting
your weight isn’t something I’d like to do all day.”

Non Sequitur took a shaky hand from her
shoulder and reached up. He was just able to snag the flag. A bit
more crabwise walking took them to the next platform. The dismount
took a tricky bit of planning, but miraculously they’d crossed the
hazard without getting wet. Now they found themselves on a narrow
platform with a plank wall nearly as tall as the first, reaching at
least a dozen feet into the air. The wall was as wide as the
platform, and there wasn’t anything that even remotely resembled a
handhold or foothold. Solving this riddle didn’t even require
words. Non Sequitur cupped one hand in the other, and Nonsensica
stepped into it, climbing to his shoulders.

“A little bit more. Put your hands over your
head!” she said.

He obliged, and she planted one boot in each,
stepping up and grabbing the edge to pull herself up.

“There’s a rope ladder up here,” she said,
kicking it down. “Hurry up and climb. Next is the fun part!”

He pulled himself to the top of the wall to
find Nonsensica eagerly eyeing up a zip line. There was only one
trolley. It was a heavy duty one though, spreading the load across
two pulleys, with two sets of grips hanging below it.

“Looks like we’re going down together,” she
said, reaching up and grabbing on.

When he had grabbed on as well, they pushed
off the platform and went sailing toward the landing pad that would
end the test. Unfortunately, the instant they started to move along
the line it was clear that something was horribly wrong. Rather
than smoothly gliding along the cable, the motion became a
shuddering grind, and the pulley locked up completely after a third
of the trip, leaving the two of them swinging violently, high above
the water.

“Come on! Come on!” she growled, jiggling
herself up and down in an attempt to get them moving again.

“It’s no good. The pulley came off the line.
The cable’s all bound up on the axle,” he said. “Should we just let
go? I’m sure this counts as extenuating circumstances.”

“What? Oh no. I’m not trusting them to give
me the win on a technicality. Hold on tight!”

“What do you think I’m doing?
Oof
!”

Without warning, Nonsensica wrapped her legs
around his midsection, squeezing him tight for extra support. She
then took one hand away, pulled her non-chucks from her belt, and
released with her other hand long enough to flip them over the
cable and grab them on the other side.

“Okay, grab on.”

“Easier said than done,” he said.

With a clumsy maneuver that nearly dislodged
them both, he transferred his hands in two quick motions,
immediately sending them rocketing along the remainder of the
cable. Sparks flitted from the cable and non-chuck chain when they
struck the ground. The built-up momentum carried the pair in a
tangled-up tumble across the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust
when they rolled past the protective padding and onto the sand
beyond. Finally they came to a stop, piled together in a heap and
choking on the dust.

“Time! Time!” Nonsensica croaked, looking up.
“What’s our time?!”

Sergeant Roberts held out his hand and was
presented with the stopwatch from the soldier posted at the
finish.

“Three minutes, forty-eight seconds.
Congratulations, you’ve set the new time to beat.”

“Yes! Yes! You hear that, Non Sequitur? We’re
the winners! … Non Sequitur?”

She looked down to notice for the first time
that she was laying belly to belly with her dazed partner directly
beneath her.

“Heh, good catch again, I guess,” she said
with a smirk, climbing off of him and offering a hand.

When he stood dizzily on his feet again, she
slapped him on the back. “Way to go, partner. Way to go.”

Dr. Aiken,
Private Summers, and General Siegel were seated in one of the many
conference rooms in DARPA headquarters. During the first forty-five
minutes of the hour they had been enduring a lecture from a half a
dozen of the scientists that populated the building to near
infestation levels. For the last fifteen they had been waiting.
Aiken spent the time enthusiastically reading over the notes
prepared by the scientists. The general spent the time gnawing on
the end of a cigar and quietly vowing to find and execute the man
responsible for the regulation that prevented him from lighting it.
Finally there was a knock at the door, and in stepped Major St.
John with a leather folio.

“Terribly sorry for the delay, gentlemen. It
was simply unavoidable,” he said with the sort of hurried
lip-service quality that made it seem that the phrase had become a
meaningless reflex for him. “Had to have a chat with the boys
handling the web streaming. Those fellas can talk an ear off once
you get them started.”

“St. John, maybe you aren’t aware of this,
but these two stars on my sleeve mean my days of waiting for other
people are over. The next time someone walks into one of my
meetings an hour late, it had better be me,” he fumed.

“Again, I apologize, sir. The timetables on
this little project are stifling. Putting together a large-scale
media campaign in a few days is a tall order.”

“This wasn’t supposed to be a media campaign,
it was supposed to be a top secret recruitment project.”

“All the more reason for me to be late! We
aren’t exactly set up for transparency. All sorts of permits and
special exceptions to security orders to obtain. It’s a
bureaucratic obstacle course. Did I miss anything worthwhile?”

“Absolutely!” Aiken said.

“No,” Siegel said at the same time.

“We got back the results from the testing
done on the limits and function of their powers,” Aiken continued.
“There’s some really fascinating stuff here. It turns out, when
Hocker spits the seeds, they actually accelerate to supersonic
velocity
after
they leave his mouth! The high-speed footage
is mind bending… and a little nauseating. The bulbs produced by
Phosphor are a lot tougher than normal bulbs, and they don’t
contain mercury, which is a relief, because otherwise he’d leave an
ecological disaster behind at every battle. We’ve been able to
confirm that Non Sequitur’s powers are indeed limited to almost
precisely thirty seconds. Bomb Sniffer can smell C4, black powder,
and a host of other explosives at extreme range, but not
accelerants like gasoline or separate binary explosives. The genus
of the grass that Gracias produces is—”

“Dr. Aiken, if you reiterate one more of
those facts, I am going to have you forcibly removed from the
building,” the general growled. “To be perfectly frank, your
fascination with this stuff is beginning to make me think we need a
new psychologist for the project. One would imagine that sanity is
a minimum requirement for psychological testing. Now, Major, what
exactly did you want to talk to me about, before I retire to my
office to open a very expensive bottle of scotch and attempt to
recover some measure of my own sanity?”

“Well, as you know, the edited streaming
footage of the tests and drills has been burning up the blogs.”

“Can we limit this conversation to real
words, please? Words that are part of the English language rather
than some stunted jargon for basement dwellers? No blogs, no
tweets, none of that.”

St. John sighed. “Our publicity machine has
been working wonders. We’re seeing people referring to the project,
and as a result the army, as ‘open-minded,’ ‘forward thinking,’
‘visionary,’ phrases not normally used to describe the armed forces
these days. People are seeing these super-humans as role models who
had the decency to answer Uncle Sam’s call to duty. Enlistment is
up, public opinion is improved, and funding increases are being
green-lit left and right. The only thing holding us back from
taking full advantage of this while it is still white hot is
timeliness. This is the twenty-first century. People don’t want to
wait.”

“Is there a point somewhere in this?”

“Absolutely. There is one thing that all
really great competitions such as this one have in common. A live
finale. I’m proposing that we televise the war game.”

“No. Absolutely not. I won’t have cameras
running on a live feed in a secure installation.”

“I understand, sir, which is why I’ve already
taken the liberty of locating an alternative arena.” He flipped
through the folio and revealed a brochure. “This is a recently
constructed paintball arena forty miles west of the base. It
occupies a similar area and features a simulated facility and even
a sprawling underground complex. The layout is comparable to the
training site, and it has equivalent sentry positions. Best of all,
as long as we arm the troops with paintball guns with the arena
logo on them, the usage of the facility will be free of
charge.”

“You want me to send my potential troops out
with toys to fight each other on a playground…” Siegel rumbled.