Dove Arising (10 page)

DAYS PASS, EACH FILLED WITH UNFORGIVING exercises with torture devices ranging from jump ropes to the climbing wall. While many trainees don’t finish the assigned workouts, I try too hard and sometimes end up on the floor because of my clumsiness. Eri continually complains about blisters on her feet. My own muscles smart every time I move, but I know the tears in the tissue will soon heal and increase my strength. On days when we run less than two kilometers, I jog around the training center after Yinha dismisses us, hoping that Cygnus and Anka are sleeping soundly and growing tougher along with me.

Although I miss home, I’m no longer lonely. After a few days and nights sleeping near my new acquaintances, I feel I’m better integrated into the group, though Nash still tries to ignore the fact. Slowly, I learn how to socialize with three people at once—and female ones to boot.

One day at lunch, I catch Vinasa staring in my direction. Not into my eyes, but at the top of my head. “I wish I had your hair, Phaet. Mine’s such a wild mess! It’s so thick, I can’t hold it all in one hand.”

“Cut it off, then!” Eri laughs.

The two girls look at me, heads tilted to the side, and wait for my reply—something I’m not used to from my friends. From Umbriel, that is.

“Straight hair goes in one direction,” I say. “Downward. Unless you’re in zero-grav. It’s not much fun.”

As my companions laugh, I almost feel the table rattling.

“Vin’s hair is more downward-oriented than mine,” Nash says, glancing at me with a smile. “I’m half Saudi, a quarter Nigerian, and a quarter Jamaican. Makes for an explosion on my head when I get up in the morning.”

“Indian and Irish,” Vinasa shoots back. “Kapow all the same.”

Nash admits defeat. “Cheers,” she says, and the two girls clink their water bottles together. Amused, I spear three kidney beans with my fork and eat them one at a time. Nobody’s ever complimented me on my strange hair before.

Sometimes younger people jabber about the Earthbound countries their ancestors came from. Although most of those places don’t exist anymore, discussing them makes people feel special. They’re proud of their forebears’ accomplishments, and I’m not immune to that immodesty. After a long-ago conversation with the Phi twins, I peppered Mom with questions and learned that China’s coast once boasted magnificent cities with willowy steel structures and frolicking lights, but the buildings toppled and the lights fizzled when the sea spilled onto the land. Whenever our teachers in Primary hear these discussions, they ask us to focus instead on our Lunar national identity. A few kids consider their particular genetic inheritance a source of superiority; if they do anything to show that belief, the incident shows up on their criminal records.

For that reason, talk of ancestry also is supposed to be taboo in Militia.

“You worried, Stripes?” Nash teases me, lowering her voice. “It’s too loud for the Committee’s toadies to hear us. I mean, they shouldn’t be listening, anyway.”

“Shh!” Eri says. “Don’t get us in trouble.”

“Trouble dee, trouble doo.” Nash dares herself to speak out against the Committee, as if testing to see how loudly she can talk before she’s caught. Her behavior frightens me, but I like her for it. If only more people were brave enough to state the obvious.

As Eri smiles and Vinasa giggles, a sudden pleasant thought fills my mind and makes my blood run warm through my veins: I have more of a social life in Militia than I ever did in Primary.

When the first evaluation arrives, the soreness is mostly gone and I’m ready to show the instructors what I can do.

Today, it’s not Yinha’s grating voice sounding in my ear but Colonel Arcturus the Assiduous’s. “There’s a point system, trainees. No need to know the details. We will simply watch you run, perform feats of strength, and spar with one another.”

When the trainees run laps, I place myself just behind the fastest few. I manage forty push-ups before collapsing, a fifty percent improvement from a week and a half ago. After the jog, Arcturus announces point deductions: two off for three girls who skipped instead of ran, even though they insist that it kept them motivated. He docks points from five people, including Vinasa, for inadequate push-ups—they failed to bend their elbows a full ninety degrees. Taking into account my improvement and Arcturus’s critical eye, I estimate that I’m at the seventieth percentile. Wes sits at the ninety-ninth.

The instructors assign us our sparring partners this time, usually of the same sex.

“Vinasa Epsilon and Halley Nu,” Arcturus reads off. “Io Beta and Phaet Theta.”

Io is the dark-haired girl who yawned conspicuously on the first day of training; she’s proved to have a tendency to daydream and has hazel eyes that can’t decide whether to stay open or closed. This round should be no problem.

“One point off Io’s score for untied shoelaces,” Arcturus says.

Io squats in the middle of the floor like a child and manipulates the string into clumpy knots. A strangely parental feeling warms my heart. I hope that I won’t give her any serious injuries during our match.

This time, I’m conscious during the other fights, so I’m able to observe. Fights between girls are skittish, those between boys, ferocious. Nash loses to Callisto and, swearing hoarsely, exits the ordeal with a bruised collarbone and a sprained ankle. Callisto breaks down weeping. “I didn’t mean it! Oh, Nash! Didn’t mean it!”

Behind me, Jupiter’s de facto sidekick Ganymede snarls: “Tell Callisto to watch out, Jupe. Nashira’s people started that sneaky oil embargo; who knows what
she’ll
do? It’s in her blood. . . .”

Nash is one of those citizens, like me, whose Earthbound origins are plain in her features. And Ganymede’s one of those rare idiots who derives superiority from genetic inheritance. I wonder if he’s ever gotten in trouble for it. His confident brutishness makes me suspect not.

“She tries anything, and I’ll break her damn nose,” Jupiter says.

Furious, I consider telling off the two bigots. But I don’t, because I shouldn’t make enemies.

Vinasa swivels her head and does it instead. “Say that to Nash’s face next time, vacuum-heads.”

I add, “Yes, you won’t be saying much afterward.”

Eri and Vinasa gawk at me for a long time before giggling with satisfaction. Jupiter and Ganymede look away, their jaws set like stones.

Soon it’s my turn to fight. I breathe deeply, forget Ganymede’s comments, and focus on my opponent.

The lights blink green. Io canters in a winding path toward me. Before we collide, I swerve to one side and hook a foot behind hers. She trips and sits dazed on the ground. Three seconds later, we’re done. It’s the shortest fight of the day, which should help my ranking, though I’m offended that the instructors gave me such an easy opponent. Perhaps they thought Io was all a fifteen-year-old could handle.

The last fight pits Jupiter against Wes. If Wes wins, his score will be dangerously high, but I’m rooting for him.

The crowd takes a colossal inhale as the two boys face each other. Jupiter’s forward-leaning posture and flexed muscles inflate his stature even more. Wes, who has just over half Jupiter’s bulk, stays loose by shifting his weight from left to right. He can’t win by normal means, but recent observations considered, I don’t think he’s normal.

“Ready for a week in the Medical quarters?” Jupiter hollers, wanting us all to hear.

Wes chews on his lips in concentration.

“Go!” shouts Arcturus.

As Jupiter makes his customary stampede forward, Wes turns on his heel and bolts in the opposite direction.

Callisto stands, hands clasped to her heart, her striped hair disheveled. Ganymede pulls her back down by the wrist. On the floor, Jupiter puts on an extra spurt of speed. I hold in a snort—he leans so far forward that a push from behind would land him on the ground, bulbous forehead first.

Wes has been running straight this whole time, and he’s getting precariously close to a wall. Jupiter gains from behind.

A moment before they collide, Wes launches into a handspring and pushes off the wall with his feet into a complex flip. While Jupiter grabs at empty air, Wes extends his legs and knocks his adversary’s head into the wall.

Jupiter rocks in agony on the ground, but only for a moment. His arms stir. Wes darts in the other direction and stops in the middle of the floor to catch his breath. He beckons with his hand to Jupiter, who doesn’t have the breath to curse at him. When Jupiter nears him, Wes takes off in a perpendicular direction, and Jupiter overshoots once again.

“Go, Wes!” shouts Eri, adding her voice to the cacophony. In my excitement, I grab her hand, and she squeezes back, hard.

Jupiter slows to a jog, with little malevolence left to sustain him. Sensing weakness, Wes shoots forward and launches an aerial side kick at Jupiter’s jaw.

Jupiter stumbles. With his other leg, Wes delivers a kick to the rib cage, which finally fells the massive boy.

Wes doesn’t give him a final satisfactory stomp or even put his foot on Jupiter’s chest, as Jupiter did to me. He simply waits, his fist drawn back in case the bigger boy tries to get up again.

One, two, three.

We drown Wes in claps and cheers. Even Arcturus’s announcement, “The victor is . . . Wezn Kappa!” dissipates in the din.

As Wes shyly waves at his new devotees, I feel the same amazement as when I first watched a ship take off in a miasma of dust.

10

TWO DAYS ELAPSE BEFORE RANKINGS ARE posted on the scoreboard in the training dome.

This evaluation is important, but there are three more left, each with progressively more weight, for a total of four. The Committee has always liked the number four. It’s a perfect square, the number of directions on a compass, the number of limbs on a human. Mom hates it. When she was young, her grandmother told her that the word for “four” in her native tongue sounds almost the same as the word for “dead.” I believed four was unlucky until first-year Primary math showed me that numbers are just quantities.

Wes’s name crowns the top of the list. Next is Jupiter. Orion Nu follows, then Callisto Chi. I’m fifteenth—surprisingly high, but not good enough. Cygnus, Anka, and Mom need me to do better than this.

Beside me, Callisto turns around and gives a thumbs-up, a weak sign of approval supported by a weak smile. She runs off before I can respond.
Why is she so civil to me?

“Congratulations, Stripes,” says a knowing female voice behind me. It’s Yinha, riding on one of the hover-chairs. I’ve never heard her speak without crackly amplification. “You’ve made a lot of progress recently. Cool.”

She pats me on the shoulder before gliding off.

To my right, a cluster of people congratulate Wes on his placement. He stares down, not meeting their eyes. When he sees me seeing him, he gives me a low-wattage smile before looking elsewhere.

I get a feeling in my stomach reminiscent of free fall.

“Hey, Stripes.” Nash’s voice jolts me from my inexplicable nausea.

I snap to attention.

She’s standing to my right. “I placed twenty-second. Not great, but not bad either. You, lady, seem to have a shot at the top.”

I think of Wes, with his flying kicks around the floor, and shrug.

“Also . . . thanks for sticking up for me to Jupiter’s posse. Yeah, I heard about that.”

“You’re welcome,” I say.

Nash suddenly looks bashful. She checks her handscreen. “Well. It’s only 16:00 and we’re off for the rest of the day. I’m gonna go to the Exchange and buy some stuff with Vin. Want to come?”

I don’t have money to spend, but I’m grateful that she’s trying to make up for her former coldness with an offer of—could it be?—friendship. I shake my head.

“I’ll see you later then.” Nash pats my forearm affectionately and takes off.

With all the noise, I feel an acute desire for solitude. Sliding out of the training center, I venture into the huge complex of the Medical quarters. I’m not sure if it’s allowed, but if Wes does it, so can I, seeing as the instructors haven’t stopped him.

My muscles feel pretty good. We only did some light strength training and basic weapons instruction before the rankings list was posted. So when I reach a long, empty hallway, I set the timer and distance counter on my handscreen and run.