The Other Eight (16 page)

“Oh no. That was too easy. I’m not giving you
a dollar for that.”

“Oh yeah? You try. Double or nothing says you
miss it.”

Chloroplast grabbed a rock from the ground
and started to line up.

“No, no, no. From back here, where I threw
it.”

Chloroplast took position, sized up the shot,
and promptly missed.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Gracias
said with a grin, his hand held out. “Two dollars, please.”

“I’ll pay you when this thing’s over. They’ve
got our wallets, remember?”

“An IOU is always good from a fellow member
of Team Green,” Gracia said with a handshake.

“Someone say IOU?”

All eyes turned to the new voice. It belonged
to Third Person, who was walking out of the
mess-hall-turned-poker-hall. He had a stack of napkins scribbled
with various amounts of money sticking out of his pocket,
presumably from a good run at the poker table.

“Well, look who came crawling away from his
precious card game,” Gracias said. “You get tired of playing old
lady games and decide it is time for a man’s game?”

“Hey, if it was up to me, I’d still be at the
table. They kicked me out because they insisted I was using my
powers to look at their cards.”

“Were you?” Chloroplast said.

“That’s not the important question. The
important question is ‘Can you prove I did it?’ And the answer to
that is no. Hence me keeping the IOUs. Now come on, what’s the
game? I’ve got twenty bucks from”—he checked the napkin—“Omnivox
that says I can beat you.”

“Fine. The game’s Horse, H-O-R-S-E. You hit
the pole with the rock however you want. Everyone else has to do it
the same way or they get a letter. Last one standing collects,”
Gracias said.

“Sounds good. I’ll start,” Third Person said.
He scooped up a rock, covered his eyes, and threw it. The rock
struck the pole squarely in the center.

“How did you…? Oh, wait. You were looking
over your shoulder, right? The whole third person thing.”

“Can’t prove it. Who’s next? Or should I just
collect the win now?”

“Oh no. Team Green doesn’t give up that
easily, hand me a rock.”

Third Person obliged. Gracias took some time
to line up the shot, covered his eyes, and just barely missed.

“Okay, fine, that’s H. But this game’s just
started,” Gracias said. “Try this one.”

He turned sideways and arced it up over his
head, nailing the pole.

“Simple,” Third Person said, searching out
another stone and adopting the same position.

“Oh, that reminds me. I never thanked you for
picking up the stone for me.”

“No!” Third Person said, realizing what was
coming and trying to line the shot up first.

“Grassy ass!”

A burst of dust and sod in his pants had
precisely the effect on Third Person’s aim that one might
expect.

“Game’s tied at H,” Gracias said.

“Well fine,
be
sore losers!” yelled
Johnny as he marched out of the mess hall. He spotted Third Person.
“Hey, you were right, man. Those guys accuse
everyone
of
cheating. You’d think this of all places wouldn’t discriminate
against people with superpowers.”

“Johnny! Come over here!” Third Person said,
trying to shake the remnants of Gracias’s gratitude out the leg of
his fatigues. “Johnny’s on my team. Just give me a minute to clear
out my drawers.”

“Oh ho! We’re making it a team game. Come on,
Chloroplast.”

“Against those two? No thank you.”

“You know what? I’m in,” called Nonsensica
from where she was watching. “
Someone’s
gotta put these guys
in their place. Non Sequitur, come on, it’s game time.”

“Uh… that’s okay. I’m pretty sure they don’t
take too kindly to gambling on a military base.”

Nonsensica glared at him. “Get over here, boy
scout.”

“Fine…”

She turned to Third Person. “Now you pick a
third.”

Gradually the teams expanded until Gracias,
Nonsensica, Non Sequitur, Phosphor, The Number, and Chloroplast
(after a change of heart) were facing off against Third Person and
Johnny On the Spot along with the three other players they could
scrounge up. They turned out to be Undo, who hadn’t been terribly
interested in poker to begin with, Primadonna, who had been kicked
out after a temper tantrum, and Hocker, who had been kicked out
after a
much
more worrying (and much more literal)
outburst.

“Okay, okay. That’s enough. Five on five. The
rules are simple,” Gracias explained. “You take a shot how you
want. Miss the pole and you get a letter, hit the pole and everyone
on the other team has to match it or they get a letter. Powers are
allowed. Everyone has their own letters, but you have to knock the
whole other team out to win. No doing the same throw twice,
one-minute time limit for throws. Twenty dollar buy in, winning
team splits the pot.”

There was a sequence of nods, some more
reluctant than others, and the game began. Non Sequitur ended up
being the first one out after failing to come up with a way to use
his powers to gain an edge in this game and not being the best shot
to begin with. Phosphor, on the other hand, was a surprise MVP,
throwing the stone with uncanny accuracy.

“I get a fair amount of practice hucking
those bulbs around. Once you get the heft of it, throwing one
thing’s just about the same as throwing another,” he explained
after being the only one to score a ringer from forty feet away, a
throw initiated by Undo (who’d had the built-in benefit of being
able to take a second try at each throw without gaining a letter).
“I believe Johnny throws next.”

“Come on, man, you haven’t got a single hit.
What’s the deal? Where are these powers of yours?” Third Person
muttered, handing the disappointed partner a stone. “One more miss
and you’re out.”

“What can I say, man? Sometimes it happens,
sometimes it doesn’t,” Johnny said. He took the stone and
absentmindedly lobbed it into the air as hard as he could. It flew
almost straight up, sailing on a trajectory that didn’t have a
prayer of hitting the pole. At that moment, a bird flew by and
collided with the flying stone. It bounced off and struck the
flagpole on the very top. “See? Like that.”

All eyes turned to Chloroplast, the next
thrower. “I have to bounce it off a bird,” he said flatly. “We
all
have to bounce it off a bird.”

“Those are the rules,” Third Person said with
a grin.

Chloroplast dropped the stone on the ground
and pointed to Johnny. “Screw. You.”

Johnny shrugged. “I get that a lot.”

An hour of play passed. Nonsensica was a
nightmare for the other team, earning them at least three letters
each with well-timed gibberish. She eventually eliminated herself
after a complicated bank shot failed to connect. Despite Third
Person warning his own team to avoid doing anything that even
resembled a favor for Gracias, he stuck in there out of sheer
skill. Hocker rage-quit after Gracias managed to land a shot by
throwing it over the roof of one of the cabins, declaring it to be
a stupid game that wasn’t worth his time. Thirty more minutes of
play and the game was down to the final three: Undo, The Number,
and Primadonna, each on their final letter. The two dancers had
dominated the competition for obvious reasons.

“Okay,” said The Number, “I’ll take it easy
on you, Undo. Step, ball turn, brush, brush, kick ball change,
throw.”

The dancer executed a tight, fluid sequence
of dance moves that brought him close enough to the pole for an
easy hit. Despite a stuttering sequence of retakes, Undo simply
couldn’t get the sequence right and forfeited his final letter. He
walked away muttering as Primadonna picked up his stone.

“Child’s play,” she said, gracefully
executing the routine and scoring the hit. “Perhaps something
tasteful.
”

She strung together a sequence of pirouettes
and complicated steps, ending with a quadruple turn before a light
toss. He matched it and offered up a complex routine of his own.
They traded back and forth, reducing the pole toss to a tap at the
end of an escalating dance-off.

“Come on, Number. Do some flips or something!
Take her down!” Nonsensica urged.

“Yeah, I’d say it is time we ended this,” he
said.

He launched into a routine that was
positively gymnastic in nature, with aerial pivots, rolls, and hand
springs. As it progressed, the cocky expression on Primadonna’s
face began to fade. Just as he rolled to his feet and prepared to
lob the stone for the pole, though, it slipped from his hand and
rolled to Primadonna’s feet. The cockiness returned to her face in
full force, and her team erupted in cheers. The Number dropped to
his knees, eyes wide and staring in disbelief at the fallen
stone.

“There, there, my dear. There’s no shame in
losing to the best,” she said as the losing team scribbled out
their promissory notes and handed them over to the winners. “Even
though that is, what? Two times I’ve bested you on the dance
floor.”

“It’s okay, man. You had her scared with that
one,” Gracias said, patting him on the back.

“It is always something,” The Number growled.
“First the music, now the prop. I’m telling you, if it ever just
came down to pure
dancing,
you’d see. I
know
I can
beat her.”

“Well, hey, you never know. Maybe there will
be a dancing trial,” Gracia said, the pair walking back toward the
cabins. “Like those army dances, with flipping the guns and
stuff.”

“Those are precision drills, not dances.”

“Oh… I
thought
it seemed weird that
dancing was part of basic training.”

Dr. Aiken and
Private Summers were seated in a conference room in DARPA HQ, the
doctor nervously flipping through his notes on the screen of his
laptop.

“I don’t know… Do you have the notes I took
on those team exercises yesterday?” he asked.

“They are transcribed in that little file
with yesterday’s date, Doctor,” Summers said.

“I feel like I took more notes than this.
Maybe I scribbled something in the margin that you missed.”

“I’m fairly certain I typed up everything,
but we’ve got the original notes in storage on-site at the test
facility.”

“But what if it is something important that I
should bring up at this meeting?”

“With all due respect, Doctor, the general is
not very easy to advise. He tends to treat meetings like this as a
regrettable necessity, like colonoscopies. Short of video evidence
of one of the recruits running over his dog or saving it from a
burning building, you probably won’t have much luck changing his
mind.”

“Well, why would they even bring me on the
team if they don’t care what I say?”

“Because policy says they have to. You’re
like one of those maximum occupancy signs—a legal obligation that
nobody pays much attention to until it is too late.”

“You’ve got a real gift for analogy, you know
that?”

“Thanks! I took a lot of creative writing
back in high school.”

The sound of a loudly cleared throat down the
hall signaled the arrival of the general. He opened the door at the
precise moment the clock struck the scheduled meeting time. His
face was a few notches more disgruntled than usual, and the cigar
in his mouth was already well gnawed.

“Dr. Aiken, Private Summers,” he said,
offering a stiff nod to each as he took a seat. “We may have to
keep this short. Some of the yahoos we rejected have been getting
into mischief, and for some reason the press wants to talk to us
about it, as though what those twisted malcontents do has anything
to do with us.”

“I think we can manage that, sir,” Aiken
said. “I’ve been able to conduct some more-thorough interviews,
I’ve been observing the training, and we’ve got the results of the
deeper background checks. I’m pleased to say that for the most part
my initial assessments appear sound.”

“Excellent, that’s what I like to hear. Same
time tomorrow, then?” the general said, standing up.

“Err, there are a few things we need to
discuss, though,” Dr. Aiken said quickly.

Siegel’s expression hardened a bit as he took
his seat again.

“The most pressing issue is The Hocker. I’d
indicated that I had some concerns regarding his self-control and
overall stability, and I think those concerns may be well
warranted. He’s showing clear signs of homicidal tendencies.”

“We are looking for soldiers. From time to
time they are expected to kill the enemy.”

“We aren’t talking about a man who is simply
capable of taking a life. Hocker has been taken into temporary
custody four times for assault accusations, and I’m fairly certain
that if the police had been aware of how potent his powers really
are, they would have upgraded the charges to attempted murder.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Good. Then keep his name near the top of the
list.”

“Sir, in my experience, individuals with his
personality markers aren’t likely to discriminate very well between
friend and foe once the bullets start flying.”

General Siegel considered the words. “Some of
my best soldiers have been a little trigger happy. I’m confident we
can teach him some discipline. There aren’t a whole hell of a lot
of recruits in this batch who have powers so directly applicable to
field deployment. Hocker stays. Move on to the next concern.”

Aiken shot a quick glance to Summers, who
shrugged imperceptibly and took a sip of her coffee. “Well, I think
it is clear that Chloroplast has severe issues with authority.”

“His aptitude assessments aren’t impressive.
Move him to the bottom.”

“I think… wait. Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Just so that I can be clear I understand
correctly, Hocker’s potentially manic bloodlust isn’t reason for
concern, but Chloroplast’s middling score in basic drills and his
reluctance to take orders is grounds for rejection from
contention?” Aiken said.