Peter David: After Earth

Assuming they let him into the Corps, of course. That was by no means certain. Not if Kitai kept having the mini-breakdowns that he was experiencing during these tests.

Well, that was Kitai’s problem, not Bo’s. Bo, for his part, had to focus on the rock wall.

The harness around his chest provided the additional support and certainty required for climbing something such as this. It was secured into ropes that had been set into the wall ages ago. It wasn’t as if Bo really felt he needed them. But they were there and they offered security, so why the hell shouldn’t he take advantage of them?

Suddenly he heard something coming up below him, moving much more quickly than he would have thought. Given the speed at which he was moving, it was hard for him to think who could possibly be catching up with him.

He looked down and could actually feel his heart tightening in his chest.

It was Kitai. Of course it was Kitai. Even more alarming, he was free climbing. Ignoring the drop that awaited him if he lost his grip, Kitai was practically sprinting up the rock face.

“Cadet!” Bo shouted down to him. “Click into harness!”

Kitai was gaining on him. “Slows me down!” he shot back.

Bo tried to redouble his efforts, but it was no use. Kitai shot right past him. It was nothing short of astounding to Bo. Moments earlier he had been in the lead; now he was behind Kitai and fading fast. Even the part of him that warned against worrying about such things as finishing first was losing its dominance. His inner frustration and sense of pride drove him to try to pick up the pace so he could overtake Kitai once more.

It didn’t happen, didn’t even come close.

Instead he watched.

Kitai had reached a point near the very top of the peak. He was on a six-centimeter ledge just below with a face that tilted out by more than ninety degrees into space. That should have caused some hesitation on Kitai’s part. He was, after all, facing every climber’s greatest fear: commitment to the void. Usually such a move required one to take long moments to prepare oneself.

Not Kitai. Without the slightest hesitation, he swung himself out, dangling almost two hundred meters above the canyon below. Having insufficient speed for his first arc, he swung back and forth again and then a third time. The third one did the job, providing enough momentum for him to throw himself up and over and land atop the ridge upside down.

Quickly he scrambled up and around so that he was standing properly on the top of the ridge. He stood there with his arms spread wide, and Bo could distantly hear something. It took him a few moments to realize what it was. Kitai was making aaaahhhhh sounds as if a vast audience were watching him and cheering his achievements.

Oh, that little punk , Bo thought as he clambered the rest of the way.

Kitai was still making the noises of a thrilled crowd when Bo finally joined him atop the ledge. “That was stupid,” Bo informed him, although he was certain that Kitai wouldn’t give a damn what he had to say.

He turned out to be quite correct. “They don’t give statues for being scared.”

“Yeah, but they do give plenty of headstones for being dead!”

Kitai simply grinned as he clipped himself into a futuristic zip line. Bo morbidly wondered whether Kitai might, upon reconsideration, simply toss aside the zip line and just throw himself off the top of the ridge on the assumption that somehow he would float down on waves of his own greatness.

He was destined to be disappointed, because Kitai finished clipping himself in before leaping off the ridge. The zip line drew taut, and Kitai was off on his buzz toward the ground far below. Bo clipped onto the line and leaped off as well.

As they descended toward the ground, Bo couldn’t help noticing all the sights of Nova Prime spread out before him: undulating structures in the canyon, windmill towers and waterwheels making use of the environmentally sound energies that Nova Prime provided them. In the distance there were ships ready to take off, heading toward any number of destinations within the solar system and beyond.

Not bad. Considering we arrived here centuries ago with the contents of the arks and that was all, this is definitely not bad. An appreciable testimony to the cleverness of humanity .

From below him, he heard Kitai giving out a loud war whoop that celebrated nothing else but the speed with which he was heading toward the ground.

Kid never pays attention to anything around him, and he doesn’t even realize it. That’s going to cost him. Cost him a lot .

Over the remaining twenty minutes, the rest of the Ranger cadets, one by one, came sliding down the zip line. It was the last endeavor of the day, and Bo knew that the next day, the results would be delivered. He was feeling fairly confident that he would score high enough to move on. And he had faith in 80 percent of the other cadets.

He just couldn’t make his mind up about Kitai.

As the remaining Rangers gathered, Kitai made no effort to approach any of them. He stayed off to the side, stretching and then doing push-ups. Bo simply shook his head. He couldn’t recall seeing anyone quite like Kitai Raige before. It made him wonder if Kitai’s father had been anything like this when he was Kitai’s age. He almost asked but then remembered that Kitai wasn’t much for talking about his father except in the most reverent terms, and so an honest discussion about what his father was like seemed to be out of the question.

Kitai finished his push-ups and then, without sitting up, flopped back against a small rocky projection. His breathing was completely under control. Then, with a wry smile, he tossed off a salute toward Bo. “Sorry about buzzing past you back there,” he said, and pointed in the direction of the ridge. “Sometimes I get a little…” He shrugged, apparently unable to come up with the appropriate word to describe his behavior.

Obsessive? Competitive? Nuts?

Since none of the words Bo was coming up with seemed any better, he just shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

Kitai leaned forward, ready to talk business again. “You think everyone passed the VR?”

The VR was the Ventax Reactor test developed by Doctor Abigail Ventax decades earlier. It sensed degrees of fear that human beings experienced under conditions such as the tests the cadets had undergone. The would-be Rangers had been monitored scrupulously the entire time.

“Everyone?” Bo snorted derisively at the notion. “Try ‘anyone’ and I’m pretty sure the answer is no.”

Kitai stared at Bo in shock. “Wait. You didn’t?”

Shaking his head, Bo said with a clear air of disgust and discomfort, “Spiders.”

It had been during one of their high-speed chases through a cave. Everything had been going fine right up until Bo had charged through what turned out to be an entire mass of spiderwebs. He’d let out a startled gasp, which had only succeeded in making him inhale one of the webs. Then he had spent thirty seconds coughing violently to expel it from his lungs.

“I hate spiders,” he admitted, and by coincidence, Kitai said the exact same thing at the exact same time. They looked at each other in mild surprise. Then they bumped elbows in a sign of camaraderie. It was an odd feeling for Bo, and he suspected that it felt the same for Kitai.

But hey… spiders. What could you do about spiders? “What was the point of spiders? What function?” Bo asked.

The arks that had carried humanity to Nova Prime had transported genetic samples of every species on Earth. Couldn’t they have left out the arachnid family?

“I just don’t get it,” Bo said in frustration.