Peter David - After Earth

He had seen Velan on news broadcasts since he was a kid, it seemed. He felt like he knew the guy. But there was a world of difference between them.

Cade’s mind raced. Velan wasn’t there to shoot the breeze. He wants names, I bet. And he thinks I’ll be freer with them if it’s a commander doing the asking .

Except it wasn’t going to work. Cade was a lot of things, but a snitch wasn’t one of them.

“Listen,” he said, “thanks for the visit and all, but—”

“I’ll make this short,” Velan said, interrupting him without apology. “I’ve got a proposition for you. You can rot here in prison for the next eight years, which is the sentence you’ll likely receive, or you can do your colony a favor.”

Cade smiled. “A favor…?”

“Yes. You can help us eliminate the Ursa.”

It took Cade a moment to figure out why Velan would want his services in that regard. But before this went any further, he figured he ought to set the record straight. After all, Velan would find out on his own soon enough. “I haven’t exactly earned a reputation for honesty, but I should tell you that what I did in the warehouse—”

“Is exhibit a rare talent. Our psych people think you’ve lived on the edge for so long, fending for yourself, you just don’t react to danger the way other people do. Fear has been replaced with survival instinct. Whatever the reason, it’s a talent we need if we’re ever going to get rid of the Ursa.”

“What I meant to say,” Cade pressed, “is I don’t know how I did it. Or, for that matter, how to do it again.”

Velan shrugged. “We believe your lack of fear enabled you to remain invisible to the Ursa—to ghost . It’s possible it was a one-time thing, and equally possible that the next time you confront an Ursa, it will tear you apart. But it’s also possible that you’ll do exactly what you did before, with or without the knowledge of how it happened.”

“You really think so?”

“Would I be standing here if I didn’t?”

Cade considered the proposition. “So it’s a crap-shoot.”

“Ultimately, the question is whether you’ve got the stomach for a little gamble.”

Cade chuckled to himself. A gamble? “Now you’re talking my language.”

Cade had barely sat down on his bunk in the cadet barracks before he found a woman looming over him, a rawboned woman with dark skin and thick copper-colored hair. He gathered from her rust-brown uniform and the insignia on her shoulder that she was a squad leader. His squad leader if the way she was glowering at him was any indication.

He got to his feet. That was how they did it in the Rangers, wasn’t it? They stood whenever a superior office was in the room.

“You’re Bellamy,” she said in a voice like iron. It wasn’t a question.

Nonetheless, he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m Tolentino. You’re mine now.”

Cade couldn’t help smiling a little.

“Something funny?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Was just thinking that this gig might not be too bad, after all—”

“Get dressed,” she said, obviously not amused. “We’re training at the ravine in twelve minutes. Past the command center, on the left. If you’re late, you’ll be cleaning boots the rest of the day. And just so you know, those boots can get pretty rank.” She seemed to enjoy telling him that. “By the way, the ravine’s a good ten minutes away. I’d get started if I were you.”

Then she left him sitting there.

Screw her , he thought, watching her go. He glanced at the neatly folded uniform on the bunk beside him. She thinks I’m going to jump just because she’s got more muscles than I do?

Really?

Of course, there was the little matter of jail time.

As it turned out, it didn’t take long to pull on a uniform and a pair of boots. Not long at all.

Cade stood on the dusty red dirt flat, shaded his eyes from the glare of Nova Prime’s twin suns, and considered the shiny metal structure bridging the ravine up ahead of him. It was like a child’s set of monkey bars except that the bars, which were held in place by magnetic forces, could reconfigure at any moment.

As he had learned moments earlier, they could rotate, pivot, elevate, or descend. They could cluster together or spread apart. And there was no way for Cade to know in advance which position they would take.

The ravine was ten meters wide and six meters deep, which meant a drop would be painful if not quite deadly. To get through the monkey bars and reach the flat beyond it, Cade would have to adapt. He wasn’t worried. He’d been adapting all his life.

“Ready?” Tolentino asked.

She held up a slim black personal access device. With it, she could stop the bars from moving if safety demanded. But from what Cade had heard about the exercise, safety never demanded.

“Ready,” said Cade, his voice all but lost among six other responses. His fellow cadets were lined up on either side of him, crouching to get a better jump.

After all, the first three to get over the ravine would watch the other four try a second time in the rising desert heat. And the last two in that second group would spend the afternoon cleaning everyone else’s ordnance. So there was an incentive to do well.

Not that Cade needed one. He liked challenges, always had. And this was an opportunity to show the cadets he was as good as they were even though they had been training far longer than he had.

“Go!” Tolentino barked.

The seven cadets took off as one, pelting across the few dozen meters that separated them from the ravine. It took Cade only a couple of seconds to find out he was the fastest of them.

But then, he’d spent his life running from the law.

As he approached the ravine, he lifted his knees and expanded his stride. If he didn’t leave the ground until he absolutely had to, he would minimize the amount of time he spent among the monkey bars.

Three, two, one , he thought. Now jump!

By waiting as long as he had, Cade was able to bypass the first rank of bars. But as he reached between them for a bar in the second rank, it rotated from horizontal to vertical. He managed to grab it anyway, but it slipped through his fingers.

No! he thought as he began to plummet into the ravine.

Fortunately, there was another layer of bars below the first one. Throwing a hand out, Cade hooked one with the tips of his outstretched fingers. And somehow he held on, wrenching his shoulder as he swung back and forth like a pendulum.

His fellow cadets, who had been more conservative in their approach to the ravine, blotted out the suns as they swung from bar to bar overhead. Bitterly, Cade acknowledged that he had outsmarted himself.

Twisting about, he latched on to a bar that put him back on the right path. Then he began handing himself across the ravine, his arms straining hard with the effort.

But as the wall of the ravine loomed ahead, he confronted the fact that he still had to climb back to the top layer. His first impulse was to try to swing himself up and hook a bar with his foot, but he was no trapeze artist. Then another tactic occurred to him.

He waited until he reached the wall. Then he kicked hard, hit the inclined surface, and sprang back as hard as he could. The angle of the wall and the force he exerted propelled him high enough to grab a bar in the upper layer.

From there he swung back and forth and finally, pushing himself to his limits, wrestled himself over the lip of the ravine.

As he got his feet beneath him, he saw that a few of the cadets had already begun sprinting for the finish line. Ignoring the fire in his arms and legs, Cade took off after them.