Michael Hudson: Thieves of Light

"Hornworts?" Jarvis said lightly. "I think that's something you get from handling tuba players."

Laughter filled the room, uniting the class with him and against Mrs. Martini. But it was a costly escape, for his teacher's face frosted over.

"See me after class," she said, and turned to a student in the front row for the answer.

Denise glanced his way, hair falling over one eye, and laughed amusedly.

At him.

Slumping back in his seat, Jarvis tried to look like he was listening. But his mind was begging, Get me out of here -

When the bell finally rang, Jarvis waited until most of the other students had noisily filed out before gathering himself together and approaching Mrs. Martini. She ignored him as she collected her teaching notes and placed them in a soft-sided briefcase.

"I have to catch the bus," he said finally, prodding her into taking note of him.

"Since when do seniors ride the bus?" she asked without looking up. "Don't you ride with-David Reynolds, isn't it? He'll wait for you."

Not long, Jarvis thought. Not with a Friday four o'clock reservation at the Photon Center and a tournament tomorrow. "Not long."

"Then he's not much of a friend, is he?" Mrs. Martini asked, retreating behind her desk. "In any case, you only live about eight blocks from here. Staying a while won't be any hardship."

Jarvis crossed his arms over his chest in an unconscious defensive gesture. "You seem to know a lot about me."

For the first time she looked at him. "For better or for worse, Christopher, you're the kind of student that teachers are aware of."

"I guess you're going to tell me that this time it's for worse," Jarvis said. "Look, I'm sorry I made fun of you. I didn't mean anything personal by it."

"You didn't make fun of me," she said, sitting in her chair. "You had a chance for a cheap joke and you took it. Probably because the truth was a little too uncomfortable."

"The truth?"

"That you weren't listening. That you weren't prepared. How many chapters behind are you in your reading?"

"Just a couple."

"Just a couple," she repeated. "When are you planning to catch up?"

"I'll be ready for the test."

"Just ready enough to just barely get by," the woman said pointedly. "I don't understand you, Christopher, and I don't mind admitting it. I looked at your file, your aptitude scores. You can handle this material with ease. But you don't seem to care enough to make the effort for excellence. What's going on?"

Jarvis bristled. "If you're trying to ask me if I'm having a problem with drugs, the answer is no."

Shaking her head, Mrs. Martini answered, "I'm trying to ask how I can help you get more out of your ability."

Jarvis dropped his arms to his side and slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Look, I only took Botany Survey because I needed a senior science course and it was the only one without a lab. That makes me no different than half the class."

"And that's enough excuse for you? That there's others who don't care either?"

Christopher sighed. "Mrs. Martini, I know you mean well and all that. It's just that I don't see any sense to memorizing things that I can dig out of a database in a thirty-second dial up with my dad's PC. There's a lot more facts out there than I've got brain cells."

"Even if you're right, there's something to be said for learning to think."

"I do all right in that department. Isn't that what those tests said?"

She stared at him. "You think you have the world pretty well figured out, don't you?"

"The part of it I know, anyway."

"It's such a shame. I'd love to see you go all-out sometimes," she said with a shake of her head.

He smiled and ran his fingers back through his blond hair. "Come down to the Center sometime."

"The what?"

"The Photon Center." He flexed his muscles and struck a combat pose, knees flexed, hand gripping an imaginary phaser pistol. "Meet Bhodi Li, champion of justice."

Her look was one of disdain. "It's a game, Christopher. It's not life."

"Not life," he corrected. "Life and death. Is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about, Mrs. Martini?"

She threw her hands in the air resignedly. "No."

David Reynolds was waiting for him at the curb outside the school's main entrance, the engine of his 1970 Skylark convertible rumbling impatiently, his slightly shaggy black hair blowing in the breeze.

"Almost gave up on you," Reynolds said, slipping back behind the wheel as Jarvis climbed in from the other side. "Figured she was using you as mulch for her hornworts."

"Nothing so serious."

The car lurched as Reynolds coaxed the shift lever into drive. "Which speech was it?"

"The worried-about-my-future speech," Jarvis said. "Didn't have much zip to it, though. It seemed like she felt like she ought to be pissed at me, but couldn't quite muster the energy."

"Well, it's Friday afternoon for her, too," Reynolds said, gunning the engine as he guided the car through the mostly empty parking lot.

"True," Jarvis said. "It's probably just as tiring to be boring as it is to be bored."

The lot outside the Photon Center was more than half full, which meant a crowd inside. Though they were in time for the first match of the hour, they were late enough that they ended up on opposing teams for the first time in months, Jarvis with the Red, Reynolds with the Green.

As he strapped on his chest pod, which bore the infrared sensor, and the battery belt which powered it, Jarvis sized up the opposition. All but one was familiar, and the newcomer was a nervous-looking thirteen-year-old who would almost certainly end the match with a negative score.

Beside David, who used the name Kuda Lambda, there were four other strong players on the Green team. Though he knew what to expect from them in the arena, he did not even know their real names. He knew only their Photon names-Gor, Black Eagle, Oz, and Mordred. Together with Kuda Lambda, they would provide a stronger than usual challenge.

So much the better, Jarvis thought, pulling the helmet down over his head and adjusting the visor. There aren't any twinkies on a tournament team.

Jarvis showed considerably less interest in the members of his own team. The six-and-a-half-minute matches were fast-paced enough that, in a pickup match like this, most of what passed for strategy developed spontaneously on the run. Besides, most of his success at the game had come as a loner.

That didn't mean that there was no benefit to having someone watching your back, but successful team play was more a product of practice than planning. Warriors that fought together often developed an almost instinctive synergy that made them more effective together than separately. But strangers who tried to duplicate that interaction usually ended up worse off than if they had all fought solo.

The warning alarm sounded, and the combatants filed in to take their places in the arena. While the referee ran through his familiar list of admonishments, Jarvis caught Reynolds's eye and nodded, as though offering a salute. Reynolds grinned back and touched his gloved finger to the side of his helmet.

"Welcome, Photon Warriors. Commence strategic maneuvers at audible command," boomed the canned voice of the Master Computer. "Signal: five: four: three: two: one:"

Colored lights began to flash and the pulsing beat of rock music filled the arena as the players dashed for their chosen objectives. Bhodi Li sprinted up a ramp toward the sniper's nest on the forward deck, then flung himself flat on his stomach as two Green players came storming up another ramp from the opposite direction.

Before his opponents had even seen him, Bhodi had tagged each of them with the beam from his pistol. Twenty points off the top, Bhodi thought, scrambling to the left for the shelter of a low wall.