Transcendent (9781311909442)

by Halstead, Jason

  Lily turned to Kami and Trix. “How long have you been here?”

  “We were on the first transports,” Trix said. “You came on the last.”

  Lily’s eyes widened. “The last? But, there were other people!”

  Both of the girls turned to look at Palla. She offered a sad smile. “Venus is the food source for most of humanity; there are regular transports out. It’s possible somebody else might be sent, but I don’t know.”

  “Why? Kami asked. “Was there somebody?”

  Lily blushed and shook her head. “No, uh, no reason.”

  “They’d be sent to a different habitat ring anyhow,” Palla said. “It helps you focus on what’s important. This ring is set up to make your adaptation as easy as possible. It’s even spinning so that the gravity is barely stronger than what you’re used to, but still more than five percent less than Earth’s.”

  Lily frowned. She’d already been told about the physics of the different habitat rings. She was more interested in what Palla considered important. As far as she was concerned, Krys and Devon were very important. Her mom and Krys’s mom had been talking about her and Krys and how obvious it was they liked each other. They were young but they were already talking about her and Krys growing up together and being together. Lily liked the idea; Krys was a smart boy and a hard worker, even if he did worry too much about things.

  “Lily?” Palla asked, pulling her out of her daydream. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, just thinking. Sorry.”

  Palla frowned. “Be careful with that.”

  “With thinking?” Lily asked. Kami and Trix both laughed.

  Palla smiled. “Not thinking—that’s good. I meant daydreaming. Trust me, you really need to focus here and do your best. You don’t want to end up stuck being assigned to a miserable job track the rest of your life because you were thinking about something better.”

  Lily frowned. “I don’t understand. I shouldn’t think about what I want because I won’t get it?”

  “Depends on what you want,” Palla said. “But just daydreaming by itself won’t get you anywhere. You have to work for what you want. Everybody’s equal now; we all have to earn our ways. Everybody gets what they need and we all work towards making life better for everyone. So much better than the lucky few at the top getting everything and everyone else struggling to survive, don’t you agree?”

  “Uh, I guess,” Lily said.

  Kami and Trix both glanced at her and each other.

  “So no more daydreaming, okay? I want to help you ace your aptitude tests!”

  “What happens if I do?” Lily asked. “I mean, it’s aptitude, right? So I can only do as good as I can do.”

  Palla tilted her head. “Well, yes, but the more you learn and focus, the better you’ll be.”

  “And what’s in it for you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Lily saw Kami and Trix both stare with wide eyes at the exchange between the two girls. “Where I come from, we help each other out because we like each other and we know the other people will help us if we need it later. You just met me and you’re older. What are you, fifteen, sixteen? I doubt I’ll be able to help you with anything, so why bother helping me?”

  “That’s the kind of thinking the nearly ruined the human race!” Palla snapped at her. She stopped and took in a breath to calm down. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken like that. You’re just learning. It’s not your fault you were raised on an uncultured planet. We were all so very selfish before President Ondalla showed the human race a better way to live.”

  Lily pretended she didn’t understand the insult about her planet. She’d already upset Palla; there was nothing to be gained from making things worse with her. Especially if she ended up needing help for whatever was coming. “Okay, so when do these tests happen?”

  “The first is in a couple days,” Palla said. “Then at the end of every year until either you’re eighteen or you show a mastery level in something. Whichever comes first.”

  “Wait—how will you help me with all of that? You’re older than me. Won’t you have moved on by then?”

  “This is my career track,” Palla said. “I’m working on my master level and helping you girls is my project. When you succeed, I succeed.”

  “So you do get something!” Trix said.

  Palla glanced at her and frowned. “This is how everything works now. We work together, and when one of us succeeds, we all do. It’s a team effort. My idea was to create mentoring groups like this to teach the concepts firsthand.”

  “How old are you?” Lily asked.

  Palla glanced at all of them before admitting, “Almost seventeen Earth years. Why does that matter?”

  “I want to make you proud,” Lily lied. “I’m going to do it before I’m sixteen.”

  Chapter 9

  “Still think you can do it by the time you turn sixteen?” Palla asked while she and Lily waited outside the testing room for her turn to take her first aptitude test.

  Lily glanced at her and nodded. “I will.”

  She heard Palla’s breath rush through her nose. Was she snorting or surprised? Lily didn’t dare look.

  “Do you even know what you want to do yet? You’re so young.”

  “Did you know when you were my age?”

  “What? No, of course not,” Palla said. “I mean, I knew what I liked doing, but I didn’t realize I could do something with it.”

  “I’ll figure it out,” Lily reasoned. “My parents were ranchers and my boyfriend was a mechanic. I’ll—”

  “Aren’t you a little young for a boyfriend?”

  Lily shrugged. “Small colonies on Venus. We don’t get away; we’re always working. So we learn to make do with what we have. And who we have.”

  Palla smiled. “That was who you were asking about, wasn’t it?”

  Lily felt her cheeks warm. She gave a quick nod.

  “I checked,” Palla said with a lightness to her voice. “There aren't any other transports coming from Venus anytime soon. No reports of additional reeducation candidates either.”

  Lily nodded. She’d checked too. If Krys was still alive, he was hiding. More likely he’d been killed with the rest of them. She pushed the thought away. They were just stupid kids; no matter what their parents said, the odds of them being together were pretty bad. None of that helped the burning in her eyes that she had to blink away.

  The light flashed above the door, catching Lily mid-breath and choking her as her throat seized up.

  “Your turn,” Palla said with a smile that felt almost wicked. “Remember, this is just to give you an idea where your natural talents lie. From here we can work towards figuring out the rest. Don’t expect to do amazing here, okay?”

  Lily forced a smile on her face. “I’ll do my best,” she promised. She stood up from her chair and smoothed the dark blue pleated skirt she wore. Being forced into a uniform that demanded skirts for girls and pants for boys had struck her as odd at first. The new government prided itself on equality, but it was making a distinction between girls and boys? Adult women had the option of skirt or pants when working, at least.

  She walked through the door and heard it hiss shut behind her, trapping her in the testing room. A blue light stretched out on the floor ahead of her, guiding her through a maze of cubicles to one of her own. She took a seat and wondered what was going to happen next. Her wait was over almost before it began.

  The display in front of her blinked to life, welcoming her to her first aptitude test. She read it and acknowledged it with a touch of the screen, and then followed the instructions as it led her through some basic questions and answers that gauged her skill with math and memory. The questions soon became harder, requiring her to figure out patterns and solve harder and harder problems. About the time she started to feel overwhelmed and stupid, the screen flashed.

  “Aptitude phase one completed,” the display read.

  Lily sat straighter, surprised
. She glanced at the floor and wondered if she was supposed to go now. But go where? There was no blue light to guide her.

  “Scoring completed,” the display read, jerking her eyes back up to it. “Stand by for phase two.”

  Instructions flashed across the screen, forcing her to read fast as they scrolled off. It was simple enough: more pattern recognition. She had to touch the screen before the time ran out when she recognized the solution to the problem.

  Images began to pop up, showing multiple pictures that confused her. Crops, insects, sunshine, storm clouds, and then a picture of a long extinct whitetail deer appeared. She studied the pictures and then selected the deer. Another scene appeared, filtering in pictures that she had to connect and then select the one that seemed to stand out the most. She lost count of how many she saw, including some repeats, before the display went blank again.

  “Aptitude phase two completed,” the display read. “Scoring completed. Stand by for phase three.”

  Phase three was about reflexes and hand-eye coordination. There was no real skill to it, just sorting shapes and then guiding objects around obstacles on the screen. She snorted at how easy it was until the screen went blank again. It took several seconds before the completion message showed up.

  Lily endured three more phases of testing, each more complicated than the last. When she finished, she felt exhausted and had no idea how well she’d performed. The message, “Scoring completed,” told her nothing. Did she score high or low? Palla had said it didn’t matter this time around but Palla reminded her of Pita, someone who thought so much of themselves that nobody else could ever compare.

  The blue light reappeared at her feet and started out of her cubicle. Lily jumped to her feet and followed it, heading through the maze of tiny testing rooms back to the door and then stepping through it.

  Palla looked up from her infopad and gasped. “You’re back!”

  “You expected someone else?”

  “Well, yes,” Palla admitted. “You were the last one to go in; you shouldn’t be the first one out.”

  Lily grimaced. “Um, I hope that doesn’t mean I did bad.”

  One of Palla’s eyebrows went up. “Remember, the first one just shows your natural talents. We’ll work from there on what you need to improve and whether you’re inclined towards any area.”

  Lily caught the gleam in Palla’s eyes and it made her heart flutter. Palla thought she was stupid. Was she right? Had she screwed up the test?

  The door hissed behind her, startling her. She jumped out of the way as another girl emerged. She was younger than Lily but she offered a weary smile. Lily smiled back and moved to sit next to Palla.

  “So now we wait?”

  Palla nodded. “Once everyone’s done, they’ll display the results.”

  Lily’s lips parted to let her breath rush between them. “You mean we see each other’s results?”

  Palla smiled. “Of course! This is how we celebrate the gifted and help those who have more opportunities to improve. Remember, our goal is to make everyone a contributing member of society.”

  Lily bit her tongue to keep from pointing out how the thousands of vison her family raised and the hundreds of kilometers of crops her colony raised had contributed to society. She grunted instead and turned her attention back to the door as it slid open again. Two girls came out this time, one after another.

  From there it was almost a steady stream of young women finishing their aptitude tests. Trix and Kami sat next to Palla and Lily when they came out and soon the room filled up until every seat was taken. Once everyone was seated, the wall next to the door shimmered and faded to black. Off-white text appeared on it, offering congratulations to everyone for completing the testing.

  What followed was a listing of the top scoring students for each age bracket, as well as their overall score. A display pane on the other side of the door appeared, listing everyone regardless of age. The master list included their sub scores in mathematics, reasoning, response time, retention, and comprehension.

  Lily felt her cheek flare as she saw her name at the top of the list for the fourteen-year-old bracket. She heard Palla gasp and the excited chatter from the other girls in the room but she ignored it. She jumped her eyes over to the other display and frowned when she couldn’t find her name. She saw they were arranged in order of descending score and noted that she’d scored eight hundred twenty-seven.

  Lily’s jaw had already fallen when Kami shook her and hugged her. “Lily! You’re in sixth place. Out of sixty-seven people!”

  Lily nodded and studied the two charts. It was easy to figure out that the girl in fifth place was in the top spot of the seventeen-year-olds. Fourth place was a sixteen-year-old. The remaining three were on the eighteen-year-old age bracket at the top.

  Lily turned and saw Palla staring at her with eyes so wide she could see the whites all around her pupils. Her mentor’s lips parted and closed a few times before she smiled. “It looks like I’ve found a child prodigy.”

  Lily blushed and shook her head. “No! I mean, I don’t think so. I just did my best. I didn’t think I did that good.”

  “Lily, that list only shows the girls who were tested in this room today,” Palla said. She held out her pad and showed it to her. “Out of everyone who’s tested this cycle so far, you’re ranked at number eighteen.”

  Lily’s eyes widened as she studied the display on the infopad. There were thousands of kids like her being tested. She leaned back in her chair and stared into space, trying to understand how it was possible. “There must be a mistake,” she whispered. She wasn’t that smart! Nobody was that smart.

  Kami blushed and stared at the ground. Her scores were below the average for fourteen-year-olds, especially in math.

  “Don’t sell yourself short.” Trix chuckled at Lily and said, “Besides, if you keep doing it, you’ll help us look a lot better!”

  Chapter 10

  “Krys, get ready!”

  Krys jerked his head up from the holographic display in front of him. He turned it off, making a small three-dimensional image of himself and Lily sitting on a box blink out of existence. Mr. Strain had given it to him after they’d returned to the camp where the survivors had fled. There were only eight of them. Eight out of one hundred and four colonists.

  Rumor had it some people had been loaded up and taken away, but they were kids. Why the attackers would take children while they killed the adults didn’t make any sense. It was the adults who knew how to run the equipment and tend the crops and animals. Then again, if they took the children away, it didn’t matter what they knew.

  Krys shook his head and followed Mr. Strain away from the camp at the edge of the forest. The weather was mild and warm, making survival simple if not comfortable. The worst part was the constant raiding they had to do to get food from the farms. That and the lack of meat.

  “What do you want to learn today, Krys?” Mr. Strain asked him once they’d walked a few kilometers deeper into the forest.

  “I don’t know,” Krys said. “I mean, I guess, what’s the point of it?”

  “The point? The point is to remain free. To do your best to live by your rules, not theirs!”

  Krys nodded. “I understand, but why? It’s going to take until next summer or longer until the seeds we’ve planted will bear any fruit and we don’t dare try to raise any cattle; they’ll spot us and hunt us down.”

  Mig turned and stared into the trees around them. He sighed and nodded. “It’s a shame, son. All this land and we’ve got the run of it. But because it’s so darn safe, we can’t do much.”

  Krys snapped his fingers. “Fish! They seeded the oceans with fish. They must have spread. Why not travel to a coast and live there?”

  Mr. Strain looked down at him and smiled. He shook his head and said, “You remind me of my Lily sometimes.”

  Rather than be offended by the comment, Krys lifted his head. “I miss her.”

  “I do too.”
r />   “I’ll find her, someday,” Krys vowed.

  Mig looked up to the sky. “No telling where they took her, and we don’t learn much more living out in the wild.”

  Krys shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Mig’s lip twisted up in a smile. “I believe you. But you can’t set a thing right if you don’t learn how to defend yourself.”

  Krys nodded. Mr. Strain had been a soldier when he was younger. He’d left it behind when he met Lily’s mom, Avaleen, and they’d come to Venus to learn how to be ranchers. Venus was quickly becoming the only hope for feeding the human race but there weren’t many people interested in the hard work farming hundreds of kilos of crops and animals required.

  “So practice with the rifle or hand to hand?”

  Krys frowned. “There are other ways, aren’t there?”

  “Other ways to fight?”

  “Well, maybe not fight, but to get something done. We don’t fight when we steal fruit and crops.”

  “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” Mig said. “Wouldn’t bother me much to take a few of them murderers out, though!”

  Krys nodded. He felt the same way, but he knew it was pointless. “This is all so stupid,” Krys muttered. “We weren’t hurting anyone! Why couldn’t they just take over peaceful? We’d sell crops to anyone, wouldn’t we?”

  Mig frowned and then nodded. “I expect we would,” he admitted. “But that’s the thing of it: they don’t want to buy them. They expect us to give them away, then they give us back what they feel we should need.”

  “That’s not right!” Krys said. “We grew them; they belong to us, not someone else!”

  Mig patted the air with his hand to signal Krys to calm down. “Yes, son, I know, but that’s the thing people don’t understand. If they won’t fight to protect what they got, then what’s to stop someone else from thinking they can have it?”

  “It’s not right!”

  “But we can’t fight back with only eight of us and hundreds of them.”

  “And they’ve got soldiers and that robot.”