Qualify

  “Oh my God! Go, go! Go! Just go!”

  George is yelling at the tangled mess that’s me and Logan, and we get our bearings, and then there’s what looks like an opening directly overhead.

  “Everyone, go! Get the hell out!”

  Dawn is pulling Laronda back up onto her hoverboard. Gracie is lying flat on hers, while Gordie is already above us, and he is yelling something in an incomprehensible voice, while the side of his face is bleeding.

  “Up! Up! Go! Go!”

  “What happened?” I gasp out, while Logan rights us, then transfers himself back on his own board that is floating next to mine.

  In answer he cusses, then says, “Goddamn lowlife terrorists! No time! Go, Gwen, we have to get out of here! Rise, now! I’m right behind you!”

  “Okay!” I scream. And then, “Gracie! George!”

  I have no idea what is happening.

  The earth is shaking around us, and it feels like the deep rumbling of an earthquake as cavern walls start collapsing far out along the edges.

  I grab Gracie by her shirt, as she is reeling, and scream at her. ‘Gracie! Sing! You have to go! Up!”

  And then I sing my own command to rise, while screaming people and objects fly all around me, and picking up speed I hurtle upward.

  Toward the ceiling, and the opening to the surface chute.

  Toward the distant sky.

  Chapter 54

  The volcanic walls of the narrow vertical chute tunnel are pressing in around me, and there is no light, except the distant flickering shadows from other people’s flashlights far up overhead, and the receding white glow of the huge cavern below.

  It occurs to me to pull out my own flashlight that still has a faint amount of charge left in the battery. The flashlight casts an erratic, sickly yellow glow on the walls of the chute around me, as I rise and rise . . . up, up, up . . . angling my board at a slightly elevated position on a 30 degree slope, nose up, as I straddle it.

  “Logan!” I cry out a few moments later. “Gracie? You there?”

  “I’m here!” I hear Logan’s strong voice coming from directly below me. “Keep going!”

  And then a few seconds later, I hear Gracie reply.

  “Watch for a hard curve up ahead!” The voice belongs to George.

  Oh, thank the lord! George is here, is okay!

  For the next few minutes we yell out things in the near-dark, just to hear each other’s voices, just to know we’re all still there.

  The curves are wicked. The chute branches here and there, so that it is so easy to run head on into a wall or rock incline. I sing new hover commands every few seconds to correct for the changes in direction and movement.

  This crazy vertical roller coaster ride goes on and on for interminable moments. . . .

  At last, about fifteen minutes later, the chute tunnel straightens out and we are inside a long and wide concrete tube that rises like an arrow straight up, piercing the Atlantic Ocean.

  With the end to the old volcanic portion of the chute, the rise becomes easy, and we all pick up speed.

  The air whistles around us as the boards meet wind resistance. I have no idea how fast I am going now, but it’s fast, and the rounded tube walls of concrete blur into a streak around me.

  The air is still frigid cold, but there’s a new freshness to it, as the musty depths of the earth are left behind.

  I close my eyes momentarily, reeling with exhaustion and remember that I am supposed to be afraid of heights and that I suffer from vertigo.

  It is gone now.

  The stunning realization comes to me—the fact that I am no longer bothered by height, by any of this at all, that fear has receded because of so many other things taking its place. . . .

  And just as I realize it, I suddenly burst through, out of the great tube chute, and into a great wide expanse of sky, filled with golden light. . . .

  And orange sunset.

  I soar up heavenward, my eyes blinking in the sudden radiance, my lungs bursting with the fresh, clean, balmy air. Dots of Candidates on hoverboards fill the sky all around me, like rising distant birds. Or maybe, it occurs to me in a silly flash, we are Halloween Witches, riding crazy brooms, straddling the boards in black silhouette against the sunset.

  I let out a wild laugh, followed by a scream of exultation.

  “Gracie! Logan! George! Gordie!” I scream out names, and laugh, like I am insane.

  And then I turn my head and look higher up in the direction of the Eastern darker portion of sky, and see the hundreds of Atlantean shuttles.

  In the same instant I see right below me, Blayne is flying next to Gracie, and she is clutching him by the hands and barely hanging on to her own board with her legs.

  “Gracie, what happened? Are you okay?” I yell, as the happy drunken joy deflates from me, just like that.

  Gracie sobs and makes little terrified noises, while Blayne voice-commands both their hoverboards to hover in place and then nods to me. “She’s okay, I got her. She spun out, started to fall just now, as we were flying out of the tube, but I grabbed her mid-flight. Remember, Grip of Friendship?”

  “Oh my God! Blayne, thank you!” I exclaim, but he just nods at me tiredly, and sort of disengages himself from Gracie’s desperately clutching grasp. I see his blue eyes flash with some kind of quiet satisfaction as he then rises up and speeds away toward the distant hovering shuttles.

  “See you on the flip side!” he yells in our wake.

  I turn to Gracie, and hold her, silently, as together we rise up to the shuttles, right behind him. Gordie is soaring overhead, and George, just a few feet below.

  At the door of the nearest transport shuttle, an Atlantean stands with a faint smile. He passes a scanner over my ID token, then Gracie’s. They both flash a bright yellow and red light, respectively.

  “Qualified,” he tells us. “And, Qualified. Proceed inside.”

  I pause, breathing deeply, in utter serene disbelief . . . while Gracie lets out a tiny scream of joy.

  Gordie is already inside, seconds ahead of us. He is leaning from the hatch opening, grinning widely, waiting for us. “I Qualified!” he announces. And then Gordie just laughs.

  I turn back, and see George, as he hovers before the shuttle entrance, coming in for his turn. There’s a strange solemn look on George’s face.

  “Hurry up!” I tell him.

  George nods. And then he floats toward the Atlantean who scans his green ID token.

  There’s a brief flash of green.

  And then the light goes out and George’s ID token goes dark.

  I freeze.

  The Atlantean looks at George, and his faint smile changes to a blank look with just a shadow of sorrow. “I am very sorry,” he says. “Not Qualified.”

  “What?” I cry.

  Behind me Gracie and Gordie’s voices have gone out.

  There is wind and perfect silence.

  “Yeah,” George says, breaking that silence. “Yeah . . . I didn’t think I would.”

  “But—this has to be a mistake!” I stutter. “You—you are here, you made it! Your score is great! What’s going on?”

  “It’s your team score,” the Atlantean says softly. “Unfortunately it is below the minimum.”

  “What? No! No!” Now I am crying, big sloppy sobs and fat tears running down my ugly mess of mud-covered face.

  George sighs. “Most of Team B died in that cavern. I suspected this would happen. Too many of us gone, not enough for the team average. . . . The only reason I even bothered to continue this far here was to make sure you guys were all okay, that you got loaded in safely—”

  “No!”

  I stand and bawl, hearing Gracie also crying behind me, while George hovers silently at the entrance, looking at us.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Really.”

  In that moment Logan arrives, and his expression is serious as he pauses there and hovers next to George. He does no
t appear surprised that I’m bawling, doesn’t need to ask why. . . .

  The Atlantean passes the scanner over Logan’s red token. It flashes and remains lit. “Qualified, proceed inside,” the Atlantean says, nodding at him, almost with relief.

  Logan gets off the board and steps onto the shuttle. He then holds me silently as I shake with weeping, and only acknowledge his own glorious moment of Qualification with a nod and a pitiful grimace that is trying to be a smile.

  “George!” I cry, freeing myself from Logan momentarily, like a crazed maniac. And then I hurl myself at George, pulling him in, drawing him to me and smashing my face hard against the front of his dirty wet uniform shirt as he leans in tight against me.

  We remain stilled this way for a few long seconds, while Candidates crowd the entrance.

  “You need to make room for others, sorry,” the Atlantean tells us.

  “Just one more second! One more stupid tiny second! It’s my brother!” I cry, holding George’s shirt, his arm, his shoulder.

  “Okay, but say your goodbyes on that side of this door. Move back and make some room for other people to pass,” the Atlantean says.

  I let go and move back, to now let Gracie bawl all over him. Gordie moves forward and presses his brother on the shoulder, and just leaves his hand there.

  Finally George disengages from all of us. His eyes are moist, but he grins, and it’s the familiar, wily, Cheshire-Cat George-smile, and it’s painted bright by the orange sunset.

  “Hey, hey, now! Listen, I’ll be okay!” he says, getting back on the hoverboard. “Mom and Dad will be glad to see me, and honestly, I think we’ll manage somehow! Screw the blasted asteroid, it’ll all be okay in the end!”

  “No, George! I am not letting you die here, I don’t accept this!”

  “Come on, Gee Two, no one’s dying here, you’ll see—in a couple of hours they’ll send a bunch of ships or choppers to pick us up and take us back home—”

  “That’s not what I mean!” I scream.

  But George is starting to move away, singing the hover command to descend, and now he is two, three, five, fifteen feet away, painted bright orange gold . . . a magic wizard flying on a hoverboard broom in the sunset.

  “I love you!” I scream, and my knuckles bite against my mouth.

  And then, for one crazy moment, George spreads his arms wide and starts to sing on top of his lungs:

  When that I was and a little tiny boy,

  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

  A foolish thing was but a toy,

  For the rain it raineth every day.

  It’s the fool’s song. . . . A song we all know, something that Mom used to sing both with a harp accompaniment and a cappella, and we kids joined her in harmony. It’s music from Shakespeare, of all things, “Feste’s Song” from Twelfth Night. Only the Lark family would sing something like that and not bat an eyelid.

  And now, here we are. . . .

  George’s gorgeous baritone soars in the air, and I take a deep breath, swallow shuddering tears, and then join him, because I must.

  But when I came to man’s estate,

  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain . . .

  I sing. . . . My voice begins breathy and quaking, and then it grows steady and gains power. Soon it’s deep and rich like the sun setting in the Atlantic as I sing the second verse without stumbling. As I do so, I see George nodding to me, because, yeah, for the first time in years, I am singing again.

  I am singing.

  Suddenly Gordie joins in, and his tenor is clean and perfect like the air around us:

  But when I came, alas! to wive,

  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain . . .

  And oh, but then Gracie does too! She picks up the next verse, and her bright soprano soars like a morning lark on the wind:

  But when I came unto my beds,

  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain . . .

  And in the end we all sing the last verse together, and our harmony rings in strange wonder. . . .

  A great while ago the world begun,

  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain.

  But that's all one, our play is done,

  And we'll strive to please you every day.

  And then there is silence. George is so far away now, a distant speck far below. He turns around one last time, and waves vigorously, and then he flies away, like a blazing meteor.

  I stare for a long moment, then I go inside the shuttle.

  There’s Gracie, and Gordie, and Logan, solemn, shaken. Gracie is weeping softly, again. The rest of my friends are getting on board other shuttles.

  In a few moments we will rise high up and cut through the miles of atmosphere, and we will be in orbit. Sometime soon after that, we will be inside monolithic ships, heading for the stars.

  Even now, he is on one of those great ships—he, the golden-haired sun god, son of Kassiopei, and of an ancient empire, and somehow I matter to him. . . .

  No, no, no . . . I told you, I don’t accept it, George, silly, silly, I mumble, for many endless minutes afterwards, as I am strapped into a harness. Then I sit in a daze, as the sunset fades and probably the sky outside turns indigo, but I don’t know any of it, since there are no windows to look out, here in this damn alien shuttle.

  As the Earth recedes, and gravity squeezes me into a bottomless abyss, I think of Mom and Dad . . . of Vermont autumn foliage . . . of maple syrup. 

  “I promise you, the Lark family will Qualify, hands down, all four of you!” Dad had told us, on that last day, two months ago.

  Qualify or Die.

  But, no, I whisper in the silence of my own mind, I reject it. . . . With hey, ho, the wind and the rain . . .

  There is no “or” for any of us. Because there can be no “Die.”

  George, Mom, Dad—I am coming back for you somehow.

  All of you.

  I will win the Atlantis Grail and turn worlds upside down and inside out, and I will come for you.

  There is only one acceptable answer for anyone human.

  Qualify.

  The End of QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail, Book One

  The story continues in . . .

  COMPETE: The Atlantis Grail, Book Two

  Available Now!

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  Other Books by Vera Nazarian

  Lords of Rainbow

  Dreams of the Compass Rose

  Salt of the Air

  The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

  The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass

  Mayhem at Grant-Williams High (YA)

  The Duke in His Castle

  After the Sundial

  Mansfield Park and Mummies

  Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons

  Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret

  Vampires are from Venus, Werewolves are from Mars:

  A Comprehensive Guide to Attracting Supernatural Love

  Cobweb Bride Trilogy:

  Cobweb Bride

  Cobweb Empire

  Cobweb Forest

  The Atlantis Grail:

  Qualify (Book One)

  Compete (Book Two)

  (Forthcoming)

  The Atlantis Grail:

  Win (Book Three)

  Survive (Book Four)

  Pagan Persuasion: All Olympus Descends on Regency

  Thank you for your support!

  About the Author

  Vera Nazarian is a two-time Nebula Award® Finalist and a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at 17, and has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, honorably mentioned in Year’s Best volume
s, and translated into eight languages.

  Vera made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose, followed by Lords of Rainbow. Her novella The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass made the 2005 Locus Recommended Reading List. Her debut collection Salt of the Air contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated “The Story of Love.” Recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Finalist novella The Duke in His Castle, science fiction collection After the Sundial (2010), The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration (2010), three Jane Austen parodies, Mansfield Park and Mummies (2009), Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons (2010), and Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret (2012), all part of her Supernatural Jane Austen Series, a parody of self-help and supernatural relationships advice, Vampires are from Venus, Werewolves are from Mars: A Comprehensive Guide to Attracting Supernatural Love (2012), Cobweb Bride Trilogy (2013), and Qualify: The Atlantis Grail, Book One (2014).

  After many years in Los Angeles, Vera now lives in a small town in Vermont. She uses her Armenian sense of humor and her Russian sense of suffering to bake conflicted pirozhki and make art.

  In addition to being a writer, philosopher, and award-winning artist, she is also the publisher of Norilana Books.

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  https://www.veranazarian.com/

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