"They haven't been up against ours," Morse said, leaning back in his chair with his arms across his chest.
"Look, if you don't want to do it that way, it's no skin off my behind," Reynolds said. "I only thought-"
"David's right," Jarvis said quietly. "I've been fighting myself all day trying to be a team player, taking that extra moment to try to sync what I'm about to do with whoever was nearby. It just isn't my way. Let's do it David's way. You'll all come out of it even, or even a couple hundred down a man. I'll get us the margin we need."
Jarvis was so collected and determined that there was no further argument. Instead, Morse glanced at his watch and stood up from the table.
"Time to go back," he said. "Let's do it. Let's get 'em."
Even before the match began, Jarvis knew how it would come out. Standing in the runway waiting to be called into the arena for introductions, he systematically shut himself off from the distracting stimuli and recaptured the clean focus of his early morning meditation. If he had been interrupted, he could not have said exactly what it was that he was thinking. He only knew that when the Klaxon sounded, he was ready.
And from the very beginning, the transformation was complete and miraculous. Bhodi Li ran, spun, dove, rolled, pounced. His attack was reckless, and his out-of-control style played havoc with the Panzer Boys' deliberate, structured strategy.
With Reynolds providing unacknowledged and often unrecognized help, Jarvis ambushed their ambushes, stalked their scouts, and picked off their snipers. He appeared behind them as they cautiously approached what they thought was his hiding place. When he could, he challenged an opponent's reflexes in the open floor, one on one, and usually came out best.
By the four-minute mark, the outcome of the match was no longer in doubt. The Panzer Boys had twice retreated in disarray to their base to regroup. The second time their discussion sounded more like a fractious argument, and when they came out that time, it was with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
The only remaining question was whether Bhodi Li could break Evan Kyley's arena record. As his total climbed past 2000, the game operator posted the record on the main score-board, and the audience in the gallery suddenly came alive.
"Bhodi, Bhodi, Bhodi!" The chant started with a half-dozen of Jarvis's friends and quickly spread through the gallery. Hearing it, two of the Panzer Boys started falling back toward their base goals as though they had at last found something to motivate them-denying Bhodi Li the base and the record.
Jarvis was aware of their movements, but only subconsciously aware of the crowd. Before the reinforcements could reach cover in front of the base, Jarvis burst from the alcove and surprised them from the side. He took out both on the run and dove into a shoulder roll that brought him directly in front of the base and its lone defender. Whipping his phaser up to eye level, he squeezed off two quick shots, ending the duel before it could begin.
Bouncing to his feet, Jarvis advanced on the base, savoring the moment, raising his weapon with triumphant deliberateness. Now he heard the chanting of his warrior name, the heavy rhythmic clapping from above somehow one with the thrumming of his own racing heart.
This is the way it's supposed to feel, he thought, and squeezed the trigger three times. The base's lights flashed to confirm the hit, and on the Scoreboard high above, Bhodi Li's score changed to 2520. Instantly, the cheers crescendoed to a roar, a roar that drowned out the music.
But in the next moment, everything changed. The roar was suddenly choked off, and all Jarvis could hear was a sound like a dozen operatic voices singing a dozen different floating melodies all at once. He smacked the side of his helmet with the flat of his hand, but the eerie chorus continued.
Spinning around, he looked at the enemy guards, and David standing beyond them. They all seemed to be frozen in place. One of the guards was scowling and toeing the ramp. The mouth of another Panzer Boy was puckered as though he were about to spit on the floor in disgust. David's hands were caught in mid-clap, his joyful grin as unchanging as though he were a marble statue.
Beyond the immobile figures, the arena was fast growing darker, and the remaining light was taking on a bluish cast. Jarvis turned back toward the goal and found it radiating a bizarre metallic blue light, like a neon floodlamp. The glow was spreading from the center to engulf the entire goal, and as it spread, the music grew louder.
He could not find his voice to plead for help or demand explanations. All he could do is stand, transfixed, as the blue light suddenly exploded from its source and swirled around him like a million Day-Glo fireflies. The swarm blended into a cloud so dense he could not see beyond it, then contracted into a blue light cocoon that held him gently but firmly in its embrace.
When at last the cocoon released him and faded away, the arena, his teammates, his family, everything that had surrounded him in the moment before the cheering stopped, was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jarvis was alone in a silent, empty chamber twice his height and three armspans wide. That he was somewhere else he knew without question. It was more than the evidence of his eyes. The very air had changed. The ceiling glowed with a diffused bluish light, as though it were a residue of the cocoon that had hidden from him the means and moment of his translocation.
He stood there in the middle of the chamber paralyzed as thoroughly as his friends in the arena had been, paralyzed by confusion and not a little fear. His mind could not begin to manufacture explanations for what had happened. Even the feeble thought that this was some sort of trick cooked up by the Center for the tournament was almost behind him.
"David?" he croaked, a slight tremor of panic in his voice.
There was no answer. He was alone.
But he was not alone for long.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were flawless and unbroken. He had begun to wonder how he had been brought into the room, and was on the verge of wondering how he would get out. Then a pinpoint of light appeared at eye level in the middle of the wall Jarvis was facing. The pinpoint grew rapidly into a white diamond-shaped hole in the wall, which kept expanding until the bottom point reached the floor and the opening was large enough to be called a doorway.
A moment later, while Jarvis was still marveling, a short black-skinned human boy wearing a battered Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap stepped through the opening, smiled and said, quite casually, "Hello, Chris."
Jarvis swallowed hard, then found his voice. "What's going on here?"
"Someone else will be coming in a few moments from now to answer that question," the boy said in a precise and cultured voice that was at odds with his apparent age, about ten. He reached out and handed Jarvis a small rubber-and-metal plug, slightly larger than the eraser on a pencil. "Place that in your right ear canal, please. It's an interlingual translator and you will need what it does in just a few moments."
Stunned beyond resistance, Bhodi numbly complied. To his surprise, the translator did not interfere the least with his hearing.
"My name is Parcival," the boy went on. "Like you, I'm from Earth. I want to assure you that despite any apprehension you might be feeling, you're in no danger-"
"I'm not afraid."
"If you say so," Parcival said politely. "The important thing is that you remain calm and listen carefully to everything that you're told-"
With a rush, Jarvis's mental logjam began breaking up. " From Earth," he sputtered. "A stupid thing-why would you say-of course you're from Earth! There's nowhere else to be from-"
His voice trailed off as a great bulk moved into the doorway, blocking the light streaming through. Moving on two legs stout enough to have belonged to century-old birch trees, the inhuman figure stepped through the opening.