Eddie had a pretty huge lunch, once you counted finishing the food of everybody around him, but he hadn’t had breakfast. Didn’t have dinner last night, either—he was still hitching out here. He’d slept in the bus station in town, then walked to the compound that morning. So he was still chewing french fries when the IA aides came to take them back to the hangar. He’d hoped they would get to try a flight simulator, but no luck. While they were gone somebody had cleared out the desks, and in their places were two hundred copier-paper boxes in even rows.
“Stand behind a box,” Ms. Bauer called.
Which box might matter. It might matter a lot. Eddie took a position behind a box near the front. If they had to take anything up to show her, he’d get there before the stiffs in the back.
“This is partly a physical task,” she said. Eddie rolled his shoulders. Rosa gripped the crossbody strap of the coral bag she was wearing. “When I tell you to, you’re going to take the lid off your box. There’s an item in it that you need to assemble, and you’re on a tight timeline.”
Eddie exchanged a glance with the guy next to him, a small, nerdy-looking black kid. He gave Eddie a half smile, and Eddie gave him a half shrug. They were only giving things by halves today. When you have a half percent chance, you don’t give away more than you have to. Even in smiles.
“You’ll receive one point for each part of the item you finish, and each unfinished part will cost you two points. When you’re done, or when the whistle blows, return your item to the box and sit down.” She looked out over them. “Your task is to complete the item in your box—to put it together. Is that clear?”
It was clear.
“Go!” she shouted.
Eddie pulled the box lid up with both hands and stared inside. It was a strand of Christmas lights, very long, incredibly tangled. All the sockets were empty; the bottom was filled with loose bulbs—the tiny, white kind. He pulled the string out hand over hand, the way you’d pull entrails from a shark. Bulbs cascaded off it, most falling back into the box.
Eddie grabbed bulbs two at a time and fell into a rhythm, screwing one in with each hand. The guy next to him was untangling his whole string before he started. He saw Eddie looking.
“It’ll be harder to untangle when the bulbs are in,” he said.
Which was true, but that wasn’t part of their task. The IA woman—Bauer—had said to put it together. Untangling wasn’t part of putting it together.
Eddie hoped.
He worked on one knee, filling the exposed sockets first. When he hit the plug he worked his way back along the wire, poking a finger under tight loops, feeling for empty places. He pulled the green wires into looser loops so he could get to the sockets but didn’t take time to pull the plug through.
And … he was done. He dumped the tangle of lights into the box. It flopped over the edge like a dead octopus. The kid beside him kept working. His wires were lying in an orderly coil, but only half the bulbs were in. He’d wind up with a negative score.
The whistle blew.
“Leave them,” Ms. Bauer said, standing up from her desk. “Follow me.”
They trailed her out of the hangar and across a tarmac toward the building they’d taken the physics test in. The sun felt good on Eddie’s arms, and a breeze ruffled the sleeves of his T-shirt. Ms. Bauer led them into a corridor and stopped between two doors, shouting to be heard down the hall.
“It’s the same setup inside both rooms—it doesn’t matter which one you go in. There’s an Agency official in each room who will tell you what to do next.” She nodded to the first two kids, and they looked at each other and then one pulled the big silver handle on the left door, and the other the one on the right. After maybe thirty seconds Ms. Bauer looked through the glass panels on the doors, nodded to someone inside, and sent the next people in. The line was long, but it was moving fast. The people at the front were craning to see through the glass, and that’s exactly what Eddie was going to do, too. Speed must be an issue with this test. Even a hint of what to expect could make the difference—because this was a competition he had to win.
When he got to the front of the line he peered in, but there was a panel set up to block the view. Then Ms. Bauer motioned a girl into the left room and sent Eddie through the right door. A man stepped out from behind the screen. He wore an IA ID badge on his lapel.
“Step around, please.”
Eddie did. There was a box, about a foot square, on a table like you see in church basements. That was all that was in the room: the table, the screen, the man, the box.
“There’s a scorpion inside the box,” the man said. Eddie tried to look cool but knew his eyes popped. There was a rubber cuff at the opening in the box—no seeing past it. “If you’re stung, you’ll receive medical care.” He lowered his head slightly and held Eddie’s gaze. “Put one hand in the box, and keep it there for ten seconds.”
Eddie thought of Schrödinger’s cat, in a box with poison. You didn’t know if the cat got into the poison and died until you opened the box. Schrödinger said the cat was both alive and dead—and he was right. On one world it would be alive; on one it would be dead. Maybe the scorpion was dead. The man hadn’t said it was a live scorpion.
Right then Eddie heard scrabbling from inside.
“You have two seconds to put a hand in the box.”
Eddie stared at him. Then he grabbed the man’s wrist and pushed his hand in the box. The man’s eyes flared wide with surprise and his mouth opened, but he didn’t struggle. Eddie held his wrist tight, anyway. “Time,” the guy said, and pulled his hand out.
“You used a big beetle, didn’t you?” Eddie said. “There isn’t really a scorpion in the box.”
“Oh,” the man said, “there is …” He looked at Eddie’s adhesive name tag. “… Eddie Toivonen.”
Then he pointed to the far door.