Koban: The Mark of Koban (58 page)

This room was where the newly enhanced SG1
teenagers, now changed to Third Gens, had been coming to work on their
coordination, and building strength into their new muscles. It was also here
that other parents had watched Carson and Ethan work out, and saw them performing
side by side with their own TG kids. They claimed there was a significant
difference, and they wanted to know why. So did Tet, Maggi, and the boy’s
parents.

Maggi moved to the center of the padded area,
and invited everyone to seat themselves on the edge of the pads, leaving the
center open.

In her drill sergeant voice, a constant
surprise to even those that knew the small woman well, she addressed the
assembly. “I think you know why we are meeting here, but I’ll make certain all
of you know. The first class of fifty new Third Gens has been working out here,
and some of you have observed a difference in how advanced Carson and Ethan are
in their adaptation, compared to most of the other TGs.” She paused just a
moment.

“Maggi,” a voice spoke up from the crowd. A
man rose to his feet. It was
Frank Constansi, one of the members of Mirikami’s
legendary Spider Hole combat team. He remained close friends with Tet. “They
aren’t good compared to
most
of our kids. They are far above any of
them. I don’t think you’ve watched them all exercise together. Unlike some
suspicious types I’ve heard speak out in the Great Hall, I know that you and
Tet wouldn’t hide anything from us, nor condone favoritism. I suggest there is
a reasonable explanation, and I want us to help you find what it is.” He paused
briefly to look around at the other parents.

“When we do understand how they got so good so fast, then we
can see that all of our new TGs get that same benefit, my son included.” There
was scattered applause.

Maggi nodded her approval. “I’ll admit I have
not seen Carson or Ethan when they were up here, although I’ve looked in on
others exercising, and I was impressed with their leap ahead in strength, and
how fast they are. I did see signs of coordination problems. Trips, falls,
accidental smacks to a friend’s face or body when they play fight. They all
appeared able to lift a huge amount of weight for their size. I heard Dillon
say that both Carson and Ethan have broken his own personal weight lifting
records by a large margin, and even the girls are matching or beating his old
lifts, made when he was younger. Is that what you mean? That Carson and Ethan
are a lot stronger?”

There were multiple “no’s,” and head shaking.

Frank explained. “The difference doesn’t
appear in strength, because I watched another seventeen year old boy, Matt
Dempsey, beat Ethan on a squat lift. In the strength category, nearly all of
the seventeen year olds understandably outperform the sixteen year olds. The
difference is in those two boy’s speed of movement, in the level of
coordination they have. That’s where they beat anyone they match up with. I
think you should watch some examples. The kids know what I mean. Let them show
you.”

“OK. Let’s see what we are here to discuss.
Ethan, Carson, please step out her next to me, and I’d like Matt Dempsey to
come up, and several other seventeen-year-old boys. I want to avoid the age
issue with the younger boys, and with girls that would have less muscle mass.”

Reluctantly, seven boys walked out, half of
them pushed there by their parents, including a red faced Carson, with his dad doing
the shoving.

Maggi motioned them to join her. “I won’t
bite,” she assured the reluctant participants. They moved closer, but acted as
if she might be lying about the biting.

“OK boys, I assume we aren’t talking about who
can jump highest, and it isn’t weight lifting, or other strength related
ability. So how about we see a demonstration of what Mister
Constansi
means. Matt, you did a lift that beat Ethan, what is something else he can do
that you can’t do? Describe it and then the two of you show us.”

Matt turned red. “I’d rather show you with
someone besides Ethan or Carson. I don’t want to look stupid.”

“Fine, pick one of the others first, but that
isn’t going to show us the difference we need to see.” Maggi was being unusually
gentle with the shy boy in front of the crowd.

Matt motioned to Jose
Wittgenstein, his
friend, and a son of a former Spider Hole team member.

Matt explained they were going to do two things, but warned
they wouldn’t look very impressive. He told them the demonstrations were simply
a child’s games, and the first was patty cake. Only with superfast hand
movements, palm slaps, and handclaps. The two boys sat facing one another,
close together, legs crossed, placing their hands on their own knees.

Before they started, Maggi couldn’t help reverting to her
natural acerbic manner. “Matt, you didn’t want to work with Carson or Ethan
because you would look stupid. However, you and Jose will play
patty cake
for us. That’s better you think?”

The comment drew laughs from the gathered parents, and both
boys turned red. Matt simply replied, “Perhaps you should just watch us Mam.
This involves speed and coordination.”

At a nod from Matt, the two started in the
standard slow manner of clapping their own hands once, then smacking each
other’s palms together, then clapping their hands, slapping their knees, then
alternating palm slaps from both right hands, then both left hands, and repeat.
It was a variation on a child’s game seen on many worlds. The repeated cycles
always sped up until one or the other player missed a clap, palm smack, knee
smack, or missed the other person’s hand. Someone always made a mistake when it
got too fast.

The boy’s movements gathered velocity quickly
as they got the rhythm going, and in five repetitions, their movements had
accelerated to what seemed an impossible speed for a human. The loud
staccato
crack of their hands
sounded like rapid applause, at a machinegun pace. Their hands were near blurs,
and they continued at this pace for thirty incredible seconds. Until Matt smacked
so hard he pushed one of Jose’s hand too far back, spoiling the flow. They
stopped, everyone’s ears ringing from the rifle cracks of their hands. For a
“stupid” game, there was now stunned silence.

Matt looked up and said, “I lost control of
the hand slap I was trying to deliver. I could easily see Jose’s left hand
coming, but I hit too hard and off center, and pushed his hand back and to the
side. It was my mistake, so he wins.” He shrugged.

“That always happens with this game in about
ten or fifteen seconds, for most of us. Not for Carson or Ethan, because none
of us have their control at higher speeds. Just now, Jose and I leveled off at
a speed where we wouldn’t make mistakes too soon in front of everybody. We
stayed slow for that reason.”

Maggi was shocked. “That was slow? Hell son, I
could barely see your hands you were so fast. Silly game or not, being able to
do that so fast is positively not child’s play.”

“Well, maybe not, but I don’t last three
seconds with either Carson or Ethan. Nobody does. They don’t make mistakes, and
we can’t increase speed without losing the rhythm.”

Maggi glanced at Ethan, right next to her.
“Who wins between you and Carson?”

“We can go ten minutes without a mistake
usually, and it’s true that we can go faster than the other TGs. It can be
either of us to make a mistake, but it’s probably more often me. The speed of
the other kid’s movements, their muscle speed, isn’t really the limitation with
playing us. It is their ability to keep the hands meeting the target dead
center, with the proper force. That’s where Carson and I are better. Our eye-hand
coordination and muscle control at high speed.”

Matt reminded her of the other game he’d
mentioned. “Mam the other example I was going to show is even dumber to watch,
and has the same outcome if we play against them. One person holds out both
hands palm down, the opponent places their hands palm up under yours. You’ve
seen this game. The person on the bottom has to bring one or both hands up and
over, trying to slap either or both of the top hands before the other player
can pull them back. None of us has ever beaten Ethan or Carson. They react too
fast for the rest of us.”

Matt clarified. “None of you guys, I mean you SG1’s
can beat
any
of us in these games, or even come close to keeping pace. Moreover,
even if Carson and Ethan can beat us now, we aren’t as far behind them as you
are behind us. We see we are slowly improving compared to them, but we don’t
know how they got so far ahead of us.”

Jose laughed, and added what proved to be a
telling remark, and a first clue. “Ethan and Carson can also beat Kobalt and
Kit, and Kit’s first cubs, using a variation of the hand and paw slap game. The
cats are tremendously fast, or I used to think so, but I think all of us will
eventually be faster than rippers are at some things.” He pointed at Ethan and
Carson. “You should see them at the fast draw. No Krall will want to face any
of us if we all get that fast.”

“I never saw you practice that here,” Frank
told them.

Carson answered for them all. “We only
practice on the range, and just in the last few days. It’s always been us alone,
since almost nobody goes there anymore.”

His Dad spoke up. “Son, how about we unload,
and test out our draws on one another. I’d really like to see that.” Dillon had
once practiced often with the pistols and holsters Thad had given him and
Noreen many years ago. He had thought he was about the fastest in the dome, “back
in the day,” as Maggi might say.

He removed his own clip, pointed it up and
pulled the trigger, making an audible click, to confirm a slug had not come
loose and stayed in the chamber. Despite Carson checking his own gun, good old
dad double-checked it anyway.

Carson seemed annoyed, prompting Dillon to
say, “If you shot your dear daddy dead, do you think you’d survive dear mommy’s
lifetime of unending lectures?”

Noreen’s voice floated clearly over the
chuckles from the crowd. “
Your
gun is not the one dear daddy had better
worry about when he talks like that.
Mine
is still loaded.” That drew a
lot more than chuckles.

The two squared off, about twenty feet apart.
Carson nearly as tall as his father, but less filled out. However, he was still
growing, and everyone told him he was better looking, which was saying
something. He had inherited additional good looks from his mother, and had her
Earth origin Hispanic complexion.

“Son, you can draw when you’re ready.” Dillon
felt extremely calm and confident, because he still secretly practiced his draw
in a mirror, when nobody was around to watch.

Calm, until Carson answered. “No Dad, I’d like
you to feel like you had at least a ghost of a chance. You start first. I’ll
even let you clear your holster before I go.” They were both using the
low-slung tied down holster version Thad had introduced.

Dillon answered the pretend insult with as
fast a draw as he had ever felt challenged to make. He moved his hand back
against the butt and rolled the gun easily out of the holster on the back sweep,
so that when it cleared the leather, the barrel would already be pointing at
his target, not needing more time to raise the gun, with his finger inside the
trigger guard squeezing.

What Dillon saw and heard was a rapid series
of clicks from Carson’s pistol. It magically appeared chest high, aimed at his
heart, without an apparent draw having taken place. From the number of clicks,
that weapon probably would have fired an eight round clip, all before Dillon’s
own gun made a forlorn, much too late, single click.

Metaphorically, daddy was dead meat,
overkilled by his beloved, faster-than-greased-lightning son.
Crap!

It had happened in front of many amused
watchers, the worst, from his perspective, being Maggi, Tet, and his wife. The
humorous references would follow him to his grave he assumed.

Thad uttered a simple “Wow.”

Tet wanted a better measure than simply wow.
“Jake, you recorded that, I know. Measure the time taken for Carson’s hand to
start to move towards the gun until the first trigger pull. Compare that to
recorded examples of Krall pistol draws seen on the Flight of Fancy and here on
Koban. Tell me the result over the speaker system here in the exercise room
please.” The AI, being a computer, was even faster on the draw.

“Sir, the total time that Carson used until
the first trigger pull, compared against the averaged collection of all Krall
pistol draws I’ve recorded from various holster types and attachment locations
on their belts, was two point six times faster. However, it was only one point
nine times quicker than the fastest Krall I’ve observed drawing a pistol.”

“Wow indeed,” concluded Mirikami. “Carson, you
just outdrew the fastest Krall Jake ever saw pull a pistol, by nearly a factor
of two. Frankly, I’ll want to see this recording played again, in real time,
then in slow motion. I’m not sure what I saw. That was just a blur.”

He looked around. “Can you other kids do that?
Or close to that speed?”

Mirikami saw general nods. If they weren’t that
fast now, they would get there soon he thought.

Dillon pointed out something that made
Carson’s draw seem slower than it really was. “Son, you raised the pistol to
chest height before pulling the trigger, wasting time. You could beat that
fastest Krall even quicker if you learn to shoot from the hip. Nicely done,
however.”