There were about twenty people gathered in the room, most of them females in good to excellent condition. Elgars had met a few of them when Wendy went to her EMS meetings and the captain had to admit that Wendy was in the middle range from a physical perspective. Wendy worked out every day, but she wasn't very well designed for high-strength, especially upper body strength; among other things she had parts that got in the way. It also appeared that a once a day workout was not quite enough; more than half of the women waiting to try out looked like female triathletes; their arms were corded with muscles and their breasts had shrunk to the point where they were practically nonexistent.

There was a group of emergency personnel confronting them, ten of them in a line. They were wearing the standard day uniform of the emergency, a dark blue Nomex jumpsuit. All of them were female and most looked like ads for a muscle magazine; Elgars had the unkind thought that they probably opened doors by chiseling through with their chins. In front of them was an older female in a bright red coverall. As Wendy joined the group, she glanced at her watch and nodded.

"Okay, I think everybody's here that's going to try out," the firechief said. Eda Connolly had been a lieutenant in the Baltimore Fire Department until she received a politely worded order to leave Baltimore as "excess to defense needs." She had found herself one of the few fully trained emergency personnel in this hole, but in the last four years she had built a department to be proud of. And she was fundamentally uninterested in lowering her standards.

"You all know what you're here for," she continued, gesturing behind her. "You want to join this line. You want to be in emergency services instead of whatever hole the powers that be have stuck you in.

"Fine," she said with a nod. "I'd love for you to be in emergency services too. I think that if we had three times the number of emergency personnel it would be grand; too many times we find ourselves being run ragged because we don't have enough hands. But every single hand that we have can do every single job that needs to be done. And that's not always the easiest thing in this hole.

"There are two million people in this hole. Two million people that, every, single, day, seem to find a new way to get hurt. Arms caught in drains, knifings, shootings, industrial explosions. There are grain elevators that catch on fire, a situation where if you turn off the ventilation the whole thing just blows up. There's chemical plants and showers to slip and fall in and four thousand foot vertical air shafts that kids manage to climb out into and then panic.

"And all there is keeping them alive, half the time, are these gals," she said with another gesture behind her. "Every one of them have passed this test. And then, within a week or two, found something harder than this test that they had to complete. Or someone, probably themselves, would die.

"So today you get tested," she said with a sigh. "And if you complete the course in time, making all the requirments, you'll be considered for inclusion. I've got seven slots to fill. My guess is that only five or six of you will pass. But . . . I'd rather have five that pass than seven that don't."

One of the group behind her stepped forward and handed her a clipboard. She glanced at it and nodded. "As I call your name, step forward, join up with one of the officers behind me to draw bunker gear and get ready to start your evaluation." She looked up one more time and smiled thinly. "And good luck. Anderson . . ."

* * *

Wendy threw on the bunker-coat and buckled it up. Once upon a time she had heard that there were multiple ways to put on a bunker-coat, most of which could get you killed. It had always seemed silly to her; like having a gun that shot you if you loaded it backwards. The gear was heavy and hot, but it had its purpose. On the wall above the lockers was a sign: "Like a rich armor, worn in the heat of the day." She'd tried for years to find the source of the quote, but the firefighters weren't telling and she'd never been able to find it anywhere else.

She reached into her locker and pulled out the breath-pack, spitting into the facescreen and wiping the saliva around to prevent condensation. There were various products to do the same thing, but strangely enough saliva was the least unpleasant at high heat conditions; you could use baby shampoo but it had a vaporization point well below that of the lexan visor and the fumes were unpleasant. Saliva had a low vaporization point as well, but it just smelled a bit of burning hair. Which, if you were vaporizing it off your faceshield, you were already smelling.

She checked the air and all the rest of the gear. There weren't supposed to be any booby traps built in at this point, but she wasn't willing to go for "might"; among other things, for part of the test the firehouse would be filled with smoke and she'd need the air.

Everything appeared to be right, though, so she donned the breath-pack, put on the respirator, put on her helmet and turned around.

By that point, the smoke was already streaming out of the smokehouse. The smoke was generated—there was no actual fire involved in the event—but it looked real. It looked as if the smokehouse was going to billow with flames at any moment.

She was supposed to be the fifth person to take the test, but there was only one person in front of her. As she noted that, the first testee exited the smokehouse on the roof and started the rope portion. The various lines above the smokehouse, which stretched around the room in a spiderweb, were an integral portion of the event. The Urb had some awesome chasms in it and emergency personnel never knew when they might be dangling over a two thousand foot drop. Being able to do specific rope work—and more importantly, being fundamentally unafraid of heights—was an important portion of the test.

Wendy shivered. She was not fundamentally unafraid of heights. Quite the opposite. But she could still do the job.

"Cummings."

She shook herself and tore her eyes away from the testee who had just jumped across a small gap onto a swaying platform. "Yes?"

"You're up," said the firefighter who had led her through the preparations.

"Okay." She knew the firefighter; she knew most of them. But at the test it was all supposed to be totally impersonal. She knew why; she understood why. But it would be nice if somebody acknowledged her; acknowledged that she'd been a reserve ER for four goddamned years and this was the first time she'd managed to even make the pre-quals for the PPE. She paused a moment, but there was nothing else. Then she stepped forward.

"Cummings," Chief Connolly said. "Eight events. Ladder move, ladder raise/lower, high-rise pack, hydrant manipulation, the Maze, door breach, vertical environment, hose drag and dummy drag. You are familiar with each test?" she asked formally.

"I am," Wendy answered just as formally, her answer muffled behind the faceshield.

"At each station there will be a firefighter to direct you to the next station. Each station is timed. Movement from station to station is timed. If you 'bump up' on the person in front of you, you may wait and rest and the time does not count against you. The entire course, method and time, is graded and you must make a minimum grade of eight hundred points to qualify. Do you understand?"

"I do."

"In addition there are specific items that are automatic fails. If you lose the high-rise pack, it is a fail. If you skip a step of the door breach or misevaluate it is a fail. If you enter the smooth tube in The Maze instead of the corrugated it is a fail. And if you drop the dummy, it is a fail. Are you aware of these fail points?"

"I am."

"Do you fully understand the requirements to pass the evaluation?"