Earth 2788 (14 page)

Telling the boy
it wasn’t his fault wasn’t helping. Right now, he probably felt he was
personally responsible for every mistake the Military had ever made, including
giving way to political pressure to clear Thetis for colonization before all
the Planet First checks were properly complete.

I tried a
different approach. “If your class has been dragged into helping dismantle the
base, then I hope your instructor is going to let you watch the handover
ceremony.”

“Yes, sir. We’ve
been told we can watch it from the hillside overlooking the …” The cadet turned
his head to answer me, and dropped the door again. He groaned and stooped to
pick it up.

I felt like
groaning too. The boy should be wild with enthusiasm at the prospect of
standing on a new planet, watching the ritual moment when it became one of the
worlds of humanity. This was the dream of every cadet, but this boy had given
up on his dreams and was just depressed.

“Let me hold the
door steady for you,” I said. “Taking doors off is always easier than putting
them on again. You’re a sector recruit, aren’t you?”

The cadet’s look
of anguish deepened. “Yes, sir.”

I held the door
in place while he tried putting in the locking pins. He was having trouble
because his hands were shaking.

“What’s your
name?” I asked.

“Cadet Helden
Keusink, sir.”

“I was a sector
recruit myself,” I said. “A clueless farm boy from Tethys in Gamma sector. My
head was stuffed full of romantic fantasies of a Military career working for
Planet First. My heart was filled with a burning hatred for carrots.”

“You were a
sector recruit, sir?” The cadet gave me a startled look. “I’m from Gamma sector
too. Asgard, in fact.”

“Then you have
the great advantage that people have heard of your world, Helden. Whenever I
said I was from Tethys, everyone gave me a blank look. Even the other sector
recruits from Gamma sector hadn’t heard of it. The only notable thing about
Tethys is that carrots grow incredibly well there.”

I smiled. “I’d
never gone off world before I signed up for the Military. I was wildly excited
to leave the carrot fields and travel all the way to Alpha sector. It took me a
long time to get there. I knew so little about interstellar portal travel that
I thought you had to go from Gamma sector to Alpha sector via Beta sector, but
I finally made it to Alpha Sector Interchange 1. That was when I called Military
Support for help. My instructions just said to go to Academy in Alpha sector,
they didn’t tell me what planet the Academy was on.”

Helden made an
odd choking noise.

“Oh, please feel
free to laugh,” I said. “I don’t know how the Military Captain who answered my
call managed to keep a straight face, but he did. He very patiently explained
to me that Academy wasn’t
on
a planet, Academy
was
a planet. He
told me the Military Academy, the Military Headquarters, and a lot of other
Military facilities were all on the planet called Academy. Then he said I was clearly
having a few problems making the journey, and offered to send someone to come
and get me.”

Helden made the
choking noise again.

I laughed. “I
hastily declined. Fortunately I had a few hours to wait before the next
scheduled interstellar block portal to Academy, which gave me the chance to
recover from my embarrassment. Once I got to Academy, I actually managed to
enter the local portal code I’d been given and get to the basic training area
without getting lost again. I was put in a class with thirty-two other sector
recruits. I was bottom of the class at absolutely everything, but it’s
impossible to fail basic training so I carried on to be formally enrolled as a
Military Academy cadet.”

I paused. “Things
got even worse at that point. All the sector recruits were split up and put in
classes with the huge majority of cadets who came from Military families. They
seemed to know everything already, and the second I opened my mouth they all
knew I was a sector recruit. I hated that. Don’t you?”

“Oh yes, sir!”
said Helden. “I feel like I’ve got a label on my forehead.”

“It’s mostly the
sector accent that gives you away. The cadets from Military families speak
Language without any accent at all. You will too after a couple of years in the
Military.”

I shrugged. “Once
I was at the Military Academy itself, I was even more disastrously bad at
everything than during basic training. At the end of the first week, I decided
to tell my class instructor I was quitting the Military. I’d done my best, and
I’d failed. I was going to give up, go back home, and grow carrots after all.”

Helden frowned.
“But you didn’t?”

I shook my head.
“Two of my classmates caught me as I was about to knock on our instructor’s
door. They guessed what was going on, dragged me back to my quarters, and
barricaded me in.”

I pointed at the
holo portraits on the wall. “That’s the three of us. I’m the confused looking
one on the left of course, not the perfect Military officer on the right.”

The cadet stared
at the portraits, and gave me a bemused look as if he couldn’t believe I’d ever
been that young.

“They said the
whole class would get in trouble if I quit,” I said, “and refused to let me out
of my room until I promised to give it another month. After that, they made it
their mission in life to turn a farm boy into a Military officer.”

“That’s the
other thing, sir,” said the cadet. “Since less than 10 per cent of cadets are
sector recruits, the Military have strict rules about making us feel welcome. I
know my instructor and my classmates must think I’m an idiot, but they have to
hide it and be nice to me or they’ll be put on report.”

He waved a hand
at the door. “Just look at this job, sir. My classmates are dismantling a dome
full of science labs, and packing away delicate equipment. I nearly broke
something hideously expensive by trying to force it into the wrong storage box.
Anyone else would have had the instructor yelling at them, while the rest of
the class stood around laughing, but I just got sent over here to take off
doors. The instructor thought even I couldn’t get that wrong, but …”

“What you have
to remember is that cadets from Military families have got a huge head start on
you,” I said. “You had a few months of basic training before you started at the
Military Academy. They’ve had eighteen years of living on Military bases and
going to Military schools. All that time, they’ve been absorbing knowledge.”

I wondered if
this was a good moment to mention that Helden shouldn’t be calling me “sir” any
longer. I’d called him by his first name, which showed I’d changed this from a
formal to an informal conversation, a perfect example of something a cadet from
a Military family would know but Helden didn’t.

I decided I’d
better not risk it. “Your instructor knows that,” I continued, “and your
classmates know it too. That’s why they don’t make fun of you. It’s not because
they’re scared of being put on report. It’s because you don’t gloat at beating
someone in a race when you know they’ve had to run twice as far as you.”

Helden finished
attaching the door, stepped back and looked at it disconsolately. “Perhaps
you’re right, sir, but it doesn’t make much difference now anyway. I have to
forget all about graduating the Military Academy and taking the Military Oath
of Service, because I’ll never live this down. I’ve taken the door off a
Colonel’s quarters, while the Colonel was inside them!”

“You were just
following orders,” I said. “Tell your classmates about it, and watch their
faces. You’ll see a look of horror, because they know it could have happened to
them as easily as you.”

I paused. “Anyway,
everyone has embarrassing incidents to live down. Take me for example. I burned
down a dome once.”

Helden looked
shocked. “At the Military Academy, sir?”

“No, this was
later,” I said. “I was a Captain on a Planet First assignment, and I’d had
rather an … intense day. The three of us had been out in an armour-plated Field
Command sled, collecting samples for the scientists, when we ran into a big
herd of some local wildlife. Rather like Asgard bison, but with bigger teeth
and extremely bad tempers. We were in a small valley, with the herd blocking
the only way out. The real problems began when the herd noticed our sled, and
started playing games with it. They couldn’t get through the armour plating,
but they could roll the sled over and push it around.”

Helden’s eyes
got even wider.

I shrugged. “We
screamed for help, the fighter team came to the rescue, and there was a period
of utter chaos while they chased off the herd. Somewhere in the middle of that,
I proposed marriage to two Betans.”

Helden blinked.

“Or possibly
they proposed marriage to me,” I said. “They’d been trying to persuade me into
a triad relationship for ages, but I’d been refusing. I was from a very
conventional Gamman background, and I wanted to be twoing with the girl, not
sharing her with a third party, especially a third party that kept calling me
farm boy!”

I waved a
dismissive hand. “Well, maybe I proposed to them, or maybe they proposed to me.
As I said, it was utter chaos at the time, so none of us were ever quite sure
of the details. All that mattered was that I’d reached the point where I gave
in and accepted there’d be three of us rather than two.”

I grinned at the
portraits on the wall. This was our long running private joke. At every
possible chance, I’d complain about being forced into Threeing rather than
Twoing. Then he’d say …

The male voice
in my head said the words. “You know you love me really, farm boy!”

“I don’t know
why I was fool enough to get involved with either of you, when I could have
married the amazing Pascal instead!” The female voice in my head completed our
comedy routine.

Pascal had
undoubtedly been the brightest cadet in our class, brilliant academically, but
useless at anything remotely practical. He’d wisely opted to train as a
Military Science Specialist rather than becoming combat Military. I’d lost
track of his career after he was assigned to a joint civilian and Military
research project. I wondered what had become of him later on, whether he was
still …

I saw Helden was
giving me an odd look, so I hurried on with my story. “Once we were safely back
at base, the Medical team patched us up, and then the three of us celebrated by
getting totally powered. Everything was fine until I had the bright idea of
setting off some distress flares.”

I paused. “Unfortunately,
I set off the distress flares inside one of our domes. Never do that, Helden.
It’s a really bad idea. By the time our fire crews put the blaze out, there
wasn’t an awful lot of the dome left. Luckily it was one of the smallest domes,
but our commanding officer was still rather upset about it. Now I’m a
commanding officer myself, I can quite see his point. Anyway, what I’m telling
you is that everyone has their embarrassing moments to live down, and taking
off the wrong door is a rather minor issue compared with burning down a dome.”

“I suppose
that’s true, sir,” said Helden.

“You’ve
obviously got as far as realizing the Military work desperately hard to
encourage sector recruits, but I don’t think you understand the reason.”

Helden pulled a
face. “I thought it was pity.”

I shook my head.
“It’s because you can contribute something to the Military that your classmates
can’t. What’s the most important job of the Military, Helden?”

“Planet First,
sir. Making new worlds safe for humanity.”

“That’s what
every civilian thinks, and it’s what the original Military Charter said. That
was written at the start of the twenty-fourth century, when the only two
inhabited worlds were Earth and Adonis. Once there were hundreds of inhabited
worlds, the Military became the cross-sector Military, and the Military Charter
was completely re-written with new priorities.”

I smiled. “The
new Military Charter states the prime objective of the Military is to maintain
the peace between the worlds of humanity. It specifies that the cross-sector
Military must remain politically neutral, recruit from all worlds without
prejudice, and do everything possible to promote the bonds of understanding
between different worlds and cultures.”

I paused. “There’s
a lot about Planet First as well, but that’s the second priority. Offering new
worlds to humanity is far less important than stopping wars between those we
already have. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Helden thought
that over. “Yes, sir.”

“So the primary
objective of the Military is to be a unifying force between over a thousand
worlds, and particularly between the distinctive cultures of the sectors of
humanity. The problem is that we have a largely hereditary Military, with its
own culture and traditions. Pure practicalities, like the need to keep new
worlds under strict quarantine until they’re proved to be safe, mean that many
Military officers will have little contact with civilians. The Military can’t
promote bonds of understanding between civilian cultures unless its officers
understand those cultures themselves.”

I pointed at
Helden. “That’s why the Military needs people like you. Sector recruits are the
glue that holds everything together, because they renew the links between the
Military and the sectors. You aren’t just at the Military Academy to learn,
Helden, but to teach. That’s why the sector recruits are put in the same
classes as cadets with Military background. You’re teaching your fellow cadets
and your instructors too, about civilian life and about the latest cultural
attitudes in Gamma sector.”

“Oh.” Helden
considered that.

“You see your
civilian background as a problem,” I said, “but actually it makes you immensely
valuable. So please give yourself a while longer before you abandon the
Military life. You never know, you might end up being a Colonel yourself one
day. On the whole, I feel I’ve had a better life in the Military than I’d have
had growing carrots.”