Exiled to the Stars (7 page)

He shrugged. "Of course, you are also free to visit other dorms, to see if you can find a more suitable position, but every dorm on this ship is assigned to either 'undesirables,' like us and those animals back there, or 'drones,' uneducated ghetto dwellers. There are no other choices."

She had regained her poise, and a hint of a smile even played around her lips. "So," she said, "you're a recruiter. You're trying to find educated westerners to teach those people." Upon closer inspection, Ron decided that Dr. James was older than she first appeared. Late thirties to mid-forties, he guessed. Still, she was a very attractive woman, in a fashion-model sort of way.

He grinned. "You could say that. But this is my only recruiting trip. We have only three available bunks, and I will
not
be going back to the dorm we just left. To tell you the truth, I hadn't expected the thugs to break loose until after we boosted. I'm going to have to hurry back to my new dorm to warn them, and help prepare. So, would you care to join us, or would you rather go off on your own?"

She shook her head. "Well, I certainly won't go back to that…that
zoo
back there. And wandering around like Diogenes looking for someone to swap with doesn't appeal to me, either. I've taught a lot of undergraduate college courses, I'm sure I can handle teaching basic adult education. So, Lay on, MacDuff, and damned be him who first cries 'Hold! Enough!'"

Ron laughed aloud. "Don't tell me your doctorate is in Shakespearian studies!"

She shook her head. "No, but it might be better if it was. I doubt that a PhD in molecular biology is going to be very useful to exiles and pioneers."

He grinned and snapped his fingers. "
Pioneers
! That's it! That's the term I was looking for. We will turn these ghetto-dwellers into pioneers of a new planet!"

Chapter 3

17 August 2103 AD

Ron and the others returned to the dorm just in time for the mass meeting Cesar Montero had called for the messroom. The messroom was designed to seat two hundred people, a dorm's entire population.

Cesar took charge of the meeting, briefing the residents on recent occurrences. Wide grins and a happy babble greeted the news of Rafael's, Paco's, and their gang's departures. He introduced Ron, Vlad, and the rest of the westerners, calling them "teachers," and Vlad and Susan James, "eminent scientists."

There was much less enthusiasm for Raymond Koh and their plan to hire him as "sheriff", but the motion to hire him and "tax" everyone one beer per month as his "salary" passed easily after an eloquent and impassioned speech by Cesar.

The final act of the meeting was to elect a "Kapitan," or mayor, and a "konsehal" or "council" to lead them. Cesar's nomination for Kapitan was quickly confirmed by acclamation. That boy Ron had met was not the only one who called Cesar Montero "The wise man."

Ron was surprised when immediately following Cesar's election as Kapitan, Raymond Koh moved that Cesar Montero be allowed to choose his own konsehal for the time being; formal elections could be held once things settled down. The motion passed easily.

"Of course it was staged," Cesar told Ron later with a guilty grin. "But they would not have elected any of you westerners, and I will need your help very badly, especially at first."

They boosted out early the next morning. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the boost built and they drifted slowly toward one "wall." But panic flared again when the Captain put spin on the ship, and everyone slid down the "wall" to the "floor." There was confusion as items left drifting in mid-air drifted first to the wall, and then fell to the floor. There was also a resurgence of motion sickness. This time, though, the vomit spilled to the floor along with the drifting liquids, limiting the threat to bystanders. But very soon, the colonists acclimated to the new orientation and reveled in the return of "weight."

It took only a day for the colonists to learn that space travel was
boring
! There was no work for the men. The women had no cooking to do, and little cleaning. Laundry was sent to a central location, where it was done by mechs. Cesar tasked Ron with investigating the educational capabilities of the ship's computer and verification that the claims for it had not been exaggerated.

Ron found that the claims had, if anything, been minimized. As soon as the ship was under boost, a sealed hatch near one end of the dorm had clicked open.

In the compartment it had concealed, Ron found fifty booths containing virtual-reality helmets and old-style touch screen terminals of the type formerly used in elementary schools. These would permit testing requiring student input and other hands-on tasks. Apparently, it was hoped that their simpler design would permit them to keep functioning in the unlikely event of failure of the complex VR system. A single desk occupied a slightly raised dais. It contained a similar, though larger terminal, and apparently, controls that would permit the 'teacher' to monitor or work with any individual student.

Ron slipped on the 'teacher' VR helmet, and after a few seconds, he was greeted by an attractive young woman. Her clothing was conservative, and her hair was pulled back into a severe bun. No one would ever confuse
this
image with that of a pleasure program!

She smiled. "Good day, sir. May I please have your name and ID number? If you prefer, you may simply place your thumb on the pad on the instructors' desk."

Ron shrugged. "Ronald Creding, 2648"

"Thank you, sir," she replied. "And will you be serving as an instructor? I see you are well-qualified."

"I expect to be the chief instructor for this dorm, but not the only one."

"Excellent, Mr. Creding. Would you like to change this avatar, or perhaps give it a name? There are 4,128 possible avatars. If you would like, you may browse them to select a personal choice."

Ron shook his head. "The current avatar is acceptable, for the moment. Will the other teachers have the same privileges?"

She nodded. "Of course, sir. Since you have identified yourself as the chief instructor, it will be necessary for you to authorize others to use the instructors' helmet and terminal. However, once authorized, they will be able to change their avatar and name it at will."

Ron nodded. "Can you give me an overview of your capabilities?"

She nodded, the smile widening. "Of course, sir. I have a very complete 'tour' function, but it takes some fourteen hours to display. It is very complete, however."

Ron grinned. "No, thank you. Can you give me a quick summary?"

"Yes, sir," she replied. "I contain complete curricula, lesson plans, and VR classes ranging from the basic preschool through PhD level in one thousand, two hundred and forty-seven disciplines. EarthGov gathered these materials from the most prestigious institutions in United Earth."

"It sounds as though you don't really
need
teachers." Ron said

"On the contrary, sir," she replied. "Teachers perform critical functions. Humans display wide variations in learning ability. Often a human can detect these variations far more quickly than a computer, and act appropriately. Humans also respond with more success to a human tutor to overcome deficiencies. And of course, human teachers provide motivational services I cannot equal."

"To continue, sir," she went on, "I also contain over fifty thousand skill training and instruction vids for non-academic skills that are expected to be useful to a developing colony,"

"I don't understand," Ron asked. "What is the value of those, if we can only study them while in flight?"

"There should be no such limitation, sir. My design criteria call for a service life of at least one hundred fifty years. It is expected that I will be of inestimable value to a developing colony. Normal planning is for the colony to center around and develop outward from the landed ship.

"Most of the skills training information is devoted to developing the tools to develop the tools, as humans are fond of saying. Over half of my capacity is devoted to educational and training resources."

"What about the rest?"

"I am the ship's main and only computer, except for a small backup that is capable of operating the ship in an emergency."

Ron had an idea. "Then, do you contain a schematic of the ship?"

"Of course, sir. However, the Captain has restricted that information. If you would like, I will notify you if the Captain lifts that restriction."

Ron was disappointed. He had really wanted to see if there was a way to get to the crew's quarters. "Please do so," he told the computer.

Ron talked with the computer for well over an hour, and then went to brief Cesar on his findings. He was excited. It seemed EarthGov had not simply abandoned them. They had seeds for food crops, and the fertilized ova of dozens of domesticated animals, and hundreds of wild ones. They had tools, and they had workshops to make more tools.

Ron introduced Vlad and Susan to the computer, and authorized them as instructors. Then he had each of them talk to the computer to become familiar with it and the capabilities available. Then the three of them sat down with Cesar and began to design an education program for the residents of the dorm.

People spoke of the Drones as illiterate and uneducated, but the educational attainments varied widely. Some had never set foot inside a classroom. Others had completed anywhere from a few weeks to completion of high school. Two actually had some postsecondary education. Cesar, of course, had a degree in Education.

Cesar was adamant that every man, woman and child in the dorm become educated to his or her capacity. When a delegation of the older men objected to this requirement, Cesar became angry, or, Ron thought,
appeared
to become angry.

"Are you fools?" He began. "If we find a planet and start a colony, will you be content to be mere peasants, waiting to be told to go here and do that? No! The westerners call us 'Drones'. In
this
dorm we will not be drones! Our people will be equal partners in this adventure, not dumb beasts of burden. It is you who must inspire the young! By the time we find a planet, I expect each of you to possess at least a baccalaureate degree or its equivalent in skills training, and if the trip takes long enough, a Masters degree."

When one of the men protested that he could not read or write, Cesar was not impressed. "Neither can your one-year-old grandson," he replied. "Both of you will learn. And I suspect that most of you will come to love learning. Ernesto Cansado, how many times have I seen you watch an artisan at work and say, 'I wish I could learn to do that'? Well, now you can. What else will you do? Sit on your bunks and whine about being sent off into space? Will you shame your family by being the only one who cannot read? Pah! Go away from me, lazy ones. Go! Whine in your bunks about the unfairness of life!"

With fifty terminals and two hundred residents, scheduling became a major project. Ron, Vlad and Susan spent many hours in the mess room hunched over their small tablets.

Nearly every educated person in United Earth had a tablet. They were sold at EarthGov-subsidized discounts to students beginning in elementary school. By the time they completed high school, most people considered a good tablet almost as a necessary item of clothing.

Susan, they learned, had been very lucky. She had brought nothing but a torn shipsuit from their previous dorm. Actually, they’d had a difficult time finding a shipsuit that would fit so tall a woman. They finally used one of Vlad's, suitably altered by one of the dorm's women while hers was repaired. The woman had discovered Susan's tablet in the breast pocket.

It seemed that when her assailant grabbed for a breast, he had grabbed her tablet through the cloth, and torn the shipsuit when she pulled away. Susan was delighted. Her tablet was a top-of the line model, with extra memory and dozens of features missing in the more common models. Once it was found, she practically cuddled it. Vlad teased her about going to bed with it, and Ron swore he heard her crooning softly to it.

Their discussions were often interrupted for meals, and it was after lunch the next day when Ron came out of the messroom to find himself facing four men in the red shipsuits that identified Crew Security waiting for him. All four had stunners in holsters.

One of them stepped forward. "Mr. Creding, please come with us."

Cesar stepped up. "What is this about?" He demanded.

The man shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "I was just told to bring Mr. Creding to the Captain."

Ron froze. The
Captain
! What could the Captain possibly want with Ron Creding? In fact, how did the Captain even know Ron existed? He looked at Cesar, who nodded with a worried expression. "You'd better go, Ron," was all he said.

Ron took a deep breath, and then nodded to the men. They led him off toward a service corridor.

Ron tried to keep track of their course, but that proved futile as soon as they encountered an elevator activated by retinal scan. Finally, they stopped in front of a door with a simple brass plaque that said "CAPTAIN" in inch-high letters. The leader knocked, and at a muffled, "Come in," opened the door and ushered Ron into a small, cluttered office. "Messer Creding, Captain." The leader announced, before backing out and closing the door behind him.

Ron's first impression of the Captain was how young the man was. He appeared to be in his late twenties. He was swarthy and dark-haired, apparently of Mediterranean descent. A small plaque on his desk read "Captain R. W. Angelo." It was the first time Ron had seen the Captain's name.

The Captain looked at Ron with a stony expression, but he swept a hand to indicate that Ron should take a seat. They stared at each other in silence for a long moment. Finally the Captain spoke.

"All right, Creding," he said harshly. "We're still in EarthGov space, and we enter jump in six hours. I should be on the bridge right now. I don't have time for this, but I'm having to
make
time to deal with you."

Ron blinked.
Deal
with him? What did that mean? He started to reply, but simply didn't know what to say.