Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder) (11 page)

Herk and Red were too stunned to
speak. Sojiro broke the silence as he read, “Alistair. His name’s Alistair.”

Red sent them away, saying, “Head
to class. I can do this myself. Thanks for the escort.”

The girl wandered into the back room.
Trina was sorting towels and uniforms into piles. “Right on time. No song
today, Grunt-Monkey. You take over on laundry, and I’ll clean the weapons.”

“Uh . . . I don’t know how.”

Trina locked eyes with her for a
minute. Seeing she was telling the truth, the teacher said, “I guess you
wouldn’t. Your dad never learned; other people did things for him his whole
life. We’ll do a load together.”

No yelling, no threats, just how to
do a white load. She had to run Trina’s paint-stained shirt through twice, after
a good deal of hand scrubbing. At the end of the hour, Red bowed and said,
“Thank you, Sensei.”

Classes went smoothly for Red that
day, eerily so. For the most part, people saw her staggering around with the
new name tag and stayed clear of the victim, for fear it might rub off. When
Sojiro asked, “What fiendish punishment did she devise for the first day?”

Red still looked a little dazed.
“Did you know the force that a spin cycle exerts?”

“Dude, don’t freak me out. Did she
leave any marks?”

“No, but I still don’t know what
the tennis balls on her shelf are for. She says she only uses them when it
rains.”

All day, she kept waiting for the
other shoe to drop.

However, other than extra homework
to catch up in her math class, it was an unremarkable day. Over the dinner
hour, she received a package from Miss Mori containing paint-stained clothes. Her
note said, “Clean it or buy it!” Enclosed were a list of preferred dry cleaners
and copies of shopping receipts totaling over $5000. Red’s eyes bugged out. “My
allowance was cut to only two thousand a month.”

Risa had no sympathy. “I get less
than one thousand, Se
ñ
orita
Monita
.”
The Spanish word for cute little monkey girl had become her favorite zinger.

“I can’t fly them to the dry
cleaner because I’m grounded,” Red complained. She still got no sympathy. “Fine,
I’ll wash them myself tomorrow.”

“Who are you, and what did you do
with the princess?”

Red gave her a fake, catty smile.

At 2000, when Zeiss tapped on her
door, her heart jumped into her throat. This had to be it—the second demerit.
This was going to be the lash on the back. “Follow me,” he said, and she
obeyed.

He led her to the restaurant
kitchen. When they arrived, he introduced her loudly enough for the lingering
patrons to hear. “This is François. You will be cleaning his kitchen every
night. He’s very exacting in his standards. If he’s not satisfied, you will clean
it again. You’re his for the next three weeks.”

“But. . .”

“Is there a problem?” Zeiss dared
her, raising an eyebrow.

“No, sir.”

“Good.” Lowering his voice, the TA
told her, “In payment, you’re permitted to make your own dinner with whatever
you can find in the freezers, including Professor Sorenson’s. He has the same
standards as you for dining.”

She held her breath, hardly believing
her ears. He’d turned the remaining punishment into a lifeline. “Thank you, Z.
I’ll never ask you for another favor as long as I live.”

He snorted. “Don’t make promises
you can’t keep.”

“I’ll get started cleaning now.
I’ll make you proud.”

The TA nodded and started to leave.
The moment he touched the swinging door, the girl exclaimed, “Wait!”

“A favor already?”

Red bit her lip. “It’s not my
fault, okay?” She changed to a whisper. “I don’t know how to cook. I’ve never
had to do it before.”

Zeiss rubbed his face. “Clean
first. I’ll be back in half an hour. I have classes to prepare for. Then I’ll
show you something basic.”

“
You
cook?”

“Most adults do, Red. Since my
mother was incapacitated much of the time, I had to learn. It’s not magic. Risa
or someone should be here, too. I won’t be alone with a female student.
Understood?”

She nodded and dialed up her
roommate. Risa agreed to meet them at the half-hour mark. “But no cleaning.
Just because I look like your maid doesn’t mean I do grease stains, chica.”

When Zeiss arrived in an old overshirt,
he started by showing her basic rice and pasta preparation. “Simple, but with
the right sauce, quite tasty.” Giving her badge back, he said, “Lock up when
you’re finished.”

Red told him, “Z, I talked to the
Sunday Dinner Club. We’d like to know if you’d agree to be our faculty adviser.”

“Does the post come with five-star
food?”

Red smiled. “Spaghetti?”

“Sold.”

Once back to his room, he sent a
text to Daniel. “I’m in.”

A month later, on a beautiful Saturday morning, Zeiss sat in
his bedroom, staring at his Go board. It was a grooved, maple square covered with
polished black and white stones. His opponent was Johannes Solomon, the small,
dark math professor from Ethiopia. The TA had hidden his dissertation notes and
map in his safe before the game. “We could do this during the week if you used
a computer.”

In a sing-song voice, the African
genius in the rattan chair said, “Then I would miss the social aspects and body
cues. Through a machine, Conrad, you would crush me like a
bug
.” The last
word had been loud and enthusiastic for emphasis. “In person, I can sense which
moves are important to you. Besides, I like the company. You need more
socialization.” Listening to the longer words felt like riding an ocean swell.

Zeiss wore a T-shirt featuring da Vinci’s
Vitruvian Man
playing an electric guitar. “I work for the Academy five
hours a day, security five hours, and help students in my ‘spare’ time. My
dissertation is taking a back seat and I have no social time to speak of.”

“Ach, to you this hunt for sneaky
people is like this game. It
stimulates
you.”

“I guess,” Zeiss admitted. “I found
another covert channel for information this week.”

“I won’t understand it, but please
tell me and I will pretend to be fascinated.”

“When people send email, the word
processing documents copy information left over in computer memory onto the end
of the file. The censors don’t see it because the program doesn’t display it.
So now I have to read over thousands of emails checking for inadvertent leaks
of sensitive information.”

“This does not happen when you
write it on paper like a
civilized
person.”

“I don’t understand how you can
live without email.”

When the Ethiopian laughed, the
sound was high and sharp. “People existed for millennia without this nuisance.
How many hours a week do you waste on this email?” At last, he placed a black
stone on the board, changing one of the whites to his color.

Zeiss shrugged. “At least four
hours.”

“Everything important, people tell
me in the
hallway
, in two minutes,” the math teacher said. “That is, as
you say a lot of noise and very little signal.”

Zeiss placed a white stone and
flipped three of his opponent’s pieces to white because of it. “Is this because
of the whole Mennonite anti-tech thing?”

“We are not the Amish. We object to
pride
, not science. My objective is to teach my students to
think
on their own,” he said, placing another black stone. “Speaking of students, how
is your special project, the one on probation?”

“This is the last day of her
grounding and kitchen duty. She’s still assigned to Horvath, though.”

“I think she would rather keep the
other two punishments.”

Zeiss laughed. “Horvath made her do
pushups, clean, referee sparring, and help students with their martial arts.”

“The freshman child is teaching?”

“She’s older than she looks and
quite talented in several martial arts forms.”

“Then you were wise to choose
this.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but she
definitely made the Grunt-Monkey job her own. The students changed her name tag
to Se
ñ
orita Monita or Monkey Girl for short.”

“So no more problem child?”

The TA waggled his hand. “There’s
still her cold war with Kaguya Mori. Not all the paint-ball stains came out of
the silk. I also have to monitor her while she does her Tensor Mechanics
homework.”

“Cheating?” the Ethiopian asked,
placing a stone.

Zeiss placed his next piece in a
heartbeat and flipped all but one small corner to white. He couldn’t tell his
associate that she’d found a way to use a little calculating power from each
person in the crowded cafeteria without triggering the bio-monitors. “More like
I want her to learn to think for herself.” He was so busy switching stone
colors he didn’t see the little man react. The cryptic reference hadn’t been
obscure enough.

When Dr. Solomon left the pod, he
passed by the clinic garden. Casually, he bent over and turned the garden gnome
to face his office. He needed his agent to contact him about several problems.

****

The days had passed in a blur. At
last, Red was caught up on everything except a few quantum physics essays. That
morning, Red slept in for the first time since her arrival at the academy. With
no emergency drill or extreme environment test to complete, she pulled the
comforter over her head and luxuriated. She told Risa to go walking with the
guys instead of her.

In the middle of a dream about a
dessert bar at a steakhouse, she sensed the contacts—twelve Actives moving
toward the prow of the island. Their craft was closing fast. Red grabbed the
goggles from her dresser and hit the microphone. “Priority channel, board-level
clearance, Trina Horvath.”

She jumped into pants with the
survival knife already in a pocket and left the Disney princess shirt on. She
grabbed her emergency gun from under her pillow and ran out the door without
bothering to slip on a bra.

Seconds later, Trina answered.
“Hello? Red? Are you okay?”

Building up speed as she cleared
the front door, and snapping the goggles into place, the girl said, “Active
team inbound, a dozen. Landfall on agro meta-pod four. Moving to intercept.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

Red sprinted out the front gate of
her meta, past the library, agro meta six, the faculty meta, and reached the
jogging path that meandered around the green space. She was breathing heavily
when she reached the scenic point with benches that provided a splendid view of
the ocean, isolated from the rest of the academy. A windbreak row of palm trees
provided a modicum of shade and privacy. This was the perfect spot to invade.

Kaguya was leaning against some boy
on one of the benches. He looked nervous when Red lingered. After a few
seconds, he rose and departed casually. He had lipstick marks on his neck. Miss
Mori glared at her and said, “This is my bench Saturday mornings. Get your
cardio exercise somewhere else, Princess.”

Red glanced down at her night shirt
and blushed. They were squaring off for a cat fight when Trina walked up. The
overdressed debutante left when she saw the professor but did so slowly.

“Did you just call me to ruin
everyone’s day at make-out point?” Trina laughed.

“No, there are Actives,” Red
pointed.

Trina nodded. “Daniel said they’re
friendlies. It’s classified. Come to the railing and watch with me.”

“Is it a strike team doing covert
training? A mock invasion? Are they changing the crew of our guard submarine?”

“Shh. Watch.”

Growling, Red obeyed. After a few
moments, she saw the pod of dolphins leaping through the waves. “Ooo, they’re
gorgeous.” More than just visually, on the mental wavelengths, the aquatic
mammals were all play and love. “Dolphins are Active?”

Trina nodded. “Not freshwater ones,
but these bottlenoses feel like very young human children. It’s something we
want to keep secret.”

Unaware of what she was doing while
watching the happy event, Red reached out and took her aunt’s hand. Trina allowed
her to. Neither spoke for several minutes, until a pair of joggers passed them
and raised an eyebrow. When Red saw what they were staring at, she pulled her
hand back.

“Dolphins don’t have talents, but
they
share
,” Red noted.

“Sometimes that’s enough.”

“Why didn’t I notice them before?”
the girl asked.

“The medication we had you on to
suppress normal development is wearing off. Tell Dr. Marsh today. He’ll need to
adjust your dosages and add some new monitoring,” Trina said with a gentle
smile. “You’re becoming a woman.”

Her aunt wanted to touch her face,
but Red dodged, wary of more witnesses. The girl asked, “What about other
higher mammals?”

“Extend your senses downward.”

When no more information was
forthcoming, the girl complied. Red pushed as deep as possible, but felt no
minds. In fact, she felt pushing back like a giant air bag. “Something’s there,
preventing me. Wait; is this artificial silence what Professor Sorenson needs?”

Trina nodded. “It helps us all.”

“But the zone is moving. We’re
following it,” Red recalled. “It feels like several big pillows.”

“They have their own Collective,
and we’re not welcome,” Professor Horvath hinted.

“Whales?” asked Red.

“Board-level clearance. Don’t tell your
friends. Only five people alive know the secret, and one is the island’s
navigator.”

“Too cool,” Red said, leaning over
the rail to feel the animals better.

“What are you going to do with your
newfound freedom now that you’re no longer grounded?” her aunt asked.

“Toby needs Lasik surgery if he’s
going to qualify for Extra-Vehicular training. That’ll be next month.”

“Jet packs are fun, but does he
want
to train with them?”

“The team needs it.”

“You’re a control freak,” Trina
warned. “The world can’t be controlled.”

“You’re calling me a Jezebel?”

“One of your dad’s favorite books
was
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
.”

“The short one with the beach
picture?”

“You should read it. And remember
one word: be,” Trina requested. “Every person in your life has sweat bullets to
be there. No complaints. However, you need to learn to loosen your stranglehold
on this obsession or you could miss something really important.”

“Huh? I’ll start slow.”

“That would be a first.”

Red grinned sheepishly. “Thanks for
this. It felt nice not to be Monita for a while. Now I need to change my shirt
before anyone else sees it.”

Trina laughed. “Follow me. My pod’s
the closest.” She led the girl to her apartment. Having Red wave her badge over
the reader, the professor said, “Grant access.”

The reader light turned green. Once
inside, Trina said, “This room is really just for quick changes; I sleep
through that door with you-know-who. You won’t get in there, but you can
ransack my closet in an emergency. You’re only a couple inches shorter than I
am.”

Red picked a cute top from the US
Virgin Islands. “That’s bamboo, very comfortable,” noted her aunt. “Now stay
out of trouble.”

****

Monday morning, someone had added
the word ‘Princess’ to Red’s name tag. She swore while she scraped damaged tile
off the floor of a shower. Because she had upgraded the dojo controls to
respond to her goggle commands, she was able to listen to music while she
worked.

Trina wandered in about twenty
minutes later. Red muttered, “Music, off,” and it went silent. To her aunt, she
said, “I suppose you’re not going to sing me a song for being late?”

“I just had the oddest discussion
with the dean. Wow, you finished that tile yourself. I thought it’d take both
of us.”

“I was motivated. So we have some
free time. What’s up Stanton’s craw?”

The instructor closed the bathroom
door. “There’s been an allegation that I’m dating you in a homosexual
relation.”

“That vindictive slut. I’m going to
. . .”

“Calm down and leave the teacher
business to teachers,” Trina insisted. “There were multiple complaints: the
handholding, the hug, and photos of you going in with one top and coming out
with another. I was able to prove no physical relationship by playing the tape
from my room, but the dean said I can’t supervise you anymore.”

“But you’re as het as they get.
Daniel can vouch for you.”

“Not if I want to keep my cover.
And this identity has been known to frequent gay bars. My sister Una got sloppy
and they found photos from almost twenty years ago.”

“This is asinine,” Red protested.

“You’re free. Your indenture is
over.”

Far from being excited, Red felt
disappointment. “You didn’t fight for me?”

Trina looked at her, struck by the
wording. “I thought this is what you’ve been praying for.”

“Well, not like this.”

“Daniel would laugh his ass off at
this,” Trina said, eyes sparkling with amusement. “You’re saying you
want
to work for me?”

“With. Not for,” Red clarified.

The instructor raised an eyebrow. “If
you get your black belt, you can instruct. Then there’s nothing anyone can
object to. What changed?”

“Nobody tells me who I can love.”
Red took advantage of the last time they’d have together until Christmas and
hugged her aunt.