Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder) (8 page)

“The manual says I can carry anything
that the astronauts can take, and this is UN regulation equipment for survival
training,” explained Red. After she cited the regulation number, the tech
shrugged and green-lighted the group. He put his own breathing apparatus into
place as the speaker began to play the tape of a typical NASA landing.

They had to push the buttons on the
control panel matching the voice-over instructions. Three minutes into the
simulation, Red heard a thump. There wasn’t time to brace. Air pressure popped
her ears, and cold water exploded into the fuselage. When the cockpit rolled
over, she grabbed the seatbelt latch with her last coherent thought.

****

The emergency oxygen mask dropped
lazily down from the overhead, dancing in front of her face by the dim red
emergency light. It had only been seconds ago. She pulled the latch and floated
free of the chair. She reached over and popped Toby’s belt next. The girl in
the third seat was releasing bubbles when Red freed her.

Together, the three of them
navigated the maze. Toby had practiced it often enough that he knew the route. They
had to swim under a bent plane wing to escape. When they reached the surface to
the cheering of their peers, Red gulped the air. She hadn’t practiced this
part. Risa helped pull her gasping roommate out of the pool.

While she stared, exhausted, at the
sky, someone threw a yellow football flag at her face. “Penalty. No helping the
other candidates in this exercise.”

The man on the lifeguard chair
said, “The other two pass. Cherry has to do it again. We can reschedule.”

“What’s wrong . . . with . . . today?”
she asked.

The instructor shrugged. “Not a
thing. You heard her: lock and load gentlemen. Switch out the divers and go
again.”

This time, she was ready for the
impact, the shock of the temperature drop, and the enfolding weight of the
water. She reached the door in what she was sure was record time. As she swam
though, someone in the dark grabbed her ass and pinched hard. Bubbles burst out
as she tried to voice her indignation. Merrick leaned out into the daylight. Running
low on air, she contented herself with an ‘accidental’ kick at the perpetrator.

Then he caught her foot. Grinning,
he held it fast. Drawing her survival knife, she slashed his forearm. When he
let go, she planted her foot on his face mask and pushed off as hard as she
could. When she broke the surface, her breathing was almost a braying sound.
The first gasp pulled in a little water and she spent several minutes coughing
up the excess. The instructor wouldn’t let anyone pull her out until she
touched the side of the pool.

The moment she tapped, Herkemer
pulled her out one-handed like a prize bass.

The Seal laughed, “Looks like someone
panicked.”

“Sir,” the tech announced. “There
were no dye packs today. That’s real blood.”

The instructor dove in without gear
to pull Merrick out. She checked the knife. It was clean. The tech sent them to
the locker rooms to get dressed. The rest of the class was canceled.

When they gathered poolside
afterward, the instructor announced, “Mr. Merrick’s mask shattered and
scratched his face as it twisted sideways.” Glaring at Red, Rogers said, “He’s
going to have to fly out for plastic surgery. That won’t take long, but he’s
not going to be able to help out in the pool for the rest of the semester.”

Red said, “Do I need to file a
report with you, sir?”

“Mr. Merrick swears it was an
honest accident and no charges will be filed. Do you have anything different to
add?”

Herkemer squeezed her arm in
warning.

“No, sir.”

“Carry on.”

After people dispersed, Toby
whispered, “Blind them first.”

Red snapped to alert. “What?”

“He’s a Rex. You tried to blind
him,” Toby said.

“He grabbed my ass, and when I
objected, he was going to hold me under until I couldn’t.”

Herkemer cursed.

Risa shuddered. “He doesn’t do
buddy breathing by sharing the regulator; he does it mouth to mouth.”

“All the same,” said Toby. “You
just declared war on your lifeline in survival training. Watch your back. People
wash out real easy here.”

“Maybe I should offer to airlift
him,” Red decided.

Risa shook her head. “You’ve got
cabana duty and a five o’clock class, chica.”

Remembering, Red closed her eyes.
“Just when I thought today couldn’t get any worse.”

“You were the one who insisted on
the loco load,” her roommate insisted.

“What?”

“One more credit and the dean
would’ve had to sign your slip for permission. You’re all kamikaze, so I figure
you like it this way.”

“I’ll see you at supper,” Red said,
seething inside.

At first, she handed out towels as
advertized. When the entire next class had a towel, she was sent to clean
toilets. Without her ball cap, she had to tie her hair back. The more she
cleaned, the angrier she became at the woman who’d assigned her this chore. As
she plunged an obstructed toilet with a plunger, she envisioned a stabbing
weapon. “Take that you bleached-blonde.”

Zeiss poked into the bathroom.
“What are you doing playing around here?”

“Come to laugh at me? Your idea of
a joke? I saw on your pad that you sent a message to Horvath right after we
met. You two probably planned this out together,” Red said, shaking the plunger
at him.

“I had to file a report. I used
emergency channels and she’s the head of security.”

“Well . . . you put me in too many
classes.”

“I gave you exactly the math you
requested. Everything else was straight out of the handbook. Did you read the
handbook?”

“No. But—”

“Would you have listened to me if
I’d advised you not to?”

“No.”

“I know your type. Hell, I
am
your type. You’ll push yourself till you succeed. And next time, because it
didn’t kill you, you’ll add a little more. I prefer to think of it as optimism,
not masochism.”

Her anger faded as she felt his
emotions. Zeiss seemed genuinely concerned for her.

“However, you still haven’t
downloaded the quantum physics’ paper for discussion this evening. Dr. Chau is
going to expect you to contribute. Don’t you read your e-mail?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“It was bad enough that you had
fourteen back homework assignments from Tensor Mechanics, plus studying for the
midterm that’s a quarter of your grade in Alien 101,” her adviser said.

The plunger drooped as the
magnitude of the work hit her. “Don’t let there be a ‘but’,” she begged.

“But one of your instructors phoned
Dr. Chau and said you’re a troublemaker who expects special treatment. I don’t
know which one. At the rate you’re making enemies, it could’ve been the bloody
dean himself. Now Dr. Chau wants you to watch each of his previous lectures and
pick one of the questions he asked the class from each lecture, nine in all. He
wants you to submit a three page essay on each of the questions.”

Her pale face froze.

“Don’t panic,” he said. “I told you
I’d help, and I will. I talked him into spacing the essays to only one a week
for the rest of the semester, due Friday at the start of class.”

For a long moment, she had no
words. “Why are you helping?”

The tall man stared at the ceiling.
“Does she ever listen? Because you asked and I agreed. Honestly, I’m starting
to regret that, but I keep my word. If you don’t hold up your end, Dr. Chau
will never take one of my students again. This may be all a game for you, but
teaching is my livelihood, my career. My word has to mean something.”

Still stunned, Red muttered, “I’ll
take care of that now. I can watch his class from my goggles in my room.” After
a pause, she added, “I won’t let you down.”

****

When Risa offered to cook the meal
for her, Red made a difficult decision. Trusting her Empathy talent, she shared
the freezer combination with her roommate.

The team helped her through the
worst of that first week. Sojiro patched her goggles into the school network
and Herk wired the voice controls. At 1800, Red walked up to the front door of
Trina’s pod. She didn’t knock, but shouted, “I know you’ll hear this; you hear
everything.” Enunciating every word, she said, “I’m not going to quit.”

Then she stormed back to her room
to cry and do ridiculous amounts of homework well into the night.

As students arrived for Armed Combat class Friday morning, a
bedraggled Red wandered into the smaller dojo. People stared. One man struggled
with his fencing facemask; she casually adjusted it for him and handed it back.
“The shared masks suck; invest in your own if you’re serious.”

She read a poster on the wall, “‘Sodas
add salt to make you thirsty. Don’t waste water.’ Between this and the data
security posters, it’s like a surreal war movie.”

“Can I help you?” Zeiss asked
pointedly. Then he noted, “Isn’t that the same outfit you had on yesterday?”

“Congratulations; you know your
colors. I haven’t been to bed yet, thanks to that essay. I hate writing.”

“I’m sure he’d take a six- to ten-minute
oral presentation.”

Her eyes nearly bugged out of her
head. “What?”

“You were going to tell me why
you’re here?”

She snorted. “Why are
you
here? You don’t know kendo.”

“Step into the hall, please,” he
hissed. “I’m supposed to give you a demerit for disrespect and entering the
dojo without permission.”

“You’re avoiding the issue.”

“When I quit hockey, my dad made me
take fencing. He said he didn’t want to raise a pansy.” He wouldn’t meet her
eyes.

He’s ashamed of being gay
,
she thought.

Zeiss continued. “In college, I
shifted to Aikido, which uses a lot of sword moves. It also shows you how to disarm
an opponent without either of you dying. Right now, I spend most of my time
doing set up and as a practice dummy, but Professor Sorenson is teaching me.”

“He’s training you to be his
replacement because he can’t have kids of his own. If you’re not careful,
you’ll be cleaning up after the old pervert for the rest of his life.”

Given what he knew about his boss,
Zeiss was shaken. “That’s . . . his business, and this time I
will
give
you the demerit for disrespect. Professor Sorenson’s assistants all go on to
great posts with the highest recommendations.”

“Consolation prizes. They all
screwed up,” she insisted.

“Like you did when you put that
virus on my pad?” he replied. She blanched. “I don’t know whether you did it on
Sunday or in class. But that was stupid. Violating data security is one of the
things that can get you tossed from this program or put in prison.”

Red was speechless as he lectured.
“It was clever, a variant of the video-blocker code Fortune Multimedia puts
out. It erases patterns on computer disk and memory.”

She stared at him in panic.

“But . . .” he said, allowing her
to breathe again. “Technically, you only destroyed your own data. So I’m only
giving you a second demerit for vandalism.”

“Thank you. My own data . . . How
did you find out?”

“I checked on PJ Smith’s file after
your display in class,” Zeiss explained. “He has three daughters. However, the
one about your age has no photograph available, here or on the corporate
mainframe.”

“Please don’t tell anyone,” she
begged.

He pointed to his own chest. “
I
can keep secrets, Miss Smith.
You
need to keep a lower profile.”

Red didn’t correct him about the
name. The near miss was too terrifying. She just nodded.

“I start class in one minute. Tell
me how I can help you,” the blond TA said with amazing calm.

“They don’t have dry cleaning in
this place!” she complained.

“Or maid service,” he replied
sarcastically.

“I know, Risa just told me. I
figured she came on Saturday morning like everywhere else.”

When Zeiss just stared in
disbelief, she continued. “Well, what am I going to do?”

“Learn to do laundry?” he
suggested, looking around to see if he was being recorded.

“It’s like you people are reading
from the same script.” Then she hissed, “This is custom-fitted, bulletproof
material. I couldn’t wash them in a Laundromat if I knew where one was.”

He opened his mouth and shut it
again. Pursing his lips, he counted silently to ten. “There’s a laundry room in
the entry pod of each meta-pod—it’s the door across the hall from the security
station. Have your roommate teach you about hand-washing delicates. Get the
stuff they make for fancy sweaters. I’m sure one of the other girls could loan
you some. Meanwhile, buy a pair of BDUs from the BX. They make them in most of
the same colors as your suits, and they have the same pockets. I also suggest
you go back to the clinic and take a nap. You need one and Dr. Marsh will write
you an excuse.”

“Really?” she said. “The same
colors?”

He smiled. “Nap first. Time’s up.
Goodbye!” The tall TA turned on his heel and returned to class.

****

Red awoke at 12:45 that afternoon,
just in time for Extreme Environments. She told the nurse, “God, that felt
good. Now I’ve got to go shopping.”

The nurse shook her head. “You have
a potassium imbalance and need iron.”

The girl shrugged. “So I have my
period and need to eat bananas and meat. Give me a shot for now.”

“I can do that, but Dr. Marsh is
ordering you to report next week for more blood work.”

“
Ordering
me?”

“Brain chemistry imbalance in
monitored talents is grounds for getting washed out of the program.”

Red muttered, “Just because you’re
paranoid, it doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you.”

“Pardon?”

“Shot, please.”

****

Red arrived late for Extreme Environments,
but they accepted the medical slip. Her classmates were already in their
spacesuits. Risa helped her gear up because Red had never put one on and the
techs were avoiding her. The first drill was attaching a refill hose to a
simulated spacecraft’s water tanks. The second drill was repairing a leak in
that same water tank. Herkemer rescued Red by breaking a recalcitrant lug nut.
After an hour underwater in a bulky spacesuit with insufficient cooling, she
reeked of sweat and looked like a Raggedy Ann doll that’d been caught in a
storm drain. Again, the tanks ran out of hot water before she got her turn in
the shower.

When Red tried to head home, Sojiro
caught her. “You weren’t at Alien 101 today, but Sorenson scheduled a special
session in the amphitheater—we get to watch someone read a page!”

“Who?”

“The new diving assistant who’s
replacing Merrick is reading Body Override.”

“A Rex? No, thanks. I’d sooner
watch someone get alien eggs laid inside them in one of those science fiction
movies.” She’d only seen part of one such film on cable and had nightmares for
weeks. Her father had installed rigid parental controls on all the TVs on the
estate after that.

“Don’t talk like a bigot around the
mils,” the Japanese artist said, wincing at the analogy. “Attendance is
mandatory. We have to observe and explain the reading process before we can go
through it ourselves.”

She bit her lip. Red would never
need to read a page; she had all the talents a person was legally permitted and
more. However, if she didn’t attend, people would ask questions. “Fine.”

People from their class and many
military upper classmen gathered for the event, making the main lecture hall
standing-room-only when Red arrived. “Why so many?” she asked Sojiro. The noise
of other conversations made communication difficult.

“To be chosen is a great honor,” he
explained. “We only get this page once a semester. Competition is steep. The
candidate gets a special rank and everything.”

“People should be wearing black,
not celebrating,” she muttered. “It’s the most feared page in existence.”

Behind her, against the wall, Zeiss
whispered, “Actually, Empathy is the most feared page in the world. We only get
that twice a year.” The TA checked their names off on his attendance sheet.

“Shut up!” Red exclaimed.

Sojiro nodded. “He’s right. After
Benny Hollis retired, the UN assembly united to ban empathic ambassadors.
People are afraid of losing their secrets and being manipulated, especially
when you can’t prove the offense in court. Everyone likes working with Ethics
pages, but they’re pretty rare.”

Red panicked for a moment. “I
thought any Rex had to have Ethics or Empathy to balance him, to prevent him
from becoming a killing machine. What’s to stop someone from making an army of
these monsters?”

“The price tag of about a million a
year for one of these guys’ medical treatment, and anyone with Collective
Unconscious can see them coming,” Zeiss reasoned. “By age thirty, the Overrides
who survive have the body of an eighty-year-old: prosthetics, arthritis, hip
and joint replacement. Given the average career of ten years, the Academy
accepts ethics training, two years of psych evaluation, proven group loyalty,
and Collective Unconscious to bind him to other humans.”

“That’s not enough,” she hissed.

The TA shrugged. “The UN approved the
change last year, along with increased penalties for crimes committed by Actives.”

“After Ambassador Hollis died?” she
asked, regretting that she hadn’t followed politics more closely.

“No, it was one of his last
compromises,” Zeiss explained. “Others wanted Empaths to wear some sort of
symbol or special clothing in public.”

“Like a Star of David,” Red said,
rubbing the area over her own heart. Her dad had made the deal for her. “What
else did he give up?”

The TA said, “Non-signatory
countries can have access to read Collective Unconscious.”

“But they didn’t agree to the
ethical code!” she said, outraged.

The blond mathematician said, “The
thought was letting them have a taste might encourage countries to join. The
strategy has worked with two smaller countries already. It reduces fear and
overreaction in hostile countries when they can see Actives coming. Besides,
they could already get the talent through infection or agents defecting. This
way, we get the goodwill—brilliant statecraft.”

She snorted. “I bet it was his plan
all along but he made them pay a high price for the concession.”

Zeiss wasn’t listening. He placed a
finger to his lips as Dr. Marsh opened the curtain on the stage. A man in a
hospital gown was bound to a heavy slab by numerous straps.

Over the sound system, the doctor
said, “Silence, please. I don’t approve of this spectacle, but the rest of the
candidates need to see what you’re volunteering for. Unlike most pages,
Override doesn’t cause the recipient to pass out peacefully while it reformats
the brain. We have to inject candidates with anti-inflammatory drugs, muscle
relaxants, and palliative narcotics. The page teaches them to secrete
adrenaline and endorphins at need, but the day of training is like running a
marathon while infected with Ebola.”

A soldier rolled a cart out that
contained a metal suitcase. Red could tell he was a Rex himself. He had to be
to protect the page or be able to touch it safely.

Red turned to face the wall,
closing her eyes. “Don’t do it.”

“The candidate has been fasting for
days to prepare. Every muscle in his body will seize at some point. The pain is
incredible. Even with the pads on the restraints, he’s likely to give himself
permanent scars as he strains to escape. But if he perseveres, he will be an
invaluable asset to the Sirius program. In the face of this incredible bravery,
I would ask for respectful silence.”

In the quiet, they could hear the
locked courier case snick open. The soldier stood next to the candidate’s head,
took the golden slip of alien paper out of the padded interior, and moved it reverently
over his face. The action resembled a church sacrament. Red’s stomach twisted
in anticipation. The man on the slab watched words appear on the page in his
native language. The moment he finished the first line, Red could sense the
burning sensation start in his spine and spread outward. His muscles underwent
a process that reminded her of rigor mortis.

She doubled over, queasy and pale.
Zeiss rushed her out into the hall before the stage area flared with a crimson
flash that only Actives could see. Rexes in the audience shouted, “No limits!”

The girl vomited on the tile
outside while Zeiss held back her hair.

When she stopped to take a shaky
breath, he gave her a handkerchief and whispered, “You feel what they go
through?”

Red nodded as she wiped her face
and sleeve. “No one should have to experience that, but what happens to them
afterward is worse.”

“Go recover. I’ll see that this
gets cleaned up.”

****

When Red finally got to the BX, she
bought two of every color combat pants they had, plus matching shirts and underwear.
That way she wouldn’t have to learn to do laundry for another month. The first
thing Risa said was, “Where are we going to put all this,
loca
?”

“I’ve got to eat two meals, read a
boring Chinese physics paper, and see if that bohunk of yours left me any ice
cream. Pick on me tomorrow. I promise I’ll sleep under the heap till I get
shelves installed or something. Oh, crap, I have to touch up my hair.” Her blonde
roots showed through. She took off her flight suit so this one wouldn’t get
stained like the last one.

“I’m just saying, chica, this place
is starting to look like an episode of
Hoarders
.”

“I’m having my period and someone
just slapped me with a dumb-ass demerit. You’re part of the problem or part of
the solution,” Red snapped.

“Wait, you got a demerit? Damn! You
didn’t put that KICK ME sign on Horvath’s uniform did you?”

“No, but I still think it’d be
funny.”

“Ain’t nothing funny about a
demerit, girl,” Risa stressed. “What’d you do?”

“I showed ‘conspicuous disrespect’
to a member of the faculty,” Red admitted.

Risa shook her head. “They can
assign you any number of nasty punishments to get it cleaned from your record.
Did you call Z-man a dick head to his face?”