The Far Shores (The Central Series) (23 page)

“Really? That’s pretty
strange. I mean, Vivik loves school. It isn’t like him to be late for any
class, even the ones about stuff that he already knows.”

“Vivik has been weird
lately,” Eerie said, looking down at her desk and frowning. “You should
probably talk to him.”

“Okay,” Alex said,
forcing a smile. “I’ll grab him after class, see what’s up. I’ve been wanting
to catch up anyway. Maybe we can have lunch or something. Anyway, he’s not
really the one I want to talk to. I’ve been meaning to ask – what are you doing
tomorrow night?”

Eerie hesitated for a
moment, and Alex was sure she would say she had to work, that she was needed at
Processing for something or other, his plans ruined for another week. He had to
return to the Far Shores Sunday evening, so tomorrow was his last chance.

“Well, I have some
coding to finish before Monday,” Eerie said doubtfully. “But I guess I could
put it off. Why?”

“Really? Great! Can I –
that is – do you want to go somewhere? Can I take you somewhere?”

Eerie blinked and
appeared confused.

“Where?”

“Not telling,” Alex
explained smugly. “It’s a date. You don’t get to know,” he said, secretly
hoping that Katya would come through. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

“A date?”

“Yeah. Wanna go on a
date with me?”

Her hesitation stretched
out long enough to inspire a new anxiety in Alex, one that hadn’t occurred to
Alex until that moment, though it should have – the Eerie might not be into the
idea. He had been so focused on the possibility that she would be busy, or that
Katya’s mysterious arrangements with the Black Sun would fall through, that he
had never considered the idea that Eerie might simply be disinterested in a
date. Though she had invited him to San Francisco to attend a rave – and wasn’t
that basically a date? Wasn’t it the same thing?

It sure seemed like the
same thing to Alex, but what Eerie thought was a perpetual mystery to him.
Sometimes he worried over their ongoing failure to communicate.

“Okay.”

Alex was so engrossed in
worry that the bright response caught him off guard.

“Really? Then you’ll
come?”

“Yes,” Eerie said, with what
could have been a very small smile. “If I am your girlfriend, then I should go.”

“Right. Of course.” Alex
cleared his throat, laughed nervously. “I’ll, um, come and get you at your
place, okay? Around nine?”

“Okay.”

Mr. Windsor entered the
class with his typical cheerful greeting, and Eerie turned her attention to
their teacher, leaving Alex torn between excitement and trepidation. He sat
back in his chair, fully aware that he had a stupid grin on his face, and not
caring one bit. He had a girlfriend, after all. It felt very real all of a
sudden, and he didn’t care what anyone thought, about it or him.

Excepting Eerie, naturally.

“What about it, Mr.
Warner?”

He became belatedly
aware that Mr. Windsor was talking to him, and therefore that the entire class
had turned in his direction, and became instantly flustered, trying desperately
to recall what Windsor had been discussing. Naturally, he drew a complete
blank, because he hadn’t been paying attention in the slightest.

“Uh, I’m sorry. What
about what?”

Mr. Windsor smiled
benevolently, as if Alex’s inattention was not at all taxing his legendary
patience.

“Would you care to share
anything from your recent experiences at the Far Shores with the class? There
is a great deal of curiosity and speculation centered on that facility, after
all, and I’m sure that many of your classmates would be very interested in
hearing something about your time there.”

“Ah. Okay. Well, let’s
see,” Alex said, mentally scrambling to come up with something to tell the
class, trying to remember if the Far Shores was one of the many topics to which
Miss Gallow had sworn him to secrecy. “There’s, um, there’s a beach. It’s out
in the Fringe, you know, so there’s a beach, but there’s no, uh, no ocean. It’s
just Ether.”

Alex had broken out in a
cold sweat, his brow furrowed, trying to desperately to recall anything he had
learned, anything of interest. He found himself recalling the strange nocturnal
activities that he and Katya had interrupted – the hazmat-suited technicians
conducting their nebulous tests at the edge of the endless sea of tumultuous
Ether – but that obviously wasn’t the kind of thing he should be discussing,
outside of the fact that it would probably get them in trouble, admitting that
they had seen it. Much of his time at the Far Shores had been spent on the same
Program activities that he did at the Academy, working out, or doing yoga with
Katya to kill time. His mind ran desperately over the old diesel buses, the
new, generic furniture, and the featureless white halls with the evenly spaced
doors, marked only with numbers.

“Oh! I met Dr. Graaf,
the guy who, well, I guess maybe he runs the place?” Alex looked up hopefully at
Mr. Windsor, who gave him an encouraging nod. “Yeah. He seemed...nice.”

Alex stared at the empty
white square projected on the screen in front of the class, and opened and then
closed his mouth a few times. Mr. Windsor let the silence stretch out longer
than Alex thought he was reasonable, and he felt his cheeks burning as his mind
turned up blank after blank.

“He isn’t allowed to
talk about most of it,” Katya called out, mercifully coming to his rescue. “Audits
business, you know.” Katya popped the last bit of her croissant into her mouth
and chewed contentedly for a moment, beaming at Mr. Windsor as she continued. “And
they haven’t shown us too much of the work they do there, because we have been
involved with the Program. It’s not as if Alex is an idiot, or anything.”

Alex froze behind his
brittle smile, torn between being grateful to Katya and planning a terrible
revenge upon her.

“Naturally. I should
have guessed as much,” Mr. Windsor said smoothly, sliding a transparency on the
face of the projector, the phrase “The Far Shores – An Institution of Discovery”
written large across the screen. “I only asked because, as a result of our
recent student exchanges with the Far Shores, this class has been offered a
singular opportunity, one that we will be taking advantage of, week after next.
An opportunity to get out of the classroom for a short while, and experience a
different method of learning firsthand.”

Alex snuck a look at the
class, relieved to see that whatever Mr. Windsor was talking about seemed to
have garnered almost universal attention. That wasn’t a huge surprise – field
trips were a rarity at the Academy, due to security concerns and logistics.
When students required real-world or Central experience, it was generally
provided in the context of field study, of which every student had a mandatory
period before they could graduate. This was generally limited to the student’s
presumed future occupation, however, and never took place in a group setting.
Even Alex himself was intrigued, and he had already spent a couple of weeks
trapped at the Far Shores, bored out of his mind. If nothing else, he thought
hopefully, it would mean an extra opportunity to spend time with Eerie.

He was about to return
his attention to Mr. Windsor’s presentation when he noticed Vivik closing the
classroom door quietly behind him. Alex tried to get his attention as he
tiptoed to a seat in the back of the class, but Vivik was either more concerned
with avoiding Mr. Windsor’s attention, or ignoring Alex, because he didn’t acknowledge
him. Alex gave up and decided to talk to him after class instead.

“The Far Shores have
offered the class housing and transportation, and made their facilities
available for us to tour, under the guidance of Dr. Graaf and Dr. Tsu, who are
the heads of the institution,” Mr. Windsor said, nodding at Alex as if he had
contributed something. He started blushing all over again, but when he glanced
next to him, Eerie was staring at him and appeared vaguely impressed, so maybe
it wasn’t all bad. “There are a variety of laboratories at the Far Shores, and
facilities for a range of studies – though, as you may have heard, much of
their work revolves around the Ether, mainly theoretical applications. The Far
Shores is perhaps best known for the experimental power generation facility,”
Dr. Windsor said, replacing the transparency with what looked to Alex to be the
schematics of some sort of industrial building, “brought online only last year
– designed in conjunction with the Academy’s own Dr. Vladimir Markov – which is
already providing almost half of the electricity consumed in Central. An
expansion of that particular project is already underway, incidentally, and
those of you who are on the engineering track may have already received
recruitment materials regarding the effort.”

Judging from the
whispering and rustling in various sections of the classroom, Alex assumed that
Mr. Windsor was correct.

“That is hardly the only
project of interest at the Far Shores, however. During our time there, we will
have the opportunity,” Mr. Windsor shuffled a new transparency onto the
projector, this time featuring a bullet-pointed list, “to visit the programs
for Life Sciences, Theoretical Physics, Chemistry, Nanotechnology, Etheric
Networking and Information Technology, Spatial and Statistical Mathematics,
Etheric Philosophy, and Protocol Sciences. I believe that there will be
something to interest everyone. I will distribute some literature that the Far
Shores have provided...”

Mr. Windsor paused to hand
out a few stacks of colorful pamphlets for the class to pass around.

“...and if you notice a
particular program or faculty member of personal interest, I encourage you to
let me know. I have been told that Dr. Graaf intends to schedule individual
times for students to experience firsthand any of the ongoing studies that
catch your interest. Let me emphasize the uniqueness opportunity, one that has
not been afforded to any previous class at the Academy, or to citizens of
Central at large. The Far Shores is a private, classified research facility, so
their decision to invite our class is a privilege, and a rather exciting one.
Please do review the materials, and consider seriously whether any of the
programs currently conducted at the Far Shores are of interest to you. Are
there any questions – yes, Miss Martynova?”

Anastasia spoke calmly,
but Alex got the feeling that she was at the very least annoyed, if not angry.
Of course, that was next to impossible for the unflappable Mistress of the
Black Sun, but he still got that impression.

“Isn’t this a rather
poorly veiled attempt at recruitment?” Anastasia held up one of the glossy
brochures in one hand. “I have seen similar materials. The Hegemony produces
them...”

“Hey!” Grigori snarled,
half-standing from his chair.

“As does the Black Sun,”
Anastasia continued coolly, not acknowledging his interruption. “My
understanding was that the Academy had a strict policy prohibiting the open
recruitment of students who have not yet completed their studies here. Is that
policy suspended for organizations with which the Academy has partnered?”

Mr. Windsor, as usual,
looked delighted by any class response he received, even one that was blatantly
challenging.

“An excellent question!
To respond – no, Miss Martynova, the rules remain in effect. No attempts will
be made to recruit students to work at the Far Shores, and I will be on hand,
along with Rebecca Levy, to make sure all interactions are appropriate and
within the guidelines of Academy regulations. This trip is merely an
opportunity for students to experience cutting-edge research-and-development
facilities firsthand. If the Black Sun would like to extend an invitation for
our classes to visit their own research facilities,” Mr. Windsor suggested,
full of guileless enthusiasm, “then I would be delighted to arrange such a
venture. As is true for the Hegemony, and any other interested and relevant
parties, I might add.”

“Noted,” Anastasia
responded, sitting back down with a sour expression.

“Any other questions?
Discussion? No, well, then, let’s move on to today’s lesson…”

***

Daniel Morgan was where he preferred
to be on a sunny afternoon – and in Flagstaff, those were not uncommon – on the
private golf course that was reserved for his cartel, and entertaining ranking
members of the Hegemony. The day was warm but not overly so, the grass well
tended and recently cropped, and at the tenth hole, he was only a single stroke
above his handicap. He shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand while he
watched the ball sail smoothly across a sand trap and land within an optimistic
two-stroke range of the hole, and felt that generally all was right with the
world.

He took a seat in the
plush, off-white electric golf cart and waited for his caddy – Mauricio
Delgado, the very promising son of his chief of security – to drive. Instead, the
conspicuously fit and subtly armored young man seemed preoccupied with the
miniature headset that he wore, occasionally whispering responses in Spanish, speaking
too rapidly for Daniel to understand. There was no particular hurry, however;
his schedule for the afternoon was completely clear, with nothing scheduled
until a dinner that evening in Glendale with representatives of the furiously
expanding North Cartel, so Daniel sat back to enjoy the sun and the chirping of
the birds.