Si Vis Pacem (Heinlein's Finches) Page 16
“You don’t. Anyway, all I had to do was steer her towards punishments that met her goals while doing us a favor. She’ll be positively pissed off if she ever finds out just how much of a favor she did us. You know that I don’t believe that the end justifies the means, but.”
“But what?”
“But this end justified these means.” She laughs and raises a hand to her temple. “Remind me not to do that.”
“Does it hurt?”
“A bit. But it was definitely worth it. You should have seen their faces when you did your drop bear routine.”
“Drop bear? What the hell is one of them?”
She reclines on the bed like the heroine in an old Terran drama and tells me a story about a country where unwanted people used to be sent to by their government, which sounds painfully familiar, and a breed of small, cute, but terrifying animals that used to live there. The country apparently really existed while the drop bears are fictional, but I don’t really care. It’s a nice story. It makes my eyes feel heavy. When I finally lie down next to her I try to keep listening, but I don’t manage it for very long.
Solitary with Dee is like a dream come true. OK, so that dream includes us being constantly in each other’s face, unable to get the smallest degree of privacy, and often getting irritated at each other purely because we don’t have enough space to keep our irritation to ourselves, but it’s still better than being out there. There are no dangers here, provided the air supply doesn’t get cut off. Back in the real world, where we have to go for our classes and our meals, things are still unsafe for us, but the fact that we’re under such close supervision seems to be putting everyone off having another go at us. That’s my theory, anyway; Dee reckons that it’s because I scared them. Apparently one of the girls had to have part of her ear reattached. I don’t remember anything about that. Dee doesn’t seem to think that it makes it better. Either way, although we obviously keep on high alert, we don’t get bothered.
Part of our punishment is that we have to spend all our free time in the study room. That suits us fine. The monitors are our only connection to the worlds outside this Station, the only way we have of finding out what opportunities are open to us. The more time we can spend on them, the better off we are.
We wait a couple of days before starting to look around just to make sure I really pulled off my stunt. I still can’t believe that I did it. Every single moment of every single hour I’m waiting for someone to shout out my name and drag me into solitary – solitary-solitary, that is, not the sweet deal Dee managed to wrangle for us. That’s not where I’d end up, of course: forging Fed records is a Fed offence, and as I’m sixteen that would mean jail, proper jail, not juvie. A lot of the kids here have relatives in jail. From the way they describe it, I don’t think I could cope there. I mean, I could stay alive, most likely, but whether the person staying alive would be anything like me, the me I think of myself as, that’s another story.
Nothing happens, though. No scream, no arrest, nothing. We carry on with our courses and our lives as if nothing had happened. Everyone around us does the same.
Three days into it I start to relax. It looks like Dee was right: it worked. She looks like she was right, too: if she wasn’t so damn pretty when she grins I’d be getting angry at her. We don’t have time to fuck around, though. We did this for a reason, after all.
On the fourth day we start applying for every job going – literally. There is a whole universe of opportunities out there and they all need to be individually applied for. Considering how everyone uses the Fed com system to advertise for applicants, I’d have thought there would be some kind of automated system, a way for us to put in our details once and have them automatically inserted into the various applications, but no such luck: every godsdamned application is its own separate process. We ignore the ones who ask too much about our early years because my records really wouldn’t stand up to a close examination, but we go for everything else. It’s the most tedious, frustrating thing I’ve ever done, and it takes a ton of time. Thankfully our “punishment” includes the elimination of all non-essential activities. We eat as quickly as we can, we attend our classes, and the rest of our waking time is spent at a terminal, answering the same questions over and over again. At night we get locked up in our cell and collapse in a tired heap on our little cot.
Our original plan was to apply for things together and only bother to chase up the applications where we both got pre-approved. When we realize the sheer number of vacancies out there and the amount of work that goes into applying for each one we change tack. We do precisely the opposite: we split the list in two, we only apply to our half, and anything one of us doesn’t get approved for gets struck off the list. It doesn’t help that the list gets updated every day, so we have to compare it with the applications we have already placed in order to avoid applying twice. I pride myself in being methodical, but this is starting to get to me.
A week into this we’ve gotten nowhere and I’m about ready to open a vein. We have two and a half weeks left in solitary. After that, it’s back to our old room, or a room very much like our old room. We’ll have to watch our backs again. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.
When they lock us into our cell, after we’ve taken turns staring at the wall so we can wash, piss, and shit in relative privacy, Dee lies down on the bed like she always does, right up against the wall, so there is enough room for me to fit. She looks as quietly happy as she always does, even though everything is going to shit. Remembering how badly I fucked up her life makes me want to hurt myself.
“Honey? What’s up?”
She taps the bed next to her. I sit down to stop her from getting up. I don’t want to inconvenience her more than I’ve already done.
“You were right and I was wrong: this was a terrible idea.”
“I never said that!”
“I’ve lost count of the number of forms I’ve filled in.”
“No, you haven’t. I’ve seen the records you keep.”
“I was speaking metaphorically. I thought we would have found something by now. With the amount of stuff out there...”
“I never thought about it, but our situation is hardly unique: there are literally millions of eighteen-year-olds going through the same process, and most of them don’t come from this kind of institution. I know it shouldn’t count against us, but I’m willing to bet that it does.”
“That’s a cheerful prospect.”
“It is what it is. We just have to keep on pushing.”
“We have to be less picky.”
“Honey, we’re applying for everything going.”
“No, we’re not. We are applying to all the private opportunities going.”
Her eyes narrow. “You don’t mean…”
“We need to start applying for Fed jobs. We don’t have to take them, and, if we do, we don’t have to keep them, but we can’t ignore them.”
“You hate the Fed.”
“So do you. It wouldn’t have to be forever. But as a first job, to get us out of here… Dee, we have to go for it. We have to. It’s that or staying here.”
“Nope. In six months they’ll sling us out whether we like it or not. I was on my way out anyway, but you had two years’ grace, and you blew them.”
“Huh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
She smiles. “I don’t think you were thinking, honey, but I don’t know that it’s a bad thing. This place isn’t much use to you now. Anyway, we might be jumping the gun a bit, but we have to get out of here sooner or later. Sooner is better than later, if you ask me.”
“So you’re OK about applying to Fed vacancies?”
“I have to be. But you have to promise me that even if we get in there, we’ll keep looking.”
I roll over so we’re spooning. It gives her more room, and I’d rather not look at her while we talk about this.
“Dee? What are the chances of us managing to stay together?”
S
he doesn’t say anything for a bit, and when she starts talking again her voice is unusually flat.
“It depends. If we’re willing to prioritize that over everything else, we can definitely do it. We could get ourselves sent to the same biomass recycling plant.”
“Yes, and see how many weeks pass before we are the biomass.”
“All I’m saying is that it depends on what we prioritize. And honey, I know you miss… I know you miss him, but I don’t think that throwing everything away just so we can stay close is necessarily the way to go.”
“So you want to drop me.”
“No!” She wraps her arms around me. “I just think we should both aim for what would make us happiest. And that may mean not being in the same place, doing the same thing.”
I hear what she’s saying and I understand where she’s coming from, but I can’t agree. It hurts. Everything just hurts too damn much for me to look at any of it, so I don’t. I shut it all down and force myself to think rationally, to try and plot a way out of this.
“OK. So we start applying for Fed posts. That may actually put us ahead of the game: most people our age won’t start applying until the school term has finished, so all their qualifications count.”
“You are forgetting all those people who didn’t get anywhere at the end of last term and are still floundering.”
“Thank you for that. I was starting to feel too optimistic.”
She rests her head on top of mine. She doesn’t even say goodnight when the lights go off. I know she’s awake from her breathing. I am sure she knows I’m awake too.
Dee has been pestering me all night to tell her what’s up with me, but I wait until we’re back in our room before I break the news. I have a bad feeling about how this is going to go. If she is going to flip out at me, which she almost certainly is, I need it to happen in private.
She doesn’t appreciate my secrecy. I know where she’s coming from, but it doesn’t help me or us at all. She’s already pissed off when she sits on our bed; I can tell by the way her jaw is bunched, and by the fact that she spends five minutes hectoring me on what an asshole I’ve been.
“Dee, there is something I need to tell you.”
“No shit. Really?”
“I don’t quite know how to say this.”
“Small words, short sentences, and quickly. What is it?”
“I passed a test.”
She reels back as if I’d slapped her. “You pass hundreds of tests. What kind of test was this?”
“Admission test.”
“You got in somewhere?”
“Yeah.”
“For real?”
“Yeah.”
Her smile opens like a flower, then wilts. “Is it a test I couldn’t pass?”
“No. You’d get in as easy as anything. It’s aptitudinal.”
“Then why are you looking funereal? This is fantastic!” She grabs my hands and squeezes them, then drops them. “Wait. What is it for?”
“That’s the catch. Promise you’re going to hear me out?”
“What is it?”
“Promise first.”
She throws her arms up in the air. “OK! I promise! What is it?”
“Patrol Academy. On Hyperion.”
Her face collapses, lies in ruins for a moment, then it builds itself up again into the very picture of rage. “Are you fucking shitting me? The Patrol? You want us to join the fucking Patrol?”
“Let me explain…”
“NO!” She screams that in my face. “A Fed job, OK, I see the need. We need a way out and that would be one. But I am not joining the motherfucking Patrol!”
“Neither am I. That’s not the plan.”
She takes a few deep breaths and leans back on our bed.
“OK. Speak. But this better be good.”
“First set of perks: the qualifications. As part of their training the cadets get a variety of theoretical and practical training, leading to widely recognized…”
She cuts in. “You’re sounding like a fucking ad. Cut that crap out.”
“Sorry. But they do. As well as basic ed shit, most of which we’ve already got and we could test out of, and patrol-specific stuff we wouldn’t give a fuck about, all cadets get their piloting and floating licenses, a bunch of tech courses, and some medic stuff. There’s the option to specialize as a tech or medic assist if you stay on an extra year or two.”
“You’ve not sold me the first year yet.”
“Point. Those qualifications are valid independently of an overall pass. So we can fail the course and not qualify for the Patrol, but still get our floating, piloting, tech, and medic certificates. Doesn’t that sound useful?”
“It sounds ridiculous. Don’t they ask for their expenses back if you fail? A year of air, room, board, and training, and they just let it go?”
“No. If you flunk out, they bill the cost to your household. But we’re wards of the Fed, so…”
A glimmer of light returns to her eyes. “They’d be billing themselves?”
“Yes.”
“So you don’t want us to actually join the Patrol?”
“Oh fuck no. We get the fuck out of here, we get in there, we get all our expenses paid for a year, grab as many qualifications as we can, and we flunk the fuck out and go do something else.”
“So all we’re doing is buying ourselves a year?”
“That’d be plenty, if you ask me, but there’s more. Hyperion has a population of nearly half a million, eight established bubbles with more planned, a thriving mining industry, and an employment rate of 98%. The 2% who are not employed are first classers. There are jobs there, Dee. We’d have a chance to get ourselves something. Think how much better it’d be to apply in person than over the com, and from a place like this.”
“OK. So we are definitely not joining the Patrol.”
“No. We are using them to get out of here and improve our position. It’s a strategic move, not a career choice. I haven’t completely lost my shit.”
“Keep talking. I’m starting to think I could almost live with this.”
“We’d be out of here, Dee. No Supervisors, no curfews, no poxy factions to negotiate.”
She snorts. “Bullshit. Any place with more than two people has factions.”
“”We’d be adult Citizens, Dee. With rights.”
“And duties.”
“We’re good at ignoring rules. We’re top-of-the-class at that.”
“Fact. And you think I could get in?”
“Positive. If you can stand up without pissing on your own shoes you can pass that test.”
I can hear the cogs turning in her head. Her eyes widen suddenly, then narrow into slits. “How comes there isn’t a huge rush to get in, if it’s so good and so easy?”
“There are quotas based on location. I don’t think anyone else here thought of it. As long as nobody beats your score, you’d be in. And the deadline is in two weeks.”
“So I have two weeks to pass?”
“Nah. You only get one chance to take the test. The top two candidates from this quadrant get in.”
“How did you get in already, then?”
I shrug. “I got top marks.”
“Of course you did.”
“Dee, it’s easy. Just think of an imaginary, ideal Patrolman and channel their responses. Plus, as long as we keep it quiet, I don’t think anyone else from here will apply.”
“Two weeks.”
“You could take the test tomorrow.”
“I could take it tonight if I made a Supervisor let me out of here.”
“No. If you get caught using a superpower like that it could land us both in a world of shit. And you should take it when you’re rested. You only get one chance. You’re really going for it?”
She scowls at me. “Yes. It’s the only plan we’ve got.”
“Alright. Great.”
“No, it’s not. I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
“Duly note
d.”
“Do you know what the Patrol is? Really? What they do?”
“Only too well.”
“They’re the teeth of the Fed, that’s what they are.” She tenses up for a moment and I wonder if she is going to yell at me again, but she relaxes and sighs. “Fine. Tomorrow, then.”
She lies down on the bed and turns around to face the wall. I guess she’s done with me for now. I lie next to her, careful not to touch her. I’m only inches away, but I feel further away from her than I’ve ever been. It’s not the most awful I’ve ever felt, but it’s up there. I fall asleep thinking about praying to the gods, desperately trying to work out what I should be praying for.
Dee hardly talks to me when she gets up. She’s polite, but totally closed off in a way I’d never seen before. She hardly eats, too.
We get to our terminals as soon as we’ve finished breakfast. She doesn’t tell me what she’s doing, but I can tell it’s something critical.
About an hour into it she gets up, rigid as a board. She looks at me across the room and for a moment I think she’s going to walk over, but she recollects herself and sits back down. That’s just as well: we really don’t need any attention from the Supervisors right now. We have to sit there and wait for our study time to be over before I can find out if she took the fucking test and how it went. I try to distract myself, to put my mind to something useful, but I just can’t.
As soon as the bell for lunch rings, we’re out of our chairs. We head towards the refectory together. She is still rod-straight and rigid, and I don’t know what to think. When she links her arm with mine I almost pull back. I don’t know if I want to know. I need to, though.
She looks down at me, unsmiling.
“I haven’t said a thing!”
“You thought very loudly. Calm down. But yes, it looks like we’re going. You’ll have to organize all the logistics, how we’re going to get there and so on and so forth. I’m leaving it all to you. I’m worn out already.”