Si Vis Pacem (Heinlein's Finches) Page 18

 

 

  Her thoughts scratch the inside of my head. That’s a first.

  A quick scan of the room lets me know what she’s on about. The room is full of dudes. I look about frantically, trying to ignore the stares, and manage to locate two other people who are ostensibly female.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  A few more women walk in, but they march down the steps and take their seats on the stage. I guess they’re staff. Their seats are right at the end of the table, though, so I guess they’re not very important.

  The oldest man I’ve ever seen takes the podium first. In a voice that sounds dusty with age and disuse, he introduces himself as Chancellor Paxton, welcomes us to the Academy, and introduces the rest of the academic body. Then he promptly fucks off, and most of them with him, leaving behind an officious-looking younger guy who, after fucking around with his reader for longer than seems professional, proceeds to give us our introductory lecture to this learning institution.

  It’s the biggest pile of guff I’ve ever had to suffer through, and I’ve heard some guff in my days. We get told everything there’s to say and some about how privileged we are to be here, how grateful we should be to the Fed for this privilege, how illustrious the position of Patrolman is, how magnanimous the Fed are in investing their hard-won and much-needed resources in running the Patrol for the greater good of the Citizenry, and how hard we’re going to have to work to honor the Fed’s commitment and meet their lofty goals.

  Dee does her usual thing: as soon as she realizes that the lecture is bullshit she sits bolt upright in her chair, puts on a bright and attentive expression, and disappears into whatever rabbit hole in her head she’s currently visiting. I do my best to pay attention even though I feel the life draining right out of me; this shit is terminally tedious, but it could be important. If we’re supposed to pretend to buy into something, I need to know what that something is.

  I keep myself alert and entertained by watching the reactions of the cadets. Most of them look blank or bored, but some of them, for real and no shit, are buying into this. They swell up every time the glory of the Patrol is mentioned and get all frowny-faced at the tales of all the innocents out there in the cold, unfeeling cosmos, whose lives are a living hell all for the lack of Patrolmen to protect them. It takes all sorts, I guess, but I find it shocking that anyone could reach adulthood without knowing what the Fed actually are and what the Patrol actually does. We’re not here to learn how to be knights in shining armor, going boldly forth to protect the weak and defenseless. We’re here to become glorified bailiffs for a corporation whose stated responsibilities are solely towards it stakeholders. Anyone who doesn’t have an issue with that either hasn’t been paying attention, or doesn’t see third-classers as actual people.

  The guff flows uninterrupted for a good couple of hours, with refrains. When the lecture is over, people don’t get up. They just stay in their seats like they’ve forgotten how their legs work. I nudge Dee to bring her back.

 

 

 

 

  As soon as we get up and start walking out, people get unglued from their seats. We walk down the hallway with the noise of a crowd at our heels. That’s giving me the creeps, but there’s fuck-all I can do about it. I am tempted to start walking in the wrong direction just to see what they would do: would they all follow me regardless?

  Nobody overtakes us, but when we get to the refectory it’s already packed with people. I guess these are the second- and third-years, who must have been deemed already sufficiently indoctrinated. Watching them move around gives me enough information to navigate the room and collect our meals without looking lost. That all goes to shit when we pick up our trays, turn around, and are faced with a sea of guys eyeballing us. If there’s a difference between the way they’re looking at their food and at us, I can’t spot it. The only reason I don’t piss myself right there and then is that the room is loud as hell; everyone is still going on about their business, chatting and eating. If they were looking at us like this in silence, I’d totally lose my shit.

 

 

  We march towards the back of the room. It’s no good us staying here, anyway: the tables nearest the serving hatch are taken up by the Professors, who are already surrounded by hovering brown-nosers. This is definitely not our scene. The two other girls haven’t found seats yet, but they give us such a dirty look as we walk by that I don’t think we’ll be sitting together, ever. The rest of the crowd is already congealing into factions. I can hear bursts of foreign languages, some of which I can’t even recognize. I can spot a few tables full of jocks and a couple of tables of techies. Some older, nerdier looking guys have taken up the furthest corner, level with the return hatch. It makes good strategic sense: they’re out of the way of the flow of traffic and as far from the Professors as they can be. I am starting to see how things work around here. What I can’t fucking see is where the fuck we could sit, because everyone is looking at us like we’re a fucking alien species.

  I try to look unconcerned as I’m walking along, watching my food go cold on my plate. Dee is splendid, as always: she stands straight as a rod and smiles as if nothing was the matter. If I didn’t like her so much, I could hate her for being so godsdamned majestic.

  Her dignity goes completely to shit when a dude starts waving at her from the very end of the room. Their eyes connect and their smiles morph into giant, goofy grins at precisely the same time. Dee makes a beeline for him. When we get to his table she sits opposite him and they just smile at each other for the longest time. I sit next to her and wonder what the fuck is going on. I don’t know if she even remembers that I’m here.

  A pale, skinny dude sits next to the grinning guy, looking about as confused as I feel. He also looks like he was put together in a hurry, using leftover parts. His head is way too small for his body, which is disproportionately long and narrow and seems to contain more joints than nature intended. His face, way up there on an interminable neck, sports only the bare suggestion of a chin, but balances that with a substantial forehead, currently furrowed by two symmetrical lines that dissect his eyebrows. His eyes are wide pools of brilliant grey, but they are set too far apart, perhaps pulled there by the gravity exerted by his ears, which are way too small but, not wishing to be ignored, stick out at right angles through his perfectly coiffed haired.

  He might not look half as bad were he not sitting next to the other guy, who is almost offensively handsome, but he is. After two years of living with Dee I know how that works and for just an instant I feel sorry for him. He must read something in my face, although it can’t be what I was thinking because it makes him smile, revealing that the dude has one dimple. Just one. You couldn’t make this shit up. His smile is directed at the table rather than at me and lasts for only a moment, but while it’s there it totally changes the cast of his face. It doesn’t make it any prettier,
but something about it makes me want to see it again.

  When Dee and the other guy start talking, it’s less like a conversation and more as if they were tossing a word salad together. They don’t let each other get to the end of a single godsdamned sentence. They’re clearly deliriously happy with that, even though they’re making fuck-all sense. Just about the only things I manage to gleam out of their gibbering is that the chatty guy’s name is Rodrigo Correia, but he goes by “Rody” – go figure – and the silent guy is called Nathan or Nate Petersen. I privately doubt he’s called anything, ever; if he spends much of his time around Rody, I doubt he ever gets a speaking part.

  I have to nudge Dee and remind her that she’s actually here to eat to get them to slow down. They still keep smiling and chatting, but at least they’re giving each other a chance to form coherent sentences.

  Rody is a third-year and Nate is a fourth year, both on the medic track. They know this place inside out. They could be useful. I have to keep reminding myself of that, because Rody is starting to really annoy me. It takes me no time at all to work out why: I’m jealous. Dee is my friend. We came here together. We’re a team. Now this guy is butting in between us, and I don’t know how, or why, but I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.

  He seems perfectly friendly, though, and willing to help us out. I could try and convince myself that that’s in itself insulting, because why would we need any help? But the truth is that we’re fucking clueless and this guy, annoying as I find him, is being fucking helpful. That only annoys me more. I try to smile up at him, but I don’t know how convincing I manage to be. He smiles back at me regardless, and carries on chatting with Dee.

  “You had your combat intro yet?”

  “Our what?”

  “Intro to combat. Hand-to-hand, to start with. Pew-pews come later. With our man Reggie, over there.” He points at a tall, dark-skinned man sitting at the end of one of the third year’s tables, reading. “He’s one of the adjuncts.”

  “The what?”

  “Adjuncts. They’re sandwiched between the third years and the Professors. They do all the real work around here, all the actual teaching and grading, and they get treated like shit, but at least they get paid. Me and my man Nate here, we’ve been here for ages, doing solid work, and we’re still having to moonlight. Will you guys need jobs?”

  “Will we what?”

  “Some of the cadets get part-time jobs. Well, most everyone tries to because nobody has any godsdamned credit. Look around you: nobody’s air is paid for. If you need a job, I can try and get you something. I used to work at a club in town. I’m telling you, girl, it’s the place to be.”

  He grabs Dee’s hand in his and gives it a squeeze. She beams at him. I really want to punch him.

  “I’ve never worked at a club. No, that’s not right: I’ve never worked, and I’ve never been at a club. What’s a club?”

  “Oh! You’re in for a treat! You’ll love our place. I’ve been going there since my first year. It’s called The Peacock – very reserved, very select, and totally banging. The dancing is kind of boring at times, unless you like old-style Terran stuff, but it’s a great place to be. They will just love you there. What are you doing tonight? We can get you in, no bother.”

  “I’m not sure we can make it.” She looks at me with a question in her eyes. I shrug, because I don’t know, but I use that opening to get a word in edgeways while I have a chance.

  “We’ve only got our lecture schedule.”

  He beams at me. “Baby girl, that’s the only schedule there is! I mean, you have to do your schoolwork, and most of the dudebros hit the gym as much as they can to keep their bodies in what passes for peak condition around here, but that’s not obligatory. If you don’t go everyone will put you down as a techie, though.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Depends on whom you ask. I like my techies, I really do, but the dudebros are considered more in line with the Patrol’s goals and ideals. While they’re here, anyway: all the actual Patrolmen who visited here seemed to have picked their knuckles off the floor at some point. Maybe that’s what the two years of probation are all about. Anyway, your evenings and eighthdays are your own, which means that you have no reason to turn my invite down.” His smile goes down a couple of notches. “Seriously, if you need a job, you ought to come tonight. You have to get in there before all the rest of the riffraff hit the town. Not that most of this lot will ever see the inside of The Peacock, but if you can’t get something there you’ll need to get on with looking somewhere as soon as poss. Are you going to need work?”

  Dee nods at him. “Yes. We don’t have jackshit.”

  “What kind of stuff can you do?”

  She snorts. “Child care and farm work. We’re not going to be in demand.”

  “Farm work? On a real farm? You’re making it up!”

  “Nah.” She gestured towards me. “Bona fide farm girl, right here.”

  He turns the green beams of his eyes on me. “You worked with animals? Real animals? That’s so cool! You gotta tell me all about it! I’ve only ever seen holos.”

  “It’s mostly hard work and bad smells, to be honest.”

  He guffaws. “Hey, you just described our work too! You should try to get on the med track. The basic Patrol med training is shit. They teach you to control bleeds long enough to get to a med bay, only most of the time there’s no med bay to get to and you’re screwed. You wanna take the advanced training, I tell you. It’s wicked good and you can get into proper medic work, if you do well. That’s what I’m hoping for. You got any biology background?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Everything, pretty much.”

  He wrinkles his nose. “What do you mean, ‘everything’?”

  “All the classes my school offered. Anatomy, physiology, taxonomy, histology, genetics, microbiology, neurobiology, computational biology… Oh, and chemistry, obviously. Bit of everything.”

  “You took them all?”

  “Up to year twelve, yeah. I didn’t manage to get through all the labs, though. I didn’t get the time.”

  He turns to look at Dee. “Is she making fun of me?”

  “Nope. Her academic background is… unconventional.”

  “How does a farm girl end up taking every biology class on offer?”

  “You’re not getting it. She did that with all subjects, not just biology.”

  I shake my head. “Not true. I hardly took any physics. My brain doesn’t like it. It’s the wrong shape or something.”

  Rody leans back in his seat and whistles through his teeth. “Alright. I’m prepared to believe you, though I might require evidence at some point. But hey, you gotta go soon. What’s the next item on your rota?”

  Dee looks at her reader. “It just says ‘courtyard.’”

  Rody reaches over the table to pat her hand. The guy sure is touchy-feely. I really wish Dee didn’t seem to like it so much.

  “That’ll be your combat intro. Don’t let it faze you. Reggie is a grumpy fucker, but he’s an all-round good guy. He’ll look after you. He looks after everybody, unless they’re assholes, and you’re not assholes. Don’t piss him off, though. The Professors treat him like he’s almost subhuman, but he’s a really useful guy. You need him on your side. He sorts out most of the physical training: hand-to-hand, shooting, and piloting. Piloting simulations, obviously: you don’t get to fly until you actually start your probation, but you can get your license on the simulators. It’s kinda crap, because apparently the two things don’t really compare, but it covers the Fed for any liabilities, and that’s where they’re at. Now that man there,” he points at an older, immaculate guy sitting at the end of the table where the Chancellor sits, “that’s Rogers. He trains floating – 0-g work, yannow. It’s only simulation work, too, because we do it in a tank, and apparently that’s not much like real floating. But you get to learn how to float around in a su
it, which if you ever need to do you’ll really need not to fuck up. The problem is that Rogers won’t like you. He’ll give you hell.”

  “Why wouldn’t he like us?” squeals Dee.

  “Because he is a giant, flaming dickhole. Don’t worry about him. You’ll get through it. We all do. Now get! You don’t wanna be late for Reggie’s class. It’s gonna be heaps of fun, I promise you. If you get done before dinner time, pop over and see us. Med bay. If not, we’ll see you back here, alright? We can introduce you to the cool guys. I’d introduce you to the cool gals, too, if they were any, but, yannow, it’s a bit of a sausagefest around here. I’m sorry, lovey.”

  He gets up, comes around the table, and gives Dee a hug. She hugs him back. That other guy – he’s called Nate, I’m almost sure – gets up, gives us a little one-handed wave and a tight, nervous smile, and they both walk off to put their trays through the return hatch.

  Dee turns around to face me with a beatific grin, and a tight knot clenches my insides. I am an awful excuse for a human being, but I’m so godsdamned jealous right now that I wish we were anywhere else but here.

  Her smile dims, and I feel even worse.

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Nothing. Come on, we’ve gotta go. Everyone is leaving the refectory. We don’t want to be late.”

  “OK.” She gets up and starts towards the hatch. “But you’re lying, and I’m not going to let you. What’s wrong?”

  “That guy. What is it about him?”

  “What?” She turns to stare at me, her eyes big enough to swallow me.

  “You barely know each other.”

  “You’re right. We do, or rather we don’t.”

  “So why are you so into each other?”

  She feeds her tray through the hatch, turns around, and grabs my shoulders. “You’re my best friend and I love you.”

  I wiggle out of her grasp to set down my tray. “Wanna save that for a more private setting? This isn’t the right audience for it.”

  She puts her arm through mine as we walk off with the rest of the horde.