Heinlein's Finches Read online

  Her intentions are so honest, so devoid of any negative undercurrent, and her approach so uninvested in a pre-conceived result, that she’s practically unassailable. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make her any less objectionable to those who consider her an iconoclast. In fact, it makes the situation worse. They can’t debate with her and hope to win, so they try to kill her off instead. And, to add insult to injury, she understands their reactions, too.

  “We don’t really know what motivated any of the assassins. We couldn’t ask them, because none of them survived the experience. But I have to assume that when they tried to kill me, they believed that they were doing the right thing. I have to assume that they’re internally coherent. That the assassination attempts are nothing more than the natural manifestation of the assassins’ belief systems.

  “Now, I’ve never felt the least bit inclined to bump someone off for what they thought. For what they did, yes, sometimes. But never just for their thoughts. So I have to assume that these people aren’t like me. They may be zealots, or unduly fragile, or something else. There must be something making them think or feel or believe very differently from me, else they wouldn’t act so damn different. But if I had their thoughts and feelings and beliefs, I’d be like them, and probably act like them. So, in a way we’re completely different, but we’re the same, too. We’re all trying to do what’s right; we just have a very different opinion of what ‘right’ looks like. Which doesn’t mean that I’m going to cut them any slack. If they try to kill me, I’ll kill them right back. That’s a quote, loveling. An important one, I think.”

  She is normally on high alert at the start of the academic year, when the new intake of chick arrives. Our selection process notwithstanding, it would be possible for a determined true believer to slip through and gain admission to the Academy. It’s also possible for regular cadets to crack; to be unable to handle the intensity, frequency and number of paradigm shifts Gwen puts them through.

  Such an early, obvious, poorly-planned, and poorly-executed attack is a new one on us, though, and it doesn’t stack up. Would-be assassins who are shrewd enough to hide their intentions through the selection process should also be shrewd enough to wait until they have a decent chance. Individuals so fragile that her introductory lecture, full of generalities, could have made them snap should not have made it through the selection. This just doesn’t scan.

  Over breakfast, we try to make sense of this.

  “It could be a random incident, a combination of zealotry and idiocy,” says Gwen. “The two do often go hand in hand.”

  “It could be a decoy,” says Asher. “Something designed to make us think that it’s all over, and to let us drop our guard.”

  Gwen frowns. “A suicide mission?”

  “Maybe not quite that. Not on the part of the assassin, anyway.”

  By unspoken agreement, we never refer to them by their names. They’re always ‘threats,’ or ‘assassins,’ or something equally de-humanizing. Although we know it’s a cowardly, convenient expedient, it makes it easier for us to handle the issue pragmatically. And we need to be pragmatic when Gwen’s life is at stake.

  “Well, I didn’t see a whole bunch of people reacting with any kind of speed. Or at all,” I point out. ”Getting down to it at the start of the year, before the cadets have had any training and while everyone is still confused, is tactically sound.”

  “Bellowing a charge is ridiculous, though,” retorts Gwen. “If he’d not given me that warning, in the crush of people he might have had a decent chance.”

  I shudder at her statement. Asher is doing a fine job at holding it together, but the strain is showing. I heard him screaming in his sleep last night. He now looks tense enough to snap, his hands faintly vibrating.

  I tap my fingers on the table. “I know what we all need. We need to get some of the third years to set up camp in the tower ground floor tonight. I need to meditate, and you two need to get violently drunk and screw each other’s brains out. We need to switch off. Ruminating the issue won’t help any.”

  “Amen to that," says Gwen, and Asher nods his agreement.

  “And until then, I will have to step up my game, and you will have to carry on carrying your illicitly-acquired weaponry.” Two nods. “How did you get your grubby hands on those things, anyway?”

  “Skip made them for me. It was milady’s birthday, and he needed a summer project anyway.”

  Skip is one of the tech guys; strictly speaking, he’s service staff. Most of the Proctors would fail to recognize him in a crowd, yet he keeps some of our most essential equipment working. They don’t notice his presence, but they’d notice his absence soon enough. Asher has no reason to be friendly with someone so beneath him, but apparently they're close enough for Skip to be willing to make banned weapons for him. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. I briefly wonder where the components came from, then I realize that I’m better off not knowing.

  “And look!” Gwen smiles proudly, rolling her sleeves up. “Aren’t they pretty? Neural connections, too. No risk of accidental discharge, unless I really lose it.” She flicks her arms about.

  “If you say so. I’m sorry, but they kinda look like wrist splints.”

  Gwen’s face drops.

  “Don’t pout. They look lovely on you, and I’ll want a set, too. Can you guys ask Skip for me? He’s not terribly comfortable talking to me.”

  “He’s not terribly comfortable talking to anyone, loveling. But I will ask him.”

  “Anything else you two have up your sleeves, figuratively or literally?”

  They look at each other, then at me, and shrug. I sigh. “Then we have a plan, for tonight at least. I’m off to class.”

  Within a couple of weeks, we’ve all settled into a relatively steady routine. I take my floating lesson, monitor Gwen’s lectures, and spend the afternoon working in her anteroom, so nobody can get to her without getting through me first. Students respond really well to Gwen being so easily found; although she’s never shirked her academic duties in the past, she hates being in the office. She’s always been willing to give cadets all the time they needed, but they had to catch her first.

  In my role as doorkeeper/secretary, I’m forced to actually spend time on my own work. I’ve always done what I needed to do, psi-training-wise, but never more than that. I always found it boring, frankly, and I guess I never felt the need to push myself. It probably comes of being told at an early age that I was inherently special. I know that sounds awful, but it’s the truth. That kind of attitude doesn’t foster a great work ethic.

  Now I’m turning towards work as the best cure against the frustration of being cooped up in this damn office for most of the day. And it’s working. Turns out that if you put constant, steady effort into something, you can actually make progress. Slow, frustrating progress, sure, but progress nonetheless.

  I’m finding that the frequent interruptions by cadets, which originally would irritate me hugely, are actually very helpful. I’m learning to snap more quickly in and out of med-state. I’m also learning to maintain med-state while being interrupted. It’s hard to explain what I’m trying to do, because I don’t fully understand it myself, but basically I’m learning to not switch the med-state off in order to do something else; to let it run as a parallel process. It’s extremely tiring, but it’s doable. I keep meaning to write up my findings, such as they are, and send them up to my lab for analysis. I’m sure my supervisors would be delighted to hear that circumstances finally made a worker out of me.

  While I’m disappearing into my own brain, Gwen coaches students, plans lessons, and even writes a bit. She has an extremely low tolerance for boredom, and normally it takes some kind of natural disaster, or the Chancellor bellowing down the halls, for her to sit at her monitor. “I do my best thinking when my body’s busy. Outside, moving or doing something. Otherwise I can’t make myself concentrate. And once I’ve thought my way through a question and found an answer, that answer becomes
obvious. Who wants to sit down and write out obvious stuff?”

  The enforced office time is forcing her to be methodical, and the results are showing. She’s not just keeping up with her paperwork. She’s also churning out papers – good quality, innovative papers, not fillers – at an increasing rate. She thought nothing of it, at the start, then realized the obvious problem with this when the Chancellor called her to his office to commend her: she doesn’t want the Academy to expect her to be this productive. Now she’s hoarding new papers, making them public at a decreasing rate. “When this state of emergency blows over,” she says, “I should have enough accumulated dross to see me through to retirement.”

  While we’re dealing with academic chores, Asher is floating, teaching, and climbing. Gwen had to work hard to convince him to keep to his normal timetable. All of his activities take him out of play where her protection is involved, and he’d prioritize her over his job, his health, and pretty much anything else in a heartbeat. Gwen had to remind him that he has responsibilities towards his students; that they depend on him for their safety, too. In reality, she’s concerned about him falling apart. Although he’s doing better all the time, it’s a conditional better, hinging on the right balance of activity, rest, alone time, companionship, and loving care. We have no idea what would happen if any of these elements were to slip.

  With the reassurance that Gwen is safe in her office “working on her hemorrhoids,” as she says, and that I’m guarding her door, Asher agreed to keep to his schedule. That’s probably the main reason Gwen is behaving herself. The trust Asher is putting in my abilities makes me work harder. So, although none of us is actually happy with this state of affairs, we’re making it work.

  We manage to stay busy enough to keep it together while we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Assuming that there is another shoe. We can’t be sure, but we are pretty positive that another attempt at Gwen’s life is in the pipeline. Gwen suggested staging a trap, creating an obvious weakness in her routine to try and draw the attacker out, but that made Asher freak out. If something doesn’t happen soon, though, we may be forced to try that. The waiting is corrosive.

  Life at large doesn’t stop just because we have a little assassin problem, though. That has the benefit of forcing us to stop worrying about that one issue all the damn time. We can worry about other things too.

  Asher doesn’t shout very often, but when he does you know about it, and so do your neighbors. Walking to his office to pick him up for lunch, I can hear him before I even enter the Tank building.

  “You just can’t do that sort of thing! It was ok when you were a Patrolman, ok when you were a cadet, but it’s not ok now!”

  When I get to the office door, I can hear Nick’s voice whine in response. “Yeah, but, they went along with it. Hell, it was their idea.”

  “It doesn’t matter whose idea it was! You just can’t do that!”

  “Yeah, but, they’re not complaining. They’re perfectly happy. So what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that teachers don’t go fucking their students! They just don’t!”

  So this is what it’s all about. I should have guessed.

  I knock on the door during a lull in the argument. When I walk in, I realize the lull was caused by Asher taking a break to try and stop himself from blowing a gasket. He’s gone somewhere beyond anger into a state of red-hot fury that is making it difficult for him to be coherent. He looks at me from across his desk and shakes his head in dismay. “Can you please try to explain to him? I can’t.”

  I cringe. “I take it you slept with a cadet?”

  Nick looks at me with his big, innocent eyes. “Well, two.”

  I sigh. “Together or individually?”

  He grins. “Yes?”

  Asher loses his shit again. “No. This is not funny. There’s nothing funny or cool or ok about this!”

  “Yeah, but, they started it.”

  Asher smacks the desk with both arms. “I swear, if you say ‘yeahbut’ to me one more time…”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Gods!” Asher gets up and stomps across the office. Nick just stares at him, clearly baffled.

  “I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

  I’ve heard Asher swear, but I never heard him blaspheme. Turns out that his repertoire is both extended and colorful. When he’s finished, he looks at me imploringly. “I don’t know what to do. Nothing goes in.”

  I sigh. “Ok. Nick, you know there are rules about this kind of thing. I know you know because we’ve had the same training.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  Asher groans.

  “If a rule is wrong, and if nobody gets hurt…”

  “But the rule isn’t wrong. The rule is there for a reason. Many reasons, in fact. There are issues of trust and imbalance of power and potential conflicts of interest and all sorts.”

  “But none of that happened. It was ok. Everyone’s happy.”

  “But you still broke the rule. And you’re one of the people supposed to be enforcing rules here, never mind respecting them.”

  “Well, I think the rule is wrong.”

  Asher finally blows that gasket. “Fuck the rule! This isn’t about what’s allowed, it’s about what’s right! It’s about what can hurt people who are in your charge! It doesn’t matter what you think! It doesn’t matter that it didn’t all go to shit! You just don’t do that!”

  Nick tips his head in my direction. “You’re banging her. She’s your student.”

  I snap. “If you must know, we were banging way before I started training. And I’m training because I want to, not because I need to pass the course. Asher’s not grading me.”

  “He got with Gwen when she was his student.”

  “No. No, I fucking well didn’t,” Asher growls. “I met her when she was a student, my student, and never laid a finger on her until she graduated. Not one finger. For months.”

  I didn’t know that. “That sounds harsh.”

  “I can’t even begin to tell you… Yes. It was. But I wasn’t gonna touch her while I was training her, and I wasn’t gonna have someone else train her instead just so I could get in there. So I waited and she waited and when she graduated I dragged her off to the Chancellor’s office and I told him how it was gonna be. And I married the damn woman, and it was all above board.”

  I didn’t know that either. “You actually married her? I thought you called her your wife just to poke fun at her. In a church?”

  “Oh hell no. I don’t despise religions enough to insult them like that. I’m not going to pretend I believe for the sake of a shindig. Fed office only.”

  “No offence, but I didn’t think you two would be invested in the legalities of formalized marriage.”

  He blinks. “I don’t give a shit about that. Neither does she. But we’re both rather invested in oaths of fealty. How have we not had this conversation already? I married her, not the Fed. But I married her in front of the Fed because my position carries responsibilities. I could fuck half my students. So could she. But I can’t and I won’t take the chance of my position being a factor in people letting me fuck them. This is funny to you?”

  Nick is trying not to grin. “Well, you said ‘position’.”

  “Gods! You don’t fuck people who hold you in authority in case they want to fuck you because they hold you in authority! Particularly if they’re young enough to need nappies! Man, every year we’re here, we’re a year older. The cadets are always 19.”

  “Well, what about her?” Nick points at me. “She’s way younger than you.”

  Asher’s face drops. “Yes. She is. And that was a concern for me, for a long time. Still is, really. And there’s a level of power imbalance with Gwen’s official role; not that Gwen is remotely capable of pulling rank. But yeah, it’s a concern.” He looks at me, his eyes full of sorrow. “That’s why I try so damn hard to make sure that the door is always open, in case you want to walk out. And t
hat’s hard. It kinda hurts. A lot. But it’s the right thing to do.” He nods, then snaps back to look at Nick. “And it’s a totally different situation, too. We’re not engaged in sportfuckery.”

  “No, you’re in a relationship. That’s higher risk. And there’s nothing wrong with sex. If everyone’s happy and willing. And clean.”

  “But it’s not just about whether they’re happy now. It’s about whether they’ll be happy tomorrow! It’s about avoiding the risk that your position, the power you wield, could be part of the mix.”

  Nick beams. “Some girls are into that.”

  “Yes! I know! And in your own time and in their own time I don’t give a flying fuck!”

  “You don’t think people should like anything you don’t like. You have a bias towards a certain type of relationship, and you’re being judgmental over stuff that is none of your business.”

  “No!” Asher closes his eyes and runs through several breath cycles, until he can talk at a normal volume. “No. In your own time, you can do who and what the fuck you want. But while you’re teaching here, you’re never in your own time. You’re an instructor when you teach and when you eat and when you take a shit. You don’t get to lay down your role and responsibilities at your bedroom door.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Ok. This is it. I can’t do this anymore. Man, I love you, and I know you don’t mean to do anything bad or to hurt anyone. But if you carry on with this shit, you’re on your own. I will not cover for you and I will not bail you out. And I’m not saying that I couldn’t, though that’s very possible. I’m saying that I won’t even try. Your call. I don’t want to hear about it and I sure as hell don’t want to see it, and if I do I will report you, though it’d kill me to do that. On this, I’m not on your side. Understood?”

  Nick’s face has gone rigid. “Understood.”

  “Ok. Well.” He breathes deeply, and turns to look at me. “Give me a minute. Ok?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I walk out of the office with Nick. As soon as we’ve shut the door, he heaves a sigh.