Heinlein's Finches Read online

  “Well, that was something.”

  “Sure was.”

  “Can you believe the guy? Getting worked up like that over nothing.”

  “What? Nick, that’s not over nothing.”

  “Come on! Three people had sex. Three people walked out happy. What’s the fuss?”

  I blink. “In all honesty, I think you need to have a long chat to Gwen about this. It’s way above my paygrade.”

  “Talk to Gwen? I don’t think I’d enjoy it. Or understand half of it.”

  “You’re probably right,” I sigh. “But all the same… Just don’t. Don’t do this stuff.”

  He smiles at me and slaps my back. “You’re spending too much time with that lot. You’re getting stuffy. Need to chill. No harm done, remember?”

  “This time.”

  He shakes his head at me. “Ha. Well, I gotta go. You say bye to Asher for me, ok? I think I’m gonna keep off his radar for a bit.”

  “Ok.” And I watch him walk away with a bounce in his step, entirely unperturbed and undeterred.

  I walk back into the office to find Asher at his desk, staring vacantly into space, looking distraught.

  “You ok?”

  “No, I’m not. You know I love that guy. We were cadets together. We flew together. That counts. A lot. He was there when… You know, in ’68. And I know that he doesn’t mean to hurt anyone. But sometimes what you mean doesn’t matter if people still get hurt. He ain’t gonna stop, is he?”

  I don’t want to lie to him, but I don’t want to make this worse, either. So I say nothing.

  “Godsdamn. He’s not a bad person, you know? Sometimes he just… Well, he does bad things.”

  “One day you’ll have to explain to me where you draw that line.” I wish I hadn’t said that, because he looks aghast.

  “I’m no better. I’m sitting here thinking what a piece of shit I am, because I brought him here. And despite all the grief I gave him, I know I should have reported him already and I haven’t. So I’m as responsible as he is. I’m responsible for what he could do with the students, and I’m responsible for what he could do to his own career.”

  “You’re taking on considerably more responsibility than he is.”

  “Well, someone’s got to. And he won’t.”

  “That doesn’t make any of this your responsibility. It’s not your dick getting into students.”

  “No. But I’m going to end up feeling as if I’m holding his. And I really, really wish I hadn’t put it like that because that sounds really weird.” He sighs. “And maybe I’m just a godsdamn hypocrite, because I’m doing the same with you.”

  “Eh? What?”

  “I shouldn’t have gotten you into this. I claim the moral high ground, I have a go at Nick for messing about with 19 year olds, and I’m messing about with a 20 year old. And at least Nick is normal. Healthy. He’s not dragging them into a world of shit.”

  “What the hell are you on about?”

  He shakes his head. “You know perfectly well. I get you wanting to be with Gwen. I mean, who wouldn’t? But getting us as a package deal… You could do better. Not better than her; there is no better than her. But you could do better than me. You’re smart, you’re kind, and you’re gorgeous. You could have something easy. Something simple.”

  “Yeah, because being with someone like me is simple.”

  “It’s about the simplest thing in the world. You’re so easy to love I feel like I’m cheating. I swear I wasn’t planning for this to happen. I just fell right into it. You were there, and it felt so mutual, you know?” He blinks. “Gods, that’s not terribly romantic.”

  “No, that it ain’t. But it’s true. Our situation has nothing to do with what Nick is doing. I didn’t get with you guys because I was star-struck. And you didn’t pull me in. I pushed my way in.”

  “You didn’t have to push that hard.”

  “Ok, this is making me really horny now.”

  “That’s totally inappropriate. Me too.”

  “So what are we gonna do?”

  “Lock the door? Dammit. Sorry. Wait and see, I guess. I’ll have a word with Aiden. Nick actually listens to the guy.”

  “He listens to you, too. Most of the time, anyway. He just listens to his dick more.”

  “That he does.”

  “We could sic Gwen on him.”

  “That would be cruel and unusual punishment. Will you promise me something?”

  “I’m not the least bit inclined to fuck students!” I splutter.

  He rolls his eyes. “No, not that. If things get weird or uneven or wrong in any way, will you tell me? Or bail out. Just drop us and go. Don’t let me do the wrong thing. Please. Not with you, not with Gwen, not with anyone.” I can feel the hurt radiating out of him.

  “Dude. Nick’s right about one thing. You need to chill the fuck out. You love me and I love you and we both love Gwen and that’s all good.”

  “Sometimes love is not enough.”

  “Sometimes it is. This is one of those times.”

  February

  We’ve been waiting for something, anything to happen, hoping that it would break us out of this endless waiting. Hoping that it would allow us to go back to our normal life. When the next attack takes place, though, it doesn’t change anything.

  One of the first-year cadets – a woman this time – launches at Gwen with an arc knife and a scream, again. This time it’s in the refectory, as we’re lining up to collect our meals. This time Asher’s close by, though. He just turns and lunges and stabs in one fluid movement. The guy is so easy-going and so fragile that it’s easy to forget that he’s both battle-trained and battle-scarred.

  The mess is unbelievable. Asher struck with the knife he had at hand. Not an arc knife, an actual knife. The knife he was going to use to eat his lunch. While a knife in the hands of an expert is a precision tool, it doesn’t compare to a contact shot with an expanding dart. So the death takes longer, and I get to feel all of it. Which at least might morally justify my presence there, because, yet again, I didn’t see it coming early enough to take any action. My reaction may have informed Asher’s, but I did nothing.

  I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that I failed them again, or the fact that Asher had to pick up the slack.

  At the inevitable follow-up meeting, the Chancellor is set to have my hide.

  “What is the point in us having a psi-gifted bodyguard if you can’t seem to guard a damn thing? Another surprise attack. Another public killing by a Professor. What were you doing? How could you have missed this?”

  Asher’s voice is so tense, his expression so strained, that when he speaks up even the Chancellor, in his fury, goes quiet. “That’s the point. A psi-gifted bodyguard. Not a psychic. Can’t see the future. Can only see what is actually there.”

  “What do you mean?” Gwen asks gently.

  “Most people have to ramp up before they can kill somebody. Anger, fear, something. They can’t do it cold. Normal people, that is.” We wait for him to carry on. He seems to be struggling to find the words. “Twice now, there was no big ramp-up. Just a little twinge. Way too close to the moment. It’s not normal. Quinn can only read what is there. What is there is not normal.”

  “So the problem isn’t with the reading; it’s with the absence of anything to read? Are we dealing with people who can kill in cold blood? Psychopaths?” wonders Gwen.

  “Or psi-trained. Shielded. Perfect against a psi-gifted bodyguard. Even match.”

  The Chancellor is aghast. “But us having a psi-gifted bodyguard was a closely guarded secret!”

  Gwen shakes her head. “It’s not a secret to the Patrol or to the Fed. They’re the ones who hired and trained her.”

  “That makes no sense. Why would they hire her, then blow her cover?”

  “Well, we’re guessing here, but the evidence suggests that somebody did. It would be a very strange coincidence, otherwise, for two attackers to be able to control their emotions like
that. If information has leaked, it may not have been from someone in the Patrol, or the Fed. Our cadets notice things. And they gossip. So do civilian staff members.”

  “What about your friends? Could they have let something slip?”

  “No way.” Asher shakes his head. “Only Nick and Aiden know. That’s Adjunct Gray and Keaton, Chancellor. I’d trust them with my life.”

  The Chancellor sounds dismayed. “So now we have to assume that everyone knows?”

  I interject. “No. If they did, I’d know about it. People don’t like psi-freaks around them.”

  Asher cuts in. “Ok, but if somebody does knows, they’re clearly not our friends. So now what? If our conjectures are accurate, we have no tactical advantage. No advance warnings. Back to square one.”

  “We still have plenty of advantages on our side, love.” Gwen tries to speak, but the Chancellor talks right over her.

  “Building security could be stepped up to your private quarters and office. You do not need to enter the public areas.”

  “Hang on a moment,” Gwen tries to interject, but fails.

  “You can’t be attacked in the public corridors if you don’t take them. We can have a security detail escort you between the areas you need to visit.”

  “Stop,” yells Gwen. “You are not putting me under house arrest!”

  “This is for your own safety, young lady!” And I see Gwenn swelling up with the cumulative frustration of the past weeks and the current adrenaline rush. She’s so close to blowing up she can’t even talk. Gwen and the Chancellor stare at each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move so they can explode in retaliation.

  “You know those old Terran stereograms?” Asher asks me out of the blue. The non sequitur floors us all and breaks the tension. “Those pictures that look all scrambled and random, where you need to unfocus your eyes to see the hidden three-D image?”

  “…Yes?” I’m really not sure where he’s going with this, if anywhere.

  “If you look at the image on the surface, that’s all you can see. You can’t see the depth. You’ve been looking for surges. Can you look for flat spots instead? Lack of change, lack of detail?”

  “Yes! I could!” I turn to Gwen. “Shielded people feel… Well, shielded. Muted. Normal people’s moods tend to flicker and fluctuate, unless they are intense. A shielded person’s mood is so unnaturally steady as to be virtually absent. I’ve not looked for it before because I didn’t think I had to. But if instead of looking for heightened emotions I looked for abnormal calm…”

  “You could see who is shielding?” asks Gwen.

  “I think so. I haven’t really tried.”

  “Can’t you do both? Look for surges and shielding?” asks Asher.

  “I don’t think so. It needs a different focus. Frequency? It’d be like looking at those stereograms; you have to focus on the surface image or the depth. You can’t see both at the same time. Maybe. I haven’t tried. But I could try swapping focus from one to the other. Once I learn to focus on the flat spots, I can learn to turn that focus on and off. Maybe.”

  “You don’t sound terribly confident,” the Chancellor points out rather unkindly.

  “Well, I haven’t tried any of this. I don’t think anyone has ever thought to try it. But it’s theoretically possible, and absolutely worth trying. I should have thought about it sooner.”

  “Well, at least you thought about it now,” the Chancellor sighs. “Or rather Professor McGee did. I will need to see a plan and a progress report from you as soon as practical.” He waves us out.

  As we walk down the corridor, Gwen turns to me. “This is for real? You really think it could work?”

  “No reason why not. And once I learn how to focus on both settings, I should be able to learn to flicker between them, kinda thing.”

  “Sounds exhausting,” she frowns.

  “I wouldn’t have to do it all the time. Just when you’re exposed.”

  Gwen stares at me, her eyes enormous in her tiny face. “Every moment I spend pretending things are normal, I’m putting this load on you. And you.” She turns to Asher. He looks spent, now that the excitement of his idea has drained out of him.

  “It is what it is. But maybe we need a plan B.”

  “A what? For what?”

  “If this gets too much. We don’t have to stay here.”

  “This is where my work is. This is what I’m good at! This is where your work is.” Gwen sounds shocked.

  “There are other places. Other jobs. Do we need jobs? We have some credit. We could go grubbers.”

  “We don’t have enough credit to build and run a Tank.”

  “I don’t need a Tank. Not like I need you.” His voice sounds grief-stricken, as if in his mind he’d already lost her. “We could farm. Build a house. On a colony, somewhere. Keep a low profile. Would it be so bad?”

  “Is that what we want, love, to let them chase us off, chase us away from our lives?” Gwen asks gently. “We’ve managed this far, and it’s always been hard. Let’s give this a chance to settle or blow over before we start running for the exit, ok? I’m not sure I’m cut for agriculture, anyway. I barely passed my hydroponics basics.” She sighs. “That’s if a colony would take us. We may still be within intake age, just, but we’re a bit past our best, my love.” Then she sees his expression and changes tack. “But we can start thinking about it. Look things up; see what our options would be. Then if it comes to that, we’ll be ready.”

  “Thank you,” he says in a small voice.

  Seems like everyone is reaching the end of their tethers. We’re all trying to be strong for each other, but we don’t seem to be doing all that well.

  I realize that I’d temporarily forgotten about the fringe benefits of being stuck to Gwen like glue the first time I’m out on my own. I forgot my reader at the office, so I leave Gwen safe with Asher in the tower and pop over to pick it up. It’s late, so I’m dressed casually, though perfectly decently, in one of my favorite floral shirts. Nobody’s got any reason to be lurking around the offices at this time of night, so I can’t see the point in changing.

  I’m in my anteroom rummaging for the damn reader, when the doorway becomes obstructed by a mass of meat. Two guys are trying to look into the office but failing, because the width of a normal size door won’t accommodate their combined bulk. One of them steps through into my room, and then they seem to expand to full size.

  The fact that the Academy is a scholarship-only institution doesn’t mean that communities always send us their best and brightest specimens. Colonies are actually very keen to retain exceptional people; outstanding qualities are both more noticeable and more essential in small, struggling communities. Furthermore, the deeply proctological nature of the Patrolmen’s work combined with the relatively low pay and short life expectancy don’t tend to attract too many people with other, better options. You have to be idealistic, confused, or desperate to join. There is also probably a degree of cheating, nepotism, and general skullduggery involved in the selection process. The bottom line is that we get what we get, and we try to make the best of it.

  Even with these provisos, the two specimens facing me are extraordinary. Blonde, blue-eyed, and square-faced, they are so alike that they must be related. Or clones. The one at the front, who is apparently gearing up to address me, looks as if there are only two possible ways in which he could have passed the admission tests. He could have memorized all the answers by rote, but that’s doubtful. Alternatively, he could have head-butted the testing monitor repeatedly until it yielded and gave him a pass.

  The guy currently blocking my only exit looks more refined. He would probably compare favorably to a shaved Terran gorilla. He may be a touch bigger, and not as cheerful-looking.

  The first guy has apparently managed to organize his thought processes into speech. “Hmm, so, like, my cousin here,” points at the specimen in the doorway, “sez you think you’re a girl.”

  I don’t k
now what else I was expecting, but my heart sinks. Nobody ever wants to discuss my gender identity in a brightly lit open space, when I’m with friends; or at least somewhere with witnesses. Oh, no. Every time someone wants to engage with that part of me, it’s in deserted alleyways, empty classrooms, dead-end corridors, or toilets. Given the way in which these conversations tend to go, I’ve developed the suspicion that there’s more to this choice of location than people’s natural reticence about discussing such a private matter in public.

  I sigh. “I’m sorry to say, but your cousin is mistaken.” Wrong response. They both frown, which doesn’t make their general appearance any more reassuring.

  “But you have long hair. Like a girl.”

  “I think my hair looks nice long.” I really do. There’s not much I like about myself, physically, but my hair is great. Black, wavy, and thick, it hangs halfway down my back. I love how it looks in the sun.

  “You have long hair like a girl, but a beard like a dood.” Number One is clearly an observant fellow. I scratch my chin.

  “Without a beard, I look about twelve,” I admit. This must be a better response, as they chortle.

  “But you do woman’s work.” I narrowly control my eye-rolling. Yes, because it totally takes a vagina to run an office. Or would only a woman agree to work as the assistant of another woman?

  “And the geeks call you ‘she’ alla the time.”

  I shrug. “‘She’ and ‘her’ are the most common pronouns on my colony. My friends are just trying to make me feel at home. I actually don’t care either way between ‘she’ and ‘he’. I do object to ‘it’, though.”

  “So if you a dood, why you wear dat?” and he points at my shirt.

  This is not going to go away. In this kind of situation, there’s often a choice. I can explain to my questioners my gender identity or lack thereof, or I can lie. I can pass for a ‘dood’ easily. Well, it’s easy to do it; it just means that I have to publicly repudiate a part of my identity. So maybe ‘easy’ isn’t the right word.