Higher Education

Chapter Nineteen

Rick emerged from a vivid nightmare, a chaos of screams and freefall darkness and bursting bodies. He came suddenly awake, opened his eyes, and sat up.

He stared around him. He was not in his own familiar cabin. When he realized where he was, he knew that part of the nightmare was no dream. Alice had died, in an agony of ruptured lungs and exploding air that turned to a fog of ice crystals. Every other apprentice had come within seconds of that same fate.

He rolled off the bunk and lurched to his feet. His stomach hurt, and he felt drunk or drugged. How long had he been asleep? Where was everyone else?

There was no sign of Jigger Tait, although it was his room. Rick went outside and staggered along the darkened corridor to the dining area. Everywhere seemed oddly quiet, with the hushed silence of a hospital or a church. All Rick could think of was a drink. His throat was parched and his tongue felt like a withered lump of flesh in his mouth.

He walked into the bright room, squinting his eyes against the sudden light. Only after he had bent over the spigot and allowed cold water to run into his mouth and over his whole face did he take any notice of the people at the tables.

There were three of them. Deedee Mao, Vido Valdez, and Polly Quint were sitting with drinks in front of them, but they were not talking to each other. All of their faces had a pale, waxen look.

Rick moved unsteadily over to them and slumped onto a hard chair. “What time is it? I mean, is it night or morning?”

“Half and half,” said Polly. “It’s the middle of the night. We’ve tried but we haven’t been able to sleep. Even after Barney’s explanation, we can’t decide what really happened.”

“I wasn’t there with Barney.” Rick paused. Was he ready to talk about this? “But I was there when Alice died.”

“Moira,” said Deedee. “That’s what Jigger Tait called her. But I’m like you, I can’t think of her any other way than Alice.”

“And twenty-six years old.” Vido shook his head. “First time I saw her, I guessed she was thirteen. She could have passed for it, easy.”

“How did she die?” Polly asked. “Barney didn’t actually say.”

“Jigger killed her.” Rick felt obliged to add, “In self-defense. And I almost screwed that up, and killed all of you.”

While the others stared, everything came blurting out. Rick made no attempt to excuse his own naivety and incompetence. The others did not offer a word of criticism, though he knew it was well-deserved. They didn’t seem in the least surprised that Rick had been seduced by Alice, and it turned out that Gina Styan had already told them that she and Jigger worked for Vanguard Mining’s security office.

The surprise was on Rick’s side, when after describing Alice’s terrible death he said gloomily, “The rest you know. Jigger didn’t come right out and blame me for getting in the way, but I’m sure he thought it. I guess you can cross my name off the short list for exploring the moons of Jupiter.”

The other three exchanged looks. “Jigger didn’t tell you?” Deedee said.

“Tell me what?”

“That the whole thing was a set-up. Security knew there were information leaks somewhere in Vanguard. The people from Avant Mining had been finding out about valuable asteroid discoveries made by our surveys, and flying out there to stake claims before we did. So Security planted stories, different ones in different places. Then they watched to see what Avant did. And Avant took the bait on this one.”

“You mean the Jupiter moon exploration—”

“Isn’t real,” said Polly. “Not a word. And I had my heart set on it.”

“Yeah,” Vido snorted. “You and everybody else. Move over, lady.”

“Outer System exploration will happen, maybe in another ten years,” said Deedee. “It won’t be those moons, though. So far as Vanguard’s remote surveys can tell, the lesser moons of Jupiter are just big useless lumps of rock. But Gina has been monitoring the shipping records, and a few days ago three of Avant’s main prospecting vessels went whomping out through the Belt at maximum acceleration—heading for Jupiter.”

“Pulsed fusion, two and a half gees on and off every few seconds,” Vido smiled with vicious glee. “Serves the bastards right. Let’s hope it takes ’em a long time to get there and longer to come back.”

“No Jupiter project.” Rick leaned forward and rested his head on the table. “What else have we been lied to about? I’ve had it. I say screw Avant Mining, and screw Vanguard Mining, and screw everything. We’d be better off in the Pool, back on Earth.”

“Amen,” said Vido.

The other two seemed to have nothing to add, and after a long pause Vido stood up. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been to bed twice, and I’ve got up twice because I couldn’t sleep. I’m going to take another shot at it. Third time lucky. Good night, all.”

“Wait for me.” Polly dragged herself to her feet. “Anything you can do, Vido Valdez, I can do better.”

Rick and Deedee were left alone at the table. He did not speak or lift his head, and after a while she sighed and stood up. “Maybe they have the right idea. I’m going to give it a try.”

She began to leave the table, then reached across and gently ruffled Rick’s hair. “You too, hero. That’s what Barney and Gina told us you are, even though you don’t think so. Jigger says you saved everybody. Better get used to fame.”

She was at the door before she turned and spoke again. “One other thing you may have missed. Barney says that a day to get over shock is the maximum allowance when you work for Vanguard. She told us the party is scheduled for tomorrow night, come meteor shower or solar flare. And it’s going to take place the same as before, in the smelter. Still want me to give you dance lessons?”

She waited. Rick did not speak or move. Finally Deedee shook her head and said, “Why don’t you sleep on it? But do it in your bunk and not here. Even a bonehead deserves a softer pillow than a table.”

And she was gone.

Morning was not pleasant. But it was tolerable, as the middle of the night had not been tolerable.

Work helped. For reasons either therapeutic or punitive, Barney French drove the apprentices as never before. She piled on cleaning chores and exercise fatigues and maintenance details with a vicious disregard for human limitations. Rick reeled through the day from one assignment to the next, without time to rest or think or even eat a proper meal, until a general siren sounded. He realized with astonishment that it was the signal to down tools and head for the smelter.

All for a stupid party.

Rick felt that he wanted nothing in the world less—until he reached the racks at the exit port and saw his suit. He stared at it with a distaste that bordered on horror. More than avoiding a party, more than anything, he did not want to put himself inside that suit and drift through open space to the SM. His mind flung at him a vivid image of Alice, face plate smashed, limbs contorted, dying in the airless void.

He was still standing and staring when Jigger Tait and Gina Styan arrived. They did not notice—or chose to ignore—his frozen immobility.

“This is a bit of luck,” said Jigger. “I’ve been wanting a quiet word with you all day, but Barney told me she had you fully scheduled and I was to stay out of your way. Let’s take five minutes when we get over to the smelter, all right?”

It was easier to go along than to admit the truth. Rick found himself climbing lethargically into his suit while he read the sign on the wall.

You may feel SICK, you may feel SAD, you may feel STUPID. . .

He felt all of those, as well as scared. But he followed protocol, and together with Jigger and Gina performed the thirty-six point check of the suits. That ritual somehow helped.

They went into the airlock together, and he floated across to the smelter with one of them like a guard on each side of him. In the pressurized second hatch of the SM’s airlock, Jigger halted.

“You go through, Gina,” he said. “Rick and I will get rid of our suits and stay here for a few minutes. See you later.”

He motioned Rick to the chamber off the side of the room and followed him in.

“You may wonder what the hell this is all about,” he began, even before the door was closed. “I’ll get to the point right away. I want to talk about your future. I know how it is at this stage of your training, because I went through it myself. You feel as though the assignments and tests will go on forever. But they won’t. They’ll be over before you know it. So I want to ask, what do you see yourself doing afterwards?”

“Yesterday, I thought I might have a chance at the Jupiter expedition. Early this morning I was ready to call everything quits and go back to Earth. Now?” Rick shrugged. “Now I don’t know what I want.”

“I understand about the Jupiter moons. That story paid off for Vanguard, but no one thought through what the effect would be on your group. I can’t change that, but I can tell you that even if the Jupiter expedition were real, it still wouldn’t be the toughest job in the solar system. Do you know what is?”

“I guess I don’t. All through training we’ve been told that the most challenging job is out here in the Belt, mining and refining and carrying finished products back to the Earth-Moon system. Are you saying that’s wrong?”

“That’s a tough job, and a rewarding one. Almost all the apprentices will be doing some piece of it. For you, though, I want to suggest an alternative. I want to ask you to consider a career with Security.”

The idea caught Rick totally unprepared. “Security?” He stared at Jigger. “Why me?”

“I think—and Gina and Barney agree—you probably have a talent for it.”

“But I don’t know a thing about security operations.”

“Of course you don’t. You’d have to learn new things.

But that will be true wherever you work. Education isn’t like a video, with a beginning and a middle and an end. It has a beginning, then it keeps going until you’re dead. If it stops you are dead, even if you don’t know it. And Gina and I will be learning, too. Vanguard is about to start a completely new project, tougher than anything we’ve ever tackled before. We’ll need all the help we can get.”

“You mean—Avant Mining?” Rick thought he knew where Jigger was heading.

“There’s certainly opportunities there, if that interests you. Beating Avant won’t be easy. They draw their people from the school system’s absolute cesspools, the hardest, most cynical kids they can find. You only met one of them—Alice Klein—and she was nowhere near as bad as some of the others. Compared with them, the toughest of your group is Mr. Nice Guy. But I’m going to surprise you: the hardest job isn’t fighting Avant. It’s a job where Avant and Vanguard are in total agreement about what needs to be done, and will probably have to join forces to do it. Know what it is?”

Rick shook his head. Vanguard and Avant, working together? He couldn’t imagine any area where the two companies had a common interest.

“In fact, if we don’t cooperate,” Jigger went on, “I don’t think we can possibly win. We have to fight a monster that’s effectively immortal, a monster with a billion arms, one with a million times more power than Vanguard and Avant combined. A monster not in space, but back on Earth. Do you remember what it was like in school?”

“Very well.” Rick’s confusion had become total.

“Do you think you’re smarter now than you were then?”

Rick had to consider that. He wasn’t sure what Jigger was asking. “Smarter, no. My brain’s the same. But I know a lot more, and I understand more of what I know.”

“Very true. And do you know why that’s true? I’ll tell you. Back on Earth you were being strangled by the biggest, most inefficient, best entrenched bureaucratic system in the history of the world. You were in school, adrift within an education system that had lost any interest in the value of knowledge, or truth, or discipline, or self-evaluation. Like all monopolies, it was more interested in perpetuating and protecting its own territory than in anything else. The men and women who emerge from the school system know less and less—and then wonder why they find themselves unemployable.” Jigger paused. “My God, I’m starting to spout the official company line. Let me get to the point. For every bright bored kid like you who gets kicked out of the system, another thousand stay inside it and are stifled for life. We have to change that. The toughest job in the solar system isn’t on the moons of Jupiter. It’s not beating Avant Mining. It’s back down on Earth.”

“No!” Rick finally thought he knew where Jigger was heading, and for the first time since Alice’s death he was flooded with powerful emotion. He saw in his mind Mr. Hamel, the patient turtle, bowed down by thirty years of frustration and indignity. “If you think I could ever go back there and put up with all the bullshit—”

“You told me that early this morning you were ready to go back. But this would be different. Forget the way we operate today. We’re talking something a lot more direct. We have to infiltrate the education system, and either transform it or destroy the whole mess. That needs older people, like Turkey Gossage and Coral Wogan—they’ve both volunteered—but we also need younger people, too, like me and Gina and—”

“No. Absolutely no. I’m not interested.” Rick backed toward the door. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“All right.” Jigger nodded and sighed. “I thought you would say that. I’ve had my five minutes, and more. The party and the dance will be starting now, and you’ve earned the right to be there. I didn’t expect you to say yes, you know. I just wanted to plant the seed of an idea that might grow into something five years from now. Any questions before you go?”

“No.” But Rick paused. “Did you ask anyone else in our group?”

“Two other people. I spoke with Vido Valdez, and Gina spoke with Deedee Mao.”

“I see. Can you tell me what they said?”

“Yes. Vido told me no way—no goddamn way, to be precise. Deedee told Gina, no, never, not if she lived to be a thousand. Then she asked if we had asked you. Gina told her we had not, but I was going to.”

“I see. Thank you. May I go now?”

“Sure. Have fun. I’ll be there myself in a few minutes.”

Rick closed the door and entered the second chamber of the airlock. He went through, but at the inner hatch he paused and stood motionless for a long time. He had not thought about Mr. Hamel for months, until today; but suddenly his mind was full of their final meeting, the small stooped figure sitting on the bench in the fading light of late afternoon. He heard again that dry, dusty voice: Not an easy job, but a worthwhile one. The most rewarding jobs are always the most difficult ones.

Could that be true? On Earth, in space, everywhere?

Maybe; but not for Rick Luban. Not tomorrow, not ever. And certainly not today, with Deedee waiting for him.

He moved to operate the hatch.

Beyond it, the party was getting into its stride. From where Rick was standing the sound through the closed door was no more than a confused hubbub, like the first distant swell of a revolution.