Higher Education

Chapter Three

Mr. Hamel had sensed the truth: Rick could not face going home. The school might not have called his mother, but somebody would have contacted her to make sure she knew there wouldn’t be any more education incentive money coming in. Nine hundred and forty a month. It would stop today. He never saw one cent of it, but they would make him pay. Mick would wait up for him, drunk or drugged but anyway in a foul temper.

If only, when Rick finally had to go to the apartment, he could tell them that he already had some sort of job, some way to bring home some money. . . .

It seemed like the thinnest of straws to grasp at as he descended from the overhead Public Vehicle at the corner of Chatterjee Boulevard and began to walk along toward Number 8152. He had to push his way through crowds of young men and women, standing or wandering aimlessly along the littered street. They were part of the Pool. Not more than one in ten of the Pool would have a job of any kind—ever. Yet many of them had graduated high school and junior college, and some of them from a real college. Rick had already known most of the things that Mr. Hamel had told him. He had just never thought about them.

They didn’t want us to think about them. Rick remembered what Mr. Hamel had said about self esteem. He’d heard some of that before, too, but it hadn’t seemed worth bothering with. They want us to feel good and not think about the future. And it works, too. Why should we?

Number 8152 was a ten-story windowless building, its featureless walls made of grey lightweight carbon composite. Rick waited stoically as his ID was verified by the automatic guard and the card given to him by Mr. Hamel was read. It was close to eight o’clock at night. On the way here he had convinced himself that Suite 500 would be empty.

That conviction grew when he at last stood outside the entrance of the suite. He could see through the shatterproof glass door that it was just one room. It had plenty of computers and displays and printers inside, but no people.

He touched the attention panel anyway, and was astonished when after about ten seconds a woman’s voice responded, “You are at an office of Vanguard Mining and Refining. Please identify yourself.”

Rick went through the ID process all over again. He showed the little card and stumbled through the explanation that it had been given to him by Mr. Hamel, and why. The woman did not say another word, but at last the door swung open. Rick went in. The door closed behind him and one of the television monitors came alive.

“Sit down right here.”

Rick took the only seat near the monitor. Now he could see the woman on the screen. She was small, thin, and sharp-featured, and somehow reminded him of an animal. A rat? No. Not quite.

She was examining something in front of her, not visible to Rick. “You are sixteen years old. You have been expelled from school. And it is eight o’clock, your time. Right?”

Each of the statements was true enough, but taken together they made little sense.

“That’s right.”

“I want you to tell me exactly why you were expelled from school. Take your time and give as much detail as you can. I’ll try not to interrupt. If I do there will be a delay of about five seconds between what you say, and my comment or question. So you may have to back up occasionally and say things over. Go ahead.”

There was a temptation to lie, or put things in a way more favorable to Rick. Some instinct warned him that would be a mistake. He recounted the whole episode, from the arrival of Willis Preebane to Rick’s interrogation and expulsion by Principal Rigden. It was difficult to talk about the condoms and the booby trap. After the fact it sounded so stupid and pointless and unfunny. Rick was sure that any hope of employment with Vanguard Mining was evaporating with every word he said. He plowed on, ending with his decision to come to this office tonight even though it was so late.

“Not late where I am,” the woman replied. “I got up just two hours ago. But are you tired?”

Just got up. She had to be somewhere on the other side of the Earth! The speech delay must be caused by the satellite link. “I’m not tired.”

“Good. Can you read?”

“A little bit.” But five seconds was far too long for a satellite link delay. Rick struggled to remember things that had never before been of the slightest interest to him. Radio signals traveled at the speed of light. But how fast did light travel?

“Can you write?”

“Just a few things.”

“Hell.” The woman’s opinion of his reply showed more in her tone of voice than in her comment. “Well, no matter. We’ll manage. I want to give you a whole set of things called aptitude tests. First, though, we have to deal with a few formalities. You never had tests like this in school, because they’re forbidden in public programs. We’re a private company but still the tests can’t be given to you without suitable consent. In the case of someone like you, less than eighteen years old, that consent has to come from a parent or guardian.”

Rick felt an awful sinking feeling. He was going to be sent home after all with nothing to tell except his expulsion from school.

“Problem with that?” The woman must have been studying his face. “Tell you what. Suppose that we give you the tests anyway, see how you do. If the results are good you can get consent later and we’ll postdate the tests. If they’re not good, we purge the test results from our files and you’re no worse off.”

What she was suggesting sounded illegal—but if that didn’t worry Vanguard Mining, it sure didn’t worry Rick. He took a deep breath.

“I’m ready.”

“Any last question before we begin?”

Rick shook his head, then changed his mind. “You said you just got up. Is it morning where you are?”

“Morning, afternoon, evening, anything you choose to call it.” The woman smiled, to show small, sharp teeth. Rick suddenly caught the right animal resemblance. Not a rat, but a weasel—though he had never actually seen a live weasel. Mr. Hamel had somehow taught Rick more biology than either of them realized.

“I’m on CM-2, one of Vanguard Mining’s translunar training stations,” the woman went on, “about seven hundred thousand kilometers away from Earth. But the tests will be delivered where you are by a local program. I’ll still be here if you get stuck. Don’t call me unless you absolutely have to, though—the tests are timed. Ready to go?”

Rick nodded. His heart was racing and his mouth felt too dry to speak.

The woman’s picture vanished from the screen and was replaced by a sequence of numbers.

“Good luck,” said her disembodied voice. “Do well on your tests—and one day maybe you’ll come out here and see this place for yourself.”

Rick had painted a mental picture too good to be true: he would pass the tests, Vanguard Mining would offer him a job, and he would be whisked away at once to space and his new employment.

It was a dreadful shock to learn that the first set of aptitude tests was no more than a beginning.

“Not bad,” said the weasely woman, whose name was Coral Wogan. She was studying a copy of Rick s efforts, and he was terribly aware that he had not managed to complete even one of the tests. “Not bad at all,” she went on. “You did well enough that we’ll put you on the company payroll while you take the next set.”

“Next set?” It was after midnight and his brain felt like mush.

“More extensive tests. Mostly physical this time. They last about two weeks. Now, take these"—a linked batch of forms came stuttering out of a printer close to Rick—"and fill them out. All right?”

Rick took the forms and glanced at the first one. He could see at once that it was full of words too hard for him to read, but he was not going to admit that to Coral Wogan. He’d get the help he needed, if he had to go back to school and beg for it. He nodded.

“Three of them call for parental signature,” Coral Wogan went on. “What’s your father’s name?”

“My real father? Milo Luban. But he hasn’t been around since I was three years old.”

“Your mother, then.”

“Dora Luban.”

“Right. Give her this, and tell her that there will be more coming when we receive the signed parental permissions. I rely on you to persuade your mother to sign.”

Another narrow form rolled out of the printer. This one Rick could read. It was a check, made out to his mother from Vanguard Mining. For two thousand! More than double the monthly nine-forty of the education incentive.

“She’ll sign.”

“Good. One thing more, then you can go home and get some sleep. How soon will you be ready to start?”

Now—then I don’t have to go home at all. But that would not work. He needed to fill out the stack of forms, and he needed his mother to sign.

“Will tomorrow evening be all right?” He knew what would happen if Mick saw that check. One of two things. Either there would be a tremendous fight, or Dora Luban would agree to cash it and the pair would go off on a prolonged roller-coaster ride of drink and drugs. Either way, Rick didn’t want to be home for the nighttime brawl.

“Tomorrow evening should be fine,” Coral Wogan said. “Here’s the only other thing you’ll need.”

One more piece of stiff paper scrolled from the printer. Rick grabbed it and studied it. This one looked like a ticket—an air ticket, to somewhere with a long name. He tried to spell the word out—A-L-B-U-Q—but it was too hard.

“Albuquerque.” Coral Wogan showed her first sign of impatience. “You fly there, then by shuttle bus to our facility at Tularema. You are allowed to bring up to twenty kilos of personal possessions. Don’t bother with additional clothes, they’ll be provided. Have you ever been to New Mexico?”

“Never.”

“You’ll like it. Some of the tests, though, you won’t like them. I guarantee that.”

She grinned—small mouth, sharp little teeth. “Any more questions?”

Rick was tempted to ask what she meant about the tests, then decided not to. “No.”

“That’s it then. Again, good luck.”

The screen darkened, leaving Rick clutching forms, check, and ticket. He wondered how he was going to find his way home safely in the dangerous early hours of the morning.

Rick had never flown before, and he was not sure that he liked it—a bad sign for someone hoping to go out to space. Every other passenger seemed totally relaxed, while he in his window seat noticed each vibration and every whir and thump and whistle of mechanical equipment.

As the plane climbed at a steep angle and pressed him back in his seat, he stared outside at the dwarfed buildings and roads and tried to move his mind to other things. All he could think of was the bitter memory of his last hours at home.

Mick, thank heaven, had been out when Rick first got there. His mother had signed instantly, hid the check in her purse, and told him to get on with filling out the rest of the material. He had walked over to sit outside the school, struggled through the forms unaided, and delivered everything by mid-afternoon to the Vanguard Mining office.

He saw no one and spoke only with what seemed to be a computer. But everything must have been in order, because after five minutes another check came spitting out of the printer.

Rick received travel instructions and returned home to pack. Twenty kilos was more than enough—five would have done him. While he stuffed the few things he valued into a couple of plastic bags, his mother hovered over him. After signing the permission forms without hesitation she was now moaning and weeping and pretending to be heartbroken. But she could not keep her eyes off the second check that Rick had brought from Vanguard Mining. Mick had grabbed this one, the three thousand dollar “sweetener” that expressed the company’s financial appreciation of Dora Luban’s willingness to sign over complete parental control of her child. As for the first check, if his mother did not mention that to Mick, Rick was not about to do so.

His stepfather had been even worse than his mother. Mick hadn’t pretended. He didn’t try to hide his relief at getting rid of Rick, the “troublemaker” too bad even for the school system. When Rick came home and told them about the Vanguard Mining tests and the job prospect mining the Belt, Mick had asked only one question: “When do you go?”

No congratulations; no discussion of the job; no worry about possible hazards of an off-Earth assignment. No query as to how long it would be before Rick returned. Just, “When do you go?”

When do you go. Rick stared out of the plane window. Think of it this way: it sure made leaving home pretty easy.

They had reached cruising altitude and were in level flight. Rick was gazing down on stark, snow-capped mountains, their valleys already in shadow as night approached. There was no sign of buildings or roads, no evidence from up here that humans even existed. If anything went wrong with the plane, there was no place to land down there among those dark rocks.

Rick looked at the other passengers. Some were his age or younger, but they were all dressed in a very different style. It was clear that not one of them shared his worried thoughts. They were chatting, reading, playing, working, or sleeping, without a trace of interest in what lay outside the aircraft windows.

It was time to accept that life was different now. He was entering a whole new world. The old world had been washed away in the flood of water that poured down on Delia Pearl’s head and took off her red wig. Rick in this new world had to learn to think differently.

He closed his eyes. He had not slept for more than a short nap in the late afternoon, and he was dreadfully tired. He smiled to himself. Say what you like, the school had a new legend now. Whenever anyone tried a trick on students or teachers, somebody would say, “Ah, but that’s nothing. You should have seen the stunt Rick Luban pulled. Old Rick was the absolute wild end.”

What would it take to become a legend in the world that he was entering now? . . .

The landing at Albuquerque brought Rick out of a deep and uneasy sleep. When they touched down he at first had no idea where he was. Most of the other passengers were already on their feet while he was still struggling with his seat belt. He stared out of the window at a runway dusted with white, rubbed his eyes, and groped around under the seat for his two plastic bags. One of the last people off the plane, he followed his directions through a near-deserted airport, and then outside again to look for the minibus that was supposed to be waiting for him.

Heavier snow was starting to fall. The air felt thin and cold. He understood now why Coral Wogan had told him not to bother with his own clothes—he didn’t have any warm enough. But what was he supposed to do until he arrived at Tularema? Freeze to death?

The bus was one of the new autopilot runabouts, still illegal for city use. Rick had seen them on the tube, but he had no idea how they worked. Some sort of overall navigation gadget, he guessed, taking its position from a satellite receiver in the bus’s roof. A radar told the onboard computer where other cars and trucks were, and how fast they were going.

Rick approached the bus and hesitated. He had seen a dozen accident videos in the past year, people killed in autopilot buses and cars that ran off the road into rivers or smashed into bridge supports and other cars. An autopilot bus was not his choice for a middle-of-the-night ride with snow and slippery roads.

While he stood there, the bus’s rear door opened and a gruff voice came from the dark interior.

“You gonna stand all night playing statues? We been waiting two hours. Get inside and let’s hustle outa here.”

Rick swallowed his surprise—he had expected to be the only passenger. He bent his head and climbed into the bus. It was hardly warmer inside than out. Two other people were sitting on the broad seat, so muffled up in dark blankets that at first glance he could make out little more than their heads.

“Tularema?” asked the same voice. As Rick’s eyes began to adjust he saw next to him a big, broad-shouldered youth, not much older than him.

“Yes.”

“Vanguard Mining?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t this dumb bus get out of here?”

“Because the door is still open,” the other passenger said calmly. It was a girl, sitting on the far left. She touched something on the panel in front of them. The rear door clunked shut, and at the same moment a blue interior light came on and the bus began to move smoothly forward.

Rick studied the other two, aware that they were staring at him with equal curiosity. The male was easy. He could have fitted right in at Rick’s school. He was big—even bigger than he seemed at first glance, because it turned out that most of that bulk was muscle and not clothing. He had long, swept-back frizzy hair, a broad, very black face, and dark, close-set eyes. The left one was bloodshot, and he kept rubbing it. He had the same cocky, look-at-me expression as Hoss Carlin.

“I’m Vido Valdez,” he said. He did not offer to shake hands.

“Rick Luban.”

“You’re gonna freeze your ass off in that outfit.” Valdez did not offer to share the blanket sitting on his lap.

“Let’s hope it’s going to be a short ride,” Rick said, and reached out to pull part of the blanket across his chilled legs and feet. He ignored Valdez’s scowl—he could see trouble ahead there—and turned his attention to the girl who was smiling at him in a superior sort of way.

“It won’t be,” she said.

She was something else. For a start, she was tall and thin and pale and weak-looking, like a plant left too long in the dark. Mr. Hamel had taught the class a special word for that—eeti-o-something. Even her hair, pulled back from her narrow face, seemed weak and thin. If she was heading for the physical tests that Coral Wogan had promised Rick at Tularema, it was hard to believe she would pass any one of them.

The real shock, though, was those eyes. Rick stared at them, and had the feeling that there was nothing behind them. They were grey and wide and utterly without expression. The smile that she offered Rick somehow did not extend from her mouth to the rest of her face.

“If you’re hoping for a short ride, forget it,” she went on. Her voice was small and precise, a little girl’s voice. Rick had the strange feeling that despite her size she hadn’t matured sexually. “Albuquerque to Tularema,” she continued, “is nearly three hundred kilometers. Even without stops, and I don’t know if the bus has any scheduled, we won’t get to Tularema until the middle of the night. It shouldn’t be too bad, though. The heat comes on a lot better when we’re moving.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “And I’m Alice Klein. From the Black Hills—western South Dakota.”

Rick decided that, physical weakling or not, in her own way Alice Klein was as self-confident as Vido Valdez.

“I’m from Anchorage,” Valdez said. “If you think this is cold. . .” He stared at Rick, and he was grinning. “I think she’s right, though. This shouldn’t be too bad—once we get to Tularema.”

He looked with satisfaction at Rick’s puzzled expression. “Didn’t they tell you? Or didn’t you sign up with Vanguard Mining?”

“I did sign up. Tell me what?”

“That you’re out here for physical tests.”

“They told me that.”

“Ah, but did they tell you the rest of it?” Valdez turned, so that his smirk could take in both Rick and Alice Klein. “I guess they didn’t. Don’t you realize that these will be competitive tests? Not everyone who signs up gets a job and goes to space. We’re going to be fighting against each other. And I’ll tell you now: I intend to win.”

Tests. Rick had been taking them in school for as long as he could remember. There was a definite technique to them.

Rule number one: find out if it mattered. Some teachers gave you tests, but there was no penalty if you scored zero or filled the screen with doodles. Then you and your buddies horsed around through the whole thing or cut it completely.

If the teacher played tough like old Hamel, you changed tactics to rule number two: sit near one of the goody-goodies like Belinda Jacob, someone who was likely to know the answers. Watch what she did, copy all you could, and deny to the death that you had cheated.

He knew within minutes of arriving at Tularema that this was going to be different. For starters, they arrived tired out and chilled in a bleak February overcast. Rick expected food and rest. Instead they were ushered at once into a grim medical facility. A man in a grey suit greeted them. Doctor Alonzo Bretherton, read his ID card, but he didn’t look like any doctor Rick had ever seen—he was more like a bar-room bruiser, all muscles, jug ears, flattened nose and broken veins. He took one look at them and said, “Klein, Luban and Valdez. Right. A quick physical, then it’s track suits and a treadmill.”

“We’re frozen,” protested Valdez.

“And starving,” Rick added.

It was no lie. Even with the blankets, the night journey at two thousand meters above sea level (Alice Klein seemed to know everything) had numbed them. There had been no stops, for food or anything else.

“Exactly as you should be,” Bretherton said cheerfully. “I need to catch you at a physical low point, and it’s easier to do it now than starve you or keep you up all night later. Let’s go. Those three cubicles.”

Rick was ready to say it—Screw you, Doc, I’m not doing no stupid Treadmill—when he saw Vido Valdez’s mouth opening. They stared at each other. Finally Vido scowled and walked forward toward one of the three rooms that Bretherton had pointed out. Alice Klein had already vanished into the left-hand one.

Find someone who was likely to know the answers. That was a laugh. Rick changed into the skimpy grey gown that he found in the cubicle and stared at himself in the mirror. Wonderful. Enough to cover him to the thighs, but no matter how he adjusted it part of his ass was showing. Alice Klein was due for a treat.

Except that there was no sign of her when he emerged. Rick was shuttled along to another room, where a man and woman he had never seen before performed an hour-long physical on him. It was more unpleasant and painful than one of Mick’s grade-A beatings.

“Which would you rather,” the woman said when he complained. According to her badge she was a company paramedic, Tess Shawm. She was young and very attractive, but it was obvious that so far as she was concerned Rick was nothing more than a piece of meat. “Would you prefer to find out you have a problem now,” she went on, “with full medical facilities on site—or find out when you’re halfway to the Belt and it’s fifty million kilometers to the nearest doctor?”

It was no consolation, when Rick was at last released, to see Vido Valdez and hear him grumble, “The hell with this. They were pokin’ into holes I never knew I had.”

Vido stared at Rick’s gown and then at the close razor haircut that Rick had been so proud of two days ago, and added, “I knew you were weird, Luban, the second I saw you. You got more hair on your ass than you have on your head.”

Fighting words. But before Rick could do more than raise a fist Bretherton was standing between them.

“Fun and games later, you two. Go in there and get track suits on. Time for the treadmill and the EKG.”

Rick would like to have used that raised fist on Bretherton, but the doctor’s bare arms were as hairy and muscular as a gorilla’s. Vido Valdez was already moving away. After a moment Rick followed.

The treadmill was nothing but a sort of walking machine with an angle that could be adjusted to make you think you were going uphill. Rick waited while a bunch of electrodes were attached all over him, then the belt he was standing on began to move. He started walking. It was dead easy. He was no jock, but running the streets kept you in fair shape. He began to feel warm for the first time since he left the plane. Vido Valdez was two machines over, grunting and puffing but striding out steadily. Rick knew this test couldn’t be a big deal, because beyond Valdez he could see Alice Klein, strolling easily along on her long, skinny legs.

Then he started to feel something else. It was becoming hard to breathe, and his heart was pounding away in his chest faster than he ever remembered. He put his hand to his throat.

“What’s wrong?” The same man and woman attendants were with them, watching the walkers and the monitors. Tess Shawm came to stand by Rick’s side.

“Can’t breathe.” Rick hardly had wind to speak. “And I hurt—here.”

She nodded. “Where you from?”

“Simi Valley—California.”

“Near sea level, right.”

“Uh. Uh.”

“And now you are more than a mile high. Thinner air. What do you expect?” Shawm checked the monitors. “You’re all right. Heart’s fine. Just keep walking.”

Rick walked. The pain in his chest grew, and soon it was matched by an awful tired ache in his legs. Instead of slowing the treadmill, Tess Shawm was speeding it up and increasing the slope. Finally, when Rick knew he could not go for one more second, the machine slowed and stopped. He stood still, his hands gripping the metal bars on either side of him and his head down to his chest.

“You need to take regular exercise,” Shawm said. “I’m going to make a note of that. But you’ll do. You can get down now.”

Rick stumbled off the treadmill. He saw Valdez next to his machine, doubled over, hands to his right side. Unbelievably, Alice Klein was still on her treadmill and still striding along easily.

“Don’t get all shook up.” Tess Shawm saw Rick’s startled expression. “She has an advantage over you two. She went to school in the high part of the Black Hills. For the past two years she’s been living up near two thousand meters. Like prolonged altitude training. She can walk both of you into the ground.”

She already had. Vido Valdez and Rick went side by side to the showers in grim silence. Valdez didn’t tell Rick this time that he intended to win.