Higher Education

Chapter Six

“Let me introduce myself.” The man was plump and balding, with fleshy cheeks and drooping jowls. “I’m Turkey Gossage, chief of the training program on CM-2. You can think of me as the principal here—the head teacher. You don’t know it yet, but I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Rick had taken a position near the back. He craned for a better look. The man in front of the group was dressed in a black tanktop and jeans rather than the standard jacket and slacks. He scowled aggressively as he stared at them, but his blue eyes were sparkling. There had been a low general mutter from the group, and he was reacting to it.

“You heard me, sweethearts? The best thing. So if you got something to say, get it off your chest now.”

No one spoke.

“You, sweetheart.” Gossage pointed a finger at a woman in the front row. “I see your mouth moving, but I don’t hear you. Don’t whisper. Tell all of us.”

“Don’t you call me sweetheart!” It was Deedee, not much to Rick’s surprise. “You can’t do that.”

“I can’t, eh?” Gossage was grinning, but his neck and jowls turned red as turkey wattles. It was suddenly obvious how he got his nickname. “Why not?”

“Because it’s degrading, and it’s insulting. It’s also sexually discriminatory. Do it one more time, and I’ll take you to court.” Deedee paused.

“You mean you’ll sue me?” Gossage grinned again, but now it was unexpectedly friendly. “Sweetheart, that word is music to my ears. It proves we’ve got innocent new blood out here on CM-2, and it leads me straight in to what I have to say to all of you. Let’s get a few things out of the way right now. First, forget the sexual discrimination talk. I call everyone sweetheart. You, and bluebeard standing next to you"—that was Chick Teazle—"and the one at the back with the shitface grin on his chops.”

Gossage was looking right at Rick. Rick stopped smiling. He saw Vido Valdez in front of him turning to smirk. Next to Vido, Alice Klein stared at and right through Rick.

“Far as I’m concerned,” Gossage went on, “you’re all sweethearts ’til you prove otherwise. As for suing me, good luck to you. You’re not on sue-’em-all Earth now. We got exactly two lawyers out beyond the Moon, and they’re up to their asses in mineral depletion allowances and tax codes. If you can afford their time, you don’t belong here. And if you did manage to sue, you’d lose for reasons that I’ll go into in a minute. So tell me what else is on your mind. You were angry before I ever called you sweetheart.”

Deedee shook her head. It was another youth in the second row, one of the East Coast additions to Rick’s group, who spoke up.

“What’s this teacher bullshit? I done with school two month ago. Nuthin’ ’bout school in anythin’ anybody said to me.”

“I see. What’s your name?”

“Cokie Mulligan.”

“All right, Cokie Mulligan. Nothing about school in anything anybody said to you. Right. You read your contract, did you? The one that you and your parents or guardians signed.”

“Sure I did.”

“The whole thing?—including the fine print.”

Mulligan hesitated. “Yes.”

“Then you noticed the place where it says that Vanguard Mining, and in particular its authorized instructors—people like me—are in loco parentis to you for the duration of your contract.”

“Don’t know what that means.”

“In loco parentis means in place of your parents.” Turkey Gossage smiled horribly at Mulligan. “So now I’m like your daddy and your mommy, all rolled up into one. And I’m going to take better care of you than they ever did.”

Mulligan shook his head. “Maybe. But I don’t want no teacher, an’ I’m not goin’ to no dumb school. I hate school and I’m done school. I never signed up for that.”

There was a general mutter of agreement from everyone in the group.

“I see.” Turkey Gossage turned, floated across to a chair facing the front of the room, and straddled it with his forearms folded along the back. “What we have here, I suspect, is a simple failure to communicate. It’s that hated word, school, isn’t it? It suggests the wrong thing to all of you, and I shouldn’t have used it.

“So let’s agree that this isn’t a school. Let’s say it’s a survival course for off-Earth mining operations. The Belt is a dangerous place. You can screw up bigtime out there, eat vacuum, OD on radiation, blow yourself up, get flattened by an ore crusher, get stranded and starve to death. No legal liability for Vanguard Mining—read your contract. But Vanguard doesn’t want you dead, because we already have an investment in you. You think all those tests you took don’t cost money? So it’s my job to make sure that by the time you leave here you know how to avoid killing yourself. That means learning a few new rules. Anybody object to the idea of surviving?”

Rick shook his head and glanced around at the others. Everyone was doing the same.

“Good.” The smile never left Turkey Gossage’s face. “Now we get down to details. I’m going to give you assignments that have to be completed before bedtime. But before we talk about them I want to talk about you. I’m sure you all think you’re hot-shot and special and smarter than most people. And maybe you actually are—otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all. But smart or not, at the moment you’re still zeros. No skills means no value.

“Before we’re through here, that will change. You’ll have skills. You’ll have value. You’ll have a reason to think you’re hot-shot and special. And it all starts with the assignments. Today it will be reading. All right?”

Nods all around.

“Just one thing.” Turkey Gossage was deliberately casual. “I said reading, and I meant reading. By you. Not with a reading machine. There will be times out in the Belt where a knowledge of complex instructions is vital and no electronic readers are available. So you have to be able to read. I’ll let you into a big secret, something you’d never be told in an Earth school: reading is easy! Practically everyone can learn to read with a bit of effort. All of you can, or you wouldn’t be here. And we won’t go too fast at first. Short words, easy sentences.”

There was a stir at the back of the class. A short-haired and overweight blond girl was moving toward the door.

“Now where are you going?” Gossage did not raise his voice. “Leaving us already?”

She turned angrily at the doorway. “Yes, I am.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Gladys de Witt. I didn’t read none when I was in school, and I’m damned if I’m going to start now I’m out of it. Go screw yourself, Gossage. You think you’re the boss, but you’re not. You can’t stop me leaving. I seen the contract. I don’t have to stay. It says you can’t use violence on me, neither.”

“That’s quite true. I can’t prevent any one of you from leaving. I can’t be violent with you—though we might disagree on what constitutes violence. And I can’t make you complete your assignments.” Gossage nodded slowly. “Very true. All I can do, Gladys de Witt, is explain these to you.” He held up a handful of small pink cards. “They are meal vouchers. You need one to obtain food from the cafeteria service system. When you complete your assignment satisfactorily—by this evening, or tomorrow morning, or tomorrow midday, or whenever—you will receive one voucher. But if you fail to complete your assignment to my satisfaction, you will not.”

“You can’t do that to me!”

“I’m afraid I can. Read your contract. Vanguard Mining, in loco parentis, decides the manner and extent of trainee nutrition. Now, Gladys. Are you going to leave? Or would you like to stay here with the rest of the trainees while I explain today’s assignment? Dinner is lasagna with mushrooms, peppers, and garlic bread. The choice is yours.”

Turkey Gossage could smile and coax with the best of them, but he was one tough son of a bitch. His language would have horrified Mr. Hamel, and he hadn’t been kidding about the food voucher policy. After a few missed meals and a taste of CM-2 gruel, even the toughest and most ornery—and hungriest—trainee came into angry line.

Rick observed closely, then put Turkey Gossage into his “handle with care” category. What he couldn’t understand, though, was how Gossage had found himself such a pleasant, easygoing—and droolingly sexy—assistant.

Gina Styan was a graduate trainee from three years back, returned for two months to work with Gossage on CM-2 before she went to her post on the newest of the thirty-eight Belt mines. She had a figure that made Juanita Cesaro and Monkey Cruse look like boys, clear dark skin, and short-cropped black hair that emphasized delicate bone structure and high cheekbones. Those, plus what Rick read as an unmistakable interest in her brown eyes whenever she looked at him, bristled the hair on the back of his neck. The sight of her made him catch his breath.

She had the hots for him. He was sure of it. All it would take was a quiet place and an opportunity.

Which seemed to be exactly what CM-2 was designed not to provide. It was just as well that Deedee Mao’s liftoff invitation to Cabin Twenty-Eight had been bogus, because it now proved to be impossible. She shared her tiny cabin with three other trainees, including Monkey Cruse. Rick would love to have heard the conversations in there, but when it came to accommodation he was no better off. His cabin had five recruits in it, including Cokie Mulligan, who snored like a saw in freefall though he swore he hadn’t when he was back on Earth.

Vido Valdez, thank goodness, was two cabins along, bunked with Chick Teazle and a couple of East Coasters. Vido and Rick still glared at each other whenever they met, but apparently Valdez was willing to see their feud damped down—at least for the time being.

Privacy was no better during work periods. The recruits were never out of each other’s sight, except when they were busy on work assignments. Then they were permitted the privacy of a single small cubicle. After the first week Rick suspected Turkey Gossage of doing that on purpose. When the only way to be alone was to sit in a little room by yourself and pretend to study, you found yourself actually studying part of the time out of sheer boredom. Almost against his will, Rick found himself starting to read. He still wasn’t good, and he resented every word, but within a couple of weeks he’d have beaten everybody in his old class and most of his fellow trainees. He was in no hurry to rush on ahead. After reading, Turkey Gossage threatened pure and applied mathematics—"the queen of the sciences, the high spot of all your training,” as he put it, without convincing anyone. And before they could graduate, every one of them had to write a letter home.

“What the hell for?” Chick Teazle protested. “My mother hates my guts—and anyway, she can’t read.”

“I’m sure she loves you dearly.” The smile never left Turkey’s face. “She’ll find a reader, or get somebody else to read it to her. But even if she doesn’t, even if she tears it up and throws it straight down the chute, that doesn’t let you off the hook. You still have to write—and I have to be able to read it.”

Rick had started a letter three times in the first two weeks, and scrapped the result after a couple of sentences. What was he supposed to say? That he preferred it out here to being with his mother and Alick? Even if that was true, Rick suspected that Turkey Gossage wouldn’t let a letter go out that way. The problem of what to write was going to be as difficult as the writing itself.

Rick crumpled up his fourth shot at writing, threw it away, and stared at the cubicle wall. Never mind letters to his mother. They wouldn’t make him feel any less horny. The big problem now was Gina Styan. How was he ever going to make out with her if they were never alone?

A possible answer came in the third week, when the pure theory of space operations gave way to practical experience. All the trainees had become accustomed to freefall, so nausea was a thing of the past. But manual work in space was another matter. That took lots of practice.

And practice they were going to get, in assignments that Turkey Gossage described as “Manual coordination and control in a weightless environment.” A euphemism, as Rick soon discovered, for unpaid hard labor.

Weightless environment. Moving things around in space, where an object didn’t weigh anything, sounded easy as breathing. Nothing to it. Jigger Tait, staying a while on CM-2 with Turkey Gossage before shipping to the Belt again, assured Rick as much. Then he and Rick went together to the deep interior of CM-2 to clear one of the chambers. They moved massive pilings and metal I-beams and irregular chunks of rock.

After four hours of that Rick ached in every bone. His burdens might have no weight, but they still possessed inertia. And inertia was worse than weight. In fact, it was twice as bad. Back on Earth, once you had lifted something you could just let it drop and gravity would do the rest. Here you had to work to start a rock moving, then put in just as much labor to stop it.

But Jigger had not been lying. He did the work effortlessly. It was easy as breathing—for him.

Rick wondered how many other half-truths and hidden catches were tucked away in the Vanguard Mining training program. Turkey Gossage was sticking to his policy on the meal vouchers. After two bowls of cold and sticky oatmeal, Rick had finally handed in his last assignment. He had been handed a meal ticket just before he left with Jigger. It sat burning a hole in his pocket while his stomach growled in protest. He could hardly wait for the word to quit.

But when Jigger Tait told him they were done for the day, Rick still had enough energy and curiosity to notice something when they emerged through the airlock from the planetoid’s stony interior. It was a different lock from their entry point, and next to it sat another small chamber. It was like no other structure that Rick had seen. There were flat, solid, windowless walls and a massive close-fitting door.

Rick’s question about it produced no more than a shrug and a dismissive “Historical interest only” from Jigger. Tait would have continued back around the planetoid toward the training facility quarters, but Rick stopped in front of him and swung open the heavy door.

“Hey! Padded floor and walls. What’s the deal?”

“Bolt-hole.” Jigger followed him inside. The interior lights had come on automatically. “Before the mining work produced the deep interior tunnels, the miners always faced a radiation danger. Our suits aren’t enough to protect us.”

“Solar flares?”

“Yeah.” Jigger stared at Rick. “I thought you couldn’t read.”

“Videos. Show it as a standard hazard for space travel.”

“Well, for once they got it right. If you’re out on the surface of an asteroid and a big flare hits, you have three choices: you can move to the interior tunnels, if there are any, or you can head for a special shielded chamber like this one. Me, I’ll take this any day. Your own air, see, the interior fills by itself when the door is locked. And there’s plenty of reserves of food and drink. Stay here for a week if you had to.”

“But there’s no airlock.”

“There is on the inside. That was put in later. When they built this they figured anyone coming in from space might be in one hell of a hurry.”

“You said there are three choices?”

“Sure.” Jigger was already moving back through the thick door. “You can stay outside and fry if you want to. Freedom of choice. Isn’t that what people back on Earth are all so proud of?”

“Freedom to die?”

“Sure. Most basic right of all.” Jigger started around the planetoid, swinging easily along on the fixed network of cables. “Hell, you should be free to die when you want, where you want, how you want. If you’re not, your body and your life don’t belong to you at all. They belong to your keepers.”

“You can die any way you want to?”

“Sure I can. Anyone works for Vanguard Mining has that right. But dying is a right, no more. It’s not an obligation. So watch your step, Rick. Space is more dangerous than you think.”