Read A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet Online
Authors: Ron Miller
A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (12 page)
Both Mr. Grun and the headmaster were waiting for Judikha the next morning. She looked at them with disinterested, dull red eyes. Without any explanation, she was escorted to the latter’s office. The headmaster sat behind his desk and Mr. Grun stood just to his left. They indicated with a gesture that Judikha was expected to take the single wooden chair that was placed in the center of the room, facing the heavy, sarcophagus-like desk. So far not a word had been spoken by anyone. She sat, demurely and quietly, not at all certain what was going on, yet not in the least apprehensive. She had too many other things on her mind to be particularly curious about whatever trivial problems the two men might have. She’d been in the headmaster’s office often enough before; she’d listen to whatever he had to say and then get back to class and her work. She knew that she never stepped so far over the bounds of propriety that there was ever anything to fear but the waste of her time.
There was a very long silence. Then the headmaster spoke. His voice was grim and unfriendly.
“You planned to take the Space Patrol Academy Entrance Examination, didn’t you, Miss Judikha?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This was important to you, I understand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very important?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you characterize yourself as ambitious?”
“I guess I would, sir. At least, I know that I have to get
—must
get into the Academy.”
“How badly did you want to get in?”
“I want that more than I’ve ever wanted anything, sir.” She was dimly aware that the headmaster had used the past tense.
Did.
It hadn’t sounded right.
“Would you say that you’d do anything to pass that exam?”
“Yes, sir, I suppose so,” she replied and knew immediately that, for some reason, it was entirely the wrong answer. She was suddenly wide awake, wrenched from her self-absorption like a dozing cat startled by an unexpected noise. What was going on here?
The headmaster reached into the top drawer of his desk and brought out a small blue book. He tossed it onto the geometrical center of his blotter. His expression was smug and Judikha knew that the punch line must be a good one.
“Miss Judikha, do you know what that is?”
“I have no idea, sir.”
“You’ve never seen it before?”
“No, sir.”
Again the headmaster glanced at Mr. Grun. The teacher’s face was as expressionless as a snake’s.
“Miss Judikha, I believe you know perfectly well what it is.”
“Sir?”
The headmaster leaned back into his chair, placed his fingertips together and sighed. Mr. Grun kept his silence, but—knowing that his superior could not see him—suddenly leered at her. The lascivious sneer lasted only a moment, like a rabid animal peeping from its hiding place, but Judikha saw it, as she was intended to, and it frightened her badly. Whatever was about to happen was going to be unique and it was going to be devastating. She was sure of that.
“Miss Judikha,” continued the headmaster, “you and I both know what this book is: it’s the instructor’s copy of the Patrol examination. It was taken from Mr. Grun’s desk last night and returned this morning. It was cleverly planned that he would never notice its temporary disappearance, but that plan was not quite clever enough.”
“Sir, if you’re suggesting that I took it...”
“I’m ‘suggesting’ no such thing, young lady. There’s no ‘suggestion’ about it. I
know
, Mr. Grun knows and
you
know that you removed it.”
“I did not!”
“No? I think we have sufficient evidence to the contrary.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Oh? Do you think so because you believe you were too clever?”
“I think so because I had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you recognize this?” he asked, tossing another object onto the blotter. It was Judikha’s locket.
“Well?” he urged.
Her hand went to her throat and for the first time she realized that the locket was missing. It was a gesture she regretted making the moment her hand had begun to move.
“Yes, I recognize it.”
“Mr. Grun found it inside his locked desk drawer this morning. How do you suppose it got there?”
“I don’t know, sir. Someone must have taken it and put it there.”
“‘Someone must have taken it.’ Do you have any idea how feeble that sounds? How pitiful? How desperate?”
“I can’t help that, sir. It must be true.”
“No, Miss Judikha. The truth is much simpler than that.”
“But, sir, just because Mr. Grun found my locket in his desk doesn’t mean anything. Someone
could
have taken it. You have to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
“I would be inclined to do so under any other circumstances, or for any other student. Admittedly, although your record is far from exemplary, and your behavior is not at all in keeping with the decorum expected—indeed, demanded—of a young lady your age, your grades have been excellent. And you’ve been in no really serious trouble—until now, no more trouble I must admit than any other child your age. Taken by itself, that would seem to indicate that there’d be no good reason for you to want to crib the examination.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“That is, if there weren’t corroborating evidence.”
“Sir?”
“Mr. Grun?”
The teacher nodded and went to the door. He opened it an inch or two and spoke to someone on the other side. He turned back to face the headmaster as the door swung open and someone entered the room. Judikha risked a surreptitious glance and was amazed to see Pomfret, his face a pale mask, taking a seat to her right. What was he doing here? They never spoke, other than that one time the previous day, they never associated with one another. What could he know about this?
“Master Pomfret, when was the last time you saw Miss Judikha?”
“Here, sir, last night.”
“That’s right, sir,” Judikha interjected. “He asked me to go with him and his friends to the quarry.”
“That’s true, sir,” said Pomfret, “but that wasn’t the time that I meant.”
“You mean you saw her later?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here at the school?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What was she doing?”
“She was breaking into Mr. Grun’s classroom, sir.”
“What?”
cried Judikha, half rising from her seat.
“Please don’t interrupt, Miss Judikha,” said the headmaster. “And sit down. Continue, Master Pomfret. How did you know she was breaking in?”
“Well, sir, I know that Mr. Grun keeps that door locked, and, besides, she was bending over the handle and I could hear strange noises.”
“Noises?”
“Little metallic clicks and scrapes. Not like a key would make.”
“Then what happened?”
“The door opened and she went inside.”
“Did she turn the light on?”
“No, sir.”
“What did you see next?”
“I was still trying to decide what to do—I mean, I thought that I ought to go in and stop her or notify the custodian or something. Obviously, she wasn’t up to anything legitimate. I mean, there
was
her reputation and all, you know. Everyone knows about
that
. Anyway, before I had a chance to think, she came back out and relocked the door.”
“She never saw you?”
“No, sir. I was in a shadow behind the drinking fountain.”
“Then what did she do?”
“She left the building.”
“Was she carrying anything?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What?”
“A blue book just like that one there, sir,” the boy replied, pointing at the volume on the headmaster’s desk.
“You lying piece of rat snot!” Judikha cried in midair as she launched herself at her betrayer. They crashed to the floor in a tangle of legs, arms and pieces of chair. The boy screamed shrilly as Judikha straddled his chest and, grasping his ears, began banging his head against the bare planks of the floor. A red haze obscured her vision, as though she were looking through a scarlet silk or a film of blood. The headmaster had leaped from his chair and was thumping his fist on the desktop incongruously, as though he were keeping time with Pomfret’s head. Mr. Grun rushed to the boy’s rescue, grasped Judikha under her arms and pulled her to her feet. She pummeled him with her elbows and kicked his shins with her heels as she twisted and writhed like an angry snake.
“Get your filthy hands off me! Let me go, you damned perv—”
Mr. Grun suddenly released her, spun her to face him and slapped her with a backhanded blow that threw her to the floor. Her head rang like a schoolbell and she tasted the sudden rush of blood over her tongue. Grun turned to the door, opened it and shouted for the receptionist to get the custodian, a burly ex-Army man, and to call the nearest policeman.
“Miss Judikha,” said the headmaster with the cold finality of a judge pronouncing a capital sentence, “your actions speak louder than any confession. Don’t make things worse for yourself. Wait quietly for the police and things will go easier for you.”
“Bullshit,” she said, picking up a chair leg as she rose from the floor. One side of her face was bright red from the blow she’d received and trickles of blood zigzagged from one nostril and the corner of her mouth.
“Now, Miss Judikha,” said the headmaster, stepping around his desk, his hands raised placatingly, but Judikha wasn’t placatable. She stepped toward Pomfret, who still lay flat on the floor, holding his head, and raised her makeshift club as though it were an axe and she were about to split firewood. It was more than clear that what she meant to split was Pomfret’s head. Grun, to rescue his star witness, moved to intercept her. She whirled, suddenly, and struck the teacher across his knees with the heavy cudgel. The patellae shattered with a sound like walnuts cracking. He gave a satisfyingly high-pitched wail and collapsed like a house of cards. Judikha leaped over his writhing body and made for the door. The custodian, an ox-like man used to quelling rebellious students and looking forward to pummeling a little tranquility and respect into yet one more, entered just in time to receive the butt end of Judikha’s club in his vast and receptive stomach. He was not so easily disabled as the teacher, but was sufficiently surprised and slow-witted to allow her to slip past his flailing paws.
Judikha bolted down the corridor, into the foyer, out the main doors, down the steps and into the crowded street where she knew how to get well and perfectly lost.
She returned to her garret by a convoluted route, just to keep on the side of caution. She knew that no one at the school, neither teacher nor student, knew exactly where she lived. She also knew it would not be terribly difficult for them to find out.
Oh, wonderful!
she thought, as she remembered all the time she had spent laboriously filling in her precise address on the Patrol examination application form.
Well,now what?
she wondered, as she sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed. The terrible and probably irrevokable ramifications of what had just happened were only now occurring to her, as the pain of a terrible wound will come long after it has been inflicted. Like the snuffing of a lamp, her dream of becoming a Space Patrol cadet was extinguished; that much seemed certain, though the hardness of it was still very abstract, like uncongealed concrete. At the moment, she simply sat there, quivering like an overcharged capacitor, trying to decide which of a dozen violent emotions to surrender herself to.
Should she tell Rhys about his brother? It was the first thing she decided to do, but then thought better of it. Could she save herself by exposing Pomfret as a thief and a liar? No—no matter how much satisfaction it might give her to expose him. In any case, it would be dangerous trying to contact any of the students, least of all Rhys. He was just righteous enough to turn her in, crying genuine tears of agony the whole time, the stuffy little martyr.
She decided as she made all her decisions—immediately, unhesitatingly and without afterthought—decided that her only recourse was to leave the city immediately. At the moment, no one would be expecting her to do anything quite so drastic and if she took advantage of that she could be long gone before it occurred to the authorities to watch the exits.
She took a canvas bag from where it hung from a nail and packed the few belongings with which she dared burden herself. She would have to leave her books, and that was very hard. She allowed herself only these: two slim volumes, one on celestial mechanics and another on astronavigation—since she knew that she could still join the Patrol as a common spaceman and felt that if she continued to study these subjects it might lead to an early advancement—and her dog-eared biography of Princess Bronwyn. And nothing else but the few clothes she owned.
PART TWO
JUDIKHA AT LARGE
-I-
Judikha had every reason to think her escape would be successful. After all, there were hundreds of thousands of people living in the crowded warren of interlocking buildings and narrow streets that interlaced in such recomplicated patterns that two noted topologists had written highly-regarded papers on them. And who would ever notice one more ragged urchin among the uncounted thousands that infested the Transmoltus? No one, thought Judikha, though she was unfortunately quickly proven wrong.
She had, with her usual cold-blooded practicality, formed a plan before she had even finished packing. By the time she reached the street she knew exactly what she intended to do. She realized that the authorities—especially those connected with the school, who had little real idea of how life actually operated in the Transmoltus—would no doubt expect her to immediately go into hiding, or, if were to flee the area that she would head for the City, for Blavek. It was their conceit that everyone wanted to go to Blavek eventually. It would never occur to them that a Transmoltan—least of all a threadbare, half-starved street Arab—would stand out among the proper inhabitants of the Capital like a herpes sore on the full red lips of a debutante. In any event, such a flight would not be expected immediately. They would assume that she would first go into hiding, either at her home or with some friend or ally. Therefore the authorities would concentrate their search for her in those few places she was known to haunt and their interrogation to those people with whom she had been known to consort.
Judikha’s intention was to waste no time whatsoever in either hiding or seeking help—even if she had known or trusted anyone who could help her. (It is perhaps an interesting comment on her relationship with The Fox that it never once crossed her mind to apply to him for help.
6
) Instead she planned to abandon the Transmoltus immediately via the river. The Slideen was crowded with shipping of all kinds and somewhere in that unregulated traffic jam she would find the means to escape not only the city but the country altogether.
She was half way to the docks when, turning a corner, she ran directly into a gang of a dozen boys. At first she paid them no more mind than she had any of the other people in the busy street, but she could not resist an involuntary stumble in her stride when she heard a strident voice cry out: “Hey! Judikha!”
She tried to regain her gait, consciously keeping her eyes fixed on the pavement ahead but not even a single heartbeat passed before she felt someone grasp her forearm. She was jerked to a halt, forced to do a quick double-step to keep her balance. She turned and found herself face to face with Pomfret. Surrounding that unpleasantly babyish visage were a great many more or less unprepossessing countenances—outstanding among them being that of the porcine Monkfish Glom, who had earned his nickname for very good reason. Her eyes locked with Pomfret’s for an infinitesimal moment—then, without any warning whatsoever, she turned and bolted. Taken completely by surprise, the boys hesitated for the few seconds it took the girl to vanish into the shadows of an alley.
What Judikha had seen in Pomfret’s eyes had scared her simple—she knew exactly why she had found him on the streets surrounded by his gang: he had been searching for her. So long as she remained intact, Pomfret’s duplicity was in danger of being revealed. He must be thoroughly paranoid to think for a moment there’d ever be a chance that Judikha’s story would be given more credence than his own, but even that vanishingly small possibility convinced him that it would surely be to his advantage if the girl were to be put away forever. He had no way of knowing, of course, that disappearing forever was exactly what she had in mind. Perhaps even if he had known that she had planned to flee the city, and even the country if she could manage it, it would have made little difference. She had little doubt that given his druthers, Pomfret would much prefer a
permanent
disappearance. If nothing else, it would satisfy his essentially cruel nature. If he and his gang were to catch up with her, she knew that she’d be luckier than she deserved to escape with her life. If nothing else, it would satisfy his essentially cruel nature. If he and his gang were to catch up with her, she knew that she’d be luckier than she deserved to escape with her life.
She sped through the interconnected alleys like a frightened laboratory rat. Unfortunately, she had dashed into the first dark alley at hand with little thought as to where the passage might lead.
The alley led nowhere.
She turned when she saw the cul de sac, a barrier twelve feet high, only to see Monkfish, Pomfret and the rest of their gang at the entrance to the alley. There was nowhere to go. She threw her bag away and cast around for a weapon. There was a four-foot section of discarded iron pipe protruding like Excalibur from a pile of trash and she pulled it loose, hefting its weight in both hands like a baseball bat. She planted her feet firmly onto the pavement, balanced like a spring, and awaited the first of her attackers.
Pomfret and Monkfish, like the true cowards they were, let the other four or five boys lead the rush, though they didn’t stint in their encouragement. The first, a wall-eyed tough named Cookie, took a solid blow from Judikha’s pipe full on his left arm, which snapped like a broom handle, and with much the same sound. He tumbled to the cobblestones screaming, blood pouring from around the protruding bone. She kicked him in the face and the noise abated to a soft bubbling. The others, wary now, circled her at a safe distance. Judikha maintained a slow rotation, not allowing any one of them out of her sight long enough to make a rush. Monkfish and Pomfret jeered and catcalled, making no move to help, carefully keeping the others between themselves and the girl.
One of the remaining boys—known as Poxface for obvious reasons—made a sudden rush at her, diving for her legs and when she spun to avoid him, swinging her pipe at his head, there was a sudden, blinding flash of white light as a brick, thrown by Monkfish, slammed into her left temple, just above her ear. She collapsed like a marionette which had just had its strings snapped. She didn’t lose consciousness—at least not for more than a second or two—but it was long enough for the boys to pin her to the pavement. When her vision cleared, she found herself on her back, one each of the thugs kneeling on her arms and legs, their weight threatening to snap the long bones. One side of her face was wet with fresh blood. She could taste it as it ran into her mouth.
“What now, boss?” asked one of the gang.
“Teach her a lesson, boys,” said Monkfish, “and then I’ve got a little present for her.”
“Lesson” was obviously interpreted to mean “beat senseless”, since that is what the boys proceeded to attempt to do. It was perfectly obvious to Judikha that murder was their game and that they expected no other outcome than her death.
Well, we’ll just see about that
.
The pummeling was painful, but the clumsy positioning of Judikha’s attackers never allowed them to use the full force of their swings; they were too close to her and to one another, and were scared to death of the possibility of losing their grip on her limbs. She took the punishment grimly, knowing that it was doing her little enough real damage, allowing the pain and humiliation to supercharge her anger like a battery. So when Monkfish finally said, “Hold on a minute, fellas, I got somethin’ really special for the bitch,” he had every reason to think she was half dead already.
As the boys leaned back from her, still sitting on her limbs, Monkfish came forward to stand between her spread legs. He began unbuttoning the front of his trousers.
“Okay, Pomfret,” he said, “get her ready.”
Giggling, Pomfret scurried over to where Judikha lay, falling to his knees beside her, where he began fumbling with the buttons of her own trousers. Judikha bit her lip, but otherwise remained unmoving. Taking a cuff in each hand, he wrestled the garment from her, leaving her lying half naked on the cobblestones. To allow him to do this, the hold on her legs had to be necessarily compromised, but still she waited. She could see, through slitted eyes, that Pomfret had turned blue through hyperventilation and was breathing in convulsive, shallow gasps. Monkfish, meanwhile, had pulled from his unbuttoned fly a grotesque object she knew must be a penis only through a process of elimination since judging by appearance alone it more resembled something a butcher might have tossed a begging mongrel than it did anything she had ever seen associated with a human being. It was a knotted, filthy-looking thing, crusty, swollen and dripping a thick, waxy, yellow substance from beneath its wrinkled hood.
Certain of her submission, the other boys had released their hold on her and were now standing to one side, watching in a gleeful silence.
Monkfish got to his knees, straddling her hips, and leaned far forward, bracing himself on hands placed on either side of her head. She saw the horrible thing that dangled between his legs approaching her face.
She sat up and bit him.
An explosion of hot blood arrived with an ululating scream that echoed resonantly from the high brick walls. Monkfish toppled backwards, clutching his ruined organ while at the same time Judikha leaped to her feet, grabbed her trousers and bolted down the alley she had just come up—all in a single blur of action that was over before any of the boys—let alone Monkfish—even thought of reacting.
They weren’t stunned for long, however. Judikha hadn’t gotten halfway down the alley before she heard the sounds of pursuit. She threw one, brief glance over her shoulder and saw the boys just turning into the mouth of the alley. Monkfish appeared behind them, one hand clutching a huge red stain at his crotch, the other...
Holy Musrum! He’s got a gun!
She redoubled her speed but before she had gotten another three yards there was the sound of a shot and a shriek of pain. Her heart stopped momentarily...but the shriek hadn’t been hers. Without looking back, she dived into the open door of an abandoned warehouse. The place was a labyrinth of corridors, passages and levels and she put as many of these as she could between herself and her enemies, before finally collapsing in a dark corner beneath a tangle of huge steam pipes.
She curled into as tight a ball as possible, doing all she could to strangle her gasping breath, but her heart was pounding like a trip hammer and she nearly passed out from the effort.
The building was silent.
Some time after it became obvious there was no pursuit, Judikha finally dared move enough to slip back into her trousers. She found a puddle where rainwater had leaked through the roof and washed out her mouth, scrubbing her face with the sleeve of her shirt.
It was dark when she finally left the building. She’d dropped her bundle of belongings back in the alley where she’d confronted Monkfish and his gang. She desperately wanted the things back and debated whether to risk looking for them and decided that it could do no real harm—of all the places in the Transmoltus where she might run across her enemies again, that alley was probably the least likely.
It took her several hours to traverse the same distance she’d ran in a matter of minutes earlier that day, but she was as infinitely cautious as a cat, slipping silently from shadow to shadow. She found the alley again easily enough and, as she had expected, it was deserted. It was as dark as a cave in the narrow passage and she had no means of making a light, not that she would have been silly enough to make one if she had. It took some considerable time but she did finally locate her bundle and hugged the books as though she had just been reunited with a lost child.
She still had to get to the river, which lay on the other side of a broad, busy, brightly-lit road that separated the Transmoltus from the wharves. It would be difficult if not impossible to traverse it without someone noticing her, but she could think of nothing else to do. She hoped that, dressed as she was and with her cap pulled down as far as it could, that she would be mistaken for a boy. She was nearly successful, too.
She had gotten as far as the last of the buildings and stood looking at the wide expanse of illuminated pavement that stretched between her and the water. She had arrived much later than she had originally planned—no thanks to Monkfish—and now the boulevard was not half as crowded or busy as she had hoped it would be. There were only a few wagons making late deliveries and a half dozen or so longshoremen and sailors wandering between taverns. All she had to do was cross a hundred feet of open space and she would be among the wharves, where any one of a score of ships might offer her escape. There was nothing for it but to be bold.
She stood up straight, slung her bag over her shoulder and strode out into the boulevard, trying her best to impersonate a sailor-like swagger. She got about ten yards before someone called out, “Hey! You!”.
The momentary pause as she was deciding whether to stop or to bolt saved her. It had only been a trio of drunken seamen who had called, as they staggered across the pavement toward her, each supporting the other. As they approached, the larger and more articulate of the trio said, “Hey there, mate! No reason t’be all lonely onna night like this!”
Judikha pulled her collar up and tried to make a noncommital sound, but the drunk would have none of it.
“Ain’t nothin’ weighin’ anchor ‘til th’ tide turns. Why don’t ye come on an’ pass th’ time wit’ us, eh, mate?”
Seeing nothing for it but to comply, since a fuss would only draw attention to her, she turned and followed the men, who continued their wobbly way to their destination: a tavern near the end of the waterfront. She hung back and was perfectly happy to see that her new companions seemed content just to know she was there. They appeared to have no interest in examining her more closely. What she would do when she got into the place, she had no idea.
The inside of the tavern was, she was infinitely grateful to see, dark, smokey, crowded and noisy, with all of its inhabitants even more pickled than her friends. No one gave them more than the briefest glance with eyes that obviously had enormous difficulty focusing in one direction simultaneously. She was even happier to see that the only vacancy was a small table in the darkest corner of the room. She elbowed her way ahead of the trio and took the chair that put her back to the crowd and what little light there was. The others took their own seats and immediately began calling for drinks to be brought to the table. The money they waved in their fists got the attention of the barkeep and there were soon glasses of foaming black ale in front of the quartet.