A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (9 page)

She had no idea, but she perversely persisted in doubting it.

It was spring when the bulletin was posted announcing the impending Space Patrol Academy Entrance Examination. Anyone interested was invited to apply at the headmaster’s office for further information. Although in the history of the school not a single applicant had ever been accepted by the Patrol, so compelling was the latter institution’s reputation that at least a third of the student body, undeterred by such a dismal record, applied for the test.

Judikha procured her application, which proved to be a blank form and a sheaf of papers listing the subjects that the exam would cover, to allow the applicant time to properly prepare themselves. She took all this home with her and, by the light of her frugal candle stubs, pored over the densely-printed sheets. The form, which should have been the simplest matter of all, proved to be a stumbling block right at the outset. It was for the most part a request for personal information, something of which she was peculiarly lacking. The very first line made her furrow her brow in frustrated concentration.

Name: Last
First
Middle Initial

She did not know whether
Judikha
was her first name or last: it was the only name she had ever had and it had simply never occurred to her to wonder about its singularity. Neither had it ever occurred to her to ask The Fox about the origin of her name, no more than it would have occurred to her to ask him the origin of her arm or head—or for that matter, why he was called The Fox. Mr. Grun invariably referred to her as “Miss Judikha”, which seemed to argue for it being a family name. On the other hand, he referred to some of the other girls by attaching “Miss” to their first names, and some to their last. There seemed to be no consistent, rigorously-applied rule. Occasionally a newcomer to the neighborhood or to the classroom would briefly call her “Judy” even after she had told them firmly that her name was Judikha. It was an error that was only committed once per offender. She would make one allowance for ignorance, a second “Judy” she considered an intentional affront and applied a more immediately physical correction which, once the transgressor could again speak, always seemed sufficient. “Judy”, a diminutive she hated, was an unwarranted assumption on the other’s part—it did not necessarily mean that Judikha was her given name. Did she perhaps have any claim to
Pilnipott
? She rather hoped not. Judikha Pilnipott did not quite have the
ring
she associated with a Space Patrol cadet. She thought for a moment longer, then wrote
Judikha
in the first space. She hesitated only briefly then wrote
Judikha
in the second space. The notion of yet a third name seemed to her unnecessarily extravagant, but, she reasoned, the space wouldn’t have been provided had the Patrol not expected at least some of its suppliants to fill it in. So she wrote in
J.
, just for the sake of symmetry. Judikha J. Judikha.

That taken care of, she went on to the next line, which requested her address.
Address?
Another unprecedented concept. She knew the street below was Nixnixx Road (the opposite side of the building overlooked an ancient drainage canal), but it was never a matter of any particular interest. Why should it be? She had never in her life received any mail, had never expected any, nor had she ever invited a visitor to her hiding place, nor ever expected to. She supposed that she could write down
Nixnixx Street, Transmoltus, Blavek
, but that seemed insufficient. What if the Patrol wanted to contact her directly? What if her acceptance came via the mails? The letter carrier would not know which of a dozen buildings was the right one, let alone which of (perhaps as many as) a score of rooms and apartments was hers—not that she had ever seen a letter carrier within the confines of the Transmoltus. What if, Musrum forbid, the Patrol interpreted the lax of house number as a slovenly error on her part or worse? With her usual efficiency and unwillingness to procrastinate, she laid down the form, rose from floor and began the long descent to the street. Her little den was an attic corner ten stories above the canal. She had to go to a hole in the floor, lower then climb down a rickety, homemade ladder, descend a narrow hallway, and then descend a zigzagging staircase that threatened at any moment to fold upon itself like a house of cards. This ultimately deposited her in a urine-reeking foyer. She stepped outside, turned and looked above the door. There, in two brass numerals and two painted ones, was the number 1506. Taking a small card from a pocket, she wrote on it with a stub of pencil:
J. J. Judikha. Tenth floor. Attic.
and fastened it with a pin beneath the bank of long-unused mailboxes just inside the open door.

Back in her garret, scarcely breathless after the long climb, she took up the form and neatly wrote in the space provided:
1506 Nixnixx St., 10th floor, Attic, Transmoltus, Blavek, Tamlaght.

“Age” was easy; Pilnipott had told her she had been purchased by him virtually at birth and that was about fifteen years ago. She wrote in
16. “Date
of birth” was more difficult. Why wasn’t her age sufficient? Wasn’t asking for a specific date redundant as well as over particular? What difference could it make what
day
she was born on? She was certain, however, that the Patrol must have its reasons, whatever they might be, and good ones, too, but that made her problem no easier. The Fox had never been so specific about her birth as to mention an actual
date
. What would have been the point, even if he
had
known? She considered making up a month and day, though the idea frightened her. What if the Patrol discovered this deception, as insignificant as it might be? She had read of officers being cashiered from the service for infractions that had seemed to her no less petty than lying about their birth date. It was not the general dishonesty that bothered her—Musrum knew she had not hesitated committing far more heinous crimes—but she had hoped, by earning admittance to the Academy, to put that part of her life permanently behind her. It rankled, therefore, to have even so much as a falsified date tarnishing her bright new life.
Well
, she finally reasoned,
the Patrol would be more likely to look into the reason why the space was left
blank
than they would be likely to check to see if a date was
wrong, so she swallowed hard, dug a pair of dice from a bag and tossed them onto the floor. Snake eyes. She wrote
1/1
in the space, subtracted sixteen from the current year and entered that in as well.

Race
was easy.
Human
.
Sex
puzzled her for a long moment or two and she just barely averted revealing a catastrophic naïveté by realizing at last that she need only put down the single letter
F.

And so it went.

It was well after midnight before she finished. She lay awake until dawn watching the brilliant geysers of flame rising from the distant spaceport. The next morning she took her completed application to the school office and was disturbed to see how many others were already there.

As she placed her form on top of the pile, she stole a surreptitious glace at the upper half dozen or so. There was Rhys’ (no surprise) and Weenly Glom’s (the witless hulk known as Monkfish to the half dozen thugs who passed for his friends; the presence of
his
application gave her cause for a derisive snort: fat chance
he
had of ever getting accepted!), Thandner’s, Layamon’s, Caviede’s, Brera’s and six or seven others she recognized. Except for Rhys, whom she considered brilliant, the others she knew to be Musrum’s very own dummies, which made her feel much better. Indeed, seeing the smudged, crossed-out, misspelled and mutilated entries (except, of course, for Rhys’, which was impeccable) made her feel not a little smug. The only hope the others (except Rhys) would ever have of getting into the Patrol would be to enlist as common spacemen. Mere nozzle fodder.

A posted notice announced that the examination was scheduled just one week hence. Well, she thought, still in her fit of smugness, they may as well send only two and save the paper.

As she was reentering the corridor, she heard her name called. Even before she turned, she knew it was Rhys who had spoken and her heart gave a little frisk, like a lamb that had just heard its mama’s bleat.

“A little early in the day to have been called to the headmaster’s office, isn’t it?” he said with a flash of his perfect teeth.

“No,” she replied in an unsteady voice, damn it, “for a change of pace, I went voluntarily. I was just dropping off my exam application.”

“The Space Patrol exam? You want to take that?”

“You do, too,” she said defensively, “so why not?”

“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting you shouldn’t. I just had no idea you were interested in the Space Patrol.”

Well, why should you have had any idea? You’ve certainly taken little enough notice of me.
”I’ve wanted to go to the Academy my whole life. As long as I can remember.”

“I guess if I should be surprised at someone’s interest in the exam, it ought to be my brother’s.”

“I noticed Pomfret’s application in the pile.”

“He may be my brother, and perhaps it’s not very loyal of me to say this, but I don’t think he’s got much of a chance. In fact, I haven’t a clue what he’s thinking of.”

“I noticed some even less likely names. Can you imagine Monkfish at the Space Patrol Academy?”

“As what? A doorstop?”

“He might be useful in the celestial mechanics labs—he’s big enough to generate his own gravitational field. I’m always afraid that if I stand too close to him my watch will slow down.”

“That’s funny!” Rhys laughed. “You know, I had no idea you had such a good sense of humor. You always seem so serious.”

“I am serious.”

“I know. You don’t seem to take much interest in anything except your books. Don’t you hang around with anyone? That is, ah, anyone in particular?”

“No,” she replied, not missing the significance of that last phrase but not too sure what to do with it, either, “but school hasn’t much to do with it. I’ve always been something of a loner, I guess. Even before I enrolled, I didn’t have much to do with anyone.”

“That’s not—” he began, but was interrupted by the clang of the early bell. They parted with friendly, unmeaningful words and smiles and Judikha went to her class feeling as though life were about to become complete.

Mr. Grun noticed her good humor and characteristically did not approve of it.

“Miss Judikha!” he snapped, interrupting his lecture for no better reason than to harass her. “Will you please assume a more decorous posture? And wipe that simple grin off your face. I’m discussing a serious subject and I expect it to be attended seriously!”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Grun, sir,” she replied with good humor, uncrossing her legs and sitting bolt upright in her wooden chair with her knees pressed together. It was a posture of studied insolence that Grun seemed not to notice.

“And can you tell the class what we were just discussing? Or were you too busy in cloud cuckoo land to pay attention?”

The class snickered, but Judikha didn’t even blush as she replied, “You had just explained, sir, that when two magnitudes have a common measure, that is, when another magnitude can be found which is contained in each an exact number of times, they are said to be ‘commensurable.’ Thus a line four-and-a-half and another three-and-a-half inches long are commensurable; for, if a half inch be taken as unit of length, the former contains the unit nine times and the latter seven times. If no...”