Captain Cosette (6 page)

The box was
now empty except for packing material and some papers, and there on the wall hung a thoroughly lethal E7 field rifle which she had assembled all by herself.

“
It worked,” she whispered.  “The teaching machine worked.”

She opened the next box, and watched herself assemble the next E7 and hang it
up for charging.

With a feeling of wonder and satisfaction, she assembled one rifle after another until all the charging ports were filled.  By that time the first rifle’s charging port was showing green.

How
much
more
do
I
know
?

She remembered Professor Roland saying that she should use the pile of old tires as a backstop for testing.  Inside each box was a loose paper target, a piece of paper with concentric squares alternating black and white. 

She took a target over to the pile of tires and pressed its adhesive back against a tire in the middle.

She walked back to the row of rifles and pulled off the first one she had assembled. 
“Now, how do I make this thing fire?”

Without thinking, she flipped the lever that pushed the core into the
kaeon
coil, turned around and blew the target to shreds.

She shrieked and dropped the rifle.

Okay
,
it’s
okay
,
that’s
what
it
was
supposed
to
do
! 

She shook her hands, trying to
shed her panic. 

It’s
supposed
to
do
that
,
it’s
supposed
to
fire
that
ball
of
energy
,
it’s
supposed
to
destroy
what
it’s
aimed
at
. 
It’s
supposed
to
kill
people
.

Taking a calming breath, she picked up the rifle and looked it over for damage.  Satisfied, she reversed the lever to disarm it, locked it, and laid it on the counter. 

All the assembled rifles in brackets were showing green.

She took a handful of paper targets and pressed them against the old tires.

One by one she took down the rifles, armed them, and destroyed their targets.  She never missed the center.

Soon all twenty rifles were assembled, tested, and laid out on the table. 

Now
what
? 
He
said
to
catalog
them
and
then
to
stack
them
in
that
room
.

Catalog
.

On the wall was a durable version of a keyboard and a weather-protected monitor. 

She stared at it until she had the uncomfortable feeling it was staring back.

She had never used a computer.  She knew computers existed, and she had watched with fascination when the fruit buyers tapped information into hand-held devices, but in her poor little highland school, education was all book learning. 

In some novels she had read, computers talked and robots were servants, intelligent and sassy, but she had never seen one in real life, and she wasn’t even sure if they were real or fiction.

Computers
are
real
,
obviously
. 
Too
bad
I
don’t
know
how
to
use
one
.

She didn’t want to leave the rifles out in the open, so she stacked them into the room labeled AREA KK-02 as she had been told.

Quarter-master Raimy, annoyed by her interruption, explained to her how to find Professor Roland.  She followed the directions to the professor’s laboratory, a room painted in green and lined with cages.  In some of the cages strange beasts paced back and forth, animals she had never seen before. 

Professor Roland saw her when she came in.  He put down a microphone, pressed a button, and turned to her. 
“Well?”

“
All assembled.  The machine worked.”

“
No, your brain worked.  The machine always works.  It’s the human brain that fails.  So they’re all assembled, catalogued, and put away, and the trash disposed of?”

“
I didn’t catalog them.  I didn’t know how.” 

And
the
empty
boxes
are
still
sitting
there
.

“
You didn’t catalog them?  But it’s a simple matter of… Oh, I see.  You don’t have the background knowledge.  Where were you raised?”

“
Up in the highlands.  You know, where they raise fruit.”

He smiled in a patronizing way. 
“A true country girl.  But even Toulouse-educated youth barely know how to do these things, so I shouldn’t be surprised.  You need background training.”  He tapped his lips.  “Tomorrow morning then.  Ten of the clock, ante meridian, we’ll do your background training.  The human brain needs a period of sleep between sessions to clean up the old signals.”  He stood.  “Done.  Tomorrow.  And don’t be late again!  Then you can catalog the rifles, and I’ll tell Raimy you’re ready for your next assignment.  Don’t think these easy days will continue, recruit whatever-your-name-is.  The more you know, the more work you’ll be able to do.  Now go.  Shoo!”

She shooed.

She found her way back to the area where she had assembled the rifles, found a huge rusty container marked REFUSE, and pushed all the boxes into it.  She hung the crowbar back in its place and left the wooden crates where they stood.  Maybe they would be reused, maybe they wouldn’t, but she wasn’t going to bother Raimy or the professor again to ask.

She enjoyed an early dinner – meat sandwiches, a yellow fruit that was tasteless and hard to chew, actual milk, and an incredible frozen dessert that she nibbled as slowly as she could in pure delight.  An old woman in coveralls and a hair net was the only one working in the mess hall.  Hoping she wouldn’t get yelled at, Cosette asked the woman if there was a library in the compound.

“Library?”  The old woman looked puzzled.  “Don’t you have a book?”

“
Yes, I have two books, but I’ve read both.”

“
Oh, you’re talking about paper books.  We don’t have paper books.  You’re a recruit, right?”

“
Yes.”

“
In your room, in your desk.  There’s supposed to be a library book there.  The power switch is on top.  It’ll explain itself.  They should have shown you that.”

“
Thank you.”

“
No problem.”

Before returning to her room, she walked around the training center to get used to the layout.  The male recruit housing was empty but untidy; she guessed that the men had been called away to action without warning and hadn’t had time to clean it up.  Either that or it was just the way men kept their rooms, like her stepbrothers.

She walked back to her room in women’s housing, took another hot shower, and found an electronic book just where the woman had said it would be.  She settled onto her bunk, turned on the light – lovely light! – and puzzled over the book.  It was rectangular, had a screen, and when she pushed the button on top, a menu appeared.  She didn’t know how to work the book, and almost set it aside before her hand accidentally brushed the screen and the choices FICTION and NON-FICTION came up.

“
Just like the professor’s screen,” she said to herself.  “You just touch it.  Why didn’t it say so?”

She tapped FICTION, and another set of categories came up.

She could choose HISTORICAL or CLASSICAL or MYSTERY or SCIENCE FICTION – why anyone would choose that one was beyond her – or ROMANCE or… She tapped ROMANCE.

Then came a choice of TITLES or AUTHORS.  She chose AUTHORS, and then touched her favorite author, Renée Chevalier.

A long list of titles appeared, and she gasped.  She had only read three of them. 

She touched the first title that she hadn’t read, and the text appeared.

She stole the pillows from the other beds and immersed herself in the pain and trials of TRAMPLED LILIES OF THE FIELD.

*

Rasora knocked on her door.  She looked up to find that hours had passed.  She was on the last chapter, the climax of the book, but she set it aside and invited him in.

Bouncing with excitement, she told him about her learning to assemble E7 rifles, and crazy Professor Roland, and the new foods at the mess hall, and her new book with a million books inside of it.

Only then did she calm down and listen to him tell of finding a sanctuary, of praying until he felt that Imsami was no longer in despair about his sudden death.  “I will find holy places and pray again many times, I think, until both he and I are at peace.” 

Then Rasora sat on the bunk opposite hers and told her of the fighting going on in the city. 
“This base is secure and well fortified, but the Alliance sympathizers are making a good fight of it.  I hope the commandant isn’t being complacent.”

“
Why is there fighting?”

Rasora laughed. 
“Don’t you know?”

“No.  It doesn’t affect us up in the highlands.”

“
Well, to put a pin in it, Sorine is one of the planets held by the Union of Planets.  They like to keep things neat and orderly, meaning they have lots of laws and lots of enforcement, with a solid central government. 

“
The Alliance, however, is a larger group of planets that believe in a loose, casual form of governance, determined at the local level.  Over the past couple centuries the Alliance and the Union have had peace and they have had war.  Right now it’s war.”

Cosette
nodded, trying to look interested.  She was anxious to get back to the last chapter of TRAMPLED LILIES but she also found herself enjoying Rasora’s company.

“
The Alliance sympathizers,” he continued, “are people here on Sorine who want to throw off the Union rule and have Sorine join the Alliance.  Both sides claim moral right, freedom on one side, order on the other, and it’s come to fighting.  With luck it will die down and people will go back to working and complaining.”

“
What side are you on?”

He shrugged. 
“We didn’t care.  Fighting opened up opportunities for mercenaries like us.  Now it’s just me.  And I still don’t care, but everything changed when Imsami died.  I don’t know.  Now I need to find that mess hall and a bunk for the night.”

“
You’re staying here?”

“
Yes.”  He studied the palm of his hand.  “I promised your father that…”

“
He’s just my step-father.”

“
Well, I promised your step-father that I would take care of you.  For now, this also gives me a place to stay, but once things settle down here, I’ll try to decide what Imsami would want me to do.”

Rasora excused himself, and
Cosette settled back down to the ending of TRAMPLED LILIES. 

The main character, Amadora,
had grown tired of Julio’s vacillating love affairs with other women.  She climbed into their flier and told the robot to take her back to the spaceport.

“
But Amadora,” cried Julio, “wherever shall I go?  Whatever shall I do?”

“
Frankly, my dear Julio,” said Amadora, “I don’t give a damn.”

In the last paragraph, Amadora
flew back to the spaceport lamenting the loss of her love for Julio, but confident that there was always hope, because tomorrow… tomorrow was another day.

Cosette
laid down the book and wiped her eyes, aching for the love that was never to be, and glad that the novel had ended on a note of hope, however desperate.

Where
does
she
get
these
marvelous
plots
?

She thought about starting another work by Chevalier, but she
felt she ought to get a good night’s sleep.

She took another hot shower, got into her night clothes, and turned out the lights.

As she settled under the clean sheets, she found herself thinking again about Rasora’s dark eyes, and his deep emotions when his brother died.  There was a good heart in him, despite his wild life with Imsami.