Hellburner (32 page)

“Got anything back on the tests?”

Wasn’t a thing stirred in C-barracks but what everybody was in it. “No. Not yet.” He patted the back of Mitch’s chair and made his escape to the rec-area foyer, where he could card a soft drink and a granola bar that tasted like cardboard and hit his stomach like lead.

They probably were talking about him back mere. And he couldn’t talk to them, couldn’t deal with them until he knew what he was, whether he was going to clear the tests himself, whether his partners were passing theirs—he wasn’t anyone, until he knew who he was working with, what he was, where he’d be, what they’d assign him to—

Fly again, yeah. Porey would see to that. Front of the line-up. Or the bottom—at Porey’s discretion. He’d opened his damned mouth, he’d forgotten for a critical second he had partners who could be in danger from what he did or promised—

Couple of UDC guys came over and carded a candy bar. Names were Price and McCain. Techs. They hardly even looked at him, but he was sweating. He kept thinking, If I’d kept my mouth shut, if I’d done what the colonel wanted, if I’d only once ducked my head and played the game—

Tray banged somewhere. The room felt cold. His mother had said, Paul, what is it with you? Why do you always end up in the middle of it?

He wished to God he knew that. He wished to God he could go over there with the other guys and sit down and be what they wanted him to be, but he couldn’t even tell them what he’d done or what he was waiting to find out—

Please God, they’d Aptitude somewhere down the list, somewhere out of immediate usefulness, and he could go maybe to Chad’s crew, patch things up with them, he couldn’t think of a match-up else he could make that might have a chance. He should have offered that to Porey, Porey wasn’t crazy—he didn’t want to lose another ship, for God’s sake: Porey probably would have called it a good idea— good for morale, pull the program together. UDC and Fleet.

He should still propose that to Porey—talk to Chad’s guys himself in advance, if he could get them to talk to him...

God, why couldn’t he think about people? He was all right with machines, all right with anything that reacted in just one way when you touched it—-he could understand that. He just—

couldn’t figure how to stop himself before he said things. When he opened his mouth it was wrong, when he didn’t say anything it was wrong, he never got it figured out, some people just understood him and most didn’t, and the ones that did were always in trouble because of the ones that didn’t. Sum of his life, that. Evaluations said he was smart. So why couldn’t he get that right? Like go in there and apologize to Porey and take what he had coming?

Because when he walked up against a guy like that something went snap inside, he went hyper and he couldn’t think, that was the whole damn problem—

So calm down, don’t do that?

It was why the Fleet had recruited him, it was what they trained him to do, split-second, hyped and half crazy, and they wouldn’t understand he didn’t come with an off switch...

Except maybe Graff understood. But Graff wasn’t answering pages today...

Damn him.

A little hyped. They said, You can relax now. But there wasn’t any sleep. Just the boards, alive with lights. Hands knew where to go and went there. Hell of a way to teach. But they said, “This is a sim tape. Familiarization. It won’t prioritize for you. Just give you the handedness of the boards....”

“Got it, yeah. No trouble.”

“Don’t fight the sims, Kady. You want to bring that pulse down.”

“Yeah. I’m not fighting it.” Happy as hell. God. I want this thing, don’t want to screw it up—God, I don’t want to screw it—

“Calm.”

“Yeah, yeah.” So don’t get excited, Kady, don’t go after it, ride with it, just float and enjoy it—

“Lot better, lot better, Kady. How’re you doing?”

She laughed. Laughed like an idiot.

“You all right there? You know what you’re doing?”

Her hands were reaching. She wasn’t doing it. But she didn’t object. The sequence made complete sense. “Jawohl, mate, piece of easy, there.”

Clumsy direction, then. Her hand shook. “Shit!”

Boards went dark. Direction stopped. She grabbed for the B-panel and the fuse conditions, and the examiner said, “Abort, abort, it’s all right.”

“What did I do?” Her heart was going half light. The drug made her light-headed and she hated the sensation.

“Tape error. Not yours. Relax.”

Made her mad. They had no right to screw up. But you didn’t get mad while you were at the boards, you paid attention. All attention. Save mad for later.

“Ms. Kady.” New voice. “That was a system abort. Don’t worry about it. You can stand down.”

“Thank you.” Cold and calm. Same as you did when something went seriously wrong. She flipped the board-standby switch. Habit. Fool, she thought. It was a toy-board anyway.

“Thank you.” Another delay. “You can get up. Go to the room with the red light showing. You are in .9 gravity.”

“I think I can remember that,” she muttered.

“Some don’t.”

“Thanks.” Anger was the immediate reaction. She was embarrassed to beg; but, putting her foot off the platform: “Do I get another try on mat abort?”

A hesitation. Somebody had blanked a mike. Then: “How are you feeling?”

“Good enough for another try.” Self-disgust. “If I can get one.”

“Get back in the chair, then.”

Thank God. She was all but shaking. And damped that down. Fast.

“Pulse is up, Ms. Kady.”

“Yeah. Re-start.”

“Hyped as hell,” came a mutter from the earplug. Faint. Then at normal volume: “The yoke is an automated assist. It is changing its responses. Do you perceive that?”

“Yeah.” Absolute relief. They hadn’t told her the sim could do that. “But I got my own numbers. Let’s shorten this. What are you, IMAT?”

“IMAT or CSET. A or B, select your format, input your actual license level.”

“No problem.” She took B, ran her numbers in, hoping she remembered them, hoping she was still that sharp, and watched the readout for response profiles. “Shit! Excuse.” 12.489 sudden g’s on a tenth of the yoke range. She cut it back, re-calced in her head, thinking she could have a seriously pissed examiner if she dithered too long, but dammit, she needed the fine control on that hairline correction in the sims and you had to have it wide enough if they threw you an emergency. Hell of a thrust this sim was set for—different than shuttle controls by a long way...

Forgot to ask if time counted. Too late to spare a neuron. You did it right, that was all, you did it real, hell with them... set the controls to your own touch and take the time it took, they should have effin’ said if there were criticalities not on the instruments—it was a new kind of adaptive assist, piece of nice, this was.... All kinds of interlocks and analyses it could give you. Mining in the Belt, you adapted your jerry-built and most egregiously not AI ship by whittling a new part out of plastic, and what you saw on your boards was a whole lot of hard-to-read instruments, not an integrated 360° V-HUD with the course plot and attitudes marked in glowing lines. This thing was trying to find out your preferences, arguing with you when its preconceptions thought it knew you. But it would listen. —Damn it, machine, soyez douce, don’t get cheek with me ... used one of these things ten plus years ago, she had, but, God, that had been an antique, against this piece...

“All right.” She calmed her breathing rate. Panel lights lit. Scopes lit. “Go!”

Numbers hemorrhaged.

“God!”

“Nothing yet?” Dekker asked the desk on his mid-test break; and the secretary in Testing said, “No, sir. No result yet.”

“Are they out yet? Have they left?”

“1 don’t think so, sir.”

He tried FleetCom. He had a new comtech and had to explain everything again. “I just want to know if the lieutenant’s ever checked in.”

“He’s in a meeting,” FleetCom said.

“Has he gotten his messages?”

“/ think He has. Excuse me....”

On hold again, when all he wanted to do was hang up; and he didn’t want to offend FleetCom by doing that before the tech got back to him. He wished he hadn’t called. Five-minute break from his own Evaluations, it was 1456 by the clock, the granola bar and soft drink were wearing extremely thin, and he was regretting it. //he could get off the phone, he could get down the hall to the vending machines.

No word on his partners. Aptitudes was a four-hour session. You could take a little longer coming out from under the trank if you reacted....

God, he didn’t know what to—

“Ens. Dekker? Sorry to keep you waiting. I did get hold of the lieutenant. He says see him in his office at 1400. That’s 21a, Admin.”

“I’m in Evaluations til 1700. I’m in the middle of tests—“

“Excuse me....”

Hell!

He put a hand over his eyes, he leaned against the counter and waited. Looked pleadingly at the secretary across the desk, then. “Do they ever take this long on Aptitudes?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’ve only worked here for four...”

“Ens. Dekker? I’m sorry.... the lieutenant says he can’t talk at 1700, he’s got another meeting.”

“Will he clear a phone call for me to One? That’s all I want.”

“/ think he wants to talk to you about that.”

Shit. “Look—“ He shut out the light and the secretary’s presence with the palm of his hand. Tried to think. But he kept seeing fireballs. Hearing that door clank. “Is that all he wants? The phone call? Or does he want—look, can / talk to him online? Two minutes.”

“He’s in a meeting, sir. Just a moment.”

He was late by now, by two minutes. You weren’t late in Evaluations. You didn’t antagonize the examiners. Who were UDC to begin with.

“The lieutenant says he needs to talk to you. He says at 2200.”

“2200.” Graff didn’t plan to sleep, maybe. “Right. Thanks. Yeah. I’ll be there.”

“My partners aren’t out of Test yet,” Dekker said. “They went in at 0600. It’s 2202 and Testing doesn’t answer questions....”

“They’re all right,” Graff said, quietly, from the other side of the desk. “I can tell you that much.”

“So what do you know?”

“That they’re being very thorough.”

“They’re not reacting to the drug or anything—“

“No. They’re all right. I did check.”

It wasn’t regulation. He wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t at all convinced.

GrafT said: “On the other matter—“

“I just want to call my mother. Make sure she’s all right.” He kept his frustration to himself. He didn’t want to push Graff. He was running short of friendlies in Admin.

Graff said, “I got your message. I understand. There’s a good possibility her phone calls are being monitored by the police. Possibly by someone less official.”

“Who?”

“All we know,” Graff said, “is the same thing you saw in the news. We’re investigating. I could wish this lawyer weren’t involved—personally. Is your mother a member, a contributor—of that organization?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. —Arc you asking me her politics?”

“You don’t have to answer that.”

“She hasn’t got any politics that I know of. She didn’t when I lived there. I don’t think she would change.”

“She was never politically active. Never expressed any opinions, for or against the government, or the Earth Company?”

Bit by bit the line of questioning made him uneasy. It wasn’t like Graff—at least as he knew Graff—to probe after private information. He didn’t think it was necessarily Graff’s idea—and that meant whoever was investigating. So he offered a bit of his own reasons: “I was rab when I was a kid, the clothes, the haircut—Kady says I was a stupid plastic, and I guess I was; but I thought I was real. I used the words. My mother—got hot about it, said politics was all the same, didn’t matter what party, all crooked, she didn’t want any part of it—told me I was a fool for getting involved. They’d shot these people down on Earth. I think—“

Meg was there, he almost said. But that was more than Graff needed to hear—if a deep spacer cared about the Company, the Earthers trying to emigrate...

“Think what?” Graff asked.

He couldn’t remember his thread for a moment. He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She’s just not the kind. Works a full shift, mostly over, if you want extras you have to do that—and that was all she wanted. A nice place. Maybe a station share. Security. That kind of thing. You wouldn’t get her involved in anything.”

“You know the Civil Liberty Association?”

“No, sir. I never heard of them.”

“They’re the ones funding your mother’s lawyer. They’re headquartered in Munich. They support lawsuits in certain causes, that’s mostly what they do. Their board of advisers has some of the same associations as the Sun Party, the Peace Front, the Karl Leiden Foundation—the Party of Man—“

He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about them. I doubt she does.”