Tanderon (22 page)

“Where did you get that?” Linda demanded with instant suspicion, turning her head a little to see the carton better. “I didn’t think cadets were allowed to smoke.”

“Regulations say that cadets can smoke in their quarters when they’re off duty,” I explained to her while closing the door behind me, then stepping farther into the room. “The PX carries tons of these cartons. Anybody interested?”

“I am,” Elaine said, sitting up in a cross-legged position. “I’ve been dying all day, but I was afraid to ask. Are you sure it’s all right?”

“Positive,” I assured her. “Knowing what is and isn’t contra regs is my hobby.

Normally this time of day would not be off duty, but today it is.”

“You might as well give me a pack too,” Linda said sourly, not moving from the languorous position she’d taken. “If you two are going to smoke, I’m not going to just lie here and watch you.”

I tossed them each a pack, then lit up myself and stretched out on my own bunk. I was beat from running around all day and starving from having missed lunch, but I’d have to get dressed for parade in a little more than an hour. What a life! And some people made careers out of it!

A minute later there was a knock at the door, followed immediately by the entrance of two female proctors. The two newcomers came over to my bunk and stood staring down at me as if I were some interesting specimen they’d finally netted, their dress gold-and-blacks emphasizing the official aspect of their visit. The first one was a tall, surprisingly pretty blond with brown eyes, and the second was a brunette with a perennially pinched expression. Needless to say, the sight of them did not fill my heart with feelings of sisterhood.

“I see you finally made it, Santee,” the first one said, leaning a hand on the wall.

“We’ve been looking for you on Chief Langley’s orders, since you should have been here hours ago. You’re going to pick up more demerits for this than you can carry.”

“You’d better check on it first,” I said without moving. “I wasn’t out just wandering around.”

The two proctors glanced at each other. “Just where do you claim you were?” the second one with the pinched expression asked.

“I was holding hands with the colonel,” I told her, staring her straight in the eye. “If you don’t believe me, ask Major Drummond. He was there too.”

They looked at each other again, then the second one backed off and went out.

“You’d better not be lying about this, Santee,” the first one said, measuring me with her eyes. “If you are, you won’t crawl out from under for a month.”

I took a drag on the cigarette and didn’t bother to answer her. It was too much trouble to think up something nasty enough, and in about five minutes the second one was back with her report.

“She was there, all right,” she told the first proctor. “Special punishment, over four hours worth.”

“You’ve got funny ideas about holding hands,” the blond proctor said with a grin as she looked down at me. “Now that the colonel knows about you, we’ll see how long you stay comical.”

They both gave me a last, brief inspection then turned and went out, closing the door behind them.

“Are you in trouble, Diana?” Elaine asked anxiously, staring at me with large, concerned eyes. “I don’t know how you can treat those proctors that way. I shiver every time I see one.”

“You’ve had punishment already?” Linda asked in delight, sitting up to hug her knees. “I didn’t think anyone could do anything this soon.”

“I have special talents,” I said dryly to Linda. “If you like, I’ll give you lessons. And no, Elaine, I’m not in trouble.”

Not yet, anyway, I said to myself.

When the time came to line up for parade, my two roommates and I made our way outside amid the flurry of excited female conversation coming from the other girls tenanting our barracks building. We were all herded out front to be shown the proper way to line up, every girl in our building being a newcomer and badly in need of instruction.

The dust blew around us as we lined up according to height, half the girls wondering how the proctors kept from coughing, the other half too busy coughing themselves to care. The proctors wandering among us were all female, doing the job there weren’t enough noncoms to do, the name tags they wore helping to separate them into individuals.

Our “Company” was small compared to the new men’s group across the square, but that didn’t mean the proctors had less to do. Most of the girls seemed to be having trouble telling their right foot from their left. When the line we’d made was formed into a square, the distance between one standee and the next was invariably either more or less than one arm’s length.

It wasn’t that the girls in the group were simpleminded or incapable of following instructions. The problem was that they were trying too hard and were flinching at the barked orders from the proctors, finding themselves completely unused to being herded and ordered around. Treating cadets like clumsy, half-witted imbeciles was part of a proctor’s job, but I’d never been too crazy about proctors to begin with.

Being jumped on along with everyone else didn’t help to change my mind.

I ended up in the last row of the square, with Elaine two rows in front of me and Linda three rows in front of her. I’d decided to stand in one spot and mind my own business, or at least to look as if that was what I was doing. If I knew Pete he was having me watched, trying to anticipate the time I’d make my move. I wasn’t about to sit around and get dumped on for the next three months, not even to save Pete some embarrassment, and he had to know it.

The Council was hardly likely to be pleased if I turned up missing, and Pete wasn’t anxious to face their anger in that all too possible event. When it came to access to the shuttle ports he’d have me covered like an atmosphere covers a planet, constantly and with no gaps in the coverage. I looked around as if admiring the scenery, ignoring the wind and the way it blew my hair around, trying to spot at least one corner of the coverage. The more subtle they tried to keep it, the better my chances would be to break through.

“This isn’t the time for sightseeing!” a voice snapped, bringing me back to closer happenings. “You’re supposed to be paying attention to orders, not daydreaming!”

Without my noticing it, two of the wandering proctors had made it to the back row, ending up right in front of me. It may have been a coincidence, but they happened to be the same two who had come to my room earlier. The tall blonde’s name tag said she was Morrison, the short, pinch-faced brunette being Olveri, and from their outraged expressions it was probably safe to assume I’d made a couple of new friends.

“Stand straighter!” Morrison barked, her fists on her hips. “And dress up that line!

You stand out like a sore thumb, Santee, and I don’t want any sore thumbs messing up my company! Move it and move it fast!”

So Morrison was the equivalent of Company Commander, was she? The girls around me were stiff and straight in the spots they’d finally settled into, practically quivering from the whiplash tone Morrison had used. I glanced from side to side, wondering how far out of line I could be, and found that the girls in the rest of the line had apparently toed the mark from the position I’d chosen. The line could have been used as a ruler if anybody’d needed one so Morrison was on a leaning expedition, trying to see what she could break. Olveri had a smirk in her eyes as she anticipated the collapse, but she was destined to be disappointed.

“Dr. Bartholomew,” I said in Morrison’s direction, letting my eyes continue to slide around the outskirts of our line-up position. Two male proctors were directing a dozen male cadets in policing up the central square, making sure the punishment detail didn’t turn out to be too easy. But I’d caught one of the proctors showing more interest in what was happening in front of my barracks than in the cadets he was supposedly supervising. I couldn’t see his face very clearly from that distance, but I’d undoubtedly get another chance at a later time.

“What?” Morrison demanded, confusion exchanging her scowl for a frown. “What are you talking about?”

“Dr. Bartholomew,” I repeated, finally looking away from the male proctor in the square to meet her gaze. “He’s the best eye doctor I know.”

Telling Morrison straight out that I considered her blind wouldn’t have been anywhere near as effective as dangling the hook had been. Knowing that she’d bitten really got through to the tall blonde, turning her eyes hard and furious with embarrassment, her body stiff with rage. I suppose I expected her to explode on the spot, but she didn’t even look around to see if anyone was laughing at her.

“That was very funny,” she growled after a minute of working to control her temper.

She was still angry, her fists held clenched at her sides, but she wasn’t about to explode and add to the loss column. “I had a call from the colonel a short while ago, telling me that he intended to take a personal interest in you. I’m to keep track of whatever demerits you earn and report the total to him right after parade. You can add another five to what you already have. Any more jokes?”

She stood there with her head up, her eyes telling me I’d be a fool to open my mouth again now that I knew Pete was ready to put his foot in it. I doubted if she was inventing things just to get the upper hand, but it didn’t really matter. Pete was bound to be unhappy with me no matter what I did, especially if I happened to get caught trying to escape. Compared to that, the piling up of extra demerits wasn’t enough to keep me from saying anything I normally would have.

“Telling jokes to proctors is a waste of time,” I returned with a shrug, seeing disbelief come to Olveri’s eyes. She’d expected me to back down after what Morrison had said – the way she would have done. “It isn’t that proctors lack a sense of humor,” I explained. “They simply tend to miss the punchlines.”

Olveri stiffened and drew herself up, close to total outrage, but for some reason Morrison seemed to have been expecting something like my comeback. She nodded her head and pursed her lips, and calmly returned the casual gaze I’d been sending.

“Make that ten demerits,” she said, her own gaze now moving over me in appraisal.

“I have a feeling the colonel’s got something special in mind for you, something really fitting. We’ll see how funny you are once he gets through with you. If I were in your shoes, I’d worry.”

She locked eyes with me one last time before moving off down the line, no longer interested in wasting her time. Proctors have no real authority over cadets, something most cadets don’t know – and most proctors tend to forget. If a proctor bellows and a cadet jumps, all well and good. If the proctor bellows and the cadet doesn’t jump, the matter is then passed on to Pete or one of his staff to take care of. Punishments are often overseen by proctors and sometimes come about because of reports by proctors, but proctors rarely hand them out on their own.

Morrison had seen that I knew the facts of life, and that’s why she’d given up on the pushing. Time enough to continue once Pete pinned my ears back. It was his authority she’d be using, but first I had to learn how real it was. I shook my head as I watched her move from victim to victim, wondering what she’d do if she knew who I was. A Special Agent’s authority is higher than an army colonel’s, higher even than a general’s. Too bad I was in no position to exercise it.

Another fifteen minutes dragged by before the proctors got tired of shouting at and insulting us. By then the companies of older cadets were also lined up outside their barracks. Once everyone was set the march to the parade ground began, ending us up on the grassy central square in formation. I managed to get through parade without adding to my demerit collection, and once we were dismissed I headed toward the mess hall with everyone else.

Somehow Elaine managed to find me in the confusion, and there was no reason not to walk with her. She was hardly likely to be considered a troublemaker just from being seen in my company, not when her eyes widened in fright at the very mention of proctors. Elaine was slight and pleasant and inoffensive, a plain but friendly girl who needed the company of someone she knew. When she asked what had happened earlier with Morrison and I said it was nothing, she didn’t pursue the matter.

We couldn’t have moved more than fifteen or twenty feet toward the mess hall before I heard my name being called. The voice was too young to be Freddy’s or Pete’s, so I looked around wondering whose it could be. When I found out, I felt my jaw dropping right straight to the ground.

There, not three yards away and getting closer as he fought his way through the droves of cadets was that brown-haired boy I’d had trouble with in the registration building. His handsome face was eager and interested, and he flashed me a grin as he trotted up to where Elaine and I stood.

“I’m glad you waited,” he said as he straightened his tie and ran combing fingers through his hair. “Now we can walk together.”

After hearing that I just stood there staring at him, wondering how anyone so unreal could look so solid. The kid was harder to get rid of than Harbin’s plague! Well, there had to be something that would get through to him, and maybe embarrassment was the key. If I embarrassed him badly enough, he might leave me alone.

“When did you get out of the infirmary?” I asked, trying to raise ghosts of our last encounter. It didn’t seem possible, but he might have simply forgotten.

“Oh, hours ago,” he replied, shrugging off the reminder as he continued to look at me in a proprietary way. “You didn’t really hurt me.”

“Would you like me to try again?” I suggested, folding my arms as I returned his inspection. “You know, ‘If at first you don’t succeed…’?”

“Quit kidding,” he answered with a grin, reaching out slowly and carefully to brush a strand of hair off my shoulder. “You know you don’t really want to get rid of me.”

I closed my eyes in intense pain, but opened them again almost immediately to glare at him.

“How can you pretend to still be interested in me after what I did to you?” I demanded, really needing to know. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Sure it does,” he disagreed, his grin widening at my anger. “I happen to like wild women – especially when they look like you.”