Saturn Run
Page 3
*
Neither Mr Allerton nor any of the assistants realized what Daniel was actually getting from this work experience. Each day he listened intently to the conversations of both the assistants and the customers, studying the way they put sentences together, their pronunciation and cadence. Every morning and evening he practised hard on his own, cultivating his own accent and not just speaking but thinking in this unfamiliar new way. He became more confident. He even filled in for one of the assistants who’d taken a two-week holiday, and was pleased to find that he could talk to the customers without seeing that strange look in their eyes.
He’d taken an irrevocable step. In ridding himself of the last vestiges of the speech patterns that identified him with his background he had severed his one remaining link with his past.
The time came for him to leave. All the assistants were there to see him off and Connie took both his hands in hers and gave him a peck on the cheek. “However are we going to manage without you, Danny?”
Mr Allerton was the last to shake his hand. “I wish we could keep you on, Daniel, but you’ve got a big career ahead of you. So God speed and thanks for all your help. Oh, and when you pick up your pay you’ll find there’s a bonus in there for you.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Allerton. I’ve enjoyed working here.”
When Daniel left the shop for the last time he went back via the park and sat on the bench where a troubled, confused, and somehow much younger version of himself had sat seven weeks earlier. He crossed his legs and smiled, not at the generous bonus, which he planned to send back to his mother (his father would be far too proud to accept the money), or even the kind things they’d said about him, but at the memory of his last conversation with Connie.
“Connie,” he’d said. “I’d like to ask you a question but I need an honest answer. Is that all right with you?”
Connie had given him a guarded look. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the question and I’ll see.”
“Do I still sound to you like a country boy?”
She flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry about that, Danny, I didn’t mean—"
“No, I wasn’t asking for an apology. I just want a straight answer. Do I?”
“Well no, now you mention it. You just look and sound like one of us.”
“Thanks, Connie.”
Now he had the confidence to register at the Academy.
There was no mention of a mistake and he was not packed off back to West Virginia. Instead he was sent to the outfitters, who took his measurements. His cadet uniforms were ready the following day and he took them to the room they’d allotted to him in the dormitory wing. He opened the package carefully and laid the three identical outfits on the bed. He selected one and put on first the light grey trousers, then the matching tunic, fastening it down the side and closing the high collar. Finally he passed the wide black belt around his waist and latched the buckle. He examined his reflection in the mirror, self-consciously running one hand over the smooth front of the tunic. On his left breast was a white tab with the single word LARSSEN. The transformation was complete.
He was Dan Larssen now, and the Academy was his home. There was nothing to go back to.
5
Space Fleet Academy was a complex of buildings on an extensive site outside Armstrong. The Foundation Building was a long two-storey structure faced with dark-red plasticrete tiles, some said in imitation of much older universities over on the East Coast. Other buildings housed the flight simulators, a gymnasium, a swimming pool – with a deeper pool under the same roof for gravity simulations – workshops, garages, and storage areas. In the grounds beyond the main buildings there were tennis courts, a running track, and sports fields. The whole establishment breathed wealth and privilege, an aura that wasn’t lost on Dan.
Induction took place in the Great Hall, a cavernous space that occupied both storeys at one end of the Foundation Building. After he’d taken his seat Dan surveyed the interior. The walls and ceiling were panelled in real timber, lending it a sombre, somewhat forbidding, appearance. Concealed spotlights illuminated honours boards, which listed distinguished alumni. The general lighting was subdued and came not from glow panels, as he’d already seen elsewhere, but from suspended fixtures symbolizing stars. Additional lighting fell on the empty platform and lectern in the front of the Hall.
The last cadets filed in, the door closed, and he looked round at the audience. There seemed to be only about fifty other recruits here. Was this just part of the year? His eyes strayed to the ends of the rows. Members of the teaching staff were sitting there, conspicuous in dark grey uniforms distinguished by the insignia of their ranks on epaulettes and collars. Then the door opened again and a large, fierce-looking man with white hair and a white moustache strode in and took the podium. He looked down at his notes then up at the cadets, his face registering surprise.
“Attention!” he barked.
There was a prolonged scuffling with chairs as the embarrassed cadets rose raggedly to their feet.
“Be seated!” he commanded. The cadets dropped warily into their seats.
His voice was even. “You just learned your first lesson. Whenever a person of superior rank enters the room – and as far as you’re concerned that is pretty much everyone – you rise smartly to attention. And you stay at attention until you are told to stand at ease or sit down. You rise again when they leave the room. Understood?”
There were a few desultory murmurs.
“Is that understood?” he thundered.
There was a stronger response this time.
“Yes, SIR!” he said. “You address all staff by their names or as ‘Sir’. The names are up here.” He pointed to the white tab on his left breast. “I, for example, am Dr Claymore. You address me as ‘Dr Claymore’ or ‘Sir’. We don’t address by rank in the Academy but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be aware of it. On the contrary I expect you to know every rank and the corresponding insignia in Space Fleet by the end of the week. Don’t think you won’t be tested on it because you will. All this information and all the course work for the first year can be accessed on the tablets you’ll receive when you go out. It’s held on the Academy’s network and you’ll be given the access codes you need.” A humourless smile flickered across his features. “And in case there are some smartasses here who think they can get ahead of the game, you will not be given the access codes for coursework in advance. You’ll get the code for the module you are to study next – that one only, then and only then. All except the first module, which is on discipline, dress and etiquette. I’m just letting you have some of that verbally in advance so that you and I can get off on the right foot.” His eyes swept the audience, then he continued. “If someone comes into the room you stand to attention. You do not salute. If you pass a person of higher rank in the corridor or outside the building you salute. Cadets in senior years are not higher in rank than you are. You do not rise for them and you do not salute them.” He gave them a patronizing look. “If a senior cadet says he expects a salute from you just let me know and I will personally disabuse him of the notion. Uniforms must be kept spotlessly clean and pressed. That’s why you have been issued with three – so that you are never without a clean uniform. You will wear them at all times, except in the laboratories and workshops, where you will wear the appropriate protective clothing. Understood?”
This time there was a resounding shout of “Yes, SIR!”
“Right. That’s better. When you are in public you are on show and the good reputation of this Academy depends on the way you conduct yourselves. Remember that. You will dress smartly and behave properly. Any improper conduct in public will result in immediate expulsion. Understood?”
“Yes, SIR!”
“Good. Now, in a few minutes the Principal, Dr Taylor, will come in to address you. Remember what I told you. We will now wait for him – in complete silence.”
He left the podium and sat down in a reserved seat in the f
ront row. Several minutes of uncomfortable silence passed before the door opened and the cadets rose to attention. Dr Taylor took the podium. He was smaller and older than Dr Claymore, and everything about him spoke of an obsessional attention to detail, from his clean-shaven features to his immaculate uniform and his neatly parted straight dark hair. He looked up and said, “Be seated.”
As soon as the noise of the cadets resuming their seats had subsided he began.
“Welcome to Space Fleet Academy.” His voice was quiet but there was a cold precision about him that compelled attention. “As this is the first time we’ve come together you will notice that there are just sixty students in this intake. That may surprise some of you. It also surprises some people outside this Academy, who expect us to take at least five times that many. I, and my distinguished colleagues on the Board of the Academy, have resolutely resisted calls for expanding the numbers. The reason is simple. We are interested only in quality. The education and training you will get here is second to none. Your teaching staff, some of whom are in this room now, are the finest in the country. Normally you will work with them in small groups, sometimes one-on-one. They will put in every possible effort; we expect you to do the same. We don’t aim to get many failures. We don’t aim to get any failures. If you fail we will know exactly where the blame lies. Is that clear?”
The cadets responded robustly. “Yes, SIR!”
“Good. Now not everyone can benefit from this sort of attention. We have the most stringent selection process of any educational establishment in the country. You are the few who have come through it.” He smiled thinly. “Well done.”
There was a shuffling of feet and some of the cadets smothered smiles.
“But don’t think you are here because you are good; you’re not – not yet. You’ve been chosen because we think you have potential. It is up to you to realize that potential. We will make it possible. The rest is up to you.
“When you graduate from here you will go into many walks of life. Some of you may pilot spacecraft across the solar system, some will become teachers, administrators, engineers. Others will enter the ranks of the government and rise to high office. Some of you will find ways to put back into this Academy a little of what you were allowed to take out. Whatever you do, throughout your careers we expect you to identify with the Academy, to make its values your values, its aspirations your aspirations. You are embarking on the most important time of your life. Justify the confidence we have placed in you. Make me proud.”
The cadets leapt to attention as he left the podium and the Hall.
6
Everyone said the academic standards at Space Fleet Academy were sky high and Dan was worried that he wouldn’t be able to cope. In the event he was pleasantly surprised. To him it seemed like all the best things he’d done at school racked up a couple of notches to make it more challenging. Most of the teaching took place in tutorial groups of about a dozen. The composition of the groups remained the same, so he soon got to know the other cadets in his group. There was a lot of individual attention. The instructors knew all the cadets and never failed to address him by name, which had the odd effect of making him feel valued.
When each class was over, the cadets would be left unsupervised with a set of problems to solve. After a while some of the other cadets from his group, and even from other groups, started to come to him for help. He enjoyed that, and often as not he felt he understood a problem better after he’d explained it to them. Sometimes it even showed him a quicker or more elegant route to the same result. Tackling things together and helping people with problems made him a lot of friends.
One cadet who never came to him was Karl Stott. Dan wasn’t sure how he’d got into the Academy. He was barely adequate academically and he was too overweight to be a good sportsman, so he wasn’t a natural choice on either count. Stott soon answered the question himself by letting it be known that he was the son of Fleet-Admiral Jurgen Stott, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also happened to be on the Board of the Academy. He lost no opportunity to drop “My father this” and “My father that” into the conversation. He attracted a small coterie of the sort who like to be around people who have influence, just in case some of it rubs off. He clearly resented Dan’s popularity and academic edge but that was absolutely fine with Dan. There was no way he wanted Stott’s company.
One thing Dan particularly disliked about Stott was his attitude to the girls in their group. So far as Dan was concerned the female cadets were colleagues. They often took a different approach to problems, which he found refreshing, and he liked them for their individuality. To Karl Stott they were all potential conquests, who would sooner or later be drawn helplessly to his power – the power he held vicariously through his father – like asteroids in a gravity well. Sometimes he could be heard boasting openly about it to his hangers-on, who would grin at him, no doubt hoping some of that would rub off on them, too. It embarrassed Dan that he would speak loudly enough for the girls to hear.
Among the girls one of Dan’s favourites was Bunny Marshall. No one knew if Bunny was her real name. If it was a nickname it had nothing to do with her teeth, which were small and even and very white. More likely it was because she bounced around all the time, a bundle of pure energy. She was good-looking in a blonde, clear-complexioned sort of way, but what was really attractive about her was her permanent state of high spirits. She was always up to something. They got on famously. She was the sort of girl he’d have loved to have had for a sister.
Bunny could hardly have been more different to Neraya Delveaux. Neraya was quiet, dark and not just good-looking but chest-achingly beautiful. She had big dark eyes the colour of liquid chocolate that a man could drown in. She also had a curvaceous figure, which was unusual in itself because the close-fitting tunics they all wore usually flattened the girls into a more-or-less androgynous shape. Yet everything about her mystified him: her name, her accent – which he couldn’t place – and her quiet manner, which bordered on melancholy. He would have liked to know more about her but he held back, not wishing to intrude on her space. He didn’t like the way Karl looked at her, although if she’d noticed it at all she ignored him. She seemed friendly enough to everyone in a superficial way but she kept company mainly with the other girls, and even they didn’t seem to get close to her. She was an enigma.
When Neraya came to Dan one day for advice on a problem he was momentarily taken aback. He quickly realized she’d had to pluck up the nerve to seek help from him and made a mental note to tread carefully. It would, he sensed, be all easy to damage this shy girl’s self-esteem.
“It is this one, the spaceliner on a collision course with an asteroid,” she said. She had a lovely low voice, which rose and fell with that melodious, unplaceable accent. “They give you the speeds and trajectories and you must to set an avoidance course that miss collision by five hundred metres. Then you must to write a program that solve the general problem.”
“I haven’t seen this one yet, let’s have a look. Oh yes. As I remember, Neraya, you’re pretty nifty with programming.”
“Yes, I do not think that will be a problem. It is the three-dimensional trigonometry. And there is no information on how quickly you can change course within the fuel energy cost they give you.”
“Right. That’s because they want you to spot the information is missing. Okay – you already have. You can get it from the Fleet vehicle database; you’ll have to include that part as a look-up in your program. I can show you where to find it because I needed it myself the other day. It’ll be a lot easier once you’ve got that data. Shall we just go over the general strategy? Then you can give it another try.”
They discussed it further and he guided the conversation in such a way that most of the ideas came from her. That wasn’t hard; she would grasp the point with lightning speed. At the end she straightened up and shook her heavy hair back and for an instant a small smile lit up those serious, beautiful features.
“Fine. If you do run into difficulties, let me know. And I’d sure like to see how you implement it in your program. I could use more experience in that department myself.”
Later she did come back to him with a copy of the program and he studied it closely. It was a neat and beautifully organized piece of writing and it ran very fast. He learned a lot from looking at it and he told her so. After that they often got together, sometimes to talk about problems, sometimes just for a chat. He was still scared to death of losing himself in those wonderful eyes but gradually he became more relaxed in her company and she seemed comfortable with him. He felt that in a way they were kindred spirits, because of the way both of them guarded their privacy. Like Neraya, Dan never revealed anything of his personal background; if anyone got too close he steered them away. He had nothing to be ashamed of, but he didn’t have much to be proud of either. He liked the fact that Neraya stayed off his private territory, and he in turn stayed clear of hers.
Then one day he overstepped the mark.
7
The mistake was innocent enough. The cadets had gone off to one of the ground-level lounge bars in town to relax after classes had finished. Neraya and Dan went in together and found themselves sitting in a booth apart from the others. As they were chatting he happened to comment on her interesting name. He felt, rather than saw, the way she shrank from him. He was mortified.
“I’m terribly sorry, Neraya. Really, I didn’t mean to pry. Please forget I asked.”
She hesitated, then the tension went out of her. She covered his hand with hers.