‘Hmmn,’ Silvie was intrigued, and rose to the challenge, too, as she could see that Commander Leavam did not believe she was capable of doing this exercise. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let me have a go at it.’
Hetty Leavam didn’t comment, just called up another copy of the assignment and passed it to her. ‘Clock ticking,’ she said.
‘Hah!’ Silvie set to work, and for several minutes she and Kate worked alongside one another in a kind of energetic contentment, busy and focussed but enjoying themselves. Then Shion appeared. She’d noticed that Silvie seemed restless, wandering about the ship with a ‘looking for something to do’ manner, so she’d come to find her as soon as she’d finished with other responsibilities. She was going to suggest that they hop the shuttle over to the Eagle, hosting their usual tea-party at this time of day.
‘Ma’am, good afternoon, ma’am,’ said Kate, hopping up and then sitting back down at Shion’s ‘as you were.’
‘Shut up,’ said Silvie. ‘Go away. I’m doing an essay.’
Shion just grinned and went away, but Hetty, after a brief struggle with herself, was obliged to ask the watch officer to ‘keep an eye’ on prep while she took a brief comfort break. She was gone for a couple of minutes, returning with a slightly heightened colour and an air of firm control. In anyone else, it might have been thought that she’d excused herself to cope with a fit of the giggles, but this was Commander Leavam. She had no sense of humour, and the idea of her being overwhelmed by a giggling fit was just… well, unthinkable.
‘You’re very noisy,’ Silvie complained, as the commander resumed her seat. ‘Can you please keep it quiet?’ Silvie gave a sternly reproving look worthy of Commander Leavam herself. ‘I’m trying to work.’
Hetty set her jaw and stared down at the screens in front of her. Alex was almost sure that he could detect just a tiny little hiccupping noise, but he was resolutely staring at screens himself, set-faced, knowing that it really wouldn’t be fair to Kate to break out in guffaws. This was, after all, a timed and graded assignment which would count towards her eventual grade in that course which, in turn, would be a factor in her end-of-year placement. Only the top cadet of her year would get to go over to the Class of 64 for their final year. Cadets who let the occasional assignment slide on the basis that something that tiny couldn’t possibly make a real difference did not tend to see the inside of the Class of 64 building.
Kate, though, worked on, undistracted, and having completed her essay in well under the allocated time, moved straight on to active-reading prep, working through assigned reading with a highlighter and annotating as she read.
‘There, done,’ Silvie declared triumphantly, also in well under the allocated time and passing the completed essay to Hetty in the clear expectation that she would grade it for her there and then. ‘Everything there is to be said,’ Silvie stated, ‘about whalebelly freighters.’
‘I will need a few minutes,’ Hetty said, and set to work, herself. Essay assignments were auto-graded for objective criteria such as factual content, structure and grammar, but instructors also gave a subjective mark for the quality of the work, professional style, confidence and particularly the ability to draw a conclusion. When she’d finished, Hetty handed it back to Silvie with a mild, ‘Not bad at all.’
‘B?’ Silvie was thunderstruck. ‘B minus? But it’s perfect!’
‘I’m afraid it isn’t.’ Hetty said, with a little sympathy but no apology. ‘You’ve exceeded the word count, too high a proportion of it is copy/paste from datanet, you haven’t included a model and your conclusion makes only cursory reference to future development.’
Silvie stared. ‘I’m supposed to build a model?’
It was too much. At the mental image of her sitting there carefully constructing a model whalebelly, Alex cracked. And he wasn’t the only one. Kate was the only one who appeared oblivious to the hilarity, as she continued to read and make notes as if sitting in the peaceful isolation of a study booth. Even Commander Leavam broke sufficiently to let go a noise like a chicken being throttled – she was laughing. Only a couple of squawks, but still, the first time the duralloy lady had been seen to have any capacity for humour at all.
‘A…’ she pulled herself together. ‘A virtual model, Silvie. A diagrammatical or mathematical depiction of some aspect in your essay which demonstrates abstract analytical thinking.’
‘I did put a diagram in!’ One of the first things Silvie had done had been to look up the grading criteria for getting an A, and she was satisfied that she’d achieved all of them. ‘I did a drawing of the airlock,’ she pointed out, ‘and I did not copy/paste from datanet either, I read it and wrote it out myself. And how can you lose marks for writing more than you were asked for? That’s not fair. And what do you mean, ‘cursory’? It said ‘draw conclusions referencing the future development of this class of starship’ and I said ‘They should make them bigger and faster and fix the problem with the airlock.’ I was going to say wonky airlock, but I realised that wasn’t the right vocabulary for an essay, so I left it out.’
‘I’m afraid that a drawing of an airlock, even with labels showing the zone of weakness under micro-impact, doesn’t really cut it as abstract analytical thought,’ said Hetty. ‘And replicating the text from datanet is copying it regardless of whether you use the copy/paste function or write it out yourself – nothing wrong in that, really, but the more of it you do the lower your score is for original content. Showing understanding by writing it in your own words scores higher. The word count is a limit and imposes restriction on the space you have as well as the time, because to precis your facts and findings is a skill in itself. And I’m sorry, but ‘they should make them bigger and faster and fix the problem with the airlock’ doesn’t score any higher than ‘cursory’ against the exemplar answers. I am not allowed to let you see them, sorry – I’m really not. If the exemplar answers to any assignment are seen by anyone other than an Academy instructor the integrity of that assignment is compromised. There can be no risk, ever, that cadets can see the answers before they do the assignments. We are, however, allowed to let cadets see the best in class, the top graded assignment, so that they know the quality they should aspire to. So if you just give me a moment I’ll grade Cadet Naos’s assignment and let you see that for comparison, all right?’
She did that, informing Kate of her grading, first.
‘98%,’ she said. ‘A-minus.’ The only way to get a full A was to score a hundred per cent. ‘You dropped two points,’ Hetty informed her, ‘for your lyrical comment on the place that whalebellies have in the hearts and souls of spacers. Lyricism has no place in a technical report, Ms Naos.’
‘Ma’am,’ said Kate, who’d hoped that it might count as exceptional additional content and score her the elusive A plus. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’
It took some time for Hetty to go through Kate’s essay with Silvie, explaining to her where Kate had scored higher and why. And seeing it, having it explained to her like that, Silvie stopped protesting and became fascinated instead.
‘I’m learning loads,’ she remarked, as she mastered the difference between her beautifully drawn diagram and Kate’s rough sketch which was, however, accompanied by a mathematical description of the forces involved. ‘This is great, really interesting,’ she enthused. ‘Maybe I should do the classes, too… oi!’ she poked Hetty on the arm. ‘There’s no need to scream…’
Hetty, who had done no more than blink, at least externally, gave her a look of apology as she recognised that she had, without intending it, made the quarian uncomfortable.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was just…’ another shudder of horror ran through her at the very idea of Silvie sitting in on cadet training classes. ‘No.’ She said. ‘Please. No.’
Silvie chuckled, but accepted it.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But go on – give me another one.’ Then, before Hetty could begin to respond, ‘Oh, I know! I’ll do starseekers!’
&
nbsp; She flashed up another screen and went happily to work.
Hetty and Alex, after a long minute composing themselves, looked at one another. To say that having Kate aboard as a second-year cadet was having unexpected repercussions was a bit like saying that dropping a grenade through the airlock had made a bit of a bang. Silvie was responding not to the Academy curriculum, which she’d seen before, but to Kate’s own dedication and enthusiasm. Silvie wanted to be in on the fun.
‘I am not entirely sure,’ said Alex, ‘that we are fulfilling the requirement to provide a prep environment equivalent to that at the Academy.’
Hetty imagined a prep session at the Academy with Silvie taking part, and made a small croaking noise, clearing her throat.
‘I will,’ she acknowledged, ‘award Cadet Naos a merit for completing prep under conditions of exceptional disturbance.’
This was normally only given if something like a fire alarm had gone off, or other circumstances beyond the instructor’s control. But this was hardly the first time that Silvie had been defined as ‘circumstances beyond control’ and Alex just grinned.
‘I should get one too, a merit,’ said Silvie. ‘Stop giggling, you lot, I’m trying to concentrate!’
Thirteen
It was Alex’s turn to be the student, three days later. Silvie waited until the expected courier had arrived at Serenity and Alex had been reassured that the Beeby Disclosure had still been on track at Chartsey when that news had been dispatched. Once his mind had been set at rest on that score, Silvie asked if this would be a good time to take him over to the Harmony.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Alex, and went to pack a bag. He took only what he’d need for a day or two, then handed command of the ship over to Buzz and piloted himself and Silvie over to the Diplomatic Corps ship.
Silvie had asked him to do this. She wanted him to experience the accommodation provided on these ships for quarian passengers, and then to have his people, as she said, sort it out. Alex didn’t really feel that it was necessary for him to do that – he’d have been more than happy to upgrade the accommodation based purely on what Silvie wanted. Silvie, though, had been adamant.
‘You people are always telling me that there’s no substitute for experience,’ she said. ‘And in this case, it’s right, there isn’t.’
So, they went over to the Harmony, where they were welcomed by the skipper, Andru Thurlough.
‘We have everything ready for you,’ he told Silvie, with a touch of apprehension. The Diplomatic Corps had agreed to allowing the Fourth to upgrade their quarian quarters, en route, but that was an alarming thing for the Harmony’s skipper to contemplate on all kinds of levels. Even having Silvie back aboard rekindled memories of the most horrendous Gulf crossing this ship had ever made. That any of their ships had ever made. Silvie was the first of her people to make the full crossing. Other attempts had been made, brave quarians attempting to make the trip to Serenity, but they’d never got more than a few days out before insisting that the ship turned right around and took them straight back home.
At first glance, it was hard to see why. To human eyes, at least, the quarian quarters looked like a very pleasant environment. Silvie took Alex in there herself, dismissing Andru Thurlough when he’d have come in to give his fellow skipper the tour. Alex paused on the threshold, taking it all in, and was slightly surprised. Silvie had described it as the most boring, horrible hole imaginable, a grotty hovel she wouldn’t even use as a plankton tank.
In fact, it looked spacious and airy. The upper level was the air-breathing quarters, a lounge/dining space furnished in quarian style with a lot of plants, water features and webbing. Quarians did not use sofas or chairs, they used supportive webs, instead, which you could sit on or lounge in and which Silvie said were a lot more comfortable. Colours and lighting were bright, and it all seemed very fresh and clean, a far cry from the dim, dingy environment Alex had imagined. An off-centre pool rippled with water under a pressure field, giving access to the aquadeck below.
‘Come on,’ Silvie said, and dropped down through the hatchway by simply stepping off into the water.
Alex put on a swim mask and followed.
Again, he was mildly surprised. Silvie had reserved her most blistering criticism for the aquadeck, but it seemed quite a pleasant place to him. It was about the same size as Silvie’s garden on the Heron, roughly twenty metres long, ten wide and five deep. This was no coincidence, since it was the biggest water tank which could be fitted into a starship even with considerable shifting around of other tech. Unlike Silvie’s garden, though, it had a full holographic surround, walls, floor and ceiling all active holographic screens.
‘This is ‘lounge’ mode,’ Silvie told him. It looked like pictures Alex had seen of urban aquatic environments on Quarus. In fact, it looked very like some of the pictures he’d seen. There was a mother of pearl floor, triangular webbing, some sculptures he felt pretty sure he recognised, and a general impression of calm spaciousness. One of the walls gave a VR view of a deep ocean reef. ‘It’s a transit lounge,’ said Silvie. ‘Or it would be, if anything in it was real. On Quarus this wall…’ she indicated the one opposite the picture window, which had been decorated with posters of underwater scenery, ‘would have hatchways giving access to our inter-city transit vehicles.’ She grinned at his sudden shock of realisation. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a bus station. Worse, it’s a very bad plastic copy of a bus station. But okay, if you don’t fancy spending three and a half months in a shaky plastic mock-up of a bus depot, you can always switch modes. They’re ever so proud of this, look…’ she led him over to a corner, ‘there’s a nifty little control panel, see?’
Alex saw, and almost groaned. It was the kind of easy-touch control screen that might be used in a kindergarten, with big simple blocky buttons and helpful, simplified pictures.
‘I’ll leave you to explore the other modes,’ Silvie said, and with a disparaging glance at the screen, ‘I expect you’ll be able to figure out the controls, won’t you?’
Alex grinned at that. ‘Sarcasm!’ he noted. It had taken Silvie a long time even to be able to recognise sarcasm, let alone use it.
‘It is,’ said Silvie, ‘what they said to me.’
‘Oh.’ Alex winced. ‘Ouch!’
‘They were a bit flustered,’ Silvie allowed. ‘Which I get now, though I didn’t then. But there it is, your lovely home away from home. And since they gave me the three minute tour and then hurried off with ‘call if you need anything’, I will do the same.’ She was already heading for the hatch to the upper deck. ‘Bye!’
Alex was busy for some time, exploring the facilities, and it wasn’t long before he’d pulled out a comp and started making notes. The first transit between modes did that. Selecting a button which showed a shoal of little fish, he pressed it experimentally and turned around to watch what happened.
‘Stand clear…’ a warning buzzer sounded, ‘bzz bzz’, and an automated voice spoke firmly, ‘VR transit in progress. Stand clear… bzz bzz…VR transit…’
It was immediately apparent on what basis the various modes were set up – the only way they could be on a starship, really. The Heron used much the same system on their interdeck, deploying such things as inflatable sofas and foldaway tables from containers built into the floor. The deck of the Heron’s interdeck lounge was solid with such containers, giving them great flexibility in how they set it up, or enabling them to clear all the furniture away in a moment. So it was no surprise, really, when little hatches opened up, the webbing seats were drawn away, then other hatches opened and a different set of furbishing appeared. These were known in VR as ‘hard props’, real things intended for use within a simulated environment.
All the same, Alex was used to a smooth-glide transition of furniture on the interdeck. It was an entirely different experience, he found, watching the webs sucked down as if they were being gulped, and then a moment later a whole load of seaweeds popped up. It looked silly, a ja
ck-in-the-box effect, and as the VR changed from the bus depot to an open ocean environment, a locker door in one of the walls opened to release a school of fish.
Even if he hadn’t already known that they were robosim, Alex felt, he would not have been able to believe in those fish, popped out of a cupboard like confetti fired from a party popper. He could only imagine how ludicrous it would be to quarians, so attuned as they were to their living environment. Even he… yes. He swam over to the fish and reached out an experimental finger. They responded to body language, swirling around him as if in greeting, but it felt flat, unconvincing.
Alex understood enough now to recognise that this was his own empathic sense, vestigial though it might be, telling him that these were not alive. It was akin to the sensation he’d experienced at times when someone was looking at him from behind – pure instinct, when none of the usual senses could have detected it. The fish might be able to fool his eyes and even his sense of touch, but there was no life in their eyes.
Alex made a note. In fact he made several notes. Then he went back to the control panel and experimented with the other four options. The first of them was night mode, which turned the tank into ten two metre by four metre cubicles with shadow-curtains between and each equipped with a webbing bed. Alex wrote busily for quite some time and used quite a few exclamation points. The next mode available was Tidal Reef, which came not only with the usual ‘VR transit in progress’ but with a ‘Warning: strong tidal current in…’ sign which was very big and flashed down a countdown from ten.
Alex activated his wristjets and braced himself. Once the beds and other things had been taken away and the ‘rocky reef’ scene had taken its place, the water level was lowered a metre to enable the wave machine to work.
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