Higher Education

by Charles Sheffield

  And something else became obvious. Rick and Vido Valdez might be in competition with all the other trainees, but Valdez saw the contest in more personal terms. To him, Rick was the enemy.

  "I'm gonna beat you, Luban." They were eating, and Valdez was sitting opposite Rick at one of the plastic-topped tables. He was still rubbing his left eye now and again. Rick suspected that it was a nervous habit, the eye red only because of constant irritation. If it was anything real, the Vanguard Mining doctors would have done something about it. They might be ruthless and heartless, but they were certainly competent.

  "I'm gonna whip your skinny ass." Valdez went on. "Remember this: anything you can do, I can do better."

  "Sure. Like you beat me real good on the balance bar." Rick hadn't been present when Valdez took that test, but he had heard about it from another trainee, a loudmouth boy named Chick Teazle. According to Teazle, Vido had fallen off once, lost his confidence, and fallen off four more times before he walked it successfully. Rick had aced it on the first run.

  Valdez turned red and picked up his plate of food. He was raising it high, ready to throw it at Rick, when he realized that the room had gone quiet. People all around were watching and waiting. The rule had been made clear on first arrival: say what you like to each other while the tests were going on, but start a brawl and you were out. You'd be heading back where you came from on the next autobus.

  Valdez sat down with a bump and glared both ways along the table. "Don't get your hopes up, all you weenies. I'm stayin', and I'm winning." He stared at Rick. "I'll get even with you, Luban, soon as I have a chance. That's a promise. I'll beat the shit out of you. And I got a long memory."

  "Your arms will have to be even longer—with you down on Earth and me up in space."

  But Vido would not be drawn again. He picked up his half-filled plate, but only to stand up and carry it across to the disposal area. "Have some more food, numb nuts," he said to Rick as he left the table. "You want to be real well-fed for today's test."

  That got a laugh, but Rick did not know why. He glanced down to his own empty plate. It was a favorite of his, spaghetti and meatballs, and he had eaten two big helpings. The tests of the day were not announced in advance, but did the others know something that Rick didn't? Vido was a real pig, he went for multiple helpings and he never left anything uneaten on his plate. Except today.

  Rick puzzled over that for the next couple of hours, while he struggled to assemble sets of blocks that had been cut into peculiar shapes. It looked easy, but it was curiously difficult. It didn't help when Chick Teazle stood up after less than an hour, the assignment all done. Vido Valdez followed twenty minutes later, giving Rick a smug look as he left. Rick managed to finish, just seconds before the deadline, but then he had to hurry at once to his next assigned location: Room B-2F.

  Fortunately, he knew exactly where that was. He ran down two flights of stairs, along the corridor, and entered the room exactly on time. He had half expected to find Vido already there, but the room was empty. Rick looked around him with a good deal of curiosity. He had never been here before.

  The room was one big cube. Walls, floor and ceiling were all alike, flat planes of smooth grey plastic. The only difference was the sprinkler system in the ceiling, what looked like a plastic observation window in one wall, and a set of drain grilles in the floor. In the exact center of the room stood a single piece of equipment. It consisted of three great hoops, mounted with axes at right angles to each other but with a common center. They formed the outer skeleton of a great ball, four meters across. At the center of the ball, attached to the hoops by strong metal struts, sat a chair. It had solid arm rests, foot supports, and a tall back, and loose straps dangled down from it. A short metal ladder led up toward it.

  All this, for a test? Rick was walking forward to examine the structure more closely when Tess Shawm came into the room behind him. She was holding a black plastic coverall suit. "You've never had one of these before, I assume?" she said.

  Rick shook his head. The hoops looked as though each one could swivel independently of the other two. As each hoop turned, the chair would turn with it. So the chair could face in every direction and at any angle, including upside down.

  "Well, it's really pretty simple," Shawm continued. "Put this suit on over your clothes, and zip it up. Those big hoops on the test rig are on what's called gimbals, and they're independently driven by motors in the base. There's also a centrifuge effect. You know about that?"

  "Sure." Rick knew that he had been told about centrifuges, back in school, but he didn't want to admit that he couldn't remember what they did. He slipped the black plastic suit on, and found that it fitted snugly and zipped all the way up to his neck.

  "Good." Tess Shawm checked the top of the zipper. "You hear a lot about freefall, and how it can upset your stomach. It can and it does, but it turns out that almost everybody gets used to it after a while. A week or two in space, and you hardly think about it.

  "Anyway, we can't easily test freefall tolerance down here on Earth. What we can test, and what we're going to test today, is tolerance to changes in attitude and acceleration. There's a lot of individual variability in that from one person to another, and in space that actually causes more trouble than freefall. Go ahead, climb up the ladder."

  Rick thought he knew what was coming, and it didn't sound like a big deal. He had been on the wildest rides that the city's amusement parks had to offer, and he loved every one. According to Hoss Carlin and Screw Savage, Rick was like a rat. Mr. Hamel had once told them that rats didn't have any way to throw up, and that's why rat poisons worked in the school basement. The rats swallowed the bait, but they couldn't vomit it out.

  Poison or no poison, though, the basement always seemed to have plenty of rats left.

  He climbed up the short ladder with Tess Shawm right behind. "Put your forearms flat along the supports," she said, "and make yourself comfortable in the seat. When I fasten the straps, let me know if they feel too tight. They have to hold you in for any position of the chair, but they shouldn't be in the slightest bit painful. The head band stretches, so you can move your head forward if you want to."

  Rick grinned at her as he leaned back so that she could place a broad band around his forehead. "That all feels fine. Best seat I ever sat in. Like a king on a throne up here."

  She gave him a peculiar look, and said, "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Sit tight, your majesty. I'm going down to start the ball rolling. Call out if you want to stop—I'll be able to hear you."

  She retreated down the stepladder, picked it up, and carried it out of the room with her. She closed the tight-fitting door. A few seconds later Rick saw her face at the observation window, high on one of the walls. He could not wave, but he gave her a big grin. She nodded back. A few seconds later there was a whine of electric motors and the chair began to tilt backward and to the left.

  Gradually, the pace picked up. Rick could see the observation window, floor grilles, and ceiling sprinklers rotating steadily past him. He told himself that this was just another ride, one that he would have paid good money for a few weeks ago.

  The walls were going past faster. Another component was adding to the motion. It was a curious, irregular back-ward-and-forward shift, as though the chair could not only rotate in any direction, but could at the same time be jerked up, forward and sideways away from the center of the hoops. Rick could feel new forces, pulling him every which way. It took a few seconds to realize that this must be the "centrifuge effect" that Tess Shawm had casually mentioned. It took less time than that for Rick to decide that he did not like what he was feeling.

  Ceiling, walls and floor were turning into one continuous blur. He was no longer sure which way was up. Rick swallowed hard, and at once felt an urge to belch. He did so, and the sour taste of tomato paste came to his mouth. The vision of the mound of spaghetti that he had eaten swam before his eyes, and he tried desperately to think of something else.


  All he had to do was yell, and the test would stop. Tess Shawm had promised it. The only thing that stopped him was the idea of how Vido would gloat next time they met. Someone had warned Valdez, he had known not to eat a lot. That wasn't fair.

  Fair or not, Rick knew he could not stand much more. He was full of a terrible sense of dizziness, and the chair that held him seemed to swing and turn and veer faster than ever. His stomach felt three times its usual size. It was pressing upward toward his throat.

  Stop!

  Rick opened his mouth to shout the word. Instead of sound, a great gush of yellow vomit flew out and away. Stop! No word came. He leaned forward against the pull of the head band and threw up again, still unable to speak. When he closed his mouth, a sour jet spurted from his nose. When he opened his mouth again, the urge to retch made it impossible to breathe. He closed his eyes and hung against the chair straps in utter misery. As each new spasm hit him, he felt ready to die. And still he could not call out for it to end.

  A sudden jolt of cold hit him in the face. He shivered and opened his eyes—and found that he was sitting upright in a chair that was rotating horizontally and steadily slowing. Jets of cold water from the overhead sprinkler system were sluicing down, over him and all over the room. Streaks of yellow and red—his last meal—were steadily disappearing from walls and floor.

  He leaned back, welcoming the chill of cold water on his forehead. Although his eyes told him that the chair was stationary now, when he closed them he was sure that he was still turning end over end. He was still dizzy and panting for breath. He had thrown up so hard that his stomach and his throat felt raw and strained. Even so, it was bliss just to sit there and think that, no matter how bad he felt, it was over.

  He closed his eyes again. This time everything held steady. He did not move until he heard the outer door open and the clatter of the stepladder.

  "Still feeling like a king?" Tess Shawm was ascending the ladder beside the chair. There was something different in her expression. He thought at first that she was gloating over his misery, and then he realized that wasn't it. For the first time, she was grinning at him as though he was a human being and not just a test subject. She released his right hand, and he raised it to wipe the wet palm across his mouth.

  "I feel like shit."

  "But you look like vomit." She freed the other hand, then his head. Last came the bindings on his legs. "Are you still dizzy? If you are, stay right there until it goes away. There's no hurry."

  "I'm not dizzy—not any more. But I guess I really blew it."

  She was frowning at him in bewilderment. "Blew what?"

  "The test. I spewed my ring. Everything I had."

  "Naturally. Take a look around you. Take a look at yourself."

  Rick did so, first at his dripping coverall, then around the room. Every sign that he had thrown up had vanished.

  "Why do you think the room was designed this way?" Tess went on. "And why do you think I put you in that plastic suit? You were supposed to throw up. Everybody does, every single person who takes it and passes. You only fail and blow it by shouting for me to stop too soon—for that, you lose all sort of points."

  You don't know how close I came. If stomach hadn't beaten brain to it, that's exactly what would have happened.

  "So you mean I passed?" Rick tested his balance, and found that it was all right. He stood up and put one foot on the ladder.

  "More than passed." She hesitated, as though not sure whether to speak, and then went on, "I might as well tell you this, because given the grapevine in this place you'd know within a day anyway. You lasted longer than anybody else in this whole group. You must have an iron stomach. Congratulations. For this test, you stated it right at the beginning. You're the king."

  The king. Sure. Rick didn't feel much like royalty as he stumbled away on legs that were still a little shaky. It would soon be time for the afternoon meal, but he felt not in the least like eating.

  He went instead to the dormitory, and was pleased to find it deserted. He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. When he woke up what felt like two minutes later, he found that nearly an hour had passed and his stomach was empty and growling.

  He went along to the dining-room, determined to admit to no one what had happened in the test. That proved to be irrelevant. As he came into the half-filled room, Chick Teazle greeted him with a loud, "Hey, look who's here! The Vomit King."

  The grapevine was remarkable—and Tess Shawm must be part of it. No one else could possibly know what Rick had said about feeling like a king.

  He nodded at Teazle and took a tray without speaking. If they knew what he said, they must also know that he had done better than any of them. And somehow, even if it killed him, he was now going to eat a normal meal.

  The food was a thick beef stew. The first three mouthfuls tasted sour and greasy, and as Rick swallowed he felt warning twinges in his stomach. Grimly, he kept going. When he was raising the fourth spoonful toward his mouth, Vido Valdez entered the dining-hall.

  Vido was walking carefully, on legs that didn't quite seem to meet the ground. His face, always dark, wore an added tinge of greenish-yellow.

  Rick raised the spoon of glutinous brown stew toward him in greeting, flourished it in the air, and delivered it carefully to his open mouth. It was gratifying to watch the progression in Vido's facial expressions, as they moved from anger and hatred to alarm and revulsion and nausea. He put his hand to his mouth, turned, and headed for the exit.

  Rick chewed steadily. Suddenly, everything tasted a thousand percent better.

  Revenge is a dish best sewed cold. But it was all right to eat it hot, if it was beef stew and every spoonful made your sworn enemy turn a more striking shade of green.

  The tests had gone on forever; and then, suddenly, they were over. The unsuccessful trainees vanished one evening, before the final results were announced. No one had a chance to complain, gloat or commiserate. The twenty remaining recruits were simply told the next morning that they would be going to space for additional tests and training.

  No official rankings for performance were released, but somehow the word spread. Loudmouth Chick Teazle had done best of all. It was an unpopular result, making him seem even more obnoxious than before. Vido Valdez and Rick Luban, competing with each other more than with anyone else, had finished absolutely neck and neck. Neither had a chance to crow. Vido's dark face threatened future violence. Alice Klein, looking at the end of the course even thinner, paler and weaker than at the beginning, had somehow squeaked through. Rick couldn't imagine how she had done it—he knew for a fact that she was not half as strong as him, and she didn't seem well-coordinated or fast.

  "She must have been screwing one of the testers," said Chick Teazle, standing in front of the electronic board where the list was posted. He brayed with laughter. Alice stared at him with those wide grey eyes, and thought unreadable thoughts.

  Once again, the recruits had proof that Vanguard Mining did not waste time. That night there would be a celebration for the successful recruits—"Though what sort of a celebration can you have without drugs and booze?" Valdez grumbled—and the next day they would be on their way.

  All twenty would travel together to the White Sands spaceport. Ten of the trainees would ship out first, traveling to a low orbit station on a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. The other ten would join them forty-eight hours later, after the SSTO had returned to Earth and was ready to make its next ascent.

  Dr. Alonzo Bretherton, who all through the tests had said hardly a word, joined them on the last evening and broke what they had begun to think of as his vow of silence.

  "You may have questions," he said. "If you do, I'll try to answer them."

  So far as Rick was concerned, that was easy. He had learned the rule long ago: The nail that sticks up gets the hammer. Nobody in his right mind drew attention to himself asking questions.

  Apparently the other trainees had learned the same lesson, b
ecause there was a long silence. It was finally broken by a recruit already pegged by Rick as out of control. She was short and brown and curvy, with enormous brown eyes, and she could never sit still or keep quiet. Her name was Suzie Roy Cruse, but everyone called her Monkey. Word said she had been kicked out of her school for running a professional sex service—inside its walls. She was supposed to be perpetually horny, but Rick had been too stressed out by all the tests even to think of trying her.

  "Yes—Suzie?" said Bretherton, as she coughed and fidgeted and held up her hand. Rick was sure he had almost called her Monkey. If the rest of Vanguard Mining was anything like this place, secrets must be impossible.

  Having shown that she wanted to speak, Monkey now seemed to be thinking better of it.

  "You have a question about Vanguard Mining, and what you are going to be doing in space," Bretherton prompted.

  "No." And when everybody laughed, Monkey went on, "I do have a question, but it's not about space. It's about here."