The Orpheus Plot

by Christopher Swiedler

  He opened the door and straightened himself up as best he could. “Lucas Adebayo reporting, sir.”

  He realized too late that Commander Novak wasn’t a man, but a woman in her mid-sixties with short-cropped gray hair and a thin, angular face. She was floating in front of a small group of kids seated at desks. Behind them on the wall, a recruiting poster showed a trio of smiling officers with Jupiter rising in the background.

  Every eye turned toward him. “I mean, Lucas Adebayo reporting, ma’am.”

  Novak motioned toward an open desk. “Take a seat. I don’t have all day.”

  Lucas sat down behind Elena, who gave him a tiny nod. A few seats over, Willem and Katya smirked and whispered something to each other. Novak glared at them irritably.

  “As I was saying, please do not misunderstand the term ‘introductory’ to mean that this will be an easy course. We will be going over a broad set of topics at a rapid pace. Has everyone studied calculus before?”

  Everyone but Lucas raised their hand. A dozen pairs of eyes turned toward him, and his heart sank. Of course he would be the only one.

  “Ah,” Novak said, looking at him thoughtfully. “We’ll need to do an evaluation, then.”

  “An evaluation for all of us?” Katya asked. “Or just him?”

  “All of you,” Novak said, typing something into her screen. “Which is for the best, since it will give me a chance to find out where the class stands.”

  There was a collective groan as a test popped up on everyone’s screens. Several kids glared openly at Lucas. He hung his head and looked down at the first problem. This was definitely not how he wanted to start things off with his classmates.

  The test wasn’t too hard at first, but the questions quickly became more difficult. When he got to the third section, he stopped and raised his hand tentatively.

  “Do you have a question?” Novak asked, coming over to him.

  He pointed to his screen. “I don’t know what this word means,” he said in an embarrassed voice.

  “You’ve never worked with logarithms before?”

  Willem and Katya tittered simultaneously. Lucas turned red and shook his head.

  “Skip that section, then.”

  The last part of the test was algebra, which was at least something he’d studied before. But abstract math had never been his strong suit, and it took him a while to work out each answer. Eventually Novak checked her watch. “Five minutes left.”

  Lucas looked around and noticed that everyone was finished except for him. He scanned through the remaining pages of the test. There was no way he was going to finish in time. He moved on quickly, jotting down his best guesses at the answers, since surely putting something down was better than nothing. When the bell chimed to end the period, everyone else in the class burst from their desks and headed for the door.

  “Time is up, Cadet Adebayo.”

  Lucas nodded and pressed submit. A score flashed up at the top of his screen: 45%. He hadn’t even gotten half of the answers correct.

  He made his way out into the hallway. His heart felt like it had fallen into a black hole. Was this really what school here would be like? He half expected Tali to show up and say “I told you so.”

  “So how did you do, Aaron?” Willem asked in a loud voice, turning to a burly Earther boy wearing delta section’s colors.

  “Eighty-nine percent,” Aaron said, shrugging.

  “That’s not too bad. I got ninety-four. Katya?”

  “Ninety-one.”

  Willem turned toward Lucas with an innocent look. “How about you, Lucas?”

  “It’s none of your business,” Elena said.

  Willem grinned. “That’s about what I thought.” The three delta-section kids headed up toward the rec room, passing Rahul as he came down from the deck above.

  “Oh, no—what’s got them so happy?” Rahul said, looking back at the delta-section kids.

  “Nothing,” Lucas mumbled.

  “How was your class?” Elena asked.

  Rahul made a face. “It was awful.”

  “It couldn’t have been that bad,” Elena said. “Aren’t you some kind of math genius?”

  “Sure, linear algebra is easy. But the homework is insane! And Hofstra says I can’t use my AI implant for anything. He wants us to type it all up on our screens.” Rahul waggled his fingers at them. “I can already feel the blisters starting to form!”

  “Looks like I’ve got orbital mechanics with him next,” Lucas said, looking at his own screen. Which at least sounded like something more interesting than stupid logarithms.

  Rahul pointed upward. “One deck up. I wish you luck.”

  Lieutenant-Commander Hofstra was short and heavyset, with a patchy reddish-brown beard. There were no desks in his room, and every wall was covered with large whiteboards. This time, at least, Lucas managed to get there early. After a few minutes, there were five cadets in a semicircle. Except for Lucas, all of them looked like second- or third-years. As soon as the last cadet arrived, Hofstra closed the door and turned toward them.

  “Three laws,” he said in a deep, resonant voice. “That’s it. Three laws. Everything we do here comes from Sir Isaac Newton and his three laws. Now, let’s begin with some simple problems.”

  Hofstra began drawing a problem on the board. His handwriting was difficult to read, but Lucas soon recognized the diagram.

  “The Jovian moons!” he blurted out.

  Hofstra frowned and glanced back at Lucas. “You’re familiar with this?”

  Lucas froze. Had he done something wrong? “Uh . . . yes, sir. A little.”

  “I see,” Hofstra said, peering at him with an odd expression. “You’re our new Belter cadet, I assume. Please stay quiet for the rest of the class.”

  One of the other cadets snickered loudly. Lucas’s face turned bright red. What had he done wrong? Was it his fault he’d seen that diagram before? It was one of the first navigation problems any Belter kid studied.

  He took a little satisfaction in noting that by the end of the class, all the other cadets looked overwhelmed by Hofstra’s rapid pace. When the period ended, Hofstra opened the door and waved them out.

  “Read the first three chapters of Stuttgart,” he said. “We meet three times a week. Homework assignments have been sent out. Office hours are posted and I suggest you make use of them if you have any trouble. Cadet Adebayo, please stay behind.”

  Hofstra said this last bit in such a casual way that it took Lucas a moment to realize what he’d said. The other kids exchanged looks and slipped out through the door quickly.

  “Since the problem I presented was apparently too elementary, let’s dive a little deeper,” Hofstra said, handing Lucas a stylus.

  Lucas began to explain that he hadn’t meant to be rude, but Hofstra had already launched into his first question. Lucas closed his mouth and dutifully went through the various calculations step-by-step. Hofstra seemed less interested in the actual answer than in the reasoning that went into it. What’s the logic behind that part there? What’s the meaning of that variable? Every time he saw that Lucas understood a particular concept, he would wave his hand and move on to something else. Soon they were calculating interplanetary rendezvous trajectories, which was an area where Lucas had always just relied on the computer to do the hard work. Eventually Hofstra grew impatient.

  “Yes, that’s what you do,” he said, smacking the whiteboard, “but why?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucas admitted.

  “Ah,” Hofstra said, sounding satisfied. “Perhaps one day that hole in your education will be remedied. But not today. You are dismissed.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I can see that you don’t understand, cadet. Which is why you are now dismissed. It’s time for lunch, and I’ve got a ravenous appetite.”

  Hofstra pointed toward the door with an expectant look. Lucas mumbled a “Yes, sir,” and headed out to the ladderway. Glumly he followed the sounds of ca
dets eating lunch until he’d reached the rec room again. By the time he got there, Elena and Rahul were already halfway finished with their lunch.

  “Hofstra is a bowl of cherries, isn’t he?” Rahul said, seeing Lucas’s expression.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Lucas said. He didn’t have any appetite at all, but he pulled a food pouch out of a dispenser and squirted the contents into his mouth. He grimaced and read the label. Tofu and vegetable stew, and heavy on the cauliflower.

  “We’ve got physical education next,” Elena said. “That’ll be fun.”

  Rahul and Elena soon began talking excitedly about an Earther martial-arts series that Lucas had never heard of, doing slow-motion demonstrations of their favorite sequences. Lucas watched silently and drank a water bulb.

  Why had he come here? What had made him think that this was a good idea? He’d always known that people from the inner planets were different. But until now he’d never realized how different. Was he ever going to fit in, or was he always going to be a complete outsider?

  A chime sounded throughout the ship. “All first-year cadets, fold up the tables and meet in the back of the rec room for physical education,” a burly officer called out. Everyone immediately began tossing food and water pouches into trash bags.

  Rahul sighed. “Who schedules phys ed right after lunch?”

  When they’d folded up their table and put away their trash bags, the officer herded them toward the other end of the room. “My name is Lieutenant-Commander Palmer,” he said. “This is your exercise and combat class.”

  At the word “combat,” Elena perked up. Several of the other kids groaned in dismay.

  “First up is gravity simulation in the centrifuge,” Palmer said. “You should all be familiar with this from your trips out here. Sort yourselves by planet—Earth, Mars, and Luna.”

  Lucas had seen pictures of centrifuges, but he’d never encountered one in person. This one took up the entire back wall of the rec room. It was basically just a ring-shaped padded floor that could spin around its axis. Anyone standing inside would be pushed outward, against the floor. The faster it spun, the stronger the simulated gravity would be.

  Elena and Rahul looked at Lucas uncertainly as the other kids formed three groups. “Does he know who you are?” Rahul whispered.

  “Maybe he wants you to join the Luna group?” Elena suggested.

  Palmer looked over at them and frowned. Lucas had the uncomfortable feeling that, with his skinny arms and legs, he looked exactly like Palmer expected a kid who’d grown up in space to look.

  “You’re our new Belter kid, aren’t you? Get on a bike and start pedaling.”

  Willem and his friends grinned and whispered to each other. Lucas did his best to keep his face neutral. Why wouldn’t Palmer let him try the centrifuge? He’d spent time on all the bigger asteroids, where there was at least a little gravity, and his dad had always insisted that he keep up with his strength exercises on the Josey Wales. Did Palmer really think that Belters were just weak and frail?

  He looked enviously at the other cadets. Compared to the Earthers, he was weak and frail. Even the Mars and Luna kids had more muscle mass.

  “Hey, don’t listen to them,” Rahul said. “It’s not like this is going to be any fun.”

  He and Elena lined up with the other Earther kids inside the centrifuge. “This time, all we’re going to do is a few squats,” Palmer called out. “By the end of the term we’ll be doing push-ups, burpees, and devil stands.”

  Lucas didn’t know what a devil stand was, but it was clear from Palmer’s tone that they weren’t going to be fun for anyone involved. He started pedaling on one of the bikes and watched as the centrifuge started to turn, pressing everyone inside against the outer ring. After a moment he had to look away—the sight of everyone spinning around like that made his stomach churn.

  “Don’t overdo it,” Willem called to him in a singsong voice.

  Lucas focused on the bike and kept pedaling. He had the difficulty setting turned down low, but it still didn’t take long before his legs started to ache from the effort. He could feel the other cadets watching him. Don’t slow down, he told himself. Whatever you do, don’t slow down.

  The centrifuge spun to a halt. Palmer led the Earthers out and escorted the Mars kids inside. “Oh, man,” Rahul said, rubbing his legs. “Was that really just five minutes?”

  “If you’d kept up with your exercises on the transport ship, it wouldn’t be so bad,” Elena said.

  “Nobody did their exercises on the transport ship.” Before she could respond, he amended, “Nobody but you, anyway.”

  “Maybe you should take a break,” Elena said to Lucas. “You look pretty frazzled.”

  Lucas shook his head. Tiny beads of sweat flew off his forehead. “Not yet.”

  “Remind me to spend some extra time in there,” Willem said loudly. “I don’t want to turn into some weak pile of jelly who can’t support his own weight.”

  “Stuff it,” Elena snapped.

  “I’m just saying, it’s a lot of work keeping up muscle mass. It would be nice to be a Belter and not have to worry about it.”

  Lucas stopped pedaling and wiped sweat out of his eyes. “I could do it. Palmer just won’t let me.”

  “He won’t let you because he knows you can’t,” Aaron said.

  “Luna cadets, line up!” Palmer called as the centrifuge stopped and the Mars kids climbed out. Lucas watched Willem and the other kids from Earth’s moon file into the centrifuge. Luna’s gravity was only a sixth of a gee. He could do that for five minutes. He switched off the bike and launched himself toward the centrifuge.

  “Sir,” he said to Palmer. “I’d like to try.”

  “Keep pedaling, cadet.”

  “Please, sir,” Lucas said. “Give me a chance.”

  Palmer studied him for a moment. Finally he shrugged. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  Lucas headed inside and positioned himself with his feet on the padded floor and one hand on the handrail. Willem grinned with delight from the other side of the centrifuge.

  “How long do you think he’ll last?” he said to Aaron.

  “Three minutes,” Aaron said. “Maybe.”

  Willem shook his head. “Two, tops. Look at those legs.”

  Lucas ignored them and adjusted his grip on the handrail. From outside the centrifuge Elena waved and gave him a cheerful thumbs-up. A signal chimed, and lights on the ceiling turned from green to red. The centrifuge began to spin, and the faint tug of pseudo-gravity pulled Lucas’s feet against the floor. He adjusted his stance and flexed his legs.

  “Make that ninety seconds,” Aaron said, eyeing Lucas.

  A nearby gauge climbed to 0.09 gee. Already this was higher than the gravity on Ceres or any of the other asteroids, and his legs were rubbery from the exercise bike. He could do it, he reminded himself. The Josey Wales accelerated at a sixth of a gee all the time, didn’t it?

  Yes—but he was always in an acceleration couch when that happened, not trying to stand up. He put both hands on the railing to steady himself.

  At 0.12 gee, his knees threatened to buckle. “How’s it going?” Willem shouted.

  “Fine,” Lucas gasped.

  When the display leveled out at a Luna-normal 0.17 gee, he let go of the handrail. “One,” Willem called out. “Two. Three . . .”

  Lucas’s head was starting to swim, and his stomach felt as if it were turning in slow circles. He fixed his eyes on the floor in front of him and concentrated on staying upright. By the time Willem got to sixty, Lucas knew he wasn’t going to make it. The muscles in his legs felt like jelly and his vision was turning blurry. He locked his knees and clenched his fists. Just a little longer . . .

  “Sixty-three . . . sixty-four . . .”

  Just a little longer . . .

  “Sixty-eight . . . sixty-nine . . . seventy . . .”

  Lucas’s legs buckled and he toppled backward. He reached out frantically toward the
railing, but it slipped through his fingers and he crumpled to the floor.

  “That’s it, ladies and gentlemen,” Willem called out. “Poor Lucas here couldn’t make it past seventy seconds.”

  Lucas barely heard him. His head was ringing, and everything around him felt distant and foggy. After what seemed like forever, the centrifuge spun to a halt and he floated up off the floor.

  Palmer sighed and floated over to Lucas. “I told you, didn’t I?”

  “You did, sir,” Willem said, nodding.

  “Cadet,” Palmer growled, “mind your own business. Lucas, get back on the bike.”

  Lucas pulled himself upright and grabbed onto the centrifuge railing. His stomach contracted, and bile surged up into his mouth. He clenched his jaw and tried to swallow it back down, but his body was suddenly doing everything it could to separate itself from the contents of his stomach.

  “Are you okay?” Rahul asked, watching him with concern.

  Lucas opened his mouth to reply, and as if taking this as a cue, his stomach lurched one last time, and vomit sprayed everywhere like a wet cloud.

  Not everywhere. Mostly in front of him. Mostly all over Lieutenant-Commander Palmer.

  5

  AT LEAST THE Navy had excellent showers, Lucas told himself a few hours later, as he floated in a spray of hot, soapy water. It had taken a while to convince the ship’s medbay team that he was okay, but they’d finally let him go with a diagnosis of “mild concussion,” a shot of perithental, and a warning to take it easy. The chief medical officer, Dr. Voorhaus, had been particularly reluctant, but in the end he hadn’t found any reason to keep Lucas for observation.

  “Your bones are extremely fragile,” Voorhaus had said, peering at Lucas as if he were a specimen on a lab table. “You must be cautious. I do not want to see you in here again anytime soon.”

  Lucas turned off the shower and got dressed in a clean uniform. After a quick check of the ship’s map, he headed down to deck nineteen to drop off his vomit-covered jumpsuit at the ship’s laundry. As he was studying the various bags and receptacles, trying to figure out which one he should put his uniform in, a babble of voices caught his attention. He turned and saw Maria leading the first-year cadets down the Park Place ladder toward the hangar. Willem paused briefly on the ladderway to stare at Lucas and his stained jumpsuit. Willem’s eyebrows shot up and he started to laugh.