He stood on a cylindrical pedestal, staring down at his reflection in the pool, and as students passed by, heading to or from classes (on the double!), they tossed offerings into the water. It was a silly ritual, but everyone believed, or at least said they believed, that it was necessary: "I gave the old man a fifty chip before my math test, and I squeaked out with a 2.51." "I gave him seventy-five before the physics practical, and I aced it!"
The tokens tossed into the pool weren't coins—no one used money here, and there was nothing to buy at the Academy, anyway, because all the necessities were furnished and firstyear cadets were not allowed any luxuries. Instead, the offerings were time. At the end of the first month, cadets began to receive time chips as rewards for achievement. You could even trade commendations for chips. Upperclassmen bought favors with them.
Beginning at midterm of freshman year, each chip allowed the cadet a given interval of leave on either midbreak or weekbreak. They started at ten minutes and went all the way to a thousand minutes. The lower denominations were useless in themselves, but they added up. If you had three hundred minutes in chips, you could extend your half-day leave for five whole hours and not have to report where you were going or what you were doing to anyone. That gave you extra time in the harbor town of Haven, some seventy kilometers from campus, to relax and celebrate.
Most of the gifts tossed to the God of 2.5 were ten-minute chips. Though the first-years couldn't use them until after midterm, they could get their hands on the chips if they were willing to help out a lucky upperclassman with studies, errands, or services—like being a sparring partner for physical conditioning, for instance. You stored them up, because they didn't expire, and hoped that you made Midshipman 4 and could redeem them some day.
Or if you were worried about a test, you tossed one in the pool.
Asteria didn't bother trying to accumulate them, unlike everyone else.
She had no place to go, and no one to go with. The last thing she needed, she thought, was free time. And so the God of 2.5 would receive every chip she got hold of.
Dai had already acquired a ten-minute chip by the first weekbreak day. He tossed it into the pool as he and Asteria passed by on their way to the track. "That's to guarantee a good grade on next week's math test," he called across the water.
"Where'd you get it?" Asteria asked.
"Upperclassman gave it to me because I helped him fix an AI unit he'd broken," Dai said.
"And you threw it away. I mean, I wouldn't keep them, but you're looking forward to going into Haven."
Dai shrugged. "There'll be more. And what's ten minutes, anyway? The place feels deserted, doesn't it?"
Asteria had to agree. All of the eligible upperclassmen had taken off for their leave day, and they passed hardly anyone on their way to the running tracks.
When they arrived at the freshman track, a couple of Aristo boys were just coming off it. "Tamlin!" one of them said cheerfully. "Thanks for the book on early history. I'll get it back to you tomorrow after class."
"No hurry, my lord," Dai said.
"They're not calling you 'Die, Scum' any longer?" asked Asteria as she started to stretch out.
"Some of them are. Some aren't," Dai said, doing knee bends. "Hey, I'm sorry that Kayser and his gang started that 'Disaster' thing. If I'd thought—"
"Don't worry about it," Asteria said. "I don't."
They ran their laps, with Asteria wondering how Dai managed to fit in so well. Aristos and Commoners alike seemed to regard him as…maybe not as a friend, exactly, but as someone they could talk to without insulting. She wished she had his secret.
That evening as Dai, Valesa, and Asteria sat in the common room of Bronze 1 reviewing for a math exam, Kayser came through, glanced at them, and said, "Three freaks of nature. Die, Scum, Disaster, and Total Loss."
Asteria kept her cool. Neither of her friends acknowledged the comment, either, and Kayser went on his way.
Harl Glamis, an Aristo, looked up from his AI screen and called out, "Don't mind Mastral, Dai. Name-calling's the mark of a weak mind."
Asteria started to agree, but Dai stopped her with a hand on her arm and a slight shake of his head. He just nodded pleasantly at Harl.
Harl closed his AI unit and got up.
"When he calls you names, just remember—his cerebral cortex is about the size of a pocknut."
Dai snorted in laughter. "All right, I'll remember," he said. But when Harl strolled away, he muttered, "I shouldn't have laughed. If he tells Kayser, that's just going to make things worse."
"I think Lord Mastral is bad," Valesa half-whispered. "I mean… really bad. Don't you?"
"I try not to think about him at all," Asteria said.
eight
The Academy occupied more than a third of its sprawling
subtropical island, though the Space Fleet section of it was far inland. Asteria was used to the wildly varying seasons on Theron, a sharply tilted world. Winters were dark and bleak, with only a couple of hours of sunlight a day, and summers were bright and cool, with twenty hours of light during the warmest part of the year. As her first month ended, she became aware that here there were seasons, too, though they were milder ones. The rainy part of the year set in, with day after day of steady, soaking drizzle. The cadets still ran to classes, but in foul-weather gear: gray for first-years, tan for second-years, dark green for juniors, and royal blue for seniors. Nothing else changed very much.
Somehow during that time of uninterrupted rain, Asteria began to talk with Bren Maddon. They had physical training and their physics class together, and the latter was a complete mystery to Bren. "I'll never get this," she had wailed to Asteria late one evening as they studied in the common room of Bronze 1.
"You just have to get your mind around the equations," Asteria said, more snappishly than she had intended. She bit her lip, sorry that she had caused the other girl to flinch. In a softer tone, she added, "What problem are you on? Okay, that deals with the conservation of momentum. Remember that from class? Now, first we need to determine the vector. Here's how to do that—"
The girls bent over the screen of Asteria's workpad, and Asteria walked her through the process twice. Suddenly, with excitement in her voice, Bren said, "So if there are two objects in an isolated system, if one gains momentum, the other has to lose the same amount?"
"You've got it," Asteria said.
"Now I feel like such a numbhead!" Bren said, tapping her forehead. "Thanks, Dis…I mean, Aster."
"You're welcome. You feel like such a what?"
Bren laughed self-consciously. "Numbhead. Sorry, that's kind of local slang. I come from a Fringe World, and I guess we talk funny."
"I come from a Fringe World too," Asteria said.
"Which one?"
"Theron."
"Oh, yeah, I've heard of it," Bren said, nodding. "That's where the religious fanatics—" She broke off, blushing. "Sorry, Aster."
"That's all right."
"How is Lord Mastral treating you?" Bren asked.
Asteria shrugged. "You see how he avoids me in PT. Outside of class he annoys me. He's got all the Aristos calling me Disaster."
"He's an idiot." Bren blushed. "Don't tell anyone I said that."
"I won't." Asteria flashed a wicked smile. "Just think of what I could make of his name!"
"Don't!" Bren said anxiously. "Insulting an Aristo can get you expelled!"
"I won't insult him to his face," said Aster. "But so far I haven't met many Aristos that I like."
In a soft voice, Bren said, "I'm haven't either. Those Aristos—" she broke off, shaking her head.
The two girls looked at each other. Bren was sturdily built, and it wasn't hard to guess that her homeworld was a highgravity one. "I'll bet you come from Kopenos," Asteria said.
Bren's eyes widened. "I do! How did you know?"
"Just a guess," Asteria told her. She stretched. "Tomorrow's midbreak. Are you going to the War Games?"
"No,
I can't." Bren sighed. "I have to study. I'm so far behind! I'm barely hanging on to a 2.6. If I slip—" She didn't finish the sentence.
"I'm not going either," Asteria said. She had finally decided not to sign up for the first-term games—few entering students ever did—and she didn't care to sit in the stands and overhear upperclassmen murmuring snidely about the Commoner in their midst. "If you want, we can have a study session instead. The place ought to be quiet for a couple of hours, anyway. I think you can get the principles of physics—it's just a matter of seeing how they apply."
Bren nodded eagerly. "I'd like that."
* * *
Not a friendship exactly, but Bren was someone to talk to, and someone who shared some of Asteria's feelings and attitudes. "Aristos think they're so great," Bren would mutter. "I mean, it's just an accident of birth."
"I know some Aristos who are pretty bad accidents all by themselves," Asteria growled, thinking of the indolent baron who ran her homeworld and who couldn't be bothered to chase down a band of murderous Raiders.
* * *
Asteria was sitting in the common room the next day proofreading an upperclassman's history report (the girl from Bronze 2 had assigned her the task when she learned that Asteria wasn't going to the War Games) when a crowd of cadets returned from the arena, chattering and laughing. Valesa Storm ran straight to her. "Did you hear?" she asked.
"Hear what?"
Valesa's face looked stricken. "Dai Tamlin's hurt. He was playing Corona football against Lord Mastral's team—"
Asteria jumped up. "How bad?" she asked, her heart thumping hard.
"Broken wrist, they said, and—where are you going?"
"To sick bay," Asteria called back over her shoulder.
She ran across campus to the medical building where she had received her examination. Before she could ask about Dai, though, she saw him, his face pinched, his left arm in a sling. "Hi," he said, forcing a grin. "I sort of got stomped on." He wiggled the fingers of his left hand.
"What happened?"
He shrugged. "I caught a pass in the last minute of the game. If I'd scored, we would've won, but Lord Mastral and his friend Broyden stopped me. They really piled on."
"And you broke your wrist when you fell?"
Dai shook his head. "I was trying to hold onto the ball so it wouldn't be counted as a fumble. Broyden hunched over me, and Lord Mastral stamped on my hand. The referees didn't see it."
"You've got to report that!" Asteria whispered.
"No use. I can't prove it. And Broyden and Mastral are Aristos. A court-martial would believe their word over a Commoner's. Let's get back to the barracks. They've given me something to make my bones heal faster, and I don't feel so great."
They walked back through the darkening evening. "So you lost?" she asked.
"Yeah, by three points. If I'd scored—"
"If you'd scored," interrupted a sneering voice from the shadows, "you would have been a halfway decent player instead of a loser."
Asteria felt a jolt from her belt, felt all her muscles tighten. "Kayser, shut up," she snapped.
"You will address me as 'my lord,' you Commoner filth," Kayser said, stepping out of the shadow. Broyden and Gull flanked him.
"Come on, relax," Dai said uneasily.
"Dai told me how you cheated," Asteria hissed.
Kayser smirked. "At least I played. You were too much of a coward to go out for the games," he said. "I wanted to show you what would have happened to you. You want to fight me, Disaster? There are three of us and only one of you."
"Two," Dai said. "And I'm right-handed, my lord, so this wrist won't be a problem."
Kayser's eyes darted from Asteria to Dai and back again. "We'll break the other one this time," he said. Then he snapped, "Get them!"
Both Broyden and Gull had seen Asteria in action, and they stepped forward slowly and reluctantly. The power from the belt seemed to fill Asteria like liquid fire. Again, she had the strange sense that things were moving in slow motion. Broyden was nearer. She dropped, braced on her arm, and did a full leg sweep, catching him at the ankles and sending him toppling. Before he had hit, she sprang upright, feinted so that Gull's quick blow whooshed harmlessly past her cheek, and uphanded his chin, stunning him and sending him reeling against Kayser, who had stepped back.
"Get off me!" Kayser shrieked, shoving Gull to the side.
"Come on," Asteria said.
Kayser looked down at Broyden, who was gripping his ankle and who looked as if he wasn't even considering getting up. Gull staggered, turned, and ran.
Kayser's lip curled. "I'll let you off this time. You could be expelled for touching me, Disaster. You remember that! Come on, idiot!" He turned and strode away. Broyden got up and followed him with an exaggerated limp.
"Always fun at the Royal Military Academy," Dai muttered.
"Next time," Asteria growled, "I think I will go out for the War Games."
* * *
As the term went on, the rains began to break up—instead of raining twenty-six hours a day, now it rained for only twenty. Occasionally, the nights were even clear enough of clouds for the other suns of the Corona to show up in the dark sky as a cluster of brilliant stars. Coriam, the homeworld of the Corona Aristocrats, showed up as a shining blue planet, so near that it was visible as a minute blue disk. It was the third world in the system, and rumor said that it was a cool planet, with dark seas and tall mountains capped with shining white snow. Not that a Commoner would ever be likely to see them in person.
A week before midterm, Asteria had racked up a 3.1 average, and Dai had barely edged her out—3.13. "I'd do better than that if I didn't have chemistry," she complained. "I've got a 3.8 in PT."
"Because you have those crazy reflexes," complained Dai. It was weekbreak, and the two of them were hiding out in a study room of the library—if they showed their faces on campus, some upperclassman was sure to yell for them to do something: run to the barracks for a piece of sports equipment, a thendel racquet or a fieldball glove, or return some pulsebooks to the library, or even proofread and correct homework. Dai sprawled in his chair. "I still don't know how you manage to progress at the speed you do. What are you bench-pressing now?"
"Fifty-five K, standardized."
He grimaced. "I'm up by exactly half a kilo. How do you do it?"
"I don't know." The truth was, however, she was beginning to suspect there was more to her steady gain in physical strength than just training. She knew it wasn't the food they were given—it was supposed to meet all nutritional standards, but judging from the taste, it probably had about as many vitamins as sawdust.
"As long as I hold a 3.0 or better, I'm not worrying," Dai said.
"Why a 3.0?" asked Asteria with a smile. "Don't you make offerings to the God of 2.5?"
"Sure," he said, grinning. "I'm no heathen. But I've signed on for the third term in space. While the Aristos are having summer break, I intend to be serving on a Fleet ship."
"I signed up too," Asteria said. "I didn't know about the grade requirement."
"It's just for first-years," Dai told her. "After that, 2.5 is good enough. Not many first-year students sign on, though."
"Why not? Space experience—"
"We're serfs," he reminded her. "For us, space experience is going to be doing the work even Cybots object to doing. Aristos don't like getting their fingers dirty."
"I'm not afraid of work," Asteria said. "Summer can't come too fast for me."
"Time does seem to fly by when you're having fun," Dai agreed with a grin, flexing his nearly healed wrist. "Six more days to midterm." He stretched and yawned. "And then we can get away from this zoo for half a day once a month. And at least we'll be out of orientation after midterm. We'll have study period instead for two days a week and pilot pre-training for the other four. Have you ever flown a ship?"
She shook her head. "Not a spaceship. Dad let me handle the controls of a skimmer once or twice. Not takeoffs or landi
ngs, but cruising. It's not the same."
"No, it isn't," Dai agreed wryly. "Anyhow, there's one subject where I've got the edge on you. I've flown an orbiter…umm, twice. Took off, docked, and landed."
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