Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder)

by Scott Rhine

“Eighteen,” she corrected. When he appeared puzzled, she remembered, “You can’t repeat that number! It’s above board-level, it’s whale-level secret.”

  “Fine, eighteen, but you’re going to sleep at the clinic until you see Dr. Marsh.”

  “I’m fine!”

  “That wasn’t a negotiation,” he underscored. Zeiss took the silent glare as acknowledgment and continued. “Just that value is . . .” his mental signature went silent for a few seconds as he calculated, “about ten to the fifteenth power possibilities.”

  “It can’t be that big,” she gasped and clicked the real answer out on her pad. “Nine times ten to the fourteen. Are you sure you’re not a quantum talent?”

  He shook his head. “I’m just good at what I do. But your Goliath is even bigger, yes? You then match a different page to each of the eighteen.”

  She was already clicking numbers on the calculator. “There are only about five million of those combinations. It’s not so bad.”

  “Multiply those values together. Pretend your brilliant interface could search through a million combinations a second,” he said generously. “How many years would it take to go through every combination by brute force?”

  She wouldn’t believe it unless she did the math herself. Even then, she slapped the side of the pad. “A billion years?”

  He nodded. “To be fair, if you used a thousand state-of-the-art computers, you could get it done in a million or so. Do you see my point? And what you want is even bigger. The combinations of individual paragraphs—”

  Red collapsed to the floor in defeat, hands over her face. “Make it stop.”

  He knelt and whispered, “I’m trying. But first you had to admit that your approach wasn’t going to work. Yes? The trick to taming giants is to catch them when they’re little.”

  “Now you’re just messing with me.”

  “No. Turn the telescope around, and anything can look tiny. It’s all how you view the problem. David only needed one little river stone for Goliath.”

  “And one each for his brothers,” grumbled Red. Zeiss seemed surprised that she knew the story that well. “How do I shrink it?”

  “Critical path analysis. If you were trying to pack for one of your Saturday exercises, how would you start?”

  “Biggest weapon first.”

  “And the last thing you put in is the sun screen.”

  She blushed a little at this. Her nose had been red and flaky for days. “The little bottle can fit in anywhere around the edges.”

  “Now, apply that to the mission. Start with constraints, not possibilities.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The limit is two separate pages per person. Collective unconscious doesn’t count; they treat it like VD. Multiple paragraphs on the same page are okay; however, only about one in ten people can manage that feat. Only one in a hundred can master a whole page.”

  “Stop!” Zeiss insisted. “You’re exploding again, not limiting.”

  “My brain has a flat tire,” she whimpered. “Can you just tell me the answer and not make me discover it?”

  “Mission requirements: you need one trained psychiatrist to monitor the group for page decay. He’ll be the one with Ethics so he won’t talk about what you tell him and so the sponsors can trust him to follow the rules. Yes? With almost any mental page, the person chooses a second mental. Therapists lean toward Empathy.”

  She uncurled as he lectured. “How do you know all this?”

  “Professor Sorenson is training me to take over the Alien Intro class so he can concentrate on the advanced students. I’ve read his notes,” the TA pointed out.

  “Wait,” she said, hitting record on her pad.

  He repeated the description of the first mission candidate, then added, “A doctor is also required; this person comes in with advanced biochemistry for the genetic pages. Since you need organic biochemistry to understand protein folding, they could be the same person. Since you already have Auckland for one slot and Toby for the other, this frees you further. I presume that you won’t be replacing any of the six members you’ve already chosen?”

  She shook her head, a bit awed by how it was falling into place.

  “We’ll leave those specialties as an exercise for the student and move on to the bridge crew. The navigator will have the Red Giants page or Ideal Planets, and Quantum Computing. Hollis proved that when she saved the crew of moon base. The copilot could be a gravity sensor technician with knowledge of strange attractors for keeping track of relativistic position and speed.”

  “You know about the copilot stuff from that paper you did,” she exclaimed. “I’ll be pilot and commander. That’s half the team already.”

  “More. You’ll need a scout. Those have Out of Body or Mind-Machine Interface. You’ll need an Override page for rescue and repair.”

  Red hugged him. “Thank, you’re a genius. A whale-level genius,” she proclaimed.

  Taggart walked in on this display of exuberance, forcing Zeiss to explain, “I showed her where she slipped a decimal point.”

  “More like fifteen. Now I can sleep,” she said. When she tried to stand up, she swayed.

  “To the clinic,” ordered Zeiss.

  After they delivered her, Red fell asleep before the TA completed the forms. As he left, the commander whispered, “You remind me of this cartoon I saw once. It’s this big bulldog who has an itty bitty kitten crawl on his back, fluff it up, and go to sleep.”

  Zeiss gave him a colorful suggestion what he could do with the analogy or any other early morning student emergency in the future.

  Taggart chuckled. “You want to grab some breakfast, on me?”

  “I have to get up in an hour and start Monday. It’s my busiest day.” The TA grimaced. “Sure. I’d appreciate that. At some point, I need to find a certain Japanese artist and squeeze him till he talks.”

  The TA went to Sorenson’s pod a few minutes early that day. He noted Professor Solomon doing Tai Chi with a few other staff members in the faculty quad, and waved.

  Pressing the button on Daniel’s door, Zeiss said, “Boss, I have a situation report on our special project.” The couple buzzed him in.

  The young instructor started to describe Red’s bizarre all-nighter, and Daniel burst out laughing. “Just like her mother.”

  “So this obsessive-manic swing is normal?”

  “As we taper her off the suppressants, yes,” Trina said, coming from the bedroom. She had on a long shirt, but no bottoms. Zeiss caught a glimpse of her fantastically toned legs before turning away. Daniel communicated something to her with a glance, and she ducked back to the bedroom for pants as she concluded, “Unfortunately, the most we can do is keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t hurt herself too badly while she tests her new limits.”

  “Sorry,” Daniel whispered. “We’ve started to think of you as family. In here, we don’t always follow social convention.”

  Zeiss waved the apology away. “I’m intruding. I just thought you needed to know. Can’t we just stop Red from . . .?” The billionaire laughed even louder. The TA smiled. “You’re right, what was I thinking?”

  “You did a great job on your first night mania. A natural,” said Daniel.

  Trina was reading a medical report on her pad. “Mira’s experiencing leg cramps, but otherwise fine.”

  “Growing pains,” her husband replied. “Maybe next time she’ll think twice.”

  The three left the residence together.

  The Ethiopian almost choked on his water when he saw Horvath, the head of counter-terrorism, walking beside Zeiss. He departed soon after, walking to the bench at make-out point. As a female student jogged past on her morning run, she stopped to tie her laces. He hissed, “Last night’s power spike must have been a search for us. It started right after the transmission. It’s a good thing I pulled the plug. Get eyes on that Swiss huntsman, and bring me every minute of video we have since he’s been on the island. I need to know who else is involved.”
She jogged away without acknowledging.

  Chapter 15 – Coincidences

  Enemy agents couldn’t bug Zeiss’s bedroom because it was locked too well. They tried to put spyware on his pad, but he scrubbed it so frequently that their efforts came to nothing. They had to settle for a laser microphone and a team of observers.

  Zeiss didn’t get to talk to Sojiro until lunch. It was a chance meeting outside the dining hall. The artist asked, “What’s your favorite dessert?”

  “Huh?” the TA replied, caught off guard.

  “Our favorite kung fu fighter wants to know.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Angel food cake.”

  The student nodded. The agent following them whispered, “They’ve exchanged countersigns.”

  Zeiss complimented, “Great job on that search interface.”

  “She told you about it?” asked the Japanese student.

  “I’m cleared to board-level,” the TA said. “About project eighteen . . .”

  “She’d kill me and scrub the whole team if I said a word.”

  “Right, I just wanted to warn you, she has a few refinements to make based on the test run. Stop by the clinic and see her.”

  Soon after Sojiro walked into Red’s room, Trina snuck out the back. The man with the microphone whispered, “Confirmed, Sojiro is working for Searcher.”

  For the rest of the week, a team followed Zeiss. His routine bored them silly. His call sign became, “The Monk.” He was always working or locked in his cloister cell.

  During the report, the observer told Solomon, “Today he did only one thing differently; he wore black pants. The camera in his office picked up an email title: confirmation for specialized satellite imaging. It didn’t say where or what. He doesn’t read the good stuff in unsecured areas.”

  “You’re wasting your time. He’s a machine. He won’t make another mistake this soon. I’ll review the tapes. Switch to the Japanese boy.”

  That Saturday, Red picked up an angel food mix during her practice flight. Late Sunday afternoon, she whisked it together in a plastic bowl. Sojiro, helping to decipher the Asian instructions, said, “I think it says glass or metal bowl.”

  “That’s stupid,” countered Red. “How’s a cake going to know what kind of bowl I mixed it in? I bought the right cooking pan like Risa told me. What could go wrong?”

  Herkemer rigged a solar oven for them on the patio. The surveillance team took a lot of photos of the device. The cake, when Red took it out, was flat and rubbery.

  Sojiro spotted Zeiss at a distance and ran to intercept him. The Japanese student whispered, “You don’t like angel food. Your new favorite is pancakes.”

  “How’s the search going?” asked Zeiss.

  “The boss thought you made the problem too easy. She’s expanded the parameters to cover all the students. It’s going to take me weeks to handle the increased complexity in my code.”

  “You’ll manage it. She’ll find her man by the end of the semester and everyone will be happy.”

  Meanwhile, Red felt terrible about the ruined cake. First she blamed the foreign instructions, then Herkemer’s makeshift device. Eventually, Risa explained that the physical properties of plastic prevented bubbles from forming.

  Red only managed to keep from crying when Zeiss said, “Pancakes? That’s my favorite food of all time! But we need whipped cream.”

  Herk fist bumped him and Sojiro when the ladies went inside.

  “How’s the outlook for the rest of the semester?” asked the TA.

  “Smooth sailing, except the Extreme Environments final,” said the bomb technician. “I checked out the equipment they’re loading.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?” asked Sojiro. Toby used the distraction to hide his piece of rubber cake behind a low-water shrub.

  “In the military, we call it recon,” said Herkemer. “Only idiots choose their gear blind. Anyway, me and the two ladies will be hip-deep in snow for two days. They’re going to make it brutal because there are more freshmen than normal this year. Anyone know about winter survival?”

  Zeiss snorted. “In my country, they teach this in grade school. Don’t they have winter in Poland?”

  “I’m with Herk,” said the artist. “If it’s cold, stay inside. I’m glad I had my test before class started—ocean survival. We were in a raft and had to conserve water, but I had plenty of fish and seaweed to eat.”

  “I’m a city boy; if I get cold, I take a bus or call a cab. They don’t have to send dogs to find my body,” said the Polish man.

  “No wonder you guys never won a war,” the TA quipped.

  Herk had him in a headlock when the girls came back out. Sojiro was trying to tickle him, but it wasn’t working. “I’m trained to resist questioning,” Zeiss claimed.

  “Let him go,” Risa ordered.

  The guys stood up straight, hands at their sides. Herkemer said, “Z just volunteered to tell us about winter survival.”

  “Getting through this is about shelter and calories—both heat and food. We’ll start with the basics of digging a snow cave,” the TA began. “Say this cake is a snow bank.”

  ****

  As soon as he could arrange it, Dr. Solomon ran into Rogers at the restaurant. “I hear you are going behind God’s back for the final.”

  “That’s confidential,” said the ex-Seal.

  “I only mention it because your assistants were complaining about being overloaded with students.” When the survival teacher grunted assent, the Ethiopian continued rhythmically. “If you had need, my good friend, Mr. Z, is very skilled at winter travel. He has hiked many times in the Alps, once on a rescue party,” the spy lied.

  “Why isn’t he here talking?”

  “Apart from his modesty, he could not undertake such a worthy venture unless the idea came from his Professor Sorenson.”

  The agent could see the other instructor’s wheel turning. Rogers said, “The professor owes me one. We’ll see. Much obliged, Johannes.”

  ****

  A few mornings later, in the gym changing room, Daniel told Zeiss, “I know we’ve put you under a lot of pressure, but something new has Trina worried.”

  “Orbital lasers?”

  “No. Those, we can handle. It’s a female thing.”

  “About this high?” the TA asked, placing a hand in front of his nipples. “With attitude twice as tall?”

  “Yeah, her,” Daniel said shyly. “I need a big favor. We’d like you to go along on the emergency shadow crew to monitor her team. If anything goes wrong, I need you to personally do the extraction.”

  “I . . . of course, sir. Who’ll look after you?”

  “I’ll be fine for a few days. Finals week is slow. I’ll see you get hazard pay and a bonus.”

  “You don’t have to. I have friends on that campout. But they have to agree for me to intervene, because accepting assistance means they drop from the program and fail.”

  Daniel stared at him. “This is more important that the program.”

  “Sir, no offense, but I have at least three oaths pulling me in different directions. I need a good reason to bend the others.”

  The billionaire gazed over his shoulder. “You can’t let on I told you to either of them.”

  “Who?”

  “Trina raised Red until she was six.” The secret was harder to force out than Daniel anticipated. The deception of a good friend was even more difficult. “If anything happens to that girl on your ‘campout’, I’m sleeping in your room.”

  So many things made sense now to Zeiss. The women had a history. The TA nodded. “I’ll walk the line, sir. If she doesn’t come back, I don’t either.”

  “Good man.”

  “In the meantime, I need your people to vet Sojiro for me; third-year clearance should be enough.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you everything, but if you want Red to stop triggering alarms all over the place, I need a student helper. He has crazy computer skills, and if I
help him, he might tell me about a few of her schemes before they wake me up in the middle of the night.”

  Daniel snorted. “Consider it done.”

  Chapter 16 – Survival

  The team had their Christmas party early in the girls’ room because it was raining too hard to eat outside. The spending limit was twenty dollars. Most people gave luxury food items because they wouldn’t be able to enjoy such treats on the trip. Sojiro gave colorful dream catchers, due to Red’s recent spate of nightmares. Zeiss bought Herkemer an e-book on building rabbit snares. Toby got a Swiss Army knife—used, from a surplus store. Risa received a folding, ceramic gardening shovel. He gave Red a slingshot. “It arrived yesterday. It goes in your hair.”

  Red knit her eyebrows. “Thanks? I’ll play with it when I get back. You don’t know much about girl stuff, do you?”

  Zeiss turned to Herkemer without saying a word. The Polish man told the team leader, “He knows what a real hair clip looks like; he’s not stupid.”

  Sojiro picked up the theme. “He wants you to conceal it.”

  “On the trip,” clarified Toby, when she still wasn’t getting the clue.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “If he told you, he’d be breaking the rules,” said Risa. “Even I know that, Monita.”

  “Always with the rules,” Red complained. “Is that why you suggested this whole gift exchange?”

  The TA opened a new drink instead of answering or even facing her.

  “Don’t I get a present?” asked Sojiro.

  “Oops.” Zeiss pulled out a new badge on a blue lanyard. “You’re my student assistant for special projects.”

  “Cool. I’m a deputy, pardner,” the artist said with a horrible John Wayne accent. “What for?”

  “Keep that under your vest, please,” Zeiss requested. “Mainly, it’s in case something happens to me on my trip. Professor Horvath can get you into my room, and that’s the emergency key for my computer. I have a big experiment for my dissertation running this weekend, and if I don’t make it back, someone needs to read the results.”

  The Japanese artist gripped the lanyard, touched. “Sure. Your dissertation’s safe with me.”