Fighting Gravity

by Leah Petersen

  My face was hot but I refused to bow my head or lower my eyes, instead meeting their disapproving looks with one of defiance. Looking back, I realize that wasn’t a terribly intelligent response to the situation. No doubt, it only confirmed what the director had said.

  Director Kagawa did me an incredible favor that day. Had he watched me and plotted in silence, he might very well have gotten the proof he needed to have me removed from the IIC. I was always stubborn and rebellious, but by setting up the expectation for me to misbehave, he gave me something to rebel against that helped rather than harmed me. So I resolved to be exemplary in word and deed, academically and personally. I vowed to myself that whatever I truly thought or felt, he would never see it and would never have opportunity to condemn me for it.

  It is humbling now to realize how much I owe that man, whom I so passionately hated.

  -

  The rest of the afternoon was spent in a tour of the main buildings, and lessons in the rules and routines of our new home.

  As we were walking through the building set aside for medical facilities, I was pulled aside by a young woman in a white smock.

  I cast a glance at the teacher conducting the tour but he just nodded for me to go.

  I followed the woman into a stark, sterile room.

  “Sit there,” she said, pointing to a raised table with a stepstool in front of it. I did as she said, trying not to squirm—and not just because of the stripes I was sitting on.

  She joined a man on the other side of the room and they both cast a glance back at me. The man grimaced.

  “You were right,” the woman said, “they really did bring one.”

  The man scoffed. “Unbelievable. Have you seen this? No medical data on this one. None at all. If he didn’t have a citID I’d have a hard time believing he was real.”

  “Emperor only knows what we’re going to have to treat him for.”

  “Everything. Whatever it is he’s probably got it.”

  “I’m going to have to order most of the inoculations. We don’t even stock that stuff.”

  “Well we’ve got the STD panels, at least.”

  “He’s probably too young to start those, isn’t he?”

  “An unclass? I’d be surprised if he didn’t have half the diseases already. Wouldn’t hurt to start the repro-control either. Can’t start too early with them.”

  I rejoined the group an hour later, my face still burning. Kirti cast me a questioning look but I just shook my head and wouldn’t look at her.

  -

  At the end we were shown to our own rooms.

  The room I entered took my breath away. This couldn’t be for me alone. It was huge by my standards at the time—fifteen by twenty feet, with a large window in the wall across from the door.

  There was a sitting area, and past that a bed with a nightstand on each side. A full double bed.

  The closet was full of clothes. There were ten complete uniforms: navy jackets, crisp white shirts, slate gray pants, two of them dress uniforms. There were casual outfits and sports suits, and on the floor of the closet were four different pairs of shoes.

  In the drawers beside the closet were an unfathomable number of pairs of underwear and socks. (I blushed to imagine the embarrassing situations they must have been anticipating, to provide so many at one time.) There were even undershirts, something I couldn’t begin to imagine a necessity for in this place that was surely always warm enough. Another drawer was full of sets of pajamas. It was an embarrassment of riches.

  To the right of the entry door was the most incredible desk. The entire surface was one continuous vid screen. I turned it on with a touch. With only a few swipes of my fingers I was able to open at least ten different documents while leaving ample room in the middle front to input my own work. Happiness tingled in my whole body.

  On top of that shock, I discovered I had a bathroom all my own. The shower was big enough to wash yourself in without ever hitting your elbows on the walls.

  I wandered back over to the closet, looking down the line of crisp, new shirts. I stripped out of the borrowed clothes and, almost trembling, put on one—one of several—of my new suits of clothes. I was running my hands over the selection of socks when I heard the dinner bell. I looked up in panic. Dinner. I was supposed to be in uniform and on time.

  I stumbled into socks and shoes, fought with one of the confounding neckties, grabbed a coat and dashed into the hall and the noisy press of the other boys. Chuck grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop.

  “Here,” he said, “like this.” With one tug my tie unraveled, and in a flurry he had it rearranged so that it looked like everyone else’s.

  “Thank you,” I breathed.

  “I’m not helping you with your fly, though,” he said over his shoulder with a laugh as he rushed ahead to join the other boys. I zipped up and hurried after them.

  -

  The dining hall was as impressive as the great hall, in its way. There were long, dark tables set in parallel lines across the width of the room, enough to accommodate the more than 350 members of the IIC, from the youngest student (me, actually) to the oldest fellow, a centenarian from twenty Selections ago.

  As with everything, there was a system of seating based on rank and seniority, the two roughly equivalent at the IIC. The seating wasn’t so much assigned as enforced with the weight of tradition. There was a head table with seating for twenty set up on a small rise on the far side of the room. Spreading out from there were the oldest of us down to the youngest.

  For the forty of us who were still full-time students, there were four tables, two for the previous group Selected and two for us. We were directed there and instructed to stand in place as the director entered.

  He said the blessing, the same as on the transport. There was food in quantities and varieties that still surprised me. And succeeded in distracting me, at least for the rest of the evening, from the cold fear that had settled in my stomach the moment I realized Director Kagawa meant to be rid of me, and the humiliation of the medical exam.

  Back in my room, I took Carrie’s drawing out of my pocket and smoothed it onto the adhesive surface above my desk, careful not to tear or wrinkle it. I sat down to record a message. When I entered Ma’s citID I got an error:

  Access denied.

  I stared at it in disbelief. I tried again.

  Access denied.

  I entered Carrie’s.

  Access denied.

  I dashed out of my room and over to Chuck’s. He came to the door in pajamas, his head cocked to the side.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I got access denied! For Carrie too.”

  He made out the meaning of that breathless jumble and gave me a sad little smile, patting my arm.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “We don’t have families anymore,” he said, with a calm matter-of-factness.

  “What?”

  “We’ve got an important job here, gotta have focus and dedication. No distractions. Once we’re adults we can contact them if we want.”

  “But I didn’t even get to say goodbye!”

  His mouth twisted in good-natured sympathy.

  “Yeah. That’s rough.”

  I stumbled back to my room without another word, too stunned for anything else.

  fg4

  I was awakened in the morning by the bell, and rolled out of my bed and into the shower. Having my own bathroom was a heady luxury, and later as I made my way to the dining hall with the other children I found myself feeling light and carefree in a way I didn’t expect. I found Kirti and, though I didn’t ask her about it, I could see that she’d had a better night.

  In the school building, we were grouped by age: the eight, nine, and ten-year-olds in one class, the older children in the other. I would have a lot of catching up to do. Not only because I was the youngest, but because my education so far had been marginal at best.

  Dr. Hammo
nd made it clear I was to catch up and keep up in the expected time frame. To do otherwise would result in serious repercussions. I bit my tongue and said nothing.

  In truth, I didn’t need to be told to apply myself; it was my enthusiasm that got me into trouble. For the first time in my life, I had teachers who knew more than I did, teachers who could answer any question I could ask. And ask I did. For my trouble, the teachers labeled me disruptive, undisciplined, and hopelessly behind. Some managed to take insult, as if I were questioning their ability to teach.

  Some of those things were true, of course. I was undisciplined. My questions were disruptive in their frequency and their tendency to wander off on tangents. I wasn’t as far behind the other children as they believed. Oh, I was very behind, but more than once my questions were answered with much more basic information than I’d asked for. They had formed their opinions of me and my level of knowledge and didn’t choose to see past that.

  Dr. Frozt, the literature teacher, got fed up that first day and I got three licks of the cane from her. I kept more of my questions to myself after that, but not all of them. My craving for knowledge was far too potent to be squelched by a mere three stripes.

  That night, in my room, sitting at my desk, which made my stomach flutter with happiness every time I looked at it, I gorged myself on answers to all the questions I’d come up with that day and then some. I was nodding off when I realized I hadn’t completed my homework, having gone off point far too many times. I struggled through the rest of it and fell into an exhausted, blissful sleep.

  I was bleary eyed in the morning, but no less eager. The second day went better than the first. I managed to better channel and focus my thoughts, and to save most of my tangents to research later.

  In spite of my efforts, the teachers saw what they wanted to see. I went over the desk three times in the first five days. It was frustrating, infuriating, and of course painful. But there was nothing to be done about it except endure.

  It took little effort on my part to carry out my resolve to be an exemplary student, simply because there couldn’t have been a student more eager and appreciative than I was. Still they managed to see and punish every mistake I made and many I didn’t.

  I bit my tongue, took my stripes in silence, and moved on.

  Kirti was more affected by my undeserved infamy than I was. She cried every time I was punished. I did my best to reassure her that it wasn’t as bad as she thought, but it was quite some time before she was able to bear my punishments in white-faced silence.

  In truth, the prejudice, my anger and resentment, were just minor annoyances. The experience of such schooling was like nothing I’d ever known. The only thing I had to compare it to was the stolen hours in a library booth, wallowing in text after text, chasing facts and ideas like butterflies in a field of wildflowers.

  This was entirely different, though. Directed, focused, and challenging, with stimulating raw knowledge laid out before me, and answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask.

  My bottom became very intimate with the cane. But I wouldn’t have given it up for all the universe.

  -

  If Kirti suffered for me in silence, Chuck seemed to take pride in the way I endured it. But what he accepted as unavoidable from the adults, he wouldn’t stand for among us. It was this attitude that led to the first of our many fights with Sasha.

  I suppose the first fight was inevitable. In light of the director’s public opinion of me, Sasha set about goading me at every opportunity. He was easy to ignore at first; I was so absorbed in my experience of the place and my new education that I barely noticed him. But after a couple of weeks it came to a head.

  Kirti and I were walking together to our next class when Sasha stepped in front of me and stopped me with a hand on my chest.

  “You don’t belong here,” he said. “Why don’t you leave?”

  I tried to step around him, seething but highly motivated to avoid trouble. He stepped with me. “Are you deaf too, freak? Besides being stupid?”

  “Drop it, Sasha,” Chuck said from behind me. “Leave him alone. If you hate him so much, just avoid him. He didn’t do anything to you.”

  Sasha laughed. “Freak’s got a champion.” He towered over Chuck.

  Chuck’s punch was too unexpected to be avoided. Sasha staggered back a step but then came barreling toward Chuck, his fist flying. Chuck dodged it but took the next punch in the gut, doubling over. As Sasha went to swing at Chuck again, I crashed my fist into his face. Dr. Laan came rushing out into the hallway and hauled us apart. He dragged Sasha and me to the director’s office by the scruff of our necks, ordering Chuck to follow.

  We stood before Director Kagawa’s desk and endured a long, loud scolding. Even when the truth of the story came out, corroborated by Dr. Laan according to what the other children had told him, I was still singled out as the source of the trouble. So when the three of us went over the desk, pants and undershorts around our ankles, I took twice the punishment the other two did. I endured in silence as always. Chuck grunted through clenched teeth after every blow. Sasha blubbered from almost the very first. That alone made the stripes worth taking.

  That was not the first of such scenes. Even when the fight stayed between Chuck and Sasha alone, I was still punished alongside them. I hated that Chuck had to defend me when I was quite capable of defending myself. But my hands were tied; my fear—not of the bully or the fight, but of giving Director Kagawa what he needed—was stronger than the guilt.

  For Chuck, it was much simpler. I was his friend, He defended his friends. No more complicated than that. I tried to talk him out of it, once, after he’d yet again been caned for fighting my battle. He looked at me as if I’d insisted the atom had never been split.

  The trips to the director’s office after a fight weren’t the only times I found myself before—or over—his desk. He requested regular reports from my teachers and when he had a large enough collection of infractions, I would be summoned to his office to be scolded for a list of things I usually hadn’t even done.

  “Cheating on a math test,” he said from behind his desk.

  “But I wasn’t cheating. I don’t even know why she thought I was.”

  “A liar as well,” he said to himself, shaking his head as he looked down at his list again. I bit hard on the inside of my cheek and glared at the floor.

  “Calling Sasha names during your exercise period in order to provoke him.”

  “But I didn’t say a word to him! He called me names.”

  He scoffed.

  “Late for curfew.”

  “That was the night we did the lab in the observatory. We didn’t start until after dark. Most of us were late for curfew.”

  He laid his tablet down and placed his hands on the desk in front of him, one over the other.

  “Do you know why the unclass exist?” he said.

  “No sir.”

  “Do you know why, in an empire that has spread peace and justice throughout the galaxy, poverty and lawlessness persist?”

  I knew where this was going. “No sir.”

  “It is because of you. All of the unclass, each and every one. You live in poverty and squalor because you can’t be bothered to work or to better yourselves. You suffer from crimes and violence because you yourselves commit them. You treat the laws of civilized society as if they were as worthless as you are.”

  I shoved my fists into my pockets.

  “No unclass has ever been brought to the IIC. Not one in three hundred years. Your intellect may be a genetic anomaly, but it doesn’t change what you are. The proof of that is clear in your sociological scores: propensity to anger and violence, no concept of self-sacrifice and the greater good. All of which is borne out in your behavior here.

  “This institution is a shining beacon of all that is good in the Empire. Your presence here is an outrage. You are a stain on our perfection, poison in our well. And until the Committee agrees with me, perhaps I c
an beat enough wickedness out of you to mitigate your effect on the rest of us.

  “Take down your shorts.”

  I hated the man with a passion, but each punishment only made me more determined, and more confident. If he had sufficient data to prove his hypothesis, I would already be gone. So no matter how many stripes I carried away from his office, or what insults still rang in my ears, I always left happier than when I had entered. Because I’d won again.

  fg5

  Three weeks after we’d arrived, I was sitting in math class. The class before had been physics. Not only were these two of my favorite subjects, but the juxtaposition was exhilarating. The concepts from each subject fed off of the other, inspiring me with questions and ideas.

  I was making notes and sketches on my tablet, so lost in the equations flowing across the screen like a music score, interweaving the complex harmonies that had been running through my mind since physics class, that I didn’t even hear Dr. Noh approach. The tablet disappeared from under my hand.

  “What is this, Mr. Dawes?” Dr. Noh demanded.

  I dropped my head. “Just an idea I had. I was making some notes.”

  “Are these the problems you’ve been given to work on?”

  I wanted to protest that I was paying attention. That’s where I’d gotten the idea to begin with! But instead I answered, “No, ma’am.”

  “Get up to the desk, then.”

  I shuffled up to her desk, took my three, and went back to my seat. But the real blow, the worst of the punishment, was that my tablet was blank when she handed it back. All my work had been wiped away. I slumped down in my seat and began the problems I’d been assigned.

  Determined to do nothing else worthy of censure, I focused on my assignments that night and diverted no time to recreating the work that Dr. Noh had destroyed. Still, it played through my dreams all night and was foremost in my mind all the next day. I wouldn’t allow myself to put down on tablet any of my ideas or questions, afraid of getting caught again, but I saved, collected, and catalogued ideas in my mind.