Si Vis Pacem

by Robin Banks

  Reggie’s door glides open and he emerges, looking more tired than ever and not the least amused. I open my mouth to speak, but he lifts up one hand to silence me and rubs the bridge of his nose with the other.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this right. These kids have been assigned places at a learning institution. All I have to do is authorize their transfers. Instead you suggest that I fudge my way through a procedural loophole so I can send them to work in a…” he stops and runs through a couple of breath cycles. “A mine? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  Dee takes a step forward. “Chancellor, Pax and I spent our formative years at a Youth Sorting Centre.”

  “Indeed. Your results do them credit. You are two of our best students.”

  “Do you have any idea what life is like in a place like that?”

  His eyes narrow. “No, but I know what life is like in a mine. My father was a miner. The past tense is not accidental.”

  “While I was on Alecto, not a day went past that I didn’t consider opening a vein, just so I could get out.” She says it with perfect calm and composure, but I don’t doubt for a moment that she means it. “The only thing that stopped me was my cowardice. And the center we were sent to was one of the better ones. We were reasonably well-cared for, and we had hopes of making something of ourselves once we got out. A center for the unwanted children of third-classers won’t offer them either. Don’t do this. Don’t send them there.”

  “Cadet Isaaq, what you suggest is a ruse. It’s a game of find-the-lady with paperwork and children! The adoption process is not intended to be used so children can be released into the wild to fend for themselves!”

  “No. It isn’t. But we can use it to ensure that the Pollux children get a say on what kind of life they want to build for themselves. At the very least, give them the option.”

  “And who do you propose would adopt them?”

  I step forward. “Martyn. We would, but we can’t. Dee and Rody are third-classers, I have no share, and the Bens and Nate are halfies…”

  “Pax! Language, please!”

  I stop myself from eye rolling. “They have only a half share, Chancellor. Martyn is the only one of us who can do it, and he’s happy to.”

  “How many of these children are there?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that Martyn and his partner own seventeen shares, and he chooses to work here?”

  “No. He can only have two adopted children at a time, but he can emancipate them immediately, provided that they meet the self-sufficiency criteria, and adopt two more. There are no quotas pertaining to these circumstances.”

  “That’s because these circumstances are a giant fiddle!”

  Dee steps forward. “At the very least, go and talk to the Pollux children. They will tell you what they want.”

  “They are children! They do not know what they want!”

  “They are all sixteen and up. The younger children went missing in transit. That should tell you all you need to know about how well the Fed take care of their wards.”

  “That tells me all I need to know about the insubordination of the Pollux colonists. I don’t think you need to facilitate more of it. I will not be a part in this!”

  That’s when his secretary clears her throat. We all turn to look at her. She types a flurry of characters into her terminal, then turns to smile at us.

  “Chancellor, you won’t need to. It is done.”

  His eyes spring wide open. “Say what?”

  “Cadet Pax was correct about the simplicity of the process. It’s finished. Conditional job offers were sufficient to the emancipation procedure.”

  His shoulders drop, and he suddenly looks bereft. “But Mara… Why?”

  She rests her chin on her hands and smiles at him fondly. “I have known you since you were a teenager, and I have had the pleasure of watching you grow as a person and as an instructor. I predict you will be the finest head this institution has ever had. You are already more capable and more interested than Chancellor Paxton ever was, and he was a good person and a good Chancellor. But that doesn’t mean that I will sit and watch you make a bad decision when people’s lives are on the line. You would have come around, I am sure of it, but on this occasion we did not have the opportunity to wait for you to change your mind.”

  “Your job is to assist me.”

  “I did.”

  A muscle twitches in his jaw. When it settles, he nods gently. “We can talk about this later. Let’s have these cadets return to their studies.”

  Dee murmurs, “Chancellor, what do we tell those kids?”

  “That they are in for a rough time. The local mines are no picnic. And that we will help them as much as we can. Pax, work out the details, if you haven’t done so already. Any problems, please speak to Mara.”

  As the Pollux folk get busier with their training, their mood slowly lifts. Maybe they aren’t feeling any better, maybe they are just too busy or burnt out to express their feelings, but it is a relief all the same, particularly for Dee. She bore the brunt of this last emotional blow and she has not been doing well. I am so worried about her that I am considering speaking to Martyn. Maybe she needs professional help, or there is something in his arsenal that would give her brain a break. As things are, she can’t seem to pick herself up, and every little mishap crushes her.

  Classes help a little, because they give her stability, continuity, and a sense of achievement. They would help even more if all our instructors were on board with our extensions. What would be most helpful would be if motherfucking Rogers died in an industrial accident, or gave up what he calls teaching for his true calling: kicking people when they’re down.

  Dee has always sucked at floating; that’s an objective fact. About half the problem is that she lacks natural aptitude for the activity, but the other half is that she lacks tolerance for being shouted at and humiliated in public. A two-month break did not magically improve her floating ability, and her burnout has lowered her tolerance. Getting her to fall apart is easier than helping her keep herself together, and Rogers is taking full advantage of that. Watching her drag herself to her floating class, her chin set hard and her bottom lip quivering, makes me want to go to that fucking tank and drown the bastard. I used to fantasize about setting him on fire, but watching McGee heal put me off. A drowning would be easier to pass as an accident, anyway.

  I’ve been controlling myself because Dee doesn’t share my penchant for violence as a solution to everyday problems, but it’s been a struggle. When I see her running into the tower at full pelt, way before the end of her class, I think that this is it. I don’t care what he’s done this time. I’m just going to go to the tank right now, do what I have to do to make the world a better place, and worry about the consequences later, if at all. Then she grabs my arms and starts bouncing around and I have to bounce with her, because it’s that or letting her pick me up. That confuses me plenty, and the glimpses of her face I manage to catch confuse me even more. She’s happy. She’s happier than I’ve seen her in weeks.

  “Dee, are you gonna tell me what the fuck happened or what?”

  “I passed my basic floating test!”

  “You what? We’re not due to take it until next term. And you suck at it.”

  “I know! But I passed! And that’s not half of it!”

  “What the fuck happened?”

  She stops bouncing and drags me into our closet. Her eyes are huge and shining, but for a change they’re not shining with tears.

  “You should have been there! It was epic! We get there, forty of us as usual, and the last load of Patrolmen is there for their re-testing, so we’re crammed. Rogers comes in, yells at us for five minutes solid because somehow it’s our fault that the Tank is double-booked, gets his assistants to set up the test course for the Patrolmen, yells at us some more, then fucks off into his office, like usual. One of the adjuncts is supposed to run us through our paces and the other
one is supposed to run the tests, but there’s not enough room for all of us, so it’s fucking chaos. Then McGee comes in.” Her face lights up when she says his name. “I should say he stumbles in – I swear, he was totally wasted. His face was green.”

  “Blue-green is his natural skin tone.”

  “You’d be the one to know.” She winks. “Anyway, I’m telling you, I don’t think he’d stopped drinking from last night. But he barges in, puts his suit on without even looking at it, gets into the tank, cuts the line, and starts screaming at the adjuncts.”

  “He what?”

  “You’ve never heard the like. I learnt a few new words, I tell you, not that I’m ever going to repeat them. When he’s finished telling them what’s what, he splits us up in groups and makes us do some weird-ass tumbling exercises while he has the Patrolmen run through the test course. And I mean run: he has them racing through it like their asses are on fire. He keeps bellowing at the adjuncts, at us, at everyone and everything, just a constant stream of orders and obscenities, and everyone is doing what he says because nobody knows what the fuck is going on, but it’s working. He yells at the adjuncts to start recording the tests, yells at the Patrolmen to get on with it, and they start passing. One after the other, they just get in there, do their shit, and get out. When they’re all done, he looks at us still doing that weird-ass shit he told us, and he starts to scream us through the test course. He has us run around it time and time again. I don’t even know when I passed, exactly. But I passed!”

  “What about everyone else?”

  “We all did. All the Patrolmen, too, apart from that poor dude who’s still waiting for his prosthetic to come in. He didn’t make the time.”

  “I wonder what Rogers is going to do when he finds out.”

  Her smile gets even broader. “He already did. He turned up when we were all done. McGee was having us do some more weird-ass shit. Rogers yells at him, McGee yells back, Rogers tells him he’s got five seconds to get the fuck out of his tank, so McGee just races through the test, gets out of the tank, and desuits, screaming at Rogers all the way through. He passed, too. He must have broken a record, he did it that fast.”

  “Are you making this shit up?”

  “Honey, I couldn’t if I wanted to. I’m not that creative.”

  “I can’t believe I missed that.”

  “Me neither. It was glorious, I tell you. Straight out of a threedee.”

  “That’s not even the main feature.”

  “What?”

  “Wait till Reggie finds out. He’s gonna blow a gasket.”

  “Ooh!” Her eyes widen. “That would be too much excitement for me.”

  “I wonder if he’s heard.”

  “I doubt it. The place is still standing and nobody died.”

  “You seem to have very little faith in my self-restraint,” says Reggie. He’s leaning nonchalantly on the door frame, but his eyes are on fire.

  When I’ve finished having a panic attack, I try to think of something to say to patch this up, but I can’t think of anything. Dee seized up completely, mouth hanging open. Reggie glares at us for a few moments, clearly enjoying our discomfort. A smile is crawling along his face.

  “Professor Rogers has been so kind as to inform me of today’s events. Yet nobody died. Not yet, anyway. Now you,” he points to Dee, “will be coming with me. You’re not in trouble. Not yet, anyway. And you,” he points to me, “I need you to find Ash. As soon as he turns up, catch him and send him to my office. No: take him to my office. By force, if necessary. Were he capable of doing as he’s bloody well told, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Chancellor, I think I know where he is. I mean, I’ve not seen him, but I think I can guess.”

  “OK. Take me to him.”

  I lead them up the tower stairs. If I know anything about McGee, it’s that his homing beacon never fails, however plastered he might get.

  When we get to his room, there he is, asleep in his tank. It would be a perfectly unremarkable scene, were he not fully clothed.

  Reggie takes it all in with remarkable calm. “This is normal?”

  “Normal is relative around here. The tank is self-cleaning and he does his own laundry, so it’s not really a bother. I guess we’re lucky that he sleeps on his back. He’s not drowned himself yet.”

  Reggie nods. “I see.”

  He takes a deep breath and looks around. The room is full of stuff; nobody else is using it but McGee, so all the crap of the world ended up here. Reggie picks up two metal bed pans, checks their weight, walks over to the tank, and bangs them together a couple of inches from McGee’s head with a horrible clang. McGee sits up instantly, a horrified look on his face. When his eyes focus, his expression turns angry.

  “Reg, what the fuck?”

  “Rise and shine!” He bangs the bedpans again, and McGee’s eyes cross in pain

  “I’m shining! Cut that out!”

  “I need to talk to you about your floating test.”

  “And it couldn’t wait till daytime?”

  Reggie lets the bedpans fall to the floor with two final clangs. “It is daytime. I should be having my lunch.”

  “What?” The color drains from McGee’s face, leaving it an unhealthy-looking shade of pale green. “Shit, shit, shit! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… Shit. Can you reschedule me?”

  “What?”

  “I know I don’t deserve it, but gods… I didn’t mean to. I just overslept.”

  Reggie rubs the bridge of his nose. “You think you missed your test?”

  “It was this morning. I just… I couldn’t get to sleep last night, and I might have had a couple too many. I didn’t mean to.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t mean to. You seem to keep doing it, though.”

  “If you can reschedule me, I promise… What I say doesn’t matter, though, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” sighs Reggie. “Ash, you didn’t miss your test. You turned up. You passed. You also verbally abused a Professor and threatened to perform some implausible yet creative physical acts upon his two adjuncts.”

  “I did what?”

  “Are you seriously telling me you don’t remember any of it?”

  McGee’s face goes even greener. “Not a thing.”

  “How much did you drink last night?”

  “I can’t remember that, either,” croaks McGee. “How much shit am I in, exactly? Just tell me.”

  “Depends. Aside from behaving in a manner likely to cause offense and incite mayhem, you put fifty-six people through their basic Fed floating test in under two hours, yourself included. Nobody has ever come close to doing that. It was the remedial Academy class, too. I would have been pleasantly surprised had half of those cadets managed to pass by the end of the year, and they are only halfway through their training. The fact that you did it all blackout drunk… I don’t know. I can’t quite get my head around it. The important question is: can you do it sober?”

  “What? Yeah. Of course. I mean, it’s not hard, they just make it complicated when they teach it. It’s the simplest thing in the world, really, otherwise I couldn’t do it. You just do what you gotta do to go where you wanna go, you know what I mean?”

  “Not a clue. Do you want a job?”

  “Say what?”

  “Floaters are never out of work. If we can get all our Patrolmen through the basic certification, they’ll be able to earn their air. If we can get them through the advanced certifications, they could actually be better off than before this whole affair. Financially, anyway. Can you do that?”

  “I can try.”

  And that’s when Reggie finally flips his lid. “No!” he screams, his face a portrait of rage. It’s as if he’d suddenly let go of all his anger and unleashed it on McGee. I find myself clutching at Dee’s hand as she squeezes up against me. “I don’t need you to try! I need you to do it! Those Patrolmen need you! Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  �
��Can you do it sober?”

  “Reggie, I… I don’t mean to, it’s just… If I don’t drink, I can’t sleep.”

  “I don’t care what you do in your own time! I need you sober, coherent, and presentable from breakfast to dinnertime. Ten hours of the godsdamned day! Can you do that?”

  “I… Yeah. Yes. I can do that.”

  Reggie pokes him in the chest hard enough to make a noise. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. If you let those Patrolmen down, you might as well kill some of them.”

  “I mean it! I’ll do it. I’ll sort myself out.”

  Reggie takes a deep breath and visibly puts all his anger back into whatever compartment of his mind it normally occupies. When he’s done, he nods. “Good. About time, too. I’ll have a schedule ready for you. Pop by my office tomorrow, first thing after breakfast.”

  He’s halfway to the door when McGee squeaks. “Reg? That means I can stay here? Until all the Patrolmen are certified?”

  Reggie stops and speaks without turning around. “Yes. We’ll need to get you certified, too, all the way up to the advanced levels, if you can handle them. I’ll get Rogers to run you through the tests; that’ll be a formative experience for him. Keep your eighthdays and evenings clear. You’re going to be busy. As of tomorrow morning you’re officially off the cycling program. Find out what follow-up care you need, if any, and schedule it. Have that schedule on my desk before the end of today. And find yourself a room out of my medic’s way, OK? They’re busy enough without dealing with your crap.”

  McGee blushes crimson. “I’m out of the way here.”

  “Stay put, then, if they agree to it. I don’t care. You’re welcome to camp out in the courtyard provided you let my medics do their work and show up for yours. Sober. Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes. Sure. Reg… I mean, Chancellor. Thank you.”

  “Wait until you’ve done the work, then we’ll see how thankful you feel.”

  “How long have I got? Here, I mean.”

  “Thirty-two days after the last Patrolman has been discharged, unless you can get them through the advanced qualifications faster than that. I’ll have to see about the civilians. But I don’t want you worrying about that. I want you focusing on the job in front of you. It’s important. Tomorrow, my office, first thing. Ash, I’m trusting you. Don’t screw this up.”