by Thomas Locke
The next morning they rode their new bikes over to the apartment complex and found Tatyana waiting with Carver, deep in discussion over some chart they rolled up and stowed away. Tatyana gave Sean a ten-second blast from those imperious eyes, then said, “Your task is to learn. Not investigate. Do you hear me?”
Maybe it was how Dillon had stood up to Carver the day before. Or maybe it was just how exhausted Sean still felt. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t interested in taking more of her orders. “It would be a lot easier to agree if you took Dillon’s information seriously.”
“We’ve been through this before. I have the word of senior Watchers who say otherwise.”
“Oh. Right. The same guys who sat back and watched us get toasted. You’re talking about them?”
She clearly disliked that. “I don’t have time for this.”
Carver said, “You are still in the earliest stage of your training, and not in any position—”
“If Dillon says it wasn’t the Examiner who blasted us, you need to listen.”
Tatyana said to Carver, “Perhaps this is not a good idea, sending them to the Examiner’s school.”
“We have to shift them somewhere,” Carver said.
“How was their transit?”
“They performed faultlessly.”
Sean persisted, “You promised us answers. I’m still waiting to hear who it was that tried to take us out in the Charger.”
Tatyana swatted at the words. “You will remember your stations and you will obey.”
Sean smoldered. Dillon muttered, “Just like a principal.”
“The proper response,” Carver snapped, “is ‘Yes, Counselor.’”
They fumed in silence.
Carver commanded, “Say it.”
They did. Sort of.
Tatyana said, “Let’s get this over with.”
23
The chief instructor at the Examiner’s school was named Josef. The only thing Josef had in common with Carver was that he was probably human. It was hard to tell, though, behind all that hair.
Josef was a soft-spoken, fumbling, benevolent giant. He topped eight feet by a couple of inches. He welcomed them with a warmth that shone through his shock of grey-blond hair and beard. He bowed to the Counselor and Carver, then swallowed Sean’s hand with his. By the first day’s end, Sean wondered if perhaps Josef was actually shy and loathed towering over everyone, so he twisted his massive trunk whenever addressing a group. Trying to bring himself down as close to everyone else’s level as he could manage. It was clear that the students adored him. And for good reason. Josef did not possess a single negative element in his four-hundred-pound frame. He was not actually fat. More like almost everything about him was huge—bones, head, beard, limbs, heart—everything but his manner and his voice, which were gentle as a baby bird’s.
Josef handed them another diadem to wear that night. Their dream-time lessons were shifted from Serenese to Lothian, the dominant language of the world where the Examiner’s school was located. The new speech was nothing like the old. Gone was the sibilant music. In came a guttural drumbeat. It seemed to Sean that every consonant was formed at the back of his throat.
He was repeating some of the words to the mirror the next morning when Dillon appeared in the doorway and said, “It makes my throat hurt.”
“If Arabic married German,” Sean agreed, “their kid would speak Lothian.”
The transit chamber opened into a pair of locker rooms. Around the school, students wore navy sweats made from some fabric that actually felt great. Dillon groused that they all looked like magnets for interstellar bullies. But they had not met any yet, so Sean didn’t mind.
As they were dressing the second day, Dillon muttered, “Your idea about attending here was a good one. It really comes down to us.”
Sean glanced around. The school’s two hundred students came from a dozen and more worlds. Classes ran pretty much around the clock, so students came and went at all times. The shouts and laughter in many languages formed a wash that enveloped them in a private bubble. “I thought maybe you were going to let this go. You know, because of Carey.”
“That doesn’t change anything.” Dillon gave that a beat, then amended, “And it changes a lot.”
“When are you going to tell her?”
“Later,” Dillon said. “Right now it’s already more than I can handle.”
Josef appeared to Sean like a man who never got angry. Stern, certainly. When their class went into a kid-style riot, his worst mood was a very slow burn. Even so, he kept the class in absolute order. He’d show that smoldering disappointment and the most unruly student was brought into line.
Initially Josef placed them with the newest recruits, the oldest of whom was eleven. This lasted all of two days. When Josef was certain they could do what Tatyana and Carver had claimed, he shifted them into the class of their own age. And Josef shifted with them. The instructors must have been used to being swung around, for they moved without a peep. The students, however, knew something was up. The only thing that saved Sean and Dillon from more serious trouble was everybody in the older class was delighted with Josef’s unexpected arrival.
A few of the students lived at the school. Most departed at the end of class. For the first two weeks, everybody left Sean and Dillon in their very own isolation bubble. It bothered Sean, but not as much as he might have expected. Basically he was too tired to care. Classes ran ten hours straight. This was followed by the nightly dream routine. Spoken Lothian was combined with the written language. Sean often woke up feeling more tired than when he went to bed.
By the end of the third week, Sean had defined a new normal. Up at six. Threaten his brother with a kitchen pot of water to get him moving. Dillon was out late every night with Carey, mostly just sitting on the patio, their laughter filtering through the loft’s balcony doors. Quick breakfast at the kitchen counter. Bike to the apartment Carver rented. Transit to class. Sit through a lecture that defined boring. At least nothing had changed there. Then begin another day of learning new destinations.
The problem was, all these new destinations were nothing more than names. Ditto for the school itself.
The school had no windows. It also had no doors linking them to the outside world. They came, they studied, they went home. There were a lot of reasons for this isolation. But it all added up to one thing, as far as Sean was concerned. The guys in charge had spent four thousand years straining away every ounce of adventure. Leave it to the adults to turn the galaxy’s most thrilling ride into a class on tedium. If he hadn’t spent his entire life wanting what he couldn’t name, Sean would have done his own version of the roadrunner. Adios, baby. Off to see what’s out there beyond the monotony.
Twenty days in, they got their first free time. They didn’t even know it was happening until they showed up and the school was empty save for a lone instructor who smiled and told them to go play. They would have, definitely, except for how they were both totally beat. They went home and collapsed, for once without the language police invading their dreams. When they woke up they biked over and saw their folks, who were living in apartments a mile or so apart. They listened as first their mother and then their father tried to convince themselves their separation and eventual divorce was best for everyone. Then they went home and spent their first free afternoon of the summer elbows-deep in the adventure of laundry.
Sean was sorting socks when Carey called up the stairs. He greeted her with, “Dillon’s wandered off somewhere. My brother’s always been afraid of soap.”
Carey smiled at his feeble attempt at a joke and said, “He’s over talking with Dad.”
“What about?”
“Me, probably.” She shrugged that away. “I wanted to speak with you.”
“I’m all ears.”
She made a process of slipping up onto the kitchen counter. “I’m really interested in your brother.”
“I know. And he’s the same. Only about a billion
times stronger.”
“I doubt that.” Then she must have realized what she’d said and blushed.
Her beauty and her vulnerability and her heartfelt eagerness left Sean swallowing against a sudden hollow feeling. It wasn’t so much that he was jealous. It was just, well, he could use a little of the same for himself.
Carey asked, “Are you okay with this?” When Sean did not answer, she pressed, “I mean, you’re his twin and all. I just—”
“I know what you mean. And it’s great.”
“Really?”
“It’s better than that.” He struggled to say what he had never spoken about to anyone. Thought about, sure. But never said aloud. “Things around our house have never been good. Dillon has spent his entire life looking for someone to give him what he never had. Only he didn’t know it.”
Carey nodded, and then the motion grew until it took in her entire body. Swinging back and forth on the kitchen counter beside the washing machine, watching Sean fold his laundry, her gaze distant and unfocused. Sean liked being this close to her, looking at her beauty, and knowing she was as much in love as Dillon.
Carey said, “Dillon is sure lucky to have you.”
For some reason the words brought a lump to his throat. Sean pounded a fist into the soft fabric and said, “I just wish there were two of you.”
Carey slid off the counter so she could hug him. She smelled of vanilla and a spice he could not name. “That would be so cool.”
After Carey left, Sean phoned Carver. He’d been doing this every few days, just checking in. When the colonel called back, he was his normal clipped, direct self, only with an edge of barely repressed impatience. Sean gave the sort of terse report Carver seemed to expect, then finished as usual with, “Is there anything to report about the attack?”
Carver replied as always before. “Your task is to study, learn, progress.”
“I want to know.”
“The investigation is none of your concern at present.”
“Except for how we were the target,” Sean shot back.
“The Counselor specifically ordered you to let this go.”
“Whether or not you tell us isn’t going to change anything. This is our lives we’re talking about. We were the ones who were attacked.”
Carver was silent long enough for Sean to fear he wasn’t going to answer. Then, “There is no progress on any front. We have found no trace of your attacker.”
“What about the Examiner?”
“I just told you.”
“And I’m saying the Examiner isn’t your guy.”
They’d had this same conversation before, and Carver had commended Sean for backing his brother. Even though Carver remained certain they were both wrong. Today, however, Carver asked, “If that is so, why did the Examiner flee?”
Sean had been thinking about that. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was captured by the spookies.”
“What is this ‘spookies,’ please?”
“My word for the ladies in the first attack. Have you considered that?”
“There are issues which I cannot discuss with a raw recruit,” Carver replied flatly. “Once again, you are hereby ordered to leave this in the hands of your superiors.”
24
Their first tutorial with Josef took place the next day. Sean felt totally unprepared for the transformation their instructor revealed. Gone was the shy, bumbling giant. In his place was a man of blazing intent. He shut the door, slipped behind his oversized desk, and in that instant the outside world was gone. Dillon and Sean and their conversation were it. They were on.
Josef began with, “Tell me what you are thinking.”
“About what?”
“Anything. Only let us speak Serenese, yes? I need to observe your ability with the Assembly’s official language.” Josef spread his massive hands. “Let us talk on whatever you like. There are no limits.”
Sean exchanged a look with his brother. Uncertain how to take the words.
“By the time I normally start this tier of a recruit’s training,” Josef went on, “I know my students intimately. I know their strengths, their weaknesses. I know what they want to do professionally. And usually I know what they should not attempt. You see? With you two, I know nothing at all. So I ask you to spend this time talking with me.”
Sean glanced over a second time. Dillon nodded once. Go.
“You want us to be honest,” Sean said.
“If this tutorial is to be of any benefit, our words must be truthful,” Josef agreed.
“Which is why we’re speaking Serenese. So you can hear more than just what I say.”
Josef smiled approval. “The Counselor claimed you were gifted. I have seen confirmation of this in the class. Now I am pleased to know it is not simply a matter of applying your power.” When they remained silent, Josef pressed, “Come, come, gentlemen. Tell me this. What is your clearest impression of our school and what we do here?”
Sean replied, “Same-old, same-old.”
“What means this, please?”
“We swing back and forth to different places, and we don’t see a thing. One windowless room to another. We’ve learned transits to what, sixteen worlds?”
“Seventeen,” Dillon corrected. “Seventeen boring windowless rooms.”
“Boring,” Sean said. “That’s the word.”
Josef’s eyes were crystal green, a laser intent upon probing deep. “Most of the students here have great difficulty focusing on the transit itself. They need this sameness. It helps them maintain proper aim. Ninety percent of all recruits become Messengers. They are required to learn a minimum of—”
“Forty transit points to graduate. We’ve heard all that.” Sean was glad to finally have a chance to speak his mind. “We’re not most students.”
Josef continued, “Forty transit points. Correct. This is all they want. This is why they come. They travel, they perform an important role. They graduate and they step from the chambers into new and exciting tasks. They deliver their message, they have a nice meal, they stay in a nice hotel, they return home. They have rank. They are respected.”
“You’ve just painted the life we don’t want,” Sean said.
“Messengers play a vital role within our community of planets,” Josef replied.
“Right. Just like galactic cell phones.”
“Please?”
“Never mind.”
“Plus there is the issue of age. Our students are normally between nine and fourteen Lothian years old when they arrive.”
The Lothian year was about three-fourths the length of an Earth year. “So?”
“Their maturity is not at a level where we can permit them to interact with the outside world. Already there are many people, on many worlds, who resent us and suspect our intentions.”
“But why? You just said they play an important role.”
“There have been problems. Serious ones. But that is for another time, yes? Right now what you need to understand is this. Our isolation is in place for important reasons.”
Dillon complained, “But we’ve never even seen anything of any other planet. Including this one. Just weeks of blank-walled classrooms.”
Josef kept his gaze on Sean as he replied, “In seventeen days, Lothia celebrates the summer equinox. It is a great festival, and you will have an opportunity to see some of this world. But never mind that for the moment. Listen carefully, my two young adventurous gentlemen. A tutorial is meant to delve beyond the boundaries of ability. To stretch the student, to help them redefine the possible. But so far, all I know is what you don’t want. So before we speak of your professional aims, I must know the person. You understand? Yes, I see you do. Excellent. So here is what I ask. Tell me of the secret Sean and the secret Dillon. Tell me what is on your heart. Learn to trust me. You will find me a strong and willing ally.”
This time when Sean hesitated, Dillon spoke to him in English. “You’re up, bro.”
“You think?
”
“I know.”
“But what if he’s the Examiner’s pet?”
“You been listening? We’re talking Serenese and the guy is coming across straight as a bullet.”
“True, true.”
“So let’s give this a shot. We’ve been here three weeks and done nothing. It’s time to do more than walk through walls.”
Sean turned back, took a breath, and launched straight in.
Sean didn’t hold anything back. Including his and Dillon’s mutual loathing for the Examiner. And vice versa.
Midway through the description of the Charger attack, Josef rose from his chair and turned toward the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves running along the right-hand wall. The professor was so large he seemed to push most of the air from the room. When Sean hesitated, Josef rolled one finger without turning around. Continue.
When Sean finished describing the assault that destroyed their home, Josef remained as he was, frowning and blindly perusing titles before his nose.
Sean turned to his silent brother and said in English, “You’ve been a big help.”
“Hey, you were on a roll there.”
Josef halted Sean’s retort with, “It is customary in tutorials to speak only the languages that all present understand.”
“Sorry.”
“No, no, it is I who must apologize.” He turned around and gave them a portly bow. “On behalf of my dear friend Tirian, I sincerely regret everything you have endured because of his prejudice.”
Sean was taken aback by the words, such that Dillon was the one who said, “Apology accepted.”