Heinlein's Finches

by Robin Banks

  When the cadets finally come back and the Chancellor calls Asher in to tell their results, Asher looks as if he’s headed to his own execution. This time we let him go alone. I don’t know whether it’s a good sign or a good thing, but that’s what we do.

  When he comes back, he looks exhausted and frustrated, but relieved. “90% pass. Not good, but not bad. And these poor chicks got the least time covering the new curriculum. This could work.”

  Gwen rushes up to hug him. “This is good-ish news? Still annoying as fuck, but at least your plan is working?”

  “Is it my plan? Oh, hell, it doesn’t matter. As long as the chicks don’t suffer. They should have never have gotten caught up in whatever the fuck this is. So yes, good-ish news. Those who fail can resit in the summer. Pretty much guaranteed to pass then, with all the extra training they’ll be getting in the meanwhile. So overall, no harm done.”

  Gwen’s face darkens. “Are you ignoring everything they…” then she visibly checks herself, swallows, and does a couple of breath cycles. “You’re right. Priorities.”

  Still, one group down, six to go. As for what might come after that, we haven’t even spoken about it.

  We’re having our dinner when it happens. I neither see it nor feel it coming. I’m looking the wrong way, and I’m feeling either too much or too little, depending on the point of view. Asher’s mood keeps oscillating between relief and despair, Gwen’s between relief and rage. They’re feeling so much and they’re so close to me, in every sense of the word, that they might as well be projecting on purpose. The room is packed and way too loud. Everything is just too intense. My psi-bility is so overloaded that I’m effectively psi-blind. Unfortunately, I’m too overwhelmed by everything to realize that until afterwards.

  Gwen is sitting next to me, talking with a cadet about her project. Asher is sitting across from us. As Gwen turns back to the table to write something down, Asher screams and tries to get up and reach across the table, but fails. Behind him, at the other end of the refectory, Marcus stands up and lifts his arms level with his chest, hands together. I don’t see the beam, but I hear the buzzing. Gwen screams. The cadet falls down. At least, I think that’s the order of things. It all happens so fast I can’t be sure.

  I turn around to see the cadet on the floor, a neat, cauterized hole right between her eyebrows. I’m trying to think through this, but I can’t. Gwen is still shrieking. Asher is still trying to make his way around the table to her. When he gets there, he grabs her and holds her to him. “Stop. Stop. Calm down.”

  “He shot Leila! I saw him do it!”

  “I know. But you need to calm down. Breathe.”

  Marcus walks over. When Gwen sees him, she tries to lunge towards him but Asher holds her back.

  “He shot Leila! He killed her!”

  Marcus bends down to pick something up from the floor. His hands come up holding an arc knife. “I had to. She was about to stab you in the back.”

  Gwen is shocked into silence.

  “He’s right, love. I saw her. I just couldn’t get there on time.” Asher chokes on his words.

  “But I knew her. We were working on her project. That can’t be right.” Gwen looks about to faint.

  “Let’s get out of here. Come on.” Asher takes her on his lap and speeds off, Marcus in tow. They’ve been out of the door a while when Aiden shakes me by the shoulders.

  “Snap out of it. You need to go.”

  “What?” I realize I’ve been staring at that hole in the girl’s forehead. I don’t know how long for.

  “Go find them. Go away. Whatever. Don’t stay here.” And he yanks me up and pushes me away from the table. “Go. Find them.”

  I start walking off, but I’ve no idea where I’m going, so I turn back to look at him. He grabs me by an arm and walks me out. “Come on. Chancellor’s office. Most likely.”

  Moving seems to clear my head. By the time we’re out the door, I can steer myself. “I’m ok.”

  “No. But you will be.”

  “I didn’t see it coming.”

  “You said that. Several times. Come on.”

  We’re still outside the Chancellor’s office when we realize that Aiden was right. Gwen is definitely in there. We can hear her screams from the hallway. The Chancellor’s secretary is frozen in her chair, looking at us in horror as we walk in. She doesn’t even try to stop us.

  Aiden leads me to the door. “You ok to go in?”

  “No.”

  “You still have to.”

  “I know.”

  He opens the door, pushes me through, and shuts it behind me. If he hadn’t, I would have walked straight out.

  “And where were you in all of this?” the Chancellor bellows at me.

  “Don’t take this out on her! This is not her fault!” Gwen bellows back. “He shot at a cadet. From across the refectory. In a room full of people!”

  Marcus’ voice is disdainfully calm. “What was I supposed to do? Send her a nasty memo?”

  “You could have hit anyone!”

  Marcus crosses his arms. “I don’t miss.”

  “Chancellor! He shot a cadet in a room full of people!”

  “I am well aware of that!” The Chancellor thumps his desk. “Now could you calm down long enough for us to discuss this?”

  It doesn’t take any psi-bility to work out that Gwen has completely lost it. She’s in the middle of a massive adrenaline dump. Telling her to calm down is pointless. Yelling at her to calm down, doubly so. Yet the yelling goes on, back and forth. Throughout it all, Asher just sits there with his jaw clenched, muscles twitching in his face. Marcus looks completely unfazed. I want to curl up in the fetal position and die, but that doesn’t seem appropriate.

  The yelling continues until Gwen and the Chancellor have both exhausted themselves and she’s in tears. After a couple of minutes of silence, Asher speaks up.

  “Captain Kendall is right. Leila was about to stab Gwen in the back. None of us could have done anything to stop her.”

  “Right?” Gwen cries.

  “I’m not saying that I agree with what he did. But it was the only thing that could be done in that moment. Which amounts to the same. Oh, fuck it. Gwen, Leila was going to kill you.”

  “But how could he even tell? From so far away? She could have been holding a spoon!”

  Marcus speaks up. “I saw Professor McGee’s reaction, spotted the threat, dealt with it. That’s what I’m trained to do. That’s why they sent me here. This is my job.”

  “Well, nobody told me. Nobody told me that you carried a blaster. Seriously, a long-distance weapon? In a school?”

  “How do you suppose I could protect you from a distance otherwise?”

  Gwen falters. “I guess I never thought about it. We never discussed it.”

  “I never thought it was an issue that needed discussing. I was assigned here to protect you to the best of my abilities. May I remind you that this was not our choice? We wanted to remove you from the Academy to a safer place. You refused. We have done our best to work around your decision while ensuring your safety. This is what it looks like, in practice.”

  “So you’re saying that it’s my fault that you’re going around shooting cadets across crowded rooms?”

  “I appreciate the stressful nature of this experience and I am making allowances for your current emotional state. However, I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”

  Asher erupts “Now listen…” but the Chancellor cuts him off. He’s managing to speak calmly, though it’s through gritted teeth.

  “Captain Kendall. I can appreciate that you are under instruction to perform certain duties. However, I am also sure that you appreciate that certain decisions, such as that to use a long-distance weapon in crowded building full of innocent people, is perhaps something that should be discussed with the people involved. And by that I mean with me, not Professor McGee.”

  Marcus sniggers. “That’s genuinely funny. Next time s
omeone is about to stab Professor McGee in the back, I should ask you whether I should stop them?”

  “No.” The Chancellor growls. “But you should discuss the possibility of certain tactics beforehand, when those tactics put the entire student body at risk.”

  “I am genuinely confused as to what the issue is here. Blasters are standard issue for Patrolmen. Even the local town guards use them.”

  “They don’t go shooting them across crowded rooms!” wails Gwen.

  “Maybe their aim is not as good as mine,” Marcus smirks.

  “Enough of this!” booms the Chancellor.

  Marcus stands to attention. “I am sorry if I’ve failed to meet protocol. I assumed that the implications of the requirements I had to meet were clear. I was obviously wrong. For that I apologize. However, may I remind you of today’s events? Had I not carried and used a blaster, Professor McGee would be dead. I don’t believe that fact should be discounted.”

  The Chancellor turns to Gwen, his voice gentle now. “You really had no idea?”

  “None whatsoever. We’ve been working on her project. She was doing well.” Gwen face falls apart, and Asher pulls her into him and holds her.

  “And what about you?” The Chancellor stares at me.

  “Nothing. There was too much… Clutter. Background noise. Didn’t feel a thing.”

  The Chancellor slumps back in his chair, rubbing his forehead. “Well, then. I guess this was as close a near miss as we ever want to have.”

  “You can’t mean that.” Gwen pulls herself away from Asher and starts shaking.

  “What else do you want me to do? By all accounts, Captain Kendall did what he had to do in order to save your life. All our other measures had failed. It hardly seems appropriate to second-guess him based on that evidence.”

  “But you can’t just let this slide! He could have been wrong! He could have missed! You’re saying that it’s all ok, that he could do it again? I can’t live with that.”

  “You would have been dead without it,” Marcus snaps. “Does that count for nothing?”

  “But what about everyone else? You’re putting everyone around me at risk!”

  “Maybe that’s something you should have taken into account before deciding to stay here.” Gwen reels as if he’d slapped her. “You made a decision. I was never entirely sure that you’d accounted for all associated risks. However, it was your decision to make. The Chancellor supported you. The risks your presence was posing to innocent bystanders didn’t come into consideration then. I’m not entirely sure why that’s changed now. Is that you’ve just had to face the consequences of your choices?”

  Asher’s voice is ugly. “That’s not fair on her. Not ever, but particularly not right now.”

  “Of course it isn’t. It’s not as if her decision to stay was made freely.” Marcus takes a pointed look at Asher’s casts. “And all the fallout should fall on the relevant shoulders. But as that is unlikely to happen, all I can do is try to manage the situation with the adults in charge.”

  “Don’t talk to him like that!”

  Marcus smirks. “Of course. The priority here is clearly to protect people’s feelings.” He turns to the Chancellor. “My duty is to protect Professor McGee’s life. I believed this was a shared goal. Apparently other people have other priorities. But that doesn’t change my duty. If you decide to place restrictions on what strategies I may employ in the performance of my duty, I will accept those restrictions. I respect the chain of command. However, I should take steps to mitigate the impact of those restrictions. I will leave it to Professor McGee and yourself to make that decision. If you will excuse me, I will wait outside.” And he salutes, and steps out the door.

  He leaves us in silence. Gwen is breathing heavily, clearly trying not to cry. The Chancellor looks as if he’s about to explode. Asher’s face is expressionless. When he speaks, his voice is equally flat.

  “I fucking hate that guy, but that doesn’t make him wrong.”

  “What?”

  “He’s doing his job. He’s doing a job he wouldn’t need doing if we hadn’t ignored his original advice. We, you, decided that we wanted to stick with things as they were. He’s working around that. We never questioned him on the specifics. That’s on us.”

  “So you think what he did was ok?”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth. He did what he had to do under the circumstance. And it worked. I don’t like it, but it worked, when everything else failed. Gwen, Leila was gonna kill you. And I couldn’t do anything but watch. We all failed you. Maybe you failed yourself, I don’t know. I know I'm not going to sit around and watch you get killed. Not ever, and particularly not when it’s partly my fault.”

  “Your fault?”

  “I can’t get you out of here. I can’t protect you. I’m worse than dead weight. But I refuse to let my problems kill you. I’m not going to play this game anymore. You take that man’s blaster away, you have two options. You listen to him about your security, you let him do whatever he needs to do. Or I walk.” He chortles hollowly. “Metaphorically.”

  “What do you mean, you walk?” Gwen looks horrified.

  “I am not going to hang around and watch you feed yourself into a grinder.”

  “You want to leave me.”

  “No. No, I don’t. But I don’t want to be the reason you get killed. Don’t put that on me. You decide what steps you want Marcus to take. I don’t seem to have a say anymore. Maybe I never did, and maybe that’s right: your life is not mine to dictate. But if you stop Marcus protecting you effectively, I’m out of here. Gods know that I don’t know why I’m here anymore, anyway. So you can decide whatever you want. Let me know.” And he drives off.

  Gwen just stands there and shakes.

  The Chancellor takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but I can’t leave this up to you. The safety of our cadets is being affected. I cannot allow what happened today to happen again. You understand?”

  “Yes. Of course. I couldn’t either. If an innocent person got hurt… I couldn’t live with that.”

  “So are you going to authorize Captain Kendall to implement whatever security measures he deems necessary?”

  “I don’t have much of an alternative, do I?”

  “Well, I trust you will come up with an acceptable solution. Please ask Captain Kendall to report to me with the finalized arrangements. But I would advise you not to rush into this. Everyone is very emotional right now. Unsurprisingly so. This is not the time to make any rash decisions, or to let anyone else do something that they would regret. People can say things they don’t mean in the heat of the moment.”

  Gwen stares at him with an oddly distant expression in her eyes. “I’ve never seen Asher say something he didn’t mean. I don’t think he’s capable of doing that. Do you?” And she walks off.

  Good advice is only useful when you have the luxury of being able to take it.

  Marcus starts the meeting as soon as we all get to Gwen’s office. It’s a discussion we must have, but we’re hardly in a fit state to have it now. Gwen seems stunned, Asher is completely withdrawn, and I’m still trying to catch up with everything that happened. That leaves Marcus firmly in charge.

  “Before I can determine what measures we need to implement, I need to understand what happened today. You didn’t feel anything?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing. Not shielding, not an emotional surge. But... It’s hard to explain. If my psi-bility was a radio, there was a lot of interference. Too many conflicting signals.”

  “And before? You’ve met this cadet in the past, right?”

  “A little bit, but I hadn’t seen her in a while.” I turn to Gwen.

  “She’d just gotten back from the tube,” she murmurs. “She was on the second intake for float camp. Passed.”

  “So you don’t have an explanation for this?”

  I shake my head again. “No. But we have to take the facts at face value. I didn’t sense anything. I may be no longer us
eful.”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions. But we could do with finding out what circumstances make your psi-bility unreliable, and avoiding them.”

  “This was just a case of emotional overloading. Everyone was feeling so much. The last few weeks have been eventful and today it just got too much for me.”

  “Emotional overloading. So this is my fault.” We all turn to look at Asher. “All the shit at float camp, and everything else since the accident. I’ve dumped a load on you. Don’t tell me it’s not true, because I won’t believe you. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it could happen until it did.”

  “But now it has. So now you know. If I’m around you and I’m in a state, I can cancel out your psi-bility. And it’s not as if I’m useful.” He taps his casts. “Solution is simple: I need to not be around you.”

  Gwen whispers to him “Love, that’s a bit extreme.”

  “Is it? Explain why, and tell me what other solution you can think of.”

  I cut in. “Gwen’s emotions are just as distracting.”

  “But she can’t stop being around herself. I can. And if I’m not adding my own emotional load to hers, that might help, too.”

  “But I don’t want you away from me!”

  “And I don’t want you dead. You could have died today, right in front of me. I couldn’t do anything, and now it turns out it could have been my fault. How do you think this makes me feel?”

  Gwen looks drained. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. But I don’t want to be away from you.”

  “I know that. But you can’t have it both ways. I’m a liability now.”

  “You talk as if it was all your fault. I’m the one who nearly got you killed.”

  Asher frowns. “You didn’t push me off that godsdamned overhang.”

  “If you weren’t associated with me, do you really think that would have happened?”

  “You’re right, of course.” Asher nods, staring into space. “I need to be more mindful of my own insignificance.”