Chapter 1
Rule Number One, Bel knew, in teaching thirteen-to-fifteen- year-olds, whether on Earth or, as she was now, in the depths of space -- Rule Number One is: Never turn your back on them. So, it was with the deliberateness of a gunfighter in a saloon full of cowboys that she turned now, toward the boardwall.
Bel had never planned to go into space. She had never planned to teach Space Academy Prep courses on a training ship: four levels, four preparations. She had never planned to work in a Catholic-sponsored institution, certainly not one sponsored by a Religious order, most certainly not one sponsored by The Dear Old School, St. Bennedetta's.
Here's how it happened:
In the ragged hills of Southern Indiana, in the area known as "the Knobs," along a ridge overlooking the Ohio River, stands St. Bennedetta's Jesuit Subscription School. St. Bennedetta's is a co-ed school, as the St. Bennedetta Jesuits is a co-ed order -- the first established after Vatican III.
Now, Southern Indiana has its share of Catholics, but not as many as, say, Rome. This being the case, a subscription school the size of St. Benny's has to take what it can get. And this being the case, so does the Personnel Director. And the quality and peculiarities of the faculty infect the student body, which influences the quality and peculiarities of the faculty, and... it just goes on and on like that.
Bel was a boarding student at St. Benny's from the age of five. Her Hoosier parents, both in the military, had enjoyed a weekend pass together at a time inconsistent with the guidelines of Natural Family Planning and had been, as they say, surprised by love. They had named her Isobel Enid Schuster, and had carried her from base to base more or less tucked under one or another of their arms, both of them indifferent to child-rearing methodology either traditional or contemporary. Early on, Bel had shown self-reliance, efficiency, initiative, a tendency to over-reach herself -- and an ability to reason her way out of the consequences of her actions that was positively chilling in a four-year-old. So, at five, she was sent to St. Benny's. There, she showed an affinity for algebra, the "soft sciences," and the liberal arts. She also showed an antipathy toward all non-algebraic math, the "hard sciences," and brute stupidity.
Bel passed all her classes, some with honors and some by the skin of her teeth and was, for two years, President of the Debate Club (the St. Bennedetta Jesuit Hairsplitters). Her parents were only called to school for disciplinary reasons once, when she was accused of threatening a moderately loathsome bully with a copperhead from the biology lab. Her parents hid behind the military and declined to come. Bel, pleading her own case, claimed that she was only acting out the Adam and Eve story for some of the younger students, and that the moderately loathsome bully had, typically, misunderstood. In a dramatic courtroom gesture, she produced an apple as corroborative evidence. The younger students backed her up, the copperhead proved to be fangless, and the matter was dropped. The bully's parents claimed the snake had been defanged after the threat and not before, but people like that will say anything. Thereafter, Bel learned to practice discretion, if not restraint.
After twelve years of unopposed learning at St. Benny's, Bel found Notre Dame something of a shock. Nevertheless, she graduated with a paper that certified her to teach Literature, Humanities, and Comparative Religion. She did her graduate work in Non-Terran Ethics at the Lunar University extension in Corydon, Indiana, not twenty miles down the road from St. Bennedetta's. Her Masters Thesis was a comparison of Taisen Deshimaru's THE ZEN WAY TO THE MARTIAL ARTS and Dr. Bambi Deere's THE CODE OF THE CLAN ON INVERDEEN IN THE SILICON AGE. For her mandatory civil service, Bel relieved both her parents by giving the military a miss and signing up to teach a four-year course in Civic and Moral Responsibility at Juliette, a women's prison near Wabash, Indiana. She liked it. It reminded her of days long past at The Dear Old School.
After all this, it is perhaps not surprising that most school systems found Isobel Enid Schuster rather too highly spiced. And so, at age thirty, Bel found herself back on that ridge overlooking the Ohio River, a professor of Literature and Humanities for the St. Benny Jesuits. The kids never knew what hit them.
Then had come the day when Bel had been called before Mother Hadrian, the Personnel Director of St. Bennedetta's.
"Ven Schuster," said Mother Hadrian, affecting to consult her multi-color monitor on a file she knew too well, "it has come to our attention that you have evicted a student from your classroom."
"Ven Byerly was disturbing the class, Mother. He was boasting that he could take his desk apart with his bare hands. And then he did it."
"Nevertheless--"
"He's too big to be in that class, Mother. The other children are afraid of him; I think he shakes them down."
"Such things happen in a boarding school. Children must learn to cope. Surely you remember when you were here as a student..."
This was not, perhaps, the reference a cooler head would have made. Bel did remember.
"This child," Mother Hadrian hurried to say, "must be treated with the same tenderness as a child we like -- as any other child, that is. The child is not responsible for his scholastic difficulties..."
"Difficulties, my Aunt Nellie's nose," said Bel. "Nearly eighteen, and still in the ninth grade? Have you seen his scan pattern? He's smart enough to pass; he fails on purpose. I know he does: I've given him--"
"You've given him what, Ven Schuster?"
"Er... Every chance."
"Nevertheless--"
"The room is only on the ground floor. It hurt the hydrangea bush more than it did him."
"Nevertheless--"
"I've written him up five times. If the administration would handle disciplinary problems, the teachers wouldn't have to. I don't understand it; we don't have a football program."
Mother Hadrian was only human. She had to ask. "Ven Schuster... How did you do it?"
"Do what, Mother?"
"How did you... manage it? Exactly?"
"I pretended I saw an injury accident on the front lawn; when he leaned out to gawp at it, I upped his legs and over he went."
Mother Hadrian appeared to be taking notes. "Ven Byerly's parents are threatening to withdraw him," she said. "It can only improve the tone of the school. Father Omer should thank me."
"Father Omer is of another opinion. Being Father Omer's confessor, I'm not at liberty to tell you specifically what that opinion is, but it differs from yours by a considerable margin. Nevertheless--"
"Oh, yes, I know the speech: 'St. Bennedetta's is a costly school to run. We receive no financial assistance from the government or from the church. That gives us a great deal of autonomy; an autonomy we can best protect by drawing as little attention as possible to ourselves and by continuing to require no financial assistance from the church or the state.' I know that. If we expelled every rotten apple in the student barrel, we'd have slim pickings."
"And one fewer Old Grad professor," said Mother Hadrian.
Bel couldn't argue that point. "But, Mother, what should I have done? Hire an assassin?" I could have slain him with the jawbone of an ass, she thought, but you weren't handy.
"Ven Schuster," said Mother Hadrian, with the unwearying patience of one who was always heard, eventually, "whether or not you were wrong is open to debate. Whether or not you are to remain here is not."
"I have a contract! It still has five years on it! And my classes' performance test scores are the highest in the state!"
"We acknowledge your ability to, if nothing else, get and keep your students' attention long enough for them to learn something. We will, of course, honor your contract. But not in this world."
"You must mean Heaven: I've done my time in --"
"I mean," said Mother Hadrian, "we're kicking you upstairs. You're being transferred. You are aware of the Space Academy Preparatory Training vessel we operate in conjunction with the Galactic Union Space Troopers?"
Bel nodded.
"The students aboard are referred there by their teachers here. They're the best of the lot."
Sure, they are, Bel thought. That's why you're down here and they're out there.
The Personnel Director handed Bel a packet of laser discs and printout paper. "Orientation materials and curricula," she said. "Pack your things and be in Indianapolis by 1900 hours."
"This morning?"
"1900 hours is in the afternoon. It's ... er ... It's in the afternoon. This afternoon, yes. Dismissed."
"Don't I even get a going-away party?"
"Dismissed."
Bel had held a whirlwind yard sale, dumping most of her worldly goods for a wallet full of credit notes. She had packed one case of discs -- video, audio, and print -- and splurged on an Instaport to Indy. There, she had spent all her credits on a small, dull, versatile wardrobe and a trunk full of treasure. At least, it would be treasure when they'd been out of port long enough: candy bars, games software, discs of classic sports events, irradiated food, scented soap, and industrial-strength concentrated Liquor-in-a-Drum. Her four years at Juliette had taught her many things; among them, this: a trunkful of junk can take you a long way when nobody else has one.
The CORRAGIO had once been a proud member of the Galactic Union Trooper Fleet. By and by, it had become too obsolete for any form of active service, and had been surplused to Space Academy Training duty, attached by lottery to the St. Bennedetta Jesuit Subscription School. The name CORRAGIO was stricken from the Troopers' active list, and the ship was renamed the SAINT GREGORY THE WONDERWORKER. ST. GREGORY'S serial number was G.U.S. 41883-40204. The students called him "Uncle Gus." He was staffed by Troopers who had also been surplused, for one reason or another; by citizens of the Galactic Union fulfilling their mandatory civil service; and by contract workers like Bel. All of Uncle Gus' students were American Terrans. Most of the staffers were, as well, with some exceptions: Lieutenant Commander Faline Mahoud, the Commissariat, from the People's Emirates of Arabia; Tetra and Quatro Petrie, the Gillhoolies; Dr. Vlador Frazni, the Empathetic Diagnostician from the planet Bhat; Wotan Hessaphess, the Inverdinian physics engineer; and the astrogator, Lieutenant Shch Th'zh, who called herself "the token non-humanoid," an expatriate from Frikkit IV.
When Bel turned her back on her Extra-Terrestrial Humanities and Value Systems 100 class, she had been aboard Uncle Gus for nearly two years. During that time, she had formed uneasy alliances with Commissariat Mahoud and with Brother Theodore, the Ship's Chaplain and Dean of Students, but had made no friends. She intended to sign off when her contract came up for renewal in three years' time, and she didn't want any ties to bind.
Not that she couldn't handle four preparations a day; she could. And not that she couldn't handle the students. In fact, that was part of the problem: The Space Prep students may or may not have been "the best of the lot," but they were bright enough to know a losing proposition when they saw one, and larking about in Ven Schuster's class was one. Those who knew spread the word, and classes went smoothly. No challenge. Even before the word was spread, let's face it, kids come up with the same lame defiances crop after crop. Again, no challenge.
Now, for instance. Bel lifted her pointer to touch an empty space in the Mindian panoply of gods, saying, "Can anyone tell me what goes here?"
WHHAPpf! A spitball the size of Cleveland landed in the place usually reserved for Daimon, the Beloved of Nyc. Bel lowered the pointer and faced the room. Some of the students blanched. Some giggled nervously.
"Ven Wiseman," Bel said, "come up here and clear away your mess."
"Me?" said a gangly boy with thick blond hair shaved in the shape of the United State of America, its territories and protectorates. "What makes you think it was me?"
Bel sighed. "First, you're the only one who looks innocent. Second, you have slurry on your chin. Third, that plastic doodah that's supposed to resemble a gauge is hollow and has no measurement markings on it and is obviously a spitball blowpipe. Fourth, we all know that the paper aboardship is recycled and we all know where it's been, and only a lab rat like you would feel comfortable putting it in his mouth. Okay?"
Ven Wiseman cleaned up his mess.
The intercom ting-a-linged, marking the end of the period. The class filed out to add another brick to the legend. Bel pressed the boardwall's erase button. She checked her Floatachair for amateur science geek gimmicking and, finding none, sank into it.
Chapter 2
Tetra Petrie had volunteered to carry the Captain's directive to Bel. Rather, she had noticed it in Bel's tray in the teachers' mail room, and had plucked it out along with her own and Quatro's.
"It's on the way," she had said and, possession being nine points of the responsibility, the officer had shrugged and let her take it.
Tetra and Quatro Petrie left the office and proceeded toward their classrooms.
Both brother and sister taught; Quatro, Exobiology, and Tetra, Principles of Linguistics. Both were reserved, both were pale, with thick and resilient but easily sunburned skin, and both had gills on either side of their necks. Still, if one didn't know they were litter-mates, one would have pegged them as random Gilhoolies, together by chance.
Tetra had thick, baby-fine black hair, in loose curls about two inches long. It never grew longer, and never would. She had webs between her toes, but not her fingers, and she always wore a high collar or a scarf to conceal her gills.
Quatro was nearly bald; black fuzz covered his skull, like the plush on a cheap toy. Now, as usual, so did a wig. His long, thin fingers and toes had vestigial webs from the third joint down. And he was tall. Tall and thin, like a walking test tube; not inappropriate, considering the experimental nature of his and Tetra's births.
The planet Gilhoo was inhabited by two races: the Plamin, land-dwellers, and the Mayim, water-dwellers. The two had the same basic genetic makeup, and tradition had it that they had once been one race, but had mutated away from each other. About fifty years before Tetra and Quatro were born, a movement swept one of the Gilhoo continents to reunite the races.
Standard procedure, of course, was to eject one's trigo into a dish, stir in a packet of blesk from an unrelated person of one's own race, hit it with 16 volts, and put it straight into the incubator. Now, both Plamin and Mayim in the area around this aggressively nostalgic continent were encouraged to use blesk from the other race, to reverse polarity after the first jolt and hit it again, and then to put it into the nursery bubble.
Son of a gun, it had worked. The litter was generally smaller when it was a mixed batch -- Tetra and Quatro were all of theirs, but the mixed litters had a higher survival rate than solid ones, the mixed litter-mates could reproduce, and always had both gills and lungs, both of which always worked. The blended people were called the Raisim: simply, "together," in Gilhoo's global patois.
Tetra and Quatro had been produced and raised by a male Mayim, a biologist, with a large library and little time for children. Why he had ever mixed a litter was a matter of speculation between them. They had tentatively concluded that he had done it just to prove to his mother that he could, a poor but not uncommon reason for batching progeny on Gilhoo.
The Petrie children had developed more diversely than most litter-mates. As Tetra was wont to say, "Our genetic inheritance was uneven: He got the height and I got the personality." At any rate, he was a biologist from the marrow out, and she had always had a mouth on her... that is to say, a way with words. Both litter-mates had schooled themselves thoroughly. When the Capability Board had examined them for their Certification, even their grandmother had been unable to pose any questions they could not, between them, answer.
As Gilhoo was a member of the Galactic Union, Quatro and Tetra were bound to serve four years' civil service. They both chose to go off-planet. Quatro took a lonely position with the Smithsonian Institute's outpost on Rhondo, in the Hatton system. Tetra went to Geneva, on Terra, to work as a message transmitter in the Services to Space Troopers' Families Department of the Red Starburst, originally known as the Red Cross.
When their hitches were over, Tetra and Quatro returned to Gilhoo to find, as have so many young people, that the old place just wasn't big enough to hold them. Teaching positions on an Academy Prep ship seemed the ideal answer. Just their luck to land on Uncle Gus.
Quatro, particularly, found the assignment trying. Unlike his father, who was a devout Flunder, Quatro had no religious convictions. In point of fact, he had no convictions at all, unless it was that the Scientific Method was all anyone needed to function, and that any set of values other than enlightened self- interest was as meaningless as any other.
Tetra, on the other hand, while suffering from the common delusion that she had outgrown her father's narrow faith, had a taste for transcendent ritual. She enjoyed dipping into the instructional materials Uncle Gus carried in case one of the non- Catholics took a notion to convert. She had no such desire, but she often carried a booklet with her, just to jerk Quatro's chain.
Quatro seemed to have systematized his thoughts until they had developed into set pieces, which he could repeat almost verbatim as they applied to the situation at hand. Tetra had numbered the ones she heard most often. Now, for instance, he returned to the one Tetra called "Petrie No. ER-13," which had been interrupted by their stop in the mail room, and which he took up where he had left off.
"--neither the one nor the other," he said, tucking his copy of the Captain's directive into the pocket of his jacket, from which it protruded like an overstarched handkerchief. "The intelligent being, therefore, has a responsibility to remain unaffected by the illusions of the majority--"
"What kind of responsibility? Moral? Ethical?"
"A scientific one. --in order to maintain the optimal functioning of at least one intellect. One rejects the imposition of values, ethics, morals, and codes, as one would clean dust from the lens of a microscope."
"There is something to what you say. I do not say that you are mistaken. I do say, however, that, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man has a communications problem. You must concede that."
"With many reservations and qualifications. But how do you justify your own willful descent into superstition?"
"Quatro, Quatro, 'superstition' is a judgementally loaded word. Do I detect disapproval?"
"You do. All religion is superstition, and all superstition is counter-productive."
"You maintain, then, that the Scientific Method is the only road to knowledge?"
"Certainly."
"You maintain, then, that conclusions drawn from statements verified by means of the Scientific Method are valid, and conclusions drawn from statements verified by other means are not?"
"No statements can be verified by means other than the Scientific Method."
"No statements can be verified by means of the Scientific Method, other than by means of the Scientific Method. Is that not what you mean?"
"I just meant what I said," said Quatro, seeing the grease being rubbed onto the thread of his argument, but unable to remove it without losing his grip entirely.
"In other words, your reliance on the Scientific Method is based on faith in a closed system, as are all other belief structures. Therefore, the Scientific Method is only one of the rest of the 'superstitions' you affect to despise. Therefore, in terms of your own ethical relativism, I am free to reject your Cult of the Clean Lens and adopt any value system I prefer. Does that not follow?"
There was something very wrong with Tetra's case. Quatro knew it, and he knew he'd get it sometime, probably in the middle of class, but he couldn't get it now.
Fortunately, they had reached Ven Schuster's classroom, next to Tetra's and two doors from his own.
"Don't forget Ven Schuster's envelope," he said.
"I will not forget. I am not in the habit of forgetting things. I will not give her my envelope by mistake, either, so please do not caution me against it. Thank you." Tetra never used contractions. She had noted that Terrans never questioned the honesty of people who did not use contractions. It had been a little difficult to get the hang of, but it had come in very handy from time to time.
The Gilhoolies reached Ven Schuster's room just as the door accordianed open and the class poured into the corridor. Tetra, a keen observer of Terrans, could tell that something in the class must have impressed them. No, she is not as dull as she looks, Tetra thought.
Ven Schuster slouched in her Floatachair as if one of the students had flipped her off switch on the way out. Frumpy looking little thing, Tetra thought. (Ven Schuster was six inches taller than the Gilhoolie woman, but Tetra tended to think of other people as smaller than herself.) Brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, brown suit. She looks like a mud puddle with buttons. This, too, was less than fair; Bel had hazel eyes. Not as striking as Tetra's grass-green ones, but not puddly, either. And her skin, to be precise, was biscuit-colored. Still, this was how Tetra saw her, and perhaps Tetra's somewhat subjective description should stand.
"Ven Schuster."
The Terran looked at her without interest.
Tetra handed her her envelope. Ven Schuster made a disparaging remark about the Captain's directives, but she did not throw the envelope away, which she would have done at once if she were going to at all. Tetra made a remark to this effect, and even winked but, before she could see if this gesture of camaraderie had any effect, Quatro called to her from the corridor. Not a comeback already, Tetra thought.
"Just coming," she said, and rejoined him, closing Ven
Schuster's door as she came.
"What took you so long?" Quatro asked.
"I was attempting to make friends with Ven Schuster."
"To what purpose?"
"Unlike you, Quatro, I do not find my own company sufficient to my emotional needs. I made many friends in Geneva. I expected to make many new ones here, but I have made, in effect, none."
"On the contrary," said Quatro. "You're very active socially."
"That is not the same thing at all."
"And you would choose Ven Schuster for your friend? For one of them?"
Tetra shrugged. "Any port in a storm, as they say back home. Besides, she seems to be an exciting teacher; perhaps she would be a stimulating companion." The teacher's lounge grapevine said she might be. It whispered that it was Ven Schuster who had replaced the tapes in the language lab one day with Middle English translations of "Who's On First." It hinted that it might have been Ven Schuster who had discovered how to program the food synthesizer for fudge. It stated as a fact that Ven Schuster, as a student at St. Bennedetta's, when stuck in the Sacrament of Reconciliation line for the fifth week in a row behind an unjustifiably long-winded penitent, had newspapered the confessional. If the grapevine were right, Ven Schuster was a person of hidden resources; a person another person of hidden resources would enjoy knowing.
Feb. 2000; Oct. 2001; May 5, 2002