Sassinak (6 page)

"That's not the point, rockhead. The point is that you—" He tapped her shoulder. "You have to learn how to behave, and I don't think anything in your background's taught you how." Sass stared at him, back in control, furious with herself for taking the bait. "On the other hand, you're loyal. That's something. Not much, but something." He dismissed her, and she set off to find her assigned quarters, careful not to gawk around.

For reasons known only to the architects, the main buildings at the Academy had been constructed in a mix of antique styles, great gray blocks of stone that looked like pictures of ancient buildings on Old Earth. Towers, arches, covered walkways, intricate carvings of ships and battles and sea monsters around windows and doorways, enclosed courtyards paved in smooth slabs of stone. Six of these patriarchal buildings surrounded the Main Quad Parade: Themistocles, Drake, Nelson, Farragut, Velasquez, and the Chapel. Here, where the boldest street urchins could peer through the entrance gates to watch, cadets formed up many times a day to march to class, to mess, to almost every activity. Sass soon learned that the darker gray paving stones, which marked out open squares against a pale background, were slippery in the rain. She learned just where a flash of reflected sunlight from an open window might blind a cadet long enough to blunder into someone else. That meant a mark off, and she wanted no marks off.

Through the great arching salleyport of Velasquez, wide enough for a cadet platoon, were the cadet barracks, these named for the famous dead of Fleet battles. Varrin Hall, Benis, Tarrant, Suige. By the time they had been there a half-year, cadets knew those stories, and many others. Sass, on the third deck of Suige Hall, could recite from memory the entire passage in the history.

Other cadets complained (quietly) about their quarters, but Sass had spent years as Abe's ward. She had never been encouraged to spread her personality around her quarters, "to acquire bad habits" as Abe put it, although he admitted that Fleet officers, once they were up in rank, could and did decorate and personalize their space. But the regulation bunk with its prescribed covers folded just so, the narrow locker for the required uniforms (and nothing else), the single flat box for personal items, the single desk with its computer terminal and straight-backed chair—that was enough for her. She didn't mind sharing, or taking the top bunk, which made her popular with a series of roomies. She felt the neat, clean little cubicles were perfect for someone whose main interest lay elsewhere, and willingly did her share of the floor-polishing and dusting that daily inspections required.

She had actually expected neutral or monotone interiors, but the passages were tinted to copy the color-code used on all Fleet vessels. By the time the cadets graduated, this system would be natural, and they would never have to wonder which deck, or which end of a deck, they were on. Main or Command Deck, anywhere, had white above gray, for instance, and Troop Deck was always green.

Most classes went on in the "front quad" or in the double row of simpler stone-faced buildings that lay uphill from it. History—from Fleet's perspective, which included knowing the history of "important" old Earth navies, all the way back to ships rowed or sailed. Sass could not figure out why they needed to know what different ranks had been called a thousand years ago, but she tucked the information away dutifully, in case it was needed for anything but the quarterly exams. She did wonder why "captain" had ever been both a rank and a position, given the confusion that caused, and was glad someone had finally straightened it out logically. Anyone commanding a ship was a captain, and the rank structure didn't use the term at all. "You think it's logical," the instructor pointed out, "but there was almost a mutiny when the first Fleet officer had to use the rank 'major' and lieutenant commanders and commanders got pushed up a notch." Sass enjoyed far more the analysis of the various navies' tactics, including a tart examination of the effect of politics on warfare, using an ancient text by someone called Tuchman.

Cadets ate together, in a vaulted mess hall that would have been lovely if it hadn't been for the rows and rows of tables, each seating eight stiff cadets. Looking around—up at the carving on the ceiling, for instance—was another way to get marks taken off. Sassinak, with the others, learned to eat quickly and neatly while sitting on the edge of her chair. Students in their last two years supervised each table, insisting on perfect etiquette from the rockheads. At least, thought Sass, the food was adequate.

The Academy was not quite what she'd expected, even with the supposedly inside information she'd had before. From Abe's attitude towards Fleet officers, she'd gotten the idea that the Academy was some sort of semi-mystical place which magically imbued the cadets with honor, justice, and tactical brilliance. He had told her about his own Basic Training, which he described succinctly as four months of unmitigated hell, but that was not the same, he'd often said, as officer training. Sass had found, more or less by accident, a worn copy of an etiquette manual, which had prepared her for elaborate formalities and the fine points of military courtesy—but not for the Academy's approach to freshman cadets.

"We don't have hazing," the cadet commander had announced that first day. "But we do have discipline." The distinction, Sass decided quickly, was a matter of words only. And she quickly realized that she was a likely target for it, whatever it was called: the orphan ward of a retired petty officer, an ex-slave, and far too smart for her own good.

She wished she could consult Abe, but for the first half-year the new cadets were allowed no visitors and no visits home. She had to figure it out for herself. His precepts stood like markers in her mind: never complain, never argue, never start a fight, never boast. Could that be enough?

With the physical and mental discipline he'd taught her, she found, it could. She drew that around her like a tough cloak. Cadet officers who could reduce half the newcomers to red rage or impotent tears found her smooth but unthreatening equanimity boring after a few weeks. There was nothing defiant in that calmness, no challenge to be met, just a quiet, earnest determination to do whatever it was better than anyone else. Pile punishment details on her, and she simply did them, doggedly and well. Scream insults at her, and she stood there listening, able to repeat them on command in a calm voice that made them sound almost as silly as they were.

Abe had been right; they pushed her as hard as the slavers had, and the cadet officers had—she sensed—some of the same capacity for cruelty, but she never lost sight of the goal.
This
struggle would make her stronger, and once she was a Fleet officer, she could pursue the pirates who had destroyed her family and the colony.

That calm reticence might have made her an outcast among her classmates, except that she found herself warming to them. She would be working with them the rest of her life—and she wanted friends—and before the first half-year was over, she found herself once more the center of a circle.

"You know, Sass, we really ought to do something about Dungar's lectures." Pardis, an elegant sprout of the sector aristocracy sprawled inelegantly on the floor of the freshman wardroom, dodged a feinted kick from Genris, another of her friends.

"We have to memorize them; that's enough." Sass made a face, and drained her mug of tea. Dungar managed to make the required study of alien legal systems incredibly dull, and his delivery—in a monotone barely above a whisper—made the class even worse. He would not permit recorders, either; they had to strain to hear every boring word.

"They're so . . . so predictable. My brother told me about them, you know, and I'll swear he hasn't changed a word in the past twenty years." Pardis finished that sentence in a copy of Dungar's whisper, and the others chuckled.

"Just what did you have in mind?" Sass grinned down at Pardis. "And you'd better get up, before one of the senior monitors shows up and tags you for unofficerlike posture."

"It's too early for them to be snooping around. I was thinking of something like . . . oh . . . slipping a little something lively into his notes."

"Dungar's notes? The ones he's read so many times he doesn't really need them?"

"We must show respect for our instructors," said Tadmur. As bulky as most heavyworlders, he took up more than his share of the wardroom, and sat stiffly erect. The others groaned, as they usually did, Sass wondered if he could really be that serious all the time.

"I show respect," said Pardis, rolling his green eyes wickedly. "Just the same as you, every day—"

"You make fun of him for his consistency." Tadmur's Vrelan accent gave his voice even more bite. "Consistency is good."

"Consistency is dull. Consistently wrong is stupid—" Pardis broke off suddenly and sprang to his feet as the door swung open without warning, and the senior monitor's grim face appeared around it. This weekend, the duty monitor was another heavyworlder, from Tadmur's home planet.

"You were lounging on the deck again, Mr. Pardis, weren't you?" The monitor didn't wait for the reply and went on: "The usual for you, and one for each of these for not reminding you of your duty." He scowled at Tadmur. "I'm surprised at
you
most of all."

Tadmur flushed, but said nothing more than the muttered "Sir, yes, sir" that regulations required.

Sassinak even made some progress with Tadmur and Seglawin, the two heavyworlders in her unit. When they finally opened up to her, she began to realize that the heavyworlders felt deep grievances against the other human groups in FSP.

"They want us for our strength," Tadmur said. "They want us to fetch and carry. You look at the records—the transcripts of the Seress expedition, for instance. How often do you think the med staff is assigned heavy duty, eh? But Parrih, not only a physician but a specialist, a surgeon, was expected to do the heavy unloading and loading in addition to her regular medical work."

"They like to think we're stupid and slow." Seglawin took up the complaint. Although not quite as large as Tadmur, she was far from the current standard of beauty, and with her broad forehead drawn down into a scowl looked menacing enough. Sass realized suddenly that she had beautiful hair, a rich wavy brown mass that no one noticed because of the heavy features below it. "Pinheads, they call us, and muscle-bound. I know our heads look little, compared to our bodies, but that's illusion. Look how surprised the Commandant was when I won the freshmen history prize: 'Amazingly sensitive interpretation for someone of your background.' I know what that means. They think we're just big dumb brutes, and we're not."

Sass looked at them, and wondered. Certainly the heavyworlders in the slave center had been sold as cheap heavy labor, and none had been in any of her tech classes. She'd assumed they weren't suited for it, just as everyone said. But in the Academy, perhaps five percent of the cadets were heavyworlders, and they did well enough in classwork. The two heavyworlders looked at each other, and then back at Sass. Seglawin shrugged.

"At least she's listening and not laughing."

"I don't—" Sass began, but Tad interrupted her.

"You do, because you've been taught that. Sass, you're fair-minded, and you've tried to be friendly. But you're a lightweight, and reasonably pretty enough, to your race's standard. You can't know what it's like to be treated as a—a thing, an animal, good for nothing but the work you can do."

It was reasonable, but Sass heard the whine of self-pity under the words and was suddenly enraged. "Oh, yes, I do," she heard herself say. Their faces went blank, the smug blankness that so many associated with heavyworlder arrogance, but she didn't stop to think about it. "I was a slave," she said crisply, biting off the words like so many chunks of steel. "I know
exactly
how it feels to be treated as a thing: I was sold, more than once, and valued on the block for the work I could do."

Seglawin reacted first, blankness then a surging blush. "Sass! I didn't—"

"You didn't know, because I don't want to talk about it." Rage still sang in her veins, lifting her above herself.

"I'm sorry," said Tad, his voice less hard than she'd ever heard it. "But maybe you do understand."

"You weren't slaves," Sass said. "
You
don't understand. They killed my family: my parents, my baby sister. My friends and their parents. And I will
get
them—" Her voice broke, and she swallowed, fighting tears. They waited, silent and immobile but no longer seeming inert. "I will get them," Sass continued finally. "I will end that piracy, that slavery, every chance I get. Whether it's lights or heavies or whoever else. Nothing's worse than that. Nothing." She met their eyes, one and then the other. "And I won't talk about it again. I'm sorry."

To her surprise, they both rose, and gave a little bow and odd gesture with their hands.

"No, it's our fault." Seglawin's voice had a burr in it now, her accent stronger. "We did not know, and we agree: nothing's worse than that. Our people have suffered, but not that. We fear that they might, and that is the source of our anger. You understand; you will be fair, whatever happens." She smiled, as she offered to shake hands, the smile transforming her features into someone Sass hoped very much to have as a friend.

Other times, more relaxed times, followed. Sass learned much about the heavyworlders' beliefs. Some reacted to the initial genetic transformations that made heavy-world adaptation possible with pride, and considered that all heavyworlders should spend as much time as possible on high-gravity planets. Others felt it a degradation, and sought normal-G worlds where they hoped to breed back to normal human standards. All felt estranged from their lighter-boned distant relations, blamed the lightweights—at least in part—for that estrangement, and resented any suggestion that their larger size and heavier build implied less sensitivity or intelligence.

Cadet leave, at the end of that first session, brought her home to Abe's apartment in uniform, shy of his reaction and stiff with pride. He gave her a crisp salute and then a bear hug.