“I’m damned good. But I’m not killing things.”
“You have a moral objection?”
He put hands and eyes on autopilot and left them to search for screen-generated threats. At definable intervals. Random number generator in the virtuals, for God’s sake. “I got a moral objection. I got a moral objection to getting shot at.”
“Exactly what we’re looking for.”
He thought about that reasoning. He thought about screwing the test, while he was zapping stupid dots. Faster now. “Screw it, you severely got a pattern in here.”
“I’ve been telling them that.”
“Tell you something.” Zap. “I’m supposed to be in Stockholm. Somebody skuzzed my records.” Zap. “Matched me up with the lunatic.” Zap. Zap-zap-zap. “Oh, hell.”
“See? Not all a pattern. You missed that one. Getting cocky, were you?”
Faster now. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
“You have two hands, two keysets. Brain can do both operations. Hands can. How good are you?”
“Damned moonbeam partner of mine,” he muttered. “You give me programming. I’m telling you—anywhere else is a waste—” Zap. “I don’t want combat. —I know what this mother’s doing—”
Zap/zap/zap—
Hand on the other pad. Interrupt to Command level and invoke the chaos o/i off the internal generators. Obsolete as a security device, but certainly an improvement on this antique.
Resume. Let them figure that one. Let their techs come in and patch it if they didn’t like it.
“Where did you get that code?”
“Telepathy,” he said. “Sir. I told you. I belong in Stockholm.”
Watch the lights, track the dot, do you have any blurring of vision, Mr. Dekker?
Have you had any headaches?
Stand here, stand there, look at the light, bend over, Mr. Dekker...
He escaped with a grudging Release on his card and an admonition to take his mineral supplements, got to a phone outside the med station and put the card in to check the readout for messages. Lunch, he thought, might bring people to check then- messages. Might get a phone call, however muzzy, from Meg, telling him how she was doing.
None from Graff; none from Meg or Ben or Sal. No authorizations. Just a reminder of his appointment in Evaluations.
And a note from the gym that he hadn’t carded in his preferred time slot and was he interested in team volleyball?
Hell.
Marine guards at every intersection. Corridors everywhere had a decided chill. God, there were even guards in the messhall....
He started in, saw Mitch and Pauli and the guys at the tables and they saw him.
Upset him. He couldn’t say why. He walked by for politeness’ sake—”Sit down,” they said, offering him a chair. But he couldn’t face lunch of a sudden, in this place—too many faces in the room, too many people trying to be friendly who didn’t know all that was going on with him, and the guards and the UDC watching him from the other end of the room. He muttered, “No, I’m on medicals right now, just time for a soft drink, thanks.”
“Got anything back on the tests?”
Wasn’t a thing stirred in C-barracks but what everybody was in it. “No. Not yet.” He patted the back of Mitch’s chair and made his escape to the rec-area foyer, where he could card a soft drink and a granola bar that tasted like cardboard and hit his stomach like lead.
They probably were talking about him back mere. And he couldn’t talk to them, couldn’t deal with them until he knew what he was, whether he was going to clear the tests himself, whether his partners were passing theirs—he wasn’t anyone, until he knew who he was working with, what he was, where he’d be, what they’d assign him to—
Fly again, yeah. Porey would see to that. Front of the line-up. Or the bottom—at Porey’s discretion. He’d opened his damned mouth, he’d forgotten for a critical second he had partners who could be in danger from what he did or promised—
Couple of UDC guys came over and carded a candy bar. Names were Price and McCain. Techs. They hardly even looked at him, but he was sweating. He kept thinking, If I’d kept my mouth shut, if I’d done what the colonel wanted, if I’d only once ducked my head and played the game—
Tray banged somewhere. The room felt cold. His mother had said, Paul, what is it with you? Why do you always end up in the middle of it?
He wished to God he knew that. He wished to God he could go over there with the other guys and sit down and be what they wanted him to be, but he couldn’t even tell them what he’d done or what he was waiting to find out—
Please God, they’d Aptitude somewhere down the list, somewhere out of immediate usefulness, and he could go maybe to Chad’s crew, patch things up with them, he couldn’t think of a match-up else he could make that might have a chance. He should have offered that to Porey, Porey wasn’t crazy—he didn’t want to lose another ship, for God’s sake: Porey probably would have called it a good idea— good for morale, pull the program together. UDC and Fleet.
He should still propose that to Porey—talk to Chad’s guys himself in advance, if he could get them to talk to him...
God, why couldn’t he think about people? He was all right with machines, all right with anything that reacted in just one way when you touched it—-he could understand that. He just—
couldn’t figure how to stop himself before he said things. When he opened his mouth it was wrong, when he didn’t say anything it was wrong, he never got it figured out, some people just understood him and most didn’t, and the ones that did were always in trouble because of the ones that didn’t. Sum of his life, that. Evaluations said he was smart. So why couldn’t he get that right? Like go in there and apologize to Porey and take what he had coming?
Because when he walked up against a guy like that something went snap inside, he went hyper and he couldn’t think, that was the whole damn problem—
So calm down, don’t do that?
It was why the Fleet had recruited him, it was what they trained him to do, split-second, hyped and half crazy, and they wouldn’t understand he didn’t come with an off switch...
Except maybe Graff understood. But Graff wasn’t answering pages today...
Damn him.
A little hyped. They said, You can relax now. But there wasn’t any sleep. Just the boards, alive with lights. Hands knew where to go and went there. Hell of a way to teach. But they said, “This is a sim tape. Familiarization. It won’t prioritize for you. Just give you the handedness of the boards....”
“Got it, yeah. No trouble.”
“Don’t fight the sims, Kady. You want to bring that pulse down.”
“Yeah. I’m not fighting it.” Happy as hell. God. I want this thing, don’t want to screw it up—God, I don’t want to screw it—
“Calm.”
“Yeah, yeah.” So don’t get excited, Kady, don’t go after it, ride with it, just float and enjoy it—
“Lot better, lot better, Kady. How’re you doing?”
She laughed. Laughed like an idiot.
“You all right there? You know what you’re doing?”
Her hands were reaching. She wasn’t doing it. But she didn’t object. The sequence made complete sense. “Jawohl, mate, piece of easy, there.”
Clumsy direction, then. Her hand shook. “Shit!”
Boards went dark. Direction stopped. She grabbed for the B-panel and the fuse conditions, and the examiner said, “Abort, abort, it’s all right.”
“What did I do?” Her heart was going half light. The drug made her light-headed and she hated the sensation.
“Tape error. Not yours. Relax.”
Made her mad. They had no right to screw up. But you didn’t get mad while you were at the boards, you paid attention. All attention. Save mad for later.