“You go through, Gina,” he said. “Rick and I will get rid of our suits and stay here for a few minutes. See you later.”
He motioned Rick to the chamber off the side of the room and followed him in.
“You may wonder what the hell this is all about,” he began, even before the door was closed. “I’ll get to the point right away. I want to talk about your future. I know how it is at this stage of your training, because I went through it myself. You feel as though the assignments and tests will go on forever. But they won’t. They’ll be over before you know it. So I want to ask, what do you see yourself doing afterwards?”
“Yesterday, I thought I might have a chance at the Jupiter expedition. Early this morning I was ready to call everything quits and go back to Earth. Now?” Rick shrugged. “Now I don’t know what I want.”
“I understand about the Jupiter moons. That story paid off for Vanguard, but no one thought through what the effect would be on your group. I can’t change that, but I can tell you that even if the Jupiter expedition were real, it still wouldn’t be the toughest job in the solar system. Do you know what is?”
“I guess I don’t. All through training we’ve been told that the most challenging job is out here in the Belt, mining and refining and carrying finished products back to the Earth-Moon system. Are you saying that’s wrong?”
“That’s a tough job, and a rewarding one. Almost all the apprentices will be doing some piece of it. For you, though, I want to suggest an alternative. I want to ask you to consider a career with Security.”
The idea caught Rick totally unprepared. “Security?” He stared at Jigger. “Why me?”
“I think—and Gina and Barney agree—you probably have a talent for it.”
“But I don’t know a thing about security operations.”
“Of course you don’t. You’d have to learn new things.
But that will be true wherever you work. Education isn’t like a video, with a beginning and a middle and an end. It has a beginning, then it keeps going until you’re dead. If it stops you are dead, even if you don’t know it. And Gina and I will be learning, too. Vanguard is about to start a completely new project, tougher than anything we’ve ever tackled before. We’ll need all the help we can get.”
“You mean—Avant Mining?” Rick thought he knew where Jigger was heading.
“There’s certainly opportunities there, if that interests you. Beating Avant won’t be easy. They draw their people from the school system’s absolute cesspools, the hardest, most cynical kids they can find. You only met one of them—Alice Klein—and she was nowhere near as bad as some of the others. Compared with them, the toughest of your group is Mr. Nice Guy. But I’m going to surprise you: the hardest job isn’t fighting Avant. It’s a job where Avant and Vanguard are in total agreement about what needs to be done, and will probably have to join forces to do it. Know what it is?”
Rick shook his head. Vanguard and Avant, working together? He couldn’t imagine any area where the two companies had a common interest.
“In fact, if we don’t cooperate,” Jigger went on, “I don’t think we can possibly win. We have to fight a monster that’s effectively immortal, a monster with a billion arms, one with a million times more power than Vanguard and Avant combined. A monster not in space, but back on Earth. Do you remember what it was like in school?”
“Very well.” Rick’s confusion had become total.
“Do you think you’re smarter now than you were then?”
Rick had to consider that. He wasn’t sure what Jigger was asking. “Smarter, no. My brain’s the same. But I know a lot more, and I understand more of what I know.”
“Very true. And do you know why that’s true? I’ll tell you. Back on Earth you were being strangled by the biggest, most inefficient, best entrenched bureaucratic system in the history of the world. You were in school, adrift within an education system that had lost any interest in the value of knowledge, or truth, or discipline, or self-evaluation. Like all monopolies, it was more interested in perpetuating and protecting its own territory than in anything else. The men and women who emerge from the school system know less and less—and then wonder why they find themselves unemployable.” Jigger paused. “My God, I’m starting to spout the official company line. Let me get to the point. For every bright bored kid like you who gets kicked out of the system, another thousand stay inside it and are stifled for life. We have to change that. The toughest job in the solar system isn’t on the moons of Jupiter. It’s not beating Avant Mining. It’s back down on Earth.”
“No!” Rick finally thought he knew where Jigger was heading, and for the first time since Alice’s death he was flooded with powerful emotion. He saw in his mind Mr. Hamel, the patient turtle, bowed down by thirty years of frustration and indignity. “If you think I could ever go back there and put up with all the bullshit—”
“You told me that early this morning you were ready to go back. But this would be different. Forget the way we operate today. We’re talking something a lot more direct. We have to infiltrate the education system, and either transform it or destroy the whole mess. That needs older people, like Turkey Gossage and Coral Wogan—they’ve both volunteered—but we also need younger people, too, like me and Gina and—”
“No. Absolutely no. I’m not interested.” Rick backed toward the door. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“All right.” Jigger nodded and sighed. “I thought you would say that. I’ve had my five minutes, and more. The party and the dance will be starting now, and you’ve earned the right to be there. I didn’t expect you to say yes, you know. I just wanted to plant the seed of an idea that might grow into something five years from now. Any questions before you go?”
“No.” But Rick paused. “Did you ask anyone else in our group?”
“Two other people. I spoke with Vido Valdez, and Gina spoke with Deedee Mao.”
“I see. Can you tell me what they said?”
“Yes. Vido told me no way—no goddamn way, to be precise. Deedee told Gina, no, never, not if she lived to be a thousand. Then she asked if we had asked you. Gina told her we had not, but I was going to.”
“I see. Thank you. May I go now?”
“Sure. Have fun. I’ll be there myself in a few minutes.”
Rick closed the door and entered the second chamber of the airlock. He went through, but at the inner hatch he paused and stood motionless for a long time. He had not thought about Mr. Hamel for months, until today; but suddenly his mind was full of their final meeting, the small stooped figure sitting on the bench in the fading light of late afternoon. He heard again that dry, dusty voice: Not an easy job, but a worthwhile one. The most rewarding jobs are always the most difficult ones.
Could that be true? On Earth, in space, everywhere?
Maybe; but not for Rick Luban. Not tomorrow, not ever. And certainly not today, with Deedee waiting for him.
He moved to operate the hatch.
Beyond it, the party was getting into its stride. From where Rick was standing the sound through the closed door was no more than a confused hubbub, like the first distant swell of a revolution.
HIGHER EDUCATION
A Jupiter™ Novel
Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.