I messaged the registrar again. Still waiting.
You’re still waiting? I thought. At least he had an office of his own. He didn’t have to share with Miss Ohmigod, This Is So Incred! Libby adored everything about the Academy—the sardine-can cabins, the rehydrated food, the exhausting schedule of lectures and labs and exercise and freefall training. She even loved the falling-off-a-log vertigo. “Because then you know you’re really in space!”
And she wasn’t the worst one. Several of the cadets acted like they were in a cathedral, wandering the corridors with their mouths open and speaking in hushed, reverent tones. When I mentioned that the place smelled like a gym locker, they looked at me like I was committing heresy, and went back to the cadets’ favorite topic of conversation, how lucky they were to be here. By the end of a week, I was ready to walk through an airlock without a spacesuit just to get away from them.
I was also worried about how I was going to talk to Kimkim, if and when she figured out a phone connection, and about finding a safe place to stash my phone so the registrar couldn’t suddenly confiscate it. I checked the RAH’s schematics, but there was nowhere a person could go to be alone on the entire space station. Every classroom and lab was used every hour of every watch. So were the mess, the gym, and the weightless modules, and when I’d gone to the infirmary, there hadn’t been separate examining rooms, just a tier of cots.
There was temporary privacy in the shower (very temporary—water is even more limited than the phone call times) and there was supposed to be “private time” half an hour before lights-out, but it wasn’t enforced, and Libby’s half of the cabin was always crammed with cadets discussing how exciting it had been to learn to use the zero-g toilet. I began to actually miss Coriander.
I checked the schematics again, looking for anything at all that might work. The inner room of the registrar’s office might in a pinch, though when I’d gone over to ask him what was taking the files so long, I’d been told the section was off-limits to first-years. So was the docking module, and all the outer sections were exposed to too much radiation to make them practical.
The only other possibility was the storage areas, which in the super-compact world of the RAH meant every space that wasn’t being used for something else—floors, ceilings, walls, even the airlocks. The diagrams showed all those spaces as filled with supplies, but it occurred to me (during a private-time discussion about the joys of learning to sit down in two-thirds g) that once those supplies had been used, the place they’d been might be empty.
I noted some of the possible spots and for the next few days spent my rest period exploring, and finally came up with a space between the plastic drums of nutrients for the hydroponics farm. It wasn’t very big, and it was above the ceiling, but luckily it was in the freefall area, and I’d finally figured out how to propel myself from one location to another in it without major damage. I half drifted, half rappelled my way up (over?) to the ceiling, squeezed into the space (which turned out to be a perfect size, big enough, but too small to drift around in), replaced the hatch, and spent a blissful fifteen minutes alone.
It would have been longer, but I remembered a class was scheduled to come in sometime soon, and I couldn’t afford to get caught. When I got back to my cabin, I memorized the freefall-area-use schedule and checked for a message from the registrar.
There wasn’t one, but on my schedule was “Conference Registrar’s office. Tuesday. 1600 hours.” Which meant I wouldn’t need a hiding place after all.
“I’ve gone over your application,” the registrar said, “and everything appears to be in order.”
“In order?” I said blankly.
“Yes,” he said, looking at the console. “Application, entrance exams, endurance test results, psychological battery scores. It’s all here.”
“Application?” I said, standing up too fast and nearly shooting over the desk at him. “I told you, I didn’t apply!”
“I also sent for the interviewer assessments and the minutes of the selection committee. You did in fact apply—”
“I did not—”
“—and were duly appointed.”
“I want to see that application. It must be a forgery—”
“Conflicted feelings among new cadets are not unusual. A strange new environment, separation from family, performance anxiety can all be factors. Did you perhaps have a friend who also wanted to get into the Academy?”
“Yes, but… I mean, she wanted in the Academy, I didn’t. I didn’t—”
He nodded sagely. “And now you feel by accepting your appointment you’re betraying that friend—”
“No,” I said. “I did not write that application. Let me see it.”
“Certainly,” he said, hit several keys, and the image of the application came up on the screen.
“Theodora Jane Baumgarten,” it read. This is like a bad dream, I thought. Birth date, address, school… Before I could read the rest of it, the registrar had hit the next screen and the next. “You see?” he said, blanking the last screen before I could get a good look at it. “And quite an impressive application, if I may say so. I think you’ll make an excellent addition to the Academy.”
“I want to see the Commander,” I said.
“She’d only tell you the same thing.” He hit several more keys, and the terminal spat out a slip of paper. “I’ve made an appointment for you with Dr. Tumali. He’ll help you sort out any conflicting feelings you—”
“I don’t have any conflicting feelings. I hate this place, and I want to go home,” I screeched at him, and stormed out, slamming the door behind me. Well, sort of. Slams aren’t terribly impressive at two-thirds g, and after I’d done it, I realize I should have demanded another phone call instead, this one to my mother. She’d said she’d secretly hoped I’d apply. Maybe she’d decided to do it for me. Or maybe Coriander had, as some kind of hideous joke. Or Mr. Fuyijama. The more cadets he had, the better Winfrey High looked.
But even if they’d filled out an application and forged my signature, they couldn’t have faked the entrance exams or the interviews. It made no sense, and I had no time to think about it. I had an essay due on asteroid mining and a lunar geography exam to study for. “Help,” I messaged Kimkim.
The display lit up. “Number out of range.”
Three days later, when I had decided I was going to have to do something drastic to get myself expelled and forget UCLA, my phone rang in the middle of rest period. “What was that?” Libby said drowsily.
“A killer meteor,” I said, switching the phone to “message.”
“Are you there?” the display read.
“Yes,” I messaged, “hang on,” and took off at a run for the freefall area. And nearly got caught by a group of second-years playing weightless soccer. I had to wait till they’d finished and left to swing up to my hiding place, hoping Kimkim hadn’t concluded she’d lost me in the meantime.
As soon as I was inside the space, I switched the phone to “voice” and said, “Kimkim, are you there?”
There was no answer. Oh, frick, I thought, and then remembered the lag.
“I’m here,” she said. “Sorry I took so long. I had trouble setting up an encryption so the Academy can’t eavesdrop on us.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I need you to get a look at my Academy application.”
“I thought you said you didn’t apply.”
“I didn’t, but the registrar showed me something that looked like one. I need you to find out what kind of signature verification it’s got on it, an R-scan or a thumbprint, and what site notarized it.”