"I can show her where it is," Hap volunteered eagerly.
"Thank you, Hap. If you'd show Khorii and Elviiz the general layout, where the classrooms are, and the other important stuff, I'd appreciate it," Calla said, then turned apologetically to Khorii. "I have a class in a few minutes, but I just wanted to say hi and make sure you two-three-were settling in okay. Hap, if you would also show them the curriculum and help them get registered?"
Khorii started to protest that they wouldn't be there long enough to take courses like the other students, but thought better of it. Saying so might give rise to Shoshisha accusing her of being elitist again and of failing to exhibit the proper attitude for assimilation.
The girl needs a few lessons in assimilation herself Khorii thought, as she followed Hap down the passageway.
Chapter 6
Hap led them to a computer terminal and suggested they fill in the forms. She and Elviiz both did so. The curriculum on Maganos Moonbase was essentially directed toward mining engineering, Mr. Delzsaki Li's enterprise on the moon before he and Uncle Hafiz had joined Mother in establishing the school.
Other kinds of classes were offered, of course, and several were offered during each time slot, so students had more choices as to what to take when. The psychology and sociology classes taught by Calla Kaczmarek were no doubt designed to help the students deal with the various traumatic events that had brought them here. Steve Reamer, whose daughter Turi had once babysat Khorii, taught gemology and metal-smithing as well as drawing and, oddly enough, symbology. Khorii signed up for those, which were new to her, as well as advanced studies in conversational and written Standard and Calla's classes.
The others all seemed a bit redundant. Astrophysics, from the course description, seemed fairly elementary compared to the studies she had done with data provided by Elviiz's memory. Maak had equipped his son with not only the basic and advanced Federation courses required for those employed in intergalactic navigation, but also with the quirky theories and star charts compiled by Uncle Job and his adopted father, the late Captain Theophilus "Off" Becker. Great-uncle Off had taught Uncle Joh to use wormholes and pleated space as well as other physical anomalies as aids to navigation and shortcuts. She and Elviiz had already mastered many of the other conventional courses as well, and surpassed the lessons offered in the catalog. But she marked something for all of the required time slots, realizing that for the most part what she would actually be studying was her fellow students.
"Here's the 'ponies garden," Hap said, opening a glass door to a place as moist and green as Khorii imagined the rain forests of Khiindi's native Makahomia might be, from what Mother and Uncle Joh had told her.
Indeed, as they entered, Khiindi began purring loudly enough to drown out the noise of the generators and irrigation system. He sprinted forward, tail aloft, back paws flashing, till he was engulfed by the plants, where he sniffed and licked experimentally. One of them made him sneeze, and he turned his back on it and tried to bury it with digs of his back paws. Then he found a bed of something to roll in.
"Ah, he's found the herb garden," Hap said. "Do you know what all the herbs are for, Khorii? Rosemary is for remembrance and is delicious with fish and chicken, thyme is for . . ."
"Are there other cats here?" she asked. "Or has catmint a use to humans as well as cats?"
"Oh, yes, it's used in tea and is said to be good for stomach upsets and to calm the nerves," Hap replied.
"That's surprising," Khorii said. "It seems to have the opposite effect on Khiindi."
Khiindi gave her a look that seemed to indicate that he had heard and understood her words but didn't care one bit what her opinion of his behavior was. The cat went right on burrowing into the hydroponics bed.
But Hap bared his teeth at her! At first Khorii was startled, thinking she had done something wrong to make him react with such hostility, then recalled that with humans, that particular toothy expression was usually friendly.
"Khiindi's a cat," Hap said. "Cats have their own way of doing things."
"I've noticed," she agreed. "Often."
At that, Khiindi gave a flip of his tail, and vanished into the catnip patch. Hap continued talking and explaining every single plant in the beds, its uses and properties, dangers and lore, as well as any personal experiences he had had with each variety, while she and Khiindi used the 'ponies garden for their needs. On a Linyaari ship, she would have used the garden the same way Khiindi did to relieve herself, since Linyaari excrement was high in nutrients that were good for plants and very clean. But humans, as she had learned on MOO, were repulsed by the practice, and so Linyaari wasted their contributions in lavatories when they inhabited human-occupied spaces.
Khorii said, "It was good of you to wait for us and delay your own meal. We can accompany you now so you can eat, too."
"Not hungry!" Hap said. "This is more fun."
"But it would be a good opportunity to meet other students, would it not?" Elviiz asked.
"I guess so," Hap agreed, as if reluctant to share them. "Come on. It's three stories up."
She wasn't sure what he meant until they reached what he called the "hubbub."
"There's one of these at the center of each of our bubbles," he told her. "They were designed to make maximum use of the vertical space we have." A broad, moving walkway ascended in a wide, spiraling path to a series of what seemed to be suspended platforms, staggered so that each level branched off in a different direction.
Khorii counted six levels, including the one they stood on.
'Ponies garden, administration offices, most of the recreation areas, laundry, and dorms are on this level of this bubble," he told them. "Next one up is the 'puter labs, holo cells, and communications center. That's where I was when you came in."
"It's not associated with the docking bays?" Elviiz asked.
"No. We found it easier to have it all in one place. The idea behind the moonbase, as I'm sure your mom must have told you, is for us to learn to do everything ourselves. We have some supervision from experts and teachers, like Calla, but we're not just learning schoolkid stuff. This is on-the-job training, apprenticeships, vocational-technical education, and all of the cultural essentials kids who live with their families or go to planetside schools would learn as well. And not all the teachers are adults. We also give classes to each other about our worlds of origin. Some of us are from pretty strange places."
"Is it true you were all child slaves before Mother and her friend Mr. Li and Uncle Hafiz rescued you?"
"Well, that was true when they first established the base, but most of those kids have grown up and gone on-of course, some are still teaching here, some you've probably met on MOO. A few of the kids who were little when the Moonbase was established are in the upper levels now. But most of us are orphans, or displaced from our families as the result of a war or some other catastrophe. Shoshisha's family used to rule one of the provincial kingdoms of Zapore, a country located on the most temperate continent of Zilbek, the second planet from the suns of the Ganesha star system. So she's like a princess or something, except that her family got deposed and everybody was sent into exile while she was on an off-world shopping trip, then the exile was made permanent by some of those political enemies, who had her family assassinated. One of her mother's old friends warned her not to return and arranged for her to be smuggled out of the Ganesha system to Maganos Moonbase."
Khorii sighed. "She has been through a lot. She must be very unhappy."