The now-familiar warning siren began to wail. Thrust was coming in sixty seconds. Rick led the way back to their seats, striving to mimic the easy free-space motion of Jigger Tait. He couldn’t do it. After a few seconds of aimless drifting he was forced to pull himself along using seat backs as handholds. Convinced that Deedee was watching him and laughing, he turned his head. She had just bounced off a wall and was turning end-over-end with a bewildered expression on her face. He went back and helped her to reach her seat.
One thing about freefall, Rick thought as they reached CM-2 and went through docking, pressurization, and disembarkation: it made you a lot less likely to laugh at somebody else—because you never knew how soon your turn would come to look like an idiot.
As he left the pressurized dock he turned and caught a glimpse of Earth through the transparent overhead dome. It hung above him, about twice as big as a full moon.
He halted and stared up at it for a long time. Somewhere on that globe was his school, with Screw and Hoss and Juanita and Jackie, with Mr. Hamel and Mr. Preebane and Principal Rigden. Somewhere were his mother and Mick, living it up on what they had been paid by Vanguard Mining—unless it was already all spent. Somewhere were Doctor Bretherton and Tess Shawm, taking in the next batch of recruits and testing them to the point of collapse.
They were all on that far-off blue-grey ball, all invisible, close to each other in space but seven hundred thousand kilometers away from him.
It felt more like seven hundred million.
Chapter Six
“Let me introduce myself.” The man was plump and balding, with fleshy cheeks and drooping jowls. “I’m Turkey Gossage, chief of the training program on CM-2. You can think of me as the principal here—the head teacher. You don’t know it yet, but I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Rick had taken a position near the back. He craned for a better look. The man in front of the group was dressed in a black tanktop and jeans rather than the standard jacket and slacks. He scowled aggressively as he stared at them, but his blue eyes were sparkling. There had been a low general mutter from the group, and he was reacting to it.
“You heard me, sweethearts? The best thing. So if you got something to say, get it off your chest now.”
No one spoke.
“You, sweetheart.” Gossage pointed a finger at a woman in the front row. “I see your mouth moving, but I don’t hear you. Don’t whisper. Tell all of us.”
“Don’t you call me sweetheart!” It was Deedee, not much to Rick’s surprise. “You can’t do that.”
“I can’t, eh?” Gossage was grinning, but his neck and jowls turned red as turkey wattles. It was suddenly obvious how he got his nickname. “Why not?”
“Because it’s degrading, and it’s insulting. It’s also sexually discriminatory. Do it one more time, and I’ll take you to court.” Deedee paused.
“You mean you’ll sue me?” Gossage grinned again, but now it was unexpectedly friendly. “Sweetheart, that word is music to my ears. It proves we’ve got innocent new blood out here on CM-2, and it leads me straight in to what I have to say to all of you. Let’s get a few things out of the way right now. First, forget the sexual discrimination talk. I call everyone sweetheart. You, and bluebeard standing next to you"—that was Chick Teazle—"and the one at the back with the shitface grin on his chops.”
Gossage was looking right at Rick. Rick stopped smiling. He saw Vido Valdez in front of him turning to smirk. Next to Vido, Alice Klein stared at and right through Rick.
“Far as I’m concerned,” Gossage went on, “you’re all sweethearts ’til you prove otherwise. As for suing me, good luck to you. You’re not on sue-’em-all Earth now. We got exactly two lawyers out beyond the Moon, and they’re up to their asses in mineral depletion allowances and tax codes. If you can afford their time, you don’t belong here. And if you did manage to sue, you’d lose for reasons that I’ll go into in a minute. So tell me what else is on your mind. You were angry before I ever called you sweetheart.”
Deedee shook her head. It was another youth in the second row, one of the East Coast additions to Rick’s group, who spoke up.
“What’s this teacher bullshit? I done with school two month ago. Nuthin’ ’bout school in anythin’ anybody said to me.”
“I see. What’s your name?”
“Cokie Mulligan.”
“All right, Cokie Mulligan. Nothing about school in anything anybody said to you. Right. You read your contract, did you? The one that you and your parents or guardians signed.”
“Sure I did.”
“The whole thing?—including the fine print.”
Mulligan hesitated. “Yes.”
“Then you noticed the place where it says that Vanguard Mining, and in particular its authorized instructors—people like me—are in loco parentis to you for the duration of your contract.”
“Don’t know what that means.”
“In loco parentis means in place of your parents.” Turkey Gossage smiled horribly at Mulligan. “So now I’m like your daddy and your mommy, all rolled up into one. And I’m going to take better care of you than they ever did.”
Mulligan shook his head. “Maybe. But I don’t want no teacher, an’ I’m not goin’ to no dumb school. I hate school and I’m done school. I never signed up for that.”
There was a general mutter of agreement from everyone in the group.
“I see.” Turkey Gossage turned, floated across to a chair facing the front of the room, and straddled it with his forearms folded along the back. “What we have here, I suspect, is a simple failure to communicate. It’s that hated word, school, isn’t it? It suggests the wrong thing to all of you, and I shouldn’t have used it.
“So let’s agree that this isn’t a school. Let’s say it’s a survival course for off-Earth mining operations. The Belt is a dangerous place. You can screw up bigtime out there, eat vacuum, OD on radiation, blow yourself up, get flattened by an ore crusher, get stranded and starve to death. No legal liability for Vanguard Mining—read your contract. But Vanguard doesn’t want you dead, because we already have an investment in you. You think all those tests you took don’t cost money? So it’s my job to make sure that by the time you leave here you know how to avoid killing yourself. That means learning a few new rules. Anybody object to the idea of surviving?”
Rick shook his head and glanced around at the others. Everyone was doing the same.
“Good.” The smile never left Turkey Gossage’s face. “Now we get down to details. I’m going to give you assignments that have to be completed before bedtime. But before we talk about them I want to talk about you. I’m sure you all think you’re hot-shot and special and smarter than most people. And maybe you actually are—otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all. But smart or not, at the moment you’re still zeros. No skills means no value.
“Before we’re through here, that will change. You’ll have skills. You’ll have value. You’ll have a reason to think you’re hot-shot and special. And it all starts with the assignments. Today it will be reading. All right?”
Nods all around.
“Just one thing.” Turkey Gossage was deliberately casual. “I said reading, and I meant reading. By you. Not with a reading machine. There will be times out in the Belt where a knowledge of complex instructions is vital and no electronic readers are available. So you have to be able to read. I’ll let you into a big secret, something you’d never be told in an Earth schooclass="underline" reading is easy! Practically everyone can learn to read with a bit of effort. All of you can, or you wouldn’t be here. And we won’t go too fast at first. Short words, easy sentences.”