According to regs any middy could be caned, but tradition held there was a dividing line. Alexi, at sixteen, should have been over the line except for a grievous offense. By statute Lieutenant Cousins was within his rights, but not by custom.
Alexi was miserable but hadn’t complained, which was right and proper.
I slept.
4
Two weeks later they gave me another docking drill. It took me forever to plot our course. I labored an hour just to calculate our position, until even the Captain was fidgeting with annoyance. By the time I came off the bridge I was wringing wet, but I hadn’t wrecked the ship, though I’d bumped the airlocks together fairly hard.
I went looking for Amanda to tell her of my accomplishment. I found her in the passengers’ lounge watching a holovid epic. She turned it off and listened instead to my excited replay of my maneuvers.
Though I no longer sat at her table in the dining hall, Amanda and were becoming good friends. We took long walks together around the circumference corridor. We read together in her cabin. She told me about her father’s textile concern, and I told her stories of Academy days. Our only physical contact was to hold hands. I could have slept with her; it wasn’t against regs, and I lined up with the other middies for my sterility shot from Doc Uburu every month.
But she didn’t invite me and I couldn’t push, not with a passenger.
A few days after my success on the bridge I relaxed on my bunk, watching Sandy tease Ricky Fuentes, our ship’s boy.
“C’n I try it? Please, sir? Please?” The ship’s boy reached for the orchestron Sandy held over his head, grinning. We all liked Ricky, a happy twelve-year-old. Even Vax was congenial to him. The youngster’s trusting good nature encouraged it.The ship’s boy roamed crew quarters, officers’ country, and passenger lounges with impunity. It was all part of his job as ship’s gofer. Ricky took messages, retrieved gear that crewmen or officers forgot, generally made himself useful.
Every capital ship had a ship’s boy, usually an orphan of a career sailor. Traditionally, he graduated to seaman first class and usually made petty officer before he was twenty.
Sandy gave him his orchestron. The boy selected harpsichord, French horn, and tuba, set down a bongo beat, and tapped out a simple melody on the tiny keyboard. He set it
to repeat. Then he set up a counterpoint, using different instruments.
Ricky listened to the orchestron develop the theme he had created. “Zarky! Real zarky!” I think that meant he liked it.
I was only five years older than he, but joespeak changes fast.
The machine burbled to a stop. “Thanks, Sandy, I gotta run.
I’m helping in the kitchen tonight. I mean the galley. Bye, sir!” He ran off.
At Ricky’s age, I was chopping wood for Father. I wasn’t outgoing and sociable, as he was. I never would be. At home Father and I didn’t talk often, and we certainly didn’t laugh.
Sandy left, and I dozed.
Sometime later Vax came and slapped the light on, waking me from a pleasant dream.
I muttered, “Turn it off, will you?”
He ignored me, undressing slowly.
“Vax, turn off the bloody light!”
“Sure, Nicky.” He slapped it off, managing to express contempt with the gesture.
Perhaps it was the heavy dinner, or the lack of exercise.
Drugged and lethargic, I fell instantly back to sleep.
Sometime later I was aware of a complaining voice. “It’s cold. Turn the heat up, Wilsky.” I heard the rustle of sheets as Sandy dragged himself out of bed to dial up the heat.
A few minutes later Vax started again. “Sandy, it’s too hot. Turn it down.” Once again the boy got up and turned off the heat. This time it took me longer to get back to my dream.
“Turn the heat up, Wilsky!”
I snapped awake, inwardly raging. Alexi groaned. Sandy, who must have been asleep, did not answer.
“Wilsky, you damned asshole, get up and give us some heat!” Now Vax was adding blasphemy to his boorishness.
I heard the rustle of sheets as Sandy climbed out of his bunk and adjusted the temperature.
I lay awake, debating. I wouldn’t protect Sandy from all Vax’s hazing, but there came a point when Sandy had enough.
More would cause him emotional problems. For that matter, more would cause ME emotional problems. Where should I draw the line? And how could I do it without getting my head knocked off by the muscular gorilla in the next bunk, and permanently losing control of the wardroom? “Now turn it down.”
“It’s fine in here,” I heard myself say.
“It’s hot. That jerkoff doesn’t know how to adjust it properly.”
“Get up and do it yourself, Vax.”
He ignored me. “Wilsky, put your pretty little ass on the deck and fix the heat!”
I’d had enough. “Stay put, Sandy. That’s an order.”
“Aye aye, Mr. Seafort.” His tone was grateful.
“What in hell are you pulling, Nicky?”
I tried to sound authoritative. “Enough, Vax.”
“The hell you say!” So much for my sounding authoritative.
“Vax, turn the light on.” I waited, but he did nothing, forcing the issue. From the silent breathing I knew we were all awake. “Alexi, get up. Turn on the light.”
“Aye aye, Mr. Seafort.” Alexi slapped the light switch, his eyes bleary, hair tousled. Quickly he sank back into bed, out of harm’s way. Vax sat up, glaring.
I lay back in my bunk, arm behind my head. “Vax, please give me twenty push-ups.” I was in big trouble.
“Prong yourself, Nicky.”
I heard Alexi’s sharp intake of breath.
“Vax, twenty push-ups. That’s an order.”
“Don’t be more of an ass than you can help.” Vax’s challenge was now in the open. Give me orders? Enforce them--if you can. He had the right, according to custom.
But a first middy wasn’t entirely without resources.
“This is a direct order, Vax. Twenty push-ups, on the deck.”
“No. You’re not man enough to give orders. Not inside the wardroom.” A wise distinction. His challenge was to my authority in the wardroom, not to ship’s authority in general.
“Mr. Holser, put yourself on report at once.” That meant, go knock on the first lieutenant’s hatch and tell him I had written you up for insubordination. It would most likely cause him to be put over the barrel, even at his age.
“You’ve got to be kidding. You know what that’ll do to you.”
I knew. “Mr. Holser, go to the duty officer, forthwith, and place yourself on report.”
“I will not.” Vax was taking a chance, but not a big one.
He knew as well as I that a middy who called on an officer for help to run his wardroom was finished in the service.
“Alexi.”
“Yes, Mr. Seafort?”
“Put your pants on, go to the duty officer, and tell him the senior midshipman reports a mutiny in the wardroom. Mr.
Holser is written up but refuses to obey a direct order to place himself on report. I request a court-martial to determine the validity of my allegations.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Alexi threw aside the covers and reached for his trousers.
“Belay that, Alexi. You can’t do it, Nick.” Vax’s tone was urgent. “It’ll ruin you too. You’ll never get command if you can’t even hold a wardroom. You won’t even get another posting!”
“That’s no longer your concern, Mr. Holser.” I remained icily formal; it was my only chance. “Mr. Wilsky.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Dress yourself. Go to crew quarters. Wake the master-at-arms . Have him bring an escort to the wardroom, flank.
“As for you, Vax, you are under arrest.”