Except maybe the subtle parts of Bellier’s teaching methods.
If browbeating the students could be called subtle.
“Gloves on,” Bellier said.
Yash took one glove and slid it over her left hand first. She was righthanded. If the glove had some nasty bite to it, she wanted to avoid having that bite on her dominant hand.
The glove’s interior felt smooth and cool, almost as cool as the inside of the room. The fabric was soft and thin and incredibly responsive. She twitched a finger, and the glove felt as if it were a part of her hand.
The glove’s exterior clicked as it moved. The parts on it—the scales, for lack of a better word—were hard enough to make that sound as they brushed against each other.
She had never worn a glove like this before, but, if she survived this course, she might wear gloves like this all the time.
There seemed to be no ill effects from the glove, so she slipped on the other one. It too was cool and supple. She moved her fingers in a modified wave. The more she moved, the more it felt like the glove had become part of her hand.
“The specs for these gloves exist in every DV-Class ship,” Bellier said. “Should your anacapa drive on that ship become inactive or die, and you feel the need to interact with it using your hands, I urge you to make a copy of these gloves before you do so.”
“I take it they’re made of nanobits?” Crenshaw asked.
Yash couldn’t quite suppress a surge of irritation. Couldn’t he ask a question in a normal way, one that made him sound less like a know-it-all?
“Answer your own question, Crenshaw,” Bellier said. “And think about it for a moment before you do.”
This time, Yash looked. A red flush was climbing up his neck. It reached his chin, then his cheeks, and then his ears. He actually looked terrified.
She felt no compassion for him, though. His mouth kept getting him into these strange situations. He would have to learn to shut up or someone would pull him out of the program, no matter how smart he was.
“Apparently, Crenshaw here has declined to guess,” Bellier said. “Perhaps he really did need that question answered. Can you answer it, Zarlengo?”
Yash’s mouth went instantly dry. “I can’t answer with accuracy,” she said. “But I can answer with a supposition that I’m reasonably satisfied with.”
Bellier’s eyebrows went up in amusement. “Let’s hear your supposition.”
Yash took an ever-so-quiet breath to steady herself.
“You said that the gloves’ template exists in each DV-Class ship, and that we can make the gloves if we need them. DV-Class ships do not carry a wide variety of materials with them, especially if they’re going long distances without backup. However, DV-Class vessels carry a large supply of nanobits for repair, for emergency, and for other uses around the ship. So, based on what you said, I’m guessing—and it truly is a guess, since I did not have time to test this—that the gloves are made up of nanobits.”
“You seem to be on a roll today, Zarlengo,” Bellier said. “Good time to put in your best performance of the class so far.”
A few of the students were frowning at Bellier. Did they truly not understand that Bellier had just confirmed what Yash had said?
“Yes, indeed,” Bellier said, that edge of contempt back in her voice as she looked at the other five students. “Zarlengo’s supposition is correct. The gloves are made of nanobits, which is both good and bad. Before Crenshaw can ask another stupid question, let me say that I will get to the ‘good and bad’ part in a moment. I do want to comment on Zarlengo’s ability to take disparate pieces of evidence and put them into a logical whole. It’s a skill you all should cultivate. I’m assuming you used that to figure out what was going on with the container?”
Going on with the container. The question was vague, maybe deliberately so. But Yash had to answer.
“Um,” she said, annoyed that the single word showed just how nervous she was, “if you’re asking how I figured out there was a control panel, yeah, I saw what happened to the others, figured out that they probably hadn’t touched anything, and that meant that they had activated something else. If you wanted us to have the gloves, then there had to be a way to deactivate whatever that something else was.”
“Excellent,” Bellier said. “That is the kind of reasoning you all practice. You will need the ability to leap across certain pieces of evidence to arrive at conclusions that will enable you to make snap decisions. You will not always have time to test your hypothesis, so you must learn to trust your instincts on some matters.”
“I don’t get it,” Crenshaw said, and Yash wasn’t alone in cringing. She saw Vincent Mercer, standing beside the very last container, shake his head slightly as if to say, Don’t do it, Lionel.
Bellier turned toward Crenshaw, her face almost expressionless.
Crenshaw clearly didn’t take that expressionless face as a warning. “First, you make us go through this elaborate scenario without telling us that there were security protocols and you put some pressure on us, and you punish the people who act quickly, and then you tell us that acting quickly is what we need to do. I don’t get it. What are you trying to teach us? How to be uncomfortable?”
“Are you angry, Crenshaw?” Bellier asked.
“I’m not happy,” he said.
She nodded once. “Did you fail to hear my comment on emotion?”
“I was finishing the task you assigned,” Crenshaw snapped. “You told us to ignore everything around us until we were done.”
So he was one of the last two. That had to grate on Mr. Know-It-All.
“And yet, you know when I made that statement,” Bellier said, “so you were paying attention. You simply were not absorbing the lesson.”
“I was trying to get to the damn gloves inside your time limit,” Crenshaw said.
“Which you succeeded at doing. Let me ask you again, Crenshaw. Are you angry right now?”
“I’m going to give you the same answer,” he said. “I’m not happy.”
“Why do you expect to be happy?” Bellier asked. “This class does not exist to make you happy. It exists to teach the best engineers from this year’s class how to work with anacapa drives. Do you recall what I said about emotions?”
“I recall that you pontificated on emotions,” Crenshaw said. “I don’t know the exact language.”
Yash winced at the word “pontificated.” Her gaze met Abby Darlington’s. Darlington’s dark skin looked pale in this light, or maybe she had simply gone pale with panic.
Darlington actually liked Crenshaw. They often left class together, talking and comparing notes. She clearly knew that Crenshaw was blowing up his entire future, right now, with this single conversation.
“I said that emotions have no place here,” Bellier said.
“And yet you let Zarlengo make some kind of leap of faith and then tell us how impressive that is,” Crenshaw said.
“Taking pieces of information and compiling them into a working hypothesis is not a leap of faith, Crenshaw. It is essential to this job.” Bellier’s tone hadn’t changed at all. She didn’t even seem surprised that she was having this argument.
Yash was. Yash couldn’t believe anyone would challenge Bellier like this.
“It upsets you that you are not the star pupil in this afternoon’s class, doesn’t it, Crenshaw?” Bellier asked.
“I’m not that petty,” he said a bit too quickly.
Bellier’s eyes narrowed. “But you are angry—oh, excuse me. You are not happy. You want me to give you rules, don’t you, Crenshaw?”
“It would certainly help,” he said. “Because this poking around in the dark is just plain stupid.”
“And yet it is the essence of the job, should you end up on a DV-Class ship. Nothing will follow rules.”
“That can’t be true,” Crenshaw said. “We’ve been spending years studying systems and how they’re compiled, how they work. Systems exist for a reason, and
that reason translates into rules. Saying that nothing will follow rules is something you’re doing to mess with us.”
“I am?” Bellier almost smiled, but seemed to catch herself before she did.
“Yeah,” Crenshaw said. “This whole thing. It’s just mind games. You’re messing with us on purpose for some sadistic reason of your own.”
Yash wondered if he wanted out of the program or if he was always like this. She had never been in a class with him before this one. She had found him deeply annoying all semester, and now she found him both annoying and worrisome. She hated that she was worried about him losing his place in class, but she also knew that she would rather have someone leave class because they had made a technical mistake rather than some kind of emotional blowup.
“Tell me, Crenshaw,” Bellier said, “did you have Professor Alsworth’s class on Unusual Technologies?”
Yash had loved that class. It had been very similar to this afternoon; find something unusual, examine it, see if it was useful, dangerous, or harmless, see if it could be co-opted into something for the Fleet. She had applied to be in Alsworth’s upper level programs, should Yash survive this particular course.
“No,” Crenshaw said. “I tested out of it. I spent three years interning in one of the labs on Sector Base T.”
Yash let out a small breath. The fact that he had not taken that class explained a lot. Professor Alsworth had had a large waiting list, three times the size of the class. Why she did had become clear in the first week, when she had flunked six students, one each on six separate days, and six others took their place. By the end of the first month, nearly twenty students had washed out of the engineering program thanks to Professor Alsworth.
Once they were gone, the class moved forward with energy and curiosity and a sense of fun. But that first month had been brutal.
Bellier nodded. “I shall discuss this with my superiors,” she said, “because Unusual Technologies is a class one should not test out of.”
“Well, I did test out of it,” Crenshaw said. “Your bosses determined that I didn’t need something like that. I had enough experience.”
“And yet you do not,” Bellier said. “Because you are challenging me right now.”
“You don’t like someone pushing back?” Crenshaw asked.
“I don’t have any emotional entanglement here at all,” Bellier said. “I simply do not like wasting a slot in my class on someone who is terribly unprepared for it.”
Someone near Yash gasped. It wasn’t Crenshaw, though. His entire face was red. He was finally beginning to understand that he was in some kind of trouble.
“You are a bright man, Crenshaw. You have tested well in my class. You have done the work. You’re often ahead of the curve on anything to do with logical systems and following instructions point by point.”
His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, but Yash thought that they shouldn’t. Because there was a “but” lurking in Bellier’s sentence.
Crenshaw didn’t seem to be able to feel it coming. Yash suddenly wondered if he was unable to understand some of the nuances of human interaction, particularly when it was as controlled as Bellier’s had been all semester.
“Unfortunately, you have an arrogance that gets in the way of learning, and even more unfortunately, the system has encouraged that arrogance by letting you test out of essential classes.” Bellier walked until she stood in front of the container that Crenshaw had chosen.
He remained motionless, but his flush got even deeper.
“You have performed well today on the technical aspects,” Bellier said, “but you have made unwise choices since you entered this room. Actually, those choices began when you sat down in my class and felt that you could comment on every small part of—”
“You don’t like being questioned, do you?” he blurted. “You think you’re better than all of us. You like going after us, like picking on us. You could teach this class in a kinder way, you know.”
Bellier did not move. She barely seemed to breathe. Yash was having trouble breathing as well.
Yash had seen other students break down in other classes, but she had never seen anyone lose it in front of Bellier. Bellier usually dismissed them long before the emotions got heated. Or rather, the student’s emotions got heated. Bellier seemed to have a preternatural calm that emanated from her no matter what she did.
“If you were to graduate from this program,” Bellier said to Crenshaw, “you would then have to enter a military program that would train you in the Fleet’s military protocols. All engineers end up with officer-level credentials.”
Bellier paused as if she expected Crenshaw to say something snide. When he didn’t, Yash glanced at him. He was sweating visibly now. If he didn’t know where this conversation was going, he was dumber than he looked.
“Superior officers do not like being challenged without cause,” Bellier said. “I—”
“I have cause.” Crenshaw said. And there it was, Crenshaw having trouble being disciplined. Or Crenshaw having trouble with impulse control.
Or both.
Yash wished she could step out of the room. Or that Crenshaw would leave the room. Because this wasn’t going to end well.
“You know I have cause,” Crenshaw was saying to Bellier. “You’re just being unfair.”
Bellier waited again until he was done speaking. When it was clear to the entire class that he was not going to say anything else, she said, “Superior officers also do not like to be interrupted. You should know that as well, Crenshaw. You grew up in the Fleet. You’ve watched the military protocols—”
“They didn’t apply to me,” he said.
Bellier paused, as if she was editing her words before speaking them. Then she spoke very calmly. “As I said, Crenshaw, you have an ability in this area. It will be sad to lose you from this program.”
“Will be…?” he said, sounding stunned. Apparently it was taking him a moment to process her words. “You’re getting rid of me? You just said I’m doing well.”
“At the technical aspects,” she said.
“Those are the important aspects,” he said.
“And because you believe that,” she said, “I am letting you go, with great reluctance.”
Yash wasn’t feeling reluctant. The sooner he left, the happier she would feel.
“I’m going to protest your treatment,” he said.
“That is your choice.” Bellier waited, as if she expected something more from him. Maybe she wanted him to back down? Apologize?
Yash could sense Bellier wanted something, but Crenshaw didn’t seem to notice.
“Just get rid of me then,” he said.
“All right, Crenshaw,” Bellier said. “Please leave by the door through which you entered.”
He glanced at the other door, as if he had expected to go that way. Then he threw the gloves onto the floor next to the dead anacapa drive he had been assigned to, and stomped back toward the original door.
He yanked it open, paused as if he was going to say something, then shook his head as if he had changed his mind. He left, slamming the door behind him.
Bellier hadn’t moved. She had watched him leave.
“If he hadn’t continually interrupted me,” she said to the class, “I would have sent him back for retraining. He would have had another chance two years from now. But his temperament has shown me he is not the kind of man who can do this job.”
She walked back to the center of the room, her slight form reflected in the windows. It looked like she was etched against the rock of the crater.
“You should be learning that this job is about how well you handle a crisis emotionally. You might be technically proficient, but if you cannot handle the pressure of a classroom setting where there are no real stakes, then you will not be able to perform on a bridge, in the middle of a life-or-death emergency, while everyone around you is dealing with their own version of the crisis.”
Yash had never seen a cris
is like that, but she knew they existed. She’d heard stories. She’d studied some of the best and most creative solutions that had come out of those crises.
She wanted to believe that she could handle all those situations. At least she knew better than Crenshaw. Yash would never have picked this kind of fight, not with Bellier, not with any of her instructors.
“Well,” Bellier said, “since none of you feel the need to interject yourself personally into the drama that we have had this afternoon, we can turn to the reason for our class—the anacapa drive. Are you ready to learn how it works?”
Yash almost said yes. She had a hunch the other four also would have said yes if it hadn’t been for that showdown with Crenshaw.
“Good,” Bellier said, apparently taking their silence for assent. “Then let us begin.”
Twenty-Four
Yash sat cross-legged on the floor of the lab, her hands the only warm thing about her. The floor had a chill that made the chill in the air seem balmy.
She could barely see Bellier, who now paced back and forth across the front of the lab, moving from student to student. Only five remained, and they were scattered between the ten containers.
Bellier had not asked anyone to get closer to anyone else. She had kept them in the spots they had initially chosen.
Back at the start of this session, Yash had thought that she had been wise to take the largest dead drive, but now she wasn’t so certain. The instructions Bellier had given them sounded simple (why did Bellier’s instructions always sound simple?)—take a hard, close look at the dead anacapa drive without touching it.
But the students did have to keep their gloves on. Yash wasn’t sure about the whys and wherefores of that either, and after the problems with Crenshaw, she was even more reluctant to ask questions than she had been when the session started.
The dead anacapa drive really did look like a rock, at least from far away. Up close, she could see some gray nanobits flaking off its edges. However, not every part of the anacapa drive had nanobits on it.
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