Higher Education

by Charles Sheffield

  Rick had been told quite a few things about Vanguard Mining's operations, but he lacked the glue to put the pieces together. For instance, he knew from the short briefings at the medical facility and at White Sands that franchises for commercial mining of the Belt had bogged down in endless debate within the Council of Nations. That deadlock had continued until the Council's own international (and multilingual) mining effort had ended in disaster, with the loss of all equipment and personnel.

  At that point, business interests were suddenly permitted to mine the asteroid belt—and welcome to it. The Council had decided that there was no profit to be made there, although they were more than ready to accept franchise fees. They were astonished when Vanguard Mining's prototype mine and refinery turned out to be profitable. In the subsequent sixteen years the company had established commercial mining and refining operations on thirty-eight different asteroids out in the Belt.

  Rick knew all that. He had also been told, at the time of his first tests by Vanguard, that the woman speaking to him was located on some place called CM-2, in translunar orbit. But in school, astronomy had been of no interest. He didn't know the difference between LEO and GEO, or cislunar and translunar. He was more interested in chastity belts than asteroid belts.

  It never occurred to Rick to connect the things he had been told until the translunar transfer vehicle carrying him and thirty-one other trainees up from the holding station in low earth orbit was close enough for Rick to actually see CM-2.

  He had been expecting some sleek, clean-lined structure. Instead he found their vehicle was closing on a vast irregular lump of dark rock.

  "That thing?" Rick spoke to Deedee, who was standing between him and Jigger Tait, a Vanguard miner who was hitching a ride back from Earth with the trainees. "That can't be the training center."

  In the two days since first lift-off, Rick and Deedee had been observing a sort of armed truce. Their ship, station, and dining-area seat assignments had forced them to be together most of the time, but neither one was sure enough of either knowledge or stomach stability to risk an assertion of superiority. So it was Jigger, big-boned, iron-stomached, unaffected by freefall, and apparently totally self-confident in every way, who raised his pale eyebrows, sniffed disdainfully, and said, "Don't you guys know anything? That's CM-2 out there—commercial mine number two."

  "But I thought the mines were all out in the Belt."

  "They are. But this one has been worked out commercially. When the iron and siderophiles—that's nickel and platinum and iridium—were all gone they attached low-thrust engines and moved it to translunar, so now it's the headquarters for the Vanguard training school."

  "I don't remember that from any briefings." Rick looked questioningly at Deedee, who shook her head.

  "Me neither."

  "Then you didn't use the browse feature on your reader."

  "We weren't told we had to."

  Jigger sniffed again. "I'm sure you weren't. But I'll give you some free advice that I had to learn the hard way when I was a trainee: If you only do what you're told to do, you'll soon be in trouble at Vanguard Mining." Jigger lifted from his seat, moving effortlessly in the zero-gee environment. "Okay kids. Better get your act together and strap in. We'll be docking in a few more minutes. But before you sit down, take a quick look at that."

  He pointed outside, away from CM-2. At first Rick saw nothing but bright unwinking stars. He stared hard, and finally noticed something like a tiny feather of sparkling blue-white where Jigger Tait had pointed.

  "What is it?" asked Deedee. "A comet?"

  "No such luck. That, friends, is the competition. Take a good look, and hope you won't be seeing a lot like it."

  "That's a ship," Rick exclaimed. "Isn't it?"

  "It is. But it's not one of ours, you can tell that from the drive. They use pulsed fusion, we use continuous fusion. So their ships don't show a continuous exhaust. If you want to travel rough, ride one of those babies—an acceleration that varies between zero and two gees and back, every ten seconds."

  "What do you mean, not one of ours?" asked Deedee.

  "What I said. That's part of the fleet of Avant Mining and Refining."

  "Who?"

  "God! Don't they tell you guys anything?" Jigger glared at them. "Avant Mining and Refining. Founded seven years after Vanguard. They're aggressive, expanding fast. That one's on its way back from the Belt. Did you think we had a damned monopoly out here?"

  "Nobody ever mentioned Avant Mining," said Deedee defensively, and looked at Rick for confirmation. He nodded.

  "Well, they will," Tait said. "Maybe you shouldn't hear this from me, but you're going to find it out sooner or later. Avant make our management real nervous. They've had a couple of big successes in the Belt, places where they got to a rich asteroid and staked their claim on it before we did—even though we thought our prospectors had found it first, and we had the inside track. Believe me, Avant is tough. Pacific Rim financing, and they play real hardball. You'll see."

  He floated away toward the rear of the ship. Rick and Deedee lingered at the screen for a few seconds longer, staring at the insignificant mote of Vanguard's competition. But then their attention turned again to their destination. CM-2 seemed much more important to their immediate future than Avant Mining.

  Now that they were closer they could see the true size of the training asteroid. Each of the wart-like bubbles that covered the surface of the planetoid was actually the exit point for a mine shaft, three to ten meters across. The whole object must be riddled with tunnels. CM-2 seemed more like a whole world than a training facility.

  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 school: 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."

  There was a stir at the back of the class. A short-haired and overweight blond girl was moving toward the door.

  "Now where are you going?" Gossage did not raise his voice. "Leaving us already?"

  She turned angrily at the doorway. "Yes, I am."

  "What's your name?"

  "I'm Gladys de Witt. I didn't read none when I was in school, and I'm damned if I'm going to start now I'm out of it. Go screw yourself, Gossage. You think you're the boss, but you're not. You can't stop me leaving. I seen the contract. I don't have to stay. It says you can't use violence on me, neither."

  "That's quite true. I can't prevent any one of you from leaving. I can't be violent with you—though we might disagree on what constitutes violence. And I can't make you complete your assignments." Gossage nodded slowly. "Very true. All I can do, Gladys de Witt, is explain these to you." He held up a handful of small pink cards. "They are meal vouchers. You need one to obtain food from the cafeteria service system. When you complete your assignment satisfactorily—by this evening, or tomorrow morning, or tomorrow midday, or whenever—you will receive one voucher. But if you fail to complete your assignment to my satisfaction, you will not."

  "You can't do that to me!"

  "I'm afraid I can. Read your contract. Vanguard Mining, in loco parentis, decides the manner and extent of trainee nutrition. Now, Gladys. Are you going to leave? Or would you like to stay here with the rest of the trainees while I explain today's assignment? Dinner is lasagna with mushrooms, peppers, and garlic bread. The choice is yours."

  Turkey Gossage could smile and coax with the best of them, but he was one tough son of a bitch. His language would have horrified Mr. Hamel, and he hadn't been kidding about the food voucher policy. After a few missed meals and a taste of CM-2 gruel, even the toughest and most ornery—and hungriest—trainee came into angry line.

  Rick observed closely, then put Turkey Gossage into his "handle with care" category. What he couldn't understand, though, was how Gossage had found himself such a pleasant, easygoing—and droolingly sexy—assistant.

  Gina Styan was a graduate trainee from three years back, returned for two months to work with Gossage on CM-2 before she went to her post on the newest of the thirty-eight Belt mines. She had a figure that made Juanita Cesaro and Monkey Cruse look like boys, clear dark skin, and short-cropped black hair that emphasized delicate bone structure and high cheekbones. Those, plus what Rick read as an unmistakable interest in her brown eyes whenever she looked at him, bristled the hair on the back of his neck. The sight of her made him catch his breath.

  She had the hots for him. He was sure of it. All it would take was a quiet place and an opportunity.

  Which seemed to be exactly what CM-2 was designed not to provide. It was just as well that Deedee Mao's liftoff invitation to Cabin Twenty-Eight had been bogus, because it now proved to be impossible. She shared her tiny cabin with three other trainees, including Monkey Cruse. Rick wo
uld love to have heard the conversations in there, but when it came to accommodation he was no better off. His cabin had five recruits in it, including Cokie Mulligan, who snored like a saw in freefall though he swore he hadn't when he was back on Earth.

  Vido Valdez, thank goodness, was two cabins along, bunked with Chick Teazle and a couple of East Coasters. Vido and Rick still glared at each other whenever they met, but apparently Valdez was willing to see their feud damped down—at least for the time being.

  Privacy was no better during work periods. The recruits were never out of each other's sight, except when they were busy on work assignments. Then they were permitted the privacy of a single small cubicle. After the first week Rick suspected Turkey Gossage of doing that on purpose. When the only way to be alone was to sit in a little room by yourself and pretend to study, you found yourself actually studying part of the time out of sheer boredom. Almost against his will, Rick found himself starting to read. He still wasn't good, and he resented every word, but within a couple of weeks he'd have beaten everybody in his old class and most of his fellow trainees. He was in no hurry to rush on ahead. After reading, Turkey Gossage threatened pure and applied mathematics—"the queen of the sciences, the high spot of all your training," as he put it, without convincing anyone. And before they could graduate, every one of them had to write a letter home.