Higher Education

by Charles Sheffield

  She left. Rick lay again on his bunk. He was very glad that he had bitten back what he had wanted to say when she first came in: "Chick Teazle is the one you're screwing, not me. If you want to talk to somebody, why don't you go and find him?"

  Rick didn't know the answer to his own question. But he offered up a prayer that he had not asked it.

  The final arrival at CM-26, their original target, was a big letdown. It took a while to realize why.

  The first few hours were the enjoyable confusion of a new home. The apprentices were assigned living quarters—huge, after the cramped cabins of the Vantage—then left free to roam the interior, alone or in groups, and get used to the layout.

  Rick was on the same corridor as Gladys de Witt, Lafe Eklund, Polly Quint, and Goggles Landau. He was annoyed that he had not been placed with people he knew well, until he realized that was surely intentional. Turkey Gossage and Barney French had one thing in common: they both insisted that you had to be able to get along with absolutely anyone and learn to work together.

  The five apprentices set out as a group to ramble the corridors and tunnels of the mining facility. Rick noted where Alice's cabin was located, though it was probably useless information; she always insisted that she come to him. She was right next door to Deedee Mao, which made Rick feel a bit uncomfortable.

  The corridors that led deeper into the interior all ended with flashing lights and warning signs: DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT. MINING OPERATIONS IN PROGRESS.

  The five retreated, somewhat irritated. "I thought mining operations were specifically what we were here to learn," Polly Quint grumbled. She was a tall, graceful seventeen-year-old, with an oddly large vocabulary and a flashing smile that at the moment was noticeably absent. "And what type of mining operations are being denied to us, anyway?"

  They could hear along the forbidden tunnel the near-continuous rumble of explosions.

  "Not what we saw on CM-31, that's for sure," said Gladys de Witt. "There's something odd going on here."

  Rick agreed. During their approach to CM-26 he had caught a glimpse of an irregular chunk of rock, with beside it the familiar gleam of a cylinder big enough to enclose it.

  But what they had just seen—or rather heard—suggested a traditional mine using ore blasting and excavation equipment.

  The mystery remained as they headed in the opposite direction, up toward the outer layers of the mining station. It was compounded when they came to the topmost level and looked out through the transparent bubble of an observation port.

  "It's tiny," Goggles Landau protested. "Look at the ship next to it!"

  They again had a view of the asteroid and cylinder that Rick had seen during final approach. At that time there was no way of judging size, and Rick had assumed that he was looking at something on the same massive scale as the ruined facility of CM-31. Now a maintenance module was floating in space next to the cylinder, and Rick could see that Goggles was right. Instead of the kilometer-plus length and width of CM-31, this cylinder was no more than forty meters in any dimension. The rock next to it was smaller yet, more like a large boulder than a substantial planetoid.

  "That's not a mining facility," said Lafe Eklund at last. He was one of the quiet apprentices who rarely said anything, but now he sounded exasperated. "Look at that thing! It's nothing but a toy. "

  No one disagreed. Perplexed, they made their way back to the general living accommodation and ran into two other exploring parties. They had all experienced similar frustrations, of regions denied to them without explanation or mining facilities scaled down to the point where they appeared ludicrous. Without anyone suggesting it, they found themselves moving together to the main dining area.

  Chick Teazle, as usual, took the lead. "I think we can all guess what's happening," he said. "So far as they are concerned, it's business as usual. We're back in the playpen, and we'll get pushed through the next stage of training as though we're still babies. But we're not."

  There was a mutter of agreement.

  "What happened at CM-31 changed everything," Chick continued. "They still want to treat us as Level Three apprentices, but we showed that we are ready to operate at Level Five—the highest level. We've grown up faster than anyone expected. They need to recognize that fact."

  "How do we make them?" Alice Klein had been in a fourth group that had just entered the dining area and added itself to the discussion. "It's easy to say how Vanguard ought to think of us, but how do you persuade them?"

  As usual, Alice had quietly placed her finger on the key question. There was a long pause, while everyone stared around at everyone else. Rick tried to catch Alice's eye, but she looked right through him.

  "Only one way," said Chick Teazle at last. "Barney French is in charge of us. We have to tell her, all of us."

  "All of us?" Vido repeated. He sounded as skeptical as Rick felt. "Forget it. You know what she says about committee decisions."

  Barney had told them often enough: "Work in ones, work in twos, even work in threes. But don't form a committee, or you'll never get anything done. A committee is a dead-end street down which ideas are lured and quietly strangled."

  "All right, not all of us," Chick said defensively. "Not a committee, a deputation. Four people, representing everybody. Who'll volunteer?"

  "You will," said Goggles Landau, and everyone laughed.

  "I guess I have to, if I suggest it." Chick grimaced. "Who else?"

  There was another long pause. "I nominate Rick Luban," Gladys de Witt said at last, while Rick stared at her in surprise. "He's one of Barney's pets, you can tell by the way she talks about him."

  "Hey!" But Rick's outrage was lost in the buzz of general agreement.

  "That's two," said Chick.

  "Wait a minute! You said volunteer!"

  "You've been volunteered." And before Rick could speak again, Chick went on. "Need two more. Who else? Vido Valdez, will you do it?"

  "Hold on," Polly Quint said before Vido could reply. "I have nothing at all against Valdez, but you need balance. Better have two of the quartet females."

  "Agreed." Vido grinned at her. "Thanks, Polly. Accepted, everyone?"

  "Me? I never said me!"

  But Chick was already looking around the group. "So it's agreed on Polly. Just one more. Gladys?"

  "Bad choice. Barney says I complain all the time." Gladys stared around the room. "You need somebody who never bitches. How about Deedee. Will you? You know Barney thinks you walk on water."

  "She does not!" But Deedee bit her lip, then slowly nodded. "All right. If you want me to."

  "Which makes four. Good." Chick Teazle clapped his hands together briskly. "So there's only one other question: when?"

  "Now," chorused a dozen voices.

  "I was afraid you'd say that. Rick, Polly, Deedee?" Chick looked to each of them in turn. "All right with you? Then let's get it over with." He started for the door.

  "Give 'em hell, guys," Skip Chung shouted after them as they left.

  Brave words, but Rick felt the steam going out of him as they approached Barney's office.

  She was in. He had rather hoped she would be somewhere else. She greeted them with a raised eyebrow, seated them on uncomfortable chairs made of bare metal struts and mesh, and listened in silence while Chick, with prompting from the other three, explained why they were there.

  "I see," she said when he finished. "Level Five." She walked over to the inner door to her office and disappeared through it.

  Polly and Deedee looked at each other. "Bad news," Deedee mouthed, and Polly nodded.

  "Why?" Rick had seen the exchange.

  "Can't you tell?" Deedee was whispering. "She's really angry."

  "Or upset."

  "Or both."

  They were talking only to each other. Before Rick could ask how they knew, Barney was back. She was holding two polished metal cylinders about two feet long. One was thin, the other fat.

  "So you're not happy," she said. Rick
could see it now, there was a twisted look to the always-asymmetrical face that was new and frightening. "So you don't want to be treated as trainees anymore."

  Trainees, not apprentices? They had been demoted, but no one was going to correct her.

  "Well," Barney went on, "I have a question for all of you. What job do you expect to get when all your training is over?"

  The four looked at each other. "Mining engineer?" said Chick Teazle at last.

  "Mining engineer." Barney French nodded. "Do you know why you say that? Well, I do. You say it, you overgrown ape, because it's the only goddamn job any of you can imagine. So let me tell you something about Vanguard Mining. Maybe one person in a hundred makes mining engineer. Before you aspire to that, you have to be a real hot-shot—you have to know math, and mechanics, and physics, and metallurgy, and engineering. Most people don't make it. I didn't make it, and I bust my guts trying. Do you think any of you will make it?"

  There was a dead silence.

  "Well, it's not my job to tell you that you won't. In fact, it's usually my job to tell you that you can. But right now you're a million miles away from competence." Barney tossed a sheet of paper across to Chick Teazle. "Read that, and tell me what it says."

  He stared at it and shook his head. "I can't. I mean, I can read the words, most of' em. But it's full of big equations."

  "Damn right it is." Barney's face was growing redder. "Those are the equations of motion that describe the stability of a right circular cylinder under forced rotation, with off-axis disturbing forces. In other words, they describe a mining facility like CM-31. Unless you can read that, and maybe write something like it yourself, you'll never make a top-flight mining engineer. And if you do, you won't be getting an easy job. Better men than you'll ever be—and better women—have given their lives for that research." She glared at them, and her voice rose. "You think you're ready for Level Five, do you? You don't know what Level Five means. It means brains and dedication and endless hard work. It means devotion to duty, and sometimes it means sacrifice. The best engineer I ever met, Rusty Keck, was killed in the blow-up of CM-31."

  "I was there when he died," Deedee said in a very small voice.

  It halted the outburst. Barney stared at her. "So you were," she said at last. "That makes me surprised that you are here."

  She put the two cylinders down on her desk, stood up, and left the room again. This time she was gone for more than five minutes, while her visitors sat and asked each other in hushed tones if the meeting was over and they were supposed to leave.

  When she returned her face was unreadable. She picked up the two cylinders from her desk as though they weighed a ton each. "The episode at CM-31 gave you a false idea of your own status," she said quietly. "You behaved well, and for an hour or two you did act at Level Five. But in terms of real training, you're still Level Three beginners. Can you tell me why one of these cylinders is stable when it's rotating about its main axis, and the other one isn't? No, you can't. Can you tell me how the stability changes, as the mass distribution changes from being mostly on the central axis to being near the outer curved surface? Again, you can't. But you will know those things, before you leave here, because we'll have done a dozen practical experiments with the centrifuge mining test facility that's waiting outside this station. You'll know what happens in practice. You'll also be able to calculate it, so you don't have to do expensive physical tests before you reach the final design stage. You'll know and do all these things, or your future jobs in Vanguard Mining will be cleaning toilets and recycling sewage. If you're lucky."

  She sighed, and tossed one cylinder to Rick and the other to Deedee. "Take these and think about them. I should never have told you that you did well. And I ought not to have lost control of myself. I hope you'll forget that. I'm going to forget what you said to me. So far as I'm concerned, you never came here, and you never complained about anything. Now get out—before you make me real mad."

  She ushered them out. In the corridor, well away from Barney's office, Chick stopped. "We-e-ll," he said. "Well. . . well. . . I guess. . . shit."

  "The mot juste." Polly Quint tried to laugh, and produced only an ugly snort. "My English teacher told me—before he decided that he was more interested in getting into my pants than into my head—that cussing is the sign of an inferior intellect and an inadequate vocabulary. But in certain circumstances, he said, it fulfills a vital function. I guess this is one."

  "But what are we going to tell the others? They'll be waiting for us back there, wanting to know how we did."

  "We?" Polly shrugged. "It's not we, Chick. You are our chosen spokesman and chief representative. What are you proposing to tell them?"

  To that question, for one of the few times in his life, Chick Teazle had no ready answer.

  Chapter Fifteen

  RICK, like the rest, felt crushed and humiliated by Barney French's anguished put-down. It took Alice Klein to offer a different perspective on what was really happening.

  "You know what they've been telling us since day one," she said. She nudged him with her elbow to get his attention. "Things are not what they seem. Expect zingers. I bet that's what is happening now."

  She was snuggled at Rick's side, naked in the darkness of his cabin. It was two days after their arrival at the new training facility, and until now the whole time had been non-stop effort—mostly mental work, which Rick found far more demanding than physical labor. He had spent all day struggling with the unfamiliar notion of moments of inertia. According to the learning machines, moments of inertia were related to advanced methods of ore melting and metal extraction. It was hard to see how, and the problems he had been assigned did not help.

  A strong mid solid hoop is spinning around a massive central point to which it is connected by thin strings. All those strings are cut at once. What will happen to the hoop, and why? Comment: When you understand the answer to this question, you will know how the great Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, proved that the rings of Saturn cannot be solid but must be made up of small independent particles.

  Rick had about as much interest in dead Scotsmen as Maxwell had in him; but he did have ambition. He wanted to be a success in Vanguard Mining, and visions of a solid hoop spinning around and attracted by a central mass had plagued him all day. After the excitement and horror of the CM-31 disaster, going back to the old routine seemed boring; but he could not get his mind off this particular problem.

  Spin the hoop, cut the strings. And then what? What would it do—still spin around the central mass, or something else?

  He had been drowsing, his mind filled with rotating rings, when Alice spoke again. "Did you hear me?"

  "Uh-huh." He grunted his reply.

  She nudged him. "Wake up. I checked the qualities that successful apprentices are supposed to display. Do you know what the most important quality is, according to the manuals?"

  "Intelligence?" A strong, solid hoop. That meant it was able to stand either compression or tension. As he had learned long ago, the assigned problems did not tell you things that you didn't need to know. And gravity had to be important, too, because the central point was stated to be massive. The hoop and the central mass would attract each other.

  "Wrong." Alice wriggled closer. "You only say it's intelligence because you think you're smart. The most important quality isn't knowledge, either. It's initiative. But it seems to me that initiative is the exact opposite of doing what you're told and following somebody else's instructions."

  "What are you suggesting? That we ignore our assignments? Then we flunk everything and get kicked out."

  "No. I think they want us to try things for ourselves. They want us to push the envelope, keep going as far as we can until we're stopped. Unless we're told not to go somewhere, we should make a point of checking it out. Unless something is forbidden, we go ahead and do it."

  "Mmm."

  "Agreed?"

  "Uh-huh."

  So far as Rick was c
oncerned that was the end of the conversation. He didn't remember any discussion after that. On the other hand he didn't even remember Alice leaving his cabin. Her words went forgotten until three days later, when the whole group of apprentices were told to put on their suits and assemble inside the Smelting Module.

  That was the official name, usually shortened to "the SM," for the cylinder that Lafe Eklund had dismissed as a "toy" the first time that they had seen it. Close up, the SM seemed anything but a toy. Access to the interior was gained through an elaborate triple hatch, more complex than any that Rick had ever seen before. It was located near the edge of the SM's flat circular end, and its three octagonal doors had to be passed through in series, one after another. Each chamber had a little side room with its own door, and every door had a central viewing port of thick transparent glass. From any part of the lock, and even from outside it, you could see all the way along the axis of the cylinder to the other end. That other end was partly open, showing beyond it a disk of star-filled open space.