A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet

by Ron Miller

  With one exception the girls shunned her entirely. Those who had grown up in the streets as Judikha had done looked upon her as an apostate, a renegade who thought she was better than she ought to be. The girls who considered themselves respectable—however baselessly—looked upon Judikha with ill-concealed contempt.

  She had always accepted this; she gave it little thought. She was at heart a misanthrope and, while she did not want to do entirely without human company, companionship or friends, neither she did want these forced upon her. Neither did she accept overtures of friendship nor did she solicit them. Her only friend within the school was, strangely enough given all this, another girl.

  Bettina Henlopen possessed that same plump, round-eyed cheeriness usually reserved for the plastic dolls won by knocking over milk bottles in a carnival. She was the only one of all the girls who seemed to genuinely enjoy Judikha’s company, with neither condescension nor any understanding of what Judikha thought or said. Bettina was truly sweet, generous and almost entirely brainless. She was very popular with the boys, as one might imagine, whom she favored equally, showing neither prejudice nor discrimination. She was, outwardly, a seemingly unlikely choice for a friend, but Judikha found her naïvete, honesty, trust and simplicity comforting. She could tell Bettina anything, however intimate, and know it would be received with honest compassion, empathy and genuine interest—yet would be forgotten by the next day, possibly even within the hour, as though Judikha had emptied her heart into a leaky barrel; there was never any need to swear Bettina to secrecy: her brain, as smooth as a billiard ball, precluded any need for oaths. And more than anything else Judikha appreciated more than even she realized that her friend accepted her wholeheartedly, with neither prejudice or preconception.

  Judikha was by and large satisfied with herself and her life until Rhys arrived. Afterward, she was confused, distressed and not a little annoyed to find herself under the control of internal forces whose lurking existence she had never suspected and over which she evidently had no power. Her coldly rational, practical, pragmatic self abdicated entirely when Rhys happened to be in the same room, as though an experienced bus driver decided to turn over the wheel of his speeding vehicle to an irresponsible eight-year-old. Her will was abandoned to mindless chemical processes designed ten million years earlier for rutting reptiles and lemurs. Thanks to her biology classes she was aware of the existence and function of the various glands, of primal urges and instincts—but only as abstracts. She never thought that the slippery little chemical factories that bubbled and percolated inside the neat, opaque envelope of her skin had any real existence. Who, after all, really enjoys admitting to all of the slimy, gelatinous, rubbery, shapeless bags, bulbs, tubes and lumps with which his or her body is filled? Certainly no one is willing to admit that the temporal distance that separates them from their instinct-driven animal ancestors—let alone from the blue-green algae from which we have all descended, for that matter—is not even measurable on a geologic scale. Judikha felt like the puzzled man lying crumpled under the wheels of the careless delivery van: something had just occurred with blinding suddenness that was only supposed to happen to other, less careful people. The sanguine, calculating operator that had smoothly controlled her thoughts and actions for more than fifteen years was appalled to find itself usurped, shouldered aside in a kind of biological mutiny. A primeval reptile, the existence of which she had been entirely, blissfully and ignorantly unaware, had wrested away the controls. She was unquestionably that high-powered steam omnibus, its boiler supercharged, its safety valve tied down, whose wheel was now in the irresponsible grasp of a selfish, willful and amoral child.

  Over a period of a day or two, Judikha collected every mirror or scrap of reflecting surface she could find, assembling them into a kind of bright mosaic on the one vertical wall she possessed. She stood before the makeshift looking glass, critically, trying to be objective about the fragmented images that glared back at her like the disinterested eye of an enormous insect. If she were a boy, how would she regard what she saw? She tilted her head back and squinted through her long eyes. What she saw was a kind of haphazard jigsaw picture of a tall, rather rangy young man in knee-length heavily-patched corduroy trousers, rope sandals, rumpled flannel shirt and patched jacket. Young man, indeed! Well, that’d certainly get a boy’s pulse racing was her cynical conclusion. She’d seen her own image a hundred times before, of course, but never particularly critically and certainly, absolutely, never sexually. It’s no wonder boys don’t treat me as a girl if even I can’t tell that I’m looking at one. All right then, how do I look as a girl? She dropped her trousers and kicked them aside, shucked her jacket and shirt and stood again before the compound gaze. Well, nothing wrong with that, she decided, turning first this way and then that, though the image was nothing even remotely like the plump, curvilinear topography that boys seemed to prefer over brains and ability. The jigsaw figure in the mirrors had the elongated, hydrodynamic lines of an eel or racing sloop. More than half its length was a pair of legs each as long and graceful as a stream of honey being poured from a pitcher. It had a bottle-shaped torso with narrow hips and even narrower waist, stomach like a flagstone and neat, cup-shaped breasts. The face was molded by its bones the way geologic strata shape a landscape. It was dominated by a pair of extraordinary eyes: dark as old teak and slanting perhaps a half degree or so. She liked her body—it seemed to her as efficient and streamlined as a rocket. So she was surprised at the vague and inexplicable dissatisfaction she felt; was it only an artifact, the subliminal influence of her adolescent, hormone-driven classmates? Was it in fact a good body in a larger, more objective sense? Was it like a fine painting by an old master mistakenly hung in the local five-and-ten-pfennig store? She certainly had no illusions about the earthy taste possessed by most of the inhabitants of the Transmoltus, the taste that caused thousands of homes to be decorated with paintings of unlikely-looking horses and wide-eyed moppets rendered in violent colors on black velvet; that kept tens of thousands of eyes entranced by telephonophoted game shows and inane comedies; that had half the households hoarding a few pfennigs from weekly budgets in order to save enough to send away for the latest mass-produced limited edition collector’s plate.

  She’d seen the calendars that hung in every workshop, the biologically frank posters outside the music halls, the luridly illustrated papers and the sort of girls who inspired the most uninhibited speculations from the boys. She could discern a coarse and obvious continuity that, taken item by item, excluded her from the competition with depressing thoroughness. She did not have blonde hair—nor was she willing to have blonde hair—she was neither small nor cute, she did not have soft, plump limbs, she did not have an ingratiating, fawning personality—far from it!—she certainly did not have an adorably turned-up pug nose and she just as certainly did not have breasts as large as her head.

  But she knew, because she was curious and observant, that there might be finer standards by which she might be judged. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she was very much aware that the Transmoltus was only a nanocosm and that its tastes and mores could not in any way be considered representative of the world or universe at large, thank Musrum. She, alone of her classmates, had taken a genuine interest in the study of art—probably for the very reason that it represented a glimpse into that heretofore forbidden outer world—and was fascinated by chromolithographic reproductions from the collections of galleries both in Blavek and abroad. She had immediately realized that there was a great difference between the crudely obvious drawings, paintings and lithographs that were reprinted in the popular calendars, magazines and posters and the wonderful pictures that hung in the great galleries, though she would have been hard put to analyze let alone verbalize that difference. She now wondered, as she stood in front of her fragmented mirror, if there might not be the same dichotomy in the aesthetics of the human body. How would she and, say, Bettina be received by genteel Blavek society were each of them cleaned
and dressed and polished with equal care? Would her friend, the most desirable girl in the school, appear coarse, gross and uncouth? Would Judikha, not remotely considered a sexual objective by her male classmates, let alone attractive, overwhelm them all with her lissome beauty, grace and charm?

  She had no idea, but she perversely persisted in doubting it.

  It was spring when the bulletin was posted announcing the impending Space Patrol Academy Entrance Examination. Anyone interested was invited to apply at the headmaster’s office for further information. Although in the history of the school not a single applicant had ever been accepted by the Patrol, so compelling was the latter institution’s reputation that at least a third of the student body, undeterred by such a dismal record, applied for the test.

  Judikha procured her application, which proved to be a blank form and a sheaf of papers listing the subjects that the exam would cover, to allow the applicant time to properly prepare themselves. She took all this home with her and, by the light of her frugal candle stubs, pored over the densely-printed sheets. The form, which should have been the simplest matter of all, proved to be a stumbling block right at the outset. It was for the most part a request for personal information, something of which she was peculiarly lacking. The very first line made her furrow her brow in frustrated concentration.

  Name: Last First Middle Initial

  She did not know whether Judikha was her first name or last: it was the only name she had ever had and it had simply never occurred to her to wonder about its singularity. Neither had it ever occurred to her to ask The Fox about the origin of her name, no more than it would have occurred to her to ask him the origin of her arm or head—or for that matter, why he was called The Fox. Mr. Grun invariably referred to her as “Miss Judikha”, which seemed to argue for it being a family name. On the other hand, he referred to some of the other girls by attaching “Miss” to their first names, and some to their last. There seemed to be no consistent, rigorously-applied rule. Occasionally a newcomer to the neighborhood or to the classroom would briefly call her “Judy” even after she had told them firmly that her name was Judikha. It was an error that was only committed once per offender. She would make one allowance for ignorance, a second “Judy” she considered an intentional affront and applied a more immediately physical correction which, once the transgressor could again speak, always seemed sufficient. “Judy”, a diminutive she hated, was an unwarranted assumption on the other’s part—it did not necessarily mean that Judikha was her given name. Did she perhaps have any claim to Pilnipott? She rather hoped not. Judikha Pilnipott did not quite have the ring she associated with a Space Patrol cadet. She thought for a moment longer, then wrote Judikha in the first space. She hesitated only briefly then wrote Judikha in the second space. The notion of yet a third name seemed to her unnecessarily extravagant, but, she reasoned, the space wouldn’t have been provided had the Patrol not expected at least some of its suppliants to fill it in. So she wrote in J., just for the sake of symmetry. Judikha J. Judikha.

  That taken care of, she went on to the next line, which requested her address. Address? Another unprecedented concept. She knew the street below was Nixnixx Road (the opposite side of the building overlooked an ancient drainage canal), but it was never a matter of any particular interest. Why should it be? She had never in her life received any mail, had never expected any, nor had she ever invited a visitor to her hiding place, nor ever expected to. She supposed that she could write down Nixnixx Street, Transmoltus, Blavek, but that seemed insufficient. What if the Patrol wanted to contact her directly? What if her acceptance came via the mails? The letter carrier would not know which of a dozen buildings was the right one, let alone which of (perhaps as many as) a score of rooms and apartments was hers—not that she had ever seen a letter carrier within the confines of the Transmoltus. What if, Musrum forbid, the Patrol interpreted the lax of house number as a slovenly error on her part or worse? With her usual efficiency and unwillingness to procrastinate, she laid down the form, rose from floor and began the long descent to the street. Her little den was an attic corner ten stories above the canal. She had to go to a hole in the floor, lower then climb down a rickety, homemade ladder, descend a narrow hallway, and then descend a zigzagging staircase that threatened at any moment to fold upon itself like a house of cards. This ultimately deposited her in a urine-reeking foyer. She stepped outside, turned and looked above the door. There, in two brass numerals and two painted ones, was the number 1506. Taking a small card from a pocket, she wrote on it with a stub of pencil: J. J. Judikha. Tenth floor. Attic. and fastened it with a pin beneath the bank of long-unused mailboxes just inside the open door.

  Back in her garret, scarcely breathless after the long climb, she took up the form and neatly wrote in the space provided: 1506 Nixnixx St., 10th floor, Attic, Transmoltus, Blavek, Tamlaght.

  “Age” was easy; Pilnipott had told her she had been purchased by him virtually at birth and that was about fifteen years ago. She wrote in 16. “Date of birth” was more difficult. Why wasn’t her age sufficient? Wasn’t asking for a specific date redundant as well as over particular? What difference could it make what day she was born on? She was certain, however, that the Patrol must have its reasons, whatever they might be, and good ones, too, but that made her problem no easier. The Fox had never been so specific about her birth as to mention an actual date. What would have been the point, even if he had known? She considered making up a month and day, though the idea frightened her. What if the Patrol discovered this deception, as insignificant as it might be? She had read of officers being cashiered from the service for infractions that had seemed to her no less petty than lying about their birth date. It was not the general dishonesty that bothered her—Musrum knew she had not hesitated committing far more heinous crimes—but she had hoped, by earning admittance to the Academy, to put that part of her life permanently behind her. It rankled, therefore, to have even so much as a falsified date tarnishing her bright new life. Well, she finally reasoned, the Patrol would be more likely to look into the reason why the space was left blank than they would be likely to check to see if a date was wrong, so she swallowed hard, dug a pair of dice from a bag and tossed them onto the floor. Snake eyes. She wrote 1/1 in the space, subtracted sixteen from the current year and entered that in as well.

  Race was easy. Human. Sex puzzled her for a long moment or two and she just barely averted revealing a catastrophic naïveté by realizing at last that she need only put down the single letter F.

  And so it went.

  It was well after midnight before she finished. She lay awake until dawn watching the brilliant geysers of flame rising from the distant spaceport. The next morning she took her completed application to the school office and was disturbed to see how many others were already there.

  As she placed her form on top of the pile, she stole a surreptitious glace at the upper half dozen or so. There was Rhys’ (no surprise) and Weenly Glom’s (the witless hulk known as Monkfish to the half dozen thugs who passed for his friends; the presence of his application gave her cause for a derisive snort: fat chance he had of ever getting accepted!), Thandner’s, Layamon’s, Caviede’s, Brera’s and six or seven others she recognized. Except for Rhys, whom she considered brilliant, the others she knew to be Musrum’s very own dummies, which made her feel much better. Indeed, seeing the smudged, crossed-out, misspelled and mutilated entries (except, of course, for Rhys’, which was impeccable) made her feel not a little smug. The only hope the others (except Rhys) would ever have of getting into the Patrol would be to enlist as common spacemen. Mere nozzle fodder.

  A posted notice announced that the examination was scheduled just one week hence. Well, she thought, still in her fit of smugness, they may as well send only two and save the paper.

  As she was reentering the corridor, she heard her name called. Even before she turned, she knew it was Rhys who had spoken and her heart gave a little frisk, like a lamb that had just heard its m
ama’s bleat.

  “A little early in the day to have been called to the headmaster’s office, isn’t it?” he said with a flash of his perfect teeth.

  “No,” she replied in an unsteady voice, damn it, “for a change of pace, I went voluntarily. I was just dropping off my exam application.”

  “The Space Patrol exam? You want to take that?”

  “You do, too,” she said defensively, “so why not?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t suggesting you shouldn’t. I just had no idea you were interested in the Space Patrol.”

  Well, why should you have had any idea? You’ve certainly taken little enough notice of me.”I’ve wanted to go to the Academy my whole life. As long as I can remember.”

  “I guess if I should be surprised at someone’s interest in the exam, it ought to be my brother’s.”

  “I noticed Pomfret’s application in the pile.”

  “He may be my brother, and perhaps it’s not very loyal of me to say this, but I don’t think he’s got much of a chance. In fact, I haven’t a clue what he’s thinking of.”

  “I noticed some even less likely names. Can you imagine Monkfish at the Space Patrol Academy?”

  “As what? A doorstop?”

  “He might be useful in the celestial mechanics labs—he’s big enough to generate his own gravitational field. I’m always afraid that if I stand too close to him my watch will slow down.”