Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder)

by Scott Rhine

  “If we fly one in, someone will put the pieces together.”

  “No, he’s already here, if he agrees to take you—Conrad Zeiss. He’s introverted and private.”

  “If?”

  “No favoritism, remember? You’ve got to interview on your own merits. He has a dual masters’ in math and physics already. He’s working on his PhD in astrophysics; all he has left is the dissertation. Fortunately, he’s chosen to work on Sirius topics, so we got him for peanuts.”

  “I could offer to pay him,” the girl suggested.

  Trina shook her head. “That won’t work. His family’s in Swiss banking, or maybe it was Luxembourg. I don’t remember the details. He lived with his mother in CERN until this year.”

  Red raised her eyebrow. “A late-blooming nerd?”

  “She’s in a wheelchair. He . . . he helps Daniel out when I can’t. They’re becoming friends. We’re paying for full-time nursing and our company’s prototype Parkinson’s meds for her while he’s here.”

  “What page is he?”

  Trina shook her head. “He’s a nat—natural human with no augmentation.”

  “Impressive, given how far he’s come.”

  “We need a few nats in the faculty to keep oversight happy. Be kind to him. Despite his limitations, he’s very capable and, more importantly, nice.”

  The girl rolled her eyes, something that reminded Trina of the six-year-old Mira. “Why don’t you just say ‘Some of my best friends are nats’?”

  “He doesn’t know we’re the Fortune family, and he takes Daniel to work out every morning, even when he’s been up late working the night before.”

  Red knew how rare such kindness was. “Okay. I won’t mace him or offend him till the second lesson.”

  Chapter 4 – Roast Beef

  Red went back to her new dorm room to unpack. It took three minutes, including putting the underwear into her drawers. Risa laughed at the old Disney Princess nightshirt. “It’s a little small.”

  “It still covers everything,” the younger girl protested.

  “This is college, chica.”

  “It was the last gift my dad ever gave me.”

  “Fine, but don’t let the other girls see. The six of us on this floor share a bathroom, and word travels.”

  Red watched Spanish soap operas on the bedroom computer screen for half an hour waiting for her food crate to show up. When it didn’t, Red put on her goggles and a NASA ball cap. “Do you know where I could find this TA, a guy named Zeiss?”

  Risa half-heartedly doodled on her thermodynamics homework. “Nah, but if he’s a TA, he’ll be in our meta. The guys are in pod one. What’s he teach?”

  “Math.”

  “Oh . . . Z-man! He’s only been here this semester but the mils hate his guts.”

  “Why? Does he have long hair?”

  “I dunno. I’ve never seen him.”

  Red tried to pull up his file, but he was too new for her to have data. “Well, any guy who pisses off a third of the school can’t be all bad.”

  As she walked around the clinic to pod one, she scanned the web for information on Zeiss. His driver’s license said he was twenty. The picture was a clean-shaven blond with a firm jaw who could’ve been a German extra in a WWII movie—no ponytail. He was a wunderkind with several publications. The older ones were on dry topics like improving cryptography in the age of quantum computing. He worked at the CERN physics lab and published respectable but dull math papers. Three months ago, he was struck by inspiration—how to use quantum entanglement to judge the speed and time distortion of a near-light-speed spacecraft. His fingerprints vanished from the web soon after. Pretty good for a nat, she thought.

  The front door to his group pod was locked. Someone had splattered the buzzer for his unit with yellow paintballs, gluing it into the ‘on’ position. Impatient, she pulled out her Fortune Aerospace badge and waved it over the door security scanner. She smiled when the lock clicked open.

  The TAs had two rooms each: a public office and private bedroom. However, they shared public facilities like the other dorm dwellers. A schedule was posted by his door.

  September - December:

  06:00 Teacher’s gym

  07:15 Breakfast at restaurant

  08:00 Armed Combat at main dojo (with Sorenson)

  09:00 Intro to Alien Tech (with Sorenson)

  10:00 Intro to Quantum Theory

  11:00 Lunch at restaurant

  12:00 Math for Space Navigation I

  1:00 Office hours

  4:00 Dissertation Research – do not disturb. THIS MEANS YOU.

  Red knocked. All the prefabricated pod doors on the island were calibrated to 6’3”, the maximum height for an astronaut. The man who answered was just a little taller than the opening. However, all sense of menace evaporated with she saw his sandals and T-shirt with the periodic table of the elements. He’d circled Carbon on the chart with permanent marker and written ‘you are here.’ He held out a credit card and asked, “Where’s the pizza?”

  She extended her empathy. He tasted like roast beef with brown gravy—boring but necessary. Though, the thought of red meat was making her hungry. She shut off her empathy because her mouth wouldn’t stop watering. “I’m a new student and Professor Horvath said you might be able to help me.”

  “I don’t tutor beginning algebra.”

  “I’ve been studying Tensor Calculus and Field Theory,” she asserted.

  “Pull the other one. Who put you up to this?”

  “Check my transcript—Miranda Scarlett Benson.”

  He smiled. “Step into my office, Miss. Leave the door open.” There were whiteboards on three walls and a desk on the other. A few minutes of typing on his console later, he said, “Your photo isn’t in the system yet. Do you have any ID?”

  Red panicked when she saw a photo of Jezebel Hollis on the screen. “Like blondes, do you?”

  “Huh? Oh, these are my course notes for tomorrow’s class on navigation.” He scrolled up to show the title—Hollis Curves on Lunar Escape. “Her solution was pure elegance.”

  Shaking, she passed him her Fortune Aerospace badge and pilot’s license. “I’m sixteen.”

  He checked her credentials. “Pilot, huh? I guess we know why Horvath sent you to me.” When she cocked her head, the young man explained, “Pilots have been skating for too long around here. People give them a few extra points and look the other way when they bend the rules. Not in my classes. Space doesn’t grade on a curve, Miss. Our number-one directive at Sirius Academy is the safety of the astronauts.”

  She struggled to hold back a smile as he built up steam on a favorite rant.

  “The ancient Romans had a test for new bridges: the engineer who built it lay underneath while the first wagon went across. That avoids a lot of sloppy work from . . . Is something funny?”

  “No. I just figured out why the mils paint-balled you. And I’m on your side. No one rides for free.”

  Mollified, he admitted, “The paint was for something else. Switzerland has mandatory military service, and I was exempted for unspecified reasons.”

  “None of my business.”

  “Thank you. Common courtesy isn’t always common.” Then he continued reading her transcript. “Miss Benson, you seem bright and highly capable, but you’re still lacking a few prerequisites.”

  “Call me Red. Transcripts don’t tell the whole story.” She took off her goggles to give him the full effect of her cute eyelashes. When he didn’t melt, she guessed why the mils hated him—gay. She added, “I’ll solve any problem you give me.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” he said, disappearing into his private quarters. Rummaging through the papers on his desk, he returned with a problem. “This one. I’ll give you three hours, and you can use my whiteboards. If you prefer pencil, I can . . .”

  Red rolled her eyes up into her head and went into a computation trance. He caught her before she fell out of the chair and carried her to his
bedroom. Laying her on the comforter, he checked her heart rate and breathing. As if this were a drill, he hit the red button at the base of his badge. “Dr. Marsh.”

  Five seconds later, a man answered, “Problem?”

  “Student with spontaneous catatonia—navel staring. Female, age sixteen.”

  “Crash team’s on its way,” the doctor said, already running.

  “Should I open the emergency hatch on the ceiling?”

  “No, just open the front door for us. ETA two minutes.”

  Zeiss pulled the power cord on his personal computer, shoved his stack of files into a drawer, and spun the combination lock on his file cabinet. He didn’t have time to put all the loose papers away. He propped each door open with nearby math books as he rushed to the front airlock.

  ****

  Red opened her eyes in Zeiss’s bedroom. It was even neater than the office. The only personal touch was a large framed photo of a pale older woman and a smaller framed photo of a gorgeous blonde with wavy hair. There was a game board with polished white and black stones on the nightstand—Go, they called it. Red wobbled to the desk to grab paper and a pen. She barely noticed the red pins in the map of the island above his computer. She was almost done writing the answer to the math problem when the TA came back to check on her. “Is this a prank? Students trying to find out what I’m hiding in here?”

  She was having trouble focusing. “That’s the answer, right?”

  “You faked a seizure and grabbed it off my desk. This took me two days.” He flipped over the answer on the desk.

  She shook her head. “No, see, you kept all the variables. I plugged in approximations to three digits.”

  He checked quickly. “You’re right.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  When her nose bled onto the floor, he lifted her back onto the bed. “You’re an active. Quantum trio?”

  “I can’t tell you,” she said weakly. “I think it’s sweet you have a picture of your mom.”

  Into the phone, he said, “Doc, she’s back among the living, but she’s overextended herself with a mental page.”

  “Roger. Make her lie down and give her fluids. ETA in under one.”

  “Affirmative. Do you want a bottle of apple juice, tea, or milk?”

  “Whatever you have handy that’s sealed. Water would be fine,” she replied.

  “No, part of the first aid for your condition involves raising your blood sugar.” His utter calm helped to soothe her.

  “Tea.”

  “Black or herbal.”

  “Herbal.”

  He pulled a bottle from the cooler and handed it to her. “Japanese plum tea.”

  “Ooo, this is good.”

  Dr. Marsh tapped on the door. Zeiss nodded to him. “I’ll wait outside so you can have your privacy.” He closed the door to his bedroom on the way out.

  Marsh checked her over. “When’s the last time you ate?”

  “Seventeen hours.”

  “Last period?”

  “Nine days ago. Normal cycle is twenty.”

  “Last time you took your suppression meds?”

  “This morning.”

  When he finished, the doctor concluded, “We need to put a monitor on you, overnight at a minimum.”

  “That’s invasive,” Red objected.

  “We need to re-baseline you and adjust your regimen for this unique environment. Your instructions were to go to the clinic first. Sometimes authorities say things for a reason.”

  “Is mental processing harder here? It felt like I was sucking a golf ball through a straw.”

  “We need to reduce your meds slowly, all of them. For most of the mental disciplines, it’s safer here to learn, quieter. Do you know what a Shambhala zone is?”

  “I’ve seen Lost Horizons, but I’m not sure how that applies,” she admitted.

  “For our purpose, it is a place of perfect harmony. There are seven known areas on Earth where the influence of the Collective Unconscious is muted, where the ocean of mental human noise gets shallower, calmer.”

  “Destructive interference, low population?”

  “Mostly. But this island is the only zone that doesn’t belong to a hostile nation or spend most of the year below zero Celsius.”

  “Why does it move?”

  “You’re not cleared for that information yet,” the doctor said reflexively. “What matters is that brilliant men like Dr. Lazlo are freed from the horrors of Ward Seven.”

  Red knew the name of the high-security asylum, the boogey man for all people with mental talents. Lose your balance and you too could be drooling on the floor. “The instructor? What happens if the island engines stall and we stop moving?”

  “Don’t mention that possibility to Lazlo. He has enough phobias. The island has eight sides, instead of six like normal space construction, in order to provide higher redundancy for the engines,” he said, lowering his voice. “What Shambhala means for you, young lady, is that we can finally take you off the hormone suppressors. Here, in this garden, we can afford to let you grow up without fear that you’ll burn out.”

  He let the promise hang in the air. Her eyes sparkled with the possibilities. She could be normal in this place.

  “But,” he said loudly to get her attention. “This episode was a warning. With your family history, you should listen. You’re tapping the talent too much too soon. You need to learn more of the foundations so you have a better springboard to leap off.”

  She reached for her survival knife out of instinct. “You know who I am?”

  “Don’t worry, this room is secure. I’m not stupid, young lady. A little hair dye doesn’t fool me. You were the first documented human born with the alien talents these people came here to learn. As the lead researcher in xenopsychiatry, we teach from your case history.”

  “There are others?”

  “Before you and since. But most of our modern therapies are based on the way your body adapted to the talents. The others went through the mandatory training to prepare them, rather like high-altitude climbing. You’ll need a period of no-thought and recuperation in addition to the monitor. Professor Horvath was explicit on this matter.”

  “Trina has a monitor, too. So that’s like the pot calling the kettle black,” Red grumbled.

  “You’ll need to come back to the clinic for tonight.”

  “Don’t tell Z who or what I am,” she begged, exercising the pinky-wiggle talent she’d inherited from her father.

  He sighed. “Ethically, I couldn’t if I wanted to.”

  “Thank you. I need to keep my cover here,” Red explained. “I don’t know what happened; I use quantum computing all the time.”

  “You borrow computing power from others. Till now, almost everyone in your life, including your bodyguards, has been an active. Your instructor is the opposite.”

  “He’s a nat.”

  The doctor shook his head. “Mr. Zeiss is unusual. We call them non-emitters. A small number of people think in different ways. Professor Sorenson needs this trait in order to be touched by another person. They can be trained to dim their mental noise further with practice. I’m told Mr. Zeiss can sneak up on an empath without causing a ripple. His calm demeanor may have just as much to do with that.”

  “Wait. How does this work? Is he born with it like those people who were immune to the plague?”

  The doctor smiled. “Ongoing research. My theory is that he’s more focused and uses more of his processing power than most. There’s not much left for you to steal. Once outside this room, there’ll be no discussion of these theories.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you need someone to carry you?”

  “No. I’ve been embarrassed enough today. I’ll walk,” Red said softly.

  Marsh gazed at her intently. “Young lady, embarrassment is the least of your worries. If you shift into high-gamma brain waves outside a training exercise again, I’ll pull you from the program on a medical discharge.”
>
  “Yes, sir.” As Red stood to go, she noticed an aspect of the room she’d missed before: the ceiling above the bed was covered with a series of photographs like a panoramic x-ray. It was a snapshot of the orbiting alien artifact, taken by the light of the first test of the star-drive. Moreover, there were dozens of circles and lines on the photograph, labeled with mathematical formulae. The computations couldn’t be seen from the outer office, but Zeiss probably went to sleep thinking about this problem every night.

  Roast beef, indeed. This man was hiding something.

  Chapter 5 – Schedule

  After locating her personal freezer at the clinic laboratory, Red prepared a five-star meal. The nurses objected until she shared a few packets of shrimp in cream sauce with them. Once she set her goggles on motion-detector mode, Red reluctantly went to sleep in the hospital bed.

  That night, Zeiss tried to be helpful and set up a preliminary class schedule for the girl. While he was doing research, he stumbled upon an odd date stamp on one of her digital records. All the signatures matched and everything seemed plausible, but one of the records had been created a year before the document in the image. Someone had forged her school records. He dialed Professor Horvath at 2300.

  She answered, sounding tired. “I read the medical response report. Good job.”

  “There’s a problem with the new girl.”

  “What did she do this time?”

  “Her transcript has an anomaly.”

  “Shit. Has anyone else seen it?”

  “No. My access stamp is the only—”

  “Fix it.”

  “Excuse me? I’m reporting a security violation.”

  “Repair it and any other errors you find. Fake damage if you have to. Then wipe your computer and forget what you did.”

  He would lose over an hour of sleep time. “Confirmation code, sir?”

  “Sirius level four. The world is full of beautiful things: Dr. Doolittle.”

  “Yes, sir. Can you tell me why?”

  “No. But I vouch for her personally. Just help her fit in.”