by F P Adriani
Soon after, along with the rest of the trainees, I was sitting in a large room watching films, being fed technical information on how the mines operated, the productivity there, the various minerals and their usages.
There was a long bit of footage showing how diamond sand was actually collected, and a few of the desert-edge factories were explored in detail. The film pointed out that attacks there had always been minimal, so intensive security wasn’t needed.
And then I wondered: why the hell hadn’t James sent me there? Instead, I was in this fucking pain-in-the-ass place, wasting time with training.
The films droned on, and as I watched all the diamond, diamond, diamond stuff especially, I began flashing back…shaking my head fast, I shot up from my seat and rushed to the door.
Before I could leave, the instructor stopped me with a firm hand on my arm.
“I’ve gotta use the bathroom,” I said. Then she let me go.
When I got in there, I banged my booted feet against the floor and walls over and over again, my pulse racing, my heart feeling as if it would drop out of my chest and be smeared all over the floor by my own feet.
At one point after a particularly brutal bang, I caught my reflection in the mirror above the sink, saw the sparkling wetness covering my flushed cheeks.
I instantly stilled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried.
This fucking place had been turning me into someone I no longer recognized.
I twisted on the faucet water, bent down and splashed my face.
*
That afternoon I and about ten other trainees started on learning the stun sticks. Stun sticks were about three-foot-long electrical weapons with various levels of stunning capability, depending on how much of a jolt an attacker seemed to need to stay down.
The sticks were a deceptive weapon: they looked easy to use but they weren’t. For two days I had such a fucking hard time coordinating my finger motions with my arm and hand motions; the button controls would sometimes need finger manipulation while using the weapon as a damaging lever.
On the third day of my mock fighting with Andy and now a new trainer, an older woman named Joy, when I still seemed to suck at what I was doing—or, more correctly, when I couldn’t seem to figure out what the hell TO do—Tan finally came down from his intercom mountain.
Cameras on the ceiling were always scanning the room while we worked, with Tan always watching everything and commenting on it from behind the cameras. But, apparently, this time he wanted to comment in person.
Andy and I had been grappling, but I’d screwed up again, inadvertently allowing him to remove my damn stick from my grasp because I hadn’t mock-stunned him fast enough. The practice sticks weren’t fully activated; they couldn’t really stun, but a blue light would go off only if the tips hit anything. And I was always hoping to see that damn light, but it rarely came.
“Damn, I suck,” I mumbled when Andy handed me back my stick.
I heard Joy sigh. “Pia, you’ve got to stop saying that. It isn’t helping.”
“Joy’s right,” said Tan, as he walked up to us. “You’re trying too hard and, ironically, then you’re losing concentration.”
“Are you in my fingers?” I snapped at him. “I didn’t think so. So how the hell do you know what I’m going through? My brain isn’t the problem; my fingers are.”
“Let’s try something,” he said, coming nearer to me and motioning for Andy to toss him my stick. Then Andy and Joy stepped back.
My heart started pounding harder; Tan stood so close to me now, I could smell his breath—sweet and vinegary, as if he’d been eating pickles or maybe a salad. He took one of my wrists and positioned that hand on the stick, then showed me where to wrap my other hand. Then, suddenly, he slid behind me while his hands slid over mine.
I startled a little, and then I wondered—worried—if he’d noticed it. His body felt too warm against mine, and I felt myself getting too warm in response.
Tan said now, “I want you to do the second move at Andy slowly, so I can feel how tightly your fingers slide. I think you’re grasping the stick too hard, and that’s why you can’t reach the controls fast enough. You’ve got to be easier, somewhat graceful. Don’t forget when you’re in an enclosed space, you don’t want to hit the walls too much.”
I pulled away from him and his hands dropped from mine. Letting out a little breath and feeling thankful for his not being so near me, I said, “See, that’s the thing I don’t understand. If these jolt a mine wall, isn’t that dangerous too? How’s that better than a gun?”
“Of course anything can be dangerous in a mine. It’s an order-of-magnitude thing, Pia.” He looked a little annoyed, and I could feel my face flushing; everyone was staring at us.
Tan moved toward me again. But I immediately stiffened and said, “Don’t do that coming up behind me again. It makes me uncomfortable.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes a bit. “This is training—what do you think it is?” he asked, which only embarrassed me even more. It also annoyed me. Who the hell was he to question this? It was my body.
He must have seen how I felt from my face because he nodded slowly now. “All right. I’ll grapple with Andy and Joy. You stand behind me, with your hands over mine. Feel what I do.”
My body behind his was just as stimulating, but this time I tried hard to focus on the motions of his hands and arms. Several times my hands slipped off his because, with my being behind him, if I didn’t stretch forward enough, my arms were too short. But, still, almost immediately, I could feel the difference in how we grasped the stick.
After a few moments of his fencing with Andy first and then Joy too, I pulled back and away.
“Okay,” I said. “You were right. I was squeezing too tight.” I could feel that my face was flushed even more than before.
Tan’s dark eyes carefully studied my face for a too-long moment. Then he said, “Now you try on your own, with both Andy and Joy separately. Andy’s slower than Joy. Let’s see how you do in both situations.”
This time I dipped and lunged and squatted and jerked forward and backward. And I finally managed to hit Andy many times and see the blue light! But I still had trouble with Joy when she came at me. She was lightning-fast! I missed her every time I tried to get her.
“All right now,” said Tan, and Joy backed off.
“That was better, Pia,” Tan added.
Joy’s gray-blond head nodded fast and she smiled at me. “Much better.”
“Yeah, but I still couldn’t get you,” I said.
Tan took my stick from me, his fingers flipping off the controls. “Joy’s tough—the fastest we’ve got here. Your workday’s over. You’ll try again tomorrow.”
I let out a hard breath, realizing how tired the practice had made me today; my body ached in places I never thought could ache.
I also realized that Tan was staring at me and now I was staring at him—and the others were also staring—at me and Tan, whose face began flushing. I’d never seen him with color in his face. He looked years younger, like a teenager.
The day before I’d learned from Galeta that Tan and I were the same age: thirty. We both were young, but I mostly saw him while he was working, and he was always so serious-faced then.
He finally seemed to remember the others in the room. Startling a bit, his head shot away from me and he said, “Everyone else take a twenty-minute break.”
The other trainees relaxed and a few moved toward the door. Tan turned back to me. “You’ve got another two weeks, Pia. And then the few days’ break after that before you start, in the mines maybe. If you believe you can do this, you will. You’ve got to believe in something,” he said finally, and then he walked away.
*
A few days later, I took my very first stroll in a mine.
Unfortunately, the mine was a deep cavern one, and as soon as I walked out the scary elevator and into the actual even scarier cavern, I felt the dense air press at
my throat like rock-hard fingers. I had to repeatedly gulp for that air before I could actually get any. Quick waves of nausea darted round my stomach.
Far down into the ground, it was darker and colder inside. And we trainees were supposed to do exercises in here later in the day. Five minutes and already the claustrophobia was blinding me: I couldn’t keep my eyes focused on anything long enough to see it. I could feel the walls spinning yet sliding closer….
“Pia,” I heard a voice say. Nell’s voice. “You all right?” I felt her hand press at my shoulder, shaking me a bit.
I fixed my eyes on her dark face and hair, thankful she was there, flesh and blood, not hard like the rest of the fucking place. “I don’t know, Nell.” As my eyes remained still on her face, the walls momentarily spun a bit less.
And now she said, “It’s the depth, I think, or the air level? I’ve been in caverns a couple of times on vacations. When you first walk in, it feels weird. Maybe you’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t know,” I said again. Slowly turning, I tried looking around. Visually, the area was beautiful: pale yellow and green crystals dotted the walls and part of the floor; a small clear creek flowed over the crystals into what looked like a pond beyond. The cavern was lit a bit by artificial light, but it was still a deep cavern.
I pushed out a hand in front of me, groping at nothing, searching for an anchor in the heavy air. “I think…I think I’ve gotta leave. I can’t do this. It’s too deep—all that earth above us!”
Now I used both my hands to push my way through the crowd of trainees. But I couldn’t see too well with the sudden wall-whirling going on around me. Someone grabbed me right before I was going to fall into the pond.
Again I could barely breathe but I managed to gasp, “Let me go! I must…get out of here!”
“All right!” said one of the instructors. “Take her back above!”
I was shaking by the time I got to higher up in the mine. But at least I could breathe here and the walls had stilled.
“This isn’t so far…underground. I can’t do that, go there…I can’t breathe.”
“It’s all right,” the instructor beside me said. “Very few guards are needed that far down—it’s impossible for troublemakers to get to without the elevator. You’ll probably never need to go there again.”
*
The instructor told me to see one of the doctors back in the compound.
Later, post-examining me and after some cursory tests she’d done, the doctor said, “I can’t find anything wrong on your scans, but some people may be made a little differently, their ears slightly different in how they function. The nausea tells me your ear has trouble adapting fast enough and maybe adapting at all to certain pressures while your head’s in motion. I’m not recommending you work in the mines at great depths.”
“That’s fine with me,” I said.
*
The next day we trainees finally went through firearms training—now of course this I could do easily, so easily that I was pushed through early, after only an hour. The others would continue on training with the guns for several days, but at the end of that first day, the instructor just sort of grunted at me as she said, “You don’t need any help with guns.”
*
The rest of the training was pretty much a repeat of the previous exercises, only this time the training seemed to pass by faster, and I finally got certified as a legitimate guard. Hallelujah! These had been some of the most difficult weeks of my life. My body felt used and bruised. But, at the same time, I felt so good because I’d made it. Didn’t think I could ever be so disciplined.
Nell also managed to pull it together for herself in the last week, and now we’d be working alongside each other sometimes.
All we trainees held a quick congratulatory party at Brenda’s Place the last training night, and at good times like these during the past several weeks, I almost forgot why I was here.
For the next two days, trainees would have a break. Nell would be visiting with her family. Many others would be offsite, would even start looking for new living spaces now that they’d become full guards.
For now I’d be remaining at the mostly empty barracks because I had something important to start: my real job.
*
Not as many guards roamed the interior of the compound because the edges were well-guarded with surveillance equipment, guards and sensors. So, once inside, late at night, a person could move around pretty freely.
The first night of the post-trainee break, I waited till after midnight.
From the secret cubby hole in my room, I pulled out my special jacket, my neck light, and my smallest gun and holster. I slid the holster and jacket onto my torso, then I slid the gun into its place.
*
Outside that night, both moons shone brightly, so I didn’t have any difficulty seeing my way to the Records Building.
The outer electronic lock on the side door there really was unusually flimsy; only a few minutes of wire jiggering were needed before I was opening that door. I replaced the lock’s outer paneling, then I slipped inside, moved down the hall, peering around: no one about.
When I got to the Records Room and finally stood before the digital lock there, I turned up my neck light a few levels, then I carefully punched in the code for opening the door. And—nothing. Zip.
“Goddamn James,” I said under my breath.
I tried a few more times, but still the lock wouldn’t open.
Now I pulled out part of my kit, began adjusting electrical shunts for proper placement inside the lock, then I carefully began peeling off the lock’s cover, my fingers shaking a bit and sweat trickling down the back of my neck. The cover’s being removed wasn’t supposed to trigger anything…as far as I knew, which may not have been very far, considering James’s intelligence failure….
The cover came off, but the alarm didn’t go off. I let out a sharp breath, then I got to work—quickly, checking over my shoulder occasionally.
The door finally opened; I removed every shunt, except the one that activated the alarm, then I closed the lock’s cover and slipped inside the room, pulling the door shut behind me. The room was enormous; I couldn’t even see the other end from the door. My fingers manipulated my neck light toward there, and now I saw a sign that one area contained the physical file backups. But first I wanted to try the computers. That would be faster, and you never knew: maybe one of the users hadn’t fully closed out a password or something before shutting down….
No such luck. I stood at a desk, and I could start the computer there, but that was all I could do.
Then I heard a noise—the clink-clink-ing sound of the door lock being opened again.
Shutting off my neck light, I dropped behind and half under the desk. Through a long slit-like gap there between the desktop and desk back, I could glimpse the very top part of the door. Not enough. I pulled out my little mirror-on-a-movable-stick, slid my hand around the desk’s side, adjusting the mirror’s reflecting glass. An overhead room light suddenly activated and the room brightened a bit.
“Pia, I know you’re in here.”
Tan!
I swiveled the mirror a bit till I got the right angle. He held a gun, and he wore all blue tonight, pale soft blue; apparently, he was dressed in pajamas.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I said urgently. “Everywhere I go you’re around. Like a fucking shadow, and with your lewd smiles! Are you supposed to harass the women trainees?”
“I don’t harass the women trainees. I only harass you.”
“I asked you what the fuck you’re doing here.”
“I live in this building part of the time, when I can’t make it back to my house. Had trouble sleeping tonight, saw you pass my window. The real question is: what are YOU doing here?”
“I’m doing homework.” I both saw and heard him snort.
“I’m not an idiot,” he said.
“Could have fooled me. What kind of idi
ot comes in here alone in his pajamas with guns blazing? You should have sounded an alarm.”
“But then you would have gotten caught. Like I said, your purpose here?”
“I’m looking for information. On the problems here. And on the problems in the past.”
“Ah well, let me help you.”
He took a step forward and I said, “Don’t move your ass! Except put your gun down and your hands up.”
“And then you’ll shoot me?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Through the mirror, I saw him lay his gun onto the long table beside him and slide the weapon far across the top. He lifted his hands in front of him. And I lifted my gun hand over the desk first, and then—slowly—the rest of me, shoving the mirror back into my pocket.
And Tan said, “Ah, there you are. Clever. So exactly how did you bypass the doors?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“You don’t give much away, do you?”
I didn’t respond. I kept the gun on him and walked over to the table, took his gun, then slipped it inside my jacket.
“Hey…” he started to say.
“You’ll get it back at a later date.”
“So, what exactly are you looking for?”
“Something I haven’t found. I can’t access the computer—”
“I can help with that.”
Quickly, I shook my head. “Nope. Too crowded in here tonight. This’ll have to wait.”
“But now that I know what you’re up to, I’ll always be watching.”
“What else is new? Honestly, what the hell are you all about?”
One of those lewd smiles appeared on his face. “Come to dinner at my house tomorrow night at seven. And you’ll find out.”
“Oh yeah, I’m gonna do that. Keep dreaming.”
“What’s the big strain? It’s dinner. You know, eating?”
