by Larry Niven
But when she tried to talk to the teachers about it, they smiled patronizingly and suggested she was oversimplifying.
The lessons themselves, once she got over the excitement of actually being able to do all of this in public, were … boring. She’d been doing these sorts of things since she was ten or twelve. This was all old. It was the math, of course. When you knew the math, you could always get exactly the same result, at least in this really simple stuff. The Uncertainty Principle really didn’t apply when you were lighting candles and apporting small objects. When you knew the math, you could make shortcuts, and you didn’t have to memorize pages and pages of chants and what-have-you. When you knew the math, you not only could do one spell, you could figure out how to generalize and do all kinds of spells that were like that one spell.
And there was another fly in the ointment, though it was hardly an unexpected one. She’d figured out within the first half hour that this school was no different from any other. There were cliques. There was an elite coterie of the Very Popular and Very Pretty. There were jocks of some sort (you could tell by the muscles and the attitude), who were part of the Very Popular. The Elite made it their business to try and make life miserable for the Outcastes.
Back in mundie schools, Vickie had mostly kept her mouth shut, her head down, and worn a little glamorie that basically made the Very Popular ignore her. She’d managed to skate along being a lone wolf. You could say that was in her blood, after all … No one had bothered her. No one had noticed her. Even her teachers had a tendency to forget about her once she was outside of a classroom, and called her “Veronica” or “Valerie” instead of her real name.
Well, glamories weren’t going to work here; everyone here her age and some younger could see right through them. She’d already been getting the eyeball from the Elites—and now she was standing just outside the dining hall, knowing that she could stroll in there, find where the Smart Set was eating and see if she got an invitation to sit with them. Which, if she was reading the interest right, she probably would.
Now, this was the first time the Leaders of the Pack at a school had ever wanted anything to do with her. And … it was tempting to let them hook her in. Being popular … well, obviously it was fun. Great parties. Boyfriends. People wishing they were you. And after graduation? Connections. Favors to be called in. People begging to do you favors.
The trouble was, there was always a price-tag attached to that sort of gang. Generally it was the one where you soiled your soul by “going along” with things you knew were wrong. And in a place like this, those things were going to be by definition not only wrong, but very sneaky. Vickie could see how her skillsets would be very valuable to kids who were doing things they shouldn’t be. They didn’t know that yet, of course—but if she just went along, she’d be sailing along on easy street until she graduated, and afterward too.
But she helped people, not hurt them. It was what she did. It was what her parents did. Even the Nagy family motto said as much: Servire et Tueri. With a sigh—just a little regret, because she knew allowing herself to be roped in by the Pretty People would make her life so much easier—she resigned herself to the fact that, tempting as it was … no. It would be wrong. Oh well. At least she didn’t have to live here, so their opportunities to cause trouble for her would be limited.
And maybe, just maybe, she could still skate by under their radar as long as she didn’t outright reject them. She could always play the Captain Oblivious card.
Right, then. She squared her shoulders and marched into the dining hall.
This wasn’t anything like the cafeterias in mundie schools. This was a dining hall, with tables with tablecloths and chairs, not plastic picnic benches. Food was served “family style” from platters and bowls on the tables, and the proctors at each end of the long tables watched you to make sure you took some of everything, and didn’t just fill up on carbs and sweets.
She headed for the nearest table to the door; it was scarcely a prime spot, it wasn’t near the windows and it was far enough from the kitchen that stuff that cooled off fast would probably arrive lukewarm at best. There wasn’t one of the Elites anywhere near it. With luck, they’d never notice she was in here, she could get her lunch and get out with no one the wiser.
“Hi,” she said, grabbing a chair next to a thin, pale boy who looked a bit younger than she was. “I’m Vickie, I just started today.”
She addressed the entire group at the table, who stopped eating and stared at her as if she had spoken in Urdu. Even the proctors looked a little surprised by her choice of seating.
“Uh … wouldn’t you rather sit—” one of them started to stammer.
“This is just fine, thanks,” she interrupted, and took a seat, looking around her brightly. “Could you pass the beets, please?”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be nearer the windows?” the other proctor said, carefully.
“I’m not fussy,” she replied, and filled her plate.
That was about all the conversation she managed to get out of any of her tablemates. She tried making conversation herself, but when every overture she attempted was met with nervous silence, she mentally shrugged, exchanged a few dull pleasantries with the two proctors, and just finished her meal. She felt the glares on the back of her neck as she excused herself and went to her locker, though, and she guessed there was about to be a confrontation. The Elites had spotted her attempt to avoid them, and they were not happy about the rejection.
Not surprising, really. Rejection wasn’t something they had to deal with. It probably stung a lot.
Only the day students had lockers, since only the day students needed them—though these were less “lockers” in the mundie sense and more like small locking closets. Wood, of course, and very posh, polished wood at that. Vickie sensed the bodies closing in around her as she got the books she needed for the next class. So she took her time about it, and made sure she had the door locked securely before she turned.
And feigned surprise at seeing the little group lurking in an arc between her and the rest of the hallway. “Welcome Wagon?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “I’m honored.”
She read their faces and their body-language, and reckoned that their next move would be intimidation. Wow, unforgiving lot, aren’t you? Now, there were a lot of ways to play this. Officially, the use of magic on fellow pupils, except in specific classes, like magical dueling, was strictly forbidden. Unofficially, well … Vickie was pretty sure she knew plenty of dirty tricks she could get away with.
But that would be wrong. And unethical.
She could handle this physically. She might be small, but she had a lot of tricks up her sleeve.
They might think they were at a physical advantage, since St. Rhia’s had plenty of classes in all kinds of fighting—she was enrolled in staff work and was going to be going to that class next, in fact. She was, however, also pretty sure that she was probably better than these kids had any notion of in martial arts.
But that would make her the attacker, not the attacked. That would be wrong too.
However, one thing she had noticed was that there was a huge hole in the fighting classes, as evidenced by the mere fact that they were just that. Fighting classes. There was not one single purely defensive class. No martial Tai Chi. No Tae Kwon Do. And there was her answer. She had been studying Tae Kwon Do since she was a toddler, as part of the effort to keep her from becoming Daddy’s Little Hostage to Daddy’s Enemies. Tae Kwon Do was perfect for getting out of physical confrontations smelling of roses.
All righty then, she thought, and smiled up into the face of a girl who, in any other school would have been Head Cheerleader. “Well, obviously not,” she said, sweetly. “I have a great idea. You go back to whatever supah special elite thing it is you do, comparing teeth whitening spells and figuring out glamories to make your hair shine, and I go on to class. I get what I want, you get what you want. Everybody wins.”
Evidently,
she struck a nerve, or maybe they weren’t used to anyone actually daring to be insolent with them, because the girl’s face reddened, and she actually was stupid—or unpracticed—enough to telegraph her intended slap. Vickie was not only able to easily step off the line of attack, the girl stumbled and nearly fell into the lockers when Vickie’s face wasn’t there to get the slap. And while she was stumbling forward, Vickie was able to slide past the girl and through the hole in the line she made.
Before any of them could react, Vickie was already doing a fast, purposeful walk in the direction of her next class.
If she had any luck at all, they’d decide she wasn’t worth the effort of going after.
One could only hope.
* * *
The pale, thin boy was in her Magic lab that afternoon, and the teacher partnered the two of them. And for the first half hour she couldn’t get a word out of him, not even regarding the assignment. Finally, when the teacher had gone to the other side of the classroom to help someone else, she grabbed his wrist.
“Look,” she hissed, as he went utterly still and stared at her in numb fear, “I can do an apport in my sleep—and in five minutes. I can show you how to do the same. Talk to me. What the heck is wrong with you?”
“Y-you shouldn’t be talking to me,” he stammered. “They’ll find ou—”
“Haven’t you gotten it through your head that I don’t give a rat’s ass about what they think?” she replied scornfully. “I will go right through the next three years not giving a rat’s ass about what they think. How are they getting away with bullying you?”
His jaw dropped. “How did you—”
“Oh please. You act like a scared rabbit. This place has rules about bullying, so how are they getting away with it?” She glared at him and he dropped his eyes.
“Because … nobody cares,” he whispered.
“Well, I care.” She firmed her chin.
But he shook his head. “You think you do, but you won’t. Nobody does once they—”
But before she could find out what was going on, the teacher came back to their side of the room and they had to go back to the apporting exercise. When class was over, he gathered up his books and bolted before she even got a chance to say another word.
* * *
“Well?” Moira Nagy said, her fork poised over her meatloaf. “First day?”
Vickie sighed, and stirred her mashed potatoes. “It’s better than Chafee. But I’d thought the magic classes would be more of a challenge. I’m practically sleeping through them. It’s all stuff I knew three years ago.”
It was hideously disappointing, actually, but she couldn’t tell her parents that. After all the work they had gone through to get her in?
“They’re still evaluating you, kitten,” her father said, as her mother’s brows creased with faint annoyance. “They can’t exactly take our word for what you can do.”
Moira flicked a scarlet curl over her shoulders and lost the look of annoyance. “Of course, I should have realized that and warned you. Every child is the next Merlin in her mother’s eyes. Give it a little time, and they’ll bump you up into more advanced classes.”
“Yes, but—” Vickie stopped her own protest before she made it. Even her own parents didn’t quite understand how she saw magic—only that she saw it very differently from the way they did, and that Vickie’s way was startlingly efficient. “Anyway, it’s frustrating.”
Actually she had come home only to cry a little. She wanted to be crammed full of new magical knowledge. She needed it the way she needed air. She didn’t just study magic, she was magic, and she felt as if she was being starved for it.
But … brave face. Never mind that there were bullies, just like mundie school, and that she was being put back on training wheels. Brave face. At least at St. Rhia’s she was safe to be who she was. Not like some people. That pale kid, for instance.
“This too will pass,” said her father, and grinned at her as he shook his blond hair—just like hers—out of his eyes. “Meanwhile, it’s meatloaf night, and I bet you get your homework done in two hours or less.”
“Or less,” she said, and felt at least a little smug about that. “I did half of it in study hall, and like I said, I don’t even need to think about the magical part.” Then she brightened, as she remembered the one part of the whole day that hadn’t been a disappointment. “Oh! And Staff Fighting is righteous!”
“Verily,” he agreed, and went on to suggest things to her while she listened intently. So intently she forgot to mention the Pretty People thugs and the pale kid who was being bullied, and her concern that she would end up being bullied too. By the time she remembered again, it didn’t seem quite as important. For herself, well, it was Tae Kwon Do again, really, all she had to do was keep evading and eventually they’d just give up.
As for the kid, well, he needed to be willing to be helped before she could help him. Still. I’ll keep trying to corner him, she promised herself before she gave in to the bliss of a DS9 episode followed by a brand new Charles de Lint novel. It was the first time during a school year that she had ever had time for both a TV show and a chapter of a book in the same evening.
And for the first time during a school year, she was going to be able to go to bed at a decent hour—which might have been an odd thing for a kid her age to think about, but then, most kids her age hadn’t shorted themselves on sleep so often they had to resort to Triple Red-Eyes to stay awake during the day. No more worshipping at the altar of the Goddess Caffeina.
So … there was some good.
* * *
The Pretty People left her alone. Sort of. They didn’t try to surround her and intimidate her a second time—which at least proved that the bullies of St. Rhia’s were a lot smarter than the bullies of Chafee—but there was a lot of whispering and obvious gossip going on. This, Vickie had expected. And she hadn’t been lying when she’d told the pale kid that she didn’t give a rat’s ass. Maybe—heck, probably—spending so much time in the company of her parents and their peers had given her a certain amount of insulation from what her own peers thought and said, and a long view of things. What did it matter, really, when in three years she would be gone, and the only rumors that could possibly cause her any trouble were that she cheated or that she was easy. The first, she could disprove in a heartbeat, and Mom and Dad would back her up. The second, well, any guy or even group of guys that tried anything on her was going to end up singing in the upper registers for quite some time. And that was if they were lucky. She strongly doubted that any of the kids here had ever had to fight for real. If she was actually attacked with intent to harm, bottom line, they would find out she never hesitated, and never held back. She couldn’t afford to. She wouldn’t kill anyone, but there would be people in the hospital and none of them would be her.
Still, when just before lunch some of the whispers finally got loud enough to reach her, she nearly dropped the books she was getting out of her locker in surprise.
“Lipstick lesbian …”
“Fag-hag.”
That was the best they could do? Really?
They’re dumber than I thought. Why they thought rumors about being gay, or gay-friendly were going to cause her a moment of unrest—well, they hadn’t been paying attention. First of all, St. Rhia’s had very firm policies in place about homophobia, to wit that acting on it was an invitation for expulsion. And secondly—well—she really and truly did not give a rat’s ass.
Then again, this might be 2002, but there were still plenty of people out there with homophobia, and it looked like there was a big fat clot of them right here in St. Rhia’s. Just because they were all young magicians, it didn’t follow that all or even most of them had exposure to all of the myriad sorts of folks Vickie’d had. If anything, their upbringing might be even more insular than the average mundie and—
Wait a second. Fag-hag … She could almost hear the mental pieces clicking together and solving the puzzle of the pale k
id. And that was when she got angry. Because it was bad enough to bully someone, but to do it over something they couldn’t help, any more than they could help the color of their eyes, just made it all the worse.
Heck if I am putting up with this shite. The first thing to do, though, would be to verify. Which, fortunately, she was in the perfect position to do. She hurried to the dining hall, and headed straight for the table she’d sat at yesterday, plunking herself down beside the pale boy, who looked even more alarmed than he had yesterday. She said nothing, however, until the proctors happened to be looking away.
Looking, in fact, at the Pretty People who were engaged in some stupidly obvious whispering, giggling, and smirking. Vickie took the moment to lean over and whisper in the pale kid’s ear.
“Follow me. Just leave your lunch and follow me. And don’t argue if you know what’s good for you.”
She was pretty certain that he had been cowed enough by the bullies that he would just do what she ordered without question, and she was right. She got up and left the table, acting as if she was upset by the whispers, and he followed a moment later. As soon as they were out of sight and the door to the dining hall had closed, she grabbed his hand and headed for the Central Courtyard.
“What—” the poor kid gasped, his pale face even paler, as he probably anticipated her taking some sort of revenge on him.
“Hush,” she said, put him in the Earth circle with her, and burned through the equations. He gasped as they apported into the basement of her house.
“But you—but—” His eyes were as big as the proverbial saucers. “How did you—”
“Because I’ve been doing apports since I was twelve, I told you,” she said, seizing his hand and dragging him upstairs to the kitchen, where she shoved him down into a chair and threw a couple of Cornish Meat Pasties into the microwave. “Here,” she said, handing him one. “Now I can talk to you without anyone interfering.”
