We Open on Venus - Starship Troupers 2

by Christopher Stasheff

  I nearly exploded—but with a supreme effort, I mastered my anger and began to breathe slowly and steadily. Barry was right—we were in no position to stalk out in high dudgeon. I glanced at Barry’s profile, though, and from the speculative look on his face, I thought he might be toying with various possibilities of revenge.

  We waited an hour.

  Finally, Mr. Seeholder must have been satisfied that he had asserted his own importance sufficiently, and had cowed his guests plentifully, for he finally came out of his office. He was short, plump, and bullet-headed, with a fringe of fuzz around a bald pate. I noted it carefully—the fashion had once had a brief vogue among midlevel managers; leaving the bald spot had supposedly proved that they were too busy to have hair-restoration treatments, thereby testifying to their importance.

  He ignored us.

  He ignored us, and stepped over to his secretary. “Ms. Chainsaw, have those people the committee sent over arrived yet?”

  “Yes, sir.” She didn’t bat an eye—apparently she had been through this before. Moreover, she relished it. “They’re waiting, right over there.” She pointed.

  Seeholder turned and feigned surprise. “Gentlemen! A pleasure to see you! You’re the actors, I gather?”

  Ms. Chainsaw did a double take, which was satisfying— then gave us a glare, which was not. Were these people so benighted as to equate theater with vice?

  They were.

  I could only compare this travesty of a reception by a small-town petty official with the courtesy lavished upon us when we had called on Barry’s brother, Valdor Tallendar, who was a billionaire several times over and one of the most important men in the whole of the Terran Sphere. Perhaps it was because he knew he was truly important, so did not need to emphasize it—whereas Seeholder secretly suspected that he was truly insignificant, therefore feeling the need to be so rude and treat famous men so shabbily.

  But Mr. Seeholder was giving each of our hands a quick squeeze and dropping them as quickly as he could. “Come on, let me show you my school!”

  “I don’t think …” Barry began.

  “But you really must!” A hint of iron in the tone, then Seeholder was all affability again as he stepped in front of us, beckoning.

  We followed grimly, though outwardly smiling. The quid pro quo was clear—if we did not listen to Seeholder boast about his little school, he would not give us the permission we needed to perform. I took another deep, even breath and followed.

  But my mood was not helped by hearing Flippie mutter to Turpentine, as we passed them, “Silly old geezers!” I lost the rest of the remark, but vowed that Valdor would not. Even if Barry was too much the gentleman to ask his brother to intervene, I was determined that I would not be—for the first time in my life. I would write to Valdor that very evening and tell him in detail how his brother had been slighted. I would be very surprised if, in a year or so, Seeholder did not find himself back in the classroom, and Flippie studying nothing more than the beans in the cafeteria pot. The mills of the tycoons grind slowly, but grind they do, and the grist rues the day it saw the stone.

  Meanwhile, though, we had to see the school.

  We saw it all—the swimming pool, the indoor track, the outdoor track, the boys’ gymnasium, the wrestling room, the boxing room, the football room, the weight-lifting room, the cafeteria, the girls’ gymnasium, the squash court, the aerobics studio, the cheerleaders’ room, and the Grand Gymnasium.

  “That’s where you’ll be performing, by the way,” Seeholder said as we started out of the huge athletic chamber.

  Barry stopped. “Don’t you have a theater?”

  Seeholder shook his head. “No money for nonessentials, Mr. Tallendar. We have to answer to the Company—no extraneous expenditures.”

  “But surely an auditorium …”

  “No need. We can hold assemblies in the gym just fine. Students sit on the bleachers, and we have a portable stage we can rig up. It’ll do you folks great, no problem.”

  Barry swallowed and remembered to flatter where he could. “You must be very proud of your young athletes.”

  “Winners, every one of ’em.” Seeholder nodded, almost visibly expanding. “Beat every other team on the planet, every sport.”

  “Other teams?” Barry frowned. “I should have thought this was the only school.”

  “No. There are a host of boondock towns here, to service the loading siphons. Four or five of ’em band together to run a high school—not much, really, but enough for the basics: football, baseball, basketball, swimming. We beat ’em hands down, of course …” A shadow crossed his face. “… except for the academy. But you don’t dare win against the managers’ sons—fact of life. Now, let me show you the karate dojo …”

  He also showed us the snack bar, the electronics shop, the metals shop, the housepainting shop, the plastics shop, the small engines shop, the large engines shop, the football field, the soccer field, the baseball stadium, the skating rink—all indoor, of course, since breathers encumbered athletic prowess.

  Seeholder expanded visibly as he proudly paraded his domain before us, rattling on about the virtues of each specialized facility and its vital importance to the training of young bodies and the formation of character, and the channeling of youthful energies into constructive pursuits, so that they would grow up to be dependable, productive members of society. In fact, he rattled on so long that I began to hear a humming in my ears, rather like that made by a swarm of bees, and had to concentrate to hear his words through the buzzing, or at least their gist.

  Finally, he said, “Well! You’ve seen all the sights! Let’s go and talk now, shall we?”

  “It is very impressive,” Barry commented, though he didn’t say in what way.

  The director nodded, satisfied, and I could have sworn his chest expanded an inch or two more. “It’s a very clean school,” he said. “It’s a very clean, safe school. There’s no fighting, and we have a huge janitorial staff.”

  “Of vital importance to the learning environment,” Barry murmured. “Might we see a classroom? You know, one in which books are discussed and lectures given?”

  Seeholder gave us a peculiar look, as if there were something wrong with our minds. “Sure, if you really want to. But there’s not much to see.”

  There wasn’t. We stepped in just past the doorway, and the teacher looked up inquisitively. Seeholder signed to him, and he turned back to his students, who had begun to mutter with alarm—or perhaps it was excitement; after all, we were an interruption in the routine. “Okay, class, now simmer down. You’ve all seen the director before, and guests aren’t all that surprising.” And to the buxom towheaded wench who had begun primping, “Save it, Suzie— they don’t have a 3DT camera with them.”

  She lapsed into a disappointed pout. I thought his advice was well placed, all things considered, though erroneous, under the circumstances—but he apparently hadn’t been informed of those circumstances.

  “Physics class,” Seeholder muttered to us.

  I blinked, looking about in surprise. There was nothing to mark this as a science room—only the usual array of data cube racks with screens and readers nearby, a video pickup over the teacher’s desk with a projector aimed at the screen built into the wall behind him, and row after row of student desks in timeless array. I leaned over to Seeholder and whispered, “I take it the laboratory is a separate room.”

  He gave me another of his peculiar looks. “Sure, we’ve got a chemistry lab next door—but what’s that got to do with physics?”

  So. There were no laboratory facilities for physics.

  Not that they were needed, if I were to judge by the content that the teacher was patiently explaining as he went back to the lecture we had interrupted.

  “But I don’t see any pole,” the student objected.

  “You can’t see them, but they’re there.” The teacher held a bar magnet under the video pickup that projected it onto the wall behind him, five times l
ife size. “Now, let’s say the south pole of the magnet is a girl, and the north pole is a boy …”

  “And they’re gonna have little magnets?” another student suggested, and was answered with a huge hoot of laughter from his contemporaries.

  The teacher took it without batting an eye, waited for his laughs, then spoke up as soon as the laughter had passed its crest—and won my instant admiration for his professionalism. “That’s next week’s lesson.” He put a second bar magnet onto the screen. “So if you put the north pole of one magnet next to the south pole of another magnet, what’s going to happen?”

  “They’re gonna grab each other!” the class card yelped, and the class went into howls of laughter again—and once more, the teacher waited till the laughter had just passed its crest before he said, “Quite right.”

  The laughter stopped, and the teacher let the magnets go. They jumped together, and the class hooted its approval, with a variety of ribald comments. .

  The teacher let them pass and slacken, then said, “So opposite poles attract each other. Of course, it was just puppy love, so they broke up.” He pulled the two magnets apart, then turned one of them around and asked, “Now, what will happen if we put two south poles together?”

  “Nothing much,” one girl opined.

  Another asked, “Do they both like the same north pole?”

  “Of course,” the class card said. “They’ve got the hots for Santa Claus!”

  When the laughter had died again, the girl said, “Then they’ll claw each other’s eyes out.”

  “Well, not quite that drastic.” The teacher released the magnets, and they sprang apart.

  The students stared, riveted—except for two at the side, who were trying to smile politely, but who had the glazed look to the eyes that denoted chronic boredom at hearing something they already knew. Between them was a lad with the most elaborate pompadour in the class, yawning ostentatiously, fidgeting, and hissing remarks at the other two, who did their best to ignore him, but looked pained; one frankly looked scared. So much for the “safe school.”

  Two more at the other side were fighting a losing battle at keeping their eyes open, and three at the back had given in.

  Then the class card demanded, “Hey! How’d you do that?”

  “I didn’t,” the teacher said. ‘The magnets did. Now, what happens if I put two north poles together?”

  There was a brief silence, then a nervous giggle.

  “Just to save you asking,” he said, “they’re both after the same south pole.”

  “Hot for penguins, eh?” the class card quipped.

  One of the other boys said, “They’ll pound the hell out of each other.”

  “No,” the teacher said, “they’re both black belts.” And he let go of the two magnets.

  They pushed each other apart, of course.

  A couple of people oohed and aahed, but they shut up at the first glance from their peers.

  “That’s the other part of the law of magnetism,” the teacher said. “Like poles repel.”

  “Unless they like each other too much,” one of the other boys said, and the class howled.

  While the teacher waited for the yuks to subside, I surveyed the class, noting that the two fighting sleep had come awake at the oohs and aahs, and were looking about them, wondering what they had missed. The pompadour was hissing steadily into the frightened boy’s ear, whose face was turning very pale.

  The teacher sighed. “Slade, as long as Mr. Seeholder’s right here, why don’t you just walk over to him and sign in for your usual stint at the office.”

  The pompadour looked up, affected a casual yawn, unfolded himself from his seat, and strolled over to the director, raising a hand in casual salute.

  Seeholder met him with a stony glance. “You know where the detention room is, Slade. Why don’t you just toddle on down there?”

  The pompadour tossed a lazy grin back at his classmates and sauntered on down the hall.

  “Well, that’s enough,” Seeholder turned to the teacher. “Thanks for letting us watch.”

  “Any time,” the teacher said with a sketchy salute, and Seeholder turned away, leading us out.

  “A very talented teacher,” Barry commented.

  Seeholder nodded. “He keeps ’em quiet.”

  “But that Slade chap is obviously a habitual troublemaker …”

  Seeholder looked up, startled and suspicious. “How’d you know that?”

  “Why, by the teacher’s attitude and word choice,” Barry said, surprised. “He is clearly disrupting the class continually—he doesn’t want to learn, doesn’t want to be in class, and is making it difficult for others to learn. If he is such a chronic problem, why not simply expel him?”

  “Expel him?” Seeholder winced, looking at Barry as if he had just uttered the foulest of heresies. “No, no! As long as you’ve got him in school, there’s a chance he’ll learn something!”

  “But he doesn’t,” Barry said, frowning. “He clearly has no wish to, and is only making learning more difficult for his classmates.”

  Seeholder glanced at him suspiciously. “Laymen don’t usually notice such things, and certainly not so quickly— but look at this: If we kick him out of school, he’ll just go making trouble outside, where it’s harder to keep track of him, right?”

  “I suppose so,” Barry said slowly.

  “Well, then!” Seeholder said with finality. “It’s better to keep him off the streets. Come on, let’s go to my office and talk.”

  “Yer lunch money or yer life!”

  I looked up, startled—a hulking, pompadoured chap had backed a smaller boy with tousled, mousy hair into a corner.

  “Aw, come on, Billy, I only have enough for myself, I … Ow!”

  Billy had just slapped the other boy’s head. “Come on, come on, fork up, you little grease ball!”

  “But Billy … Uh!” The smaller boy folded around a fist in his belly, his eyes bulging.

  “Director …” I said, “over there.”

  Seeholder looked; then his eyes bulged in fury. “Billy!”

  The bigger boy jumped as if he’d heard a shot, then turned slowly and slouched toward Seeholder with an insolent grin.

  “Detention,” Seeholder snapped. “I’ll tell you how long your suspension is sometime after school.”

  The youth sneered and started to saunter away.

  “And I’ll tell the youth foreman,” Seeholder said. “He told me he needs a gang to clear a yeast tank.”

  The kid hesitated for just a second, then lounged on by, but a bit too casually now.

  The director transferred his glower to the smaller boy. “What are you staring at, Famholm? Hurry up, you’re late for class!”

  The boy swallowed and dashed away.

  “Surely he could have used a bit of reassurance,” I protested.

  “Namby-pamby pantywaist like that? Doesn’t deserve any pity,” Seeholder growled. ‘Take that Billy, now—he may be a pain, but at least he’s a man!”

  “I thought there was no fighting in your school,” Barry noted.

  “Sure.” Seeholder looked up in surprise. “That wasn’t fighting. Famholm didn’t hit back even once!”

  And he led us on toward his office, while I silently noted that his statement was accurate—technically, what we had seen was a beating, not a fight.

  It was also we who had called it to Seeholder’s attention—he apparently hadn’t noticed. I wondered how many incidents like that went on every day, ones that never came to the attention of either the administration or the teachers. I had no doubt that some of the bullies had become very skilled at striking blows where the teachers couldn’t see.

  We marched into Seeholder’s office. The secretary looked up in surprise, then went back to her work, apparently disinterested. Seeholder marched on through the door, then swung around the broad expanse of desk and sat down and leaned back in the leather swivel chair—synthetic, I’m sure, but almost in
distinguishable from the real thing. “Okay, make your pitch.”

  Barry frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your pitch, your spiel,” Seeholder said impatiently. “What kind of trash are you trying to foist off on my kids?”

  Barry reddened. “No ‘trash’ at all, Mr. Seeholder, but a new play by one of Terra’s most respected authors of musical theater.”

  “Oh, so we get his rejects, huh? Who is it?”

  “Vagrants from Vega, ” Barry said, with a touch of frost, “by Cant and Arbuthnot.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of them. Cant’s the one who writes those sexy plays that make adultery look like small potatoes, isn’t he?”

  “He has written some comedies that are termed ‘bedroom farces,’ yes,” Barry said, ‘’but they show would-be adulterers as ridiculous people who never receive the gratifications they pursue.”

  “Yes, but in the process, they make adultery look like something that’s a lot of fun and okay to do. You side with the adulterer and start rooting for him.” Seeholder shook his head. “No, that’s out. What else have you got?”

  Barry reined in his temper—I could tell because he mustered a polite smile—and said, “Filters and Phyltres, by Swathe.”

  “Oh, the one that shows the hero defying authority and getting away with it?”

  “It depicts the classical Romantic struggle of the individual against the institution,” Barry said slowly.

  “Same thing. And the heroine’s a whore, and the hero’s got a social disease.”

  “The heroine has had an affair or two in her past,” Barry said, “which scarcely constitutes prostitution …”

  “No, but it makes her a whore.”

  “… and the hero is suffering from consumption, which is definitely not sexually transmitted.”

  “That’s what the whore dies from in that opera, isn’t it? The one with the camelias,” Seeholder said.

  “Certainly an interesting digest of La Traviata,” I mused.

  “Look,” Seeholder said, “we don’t want our people even knowing about that kind of thing, let alone seeing it What else have you got?”