by John Barnes
"Do you have to do that?"
"No, but I can. Decision time. Where are we going? Where's a good place to find out if we got into the PSA?"
Jak shrugged. "We need a place where we can both celebrate, or where we can both commiserate, or where one of us can pretend to be happy for the other one."
"Well, when I celebrate, I like to do it at a place with lots of food. When I'm depressed, I just want to eat. And anytime I have to conceal my feelings, I get nervous, which always makes me really hungry." Dujuv raised his left hand to his face, palm inward. His purse—the fin-gerless glove into which his computer was built—activated, casting a faint glow on Dujuv's face. "Where would we go for a lot of food cheap?"
"The same place you go four times a week, the Old China Cafe," the purse said. "Jak will have sweet and sour beefrat, and you'll have a triple portion of oyster fried rice and an order of fishloaf with Chinese vegeta-bles. Authorize to pre-order? Or are you going to pretend you're having something else until you get there?"
"Pre-order," Dujuv said, laughing.
"Done." The glow vanished from Dujuv's face and he dropped his hand to his side.
"Toktru, you ought to do something about your purse's attitude, Duj," Jak said.
Dujuv shrugged. "I like some spirit in my purse, even if it's a little snotty. It's a good way to check and see if I'm an idiot."
"You could just ask your friends."
"They're all idiots." Dujuv grinned. "And besides, if your purse can have an attitude, it can be your friend, and it won't turn you in if you do something like climb a light shaft."
That poked Jak in a sore spot; his purse had gleefully informed on him as soon as the pokheets had called it, whereas Dujuv's had done its best to hide him.
"I just don't like the idea of them being able to back-talk to people," Jak said. "Before you know it they'll start to think that they are people."
"Well, they are smart. And they talk, and they have feelings—"
"Only so they'll have judgment!"
"Isn't that supposed to be why evolution gave humans feelings?"
"That's just my point. Humans got feelings from evolution, and we're free and wild and have our feets. Any feelings a purse has, it got from its designer, just to make it useful, and any feets it has are just trouble."
Dujuv stopped, his weight settling as if he might strike. "Aren't you forgetting you're talking to a designed breed?"
Jak had, and he felt like a complete gweetz. He drew a deep breath, asking the calm of the Disciplines to run through his mind. "Why is it," he asked, keeping his voice low and neutral, "that whenever we're both toktru scared and nervous about something, I keep picking a fight by saying stupid things? This makes the second time in less than twenty minutes. And you tolerate it!"
Dujuv smiled, his mouth tight and flattened, his eyes still hard. "Oh, no, I don't just tolerate it, I enjoy it. It helps me relax. I find it soothing to think about breaking your neck."
"I bet. Why do I do that?"
"Because you're an idiot. If you'd treat your purse decently, it would tell you." Jak started to laugh, and Dujuv's shoulders relaxed and his bare scalp smoothed like a tugged sheet. "We need to get to the Old China Cafe. Our food is probably ready by now."
They paid the extra for a closed booth so that they would not be interrupted. The waitron delivered the food almost as soon as they had settled in, so now there was nothing to delay getting their results, except their nerves. They used up another five minutes arguing about who should go first, settling on sending in the request simultaneously. "Let's just go ahead and be childish about it," Jak said. "Set up the request on your purse but don't send it yet… I'll set it up on mine… okay, on three. One, two, three."
The result popped up instantly and Jak stared at it. Everyone knew what it meant when the message began
"We regret to inform you…" but Jak read and reread the whole message.
He had missed admission to the PSA by sixty-five points out of ten thousand possible. Assured admission for an unmodified-stock human had been 8529, and his score had been 8464. A few people with lower scores than Jak's had gotten in, but those were people from urgently needed specialty breeds.
"Rat turds," Dujuv said, quietly, looking down at his hand. He looked the way Jak felt.
"You too?"
"Missed it by eleven points. 8166 for a panth to get in and I got 8155."
Jak refrained from considering that with his score, Dujuv would have gotten in; if you went in as a panth, they expected things that were physically impossible for Jak. "I missed by sixty-five," he said.
They sighed, together, loudly. "Well," Jak added, "at least neither of us has to do any pretending."
"Yeah." Duj slammed the table with his hand, making their plates bounce alarmingly. "Weehu. I wonder what we'll end up doing? I thought about it, of course, and I had an in-case plan, but it all seemed very unreal till just this moment. What are you planning to do? Sign on with a general labor brigade?"
Jak shook his head. "Naw. I don't have to go that heavy. I'll try the Army. A smart heet like me could make sergeant pretty quick, and from there if you're a good enough sergeant, you can get into one of the officer programs and eventually it's just as if you went to the PSA in the first place. And the next time one of the human settlements gets into something with the Rubahy, or if Triton tries to secede again, or if we get into another argument about who owns Ceres, we can be out in the dark bouncing around in cryojammies, shooting up the landscape. It's a busy violent world out there, and we can get into all the violence we could ever want. You can't beat that for amusement. Better than a simulation game!"
"You can't get killed in the simulation games. Not literally, anyway. You're not really thinking of going into the Army, are you, Jak? I mean, you just did a great job of describing why not to go in. And you have to be a sergeant for six years to be eligible for officer school. That's like an average of… shit, Jak, that's going to be at least two wars. As a sergeant. Which you won't make right away, anyway. Probably three wars before you're a lieutenant."
"Oh, I agree the PSA would have been a better way to go—five years and walk out the door and into the commission. But I'm on entropy's bad side. I didn't get in. I'd still like to be a full citizen and I'd still like to get a good job. The Army looks like the way. And besides, I kind of like the idea of the adventure and the travel."
"Weehu. Fine idea. Adventures like digging foxholes in high gravity, close to absolute zero. And the very first thing you get to do is travel clear to the other side of the Hive. Must be what, two hours on the Pertrans?"
"But after Basic—"
"Oh, toktru, masen? the chance to be a guard on a mining asteroid. Or a ship's B&E on an orbicruiser— four years of cleaning and polishing your stuff and staying in shape, in case they need you for ten minutes of getting killed. Are you totally crazy, or have you just gotten way too far into those intrigue-and-adventure stories you like, or what? At least go into the Spatial, where you can get to fly the ship."
"There's no way for me to do that, Duj, toktra, I've thought about it, and there isn't. The Spatial gets to pick first and there are going to be lots of people ahead of me. I barely have the physap for the Spatial, and I sure don't have the mathap."
"But aren't your mechap and spatiap singing-on? They always need riggers and optimizers."
"They want heets who are top-rate across the board. I looked into this, Duj, toktru, because for some reason after I took that test I specked some bad feelings about the whole thing—pretty well dakked I'd gotten wanged, even before I got the scores. My math scores just toktru kill my chances for the Spatial. No, if I want into the Forces, it's the Army. And I'm not going to go through all the hassles of Basic just to hold down a desk or fix a machine, so if I enlist, I'm enlisting to be a dirtkick." The emphasis in his own voice surprised Jak.
Apparently it made an impression on Dujuv too, because he dropped the subject. After the silence had stretched t
oo long, Jak asked, "So what did you have in mind for yourself?"
"I'm going to see if I can get on a professional slam-ball team." Dujuv said, his voice oddly tense. Jak noted that Dujuv's usually relaxed shoulders were hanging high. This was something Duj cared about and was expecting a fight about, so Jak resolved at once that no matter what, he was going to back his tove.
Even though this might be, toktru, the stupidest idea he'd ever heard.
"Well," Jak ventured, "you're a hell of an athlete even for a panth, and you're a determined sort of a heet, and I think you'll probably make it."
Duj smiled at him. "Thanks."
But Jak couldn't quite stop himself from saying, "It's just that I can't quite believe you were worried about me getting killed in battle if you're planning to play slam-ball."
"People are not supposed to die at slamball."
"But they do." Jak knew he should shut up, but he couldn't seem to make himself. Dujuv was too important to him, and he could practically hear his Uncle Sib's often-repeated comment that slamball was something like the ancient Roman arena and something like medieval American television but without the intelligence and compassion of either. "Dujuv, last year was a safety record for the league—they only killed twenty-eight players. Most of those were goalies. And a panth—especially an athlete like you—will be a goalie!"
"Jak, toktru, I did my homework on the subject. Even goalies don't get killed if they're good. There's two hundred teams in pro slamball, and they all have five goalies. It was only sixteen out of a thousand, and at least half of those were heets who should have retired years ago and just stayed in too long. Krayjnean, the Hive National goalie that got killed, was depressed and suicidal about getting too old to play, and he had told people he wanted his league life insurance to pay off to take care of his family—you can't really count that death as an accident. There's usually a couple like that every year, masen? So those shouldn't count. And like I said, if you're good, you don't get killed. See, I did the research."
Jak wanted to argue further but he was already breaking a promise to himself. "Yeah, I dak it's mostly marginal and too-old goalies that get killed. And you're not going to be marginal, ever, and by the time you're getting to be a gwont, with your brains—assuming nobody scrambles 'em for you—you can move into coaching or managing, especially if you have a good record."
"I'm going to have a great record." Dujuv's gaze was level and serious. "You and I are not so different. We're both willing to take a little risk to get some travel and adventure. My goal, to start with, is to make it onto Hive National within a couple of years, and volunteer for the travel squad. They go everywhere, even Earth."
"Earth? With all the other opportunities, why do you want to go there? It's a giant collection of pocks in su-perhigh grav."
"Have you seen the pictures of the beaches around those pocks? And the girls on the beaches? Like say in the pock clusters in North Australia or in Arizona?"
Jak nodded. "I can see your point. If it's not a sore subject, where does Myx fit into this?"
"She'd look light on a beach, toktru, but you can trust me this time: Myxenna Bonxiao and I are completely, totally, utterly, toktru through, masen? Never again. She's not my demmy and I'm not her mekko and we won't be again. All over."
"Weehu, I'm sorry to hear that," Jak said. He did not believe a word of what his tove was saying. After all, it had never been true in all the many times that Dujuv had said it before. But though he didn't believe it, he knew that right now his tove needed sympathy, and Jak had plenty of practice at extending sympathy in the circumstances.
"What happened?" Jak asked. This time, he thought.
"Oh, some of it's happened so often that you could almost just say 'the usual,' masen? She just won't leave other heets alone, and she's always very sorry and acts toktru sweet and does outrageously kind and considerate things, afterward, and then I go running back. But I've decided that this time I'm never, never, never going running back. We'll still be friends and be in touch all the time, masen, because we have a long history and I adore the girl and all, and if either of us needs it the other one will be there, that goes without saying, and so forth, of course, but I'm not going running back. It's just too far beneath any reasonable semblance of my dignity.
"But anyway, look, Jak, we were talking about my career choice, and I can tell you're biting your tongue trying to support me, which toktru I appreciate more than I can say, because none of my family and none of my other friends are doing that. So what I can admit to you is what I can't admit to them: I dak the odds are rotten, but—I'm ambitious. Furthermore, thanks for the compliment but I'm not very smart, not even for a panth. The genies made me to be an athlete, cop, or soldier, not any kind of great brain. The jobs I could get in the more conventional line would be the Army (and I already told you how I feel about that), or asteroid pioneering (which means being out in the void for most of my life), or being a pokheet—hassling teenagers to keep them from doing stuff that looks like harmless fun to me."
Jak shrugged. "You don't seem crazy to me, Duj."
"Too small a sample for a valid poll!"
The boys started at the sudden voice outside the door. With a soft ping, the booth door went transparent and Sesh and Myx were standing there. Jak clicked the unlock, the girls slid in beside the boys, and the door closed, locked, and opaqued again. Sesh grabbed Jak and kissed him passionately; she was a great kisser, so Jak stopped thinking about anything else except how good her tongue felt in his mouth and how nice her body felt in his hands. When they came up for air, Sesh had that soft, damp-eyed smile that always made Jak's heart pound.
Sesh nodded to her left, grinning, and winked at Jak. Myxenna and Dujuv were kissing, or rather Myxenna was kissing and Dujuv was pinned to the wall, but she was doing enough kissing for both of them. Sesh breathed in Jak's ear, "He's been all jealous and cranky lately, so she's trying to get him out of it."
"Might be working," he muttered back. "Either that or he's about to pass out from hypoxia."
While they waited for Dujuv to give in or Myx to give up, Jak enjoyed looking at Sesh; he couldn't imagine ever having a demmy he liked better. She was tall and slender, and at least one of her ancestors must have been a gracile, for her muscles had the flat, long, strong, chiseled look of that breed, and she always moved from her center, with smooth power, like a natural athlete. She tan-patterned her light coffee skin, so that her face and body were marked with a deep brown tiger stripe; she had deep blue eyes and flame-red hair. Her white one-piece coverall, short-legged and short-sleeved, fit her loosely enough to be modest but did not hide the fine-ness of her body; like everything else about her, it was perfectly chosen and singing-on right for her.
Duj and Myx gave no signs that they were ever going to stop. Sesh shrugged. Loudly, she said, "Ahem, I say, ahem. Myx, let's tell the boys what we came here for."
"I think my boy has a pretty clear idea," she said, sitting back. She was a tiny young woman, with thick, full, black hair, green eyes with blue starring, and pale skin spattered with small freckles. The violet clingsheath she wore fit high on her thigh and she had tugged it higher on one side.
She put on her little puckish smile—the one that had lured Jak, a few times, into things that truly made him appreciate Sesh's tolerance—and said, "Well, we came here to check up on you, and to cheer you up. Once you access your own scores, they become public domain, so we found out what happened to you. Then we called the monitors on your purses, and we saw what your moods were like, and here we are, the Sunshine Squad, to cheer you up."
Duj was obviously processed. "I thought you and I agreed we wouldn't monitor moods through the purses—"
"That's what we agreed," Myx said, "and we did switch off the monitors on each other's emotions. You seemed to want to do that and it made you so happy when I agreed."
"But then you switched on again!"
"Well, of course. Just because I could make you happy by switching it off,
didn't mean I was going to leave it switched off. I wanted to dak what you were feeling. I just didn't want you to dak what I was feeling. That's important to a demmy, Dujy. I'd think you'd know that by now." To avoid looking at him, she made a show of fixing her lipstick.
Sesh sighed. "Duj, if you ever want to be treated as nicely as you deserve, just let me know, and I'll find you someone who will think the world of you and treat you accordingly."
"Mom's already married," he said, gloomily. "So if you two are here to cheer us up, you must have done all right yourselves."
Sesh raised her shoulders and lowered them, a shrug made into a dance, calling attention to her long, beautiful neck. "Myx sailed right through. I told you I didn't feel very much like I did a singing-on job, right after the test. As it happens, I didn't make it—in fact I bombed out. So that's the score for our little crowd—three losers and one winner."
Myxenna spread her hands, as if she were looking for some way to apologize for her success. "I'm still kind of baffled, myself. Toktru, I thought the test was way too hard and I didn't think I did very well. But apparently I guessed right an awful lot of times, or just dakked the overall rhythm somehow, because I got 9241."
"9241 is brilliant," Jak said, swallowing envy as fast as he could.
Dujuv nodded. "So you're in for the PSA, and I guess that means eventually you'll be Prime Minister Myx…"
"I think maybe Minister for External Affairs Myx. It's where I'm best qualified."
Dujuv made a little, coughing laugh. "If I'd said that—"
"You'd better not even think it, Dujy. All right, so I'm in public service, and what are you toves going to do?"
"The Army."
"I'm going to try out for pro slamball."
Jak noted with approval that neither of the girls voiced a word of disapproval. "So what are you planning on, Sesh?"
She sighed. "Can you be nonjudgmental?"
"I can try," Jak said, and Myx added, "Of course we can." Dujuv nodded.
"Well, there's a lot of money in my family. I don't think I'll be picking any occupation."
