Heinlein's Finches

by Robin Banks

  “I’m going to be up top. Don’t you keep me waiting. Love you.”

  He throws her half a grin, replies “Here goes nothing,” and starts going up.

  Gwen and I walk to the tower door – well, we start out walking, but we find ourselves speeding up, and by the time we get there we’re running at full tilt. We run all the way up the stairs, as a commotion starts outside. Random voices sounding out turn to a low murmur that gets louder and louder until the clamor is impressive even from inside the tower. By the time we get to our window the noise is earsplitting.

  Asher’s a third of the way up. He looks bloody awful, red-faced and sweating and infinitely more tense than I’ve ever seen him during a climb, but he’s coming up alright. Gwen bellows at him out the window: “Beat you to it!” I’m not sure if he can catch her words over the racket the cadets are making cheering him on.

  The rest of the climb seems to take forever. He slips a bunch of times, but the rig does its job and he just gets back to climbing. When he gets up to the windowsill he looks up at us. “Little help?” he pants. We grab him and lift him onto the windowsill. When he sits there, gasping and flushed and faintly shaking, the cadets’ voices explode. Gwen prods him.

  “Wave, love. Say thank you to the nice people.”

  “I’m not sure I can lift my arms that far.”

  “Get on with it or I’m going to leave you here.”

  So he waves, the cadets let out a last cheer, and we carefully lift him into the room.

  “Bed. Now. That was hard work.” He’s still panting.

  “Pah. You’re all sweaty and smelly. I don’t think I want you in my nice bed.”

  “My bed. This was my room before it was yours. Perhaps we ought to return to that state of affairs.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “I’d offer to wrestle you for it, but you’re way too icky. I guess I’ll have to let you win this one.”

  “Me big man. Me win. Now please get me to the bed before I fall over.”

  Returning to the tower gives me a much greater sense of relief than I expected. It’s as if we’re actually returning to normality. Sure, Asher’s got to use a winch to get up and down from his room, and he’s still motoring around in an ATR, and Gwen’s still in danger, and Marcus is still dogging our every step… But apart from that, everything is perfectly normal.

  Asher’s mood has improved drastically. Although he still gets occasionally frustrated, he is a lot more upbeat. I don’t know what exactly has done it, if it’s the pain subsiding, endorphins from the exercise, or the sense of achievement he’s getting. I don’t really care why it’s happening. I’m just glad to see it. The next milestone for him will be walking, even if on crutches. Although we still don’t have a timeline for that, he seems to be more optimistic about the fact that it will happen.

  Everything is slowly getting better for us. Thinking that fills me with dread. I’m scared that if I look at our current happiness too closely, or take it for granted, I might jinx it. I feel bad about feeling good. That’s a new one on me, and that also scares me. I’m scared about feeling bad about feeling good. My anxieties have anxieties.

  But everything is getting better. I try to hold on to that fact.

  I don’t believe in jinxes. I wonder if they believe in me, though.

  The first batch of Asher’s students has returned from float camp. He was expecting them to check in with him on their return, but not one of them touched base. Weird, and more than a little bit rude, but he didn’t think much of that.

  At breakfast the day after, though, it becomes painfully obvious that his students are avoiding him. They won’t even look at him. When we leave the refectory, Asher finally gives up waiting and collars one of them in the hallway.

  “How did it go?”

  “It didn’t.” And the cadet walks off on him. We stand there flabbergasted until another cadet takes pity on us and comes to talk to us. She doesn’t bring good news.

  “We failed. All of us. It went to shit from the get-go. The stuff they were asking us to do was totally different from what we did here.”

  “Different? How?”

  “They broke it all down. It wasn’t just ‘go from here to there and do this’. It was all ‘use left thruster to turn two degrees then right thrusters to decelerate by 10%’, kinda thing. Everything had to be done the way they said. And none of us had done it like that before.”

  Asher looks stunned. “But they never asked for that! They have always just wanted results, people able to perform given tasks. And the way we do it is safer and more efficient.”

  “The way you do it isn’t what they want now. They failed us all, man. They’ll give us a chance to make it up after the last term, because… Well, because they decided it wasn’t our fault.” She drops her eyes to the floor. “What they told us was that such a catastrophic failure in performance couldn’t be attributed to individual cadets. Catastrophic failure in performance. That’s how they put it.”

  She locks eyes with Asher. “Look, man, I know this is probably not your fault and I don’t know what’s going on, but everyone’s really pissed off. They’re scared, too. Their futures ride on this now.”

  “But whatever possessed Nick to do it like this? He knows how you’ve been trained.”

  “He wasn’t testing us. Some bi… Some woman from the Patrol was. Not a Patrolman – a civilian specialist. She was there to do our training the way they set the test up, but it was a too late for us. Man, I gotta go.” The cadet jogs off to join the rest of her group.

  “This is fucked up. This is totally fucked up. I gotta talk to the Chancellor.” Asher motors off as fast as the ATR will take him. I glance at Gwen, who’s looking horrified, and we all charge after him, Marcus in tow.

  By the time we catch up with Asher, he’s already being let into the Chancellor’s office. As we all file in, the Chancellor doesn’t try to hide his exasperation. “I was hoping this could be a private meeting with Professor McGee, not a public extravaganza.” Gwen looks abashed, but makes no move to leave. I stand behind her, staring at the floor.

  The Chancellor sighs. “Oh, very well. I just got the reports. I can’t understand them. I have no idea why I wasn’t consulted or even informed until now. Apparently the Patrol has unilaterally decided to change the testing criteria for the suited maneuvers portion of the curriculum to make it more ‘quantifiable’.” He smacks a folder on his desk. “In the process of doing this, they somehow managed to fail an entire batch of cadets. You never reported a problem with the current class and we’ve never come near to a 100% failure rate, so the problem must be with the testing. And I don’t understand that.”

  “From what I understand, they broke every exercise down into a set list of component movements.”

  “But why would that cause our cadets to fail?”

  “Because… Because it makes no sense. It’s clumsy. We’ve been teaching them how to complete a course in the most natural and efficient way possible. That was the idea behind the whole system. With this testing method, all that matters is following the instructions. If a cadet can float better than the instructions call for, that’s a fail. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No. It doesn’t. But it sounds like that is what they’re doing.”

  “What is Nick saying about this?”

  The Chancellor rubs his forehead. “I don’t know whether Adjunct Gray has had a speaking part in this. All I know is that the Patrol assessor chose this route. Though I’m frankly disgusted that they would do that without consulting any of us.”

  “Someone’s got to talk to them. We’ve got to stop this.”

  “We can’t. In their infinite wisdom, they have determined that the failure rate demonstrates the need for further, greater Patrol involvement.”

  Gwen explodes. “They interfere and set the cadets up for failure, then use the failure to prove that they were right to interfere? That’s… That’s recursive!”

  The Chancellor grimaces at her. �
�I can think of stronger words. But yes.” He turns back to Asher. “So, am I to assume that this is a problem that will affect our entire student body?”

  Asher looks shocked. “Yes. Most likely. Shit! Sorry. Yes. None of them will pass because they can float much better than the test requires. They will all need to memorize the maneuvers step-by-step and… float wrong. It’s doable, but hard. And such a waste of time and effort.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. But we’ll have to play along.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t do anything else. We set our curricula, but the Patrol has the right to set standards for graduation. That’s the premise underlying our entire system: we train cadets up to Patrol standards, and the Patrol enlists them. As things stand, they could reject the entire year.”

  “What? That’s... They wouldn’t. They need Patrolmen.”

  “At this point, I feel unable to anticipate what they may or may not do. After all, this entire situation is ridiculous. Expecting them to start making sense now would seem overly optimistic.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  The Chancellor sighs. “They have kindly offered us the loan of a Patrol floating instructor. A Rupert Evans. Do you know him?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Marcus clears his throat. “If you’ll excuse me, I have. He trains some of our civilian staff at the Central Headquarters. He’s highly qualified.”

  Asher snaps. “Hell, from what I’ve heard so far none of them sound like they can float at all! If you tried to teach kids to walk like that, they’d be still crawling in their teens.”

  Marcus smirks. “Yet his track record is impeccable and his testing methods are Patrol-approved. Very stringent. Definitely quantifiable.”

  “Quantifiable? How can you quantify efficiency, or grace?”

  “That’s rather the problem, I guess. Arbitrary, subjective quality standards leading to arbitrary, subjective teaching methods. That’s not how the Patrol normally operates. I’m surprised they’d approved non-standard methods of training and testing up to now, really. And,” he turns to the Chancellor, “I’m ever more surprised at the tone of your responses. I’m sure it’s solely the result of the stress of the situation, and that you couldn’t have meant to blatantly disrespect the Patrol.”

  The Chancellor’s face darkens. “I have said nothing about the Patrol.”

  “But you have said plenty about your opinion of this decision, which was made by the Patrol. What can I say? I respect the chain of command. I guess I forgot that civilian staff may feel differently.”

  Asher blanches. “Civilian staff?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sorry, Corporal. I keep forgetting you served, however briefly. It’s hard to reconcile with your… Well. Anyway.”

  Asher looks as if he’d just been slapped. Gwen looks about to slap somebody.

  “If you’ve finished volunteering your opinions on the matter, Captain, could we return to the topic of this conversation, in which you are not in fact a party?” booms the Chancellor. “They are going to send their own trainer to re-train our cadets in the approved curriculum. Class schedules will have to be rearranged in order to accommodate this. That’s going to vex a few people. Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take for them to reach standards?”

  “Not a clue.” Asher shakes his head.

  “Could you select for the best cadets to go first?”

  “That’s what we did already, pretty much. Well, I didn’t: Nick did. We always put forward the ones who’re ahead. But the test is set up so they’d find it hardest to pass.”

  “Maybe that’s a solution. Well, not a solution, but a way to get past this. Send the worst cadets first. If they pass that’s no loss, and if they fail they can retest in the summer term. They’re less likely to be upset by that if they already know they’re not doing well.”

  “That’s not fair on them. We’d be sending them off as sacrificial lambs.”

  “As what?” The chancellor looks shocked.

  “Sorry. Terran expression. Not literal. We’re sending them off to fail. I don’t like that.”

  “That might not be the case,” I interject. “The fact that they didn’t pick up on your way of teaching may actually help them. They don’t have anything to unlearn.”

  “Is that right?” asks the Chancellor.

  Asher shrugs. “I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. It might work. Couldn’t we just send nobody for a bit, until everyone’s up to speed?”

  “Not so easily. We still have a schedule to keep. We can’t extend the term. Swapping around cadets will cause enough chaos.”

  “Well, a few weeks’ respite, at least?” We send off five intakes per term, ten in total. One’s been and gone. If instead of sending 80 cadets we sent – oh, crap, can someone do the math?”

  I pipe up. “If we sent 120 we could do that in six intakes. Buy us six weeks.” Asher stares at me. “What? I’m good with numbers.”

  “120 cadets would be way too many, though. No way they could train and test them all. Hell, I don’t know if they could even house them.”

  “How about 100? That’d give us seven intakes, with 20 cadets spare. So 103 would do us.”

  Asher shrugs. “Doable, in theory. You’d have to ask Nick, or whoever is in charge up there. I’d ask them myself if they were talking to me.”

  “So we want to ask them to give us four weeks here and then to send over roughly 100 cadets per intake? And we’re planning to send the worst cadets up first? Without telling them, obviously.”

  “I don’t like it. Not a bit. I can’t think of what else we could do, though. I wish I could. Can’t we try to talk this out with them?”

  “As they’re not talking to us at all, I doubt it.” The Chancellor frowns. “I wish I could know what’s behind this.” He looks at Marcus. “But of course I’m sure this is not some kind of political stunt on the part of our colleagues in the Patrol. That just couldn’t be the case. Well, I guess we’ve done all we can here. I will contact the tube now and see if they will allow us to make the necessary adjustments. Instructor Evans is on way to us, expected early next week.”

  As we’re filing out the door, Gwen first and Asher trailing behind us, I hear the Chancellor murmur: “Professor McGee, I am genuinely sorry about this. And disgusted, too.”

  “Yeah. I get it. The priority now is to protect our students.”

  We make our way back to the tower without speaking. Gwen tries to hold Asher’s hand, but as he doesn’t respond at all she lets him go.

  When we get to the bottom of the tower, Asher looks up at the climb ahead. “You know, I’m in no mood for this. None at all.”

  “You can set the winch to just lift you up, right?” asks Gwen.

  “Yeah. But I’m in no mood to be hauled about like a sack of shit, either. Oh, fuck it all.”

  Marcus turns his nose up at the profanity.

  “Oh, well. You two go up. See you at the top in a bit.” Gwen looks uncertain, so Asher continues. “Please. Seriously. I need some time on my own. Or nearly.”

  Gwen looks deeply unhappy about this, but she gives him a kiss on the cheek and steps into the tower with Marcus.

  “Well, there you go. Today I discovered that I suck at the only useful thing I thought I was good at. And for the first time since I’ve laid eyes on her, my woman’s waiting for me in my room and I’ve no inclination to join her. None whatsoever. That’s two firsts. Fairly impressive for a cripple, hey.”

  “Don’t say that?”

  “Which bit?”

  “Well, any of it. But the C word… that’s just plain ugly.”

  “Sorry, bud. I didn’t mean to upset your fine sensibilities.”

  “Oh, for gods’ sake. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  He sighs. “I know. Sorry. It’s just… It’s been a day. And it’s not lunchtime yet. You know what I wanna do? I wanna get roaringly drunk with somebody who will not judge me when I turn into a pile o
f sniveling snot in front of them.”

  “Gwen wouldn’t judge you.”

  “True dat. And she’d hold my forehead while I puke, and make sure I’m safely tucked in when I pass out. But I’d judge myself for falling apart in front of her, and that’d be even worse. I’ve had enough failures for today.”

  “What the hell are you on about? That clusterfuck with float camp is none of your doing. And being upset about it is not a failure.”

  “If I was up there, this wouldn’t be happening. I should be up there doing my damn job.” He snickers. “Assuming it’s still my job. Doesn’t sound like it. Oh, fuck. I didn’t even think about that.”

  “You don’t know that. Stop awfulizing.”

  “They know how I teach. They were happy with that. Now they’re clearly not. They did all this behind my back. They didn’t even try to speak to me.”

  “They know you’re off sick. They have never worked with Nick directly. This doesn’t have to be about you. Maybe they just don’t want to bother you while you recover.”

  “Because two busted legs would stop me using a com? I don’t buy that. This is all fucked up. And I just wanna go and lay my head down in my woman’s lap and I can’t, because I want the solace she gives me, but not her pity. And I'm not sure I could tell between the two right now.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I shut up.

  He sighs. “There you go. I can get my big boy pants on and haul myself up this wall, or I can make even more of a spectacle of myself. Not much of a choice, is it?”

  “You do know that she doesn’t think of you like that, don’t you? None of us do.”

  “Yeah,” he says strapping himself into his harness. “But I do. Not that that counts for much, these days.” And up the wall he goes.

  July

  I don’t know what I was expecting from Instructor Evans. With everything else that’s gone on, maybe I should have braced myself for more shit, but I didn’t. The guy doesn’t even pretend to involve Asher in anything. Hell, he barely acknowledges Asher’s presence when they are introduced. He takes a long, thorough look at his casts, though.