Rob Chilson - Refuge

“You may see Ms. Winters now,” said the receptionist, smiling kindly.

Ms. Winters kept them waiting in an outer office for a moment while she examined their forms, and Ariel nudged Derec.

“Did you hear that receptionist? She was trying to copy our accent!”

Ms. Winters called them in, asked a question or two, nodded, and, taking the forms, left with a brief “Wait just a moment.” It hadn’t taken her long, as they had indicated no experience.

She hadn’t closed the door completely.

“Red? Those two students, the brother and sister… upper-rating children slumming, or kicked out of the house, or something.” Doubtfully, she added, “Maybe student reporters, checking up on the schooling system, or something.”

“Who cares?” came a gruff-sounding male voice. ‘They got money, they want to learn, we sell schoolin’. Send ‘em on out.”

With a dazzling smile, Ms. Winters ushered them through the farther door into a large room with a number of carrels within it. Students were entering in a steady stream from a different door and occupying carrels and other learning stations farther down.

Red confronted them, a blocky fellow with thinning sandy hair and a handsome face, his body one solid slab of muscle. He looked them over shrewdly for a moment, nodded, gave a noncommittal grunt.

“Drivin’s a hands-on schoolin’,” he said bluntly. “You either learn it with your reflexes or else you don’t learn it. It ain’t so different from learnin’ to ride the ways, though you don’t remember how you did that.” It was a set speech, and went on in that vein for about three minutes. Red’s face remained blank.

Derec was impressed despite his prejudices. Education among Spacers, as little of it as he could remember, was a more gracious process, lavishly supported by ever-patient robots. It was clear that this indifferent man proposed to push them into the water and watch to see if they drowned. If they did not, they would be rewarded only by his good opinion.

“…it’s your money and your time, so I know you’ll do your best and not waste either.”

Though his experience with different machines must be far greater than this Earther’s, Derec wryly found that Red’s good opinion was a thing worth striving for.

The carrels were cockpits containing mockups of the control sets of various kinds of vehicles, and trimensionals of the roadways. Red gave them a brief instruction on the rules of the road and the operation of the craft, showed them a printed set of instructions on the right and of rules on the left, and said, “Do it, gatos.”

Derec and Ariel grinned faintly at each other, and did it for about half an hour.

Red came by at the end of the time, sucking on the stem of a cup, if a cup had a stem, and exhaling smoke courteously away from them. He bent and looked on the back sides of the carrels.

“You did good,” he said, his eyebrows expressing more than his voice. “You did real good, for beginners.”

Maybe too good, Derec thought uneasily.

Red looked at them, blew smoke thoughtfully, and said, “Come down here to the models.”

The models were as they had supposed, small-scale versions of various vehicles they’d have to learn to drive in order to graduate, from one-man scooters to big transport trucks. They were given models of four-person passenger cars marked POLICE, and control sets, the models being, of course, remote-controlled.

This was an interactive game with a vengeance, and the other students who had advanced this far grinned at them and made room. Derec started his car slowly, nearly got run over by a big truck, speeded up, nearly went out of the lane going around a corner, cut too sharply, but gradually began to get the hang of it.

Then a white-gleaming ambulance with red crosses on its doors and top made a left turn from the outside lane, the operator crying “Oops!” belatedly as he realized where he was. Derec avoided him skillfully and slipped past. After a moment his controls froze, as did the ambulance’s. The ambulance operator grimaced, then grinned ruefully, and they all looked at a trimensional screen to one side.

A-9 ILLEGAL TURN, NO SIGNALS. P-3, FAILURE TO APPREHEND TRAFFIC VIOLATOR.

“Frost. Swim or drown,” Derec muttered, and the girl next to him laughed.

It wasn’t as easy as it looked, and he wasn’t thinking only of not knowing the rules-such as that a police car was expected to act like a police car. The streets were full of vehicles, and he had to be prepared to predict their moves. None of his Spacer training was of much use here. To his mortification, he rammed a fire engine at one stopping, not seeing the signal lights in time. It didn’t help that Ariel slaughtered half a dozen pedestrians at a place where the motorway and pedestrian levels merged. The other students were far better, but cheerful about it, or Derec couldn’t have stood it.

It was humiliating.

After an hour of exhilarating play, during which they got much better, Red came by and said, “Take a break, all; give the second team a chance.”

The students relinquished their controls, leaving the vehicles in mid-street, and trooped out, old and young alike, to some kind of refectory. Red caught Derec’s eye, nodded to Ariel; they stepped aside.

“I’ve been watching the monitor record. You’re not so swift on models, where I was expectin’ you t’ shine,” he said. “Figured you’d have lots of experience on them.”

He paused and eyed them questioningly, but they just nodded. Shrugging, Red said, “I’m gonna put you on trucks. Big ones. You ever been outside?”

Chilled, Derec said, “What?”

“Outside the City, “ Red said patiently.

“Well-” Derec exchanged a glance with Ariel. “Yeah. We’ve, uh, we’ve given it a try.”

“Ever have nightmares about it?”

“What? No.”

Red nodded shrewdly. “The shrinks have all kinds tests, but one thing talks true: nightmares. Thing is, you’re young, you could be conditioned easily if you aren’t what shrinks call phobic. That means, if you don’t have nightmares. Big money in driving the big rigs outside-not many people to do this kind of job. Most trucks are computer-controlled, or remote-controlled-but even remote-control ops get upset, break down, have nightmares. They even use a lot of robot drivers. “

“Really?”

Red shrugged. “Why not? They’re not takin’ anybody’s job away. Not many people will do that kind of work. If you can do it-and will-it pays real good.”

Derec and Ariel looked at each other.

“Don’t have to decide right away,” Red said shrewdly. “I know-people’d think you’re queer, wanting to go outside. And I should tell you, I get a bounty on every prospect I send out.”

He looked at them with a hint of humor. “Oh, yeah, you got to apply for the job-outside.”

He paused for an answer, and Derec said slowly, “Well, can we think it over? I mean, we don’t know anything about trucks-”

“I’ll put you on simulators now-c’mon back here.”

At the back of the room were giant simulators they had to climb up into-three of them.

“Most of the trucks we train on are for inside the City, and they’re pretty small. Lots of competition for the driver jobs on them-most freight goes by the freightways, naturally, and driving the freight-handler trucks is a different department of the Transportation Bureau. Lots of competition for those jobs, too. But these big babies go beggin’. Yet they’re real easy to learn.”

The important thing was remembering that one had a long “tail” behind one. They moved. slowly when maneuvering, though, and anyone who had landed a spaceship could learn this readily enough.