Конни Уиллис: Terra Incognita: Three Novellas

“Cheyenne,” Mom said. “As soon as I heard, I left a message for him to come to the school. Why didn’t you tell us you’d applied?”

“Because—”

Mr. Fuyijama patted me on the shoulder. “Shouldn’t you be getting home, young lady, and getting ready to go?”

For your information, I am not going anywhere, I thought.

“What am I saying?” Mr. Fuyijama went on, smiling coyly. “You’ve probably had your kit all packed and ready to go for months.”

“Mr. Fuyijama’s right,” my mom said. “We need to get you home. You only have a few hours.”

“A few—?”

“I’ll call your father,” Mom said, steering me toward the door and away from Kimkim. “He can meet us there.”

“Mom, what do you mean, a few hours?” I said, but she was talking to Dad.

“Bob? Where are you? Oh, dear. Well, turn around and go back home. We’re on our way.”

Kimkim appeared, shaking her head. “The admiral’d already left.”

“What does my mom mean, I only have a few hours?” I asked her.

“Didn’t you listen to anything the recruiter said when she was here? Cadets go straight to the Academy after they’re appointed,” Kimkim said, grabbing the letter the admiral had given me and opening it. “It says they’ll pick you up in exactly—oh, gosh, two hours and forty minutes.”

“Let me talk to Dad,” I said to Mom, who was still on the phone. Dad knew I didn’t want to go into space. We’d talked about it after the recruiter came. “Hand me the phone.”

Mom shook her head. “I’m talking to Grandma. You can talk to your dad when we get home. Yes, isn’t it marvelous?” she said, presumably to Grandma, and then, presumably to me, “Get in the car. Yes, of course she’ll want you to come over and say good-bye. Come on, we need to go. Good-bye, Kimkim.”

“Kimkim’s coming with me,” I said, grabbing her arm and pushing her into the car. “She’s going to help me pack.”

Mom nodded absently, still talking to Grandma. She switched on the car and pulled away from the school. “Would you call Bob’s parents for me? And Theodora’s piano teacher? I’m sure she’ll want to see her before she leaves.”

“You’ve got to find out the admiral’s phone number for me,” I messaged Kimkim so Mom couldn’t hear what we were saying, “so I can call him and explain—”

“I’ll try,” she messaged back. “Academy numbers are all classified.”

“Do you think I should phone Aunt Jen and Aunt Lucy?” my mom called back to me.

“No,” I said, and Kimkim put in helpfully, “She doesn’t have much time, and she’s got to pack, Mrs. Baumgarten.”

“I suppose you’re right. You should have done that beforehand, like Coriander Abrams. Her mother said she packed her kit the same day she filled out her application. Oh, look,” she said, pulling into the driveway, “Aunt Jen and Lucy are already here.”

They were, along with Grandma, Grandpa, Grandma and Grandpa Baumgarten, and about a hundred neighbors, all holding up a big laserspark banner twinkling Congratulations, Cadet Baumgarten!

The online news crews were all there, too, holding mikes, and it took me half an hour to get into the house and another fifteen minutes to escape to my room, where Kimkim was working away at my computer. “Here,” she said, handing me a printout.

“What is it?” I said eagerly. “The admiral’s phone number?”

“No, it’s the list of what you’re allowed to take. Fifteen-pound weight limit. No pets, no plants, no weapons.”

“Because they know at this point I’d like to shoot them. I don’t need lists,” I said, throwing it in the wastebasket and going over to stand beside her. “I need the admiral’s phone number.”

“I can’t get to it,” Kimkim said. “I’ve been trying to hack into the Academy officer roster for the last half hour. It’s got firewalls, moats, ramparts, the works. I’m not surprised. With fifty thousand candidates, they’d be inundated with students trying to find out the officers’ numbers so they could call them and beg them to be let in, but it means I can’t get in either.”

“Of course you can,” I said. “The database you can’t hack hasn’t been invented. What about calling the airport? Mr. Fuyijama said the admiral had to go announce more appointments.”

“I already did. IASA refused to authorize an in-flight emergency call, and the plane’s onboard number is just as protected as the admiral’s.”

My mom poked her head in the door. “Theodora? You need to come cut your cake.”

“I’m still packing,” I said, grabbing my duffel bag off my closet shelf and throwing some underwear into it.

“It’ll only take a minute,” she said firmly. “The governor’s here.”

Oh, frick. “Have you heard from Dad?”

“No, but he should be here any minute. Come on. Everyone’s waiting.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said, and called up Dad, but there was no answer. “I’ll only be a minute,” I said to Kimkim. “There has to be some kind of emergency number where we can talk to somebody. Keep trying!” and went out to the dining room.

Everyone in town was there, gathered around a sheet cake with a spaceship and silver stars spelling out “Blast off!” Mom handed me a huge piece, and I gulped it down, nodding while two dozen people I’d never seen before told me how lucky I was, and finally escaped on the pretext of taking Kimkim some cake. She waved it away, intent on her hacking, so I ate it.

“It’s no use,” she said. “I can’t get in anywhere. IASA, the Academy cadet roster, everything’s blocked.”

“But there has to be a number where the cadets can call them if they’ve got questions.”

“There is,” she said, her eyes on the screen. “It’s automated. Press ‘1’ for a list of forbidden kit items. Press ‘2’ for the Academy course schedule. Sixteen menu choices, but none for ‘If you wish to speak to an operator’ or ‘I think there’s been a mistake.’ You don’t remember the name of that recruiter, do you?”

“No. Did you check the name thing?”

“Yes. There’s no Theodore Baumgarten, or Ted, or Dora. Or Bauman or Bauer or Bommgren. The closest thing I found was a Theopholus Bami, and he lives in New Delhi. And is four years old.”

“Oh. I know—look up the Academy rules. Those can’t be encrypted, they’re public record, and there’s got to be something in there about turning down an appointment.”

My mom poked her head in again. “Your dad’s just pulled in,” she said.

Dad. Thank goodness. I waded through the crowd in the dining room again, which now seemed to contain everyone in the state of Colorado, all eating cake, and outside. “Dad, I have to talk to you. I didn’t apply to the Academy—”

“You didn’t?”

“No. I—”

“That’s wonderful! You did just what I always told you to do—follow your own path, be independent, don’t do what everybody else is doing, and look what it got you! An Academy appointment!”

“No, Dad, you don’t understand. I don’t want this appointment. I don’t want to go to the Academy!”

“That’s what you said your first day of school, remember? And do you remember what I told you?”

“The stink bomb story?”

He laughed. “No, I told you to try it for a week and then see how you felt. You’re just having cold feet. When does she leave?” he asked Mom, who’d come up carrying two pieces of cake.

She handed us each one. “In twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes ?!” I said, looking at my digital. According to it, I still had over an hour.

“IASA called. They said they knew how eager cadets always are to go, so they’re sending the escort over early.”