Charles Sheffield - Higher Education

“I feel like shit.”

“But you look like vomit.” She freed the other hand, then his head. Last came the bindings on his legs. “Are you still dizzy? If you are, stay right there until it goes away. There’s no hurry.”

“I’m not dizzy—not any more. But I guess I really blew it.”

She was frowning at him in bewilderment. “Blew what?”

“The test. I spewed my ring. Everything I had.”

“Naturally. Take a look around you. Take a look at yourself.”

Rick did so, first at his dripping coverall, then around the room. Every sign that he had thrown up had vanished.

“Why do you think the room was designed this way?” Tess went on. “And why do you think I put you in that plastic suit? You were supposed to throw up. Everybody does, every single person who takes it and passes. You only fail and blow it by shouting for me to stop too soon—for that, you lose all sort of points.”

You don’t know how close I came. If stomach hadn’t beaten brain to it, that’s exactly what would have happened.

“So you mean I passed?” Rick tested his balance, and found that it was all right. He stood up and put one foot on the ladder.

“More than passed.” She hesitated, as though not sure whether to speak, and then went on, “I might as well tell you this, because given the grapevine in this place you’d know within a day anyway. You lasted longer than anybody else in this whole group. You must have an iron stomach. Congratulations. For this test, you stated it right at the beginning. You’re the king.”

The king. Sure. Rick didn’t feel much like royalty as he stumbled away on legs that were still a little shaky. It would soon be time for the afternoon meal, but he felt not in the least like eating.

He went instead to the dormitory, and was pleased to find it deserted. He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. When he woke up what felt like two minutes later, he found that nearly an hour had passed and his stomach was empty and growling.

He went along to the dining-room, determined to admit to no one what had happened in the test. That proved to be irrelevant. As he came into the half-filled room, Chick Teazle greeted him with a loud, “Hey, look who’s here! The Vomit King.”

The grapevine was remarkable—and Tess Shawm must be part of it. No one else could possibly know what Rick had said about feeling like a king.

He nodded at Teazle and took a tray without speaking. If they knew what he said, they must also know that he had done better than any of them. And somehow, even if it killed him, he was now going to eat a normal meal.

The food was a thick beef stew. The first three mouthfuls tasted sour and greasy, and as Rick swallowed he felt warning twinges in his stomach. Grimly, he kept going. When he was raising the fourth spoonful toward his mouth, Vido Valdez entered the dining-hall.

Vido was walking carefully, on legs that didn’t quite seem to meet the ground. His face, always dark, wore an added tinge of greenish-yellow.

Rick raised the spoon of glutinous brown stew toward him in greeting, flourished it in the air, and delivered it carefully to his open mouth. It was gratifying to watch the progression in Vido’s facial expressions, as they moved from anger and hatred to alarm and revulsion and nausea. He put his hand to his mouth, turned, and headed for the exit.

Rick chewed steadily. Suddenly, everything tasted a thousand percent better.

Revenge is a dish best sewed cold. But it was all right to eat it hot, if it was beef stew and every spoonful made your sworn enemy turn a more striking shade of green.

The tests had gone on forever; and then, suddenly, they were over. The unsuccessful trainees vanished one evening, before the final results were announced. No one had a chance to complain, gloat or commiserate. The twenty remaining recruits were simply told the next morning that they would be going to space for additional tests and training.

No official rankings for performance were released, but somehow the word spread. Loudmouth Chick Teazle had done best of all. It was an unpopular result, making him seem even more obnoxious than before. Vido Valdez and Rick Luban, competing with each other more than with anyone else, had finished absolutely neck and neck. Neither had a chance to crow. Vido’s dark face threatened future violence. Alice Klein, looking at the end of the course even thinner, paler and weaker than at the beginning, had somehow squeaked through. Rick couldn’t imagine how she had done it—he knew for a fact that she was not half as strong as him, and she didn’t seem well-coordinated or fast.

“She must have been screwing one of the testers,” said Chick Teazle, standing in front of the electronic board where the list was posted. He brayed with laughter. Alice stared at him with those wide grey eyes, and thought unreadable thoughts.

Once again, the recruits had proof that Vanguard Mining did not waste time. That night there would be a celebration for the successful recruits—"Though what sort of a celebration can you have without drugs and booze?” Valdez grumbled—and the next day they would be on their way.

All twenty would travel together to the White Sands spaceport. Ten of the trainees would ship out first, traveling to a low orbit station on a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. The other ten would join them forty-eight hours later, after the SSTO had returned to Earth and was ready to make its next ascent.

Dr. Alonzo Bretherton, who all through the tests had said hardly a word, joined them on the last evening and broke what they had begun to think of as his vow of silence.

“You may have questions,” he said. “If you do, I’ll try to answer them.”

So far as Rick was concerned, that was easy. He had learned the rule long ago: The nail that sticks up gets the hammer. Nobody in his right mind drew attention to himself asking questions.

Apparently the other trainees had learned the same lesson, because there was a long silence. It was finally broken by a recruit already pegged by Rick as out of control. She was short and brown and curvy, with enormous brown eyes, and she could never sit still or keep quiet. Her name was Suzie Roy Cruse, but everyone called her Monkey. Word said she had been kicked out of her school for running a professional sex service—inside its walls. She was supposed to be perpetually horny, but Rick had been too stressed out by all the tests even to think of trying her.

“Yes—Suzie?” said Bretherton, as she coughed and fidgeted and held up her hand. Rick was sure he had almost called her Monkey. If the rest of Vanguard Mining was anything like this place, secrets must be impossible.

Having shown that she wanted to speak, Monkey now seemed to be thinking better of it.

“You have a question about Vanguard Mining, and what you are going to be doing in space,” Bretherton prompted.

“No.” And when everybody laughed, Monkey went on, “I do have a question, but it’s not about space. It’s about here. ”

“I’ll do my best.”

“How come you keep males and females separated at night? And you run a curfew, and you hit people. One of the paramedics slugged me yesterday, just ’cause of something I said. That’s against the law! I know we signed off on a deal that says you’re like parents, but parents can’t do that stuff. I could sue you, same as I could them.”

“Are you planning to?”

“We-e-ell. I dunno. But I could.”

“I’ll save you the time and effort. You’d lose if you tried.”

“I still got my rights. I never signed those away.”

“Of course you have, and of course you didn’t.” Bretherton rubbed at his broken nose, and looked more like an old street bruiser than ever. “But you don’t seem to know where you are. Can anyone tell Monkey where she is?”