A Princess of the Aerie (2 page)

He folded those long, long arms on the desk in front of himself and leaned far forward, looking deep into Jak’s eyes with
utter sorrow. “First of all, let us be clear. You are a Hive citizen admitted as a special favor to a foreign government,
and we expect you to behave like and as a Hive citizen. Don’t hope for clemency just because Psim Cofinalez likes you.”

Jak nodded. “I’m aware, sir.” Jak and Dujuv had not actually had the test scores to get into the PSA, but two years ago, just
after graduating from gen school, they had gotten mixed up in a complicated business that had involved, among other things,
a kidnapped princess, a duke in disguise, control of most energy sources in the solar system, and blackmailing one of the
most dangerous people alive. In a series of improbable accidents, Jak and Dujuv had come through it all as good friends of
Psim Cofinalez, who had shortly after become Ducent, and then Duke, of Uranium.

As a reward, or to get them out of the way (most likely both), Psim had enrolled them at the PSA as foreign students—and made
it clear that staying in was up to them.

Worse yet, Psim had explained this to the PSA’s administration, so his name could not even be used in a successful bluff.

“Now,” the Dean went on, “we prefer that none of our students have wars named after themselves, at least not until after they
graduate.”

“A war? Over some amateur pornography?”

The Dean had stopped smiling. “Is
that
how you intend to describe yourself and Dujuv Gonzawara’s having penetrated security for the Venerean delegation, placed
hidden cameras, and recorded a Venerean sacred orgy—and not just any sacred orgy, but specifically the Joy Day orgy?”

Jak refrained from shrugging and tried to look innocent.

“The innocent look is not going to work, Jak Jinnaka. Joy Day is the most sacred of all the Venerean orgies. It was a major
concession for the Venerean delegation even to meet with us when it meant being away from home over the Joy Day holiday.”
The Dean stared down his long nose at Jak, as if considering pecking out his eyes, and said nothing further.

At last Jak ventured, “I suppose most of them would want to be at home with their families.”

The Dean’s eyes became hard and cold as metallic hydrogen. “Why do you think that a crude ethnic sex joke will help?”

Jak wondered what he had said. Apparently something else that would offend Venereans.

“Pro forma,” the Dean said, “since anyone who chose to be so offensive can hardly have done so out of ignorance, but pro forma,
because we are supposed to assume that ignorance may be the problem, let me tell you what you should have known, and known
thoroughly, since you were ten. Venereans do
not
practice incest. Incest is defined as ‘prohibited intercourse with a family member,’ and since what Venereans do on Joy Day
is
required,
and in any case they do not recognize consanguinity as a basis of familial affiliation, no such thing happens at the Joy
Day orgies, and, to repeat the point,
Venereans do not practice incest.

“I refuse to believe that you did not at least learn
that
in the required Solar System Ethnography unit on ‘fighting words and how to avoid them.’ You should have had that three times
in gen school—it is on the list of basic things to be remembered, always, in dealing with people around the solar system.
And apparently pretty nearly everything about Venus must have failed to register—” as Jak had feared he would, Caccitepe looked
down, and then looked up again; the smile was not back, but there was a trace of a smirk that was no more reassuring. “Aha.
But I see I failed to dak just who and what Jak Jinnaka is. You’ve failed Solar System Ethnography
twice.
A required course that everyone knows is easy.”

“Actually, sir,” Jak said, trying for a diversion, “what Dujuv and I were thinking was kind of like this. I mean, we dak,
we toktru dak, that Venus is an important ally and all that. And especially since there have been some problems, the last
few years, and some tensions, I guess you could call them, well, we were hoping that this might improve relations.”

“Am I going to hear the same silly explanation that Dujuv gave me?”

Jak put on his very best expression of wounded innocence. It had no perceptible effect on the Dean.

Jak went ahead, anyway. “Sir, maybe Dujuv isn’t very good at explaining things, and maybe he got a little mixed up trying,
but I’m just as sure that he was
trying
to tell you the truth. Will you let me?”

Caccitepe’s eyebrows tried to scale his high forehead. Still, he gestured for Jak to go on.

“Well,” Jak said, “just think of it this way. Almost all of the population of Venus is resourcers, and everyone knows that
they’re a pretty strange lot. I mean, how could they not be? They live their whole lives in the giant crawlers, no sky, no
stars, always high grav, and instead of pure clean vacuum they live at the bottom of a boiling chemical hell, in a tin box
full of noise from gigantic treads, huge engines, heat pumps that keep them from baking, and the hell-wind against the hull.
They’re all half-deaf and full-crazy.

“But the djeste of their freedom makes them the symbol of liberty to young people all over the solar system. I mean you just
can’t get any more open and democratic than the way they live, toktru they have their feets, it just singing-on
resonates
for everyone young, not only here, but in the Aerie, and in all the minor stations too.” (If only the Dean’s facial expression
would change—Jak was without a clue about how this was going over.) “Well, sir, young people do feel like the high price the
Venereans charge for resources is unconscionable, and it chokes back growth, which hits the youngest generation hardest. Among
people up to age seventy or so, Venus looks greedy at our expense, and it’s toktru resented. But at the same time, they’re
a symbol of freedom. So if people had a chance to see all these old, dignified diplomats doing all that wild stuff—well, of
course nobody’s going to get all excited or anything, but it’s sure going to remind them why Venus is the lightest planet—”

“It has the second highest gravity of anywhere inhabited,” the Dean said. “Is this the quality of your research?”

“I mean light the way kids use the word, sir. Fun. Fashionable. Exciting. New. Something you want to be associated with. Like
rich people with style. Not like some pathetic loser gweetz with a job and bills and no future. Like that.”

The Dean smiled as if he were about to torment a small animal. “Oh, yes, oh, yes, I should dearly love to try to sell
that
story upstairs, if I had to, which (glory to Nakasen) I won’t.” He brought his feet up onto his perch, still chuckling, bracing
his hands on his knees. “And you did manage to keep your preposterous tale straight, much better than Dujuv. Did you consider
how the Venereans might feel about it?”

“Well, sir, my concern was the Hive. That’s where our loyalty is supposed to be, after all. So I probably wasn’t thinking
about the Venereans at all.”

“Do you see a pattern here? Because I do. And not a good one. You seem to think that the Hive is all that matters, and that
all your superiors will, or should, feel that way as well. In fact you seem to think that consideration for the different
feelings and ideas of the citizens of other nations is somehow a weakness or a failing in someone working for the Hive.”

Bewildered, Jak dakked what he was being accused of, but not why it would be an accusation. What was good for the Hive, so
far as Jak could see, was good, regardless of what it might mean for the perverts of Venus, the miserly miners of Mercury,
or the surreal tribals of Mars.

“Jak,” Dean Caccitepe said, “you know that I’m not going to try to appeal to your moral sense. I’m not that big a fool. But
if you think ignorance is a mark of patriotism, we have a problem. And I think that’s how you actually feel. Why else would
you avoid and/or flunk, constantly, a not-at-all difficult required class? Certainly it’s consistent with your cover-up story.
I know perfectly well that you and Dujuv were merely trying to finance an end-of-year slec party. But even if I didn’t, I’d
have known that your entire story was nonsense. Now, can you tell me why?”

Jak shrugged, looked down, and mumbled, “Because you’re smarter than me.”

“
No,
Jak. I
am
smarter than you—many people are—but that is not the reason your lie failed. Almost anyone could have seen through it. Now,
why? This is important, Jak. If, in just a few years, we are going to have you out there lying on behalf of the Hive, with
the security of a billion people dependent upon your lie’s being believed, then you had better be able to tell a good one
(and more importantly avoid telling a bad one). Now—again—why was it that
anyone
could have seen through that lie?” The question was clearly serious. “I’m still waiting for an answer,” Caccitepe said.

“I don’t know. I don’t have any idea,” Jak said, possibly for the first time in his life.

“What is Principle 204?”

“I don’t—”

“Just recite it.”

Jak drew a breath, blanked his mind, and let the familiar words tumble out. “ ‘Principle 204: Always make your lie the lie
that your listeners want to tell themselves.’ All right, sir, I sort of see
that
it has to do with the case, but I don’t see
what
it has to do with the case.”

“Hmm.” The Dean frowned. “Either that was a real question or your act is improving. Either of those is a good thing, of course.
Hmm.” He tented his fingers under his jaw, seeming again to look for something to peck at on his desk. After some thought,
Caccitepe said, “Well, then, here’s what I’ve decided. Mind you, if you don’t like it, you can always appeal through official
channels.”

Jak shuddered.

The Dean nodded a few times to himself, his sharp face and small head bobbing on his long neck. Jak tried not to think of
it as stork-like, because he was already feeling like a bite-sized frog. When the Dean spoke again, that smile was back. “Now
let me tell you what you did. You had exactly the effect you’re claiming to have intended—in the Hive. Millions of our younger
citizens accessed those illegal recordings and were fascinated. Venerean diplomats are getting fan mail from pornography buffs.
Interest in and affection for all things Venerean surged—we’re predicting dozens of best-selling entertainments with Venerean
themes soon. Intrigue and adventure vivs, vids, and novels for the next few years will feature many Venerean sidekicks, love
interests, or other important secondary characters, and there are going to be practically no Venerean villains for the next
six or seven years. You truly have made the Venereans the lightest of the light, Jak.

“You’ve made them deeply angry, too. The average Venerean likes us less than ever, and the anti-Hive parties and organizations
are growing fast.

“When you pulled your little trick, we were in secret negotiations for a more equitable trade treaty. You’ve just strengthened
their hardliners and our accommodationists— so guess what you’ve done to the negotiations? Guess who will be making concessions
and who will be accepting them?

“Now, you don’t have to
like
Venereans, Jak, but if you don’t want to give the store away to them, you have to know who they are. Can I make that any
clearer?”

“No sir.”

The Dean’s smile had become very, very deep and strangely warm. He settled back, letting his back straighten so that Jak became
aware that Caccitepe was actually well over two meters tall, and beamed down his long nose at Jak. “No doubt you are well
aware that the time is almost here to set your Junior Task.”

Jak tried not to hold his breath. All students were given a task to be completed by the end of the junior year. Caccitepe
was one of the dozen or so administrators who set Junior Tasks … and he was legendary for setting difficult tasks, sadistically
aimed straight at your weaknesses.

“Jak, we have to maintain your independence and your talent for improvisation while finding a way to harness them. There are
two kinds of people that can’t be trusted with any important job—those who always follow directions and those who always tear
them up. Before you graduate, you
must
be able to completely understand directions, intentions, and context, and then do the right thing, which is
often but not always the thing you were ordered to do.
Am I making myself clear?”

“Toktru clear, sir. I dak.”

“Well, then. Right now, you are compulsive about not following directions, which makes you as much their prisoner as any robot,
and you willfully refuse to understand any point of view other than the most narrowly chauvinistic one, which means you can’t
modify the directions intelligently. By the end of your junior year we will have fixed all this completely.”

Jak felt a cold chill up his spine, but he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

The Dean smiled at him, very kindly and warmly, and the chill became a vast glacier of frozen helium. “So. First of all, you
will continue on the Maniples team and you will not be on academic suspension.”

He relaxed a little.

“You will be under a much tougher condition. Every term while you remain here, and via correspondence during Long Break, you
will repeat Solar System Ethnography, regardless of how many times you pass it,
until
you actually earn top rank in the class, after which you will repeat the optional class in Advanced Ethnography until you
earn top rank in that class. If you insist on being a fool and a boor we cannot fix that, but we can make sure that it’s a
choice, rather than a matter of ignorance.”

Jak breathed a sigh of relief; this wasn’t so bad. He would still be on the Maniples team, and if he was sentenced to perpetually
take the course he most disliked, well, at least with all that exposure to it, he should be able to speck some detection-proof
method of cheating.

“Now those are the preconditions for your staying. About your Junior Task.” The Dean seemed to be glowing with joyous bonhomie,
like one of the medieval gods— Buddha or Santa Claus or Satan, Jak could never keep them all straight. “You will take on an
independent project to be graded by me. It must be a situation exactly like those you will encounter as a field operative:
the directions must be vague, the goals not entirely clear, the situation one in which you have to interact extensively with
people who are not Hive citizens and do not share our goals. It’s a shame that that little adventure of yours a couple of
years ago— when you rescued Princess Shyf, put Psim Cofinalez in line to be Duke of Uranium, and acquired a number of cross-cultural
friends, including one Rubahy—isn’t coming up now, because it would have been perfect. You have one week to tell me what your
project will be. Questions?”