Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder) (17 page)

Sojiro shouted, “Massive blue and
baby silver dances!”

“What?” asked a confused Zeiss.

“Our blue whales,” Daniel said.
“Yes, she has a calf and it’s very playful.”

“I come down here and watch them when
I can’t sleep,” said Trina, taking her husband’s hand. Without invitation,
Sojiro took her other hand and stared into the deep.

“It’s an extended family, a net,”
noted Red, taking Daniel’s free hand and extending her own special senses.

“I can see that,” whispered Zeiss,
feeling left out.

Red sensed his depression and told
him, “This was a great idea, Z. Thank you for suggesting it. I know what I want
for my last class: Oceanography. As if you had any doubts.”

“I don’t force anything. I merely
suggest a range of alternatives.”

“Well, you can hold Sojiro’s hand
or you can grab mine—your choice.”

With extreme care, Zeiss took the
artist’s injured left hand. “Merry Christmas, everyone.”

The first week of the new semester, Zeiss deduced that the
park bench in the agriculture sector had been a frequent meeting location for
Solomon. The bench had been painted with the slogan, “A glass of caffeine
flushes a glass of water out of your body. Don’t waste!” He planted hidden
cameras and staked it out. Sunday morning of the second week, someone left a cardboard
tube underneath the bench.

At noon one of the students, the
winner of this year’s video-logging contest, announced over the public-address
system: “Looks like the first big storm of the season is here, folks. All hands
tie down loose objects and help cover windows.”

The TA put on a set of rubber gloves
from the first-aid kit in his pod and watched, palms sweating. Waiting until
the sky was black and torrents poured down, Zeiss grabbed the tube before more
evidence could wash away.

At 1700, he pounded on Daniel’s
door, drenched, with his chamois shirt draped over the tube. Trina wanted to
berate him for several mistakes, but he looked too serious. “Show me,” she
ordered.

Inside were detailed blueprints of
the island, with red circles by key engines.

In spite of the foul weather and
the island’s rocking, she doubled the guards around the engines and steering
house before taking charge of the hunt for the saboteur. “We have fingerprints
and a face. Who is he?” she asked.

“One of the people we flagged for
manual checking. He stowed away on the mail boat just after he made the drop,”
Zeiss said, showing her a diagram of the island and the routes the man took.

“How did you make this map?”

“I described the tool I needed at
the club last weekend, and Sojiro had it built by class on Monday. It’s a
little CPU-intensive but it does a great job tracking one person’s movements by
image and badge recognition. It uses an algorithm—”

“Save the geek talk for Daniel,
sweetie; I don’t care. I go by results. Just send me a copy.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Conrad, you exceed expectations.”

“Thank you, sir. I hear a but?”

“They’ll switch to an easier target
for the bombs. We can’t even hold assemblies in the main amphitheater because
it’s too tempting a target.” As she fretted and planned, she told him, “Don’t
mention to anyone how you did this.”

“As usual, sir. But Sojiro will
figure it out.”

“Swear him to secrecy, too. That
reminds me: no meetings of the supper club until we find the explosives. Too
many of you are on the enemy watch list.”

“Red isn’t going to like that.”

“That’s why it’s coming from you.”

“My reward for a job well done?”

****

Sojiro drew a new character for
Zeiss in his manga, a man who clung to the shadows but wore a fedora straight
out of a black-and-white spy movie. The TA hung the sketch in his office for
everyone to see.

On Sundays, Zeiss wrote lesson
plans and letters to his mother and sister while watching Sojiro paint a mural
on the flight deck. The weather cooperated, raining hard only in the evening. Starting
at the place where he’d been beaten and tortured, the artist decorated the gray
place with an ever-expanding spiral of color and life. The friends wouldn’t
talk, except for when Zeiss stopped Sojiro to take a drink or eat. Soon Dr.
Marsh joined them, playing classical music on his radio as he observed. The
Japanese student didn’t sketch on paper or draw chalk outlines on the walls and
tarmac; rather, he sprayed bold arcs that evolved into amazing pictures. His
depiction of the closest colonizable planet to Earth stopped all work on the flight
deck for hours. Before long, several art fans camped out beside them to witness
the impromptu scenes unfold. His portrait of Quan’s sacrifice in orbit brought
tears to many eyes. Daniel approved decoration for the jogging path that would
delineate a circuit exactly one kilometer long around the island. The complete loop
was projected to take three years.

On every night except Sundays,
Zeiss went back to the sublevel after his normal duties. He stayed so late that
he brought a cot down. He was staring at a diagram on the wall and straining
the Academy computer system to come up with a pattern when he began to lose
compute cycles to a newer task. The growing job had no name or owner and
couldn’t be viewed directly as it kept mutating to avoid detection. However, he
did find the files it accessed and what the search program was interested in. A
bug in the code left distinctive footprints on the mainframe.

Zeiss phoned Risa. She removed the
pillow that covered her ears to answer. “Z, it’s midnight, what do you need?”

“Red has her phone and messaging
off. Could I get your help with an intervention?”

“
Dios mio
, yes. She’s
fixated on this program. Tip, tap, tip, tap all night.”

“Punch the upper right-hand corner
of her screen to accept my remote control after you hand her the phone. Then we
can all get some sleep.”

“I hear that,” she agreed.

“What?” Red demanded, as she took
the phone.

“How’re you enjoying the semester?”
He typed frantically while she was distracted.

“Oceanography sucks. It’s nothing
like what I signed up for. I learned more watching
Finding Nemo
. It’s
boring.”

“Gut it out. Suffering is good for
the soul.”

“What are you . . .? Hey, I’m
locked out!”

“This is an intervention, Red.”

“But I need that data.”

“You need sleep.”

“I have to build an interaction
chart of everybody on the island so I can decide who will make the best team
and how I can recruit the people I want more easily.”

“If you had that chart, would you
go to bed at eleven?”

“You’re not my parent!”

“You’re right. I’m the security
specialist who’s blocked off the receptor sites for a known breach.”

“Rrr. Eleven thirty, and I get
access back.”

“Limited to one-tenth the island’s
computer power,” he insisted.

After a few choice swear words, she
agreed. He mailed a file to her and pulled it up remotely on her screen. She
gasped. “How did you manage the diagram so quickly? Are you sure you’re a nat?”

“I’ve been running the same
algorithm covertly for the last week. We have the same supplier, but my version
has some fixes. Yours is a bull in a china shop that will get us both busted.”

“Point made. What are the speckles
to the side?”

“That’s what I’m trying to
analyze,” he admitted. “Places where people who don’t know each other cross
paths, with some small time delay. I’m searching the security logs for agents
doing dead drops. Maybe I can find other message sites, or other contacts for
our bomber.”

She shook her head, even though he
couldn’t see her. “It won’t work. Every city in Europe has a fountain where, if
you wait long enough, the entire town will walk by. You’ll get too many false
hits.”

He sighed. “Right, I just wasted a week.”

“No, this is good analysis, Z. You’re
great at finding patterns and inconsistencies in them. Trina can still use this
diagram for a wide variety of security applications.”

“So you’ll sleep?”

“Yeah. Good night.”

“
Gracias
, Z!” shouted Risa.

****

That night, Zeiss summarized and
mailed off his failure to Trina. Then, he saw the pile of essays he had yet to
grade. His eyes began to flag while reading the first one. Remembering Daniel’s
stash of drinks in the refrigerator, he indulged in one. It worked great. He
was able to mail the grades to Professor Sorenson before sleep caught him
again. Four hours later, he decided another beverage would be necessary to get his
weary body through the morning.

On his way into his first class,
Taggart met him with a green slip of paper. “Random drug test over lunch. I
know you’re clean, but Horvath says the staff has to set an example for the
kids.”

Zeiss accepted it cheerfully. “Not
a problem. You have to do it every month. This is my first test since I got
here.”

At the clinic, the young nurse
weighed him first. “Mr. Zeiss, you’ve lost ten pounds since your last visit.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes when I’m
busy, I forget to eat.”

“I wish I had that problem,” the
pretty brunette said, fishing for a compliment from the tall bachelor. The name
tag on her chest read Betsy, and she leaned forward to make it easier for him
to read.

As he held out his arm for the
blood-pressure cuff, he noticed a new poster naming the forbidden substances
they screened for. “Hah. Looks like a typo. I think that should be cocaine and
methamphetamine.”

“No, it’s caffeine,” the nurse
insisted. His blood pressure spiked. “Are you okay?” she asked putting a hand
on his arm.

“Sorry, I saw the needle and
panicked,” he lied. “I hate needles.”

She softened. “Since you just have
the base screening, you can fill this instead,” the brunette said, handing him
a plastic cup. “Use that bathroom.”

Eyes wide, he staggered to the
appointed bathroom. When he opened the door, Red was standing at the sink
scrubbing sticky tape marks off her forehead. Zeiss hopped inside and closed
the door behind him. Holding the cup out, he hissed, “Quick, pee in this.”

She giggled. “Okay, turn around.”

He faced the door. “Don’t you want
to know why?”

“No. If you’re breaking a rule, I’m
in.” After she handed him the filled cup, she asked, “You know that martial
arts tournament I’m in next week?”

“I’ll be in the front row cheering.
I’m one of the judges.”

She smiled. “I know. I was hoping .
. .” His face fell as he handed the cup back. “Hey, no. I wouldn’t ask you to
cheat; I just wanted you to fill me in on the loopholes. I want to take all
three tests the same day.”

“They have to be done in order. The
green belt is the kata plus board breaking.”

“I’ve been practicing the kata to
music.”

“For brown, what’s your weapon?”

“Bamboo sword from Kendo?”

“I can drag our tests out a little
and apply for your waiver because we’re using all the
shinai
until lunchtime.
And for black belt, the teachers won’t be available until all the other belt
tests are done.”

“Sweet, thanks.”

“Now, I have to get this sample back
before she comes looking for me.”

****

Three days later, Zeiss was working
out with Daniel when his boss said, “You passed your surprise drug test.”

“Good.”

“But your glucose is high and
you’re on day ten of your cycle,” the billionaire chuckled.

“In a moment of weakness, I drank
from your stash.”

“Damn. Trina saw the late email and
guessed. She’s going to pressure you to tell where the bottles are hidden.”

“So our menstrual cycles are in
sync. We share the same problem.”

“I’ll tell Marsh it was a mix-up at
the lab and to retest you.”

“And bring Red in for her glucose
levels,” Zeiss added. “That’s an advanced indicator of brain problems.”

****

Red met Zeiss as he was setting up
the martial arts testing arena. “More tests and supplements?” she hissed. “You
owe
me.”

“What do you want?”

“Let the supper club meet again.”
When someone else passed nearby, she asked Zeiss loudly, “Did you get my music
file?”

“The instrumental? Yeah, why?”

“I’m doing my kata like a
gymnastics routine.”

“Didn’t Professor Horvath compete
in gymnastics?” he asked. Red stretched and feigned surprise. “Fine. I’ll try
to convince Trina to allow the meetings again. I’ll have Alistair lay the
groundwork this morning.”

“Who?”

“Grunt-Monkey, the Canadian military
TA doing a thesis on zero-g combat. Then we convince Daniel to mention that
your routine is an homage to her career. I’ll hit her with the request after
you get your belt. She’ll be so happy I’ll be able to ask her for anything.”

“Wait. You plan for stuff like that?”

“I have a plan for everything. Most
things don’t take my whole concentration, so I run disaster scenarios.”

“That explains the survival class
and a few other weird suggestions. Why would you waste a favor that powerful?”

“Your milestone; your reward.”

“You have a highly developed sense
of fair play. I like that about you—some days.” She spun and did a few quick
practice punches.

“How’s the search going?” he asked,
trying to change the subject.

“We need twelve more team members.
I have four almost-certain choices, seven coin flips, and one three-way tie.”

Zeiss shook his head. “Better meet
them in person. Math modeling only gets you so close. When the club meets next,
have each member take about three candidates to research for the next week.
Find out what’s not in the paperwork.”

“Yes, Daniel complains that even if
he has perspective employees followed by detectives for a month, he still has
to meet them to make sure they’re not assholes.”

“How’d I get through?” joked Zeiss.

“You follow rules too much, but
there’s no stick up your butt.”

“Thanks. I’ll have to put that on
my next T-shirt.” Zeiss tapped his tablet and nodded. “Speaking of clothing, I
noticed that you’re showing a scandalous amount of ankle in that uniform.”

She got a little flustered by the
comment. “Marsh says I’ve been growing a lot.”

“The measuring tape says the same.”

“Some of it may be my inexpert
laundering.”

“Either way, can the club get you a
new uniform for your belt celebration?”

“Yes. Thank you for your vote of confidence.”

He snorted. “Watching you practice,
you clearly have more skill than your cover identity. Your biggest challenge
will be getting the black belt
without
using things you aren’t supposed
to know.”