Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder) (6 page)

Monday morning, at six on the dot, Zeiss arrived at
Professor Sorenson’s pod in the faculty meta-pod. He was waiting in his wheelchair
outside his room, as usual.

“Morning Daniel,” the TA said as he
pushed his professor to the faculty gym.

“How’s it hanging, Conrad?” The
professor’s sandy hair was thinning and had a hint of gray, but his face looked
a decade younger when lit with a wide, irresistible smile.

“Same old, same old.”

“Come on, you’re wearing
yesterday’s clothes and looking a little rough. Do a little sheet surfing last
night?”

“Huh?”

“The horizontal mambo, beast with
two backs, Gumby meets Pokey—”

“Whoa, I get it. And, no I didn’t .
. . uh . . . get any. I just had an amazing break-through on my dissertation
and kept writing until I crashed.”

“You need to get out more, dude,”
Daniel said as they reached the gym door.

“Do you want to start with the
whirlpool after two idle days?”

“Nah, just the usual PT—pain and
torture.” He used the same physical therapy joke at least once a week.

Lifting the professor onto the
floor in a vacant corner of the gym, Zeiss started the routine, flexing,
stretching, and pushing the man’s body in ways his own muscles couldn’t. “I
admire your commitment,” the TA said.

“The price of space. My bones need
to build up again or when I get old, they could snap when some young groupie
jumps my bones.”

Zeiss just laughed and massaged the
tight muscles.

“So what
was
all the
excitement over in your pod Saturday?” asked Sorenson.

“A new student . . . had low blood
sugar.”

“So you dispatched the chief
medical officer and a guard? Ouch! Sadist.” Daniel complained as he was
force-stretched. “You’re not going to dish? I thought we were friends?”

“Sir, you’re probably my best
friend here.”

“And you’re still not going to talk?”

He shook his head and carried the
paraplegic over to the weight machine, setting the weights and confirming the
amount.

Daniel worked on chest muscles
first. “I saw that you over-scheduled the new girl.”

“It’s for the best. Hopefully it’ll
keep her out of trouble. Her guardian angel must be a chain-smoking wreck.”

The professor laughed. A few
minutes later, he asked, “So have you ever done the deed? A bachelor is someone
who’s supposed to walk to work from a different direction each day.”

Zeiss put another weight on. “I got
close once.”

“Come on, I’ll tell you a secret if
you tell me.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“The first time we worked out, you
had to carry me to the toilet, dude. I have a high bar for embarrassment.”

Looking around to make sure no one
was in earshot, Zeiss whispered, “It was the only time I ever went to the
hospital.”

The professor whooped. “Now you
have
to tell me the story.”

“I was necking with this model, one
of my sister’s friends from work.”

“Whoa, your sister’s a model?”

“I showed you Claire’s picture.”

“Yeah, but I thought that came with
the frame.”

“It did. That was her first paying
job, barely enough to buy all of us a copy. She travels all over the world,
earning just enough to eat and party.”

“And you were tapping the models
she worked with? Sweet!”

Zeiss grinned sheepishly. “Just the
one. She must have been vision-impaired to date me. Vanessa wore flavored body
gel and these fancy diamond earrings still on from the shoot. She was supposed
to turn them in to the property master; they were really expensive, but she
couldn’t part with them.”

“Enough about the ears, what was
she wearing?”

“By the end of the evening, that
was about it.”

Daniel wheezed with laughter. “You
dog!”

“I was seventeen and hormones were
raging. The last thing I remember was working my way down her neck, nibbling.
Then she looks in the mirror . . .”

“Ouch.”

“And asks where the left earring
went. We spent the next twenty minutes ruining the mood and searching for it.”

“You could turn that around,”
Daniel said as they switched to the bench press.

“We found the back of the earring
on the floor and my lip was bleeding. I remember swallowing something, but I
thought it was just glitter.”

The professor started laughing so
much that Zeiss had to grab the weight. “You ate the diamond? Hah!”

“And spent the rest of the night in
the emergency room,” the TA confessed, “with that shrew and my sister badgering
me the whole time.”

After he got done chuckling,
Sorenson said, “You can’t give up because of one failure. You’ve got to get
back on that horse.”

“No more sex analogies, please.
When’s the last time you had a date?”

Daniel remained silent. Zeiss
nodded at Professor Horvath in the Pilates class. “I see you looking at her
every day.”

“She has a truly magnificent ass
and legs like a thoroughbred.”

“Shh.”

“Aw, she hears it all the time, a great-looking
woman like that.”

“For her age.” Zeiss shrugged. “Okay,
any age. I hear comments about her all the time from the male cadets. You’re
not just in it for the sympathy lay? You really like her?”

“There are no words. Why?”

“Because she has a huge heart and I
wouldn’t want to see her hurt.”

Daniel turned to face the young
man. “How would you know? Everyone else says she’s Cruella de Vil.”

“A lot of my students complained
about her, so I checked her out. I watched her teach, even when she wasn’t in
her class. She’s doing everything she can to make sure those kids don’t get
hurt, now or later. She helps them even if it means missing lunch; you can’t
fake that kind of dedication,” Zeiss said, increasing the weight. “Ask her
out.”

“You think I could?”

“I think she’d be lucky to get
you.”

“That’s a big risk,” Daniel
complained. “What are you going to put on the line?”

Zeiss sighed. “What did you have in
mind?”

“One more secret. You talk a lot
about your mom but not your father. His name wasn’t on your application.”

“He divorced my mom when she was
diagnosed.”

“That tells me he’s an ass, not his
name. Why did you choose to take care of her instead of go with him?”

“When I refused to play hockey, he
didn’t take it well. He disowned me.”

“Harsh. Why? You like hockey. You
wear that Snoopy shirt with the Zamboni.”

“I like the comic strip and it’s a
funny word. Any sport where they put on cups fifty years before they required
helmets has its priorities out of whack. I had friends with missing permanent
teeth and memories.”

“I agree, but I think you’re
exaggerating about your dad.”

“He had me genetically tested to
make sure I was really his son.”

“You win. Major sphincter. I’m
sensing more to this story than wearing a cup.”

Conrad weighed the silence for a
moment. “During tournament semi-finals, he told me to check the other team’s
lead scorer, slow him down. Our coach told another boy the same thing. We both
hit their star player. No one knows which shot injured his spine. But I was
always big for my age. I had to have done more damage.”

“Oh, shit.”

“The old man disowned me the day I
sat with Ulrich in the hospital instead of going to the finals. He didn’t
understand that I could never hit another human that way again.”

“That’s what made you a pacifist?”

“What followed did. I prayed a lot
that week. Ulrich was approved for that new nano-nerve stimulation treatment
based on alien technology.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Daniel said,
voice laden with irony. He’d been among the first test subjects. “The shot
repairs recent damage in about 60 percent of the cases, but you can only use it
once.” By this time, Daniel had stopped any pretense of working out.

“While I held his hand, praying,
Ulrich moved his feet. He never played again, but we went hiking together a
year later,” Zeiss said, choking a little. “You don’t ignore a miracle.”

The wording made Daniel pause for a
moment. “The cure explains why you gravitated to alien sciences. So that
incident is why you didn’t put your father’s name on the application?”

“I didn’t write my father’s name because
he would have influenced your choice. I wanted to make it on my own merits.”
After a pause, the TA admitted, “My dad’s Heinrich Zeiss.”

“He won a Nobel Prize for physics.”

“Only because Jezebel Hollis died a
month before the judging.”

“Okay, I’m going to embarrass
myself publicly for our friendship. I hope you’re happy.” Professor Sorenson
looked at the martial arts instructor and shouted, “Hey good-looking; I’ll bet
I could bench press you.”

She strolled over to the bench,
sizing him up. Her voice was frigid. “Really?”

“If I put my hands in the right
places. And from what I’m seeing, they are
all
the right places.”

“How many times?” challenged the
platinum blonde.

“It’s not about quantity, it’s
about quality.”

“So, just once and then you’ll have
to take a nap, old man?”

Zeiss winced.
Ballbreaker one,
nerd zero.
“Um, we still have forty-five minutes in your workout.”

Daniel whispered, “She’s two years
older than me.”

“No way,” exclaimed Zeiss.

Trina smiled. “Thank you.”

Daniel hissed, “I won’t tell anyone
if you go out on a date with me.”

She considered for a moment.
“There’s no place good to eat around here. Could we just go to your room
instead? Then you could prove that stamina thing.”

“Okay,” Sorenson agreed. “Get me
back in my chair.”

Zeiss blinked as he complied. “What
just happened?”

When they were outside, with the
woman following, Daniel whispered, “Meet my wife, Trina.”

Distracted, the TA stepped off the
path into the uneven grass, almost falling.

“Hah! Babe, this is my new friend,
Conrad,” said the man in the wheelchair. “
He
thinks my jokes are funny.”

“He never left eighth grade?” she
chuckled.

“He also checked you out to make
sure you were good enough for me and his kids.”

“How did I do?” she asked.

Daniel crowed, “He said you’re the
most loving parent he’s ever met, and we’d be a good match if I ever worked up
the courage.”

“Dangerously perceptive,” she
purred.

Zeiss was dying to ask questions,
but had to wait for more privacy. When they got to Daniel’s pod, Trina badged
them in. They had the whole floor—an unheard-of luxury on the island.

When the door closed, Zeiss
guessed, “You’re keeping the marriage a secret because she’s the head of
anti-terrorism? If the enemy knew, they could use you against her?”

“That’s part of it,” Daniel admitted.
He struggled to ease into the next topic. “Conrad, it’s a good thing you were a
gentleman when we talked earlier, because my wife and I have no secrets. What I
know, she knows.”

“Good policy,” Zeiss approved.

“Not a policy, it just is. Trust me;
there were some woman things I wish she didn’t share so much. But she sees and
hears everything eventually, from my point of view. We’re pair-bonded.”

“Wow. No window shopping.”

“You get used to it.”

“I’m honored that you’re telling
me.”

“Don’t be,” said Daniel, getting
serious for the first time since they’d met. “She wanted me to ask you some
things as a friend. You’re good at keeping secrets.”

“I’d never betray a trust.”

Trina said, “That’s why we invited
you here.”

“Your secret’s bigger than mine,”
Zeiss admitted.

“That wasn’t the secret,” Daniel
explained. “I wanted to let you know that I own this school. Dean Stanton just
runs the place because I can’t stand paperwork.”

“Whoa. And you’re telling me
because?”

“We need your help,” Daniel said.
“Funny thing you mentioned Red’s guardian angel.”

“Please, sir. No.”

“She’s
very
important,”
Trina stressed.

“Because she’s a world class Quantum
Computer and off the scale on Simplification?”

The couple looked at each other.
“Yes.” The wife took the lead. “We need you to get her to be a little more
discreet.”

Zeiss snorted. “Pull the other
one.”

“I told you he was no slouch.” Daniel
smiled. “She needs someone to cover her while she acclimates.”

“You mean till she bends the school
to her way,” joked the TA.

Trina nodded, softening slightly. “You
have her number. Can you do it?”

“She’s my student. It’s my job to
help her,” Zeiss stated. “Anything more?”

“We need you to infiltrate her
Sunday Dinner Club,” she added.

“You make them sound like
terrorists.”

“Worse—idealists,” she asserted.
“Don’t push or ask. Just be open to invitation.”

“I already have more than the
normal load and my research.”

Trina passed him his computer pad.
“I’ve just raised your clearance level. That should help with your research.
But don’t use this in front of anyone.”

“Sure.” When Zeiss saw the rating,
he couldn’t speak. Fortune Aerospace—board clearance.

“You’re my assistant,” Daniel
explained. “You need it to do your job.”

“Why?”

“I’m Daniel Fortune.”

“The world’s foremost Out of Body
talent, one of the original multiples?”

“Former talent. I can’t leave this
island without blinding pain.”

Zeiss blinked. “Wow. This is big.”

“Mr. Calm. We were worried you
might be a psychopath with the way you keep your head in a crisis.”

“In every situation, I plan
disaster scenarios and try to have at least one alternative available for any
contingency. Survivors say that in any event, any positive action however small
is better than freezing or continuing unchanged. Forgive me if I don’t have a
plan for this.”