The Far Side (74 page)

“You will call me ‘sir,’ whoever you are.  What company are you assigned to?”

“Foxtrot Company, sir,” Kris replied, standing at attention.

“I’m the Second Squad leader, First Platoon of Foxtrot Company!  Why don’t I know you?”

“I’m new, sir.  I just started today.”

“Then you can’t possibly be a cadet.”

“Captain Stone said I was a cadet, sir,” Kris offered.  She decided not to ask if he thought the regular army captain was mistaken.

Still, her answer gave the other pause.  “I do believe you are impertinent, Rook!  Pushups!  Give me pushups!  Drop and give me thirty!”

Kris stretched out and did as Kurt Sandusky had told her on the Friday before.  She moved precisely, but without hurry, rolling out repetitions effortlessly.  Why they made you do two pushups and they only counted as one wasn’t something Kris understood, but she knew enough to comply.

She finished at the same speed she started.  “Permission to assume attention, sir,” she said, ad-libbing.  Evidently it was close enough.

“You may come to attention.”

She stood again, not even bothering to brush off her hands, and looked emotionlessly straight ahead.

Captain Stone appeared.  “Cadet Sergeant Cooper, a word.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Friday Cadet Boyle took her PFT, Cadet Sergeant.  Cadet Boyle, how many pushups did you do?”

“The doctor stopped me at one hundred.”

“Sit ups?”

“The doctor stopped me at one hundred.”

“And the two-mile run?”

Kris smiled slightly.  No one had stopped her there.  “Eleven minutes, thirty seconds.”

“Tell me, Cadet Sergeant Cooper, what do you think of Cadet Boyle’s chances are of improving her PFT score by fifty points during her Rook year at Norwich?”

She smiled thinly while the other contemplated improving a perfect score.  “Oh, that’s right!  She’s maxed out now!  Cadet Sergeant Cooper, please spread the word among your brethren, you will not give Cadet Boyle push ups, sit ups, or pull ups as penalty duty.  You may, however, inquire of her, starting a week from today, concerning the corpus of trivia that we so love to bedevil Rooks with about Norwich.  If her knowledge of geography is wanting, running a distance -- say a mile -- would be an appropriate punishment.

“Cadet Boyle, later Rook Mirableu will escort you around campus.  Take many notes.  My personal favorite question is how many steps there are to enter the Kreitzberg library.  Almost no one gets it right the first time and few get it right the second time.”  The captain vanished as quickly as she’d appeared.

Erica tugged Kris’ sleeve and the two made it the rest of the way to their room without distractions.  A moment later two men and two women knocked on the still open door.  Erica bid them enter and they came through.

Cadet officers, Kris thought with a smile.  “Cadet,” the one with captain’s bars told her.  “Welcome to Norwich.  What’s going on?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Captain.  There is a briefing at 1600 for everyone.”

“I heard that.  I also heard that football practice was delayed two hours.  That’ll mean practicing in the dark, Cadet Boyle.”

“That would seem logical, Captain,” Kris said mildly.

The captain stared at her.  “Sergeant Cooper wasn’t sure if you were impertinent or insubordinate.  Two people known to me said you simply didn’t know how to find your ass with either hand.”

“All three, Captain,” Kris told him.  “It will be explained at 1600.”

“I will die of anticipation first.  Captain Stone said that as well as being a student, you are helping design an entirely new curriculum.”

“That is General Briggs’ intention, Captain.”

“I keep hinting that hints would be nice.”

“Captain, General Briggs told me that I was to give no hints.  Please, the prize is still in play, so long as you don’t Google my name.”

“I already did, your last name, anyway.  Do you have any idea how many Boyles there are in the world?”

“There are quite a few of us, I’m sure.  Captain, I’m also certain that General Briggs wants someone to win without the aid of a search on my name.”

“Captain Stone made it clear that you were to be treated as a cadet who was past the bullshit phase of training.  I have no choice but to accede to her wishes.”

Kris shrugged.  The four officers turned and left, leaving Kris and Erica alone.

“This is getting interesting,” Erica said.  “Come, let’s go next door.”

They went into the next room, through the bathroom.  Two women were at the desks in the other room, studying.  “This is a new Cadet, Cadet Boyle,” Erica announced.  “She is new, but Captain Stone says she’s passed the Leadership phase and is a regular cadet.”

One of the two women gave Kris the finger.  “And how does a Rook on her first day rate that?”

“How many people have you killed?” Kris asked equitably.

The woman blinked.

“That, Kris, is Rook Deborah Harper.  She’s a pain in the ass, intending to finish number one in the class.  Next to her is Mary Compton, who, depending on your way of thinking, is more intelligent than the rest of us.”

Mary laughed.  “I’m a traditional student that lives on campus.  They put me with the retards.”

She laughed, showing she wasn’t serious, Kris thought.

“I’m new myself,” Kris told her.  “I was set to go to Caltech, but something intervened, and I was distracted.”

Captain Stone came through the bathroom door behind them.  “Cadet Boyle, if you would.  Please come with me for the staff meeting.  General Briggs wants to get an early start -- there’s a lot to cover.”

Kris waved at the others and allowed herself to be whisked away.

As they went outside, Kris was blunt.  “Captain Stone, I don’t know if your appearances at critical moments are happenstance or intentional.  I’d be obliged if you backed off in the latter case.”

“I’m trying to keep your guards from barging in,” Captain Stone told her.

Kris smiled.  “You have to understand, Captain, that so far Ezra has never been there when it counted.  It bothers him, and you are making my day and making him very frustrated.  He is almost certainly going to try to stick closer, rather than back off.”

“A bodyguard who was never there when he was needed?”

“As I’ve said, there is being there and there is being there.  His instruction carried me through a lot of sticky wickets.  Imagine how you would feel if General Briggs assigned you a bodyguard on a visit to a combat area.  Would you be happy?  Or not?”

“Unhappy, I’m sure.”

The staff meeting was in the same auditorium that she’d been shown earlier, and where later she’d brief the other cadets.  These were all of the staff members not in class.

General Briggs stood at the podium and told everyone to be at ease.  “I’m here to announce a new policy for Norwich.

“This university has, since i
ts founding in 1819, been in the forefront of developing military officers for the United States.  While we don’t predate West Point, Norwich was founded by an officer who had been cashiered for his system of education that he’d tried to apply at West Point.  Once upon a time he thought it was incumbent upon the young Republic not to permit a hereditary officer class, as Sylvanus Thayer, his replacement at West Point, favored.

“Norwich is the first university to have a ROTC program.  Since the beginning, Norwich has been at the forefront of rational education reform in this country.

“We have a long and distinguished career of innovation.  I intend to continue that tradition.”

He surveyed his assembled professors and teachers.  “I have private means; I have never shied away from admitting that.  I have, in this case, decided that if there was ever a case of pushing all one’s chips onto the table and saying ‘All in!’ this is it.

“No one has yet made a correct guess as to what I’m building across the road.  That’s because not one of you has an imagination as large as mine.  Above all, none of us have an imagination that begins to compare to that of Andrea Schulz and Kristine Boyle.

“The stars, ladies and gentlemen.  They’ve given us the stars!  Small, corrupt men have tried to interfere with that; some of you have undoubtedly heard about those events and the fallout from the attempts to interfere.”

There were nervous laughs among the men and women present.  Who hadn’t heard of the problems of the President and Congress?

“My wife is an exo-biologist, a field in search of subject matter.  They have it now.  In spite of what you’ve heard, so far things aren’t nearly as dangerous as you’ve been told.

“We are going to explore other planets here.  With luck, we’ll find a planet worth exploring such as Schulz and Boyle discovered.  This is, ladies and gentlemen, our future.

“These doors are going to open, whether our political masters will it or not.  And as Miss Schulz and Cadet Boyle have learned, it’s not all a piece of cake out there.

“The universe is a complicated place.  It is not a place where prejudice and political correctness can guide you.  Survival will depend on weighing objective realities and understanding the actual situation and then using your best judgment, your sense of duty and honor to understand as best as you can.  The skills that will be required for such explorers are legion.

“On top of that, a great many people are going to go wandering.  Some of them are going to get in trouble and are going to need rescuing.  I suppose that it sounds like I’m talking about a small patch of turf, but I’m betting it becomes larger than anyone imagines.  Those rescues are going to require people who are generalists; able to adapt and overcome obstacles that we can’t even begin to imagine just now.

“I want Norwich to be the place you go for help when you get in trouble on the Far Side.  Schulz and Boyle overcame indigenous species, indigenous political unrest and indigenous invasion.  They even had to deal with a spot of climate change.”

That brought a wave of laughter
from the assembled people.

“So, Kris Boyle has decided to come to Norwich, at least for a time.  Honestly, she says she wants to stay, and I want her to stay, and I think you’ll want the same, but it’s kind of like hoping Einstein would be content with his kindergarten math class.  At some point in time, sooner, I’m sure, rather than later, she’ll move on.  In the meantime, I have every intention of sucking her brains dry for the use and benefit of our cadets.

“Leadership.  Oh yes!  There is that and plenty on the other side of these doors!  I know Cadet Boyle doesn’t want to brag, but she went through that door a high school graduate and little more.

“When she came back, she’d fought in battles; she’d treated with sovereigns.  She was, in short, nothing like anything we’ve seen in a long time.  Maybe Alexander was like she was.  Maybe not.”

Kris could see all of the eyes in the auditorium were on her.  General Briggs held out his had to her.  “Ladies and gentlemen, Cadet Boyle.”

Kris walked forward and stood at the podium, staring out at the faces.  Weren’t the lights supposed to hide all of them?  No wonder you were supposed to imagine everyone was naked!  She’d always assumed they were invisible.  They were anything but!

She looked around, her earlier prepared remarks having flown from her head.

“I wish I could tell people how I did what I did.  Distill it down into a bottle that I could pour into students and voila!  They’d know what I had to learn.

“It doesn’t work like that.

“I’m little more than a high school graduate, no matter what you might hear to the contrary.  I didn’t have much, if any preparation.  The seventh time I shot a pistol, I killed a man with it.  Not to mention times ten, twelve, fourteen and fifteen.

“I’ve killed men with a crossbow; I had a woman, who had been a slave up until a few days before, loading for me.  She was terrified; she literally shivered at the thought of what she was doing.  But she didn’t want to become a slave again, so she loaded my crossbow.

“My friend Andie had two buff, studly fellows loading for her.  I don’t think she noticed.  One of the two men protecting her was killed in the fighting.  I only rated one guard, and he was killed as well.”

There were curious sounds.

“We were two teenage girls on the experience of a dozen lifetimes.  I’d like to think we reacted well to what we saw and experienced.

“At the time I didn’t think it was remarkable.  Even before we were back and safe, I had cause to wonder.  People would go through the same blue door we’d gone through.  Some of them had the most extraordinary prejudices!

“These days, when we bring guests from Earth, our people and the Arvalans go to great lengths to keep them safe, because it is a simple fact -- most people can’t remember the time of day over there, much less something really important.”

There was a lot more, and the afternoon briefing was even more interesting.

Chapter 28 :: The Outlines of a Rescue

Kris Boyle woke suddenly, wondering what had roused her.  There was another knock on her dorm room door, and she got up, throwing off the sheet, blanket and comforter.  Her father hadn’t been exaggerating about the temperatures in Vermont.  It was just the start of October, and already there were frosts, freezes, and occasional flurries.

Her roommate muttered something, and Kris took pity on her.  “It’s bound to be for me, Erica, just go back to sleep.”

She walked across the room, wearing long johns that covered significantly more than any bathing suit and opened the door.

Ezra Lawson was there, along with a cast of a half dozen others.  Kurt Sandusky was in the hallway, so was the dorm Resident Assistant, a campus policeman, a man in a Northfield policeman’s uniform, and another man wearing a coat and tie.

“Kris, a moment, please,” Ezra asked her.

“Let me come out in the hall.  You realize that this is breaking the rules?”  She had permission, carefully circumscribed, for Ezra and Jake -- not the others.

“Yes, but there is a situation,” Ezra told her.

Kris closed the door behind her.  “We have to keep it quiet,” she told the others.  “The work here is very intense and everyone needs their sleep.”

“Yes, we’ll do that.  Kris, this is Captain Paul Wolford of the Chicago police department.  They have a situation in Chicago.”

The man in the civilian clothes raised his hand to have it shaken, but Kris kept her hand at her side.  The man sighed and dropped his.  “All I can say, Miss Boyle, is not all police officers are like those your family and friends met.”

“I notice you don’t bother either apologizing or saying how rare they are,” Kris said bitterly.

“No, I’m not going to apologize for the acts of men I consider to be scum who happen to have the same job that I do -- any more than you’d be willing to apologize for Dylan and Klebold from Columbine, after your fellow high school students murdered a lot of people at their high school.”

“No, I suppose you’re right.  But in the meantime, I don’t have to shake hands with men like you, either.  It sure looks like the policemen involved with killing, torturing, and beating my parents and friends aren’t going to be prosecuted, and that the politicians are getting away with what they did, and that things are going back to business as usual.  Pardon my lack of enthusiasm.

“What is it that you want, Captain Wolford?  I’m losing sleep here myself.  No offense, but I want to concentrate on the future and not the past.”

“We have a situation in Chicago that we can’t deal with.  The suggestion was made that you would be someone who could help.”

“What kind of situation?”

“We have two young men who don’t seem to have been as lucky as you and Miss Schulz were.  Not to mention three of my officers who tried to help them.”

“Make it quick,” she told him.

“Three young men, working in one of their basements, assembled a fusor of the Schulz design.  They turned it on, and one of them pushed a video camera on a broomstick through the resulting wormhole.”

“We don’t think they’re wormholes,” Kris said absently.

“Whatever -- they pushed the video camera through the blue artifact.

“After a few seconds, the survivor reported it seemed like someone or something was pulling on the broomstick from the other side.  The young man holding the camera should have let go, but he didn’t.  He called for his friends to help, and one quickly went to his aid.  There wasn’t room for the survivor to get a grip on the broomstick, so he just grabbed one of the second friend’s arms.  The other fellow had a solid grip around the first man’s waist.

“There was, the survivor said, a stronger pull, but the three of them were slowly withdrawing the camera.  Abruptly, there was a severe yank, causing him to lose his grip.  His two friends were pulled through the blue artifact.

“The one remaining fellow tried to use his cell phone to dial for help, only it didn’t work.”

“Fusors do that,” Kris told him.

“Yes.  He moved towards the power cutoff, intending to cut if off if something non-human came through.  After ten minutes, he lost his nerve and shut it off anyway, and then went upstairs and called 911 on a landline.

“Two patrolmen and a sergeant responded, and the young man explained to them what had happened.  I regret to say, he wasn’t believed.  The sergeant demanded that he show them the apparatus, and when the young fellow did, asked for it to be turned on.  The young man complied, and when the blue artifact appeared, the sergeant walked over to it and stuck his head through it.”

Kris grimaced.  The first rule of intelligent problem solving -- if at first you don’t succeed, try something different.

“He seemed to stumble and vanished through it.  One of the other officers pulled his weapon and went through the blue artifact after him.  No shots were heard...”

“You can’t hear sounds on the other side of a Far Side door,” Kris told him.

“Ah.  At any rate the third officer called for backup, and approached the Far Side door as you call it, carefully.  The young survivor wasn’t sure what happened then, but he said that it seemed to be that the officer was drawn through the door.  He couldn’t see by who or what.  Afraid for his own life, the young man nonetheless waited five minutes, his fingers on the cutoff.

“More officers arrived and after another ten minutes, the watch lieutenant.  I was called, and about an hour after the three officers went through, I, with great reluctance, asked the young man to shut off the machine.  I had called the station, gotten a surveillance camera and had tried to insert it through the door.  Something started pulling on the camera, finally breaking the camera connection -- that’s when I had the machine shut off, while we regrouped.  All we saw on the picture was a gray backdrop.  There was no way to tell how far away it was, nor was there any other detail visible.

“I have talked to a number of people in the last six hours, Miss Boyle.  Please, you were recommended to us by a Mr. Jon Bullman, the surveillance supervisor on your fusor in Los Angeles.  He said that ideally he would recommend that I should get both you and Miss Schulz to help, except she’s on the other side of the door there and couldn’t be available for weeks.

“Please, Miss Boyle.  I’m told that you have agreed that helping rescue people who have misadventures on the other side of those blue doors is something worthy of undertaking.”

“This happened this afternoon?” Kris asked.  The police captain nodded.

At that moment Captain Stone, General Briggs, and his wife arrived, adding to the crowd in the hallway.

Kris used the moment while introductions were made to think about things.  Finally, when Ezra had brought the late-comers up to speed, Kris asked her question.

“Captain Wolford, in order to get my name and get here from Chicago, you had to cut through a lot of bureaucratic red tape.  That means that one or more of the young men is politically connected, doesn’t it?  Who to?”

Captain Wolford met her eyes and held them.  “Two of the young men’s fathers are important in Chicago politics.  That means Democrat party politics.  One of the fathers is on the city council; the other is significant in precinct politics.  I’m sure you know who the current head of Chicago politics is.  That’s the man at the top -- the son of one of his closest allies was involved.”

Kris sneered.  “You can’t even mention the name, can you?  That man’s former boss assisted in the theft of billions of dollars from my friend, Andie Schulz.  He gave the orders that resulted in the death of one of our employees, and the torture and beatings of others, including both of my parents.  And that mother-fucking son of a bitch thinks I’ll drop everything and go and help one of his cronies?”

“This is me personally asking you, Miss Boyle.  Forget that.”

“I bet he’d like that, wouldn’t he?  Well, my father isn’t going to forget it, that’s for sure!  If that man wants my help, first he resigns.”

There were startled gasps from all involved, except Ezra and Kurt.

“I think that is a little extreme, Miss Boyle,” the police captain said.  Still, he sounded defensive.

“You say you were in a room with a Far Side door that was open to another planet.  Are you aware that it is a Class One felony, to have avoided quarantine?  Conviction on that charge, so I was repeatedly informed, carries a twenty-to-life prison sentence, since you’re risking the entire human race?”

“I was told that I was exempted, that it turns out not to be the risk it was first thought to be.”

“Like I said, he resigns first.  Plus, I’ve been studying negotiation in my spare time and so I’ve decided to raise the price.  Not only does he resign, first he comes up with an Executive Order saying that quarantine can be reduced to one week and that applications for complete exemptions can be made on an emergency basis.”

“Miss Boyle, please think about the two young men and the three missing three police officers -- two of those officers are married and have children, and a third is engaged.  Please help us.”

“And do you understand that there is a trivial chance that those five are still alive?  That all I could do would be to risk my life and the lives of others to find out what happened to them?  And that I can’t help but wonder if that sick bastard in the White House knows that?”

Captain Stone and Dr. Briggs gasped.  The general, Kurt, and the police captain looked contemplative.  Ezra and Kris stood with poker faces.

“Once more, Captain Wolford -- what would you have us do?”

“Please come and help us.”

“I’d dearly like either that man’s resignation or that Executive Order.  What I’ll settle for, so long as Major Sandusky agrees, is that you get whatever political leader who is in charge of the Chicago PD to sign off on the idea that this is Major Sandusky’s operation.  Anything he wants, he gets, no questions asked.  If he says we can’t go, we can’t go.

“I will, in exchange, extract from Major Sandusky the same promise my father did from him: he is to do what he can to rescue those who are lost, but he isn’t to start the First Interstellar War.  He will keep the collateral damage down to tit for tat.”

Kurt laughed.  “Tit for tat?  I can live with that.”

“And you, Miss Boyle?  What would your participation be?” the police captain said stiffly.

“Why, Major Sandusky is a friend of my father’s.  He and I have served in combat together.  I would be willing to make myself available to consult with him, should he so desire.”  She waved at General Briggs.  “Further, Major Sandusky has the confidence of General Briggs, and some research will show that the major is not willing to run up the Piper’s Bill if it isn’t necessary.”

“The Piper’s Bill?” the policeman asked, not understanding.

Ezra, General Briggs, Captain Stone -- and surprisingly -- the Northfield policeman, all echoed the same phrase: “The casualty count.”

Kris turned to Kurt.  “Your call, Major.  Go or not?”

“It’s a go if my men get the standard rate, as negotiated by Mr. Boyle for off-world service, to be paid by the City of Chicago.”

“And what would that rate be?” the police captain asked warily.

“Two hundred thousand a month or fraction thereof spent off-world -- up until there is gunfire or serious threat to life and limb.  In that case, a million dollar bonus and two million dollars paid to the estate of anyone killed off-world, even if they have a heart attack or slip in the shower.  Standing ready, here on Earth, twenty thousand a month or fraction thereof per individual.”

“And we’re talking how many men?” Captain Wolford asked.

“A dozen, counting myself, Kris Boyle and Ezra Lawson.”

“I’ll phone that ahead and they’ll have an agreement ready when we land.  I don’t see any problems with that.”

Kurt nodded and turned to Kris.  “Then it’s a go.  Cadet Boyle, please pack for a couple of days.  Ezra, ditto.  I’ll rouse out the cavalry.”  He spoke past Kris to General Briggs.  “Assuming I have your concurrence, sir?”

“You have it, Major Sandusky.  You can even borrow Cadet Boyle as needed.  I’ll cover for her with her professors.”

There were a few more items, the only one of which that was important to Kris was that the police captain from Chicago had come in a Gulfstream that seated twelve.  “An hour and a half, Captain, and we’ll be at the airport,” Kurt told the man.

“I’ll make sure we’re ready to go.  What can I tell my Chief to expect?”

“Well, we’ll get off the plane and talk to him.  At that point in time, I want the authority Kris Boyle requested and a signed agreement for compensation.  I must remind you that the Executive Order about quarantine times isn’t as negotiable as she told you.  We won’t open that Far Side door without it.  My men have a reasonable desire to know how long they will be subject to those stringent, and I might add, based on personal experience, those personally invasive and decidedly uncomfortable medical tests.”

“I can ask.  But it’s out of my hands.”

“Like I said, we’ll turn around and go home without it.  Yes, we will take reasonable precautions, and we’re willing to undergo reasonable quarantines -- based on medical evidence.”