First Middle Initial VII.
The girl who had made the solemn oath before the roaring blue furnaces of the Transmoltus, like a penitent presenting a bribe to her primordial god, had at first no clear idea how she was going to implement that promise. She knew that all entrances to the Space Patrol Academy but one were closed to her. Without position, status, friends, influence, without any substantial amount of money, without even an officially recognized existence, there was left to her only Education. The Patrol, while as elitist as the most antique guild or religious cult, was not so stupid as to not recognize the value of intelligence and education. Therefore, if she went to school and if she excelled, excelled above all others, than she would surely win at least consideration from the Academy. And she was certain that if she were considered she would be accepted.
Though even by the age of ten she had not yet been exposed to anything like formal learning, she could read, write and cipher—indeed, she enjoyed reading to an inordinate degree and devoured anything printed she could get her hands on, even if she did not understand half of what she read. Which might perhaps have been just as well as most of her early reading material was by necessity those books collected by Pilnipott in aid of his monumental encyclopedia. By the time she was twelve or thirteen years old, her cramped garret was crowded with heaped piles of books, magazines, pamphlets, brochures, tabloids and newspapers. She collected them from a hundred sources: scraps rescued from ashcans, plucked from windblown litter, snatched from the racks of inattentive newsdealers, lifted from the five-for-a-pfennig tables outside the used-book dealers. She never bothered to preexamine what she gathered; her tastes were indiscriminate and catholic; all that mattered were printed words on paper. Consequently, her little hovel was packed with lurid tabloids with their tales of graphically illustrated murder and accident; political advertisements; polemic pamphlets hysterically exorting every esoteric concern from the advantages of communism to the question of whether Musrum was right-handed or left-handed; handbills announcing new plays, vaudevilles, circuses, music hall acts, new products, patent medicines, magnetic cures, cures for arthritis, syphilis and drunkenness, offers of jobs, railroad schedules and announcements of the departure of spaceships and their need for crews; cheap novels printed on paper so soft and porous the letters had spread into furry blobs, like squashed insects, paper bound novels printed on brittle, splintery pulp that crackled like old leaves when she turned their pages, fat novels printed in tiny, meticulous letters on onionskin that felt as she imagined silk must; there were magazines, filled with stories and articles and colored rotogravure pictures; best of all were the nonfiction books, the school books and the occasional encyclopedia volume. Some of these were as incomprehensible as theology, philosophy, economics and mathematics—whose dense tangles of formulae, graphs and diagrams may as well have been some indecipherable hieroglyphic—her eyes glided over them as they would the meaningless pattern of a wallpaper, but others were about science and history and biography—especially her treasured biographies of Princess Bronwyn—and geography. They filled her with more joy and wonder and longing and discontent and ideas and questions than could have any hundred books of religious propaganda.
So Judikha enrolled in a public school. She was only required to take a simple test, which she completed perfectly, if laboriously and self-consciously, being unused to writing. The school was the only one maintained in the Transmoltus, and then only because the law required its presence. But the law did not require the school to do anything more than exist; it did not require either efficiency or effectiveness; its instructors were those either too old, too incompetent or too sadistic to be tolerated in the City’s schools. Worse, however, than any of these was the instructor who was there because he or she was possessed by an overweening missionary spirit. Mr. Grun was such a circumspect man, pacing off the dingy halls in a frigid, dry odor of sanctity, as though he were measuring the depths of transgression with his stiff, caliper-like legs. He took himself and his position seriously, as he took everything, and his manner fitted his calling. He looked upon himself as the keeper of a sacred charge. These young, ill-formed, rude Citizens of the Future were under his care, and it behooved him to walk warily and so comport himself as to bring no faint suggestion of the indecorous before the notice of the young minds among whom he spent his days. He was, as should now be obvious, to a large extent severed from the realities of life and there were many subjects and aspects of subjects upon which the younger minds could better have enlightened him than he them. But, by training, nature and calling, he was incapable of crediting children with personality, let alone knowledge of good and evil. More’s the pity.
Mr. Grun certainly did not recognize the native intelligence of the rangy young girl with the lank, tangled hair. He thought that intelligence in girls was unnecessary and perhaps even sinful in an ill-defined way. For years he had paid little attention to her curiosity, ignored her questions, barely glanced at her neatly-written papers; instead he shook his head slowly and compressed his bloodless lips whenever he saw her. He disapproved of the way she carried herself, with neither modesty nor demureness. She strode the dingy halls with a masculine assurance, looking neither left nor right, her dark level eyes fixed like a surveyor’s transit on some distant point on the invisible horizon, as though she could see through the dark wall at the end of the corridor. She refused—shunned—the company of the other girls; she looked down upon them from her great height—she was already nearly a head taller than any other girl her age—down the length of her wonderful nose as though she were sighting rats along the barrel of a gun. She laughed and joked with the boys, raucously and honestly, not bothering to cover her open mouth, throwing her head back and haw-hawing shamelessly. He did not like the sight of her teeth or her throat or her tongue or the roof of her mouth. The former were too white and the latter three too wet and pink. He was scandalized by some of the jokes he overheard her telling, though he really grasped little more than the gist of but few of them—he sustained his disapproval by tacitly assuming that nothing that caused that sort of laughter could be entirely decent. He had been forced to reprimand her repeatedly about her dress; in spite of his stern admonitions she insisted on wearing shirts and trousers and where the other girls would sit primly, with their knees together and their ankles decently covered, Judikha would sprawl in her seat, one long leg thrown across the knee of the other. Mr. Grun was disturbed by that precocious and insouciant reminder that females were indeed bipedal and, reacting like most prudes, held the girl to blame for his own prurience.
Judikha kept apart from her fellow students—or was kept apart. The students who considered themselves from poor but decent families would have nothing to do with her. The students with rougher pedigrees snubbed her as a defector from the ranks of the outlaw. She did not consider this as leaving any sort of void in her life. She already had few friends and was, quite frankly, even happier with fewer.
Judikha had abandoned her old ways, as best she could—at least within the delimitations of self-perpetuation. Not that she suddenly felt any sort of new-found morality—hardly; she found nothing amiss with her past career—she took some pride in it, in fact—nor did she begin passing lofty judgments upon her colleagues. No; she simply wanted to divert neither any more time nor energy than she could spare from her studies. She had fixed upon her goal with the single-minded, inevitable purposefulness that a loosed arrow has for a bull’s-eye. Any other endeavors or interests, other than those directly required for bodily sustenance and physical survival, were extraneous; they were wasted time and energy. Such a lofty, if practical, motive was entirely beyond the comprehension of her associates—had they bothered to consider it, which they didn’t, of course. They merely—and, admittedly, with some justification—drew their ill-founded and erroneous conclusions from the evidence of the ex-hellion who now hurried home after classes, books and papers clutched to her chest, her eyes fixed somewhere far beyond their flat, stupid faces and mean eyes. She was deaf as well as blind. At first she ignored their well-meant invitations to drink, carouse or cause mayhem, to make an evening of it, to have something on; later she was just as oblivious to their taunts. She slipped through them and away, as slickly as a needle through burlap. There was only one logical reply to the gibes and she was unaware she that she made it: an exasperating smile of self-sufficiency.
Her life assumed, for the first time, a Routine. Home from school—a quick wash—a meal of some tinned food and bread and tea and perhaps some fruit (whatever she had managed to lift that morning or the day before)—a domestic chore or two, if necessary—then long hours with a book until it fell from her long, lax fingers and she slept.
She ignored the insults of her colleagues and the ostracization of the others with bland, Olympian indifference; she tolerated Mr. Grun’s attempts to civilize her. Though he had singled her out for particular attention, scrutinizing her work for the least imperfection upon which he could hang a punishment or reprimand, she knew he could do her little real harm so long as she did her work and was careful not to be overly contemptuous of his rules or puritanism; besides, Grun’s rigorous attention to her performance really had the beneficial result of only improving her work.
She would have been perfectly happy with this program and had it been allowed to run its course would have assuredly and inexorably led her to her goal. Her marks were excellent—even the parsimonious Mr. Grun could not begrudge her that—and she kept her behavior, at least during school hours, safely within tolerable limits. She had no reason to believe she would not do equally well when the annual Space Patrol entrance exams were held. If her marks were high enough she would be considered for the Academy—as it was bound to do by law—which was the one thing she wanted more than anything else she could imagine. Unfortunately, two things happened instead.
The first, upon which the second was more or less dependant, was that she fell in love.
The boy’s name was Rhys, and, like Judikha, he was fifteen and a half years old and not a native-born inhabitant of the Transmoltus. He, too, had come from the country. Unlike the girl, however, he had arrived only recently and with a mother, a father and a brother younger by one year: a dreadful little brat named Pomfret. The family had lost home and farm to an unexpected expansion of the Strabane lava lake and had come to the city because the father had luckily gotten a job, through his brother-in-law, running a heckling machine.
Rhys was a tall, almost willowy lad with fine-boned features, dreamy, intelligent eyes and delicate hands. His hair was as black and thick and glossy as molten tar. He was invariably courteous, friendly, well-groomed, as neatly dressed as his circumstances allowed and he took his studies seriously, a quality so unusual among Judikha’s classmates that it alone was sufficient to attract her to him. He wrote fine stories and well-reasoned essays and turgidly earnest poems that Judikha thought equaled anything in her library; he excelled in the art classes, at which Judikha was hopeless. Although he smiled often, exposing gleaming teeth, and enjoyed games, he shunned the roughhousing in which the other boys indulged—she never once saw him fight. Indeed, she often—with a kind of awe—observed him turn away an opponent with a few well-spoken words. In only a moment he would be laughing and joking with a boy who but a heartbeat before had insulted him cruelly or who had promised him a bloodied nose, if not worse. In a word, he was much of what Judikha herself wanted to be.
Pomfret, on the other hand, was a weasel.
While few of the boys particularly cared for the fastidious and rather self-righteous Rhys, they at least respected him to the degree that they treated him with indifference. Pomfret was immediately accepted if for no other reason than that he gave them little other choice. An accomplished sycophant, Pomfret’s obsequious, fawning nature found him ready friends among the several gangs, between which he wandered with unaligned impunity. But Pomfret’s unctuous personality did not at all reflect a weak psyche.
Unlike his older brother, Pomfret was physically unprepossessing. Short, thin to the point of emaciation, with a disproportionately large head that was always cocked to one side or the other as though it were too heavy for his long, flexible neck. His hair was fine and dust-colored, his sore-looking eyes were small and wet, with pink sclera. His nasal voice was whining as he snuffled back the glutinous products of a perpetually running nose. However, and this was not at all obvious, he was by far the more intelligent of the two brothers.
His small size and wheedling hero-worship found ready acceptance among boys who were too unsophisticated to recognize the patent insincerity. It was not long at all before they were eagerly listening to his suggestions and ideas with slack jawed admiration. The seesaw of hero worship had tipped and they’d never realized it.
However infatuated she might have been with Rhys, Judikha was realistic—or at least believed she was. There was a large number of female students in all the grades, almost any of whom would be more desirable to a boy than she. Judikha, the pragmatist, had carefully established three categories into which she divided the school’s females: the physically attractive, the physically repulsive, and herself. She did not think herself ugly by any means, but she also believed that she was not pretty. She had observed what sort of girls the boys found most interesting and which sort they avoided. It was easy to see that there was a catalog of characteristics the members of the former category shared in common—all of them of the most blatantly physical type, which surprised her not. Taking their average, Judikha decided that a small girl, with pronounced curves, soft to the verge of pudginess; breasts as large as adolescent hormones could generate; a round, smooth, dimpled face capable only of expressing a kind of dumb admiration; fat, pouting lips; no nose to speak of; preternatuarally large eyes so clearly blue that they may as well have been holes bored through the empty head and as much blonde hair as she could carry and still stand erect stood about as much chance of remaining a virgin as Judikha, who possessed not one of these qualities, did not. On the other hand, boys had always treated Judikha with a kind of neutral indifference, with neither the deference shown the attractive girls, the evasion shown the ugly ones nor the complete acceptance she would have enjoyed had she been a fellow male. She was effectively sexless. Those of her own station recognized and even respected her as an accomplished thief, while some others appreciated her earthy sense of humor and her formidable athletic abilities. Certainly none of the other girls were ever invited or expected to take part in the rougher games and escapades, where Judikha’s strength, endurance, quick wits and inventiveness were very much appreciated. But afterwards the boys went their own way—usually with another girl altogether attached: there was a distinct line Judikha was not allowed to cross.
With one exception the girls shunned her entirely. Those who had grown up in the streets as Judikha had done looked upon her as an apostate, a renegade who thought she was better than she ought to be. The girls who considered themselves respectable—however baselessly—looked upon Judikha with ill-concealed contempt.
She had always accepted this; she gave it little thought. She was at heart a misanthrope and, while she did not want to do entirely without human company, companionship or friends, neither she did want these forced upon her. Neither did she accept overtures of friendship nor did she solicit them. Her only friend within the school was, strangely enough given all this, another girl.
Bettina Henlopen possessed that same plump, round-eyed cheeriness usually reserved for the plastic dolls won by knocking over milk bottles in a carnival. She was the only one of all the girls who seemed to genuinely enjoy Judikha’s company, with neither condescension nor any understanding of what Judikha thought or said. Bettina was truly sweet, generous and almost entirely brainless. She was very popular with the boys, as one might imagine, whom she favored equally, showing neither prejudice nor discrimination. She was, outwardly, a seemingly unlikely choice for a friend, but Judikha found her naïvete, honesty, trust and simplicity comforting. She could tell Bettina anything, however intimate, and know it would be received with honest compassion, empathy and genuine interest—yet would be forgotten by the next day, possibly even within the hour, as though Judikha had emptied her heart into a leaky barrel; there was never any need to swear Bettina to secrecy: her brain, as smooth as a billiard ball, precluded any need for oaths. And more than anything else Judikha appreciated more than even she realized that her friend accepted her wholeheartedly, with neither prejudice or preconception.
Judikha was by and large satisfied with herself and her life until Rhys arrived. Afterward, she was confused, distressed and not a little annoyed to find herself under the control of internal forces whose lurking existence she had never suspected and over which she evidently had no power. Her coldly rational, practical, pragmatic self abdicated entirely when Rhys happened to be in the same room, as though an experienced bus driver decided to turn over the wheel of his speeding vehicle to an irresponsible eight-year-old. Her will was abandoned to mindless chemical processes designed ten million years earlier for rutting reptiles and lemurs. Thanks to her biology classes she was aware of the existence and function of the various glands, of primal urges and instincts—but only as abstracts. She never thought that the slippery little chemical factories that bubbled and percolated inside the neat, opaque envelope of her skin had any real existence. Who, after all, really enjoys admitting to all of the slimy, gelatinous, rubbery, shapeless bags, bulbs, tubes and lumps with which his or her body is filled? Certainly no one is willing to admit that the temporal distance that separates them from their instinct-driven animal ancestors—let alone from the blue-green algae from which we have all descended, for that matter—is not even measurable on a geologic scale. Judikha felt like the puzzled man lying crumpled under the wheels of the careless delivery van: something had just occurred with blinding suddenness that was only supposed to happen to other, less careful people. The sanguine, calculating operator that had smoothly controlled her thoughts and actions for more than fifteen years was appalled to find itself usurped, shouldered aside in a kind of biological mutiny. A primeval reptile, the existence of which she had been entirely, blissfully and ignorantly unaware, had wrested away the controls. She was unquestionably that high-powered steam omnibus, its boiler supercharged, its safety valve tied down, whose wheel was now in the irresponsible grasp of a selfish, willful and amoral child.
Over a period of a day or two, Judikha collected every mirror or scrap of reflecting surface she could find, assembling them into a kind of bright mosaic on the one vertical wall she possessed. She stood before the makeshift looking glass, critically, trying to be objective about the fragmented images that glared back at her like the disinterested eye of an enormous insect. If she were a boy, how would she regard what she saw? She tilted her head back and squinted through her long eyes. What she saw was a kind of haphazard jigsaw picture of a tall, rather rangy young man in knee-length heavily-patched corduroy trousers, rope sandals, rumpled flannel shirt and patched jacket. Young man, indeed! Well, that’d certainly get a boy’s pulse racing was her cynical conclusion. She’d seen her own image a hundred times before, of course, but never particularly critically and certainly, absolutely, never sexually. It’s no wonder boys don’t treat me as a girl if even I can’t tell that I’m looking at one. All right then, how do I look as a girl? She dropped her trousers and kicked them aside, shucked her jacket and shirt and stood again before the compound gaze. Well, nothing wrong with that, she decided, turning first this way and then that, though the image was nothing even remotely like the plump, curvilinear topography that boys seemed to prefer over brains and ability. The jigsaw figure in the mirrors had the elongated, hydrodynamic lines of an eel or racing sloop. More than half its length was a pair of legs each as long and graceful as a stream of honey being poured from a pitcher. It had a bottle-shaped torso with narrow hips and even narrower waist, stomach like a flagstone and neat, cup-shaped breasts. The face was molded by its bones the way geologic strata shape a landscape. It was dominated by a pair of extraordinary eyes: dark as old teak and slanting perhaps a half degree or so. She liked her body—it seemed to her as efficient and streamlined as a rocket. So she was surprised at the vague and inexplicable dissatisfaction she felt; was it only an artifact, the subliminal influence of her adolescent, hormone-driven classmates? Was it in fact a good body in a larger, more objective sense? Was it like a fine painting by an old master mistakenly hung in the local five-and-ten-pfennig store? She certainly had no illusions about the earthy taste possessed by most of the inhabitants of the Transmoltus, the taste that caused thousands of homes to be decorated with paintings of unlikely-looking horses and wide-eyed moppets rendered in violent colors on black velvet; that kept tens of thousands of eyes entranced by telephonophoted game shows and inane comedies; that had half the households hoarding a few pfennigs from weekly budgets in order to save enough to send away for the latest mass-produced limited edition collector’s plate.
She’d seen the calendars that hung in every workshop, the biologically frank posters outside the music halls, the luridly illustrated papers and the sort of girls who inspired the most uninhibited speculations from the boys. She could discern a coarse and obvious continuity that, taken item by item, excluded her from the competition with depressing thoroughness. She did not have blonde hair—nor was she willing to have blonde hair—she was neither small nor cute, she did not have soft, plump limbs, she did not have an ingratiating, fawning personality—far from it!—she certainly did not have an adorably turned-up pug nose and she just as certainly did not have breasts as large as her head.
But she knew, because she was curious and observant, that there might be finer standards by which she might be judged. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she was very much aware that the Transmoltus was only a nanocosm and that its tastes and mores could not in any way be considered representative of the world or universe at large, thank Musrum. She, alone of her classmates, had taken a genuine interest in the study of art—probably for the very reason that it represented a glimpse into that heretofore forbidden outer world—and was fascinated by chromolithographic reproductions from the collections of galleries both in Blavek and abroad. She had immediately realized that there was a great difference between the crudely obvious drawings, paintings and lithographs that were reprinted in the popular calendars, magazines and posters and the wonderful pictures that hung in the great galleries, though she would have been hard put to analyze let alone verbalize that difference. She now wondered, as she stood in front of her fragmented mirror, if there might not be the same dichotomy in the aesthetics of the human body. How would she and, say, Bettina be received by genteel Blavek society were each of them cleaned and dressed and polished with equal care? Would her friend, the most desirable girl in the school, appear coarse, gross and uncouth? Would Judikha, not remotely considered a sexual objective by her male classmates, let alone attractive, overwhelm them all with her lissome beauty, grace and charm?
She had no idea, but she perversely persisted in doubting it.
It was spring when the bulletin was posted announcing the impending Space Patrol Academy Entrance Examination. Anyone interested was invited to apply at the headmaster’s office for further information. Although in the history of the school not a single applicant had ever been accepted by the Patrol, so compelling was the latter institution’s reputation that at least a third of the student body, undeterred by such a dismal record, applied for the test.
Judikha procured her application, which proved to be a blank form and a sheaf of papers listing the subjects that the exam would cover, to allow the applicant time to properly prepare themselves. She took all this home with her and, by the light of her frugal candle stubs, pored over the densely-printed sheets. The form, which should have been the simplest matter of all, proved to be a stumbling block right at the outset. It was for the most part a request for personal information, something of which she was peculiarly lacking. The very first line made her furrow her brow in frustrated concentration.
Name: Last First Middle Initial
She did not know whether Judikha was her first name or last: it was the only name she had ever had and it had simply never occurred to her to wonder about its singularity. Neither had it ever occurred to her to ask The Fox about the origin of her name, no more than it would have occurred to her to ask him the origin of her arm or head—or for that matter, why he was called The Fox. Mr. Grun invariably referred to her as “Miss Judikha”, which seemed to argue for it being a family name. On the other hand, he referred to some of the other girls by attaching “Miss” to their first names, and some to their last. There seemed to be no consistent, rigorously-applied rule. Occasionally a newcomer to the neighborhood or to the classroom would briefly call her “Judy” even after she had told them firmly that her name was Judikha. It was an error that was only committed once per offender. She would make one allowance for ignorance, a second “Judy” she considered an intentional affront and applied a more immediately physical correction which, once the transgressor could again speak, always seemed sufficient. “Judy”, a diminutive she hated, was an unwarranted assumption on the other’s part—it did not necessarily mean that Judikha was her given name. Did she perhaps have any claim to Pilnipott? She rather hoped not. Judikha Pilnipott did not quite have the ring she associated with a Space Patrol cadet. She thought for a moment longer, then wrote Judikha in the first space. She hesitated only briefly then wrote Judikha in the second space. The notion of yet a third name seemed to her unnecessarily extravagant, but, she reasoned, the space wouldn’t have been provided had the Patrol not expected at least some of its suppliants to fill it in. So she wrote in J., just for the sake of symmetry. Judikha J. Judikha.
That taken care of, she went on to the next line, which requested her address. Address? Another unprecedented concept. She knew the street below was Nixnixx Road (the opposite side of the building overlooked an ancient drainage canal), but it was never a matter of any particular interest. Why should it be? She had never in her life received any mail, had never expected any, nor had she ever invited a visitor to her hiding place, nor ever expected to. She supposed that she could write down Nixnixx Street, Transmoltus, Blavek, but that seemed insufficient. What if the Patrol wanted to contact her directly? What if her acceptance came via the mails? The letter carrier would not know which of a dozen buildings was the right one, let alone which of (perhaps as many as) a score of rooms and apartments was hers—not that she had ever seen a letter carrier within the confines of the Transmoltus. What if, Musrum forbid, the Patrol interpreted the lax of house number as a slovenly error on her part or worse? With her usual efficiency and unwillingness to procrastinate, she laid down the form, rose from floor and began the long descent to the street. Her little den was an attic corner ten stories above the canal. She had to go to a hole in the floor, lower then climb down a rickety, homemade ladder, descend a narrow hallway, and then descend a zigzagging staircase that threatened at any moment to fold upon itself like a house of cards. This ultimately deposited her in a urine-reeking foyer. She stepped outside, turned and looked above the door. There, in two brass numerals and two painted ones, was the number 1506. Taking a small card from a pocket, she wrote on it with a stub of pencil: J. J. Judikha. Tenth floor. Attic. and fastened it with a pin beneath the bank of long-unused mailboxes just inside the open door.
Back in her garret, scarcely breathless after the long climb, she took up the form and neatly wrote in the space provided: 1506 Nixnixx St., 10th floor, Attic, Transmoltus, Blavek, Tamlaght.
“Age” was easy; Pilnipott had told her she had been purchased by him virtually at birth and that was about fifteen years ago. She wrote in 16. “Date of birth” was more difficult. Why wasn’t her age sufficient? Wasn’t asking for a specific date redundant as well as over particular? What difference could it make what day she was born on? She was certain, however, that the Patrol must have its reasons, whatever they might be, and good ones, too, but that made her problem no easier. The Fox had never been so specific about her birth as to mention an actual date. What would have been the point, even if he had known? She considered making up a month and day, though the idea frightened her. What if the Patrol discovered this deception, as insignificant as it might be? She had read of officers being cashiered from the service for infractions that had seemed to her no less petty than lying about their birth date. It was not the general dishonesty that bothered her—Musrum knew she had not hesitated committing far more heinous crimes—but she had hoped, by earning admittance to the Academy, to put that part of her life permanently behind her. It rankled, therefore, to have even so much as a falsified date tarnishing her bright new life. Well, she finally reasoned, the Patrol would be more likely to look into the reason why the space was left blank than they would be likely to check to see if a date was wrong, so she swallowed hard, dug a pair of dice from a bag and tossed them onto the floor. Snake eyes. She wrote 1/1 in the space, subtracted sixteen from the current year and entered that in as well.
Race was easy. Human. Sex puzzled her for a long moment or two and she just barely averted revealing a catastrophic naïveté by realizing at last that she need only put down the single letter F.
And so it went.
It was well after midnight before she finished. She lay awake until dawn watching the brilliant geysers of flame rising from the distant spaceport. The next morning she took her completed application to the school office and was disturbed to see how many others were already there.
As she placed her form on top of the pile, she stole a surreptitious glace at the upper half dozen or so. There was Rhys’ (no surprise) and Weenly Glom’s (the witless hulk known as Monkfish to the half dozen thugs who passed for his friends; the presence of his application gave her cause for a derisive snort: fat chance he had of ever getting accepted!), Thandner’s, Layamon’s, Caviede’s, Brera’s and six or seven others she recognized. Except for Rhys, whom she considered brilliant, the others she knew to be Musrum’s very own dummies, which made her feel much better. Indeed, seeing the smudged, crossed-out, misspelled and mutilated entries (except, of course, for Rhys’, which was impeccable) made her feel not a little smug. The only hope the others (except Rhys) would ever have of getting into the Patrol would be to enlist as common spacemen. Mere nozzle fodder.
A posted notice announced that the examination was scheduled just one week hence. Well, she thought, still in her fit of smugness, they may as well send only two and save the paper.
As she was reentering the corridor, she heard her name called. Even before she turned, she knew it was Rhys who had spoken and her heart gave a little frisk, like a lamb that had just heard its mama’s bleat.
“A little early in the day to have been called to the headmaster’s office, isn’t it?” he said with a flash of his perfect teeth.
“No,” she replied in an unsteady voice, damn it, “for a change of pace, I went voluntarily. I was just dropping off my exam application.”
“The Space Patrol exam? You want to take that?”
“You do, too,” she said defensively, “so why not?”
“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting you shouldn’t. I just had no idea you were interested in the Space Patrol.”
Well, why should you have had any idea? You’ve certainly taken little enough notice of me.”I’ve wanted to go to the Academy my whole life. As long as I can remember.”
“I guess if I should be surprised at someone’s interest in the exam, it ought to be my brother’s.”
“I noticed Pomfret’s application in the pile.”
“He may be my brother, and perhaps it’s not very loyal of me to say this, but I don’t think he’s got much of a chance. In fact, I haven’t a clue what he’s thinking of.”
“I noticed some even less likely names. Can you imagine Monkfish at the Space Patrol Academy?”
“As what? A doorstop?”
“He might be useful in the celestial mechanics labs—he’s big enough to generate his own gravitational field. I’m always afraid that if I stand too close to him my watch will slow down.”
“That’s funny!” Rhys laughed. “You know, I had no idea you had such a good sense of humor. You always seem so serious.”
“I am serious.”
“I know. You don’t seem to take much interest in anything except your books. Don’t you hang around with anyone? That is, ah, anyone in particular?”
“No,” she replied, not missing the significance of that last phrase but not too sure what to do with it, either, “but school hasn’t much to do with it. I’ve always been something of a loner, I guess. Even before I enrolled, I didn’t have much to do with anyone.”
“That’s not—” he began, but was interrupted by the clang of the early bell. They parted with friendly, unmeaningful words and smiles and Judikha went to her class feeling as though life were about to become complete.
Mr. Grun noticed her good humor and characteristically did not approve of it.
“Miss Judikha!” he snapped, interrupting his lecture for no better reason than to harass her. “Will you please assume a more decorous posture? And wipe that simple grin off your face. I’m discussing a serious subject and I expect it to be attended seriously!”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Grun, sir,” she replied with good humor, uncrossing her legs and sitting bolt upright in her wooden chair with her knees pressed together. It was a posture of studied insolence that Grun seemed not to notice.
“And can you tell the class what we were just discussing? Or were you too busy in cloud cuckoo land to pay attention?”
The class snickered, but Judikha didn’t even blush as she replied, “You had just explained, sir, that when two magnitudes have a common measure, that is, when another magnitude can be found which is contained in each an exact number of times, they are said to be ‘commensurable.’ Thus a line four-and-a-half and another three-and-a-half inches long are commensurable; for, if a half inch be taken as unit of length, the former contains the unit nine times and the latter seven times. If no...”
“That will do!” snapped Mr. Grun. “I think I’d like to see you after school, Miss Judikha. It’s about time that something was done about this attitude, this, this insolence of yours.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Grun, sir.”
“Haw! Haw!” came the porcine snort of Monkfish from behind her.
Judikha returned to Grun’s classroom after the final bell. He was alone. She noticed he carried the flexible, yard-long switch that she had not personally experienced for nearly a year now. Without a word, Grun went to the door, shut and latched it. An iron-grey light sifted through the slats at the windows, striping the chalk-laden atmosphere with hazy luminous bars. He stood with his back to the door, an end of the switch in either hand, flexing it up and down in sharp arcs. Slanting lines of light blended him into the dark wall and only this regular movement betrayed his presence.
“Judikha,” he said, finally, “I’ve not had to use this on you once this whole school year. I thought perhaps you’d finally learned at least one lesson. Perhaps if you hadn’t been so well-behaved for so long I wouldn’t be compelled to reprimand you in this way—it’s always much worse when a disciplined student goes astray. The fall is so much greater that the punishment must likewise be the greater.”
Judikha said nothing.
Mr. Grun cleared his throat. He actually said the word ahem. When he spoke again his voice was low and hoarse.
“Lean across that desk, young lady.”
Judikha rose from her seat and approached the great oak slab that loomed on the dias like a sarcophagus. She bent to lay her stomach across its surface when Grun stopped her.
“You know better than that. Drop your pants.”
She did as she was told, gritting her teeth so hard she could feel tiny bits of enamel flaking from them. Grun did not notice the momentary hesitation before she complied with his order. Nothing happened for a very long moment, and from beneath the hair that cloaked her face Judikha stole a surreptitious glance to her left. Grun was merely standing there, only a yard or two away, quivering like a lightning rod, his eyes like two oiled ball bearings embedded in a face glistening like an undercooked egg white. She wondered hopefully if the man might be having some sort of seizure when, suddenly, with no warning, like frog’s leg touched by a charged wire, he raised the cane and brought it swiftly down on her bare buttocks. She had no warning by which to brace herself and the pain shot from her eyes in sparks that momentarily blinded her. Three more times the cane came down, each time with the sound of a pistol shot. Judikha refused to cry out, though it cost her a tongue bitten until it bled. Tears oozed from eyes as tightly squeezed as sponges in a fist. She could hear Mr. Grun panting hoarsely. She knew her buttocks were crisscrossed with bright red welts and that the tenderness would be obvious to her classmates the next day.
“Oh, dear!” cried Mr. Grun, suddenly, softly, and she heard the cane rattle to the floor. “Oh, dear!” he repeated. It was an odd inflection, as though he were talking to a third party. “Oh, dear! This is dreadful! I’m so terribly sorry!”
She had no idea what was going on, or what may have happened. For a moment she thought that perhaps he had broken the skin and she was bleeding, but still she refused to react, rigidly keeping her place stretched across the desk.
“I’m so terribly—oh, my! Oh, see what I’ve done!”
She felt his fingertips brush her wounds and the touch stung almost as much as did the cane, as though each boney fingertip were a sharp needle. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” he continued in that bizarrely gentle voice, and this time she felt the hot, dry palm of his hand lightly caress her naked rump. Still she gritted her teeth and said nothing; but her brain whirled in confusion. What was this? What was this? What was Grun doing? She could hear him, behind her, panting like a dog.
Then she felt a single boney finger touch her there.
She spun on the tabletop like a gymnast, grasping the waistband of her trousers, her face as white and expressionless as a frozen pond. Mr. Grun, unprepared for this sudden action, fell forward, grasping at her legs to avoid falling; Judikha, thrown off balance, fell backwards off the desk, pulling Grun with her; they tumbled into a confused pile on the wooden floor. Grun fumbled with her, still mouthing incoherent apologies, tears pouring down his face, and although he may only have been trying to help her arise, unlikely as that seemed at the moment, all she knew, was aware of or was concerned with, was the scrawny, bleating body above her and the hands that still seemed to paw and pluck at her like emaciated dogs fighting over a table scrap. She drew her knees back and then violently straightened her legs. Grun was propelled, with a wheezing gasp, backward into the adjoining desks, scattering some while the rest fell atop his collapsing body.
Judikha got to her feet, adjusting her clothing while not taking her blazing eyes from the prostrate teacher.
“Oh, Musrum, oh, Musrum, oh, Musrum—” he repeated. “I’m ruined!” Then he saw the stony-faced girl heading toward the door. “Oh, no! Judikha! It was a—only a mistake! I—ah—I—my, my hand—ah—just slipped! I thought I’d wounded you! It’s dark, it’s difficult to see! I thought there was blood—that was all! It was nothing! You don’t understand!”
Judikha paused at the open door and briefly looked over her shoulder into the darkening room, where Mr. Grun writhed and whimpered among the pile of overturned furniture like a penitent before an offended god.
“You don’t understand!” he begged again, but the door was already shut and nothing remained but the echo of its closing.
For the remainder of the week Judikha was too preoccupied with the impending examination to pay much attention to Mr. Grun or she would certainly been aware of his metamorphosis. She had no intention of pursuing his indiscretion; she would keep her distance from him in the future, being more careful than ever to give him no excuse to be alone with her, and that would be the end of it, so far as she was concerned. She knew her place in the hierarchy of both the school and the larger society to which it belonged, and that either complaint or retaliation would do her more harm than good. The examination was far more important than anything else; she wanted nothing to distract her mind and energy from that. For, if all went as well as she hoped, this would be her last year in the Transmoltus and she could put it, Mr. Grun and all her previous sixteen years behind her.
Her single-mindedness, however, was a sort of tunnel vision, a over-specific filter, that prevented her from being aware of anything that was not immediately or obviously related to the examination. Thus she failed to notice that on the first day after the incident, Mr. Grun avoided her in every way possible. He did not speak to her, he did not look at her, he did not approach her. He avoided her eyes whenever she happened to glance in his direction. He did not call upon her when she raised her hand in response to a question. He did everything he could to pretend that she did not exist. On the second day Mr. Grun stared at her with frightened, furtive eyes, his normally pale face as waxily translucent as a block of lard, ineffectually mopping the cold perspiration that constantly oozed from it. On the third day, he still did not acknowledge her presence, but he now looked at her with suspicion mixed with his fear and by the fourth day that suspicion had transformed into anger and self-righteousness.
Two days before the examination, Judikha was sunrise when Pomfret touched her elbow in the corridor and asked to speak to her. It was the first time they had ever spoken. He was almost a full head shorter than she and looked to be only ten or twelve rather than the fourteen years he could rightfully claim. Judikha confused this apparent youthfulness with innocence and harmlessness. Most people did.
“You’ve been studying for the exam?” he asked.
“Of course I have.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet you study all night.”
“I’m used to it.”
“I’m trying out for the Patrol, too, but I don’t know if I can handle all that cramming. I’m not really cut out for brainwork, you know.”
“So I imagine.”
“Awful hard work, even for you, I bet?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Bet you’d give a lot to know all the answers, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I just mean, wouldn’t you like to know exactly what all the actual questions are going to be? Then you could just memorize the answers instead of all this general studying. I bet you won’t even have to know half of what you’re cramming!”
“That’s true, but that’s the way it is.”
“Not if you knew what the questions were going to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, wouldn’t you like to know what questions they’re going to ask? Exactly?”
“To tell you the truth, I’d rather not know.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, I’m not.”
“Think of all the time you’re wasting!”
“I’m not wasting it. I’ve got to learn all this stuff eventually anyway.”
“Balls. Why learn it before you need it? Maybe you’ll never need it!”
There seemed to be little reason to continue what she thought was a pointless conversation, so Judikha started to walk away.
“What a minute!” cried Pomfret, catching her again by her elbow.
“What is it?” she said, shaking him loose. “I’ve got to get to class.”
“This’ll only take a second. D’you know that old Grun has a copy of the examination already? It’s a book and he’s got it locked in his desk.”
“So?”
“So—what if I were to get hold of this book? Some people’d pay a lot to get a look at those questions.”
“Not me.”
“You’d be silly not to.”
“I’d be sillier if I did.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Nor will you ever, I assure you.”
“Hey! There’s no call to get snotty.”
“Look,” she said, turning her gaze for the first time squarely into his eyes. He flinched a little from the impact of that gaze, for which he hated her. “Look, you’re seriously in need of some advice. I don’t know exactly what you have in mind, and I don’t even want to guess, but I suggest you forget it. You’re only asking for more trouble than you can possibly imagine.”
“Yeah?” Pomfret sneered defiantly, but Judikha had already turned her back on him and was striding away with that long-legged assurance that annoyed him so much.
She was much more pleased when the next time she heard her name called, it was by Pomfret’s brother. She was just leaving the school for home, her arms filled with books, her chin resting on top of the stack.
“Judikha!” he said, coming up to her side. “Where you going?”
“Mmph,” she replied, unable to open her mouth. Rhys thoughtfully removed the top two books, allowing her jaw to drop far enough to speak. “I’m going home to study. Why?”
“You can study too much, you know.”
“How?”
“Well, I don’t know. You get a kind of brain-burn, I guess, like too much friction or something. You know, like you can’t run an engine at top speed forever. You get brain-burn. Makes you forget more’n you put in.”
“Yeah?’
“Sure. You need to give things a little time to soak in. Like it’s easier to fill a bottle slowly than by just dumping a bucketload on top of it.”
She thought a moment about that clumsily-put but vivid simile. “I suppose you have a point.”
“Sure I do. I know how important this exam is to you. I’m taking it myself. I plan to pass it and that’s exactly why I’m taking a holiday tonight.”
“Holiday?”
“A break. Got to relax a little. Let things soak in. A little brush-up tomorrow night and I’ll be all ready for the test.”
“I guess that does make some sense.”
“Of course it does. Why don’t you come along? Do you a power of good.”
“Come along where?”
“It’s all my brother’s idea. He’s a dumb little weasel but sometimes he has his inspirations. I’ve got together a bunch of the fellows, and a bunch of girls, too, and we’re all going out to the quarry for a picnic and a swim.”
Judikha had been to the old quarry many times before, but always alone. It was a vast pit with nearly vertical sides and a seemingly bottomless pool of water occupying about half its floor. Although signs were posted warning of the consequences of trespassing, the excavation had in fact been abandoned by both its owners and the law for decades. There was little worry about what damage anyone could do to a hole in the ground and there was even less concern about culpability. Every year there was at least one drowning and sometimes as many as a dozen and so what?
Still, it was a fine place to pass time during weekends, especially in the summer. The water was deep enough to be almost always cool, even if it was a metallic green and had the sharp taste of copper and one’s skin often itched and burned for hours afterward, and there were big flat rocks for sunning and shady nooks for sleeping—to say nothing of its advantages as an evening trysting-place, which were taken good advantage of to be sure.
Judikha had long ago determined when it would be most likely for the quarry’s facilities to be in use by others and therefore more often than not managed to enjoy them entirely to herself; sitting on the lip of the excavation reading or merely looking at the glistening city, basking in the thunder of the rockets, or, if the sun became too oppressive, stripping and slipping into the acrid, coppery water as slickly as a needle through fine green silk.
Judikha thought Rhys’ argument had its points. She herself had already been thinking that she lately seemed to be retaining less for the time spent studying. Perhaps he was right and there was a point of diminishing return. The Patrol examination was far too important to take chances with. On the other hand, she felt confident about her knowledge and the loss of a single evening’s study would not much hurt at this point and if it helped, then so much the better.
“All right.”
“Great!” he said, and for some reason she felt very pleased that he seemed to be so happy with her acquiescence. “Why don’t you leave your books here and go with us now? You can pick them up later, on your way back home.”
She didn’t want to do that, but neither did she want to lose her tentative advantage with Rhys; she didn’t want to leave his side for even a moment. So, dashing back into the building, she tucked the books onto the highest shelf she could reach in the coatroom. She ran outside, leaping down the steps, half afraid he would have disappeared in that brief interval. He was still there.
Together they walked the two miles to the outskirts of the Transmoltus.
It was at one and the same time the most pleasant and most frustrating half hour she had ever spent. She was as intensely aware of the physical presence of Rhys as she was of the pressing heat of the lowering sun, the ponderous humidity, the dusty, gritty, airless atmosphere, the rutted, potholed road. Was Rhys equally aware of her? He only talked of school, the subjects of term papers, the outcome of this game or that and, of course, the upcoming examination.
Whenever possible, she took advantage of irregularities in the path and allowed her body to briefly brush his, her hand to momentarily touch his own. Each time she would receive a shock as though she had discharged a Leyden jar although Rhys seemed oblivious. How could he not have felt the same thing?
The heat was becoming oppressive. The atmosphere contained more iron filings than it did oxygen. Trickles of perspiration stung her eyes and she could feel her shirt clinging wetly beneath her armpits, to the small of her back and beneath her breasts. Dark stains were spreading across Rhys’ shirt as well and she could smell his musky odor.
Like a dropped platter, the Transmoltus disintegrated into increasingly smaller bits as they passed first through condemned factories and abandoned warehouses then half-razed ruins, collapsed rubble, débris-filled blocks and empty lots.
When they arrived at the quarry, Judikha was surprised and distressed to see, rather than a homogeneous representation of students, only that coterie of ruffians who orbited around the massy center of Monkfish Glom. Food and drink were already being enthusiastically consumed, especially the latter since more than half the students were drunk. Others were splashing and shouting in the pool. What was Rhys doing with this gang? Had they finally accepted him into their circle? Had Rhys ever wanted to be accepted within their circle? She very much hated to think that would be so.
“I didn’t know you hung around with this group.”
“I don’t,” he replied to her infinite relief. “This whole affair is Pomfret’s idea.”
“That explains the company then.”
“Well, there’s no reason why we still can’t have some fun. The quarry’s big enough for everyone.”
There were implications and innuendos to that statement that were not lost upon a crackerjack mind such as Judikha’s. Rhys was deliberately suggesting they consider themselves as something apart from the rest of the group. A separate unit unto themselves. Oh my! Now what should I do? She had no answer; her Rhysocentric fantasies had never dared go so far as this.
“I hate it when it’s this hot this late in the day,” he said. “I’m covered with dust. It’s all over the inside of my mouth. Feels like ground glass. Let’s go for a swim and wash off before we eat, otherwise everything’ll taste like mud.”
“All right,” she agreed shakily, barely able to speak. “Practically everyone’s left the pool anyway. We can have it almost to ourselves.”
They had circled the pit to a point diametrically opposite the others, about five hundred feet distant, where there was a sort of little cove, a cup of dark green water. Rhys immediately began to shed his clothing and Judikha, with much more self-consciousness than she had ever thought she possessed, did the same. For some reason she found unaccountable, she tried to resist the temptation to look at the rapidly denuding boy although a few minutes earlier she would have said it was one of her fondest wishes. Fortunately, good sense won out against such unfamiliar modesty and she was almost dizzied by the lean, pale figure. Where in the world did someone like him ever get muscles like that? and how has he been managing to hide them? It must come from living on a farm, wrestling cows and heaving bales of hay or whatever it is they do there. Those hard, flat muscles look like slate shingles. Great Musrum almighty, I hope he doesn’t look at me!
To her disappointment she got her wish as Rhys plunged into the pool without as much as a backward glance, which was a little disconcerting. Didn’t he want to look? Judikha didn’t hesitate another second before following. Even though the metallic water stung her eyes, she opened them, looking around for Rhys. There he was, not ten feet ahead, shooting for the surface like a silvery torpedo. They broke into the air together.
“Ptuh!” he spat. “This water tastes like medicine!”
“I’m told it’s great for getting rid of lice and such.”
“Thanks.”
“Not that I was suggesting for a moment that...”
He dived under before her apology had reached its full clumsiness. She felt one of her ankles grasped and before she could react was jerked under. She kicked, broke free and grappled for her sleek attacker. Instead, she found herself enfolded from behind by long, hard arms that pressed against her breasts, was conscious of a warm body that touched her from shoulders to buttocks. She spun in his grasp, wriggling like an eel, felt her breasts flattening against his chest, his hands filling the convex arch of her back. Something brushed against her pubes, and somewhere within her loins there was a sudden rush of warmth, a pressure, a kind of convulsion like a fist clenching. She broke from Rhys’ grasp with a violence that took both of them by surprise.
For half an hour more they played like otters, but with their touches now discrete, brief, tentative, self-conscious.
They clambered from the water and, backs silently turned to one another with that illogical modesty encouraged by familiarity, dressed. Judikha was conscious that this new discretion indicated that something between them had changed. But what was it? And was it for good or for ill?
The sky had grown purple since they had begun their swim and the Ring was a ghostly rainbow while the lambent, swirling glow of the furnaces reflected from the low clouds.
“Let’s sit over here,” Rhys suggested, gesturing toward a flat rock that overlooked the pool. While she squatted there hugging her knees, he knelt beside her and fumbled open the paper bag he’d brought. First he took out a square of newspaper which he spread neatly on the rock, smoothing it flat with his hands. In the center of this he placed a half-loaf of bread that did not appear to have gone entirely stale, a chunk of hard, orange cheese and a bottle of wine. Judikha picked this up with some admiration.
“Where did you get wine?”
“Oh, well—” He was actually blushing, Judikha noticed, considerably charmed. “Well—I’ve been saving up for something special. It was nothing, really.”
In reply Judikha reached inside her folded jacket and, with a magician’s gesture, brought forth a sausage as big as both her fists together.
“Where did you get that?” Rhys asked in amazement.
“I picked it up on the way here.”
“On the way? I was with you the whole time. You never stopped anywhere or picked anything up.”
“Well—” Damn it, now she felt herself blushing. “It’s just something I’m good at, that’s all.”
Rhys was silent for a moment, apparently chewing on a thought as though it were a bit of mental gristle. “You mean you stole it?”
Judikha bristled. “Did I ask you so many questions?”
“I’m sorry. Never mind. Here, you open the bottle while I get a knife for the cheese and, uh, sausage.”
They ate and drank in silence. The sun was well behind the fuming barricade of the Transmoltus; the quarry was filling with indigo shadows. She noticed that some of the boys and girls were slipping into the spreading pools of darkness, not that it did them any good—she could see perfectly well what they were doing. She hoped—perversely—that Rhys did not notice what was going on around them, or, rather, that she was noticing.
“Have you seen Pomfret?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“I haven’t seen Pomfret around yet. Have you?”
“I haven’t made any particular effort to notice anyone, least of all him.”
“Well, this was his idea, after all.”
Well, thank you very much.
“Though I’m awfully glad he suggested it,” he continued, and she was glad that she’d kept her thought to herself.
“I’m glad, too,” she ventured.
“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. That was awfully personal.”
“No, no. That’s all right.”
“It’s really none of my business.”
“I didn’t mind at all.”
“If you’re sure...?”
“It’s all right. No, I don’t have a boyfriend. It’s certainly no secret. In fact, I’ll tell you something that I’ve never told anyone else.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t mind. I’d like to.”
“Well, it’s entirely up to you.”
“It’s just that...well, being here with you and all.”
“You can tell me anything you want.”
“That’s just what I mean. I trust you.”
“Thank you very much. That’s a fine compliment.”
He had no idea how much of a compliment it was; indeed, it was a two-fold compliment: she had never told anyone such a thing in all her life—she never told anyone anything for that matter— nor had she ever before placed her trust in another human being. She herself couldn’t believe what she had just said.
“I’ve never had any boyfriends—before now,” she added boldly, glancing sideways quickly to see if that subtlety had missed him. Apparently it had.
“I’m really surprised,” he said.
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re not at all bad-looking.”
“There’s a laugh!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, just look!”
“I am looking.”
“Oh come on! I’m a string bean! I’m as flat-chested as an ironing board and I have a big nose!”
“I always thought you looked kind of lithe and aristocratic.”
“Oh, right!”
“Well, I’d say that my opinion counts for more than yours because I have to look at you more often than you do. Therefore, if I like what I see, your opinion isn’t really relevant. Besides, do you really want to look like those pudgy, cow-faced girls? They make my skin crawl. I’m really surprised you don’t think you’re good-looking. You’re, well, you’re very unusual-looking.”
“I know that much.”
“No. I mean—how can I say this? Most things that are really beautiful have something unusual about them, something different. There was something some old philosopher said...I can’t remember...oh, yes! ‘There is no great beauty that hath not some strangeness in its proportion.’”
“Yeah, I’m strange all right.”
“You have beautiful eyes. I’ve never seen eyes so large. And they’re so dark I can see my reflection in them—they’re like drops of black oil. And you have those black, hooked eyebrows that look exactly like a pair of circumflex accent. They make you look like you’re questioning or doubting everything. And you’ve got cheekbones that look like those slate ledges over there.”
“So what about my nose, then?”
“It’s like the gnomon on a sundial.”
“My lips are too thin.”
“But you have a charming smile. And your teeth—”
“Are too small.”
“—are like two strands of pearls, all exactly alike.”
“I’m awfully tall and scrawny.”
“You’re as supple and graceful as a boa constrictor.”
“You’re turning me into a poem!” she laughed.
“I wish you laughed more often. You’re definitely very pretty when you laugh.”
“You’re very sweet, Rhys, to say all of this. But I know what I am.”
“Well, I think you’re wrong and eventually you’ll stop being so stubborn and admit that I’m right.”
“Perhaps you’ll have to convince me.”
“I thought that’s what I was just now trying to do.” He suddenly grew serious, almost solemn. He looked at his hands, which were wringing themselves in his lap, with some surprise, as though he hadn’t expected to find them there. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Judikha.”
Holy Musrum! Is this going to be it? She felt a wave of dizziness. Stop it! for heaven’s sake—you’re going to embarrass yourself!
“Wha—what’s that?”
“Well, this might seem awfully personal—I mean, we’ve barely gotten to know one another...”
“But we’re fixing that now, aren’t we?”
“True. I have to admit I respect your levelheadedness and practical outlook more than ever. Look here, Judikha, I can be big enough to confess that I’ve been a snob—I looked down on you. There. I’ve said it. I thought less of you just because, because of, well, just because of who you were, where you came from. Oh, this is coming out all wrong!”
“Never mind. Go ahead. Please.” It was becoming hard to breath. What was happening? Was she having some sort of asthmatic fit? Had the water of the pool finally poisoned her?
“Well—it’s not right to think less of someone just because they’ve lived differently than you or have different standards or whatever. I finally got off my high horse and realized that in spite of appearances you really were a very decent person. Not at all like those,” he said, gesturing into the surrounding, grunting, giggling shadows.
“Thanks.”
“Well—there’s no one else I’d rather turn to for advice.”
“Advice?”
“Yes. Well—I might as well blurt it out and get it over with. Everyone in the school probably knows anyway—what do you think of Bettina?”
“Bettina?”
“Yes. Bettina Henlopen. I think she’s just wonderful. I know the two of you are pretty close; you’re probably her best friend. What do you think my chances would be if I asked to see her? Be as honest as you can. Say! Where are you going? Judikha? Where are you going?”
That night, Judikha brought a cobblestone to her room and ground into powder every mirror she owned.
Both Mr. Grun and the headmaster were waiting for Judikha the next morning. She looked at them with disinterested, dull red eyes. Without any explanation, she was escorted to the latter’s office. The headmaster sat behind his desk and Mr. Grun stood just to his left. They indicated with a gesture that Judikha was expected to take the single wooden chair that was placed in the center of the room, facing the heavy, sarcophagus-like desk. So far not a word had been spoken by anyone. She sat, demurely and quietly, not at all certain what was going on, yet not in the least apprehensive. She had too many other things on her mind to be particularly curious about whatever trivial problems the two men might have. She’d been in the headmaster’s office often enough before; she’d listen to whatever he had to say and then get back to class and her work. She knew that she never stepped so far over the bounds of propriety that there was ever anything to fear but the waste of her time.
There was a very long silence. Then the headmaster spoke. His voice was grim and unfriendly.
“You planned to take the Space Patrol Academy Entrance Examination, didn’t you, Miss Judikha?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This was important to you, I understand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very important?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you characterize yourself as ambitious?”
“I guess I would, sir. At least, I know that I have to get—must get into the Academy.”
“How badly did you want to get in?”
“I want that more than I’ve ever wanted anything, sir.” She was dimly aware that the headmaster had used the past tense. Did. It hadn’t sounded right.
“Would you say that you’d do anything to pass that exam?”
“Yes, sir, I suppose so,” she replied and knew immediately that, for some reason, it was entirely the wrong answer. She was suddenly wide awake, wrenched from her self-absorption like a dozing cat startled by an unexpected noise. What was going on here?
The headmaster reached into the top drawer of his desk and brought out a small blue book. He tossed it onto the geometrical center of his blotter. His expression was smug and Judikha knew that the punch line must be a good one.
“Miss Judikha, do you know what that is?”
“I have no idea, sir.”
“You’ve never seen it before?”
“No, sir.”
Again the headmaster glanced at Mr. Grun. The teacher’s face was as expressionless as a snake’s.
“Miss Judikha, I believe you know perfectly well what it is.”
“Sir?”
The headmaster leaned back into his chair, placed his fingertips together and sighed. Mr. Grun kept his silence, but—knowing that his superior could not see him—suddenly leered at her. The lascivious sneer lasted only a moment, like a rabid animal peeping from its hiding place, but Judikha saw it, as she was intended to, and it frightened her badly. Whatever was about to happen was going to be unique and it was going to be devastating. She was sure of that.
“Miss Judikha,” continued the headmaster, “you and I both know what this book is: it’s the instructor’s copy of the Patrol examination. It was taken from Mr. Grun’s desk last night and returned this morning. It was cleverly planned that he would never notice its temporary disappearance, but that plan was not quite clever enough.”
“Sir, if you’re suggesting that I took it...”
“I’m ‘suggesting’ no such thing, young lady. There’s no ‘suggestion’ about it. I know, Mr. Grun knows and you know that you removed it.”
“I did not!”
“No? I think we have sufficient evidence to the contrary.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Oh? Do you think so because you believe you were too clever?”
“I think so because I had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you recognize this?” he asked, tossing another object onto the blotter. It was Judikha’s locket.
“Well?” he urged.
Her hand went to her throat and for the first time she realized that the locket was missing. It was a gesture she regretted making the moment her hand had begun to move.
“Yes, I recognize it.”
“Mr. Grun found it inside his locked desk drawer this morning. How do you suppose it got there?”
“I don’t know, sir. Someone must have taken it and put it there.”
“‘Someone must have taken it.’ Do you have any idea how feeble that sounds? How pitiful? How desperate?”
“I can’t help that, sir. It must be true.”
“No, Miss Judikha. The truth is much simpler than that.”
“But, sir, just because Mr. Grun found my locket in his desk doesn’t mean anything. Someone could have taken it. You have to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
“I would be inclined to do so under any other circumstances, or for any other student. Admittedly, although your record is far from exemplary, and your behavior is not at all in keeping with the decorum expected—indeed, demanded—of a young lady your age, your grades have been excellent. And you’ve been in no really serious trouble—until now, no more trouble I must admit than any other child your age. Taken by itself, that would seem to indicate that there’d be no good reason for you to want to crib the examination.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“That is, if there weren’t corroborating evidence.”
“Sir?”
“Mr. Grun?”
The teacher nodded and went to the door. He opened it an inch or two and spoke to someone on the other side. He turned back to face the headmaster as the door swung open and someone entered the room. Judikha risked a surreptitious glance and was amazed to see Pomfret, his face a pale mask, taking a seat to her right. What was he doing here? They never spoke, other than that one time the previous day, they never associated with one another. What could he know about this?
“Master Pomfret, when was the last time you saw Miss Judikha?”
“Here, sir, last night.”
“That’s right, sir,” Judikha interjected. “He asked me to go with him and his friends to the quarry.”
“That’s true, sir,” said Pomfret, “but that wasn’t the time that I meant.”
“You mean you saw her later?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here at the school?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What was she doing?”
“She was breaking into Mr. Grun’s classroom, sir.”
“What?” cried Judikha, half rising from her seat.
“Please don’t interrupt, Miss Judikha,” said the headmaster. “And sit down. Continue, Master Pomfret. How did you know she was breaking in?”
“Well, sir, I know that Mr. Grun keeps that door locked, and, besides, she was bending over the handle and I could hear strange noises.”
“Noises?”
“Little metallic clicks and scrapes. Not like a key would make.”
“Then what happened?”
“The door opened and she went inside.”
“Did she turn the light on?”
“No, sir.”
“What did you see next?”
“I was still trying to decide what to do—I mean, I thought that I ought to go in and stop her or notify the custodian or something. Obviously, she wasn’t up to anything legitimate. I mean, there was her reputation and all, you know. Everyone knows about that. Anyway, before I had a chance to think, she came back out and relocked the door.”
“She never saw you?”
“No, sir. I was in a shadow behind the drinking fountain.”
“Then what did she do?”
“She left the building.”
“Was she carrying anything?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What?”
“A blue book just like that one there, sir,” the boy replied, pointing at the volume on the headmaster’s desk.
“You lying piece of rat snot!” Judikha cried in midair as she launched herself at her betrayer. They crashed to the floor in a tangle of legs, arms and pieces of chair. The boy screamed shrilly as Judikha straddled his chest and, grasping his ears, began banging his head against the bare planks of the floor. A red haze obscured her vision, as though she were looking through a scarlet silk or a film of blood. The headmaster had leaped from his chair and was thumping his fist on the desktop incongruously, as though he were keeping time with Pomfret’s head. Mr. Grun rushed to the boy’s rescue, grasped Judikha under her arms and pulled her to her feet. She pummeled him with her elbows and kicked his shins with her heels as she twisted and writhed like an angry snake.
“Get your filthy hands off me! Let me go, you damned perv—”
Mr. Grun suddenly released her, spun her to face him and slapped her with a backhanded blow that threw her to the floor. Her head rang like a schoolbell and she tasted the sudden rush of blood over her tongue. Grun turned to the door, opened it and shouted for the receptionist to get the custodian, a burly ex-Army man, and to call the nearest policeman.
“Miss Judikha,” said the headmaster with the cold finality of a judge pronouncing a capital sentence, “your actions speak louder than any confession. Don’t make things worse for yourself. Wait quietly for the police and things will go easier for you.”
“Bullshit,” she said, picking up a chair leg as she rose from the floor. One side of her face was bright red from the blow she’d received and trickles of blood zigzagged from one nostril and the corner of her mouth.
“Now, Miss Judikha,” said the headmaster, stepping around his desk, his hands raised placatingly, but Judikha wasn’t placatable. She stepped toward Pomfret, who still lay flat on the floor, holding his head, and raised her makeshift club as though it were an axe and she were about to split firewood. It was more than clear that what she meant to split was Pomfret’s head. Grun, to rescue his star witness, moved to intercept her. She whirled, suddenly, and struck the teacher across his knees with the heavy cudgel. The patellae shattered with a sound like walnuts cracking. He gave a satisfyingly high-pitched wail and collapsed like a house of cards. Judikha leaped over his writhing body and made for the door. The custodian, an ox-like man used to quelling rebellious students and looking forward to pummeling a little tranquility and respect into yet one more, entered just in time to receive the butt end of Judikha’s club in his vast and receptive stomach. He was not so easily disabled as the teacher, but was sufficiently surprised and slow-witted to allow her to slip past his flailing paws.
Judikha bolted down the corridor, into the foyer, out the main doors, down the steps and into the crowded street where she knew how to get well and perfectly lost.
She returned to her garret by a convoluted route, just to keep on the side of caution. She knew that no one at the school, neither teacher nor student, knew exactly where she lived. She also knew it would not be terribly difficult for them to find out. Oh, wonderful! she thought, as she remembered all the time she had spent laboriously filling in her precise address on the Patrol examination application form.
Well,now what? she wondered, as she sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed. The terrible and probably irrevokable ramifications of what had just happened were only now occurring to her, as the pain of a terrible wound will come long after it has been inflicted. Like the snuffing of a lamp, her dream of becoming a Space Patrol cadet was extinguished; that much seemed certain, though the hardness of it was still very abstract, like uncongealed concrete. At the moment, she simply sat there, quivering like an overcharged capacitor, trying to decide which of a dozen violent emotions to surrender herself to.
Should she tell Rhys about his brother? It was the first thing she decided to do, but then thought better of it. Could she save herself by exposing Pomfret as a thief and a liar? No—no matter how much satisfaction it might give her to expose him. In any case, it would be dangerous trying to contact any of the students, least of all Rhys. He was just righteous enough to turn her in, crying genuine tears of agony the whole time, the stuffy little martyr.
She decided as she made all her decisions—immediately, unhesitatingly and without afterthought—decided that her only recourse was to leave the city immediately. At the moment, no one would be expecting her to do anything quite so drastic and if she took advantage of that she could be long gone before it occurred to the authorities to watch the exits.
She took a canvas bag from where it hung from a nail and packed the few belongings with which she dared burden herself. She would have to leave her books, and that was very hard. She allowed herself only these: two slim volumes, one on celestial mechanics and another on astronavigation—since she knew that she could still join the Patrol as a common spaceman and felt that if she continued to study these subjects it might lead to an early advancement—and her dog-eared biography of Princess Bronwyn. And nothing else but the few clothes she owned.