Sassinak (8 page)

"Might as well," said Silui. "One of us that we know of shifted to Thek form. A child. He'd meant to shift to a rock, which any of us can do briefly, but a Thek was there and he took that pattern. He never came back. The Thek wouldn't comment."

"Typical." Sass digested that. "So . . . you can take different shapes. How do you decide what kind of human to be? Are you even bisexual, as we are?"

"Video media, for the most part," said Gabril. "All those tapes and disks and cubes of books, plays, holodramas, whatever. We're taught never to choose a star, or anyone well-known, and preferably someone dead a century or so. And then we can make minor changes, of course, within the limits of human variation. I chose a minor character in a primitive adventure film, something about wild tribesmen on Old Earth. At first I wanted blue hair, but my teachers convinced me it wouldn't do. Not for an Academy prospect."

Silui grinned. "I wanted to be Carin Coldae—did you ever see her shows?"

Sass nodded.

"But they said no major performers, so I made my hair yellow and did the teeth different." She bared her perfect teeth, and Sass remembered that Carin Coldae had had a little gap in front. She also noticed that none of them had answered her questions about Weft sexuality, and decided to look it up herself. When she did, she realized why they hadn't tried to explain:
four
sexes, and mating required a rocky seacoast at full tide with an entire colony of Wefts. It produced freeswimming larvae, who returned (the lucky few) to moult into a smaller size of the adult form. Wefts were exquisitely sensitive to certain kinds of radiation, and Wefts who left their homeworlds would never join the mating colony. No wonder Marik wouldn't discuss sex—and had that combination of wistfulness and amused superiority toward eager young humans.

By this time, some of her other friends had realized which cadets were Wefts, and Sass found herself getting sidelong looks from those who disapproved of "messing around with aliens." It was this which led to her worst row in the Academy.

She had never been part of the society crowd, not with her background, but she knew exactly which cadets were. Randolph Neil Paraden, a senior that year, lorded it over all with any social pretensions at all. Teeli Pardis, of her own class, wasn't in the same league with a Paraden, and once tried to explain to Sass how important it was to stay on the right side of that most eminent young man.

"He's a snob," Sass had said, in her first year, when Paraden, then a second-year, had held forth at some length on the ridiculousness of letting the children of non-officers into the Academy. "It's not just me—take Issi. So her father's not commissioned: so what? She's got more Fleet in her little finger than a rich fop like Paraden has in his whole—"

"That's not the point, Sass," Pardis had said. "The point is that you don't cross Paraden Family. No one does, for long. Please . . . I like you, and I want to be friends, but if you get sour with Neil, I'm—I just
can't
, that's all."

By maintaining a cool courtesy towards everyone that turned his barbs aside, Sass had managed not to involve herself in a row with the Paraden Family's representative—until her friendship with Wefts made it necessary. It began with a series of petty thefts. The first victim was a girl who'd refused to sleep with Paraden, although that didn't come out until later. She thought she'd lost her dress insignia herself, and accepted the rating she got philosophically. Then her best friend's heirloom silver earrings disappeared, and two more thefts on the same corridor (a liu-silk scarf and two entertainment cubes) began to heighten tension unbearably in the last weeks before midterm exams.

Sass, in the next corridor, heard first about the missing cubes. Two days later, Paraden began to spread rumors that the Wefts were responsible. "They can change shape," he said. "Take any shape they want—so of course they could
look
just like the room's proper occupant. You'd never notice."

Issi told Sass about this, mimicking Paraden's accent perfectly. Then she dropped back into her own. "That stinker—he'll do anything to advance himself. Claims he can prove it's Wefts—"

"It's not!" Sass straightened up from the dress boots she'd been polishing. "They won't take the shape of someone alive: it's against their rules."

Issi wrinkled her brow at Sass. "I suppose
you'd
know—and no, I don't hate you for having them as friends. But it's not going to help you now, Sass, not if Randy Paraden has everyone suspecting them."

Worse was to come. Paraden himself called Sass in, claiming that he had been given permission to investigate the thefts. From the way his eyes roamed over her, she decided that theft wasn't all he wanted to investigate. He had the kind of handsome face that is used to being admired, and not only for its money. But he began with compliments for her performance, and patently false praise for her "amazing" ability to fit in despite a deprived childhood.

"I just wish you'd tell me what you know about the Wefts," he said, bringing his gaze back to hers. "Come on—sit down here, and fill me in. You're supposed to be our resident expert, and I hear you're convinced they're not guilty. Explain it to me—maybe I just don't know enough about them . . ."

Her instinct told her he had no interest whatever in Wefts, but she had to be fair. Didn't she? Reluctantly, she sat and began explaining what she understood of Weft philosophy. He nodded, his lids drooping over brilliant hazel eyes, his perfectly groomed hands relaxed on his knees.

"So you see," she finished, "no Weft would consider taking the form of someone with whom it might be confused: they don't take the forms of famous or living persons."

A smile quirked his mouth, and his eyes opened fully. His voice was still smooth as honey. "They really convinced you, didn't they? I wouldn't have thought you'd be so gullible. Of course, you haven't had a
normal
upbringing—there are so many things beyond your experience . . ."

Rage swamped her, interfering with coherent speech, and his smile widened to a predatory grin. "You're gorgeous when you're mad, Cadet Sassinak . . . but I suppose you know that. You're tempting me, you really are . . . d'you know what happens to girls who tempt me? I'll bet you're good in bed—" Suddenly his hands were no longer relaxed on his knees; he had moved even as he spoke, and the expensive scent he wore (surely that's not regulation! Sass's mind said, focussing on the trivial) was right there in her nose. "Don't fight me, little slave," he said in her ear. "You'll never win, and you'll wish you hadn't . . . OUCH!"

Despite the ensuing trouble, which went all the way to the Academy Commandant (and probably further than that, considering the Paraden Family), Sass had no happier memory for years than the moment in which she disabled Randolph Neil Paraden with three quick blows and left him grunting in pain on the deck. There was something so satisfying about the
crunch
transmitted up her arm, that it almost frightened her, and she never considered telling Abe, lest he find a reason she should repent. Nor did she confess that part to the Academy staff, though she left Paraden's office and went straight to the Commandant's office to turn herself in.

Paraden's attempt to explain himself, and put the blame for theft on the Wefts, did not work . . . although Sass wondered if it would have, given more time, or if she had not testified so strongly against him. When the first theft victim found that Paraden was involved, she realized that her "missing" dress insignia might have been stolen instead, and her testimony put the final seal on the case. Paraden had no chance to threaten Sass in person after that, but she was sure she'd earned an important enemy for the future. At least he wouldn't be
in
the Fleet. Paraden's clique, subject to intense scrutiny by the authorities after his dismissal, avoided Sass strictly. Even if one of them had wanted to be friendly, they'd not have risked more trouble.

Sass came out of it with a muted commendation. "You'll not say anything of this to your fellow cadets," the Commandant said severely. "But you showed good judgment. It's too bad you had to resort to physical force—you were justified, I'm not arguing that, but it's always better to think ahead and avoid the need to hit someone, if you can. Other than that, though, you did exactly the right things at the right time, and I'm pleased. The others will be wary of you awhile, and I would be most unhappy to find you using that to your advantage . . . you understand?"

"Yes, sir." She did, indeed, understand. It had been a narrow scrape, and could have gone badly. What she really wanted was a chance to get back to work and succeed the way Abe would want her to: honestly, on her own merits, without favoritism.

"We may seem to be leaning on you a bit, in the next week or so: don't worry too much."

"Yes, sir."

No one had to lean; she seemed sufficiently subdued, and eager to return to normal, as much as Academy life was ever normal. Her instructors were not surprised, and she would not know for years of the glowing comments in her record.

Graduation. Sassinak, scoring high on all the exam postings, came into graduation week in the kind of euphoria she had once dreamed of. Honor graduate, with the gold braid and tassels. Cadet commandant: and the two did not often go together. She felt on fire with it, crackling alive a centimeter beyond her fingertips, and from the way the others treated her, that's exactly how she looked. At the final fitting for graduation, she stared into the tailor's mirror and wondered. Was she really
that
perfect, that vision of white and gold? Not a wrinkle, not a rumple, a shape that—she now admitted—was nothing short of terrific, what with all the gymnastics practice. The uniform clung to it, but invested it with dignity, all at once. Nowhere in the mirror could she see a trace of the careless colonial girl, or the ragged slave, or even the rumpled trainee. She looked the way she'd always wanted to look. The mischievous brown eyes in the mirror crinkled . . . except that she'd never intended to be smug. She hated smug. Laughter fought with youthful dignity, as she struggled to hold perfectly still for the tailor's last stitches. Dare she breathe, in that uniform? She had to.

Abe would be so proud, she thought, leading the formation into the Honor Square for the last time. He was there, but she didn't even think of glancing around to find him. He would see what he had made, what he had saved . . . for a mood went grim, thinking of the latest bad news, another colony plundered. Every time such news came in, she thought of girls like her, children like Lunzie and Janek, people, real people, murdered and enslaved. But the crisp commands brought her back to the moment. Her own voice rang out in answer, brisk and impersonal.

The ceremony itself, inherited from a dozen military academies in the human tradition, and borrowing bits from all of them and the nonhumans as well, lasted far too long. The planetary governor welcomed everyone, the senior FSP official responded. Ambassadors from all the worlds and races that sent cadets to the Academy had each his or her or its speech to make. Each time the band had the appropriate anthem to play, and the Honor Guard had the appropriate flag to raise, with due care, on the pole beside the FSP banner. Sassinak did not fidget, but without moving a muscle could see that the civilians and guests did exactly that, and more than once. A child wailed, briefly, and was removed. Sunlight glinted suddenly from one of the Marine honor guard's decorations: he'd taken a deep breath of disgust at something a politician said. Sass watched a cloud shadow cross the Yard and splay across Gunnery Hall. Awards: Distinguished teaching award, distinguished research into Fleet history, distinguished (she thought) balderdash. Academic departments had awards, athletic departments had theirs.

Then the diplomas, given one by one, and then—at last—the commissioning, when they all gave their oaths together. And then the cheers, and the hats flying high, and the roar from the watching crowd.

"So—you're going to be on a cruiser, are you?" Abe held up a card, and a waiter came quickly to serve them.

"That's what it said." Sass wished she could be three people: one here with Abe, one out celebrating with her friends, and one already sneaking aboard the cruiser, to find out all about it. Everyone wanted to start on a cruiser, not some tinpot little escort vessel or clumsy Fleet supply ship. Sure, you had to serve on almost everything at least once, but starting on a cruiser meant being, in however junior a way,
real
Fleet. Cruisers were where the action was, real action.

They were having dinner in an expensive place, and Abe had already insisted she order the best. Sass could not imagine what the colorful swirls on her plate had been originally, but the meal was as tasty as it was expensive. The thin slice of jelly to one side she
did
know: crel, the fruiting body of a fungus that grew only on Regg, the world's single most important export . . . besides Fleet officers. She raised a glass of wine to Abe, and winked at him.

He had aged, in the four years she'd been a cadet. He was almost bald now, and she hadn't missed the wince as when he folded himself into the chair across from her. His knuckles had swollen a little, his wrinkles deepened, but the wicked sparkle in his eye was the same.

"Ah, girl, you do make my heart proud. Not 'girl,' now: you're a woman grown, and a lady at that. Elegant. I knew you were bright, and gutsy, but I didn't know you'd shape into elegant."

"Elegant?" Sass raised an eyebrow, a trick she'd been practicing in front of her mirror, and he copied her.

"Elegant. Don't fight it; it suits you. Smart, sexy, and elegant besides. By the way, how's the nightlife this last term?"

Sass grimaced and shook her head. "Not much, with all we had to do." Her affair with Harmon hadn't lasted past midyear exams, but she looked forward to better on commissioning leave. And surely on a cruiser she'd find more than one likely partner. "You told me the Academy would be tough, but I thought the worst would be over after the first year. I don't see how being a real officer can be harder than being a cadet commander."