A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (10 page)

“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.”