Midshipman (2 page)

He nodded silently and clasped his hands behind his back, ready for anything.

“All of my life,” I explained, “people have told me that the worlds of Marcus are the freest, most-enlightened, richest places in the universe, and their ruling House the most benevolent and noble.” I bowed slightly. “I suspect that this is true, from what little I’ve seen. All you Marcus’s seem to care about is what’s good for those who depend on you, serfs and anthro-slave alike. I want to be like that, more than anything else in the universe.” I smiled. “So, my Lord, I throw the question back on you. You’re wise where I am ignorant, and mature where I’m young. What I want is to do what’s best for everyone everywhere, no matter how difficult or risky it may be. Therefore, I’ll willingly follow wherever you may choose to take me. It’d be especially nice if you led me back to an engine room—I’ll admit that freely. I very much liked being an engineer. But, it’s up to you.”  

2

It was amazing how quickly my situation changed, once Lord Robert finished greeting the Governor and got down to serious work. The first thing that happened, just about midnight, was that some vet’s assistants came in and tried to take Patrick away. Neither he nor I could figure out what was going on until fresh flowers appeared in a vase and someone rolled in a little bed-desk with a data terminal on it. Then suddenly, all at once, I understood. “Do you want to stay here with me, Patrick?” I demanded of my bucolic room-mate just as they were ready to roll him out.

“I… I… I mean…” he stuttered, clearly at a loss for words. “I
like
you, David.”

I nodded and thought about how James would handle things. “I like you too, Patrick,” I reassured him with a smile.  Then I looked up at the lead assistant. “Does he really
need
to go? I’d miss him an awful lot.”

Then she was stammering, and so was everyone else until finally the old farmer was rolled back in next to me again, his eyes still the size of saucers. I was glad they took my suggestion—the fact was that Patrick had been almost as badly off as I was, and needed a lot more than just a new liver to be truly healthy again. Why his owner refused him better care I had no idea. But the one thing I knew for certain was that telling his tractor-story was good for him, and I wasn’t sure that anyone else would listen more than once.

The next morning Dr. Drusy was in bright and early to see me. Which was in itself remarkable— up until then he’d only come by for a few seconds once or twice. He listened to my heart, thumped my chest, and beat on my knees with a little rubber hammer, stuff that his assistants always did for him before. Most amazingly of all, though, he smiled a lot and called me by my first name. Something had clearly changed, and I didn’t think it was his opinion of Free Rabbits.

About ten-thirty, while I was still getting the data-console set up the way I liked it, another human appeared and knocked on my door. “Come in!” I cried out—it wasn’t latched anymore—and a rather plump gray-headed man in highly-formal dress stepped in. “Master Birkenhead?” he asked politely.

“I’m David,” I confirmed, nodding.

He smiled. “Pleased to meet you. My name is Israel Banes. You may’ve heard young James refer to me?”

My jaw dropped—Mr. Banes, as James called him, was the House of Marcus’s chief tutor. He’d overseen the education of three generations of nobility. “I can’t believe… I mean, James was afraid that you’d been left behind!”

“He had every reason to so fear,” Mr. Banes replied. “But I was able to stow away aboard a neutral freighter after the invasion was over.” He smiled. “A far less adventurous escape than your own, I’ll grant. Yet, it had its moments.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m told that you’ve accepted my tutelage.”

I looked down at the sheets. “I’ve agreed to do anything Lord Robert wants me to do. So if that’s what he says, than I guess I have.” I raised my eyes again. “If you’ll have me, that is. I mean, I don’t…”

“Rubbish!” Mr. Banes declared, shaking his head. “Absolute rubbish!” Then his face went hard. “Let’s make one thing perfectly clear from day one, young man. You’ll get no special treatment from me because you’re a Rabbit, d’ye hear? I’ll expect no less from you than I would from James or anyone else.”

I gulped. “Yes, sir.”

He smiled at that, his features softening once more. “Your accomplishments to date speak for themselves, son. So I’ve no concerns regarding your basic character, and that’s always the most important thing. But… What about your academics?”

“I left a copy of my apprenticeship files with James before the boarding action,” I explained. “I’m okay with numbers, or at least Dad always thought so. Though I’m afraid I can’t read Latin.”

“Heh!” my tutor snorted. “Few boys your age can, so don’t worry too much on that account. But… How far advanced is your mathematical training? Have you begun quadratics yet?”

I blushed. “I’m a little past those, actually.”

He smiled. “Calculus, then?”

I blushed redder. “I can do rough Field-theory approximations in standardized six-dimensional format. Though I still get them wrong sometimes. And I haven’t learned n-dimensional formulations at all yet. I sort of need some help with those, I’m afraid. No matter how hard I study the book, I can’t quite figure them out alone.”

Mr. Bane’s mouth opened, then closed without uttering a word. Then he looked away. “So help me, I’m going to whip that little whelp!” he muttered eventually.

“Sir?” I asked, not understanding.

“James,” he explained. “He told me you knew a little math.”

“Ah,” I replied, understanding. Then I smiled too. “He’s a little smart himself.”

The tutor snorted again. “Heaven only knows what mischief you two are going to dream up together. Probably blow up an entire planetary system or something.” Then he smiled. “He also says that you’re deficient in social studies. Though that’s natural enough, given the way you’ve concentrated on just one subject.” He titled his head to one side. “Was he sandbagging me on that, too?”

I shook my head and looked down. “No sir. Dad didn’t want me to spend time on anything but engineering-related stuff. He said that was more than enough for a Rabbit.”

Mr. Banes nodded. “Sensible enough, if all you ever aspire to be is a highly-competent yet one-dimensional technician. Which, sadly, is the very best that Rabbits have ever been able to hope for.” He tilted his head slightly. “Until now, that is.”

I blinked and lowered my ears, not really understanding. “I was going to read more novels and history and stuff as soon as I got the console set up right,” I explained defensively. “I like them.”

“Then by all means do so!” Mr. Banes agreed with a nod. “In certain exceptional cases, the very best thing a teacher can do for his student is stand back and keep out of the way; James is such a case, and you may well prove to be of the same caliber. Certainly that was the intent.”

“The intent?” I asked. “What intent?”

The tutor smiled and changed the subject. “I’ll be your primary instructor in other things besides academics, David. Etiquette, for example. And far, far more.” He stepped over to the door and waved at someone; a young gray-furred Rabbit not much older than me stepped through the door and looked down at the floor. “This is Barton,” he explained, patting the bunny on the shoulder. “And Barton, this is David.”

“Hello, sir,” Barton whispered.

“Hello!” I replied, smiling. Then I looked back at Mr. Banes.

“Barton,” he explained, “has been assigned as your personal servant for the time being. We bought him locally, expressly for this purpose. While you’re still infirm, that is—only milord has his own personal footmen under ordinary circumstances.” He looked at me very closely. “He’ll be here to run errands for you, or to do anything else at all that you might wish him to.”

I blinked. “But I don’t need—“

“In the meantime,” Mr. Banes continued, raising his voice and speaking over my objections, “I suggest you might indeed be well-served by reading a few novels and histories of your own choosing—I’m not disposed to assign you anything substantive yet; the truth of the matter is that you’re still very weak. Though I’ll go so far as to suggest that biographies, if you haven’t discovered them yet, often combine the best traits of both novels and histories.” Then he smiled and nodded formally. “And with that… Good day, David! It’s been a genuine pleasure to meet you, and I expect that our relationship shall be a mutually profitable one. On my end at least, it’s certainly off to an excellent start!”

Then he turned and left, leaving Barton standing in the corner with his eyes fixed firmly on his toes, and poor farmer Patrick staring at me from the next bed in sheer terror.

3

A long, long time passed as Barton and Patrick and I thought things through, all of us afraid to speak. Then at last I turned to Barton. “Is it true?” I asked. “I mean…”

He nodded. “I’m assigned full-time to you, sir. Master Banes bought me at auction this morning; I’m fresh in from Montclair Five.”

Suddenly it was hard to speak again. Montclair Five was infamous among us bunnies—the planet’s primary export was slaves. “Uh…”

“I need a cold glass of water!” Patrick suddenly declared, grinning from ear to ear. “And fresh veggies from the kitchen, lickety-split! Whoopee!”

“No!” I countered, even as Barton turned to obey. “Stop right there!” Then I turned to Patrick, whose grin had suddenly vanished. “Do you like it when
you’re
treated like that?” I demanded.

“Well,” he admitted. “Not particularly. But we’re in charge of him, see? So—”

“Stop right there again,” I corrected Patrick. “
I’m
in charge of him. There’s no ‘we’ to it. Is there?”

Patrick shook his head, suddenly looking scared again.

“Good,” I answered. Then I turned back to Barton. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” I said, keeping my voice as gentle as possible. “This is as awkward for me as it is for you; I hope you understand that.”

He nodded, though he was still looking down at his toes. I sighed.

“Well then…” I thought about how James had treated me aboard
Hummingbird
and smiled. “I suppose the first thing you ought to do is go out and find yourself a chair—a nice comfy one, since you’re probably going to be spending a lot of time sitting in it.” I looked around the small, cramped room. “It’ll be tight, but we’ll have to find you a bed, too. You might as well get on that right away, as well.” Then I frowned slightly. “Can you use a data console?”

He shook his head silently, still not looking up. “No, sir. I’m very sorry, but I can’t read.”

I nodded, then turned to Patrick. “How about you?”

“A little,” he admitted. “I touch the pictures on the screen when I need more supplies.”

“Right,” I agreed, sighing as I pushed the console away from my bed. It’d be rude to sit and read all the time, if I was the only one who could. Somehow it was different, now that we were three. “Then… Barton, while you’re out perhaps you could find us a deck of cards too? I want to teach you guys a game called ‘Old Maid’.”

***

By the time that Mr. Banes returned that afternoon with two navy officers in tow, Barton and Patrick and I were all seated on pillows in a little circle, playing cards. We were chatting and laughing and joking together as if we’d known each other all of our lives, munching hay and slurping wonderfully-cold ice-water and in general having what slavebunnies the universe over refer to as “a big old time”. I had to rest between hands, and Patrick’s IV lines kept getting in the way. But Barton hustled about and helped us both without being asked. He even leapt to his feet and steadied me when, for the first time in ages, I went in to use the facilities on my own. No one had to give him orders; he just came forward and did what any Rabbit could see needed to be done, smiling all the while. I hadn’t wanted or needed an assistant, and still didn’t understand why I’d been assigned one. But all in all, I couldn’t complain much about how things were working out.

“Come in!” we all cried together when Mr. Banes knocked at the door—people were coming and going all the time now, with fresh flowers and paintings to hang on the walls and all sorts of stuff. Once we’d even had to interrupt our card game while a carpet was laid on the bare cement floor. So by now the traffic was routine.

Still, when I saw that it was my tutor I tried to leap to my feet. It didn’t work out very well, however, since I sort of almost passed out and nearly fell over. Barton was right there to prop me up, however. “I’ve got you, David!” he cried. “Hang on!”

“Thanks!” I declared, patting his back in gratitude as he steadied me. When I was finally able to look up at Mr. Banes, he was smiling wider than I’d ever seen before.

“So!” he said. “I see that you two are getting along well.”

“Uh-huh!” my new friend answered first, smiling back. “Thank you
so
much for buying me, sir! I was so scared, and… Well, this is
wonderful
!”

Mr. Bane’s eyebrows rose, then his smile grew wider still. He reached out and tousled Barton’s ears, then turned to me. “You’ve done well indeed, David!”

I blinked. “At what, sir?”

“At proving it unnecessary for me to administer what might’ve been a very painful social lesson at some point in the not-so-distant future,” he explained. Then he laughed out loud and slapped his thigh at my confused expression. “Never mind son; just know that you’ve done well.” Then he gestured the navy people forward. “David, meet Admiral Bennett and Captain Xiang.”

I snapped to attention as best I could while leaning so hard on Barton. “Sir!”

The admiral smiled, then squatted down to look me in the eyes. Captain Blaine had done the same thing once, but somehow it felt different this time. “So you’re the one I’ve read so much about,” he observed. “After studying the reports, I must admit that I was expecting a far larger Rabbit.”

I blushed. “I don’t know about any of that, sir.”

He smiled, then stood back up. ‘Why don’t you climb back into bed and relax for a minute or two, David? Then if you feel up to it, the captain and I would like to ask you some questions about
Hummingbird
’s loss. And perhaps about some other issues as well.”