Chapter 4

Jack:

As I pulled away, I keyed my implant "Hey, Mark..."

"Where the Hell have YOU been?" Decurion Marcus Tillotson asked querulously.

"I, uh, tripped over a woman," I replied, embarrassed.

"Already? Where did you lock her away?" Having a prospective concubine running around for several days was a security breach at the very least, and given time, they started conniving about how to get you to ship Great Aunt Sadie, too...

"I, uh, haven't broken the big news," I related.

"Well, THAT works," Mark laughed. "You dog, you! One night on planet and you managed to put some sweet young thing on her back? I didn't think you were such a stud..."

"It just happened..." I explained.

"Well, if it doesn't work out, no harm, no foul," Mark chuckled. "You just put her on the street and take something ELSE at pickup..."

"You're a predator, Man," I chided him. "The only question is species. Wolf or hyena?"

"Hyena, probably," Mark replied, and laughed eerily. I don't think his vocal cords could make that noise, but he could subvocalize and substitute the sound effect. "You haven't seen what I've seen in the Civil Service dorms. Where are you?"

"Six blocks out."

"Okay, I'm at the gate getting a visitor's pass. I'll alibi you so we can meet the Major on schedule."

Two minutes later, I wheeled up in front of the gate for Seifort Academy -- our reason for being here. Mark waved at the guard, confirming my ID and I followed Mark's rental car to the visitor spaces in the parking lot in front of the administration building. Major Howard was waiting on the steps. "Where have you two been?" he demanded.

"Breakfast was slow," Mark replied, "And Jack, here, had to peel a woman off his leg."

"I did not!" I stood there smarting under the Major's disapproving glare.

"It's early," he grunted. "VERY early!"

"It was a date, not a pickup," I insisted. "I haven't said anything to her about any pickup."

Mark grinned. "The sly dog is getting a lengthy test drive in before making any choices -- pretty slick..."

"Actually, it's a little embarrassing," I objected, "False pretenses and all that..."

"Oh, come on!" Mark scoffed, "If the chick dropped her panties for you on the very first date, she OBVIOUSLY has round heels and therefore CLEARLY has diminished expectations..."

"Actually," I replied, "she was a virgin."

Mark's eyes popped, and the Major erupted, "What?"

"I was surprised, too," I admitted.

"She must know, then," the Major opined.

"No, I don't think so," I insisted. "We just ... connected ... at a much more basic level than you get from telling some chickie, 'Let me take you to the stars... ' She's a little bit unique, anyway; I doubt that she would be of interest to either of you."

Major Howard eyed me, "Let me know if it turns out that you're wrong and that we have a security issue." I nodded. "Let's go inside."

Classes had already started for the day so the uproar at the front counter of the administration offices was muted. We waited while the woman at the counter handled issues for a couple of students, then the Major announced us: "Mr. Howard, Mr. Tillotson, and Mr. Harper to see Dean Atkinson. We have an appointment."

"I see," the woman said. "Follow me, please -- I'll take you to Ms. Bowman, Dr. Atkinson's secretary." She waved us around behind the counter and down a hallway to a reception area. "Mr. Howard, Mr. Tillotson, and Mr. Harper to see the Dean," she announced us to a decent-looking redhead in her mid-thirties.

The redhead eyed us and said brightly, "From the Nuevo Angelino Education Department?"

"Yes, Ma'am," the Major confirmed; Mark and I flicked a glance at one another. Was the jig up? Both of us went on alert...

"I'll let him know you're here..." The tone confirmed that we were going to have an interesting few minutes.

I figured they were going to attempt a brush-off -- a stupid tactic, given what we were offering -- but Dean Atkinson wandered out of his office momentarily and shook our hands, waving us into his office. I whipped out my scanner and swept the office under cover of checking my email, then cued the AI to trigger the damping field from the drone tracking us from above as we settled into chairs. This wasn't the standard grey interdiction field that everyone knows about; this one merely damped electronic communications. Emitters still worked, because the drone received transmissions and relayed them -- but the AI was filtering all inbound and outbound signals, picking and choosing what would pass the filters and what wouldn't. "I admit to some curiosity," the Dean noted, eyeing us. "Where IS Nuevo Angelino, exactly? I couldn't find it. If there isn't such a place, as I suspect there isn't, what ARE you here for?"

I got back up and went to the office door; the AI indicated that the channel Dr. Atkinson had set up to relay the contents of our conversation to his secretary had been chopped -- and she was up and out of her chair as a result. As she popped open the door to check on things, I surprised her, taking her by the wrist and murmuring, "Come in! No reason to sit in the bleachers when you can sit in the front row!" Surprise and confusion kept her from fighting me; I closed the door behind her and waved her into a chair.

Dr. Atkinson frowned and reached for his telephone; we did nothing -- the line was dead. He took a breath and asked, "Would you care to explain yourselves?" I thought it was a pretty good front, frankly, but the AI said his pulse rate was considerably elevated...

Major Howard steepled his fingers and announced, "We mean you no harm, Sir -- quite the opposite, in fact. Nuevo Angelino does, in fact exist -- but you won't be able to Google it, because its location isn't public knowledge."

"So where is it?" Dr. Atkinson asked.

"About a hundred seven light years from here."

After THAT little shocker, we got down to business. We were there because Governor Sharpe was unhappy with the flow of fourteen-year-old male concubines we were getting as the offspring of existing families reached their minimum age of majority; we weren't getting troops, we were getting unwanted males theoretically only good for stud service. Clearly, their education wasn't up to snuff; most of that education was happening without any concerted direction, when and if someone took the initiative in individual families. We needed a fix...

Seifort Academy was a private school servicing grades one through twelve. Half of the student body was domiciled in the dormitories, and the other half walked or rode the bus; the school serviced thirty-six hundred students. Unique about the school was the curriculum; the administration had gone out two years before and begun collecting everything they could discover about Confederacy culture and technology and began fashioning a two-tier curriculum designed to either produce a highly qualified sponsor or an exceptionally talented concubine. Classes included the theory and use of advanced Confederacy technology (such as was released on Earth), strategy and tactics and other items of value to soldiers. They concentrated on moral behavior (not the crap you might expect, based upon someone's religion, but rather personal responsibility, loyalty, teamwork, honesty, and other admirable traits that would stand a student in good stead on a CAP test), and advanced sexuality and reproduction. Students were pre-screened with a school-developed 'CAP Pre-test' in the fourth grade and track recommendations were made then -- but parents could opt to ignore the results. When students were actually tested, however, their track was fixed -- but they could add cross-track courses if they wished and showed any aptitude for the subject matter. Such cross-tracking tended to be in one direction -- but there were a few surprising cases of sponsor-tracked students taking concubine courses...

Seifort Academy was already showing signs of considerable success after only two years -- enough for their data to show up in the database when Governor Sharpe went looking for a resource to fix his ailing educational system. So the Governor dispatched his Lieutenant Governor -- Major Howard -- a senior functionary in the Support Directorate in charge of Education -- Mark -- and a troubleshooter to help organize the physical movement of personnel and assets -- me -- to deliver a remarkable offer...

The gist of said offer, from Dean Atkinson's perspective, was 'We want YOU!' -- just like an old Uncle Sam recruiting poster. We wanted the staff of Seifort Academy -- and to get them, we were willing to take immediate families, the entire student body, and THEIR immediate families! If needed, we were willing to take a good deal more than that; Governor Sharpe had convinced the Navy to allow him to 'borrow' a prototype cube ship for the effort! The Valhalla was in orbit, waiting to carry as many as twenty thousand passengers on its maiden voyage to Nuevo Angelino -- all we had to do was make the whole thing work without turning the academy into a major Earth First terrorist target.

Dean Atkinson was nonplussed. "You propose to evacuate the entire school?"

"We do indeed," Major Howard agreed. "Your staff is doing a fine job of turning out sponsor-capable students -- and you don't ignore skills that improve the value of concubines in the process. We have several thousand school-aged children on Nuevo Angelino who are NOT receiving a proper education -- a situation that virtually guarantees that they will not ascend to sponsorship status. This is unacceptable -- we MUST have a high percentage of the upcoming generation qualify for sponsorship and assume the ongoing responsibility for the conflict with the Sa'arm, because there is no easy fix -- neutralizing the Sa'arm won't occur any time soon. To stop them requires not only a large quantity of human troops -- those troops have to be of adequate quality to make their mark! Today, if we lose one human in the process of killing a thousand Sa'arm, we lose! The Governor believes that proper education is a force multiplier that we cannot ignore."

"What do you propose to provide?" Dr. Atkinson asked.

"Clearly adequate classroom facilities -- although, if necessary, we are prepared to extract structures from the existing school..." Major Howard began.

"What?"

"Force bubble technology would allow us to extract uniquely suitable structures and carry them to the colony," the Major explained, "but as of this moment, we're unaware of any school structures that are truly unique."

"I would tend to agree," the Dean mused, nodding. "We have commitments to the present student body..."

"Commitments we intend to more than fulfill," Mark interjected. "We're prepared to evacuate not only the staff, but the entire student body. That's a guarantee of extraction, rather than an improved chance of extraction. In addition, the staff and students will gain access to technologies and information not released on Earth for fear that the Swarm will discover it here when they arrive. Every effort will be made to ensure that the school's knowledge base is updated constantly to the absolute latest data available to the human race."

"Not all of the staff are, ahem, sponsor quality," Dr. Atkinson pointed out. The redhead blanched.

"We don't propose to make them sponsors," Mark replied, "we can't, actually. But concubines perform a number of functions on Nuevo Angelino under the aegis of the Support Directorate, according to their skills and aptitudes. We don't allow it to interfere with procreation, which is a primary concubine function, but concubines have plenty of bandwidth. A credentialed teacher need not be a sponsor -- and need not be concerned unduly about the classic issues associated with a concubine's role. In the first place, certain of the restrictions placed upon us by the Confederacy regarding concubine conduct and sponsor responsibility for same have tended to be expressed somewhat more harshly that is absolutely necessary. Concubines are a resource -- a valuable resource -- and disposal of a concubine more or less at will by a sponsor just isn't done on Nuevo Angelino. I won't say that disposal of a concubine for any one of several reasons never occurs, but it doesn't without due process -- or a review at the very least. We're going to want to assign concubine-class teachers to sponsors -- or, at the very least, to a staff contact from the Support Directorate who will ensure that their needs are taken care of. They -- everyone, actually -- WILL inherit the secondary mission of propagating the human species, but the extended nature of the family unit on Nuevo Angelino is designed to facilitate sharing child-rearing responsibilities, so the impacts to their function as teachers should be minimized."

Dr. Atkinson nodded. "There are some embarrassing seniority issues, too."

"That will be a problem," Major Howard replied. "There is a basic expectation that a sponsor is a more valuable property than a concubine, so concubines in a supervisory position over sponsors are going to face issues. How many of these supervisors are actually performing duties that could be delegated to a good secretary?"

Dr. Atkinson coughed. "Oh, my..." He looked embarrassed. "How well do you know the staff?"

"We have dossiers," Mark admitted. "Some hard decisions will need to be made, but they are fewer than expected."

There ensued ten hours of planning and negotiation. We Nuevo Angelinos came prepared to be open-handed, but it wasn't wise to just hand over everything on the first pass; any negotiator knows that the more you give away, the more your opponent wants. We and the school administration had to walk a fine line -- we had to attempt to attract the maximum number of parents, students, and staff to the extraction WITHOUT having the secret get out. Dr. Atkinson invited several staff members to his office during the day to assist in the planning. I was in charge of ensuring that those staff members were suitably inhibited against revealing the privileged information they were receiving and working with, using a device that induced a hypnotic state that the team AI then capitalized on to apply blocks, supplemented by certain tailored nannites. Now, nannites are too small to be sophisticated enough to actively control someone's tongue -- but they CAN detect stress levels and react to them. And if the individuals involved are prepped to become stressed when a particular subject came up in the wrong environment, inflicting uncontrollable nausea is one of the simpler possible deterrents.

We were drafting a letter from Dr. Atkinson to parents encouraging them to appear for the upcoming Family Day celebration -- the event selected for the pickup -- when I looked at my wristwatch and exclaimed, "DAMN!"