Chapter 20: First Days

After a day of class room instruction there was another dinner. Instead of china and silverware, there were rectangular stone slabs and long thin hooked utensils. The Nogoll instructor mounted his floating disc and said, “Today you’ll start learning to use the utensils of other cultures as well. While there are Fleet standard procedures for everything and Fleet standard utensils, we want you to experience as much as possible about other cultures. If we can use the sum of our cultural knowledge to help us understand the ways of a society you may encounter for the first time as an officer representing the Union, it might break down barriers.

“Today you’ll learn how Attikans eat at a formal event. The hooks represent the claws and are used to tear your food into smaller manageable bits. The food we serve today is also Attikan style. Those of you who can’t eat this will be presented with lookalike substitute food tailored to your metabolism.”

Two-Three who had found a seat next to me snickered. “I wonder what they’ll serve me then, as I can’t eat anything.”

The Nogoll instructor turned on his platform responding to the non-Corp’s question, showing that they did monitor our conversations. “You’ll still learn how to use the utensils and pretend to eat. Your suit is equipped with a lock mechanism and the food will simply disintegrate. Many non-Corps went through the Academy before you and learned how to simulate eating when necessary.”

They served food that looked and smelled like slightly cooked carrion.

The Nogoll said, “It’s imperative that you understand that you will be ambassadors of the Union when you meet other civilizations. Eating and the sharing of food is an important part of many cultures and can break down barriers. It has been shown that consuming food is almost universal and almost always associated with social customs and taboos. We want you to learn to accept what you might find disgusting without showing it. Now, we don’t want you to eat poison or something harmful, and you can in such cases decline partaking, but never show disgust or any other negative emotion when you’re served foreign foods.”

The Nogoll suddenly gagged and almost threw up, and more and more cadets started to look sick, those who had noses tried to hold them closed. Before I could ask what was going on I too got a whiff of the most horrible stench I had ever smelled. It was worse than Surströmming. It was so bad my stomach turned and it took all my will power to keep the heaves down.

The Nogoll finally managed to say, “Holy mountain rocks, what is that?”

The cadet who had introduced himself as Elly earlier on said proudly, “Gelatinous-pulse stink maggots. I wanted to celebrate the safety of my family and surprise you all with a wonderful delight!” The Elly had wrinkled gray skin, a long triangular head and two large triangular ears, along with deep set yellow eyes. He almost looked like a furless nubhir wolf, except he didn’t have a tooth-filled snout, but an underarm, long hose-like trunk, and his voice sounded just like mine would have if I talked through a long hose or pipe.

Holding his furry paws before his nostrils the Nogoll said, “You just demonstrated that to every rule there’s an exception. We scrubbed, scanned and searched you. Where did you get these?”

“There was a snack machine in the hall, sir and I watched it being stocked and so I asked if they had any Elly Snacks. The man stocking it got me a whole case. I’d be glad to share with everyone!”

“No need Cadet, but you helped me make a point and showed us that we all, me included, need to learn to keep our reactions better under control. To make my point, were you offended by my reaction to your offering, which was meant as a present?”

“Offended, no, of course not. It takes us Ellies years to get used to the smell, and our kids react just like you did, but I do understand what you’re trying to make us see, Sir.”

“Well, please eat your maggots quickly and put them away so I can continue with my instructions and...” He stopped and threw his hands in the air. “No not tonight, I’ve been an instructor for a long time and have taught thousands of new cadets to accept apparently revolting foods. Tonight you taught me a lesson, so tonight we’ll forget about the eating utensils. I just instructed the kitchen to serve pizza, the one food I’ve learned almost everyone likes.”

The cadets greeted the announcement with a cheer and, as it ebbed off, one lonely voice somewhere said, “I don’t like pizza.”

Right after wake-up call and a hurried shower, the Nogoll inspected us and found hundreds of things wrong with our uniforms. He was only satisfied when the last cadet looked exactly as regulations required, then he said, “You cadets are lucky we’re not the Marines. You would already have done two hundred push ups for every problem I found on your uniforms. But we too put great emphasis on personal fitness. It was quite difficult to find a common denominator and a training regimen that’s equally demanding on all of you, so the Academy found an elegant solution to the problem. We simply train you hard and it’s your responsibility to keep up.”

Our instructors had us assemble at the inner ledge of the durocrete foundation that was the base of the transparent dome encasing the entire compound. The foundation was at least thirty meters above the ground. The ledge was about five meters wide and had no railings or safety barriers.

I learned this foundation ring was exactly 12 kilometers long. The transparent material of the dome split the ring more or less in the middle and created a two-meter-wide ledge on the inside and another on the outside of the dome. The foundation wall below the ring had doors at equal intervals, through one of which I had entered the Academy a few days ago. We had to climb up a ladder onto the inner ledge, then they divided us into groups of ten cadets and made us run around the rim. We saw other cadet groups lifting weights, climbing robes attached to scaffolds and carrying boxes up and down the stairs leading from the dome’s perimeter to the applicant roads. I even saw a group in old pressure suits running the same foundation ring on the outside of the dome.

My group included an Elly, the non-Corp and the Garbini, four Humans and two Attikans. I considered myself a decent runner and was reasonably fit from swimming and diving most of my life.

The Attikans, the trunk-nosed Elly and the Humans had no problem with this exercise and for the first two rounds it was actually like a little contest between me and the two Attikans.

They reminded me a little of Terran wolves. As the wolf was the Olafson herald animal, it was one of the Terran animals I knew and I had made it a point to check them out during a virtual zoo visit. The Attikans had the same kind of short coarse fur, except around the shoulders and up their necks where it was much longer. Their snouts were much shorter than that of a wolf and their ears not pointed but round. Both Attikans were as tall as I am and very muscular. They walked like a wolf would walk if upright and on their tiptoes; their heels were much higher up the leg. To support their upright walk they wore boots with enormous high-heeled wedge soles to support their tiptoe walk. The one with the gray fur and the black dots introduced himself as Pure and the one with brown fur and black horizontal stripes was Fectiv.

Fectiv and I ran head-to-head and he laughed in a coughing manner. “You’re fast, Human, but you couldn’t keep up with an Attikan if we ran for real.”

I kept a good pace and regulated my breathing. I replied, “Well then my new friend, I think we need to run for real then.”

“How about to that second flight of stairs leading to Applicant Road Four?” He suggested. I estimated it to be about 500 meters from where we were right then and I said, “Let’s go for it!”

He dropped and ran on his arms and legs, like a real wolf would, and truly took off in a burst of speed. I sprinted as fast as I could (at school I ran the 400 meters in 49.56 seconds, and that was decent.) One Attikan beat me by many lengths but I almost kept up with the other one. The rest of our group was far behind. After I caught my breath, Fectiv put his paw on my shoulder. “You’re fast, Human! I think you could run with an Attikan pack.”

“I’m not so sure. You look quite fresh and I’m pumped.”

“Well, I use four legs and Attika has vast plains, bigger than some planets’ oceans and during our Stone Age Attikans had to run away from Zinools when we tried to snatch their kill.”

I wiped my mouth and grinned. “I bet your plains aren’t as big as the oceans on Nilfeheim.”

“You know Attika?”

“Not really but Nilfeheim is all water, except for a few specks of rocky islands.”

He laughed. “How did you learn to run so fast on a planet without land to run on.”

“My world freezes over for seven years and you can run on ice just fine.”

“Isn’t it slippery?”

“It’s too cold for that.”

An instructor came floating up to us. “Being faster than the others doesn’t mean you can stop running. It just means you have to do more rounds! Now get moving!”

So we started running again but at a measured pace. From up there I could look outside and see the planet’s yellowish brown cracked surface. Everywhere, groups of cadets engaged in physical exercises, supervised by black-uniformed instructors. Pure didn’t talk much and I asked Fectiv about it. He turned to his friend and then back to me and said, “He’s a Striped, they never say much. It’s nothing personal.” Pure curled his chaps, revealing a row of sharp incisors. “And he’s a Dotted, they talk way too much.”

Remembering Mix, I said, “What does the showing of teeth mean for an Attikan?”

Pure made a few faster steps to catch up. “There are hundreds of ways to show your teeth. Right now I was trying to insult Fectiv, not in a really bad way though. You see how he placed his ears and his tail, that means he understood it wasn’t serious. If you see an Attikan with its neck fur standing up and its chaps up as far as possible, that’s as serious as it gets.”

Pure glanced down the rim. “I don’t feel comfortable running so high up and you can tell because my tail is hanging down.”

Fectiv said, “I’m not exactly feeling all that well either, but I can manage. I’m pleased you want to know about Attikans, maybe you can tell me what it means when a Human raises the bushy fur remnants above their eyes. My Union teacher was a Human and he did it all the time.”

“It could mean surprise if it’s both eyebrows and amazement if it’s one.”

As we talked we made it around the rim and caught up with the others. I reached Two-three and he complained when he noticed me. “While I don’t have muscles that could get tired, it takes a lot of concentration to keep my legs moving that fast.”

“What do you mean by concentration?”

“I don’t have legs you know. I must visualize every movement, be it a finger move or a leg and then put some of my energy in that visualized shape and then change the shape to mimic muscle movement. What you do subconsciously takes an awful lot of thinking on my part. Especially since the instructors turned off the computronic module that normally does that for me.” He actually stumbled and I caught him. “You see, I get distracted and I mix up my legs.”

“I bet you do just fine floating in a sun and I wouldn’t know what to do!”

“I could show you, but I think Potsema, our Garbini friend, is in worse shape.”

I looked behind us remembering passing the methane breather. The Garbini struggled visibly on his six walking tentacles. One of the instructors mocked him. “Come on you slow invertebrate, you’ve got six legs. You’re moving slower than a Shaill without a grav-sled.”

To me the instructor yelled, “Don’t slow down Olafson. Don’t let those slow misfits keep you back. You’re fast! Show them how it’s done!”

I still slowed down and fell next to the Garbini and asked, “Are you alright?”

He had a distressed sound in his voice. “The instructor said he’d fail me if I don’t make it all the way around at least once. It’s hard for me to stay on my tentacles walking and takes so much energy. I can’t run that far, we live in trees. We’re not meant to run. You see, I don’t have bones, just muscle, and without the exoskeleton that we normally use to walk, I’m screwed. I wanted to be an Officer so badly.”

“That reminds me of an old friend of mine and many stairs. He had only bones and no muscles. How much do you weigh?”

The Garbini’s tentacles shivered. “I think about 95 kilos under one gee.”

To the instructor I said, “You won’t fail him if he makes it once around right?”

“If he completes at least one round he will pass.”

“Potsema, you’ve got lots of tentacles to hold on with, let me carry you! He didn’t specify how you had to get around the circle.”

The Garbini stopped. “Are you serious?”

“Don’t argue I don’t have that much breath to spare!”

It was a weird feeling to have his tentacles worm around me, but I simply ignored it. I thought about the stairs of Hasvik and told myself at least I could see an end here and it wasn’t cold here like it was back then when I had to climb those narrow icy stairs. I ran with the Garbini on my back, trying to fall into an energy-saving rhythm as much as possible. He didn’t feel heavier then that sack of soak stones I had dragged up the mountainside of Muspelheim. I had grown since then and that episode felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.

I was drenched with sweat but we made it once around, twelve kilometers with a Garbini on my back wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. The physical training instructor who had mocked the Garbini awaited us and said, “Well the Garbini made it but your non-Corp buddy hasn’t. Maybe there’ll be another non-Corp candidate in the next class.”

I tried to catch my breath and clutched both my hands against my knees. I saw Two-Three about a 1000 meters ahead, struggling to keep his legs moving. “How long does he have?”

“I gave him an hour to but he’s never going to make it at that pace.”

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this. He has no legs you know!” Then I ran to get the non-Corp.

After I reached him and I explained to Two-Three that I wanted to carry him he said, “But why would you do that for me?”

“Odin’s beard!” I yelled. “Get on my back and don’t argue! I simply hate unfair situations!”

The non-Corp was surprisingly light, not more than fifty kilos, and half way round Pure caught up with me. “I can help too, let me take Two-Three the rest of the way!”

We made it in good time and I grinned at the Human instructor and said, “I guess you don’t have to wait for the next class. This one still has a non-Corp!”

“We’ll see if we have a Neo Viking after the next exercise!” He responded and led us to a large framework of interlocking metal bars about ten meters off the ground and 20 meters long. Looking much like a horizontal metal ladder attached to vertical ones at each end. “I think the next station is self-explanatory. You see those sand bags? There are ten for each of you. Get them over to the other side, without touching the ground. It doesn’t matter how you do it.”

The non-Corp said, “If we had some conveyor system that would be the ticket.”

“That’s a good idea, Two-Three, that’s how we’re going to do it.” I grinned and the Garbini waved his tentacles. “Of course, we’ll do the same as we did with the water sleeve in the queue!”

The other cadets easily grasped the idea and with a cadet sitting in equal spaced intervals on the scaffold we formed a chain and simply passed the bags along. At the end, the Garbini showed his skills by carrying four bags at a time and a cadet who was afraid of heights.

They gave us similar tasks all day long, without a lunch break. At the end of the day I had cramps all over and felt sore in muscles I didn’t even know I had.

The Nogoll instructor gathered us together and said, “Each of you has strengths and weaknesses and you all are only as strong as the weakest of you. Today you learned and demonstrated that by working together all obstacles can be mastered. I’m proud of you all, you showed some great team work. Now you have exactly 12 minutes to shower and get into formal uniform and meet me at the dining hall.”

“No matter how tired or exhausted you are, I don’t want to see you yawn or nod off,” the Nogoll said from his hover disc. “Imagine you’re all at a state dinner and you’re the guests of honor. Present are the leaders of a potential new member species. There will be an officer or two at each table and you’ll make polite small talk. Follow the instructions and again, if I see someone yawn or sleep you will fail this exercise.”

I whispered to Two-Three, “Lucky you, you have no eyes to fall shut or yawn. Do you actually get tired?”

“Yes, we do get tired, not in a physical sense like corporeals do, but in a mental one, and rest periods are necessary to keep a good mental balance. Believe me I’m as tired as can be today, but I can help you if you want.”

“Help me? How?”

“I can boost your neural energies, it won’t be like sleeping and you’ll still need nourishment from biochemical processes, but I can increase your electrochemical energies. Manipulating energies is something we non-Corps do all the time.”

He touched my hand and it was as if I had just finished twenty cups of coffee and taken a cold shower. I felt as fresh and alert as if I had jumped naked into a snow drift. “Thor’s thunder!”

“Be careful though, it’s only a neural stimulus and won’t last long. You still need sleep soon.”

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