She only realized that she'd been manipulated when she found herself blurting out her plans for doing some amateur archeological sleuthing on the side, and both the fact that she wanted a bit of archeological glory for herself, and that she expected to eventually come up with something worth a fair number of credits toward her buy-out. She at least kept back the other wish; the one about finding the bug that had bitten her. By now, the three desires were equally strong, for reading of her parents' success had reawakened all the old dreams of following in Pota's footsteps, dealing with Beta had given her more than enough of being someone else's contract servant, and her studies of brainship chronicles had awakened a new fear, plague. And what would happen if the bug that paralyzed her got loose on a planetarywide scale?
As she tried to cover herself, she inadvertently revealed that the plans were a secret held successfully not only from her CenCom supervisors but from everyone she'd ever worked with except Moira.
'It was because I thought that they'd take my determination as something else entirely,' she confessed. 'I thought they'd take it as a fixation, and a sign of instability.'
All through her confession, Alex stayed ominously silent. When she finished, she suddenly realized that she had just put him in a position to blackmail her into taking him. All he had to do was threaten to reveal her fixation, and she'd be decommissioned and put with a Counselor for the next six months.
But instead of saying anything, he began laughing. Howling with laughter, in fact. She waited in confusion for him to settle down and tell her what was going on.
'You didn't look far enough into my records, lovely lady,' he said, calming down and wiping his eyes. 'Oh, my. Call up my file, why don't you. Not the Academy file; the one with my application for a scholarship in it'
Puzzled, she linked into the CenCom net and accessed Alex's public records. 'Look under 'hobbies',' he suggested.
And there it was. Hobbies and other interests. Archeology and Xenology.
She looked further, without invitation, to his class records. She soon saw that in lower schools, besides every available history class, he had taken every archeological course he could cram into a school day.
She wished that she had hands so that she could rub her temples; as it was, she had to increase her nutrients a tad, to rid herself of a beginning headache.
'See?' he said. 'I wouldn't mind my name on a paper or two myself. Provided, of course, that there aren't any curses attached to our findings! And, well, who couldn't use a pile of credits? I would very much like to retire from the Service with enough credit to buy myself, oh, a small planetoid.'
'But, why didn't you apply to the university?' she asked. 'Why didn't you go after your degree?'
'Money,' he replied succinctly, leaning back in his seat and steepling his fingers over his chest, 'Dinero. Cash. Filthy lucre. My family didn't have any, or rather, they had just enough that I didn't qualify for scholarships. Oh, I could have gotten a Bachelor's degree, but those are hardly worth bothering about in archeology. Heck, Hypatia, you know that! You know how long it takes to get one Doctorate, too. Four years to a Bachelor's, two to a Master's, and then years and years and years of field work before you have enough material to do an original dissertation. And a working archeologist, one getting to go out on Class One digs or heading Class Two and Three, can't just have one degree, he has to have a double-doc or a quad-doc.' He shook his head, sadly. 'I've been an armchair hobbyist for as long as I've been a history buff, dear lady, but that was all that I could afford. Books and papers had to suffice for me.'
'Then why the Academy?' she asked, sorely puzzled.
'Good question. Has a complicated answer.' He licked his lips for a moment, thinking, then continued. 'Say I got a Bachelor's in Archeology and History. I could have gotten a bottom-of-the-heap clerking job at the Institute with a Bachelor's, but if I did that, I might as well go clerk anywhere else, too. Clerking jobs are all the same wherever you go, only the jargon changes, never the job. But I could have done that, and gotten a work-study program to get a Master's. Then I might have been able to wangle a research assistant post to someone, but I'd be doing all of the dull stuff. None of the exploration; certainly none of the puzzle solving. That would be as far as I could go; an RA job takes too much time to study for a Doctorate. I'd have been locked inside the Institute walls, even if my boss went out on digs himself. Because when you need someone to mind the store at home, you don't hire someone extra, you leave your RA behind.'
'Oh, I see why you didn't do that,' she replied. 'But why the Academy?'
'Standards for scholarships to the Academy are, a little different,' he told her. 'The Scholarship Committees aren't just looking for poor but brilliant people. They're looking for competent people with a particular bent, and if they find someone like that, they do what it takes to get him. And the competition isn't as intense; there are a lot more scholarships available to the Academy than there are to any of the university Archeology and History Departments I could reach. All two of them; I'd have had to go to a local university; I couldn't afford to go off- planet. Space Academy pays your way to Central; university History scholarships don't include a travel allowance. I figured if I couldn't go dig up old bones on faraway worlds, I'd at least see some of those faraway worlds. If I put in for A and E I'd even get to watch some of the experts at work. And while I was at it, I might as well put in for brawn training and see what it got me. Much to my surprise, my personality profile matched what they were looking for, and I actually found myself in brawn training, and once I was out, I asked to be assigned to A and E.'
'So, why are you insisting on partnering me?' she asked, deciding that if he had manipulated her, she was going to be blunt with him, and if he couldn't take it, he wasn't cut out to partner her. No matter what he thought Hmm, maybe frankness could scare him away.
