“It looks a bit swollen,” she said sympathetically. “I thought Michael was your instructor? He did this to you?”
Alex shook his head. He had class with Michael three times a week, not counting the morning workouts. Alex couldn’t imagine him injuring someone. Not accidentally, anyway.
Michael had decades of discipline, training, and combat experience. Beyond that, he was a patient and genuinely gifted teacher. But he had twelve students in his Wednesday afternoon class, and though Alex suspected he got more than his fair share of personal instruction, he still spent half of every Wednesday in the less-capable hands of various student instructors.
He was certain that Margot hadn’t intended to hyperextend his elbow — in fact, he probably should have tapped the moment he felt her lock in an arm bar. But he hadn’t figured on her being so strong, and for a moment, he’d thought he might still be able to tear his arm back out of her grip. That hadn’t happened, and for the first time since he’d met her, Margot had looked pleased, tending delicately to his injured arm, until one of the instructors came over with ice.
“No, it was some student instructor,” Alex said, bending the sore elbow experimentally. “I got it checked out; they said it would get better on its own. It’s never really been totally right, since that thing with the Weir, actually.”
Emily frowned at him, and then poked at his elbow experimentally.
“Have you been icing it?”
“Sure,” Alex lied. “Just last night.”
“Really?” Emily looked at him skeptically. “How long are you going to keep lying to me, Alex? I’m an empath, after all.”
Alex sighed, and Emily smiled good-naturedly.
“You’re no good at keeping secrets,” she observed, continuing to poke at him.
“That makes me pretty unique around here,” Alex said darkly, looking up at the blue sky and the clouds passing overhead, and wishing that any of it made him feel even slightly more at ease.
Twenty One
Alex really tried to stick with homeroom. At first.
It wasn’t so bad, most days, because they spent much of the three-hour class in breakout groups or with student instructors and guest lecturers, which were usually fairly interesting. They passed the time, if nothing else.
A Punjabi researcher from Analytics came and taught the class to read a very simple probability matrix, potential futures radiating out from a baseline of functional certainty, branching and growing more unlikely the further they spread out on the page, implying other dimensions. Alex found himself reminded of a cable show he’d seen on the mandalas that he’d seen saffron-robed monks making with colored sand. He didn’t understand it in the slightest, but he found himself captivated by the evolving beauty of the model.
On a different day, Alex and the rest of the combat-track students were pulled to spend the period on the grass outside, while Rebecca (who had refused to teach if she was forced to remain in the nonsmoking class room) lectured them on the basics of psychic self-defense. That was the idea, according to the syllabus anyway, but what actually happened was Rebecca showed up hung over and grumpy, and talked about the topic at hand for less than half an hour. The rest of the time she spent making them sit in contented silence while she slept on the grass.
One entire morning was devoted to a short Mongolian professor, whose name Alex never did catch, lecturing semi-coherently on relaying coded field information via Internet message boards and social networking sites. Another afternoon consisted of tiny Mr. Huang demonstrating in rapid order how to open a dozen different models of locks with improvised tools, while the class watched in astonishment and envy. An alarming number of people stayed after.
And that was only the practical stuff — unlike, say, the two-hours they spent with a cheery empath named Mrs. Lovett who encouraged them to hurl paint at a roomful of blank canvases, or Mr. Brosnik’s interminable lecture on chess and a Japanese game called Go, or the various other sessions on gardening, ceramics, or the recreation of the American Civil War.
As far as Alex could tell, there was no particular pressure on the students to learn any of things guest lecturers taught, but for anyone who showed interest or aptitude, further instruction was made available. Accordingly, Alex was careful never to show either, particularly for the history teacher who showed up in full Union regalia.
The core course, and Mr. Windsor along with it, was another matter entirely. For one thing, the lectures were frustratingly broad and vague, the kind of topics that Alex associated with the questions that novels sometimes included in the back for book club discussions. Mr. Windsor was always encouraging them to ‘consider’ — to consider, for example, the nature of the Ether itself, or the oddity of Central being located inside of it, or what effects repeated transit through it might have on the human body. Alex played along for a while, until he realized that Windsor didn’t have any real answers — he seemed to think that any sort of discussion was a desirable thing in and of itself. And Alex resented being asked questions that there were no answers for.
Then Anastasia informed him that he didn’t even have to pass the class in order to clear the Academy. Apparently, Mr. Windsor’s role was more advisory than anything, and homeroom designed more as a yardstick to measure the student’s progress and interest level than to teach any one thing. That was still buzzing around in his head when Mr. Windsor asked him to stay late after class one Friday. Alex had an afternoon training session with Michael looming, and precious little time before it began.
“Can I ask what the problem is?” Alex demanded, as soon as the rest of the class had filed out, Emily glancing over her shoulder sympathetically at him before she left.
If Mr. Windsor was surprised by Alex’s tone, he didn’t show it. He simply carried on stowing his laptop away in the brown leather messenger bag he carried with him everywhere, the same defocused smile plastered on his face that seemed to be an almost permanent feature.
“I wanted to discuss your progress and your comfort level with the material, Alex,” Mr. Windsor said reasonably. “Our most recent test was not your finest effort to date, particularly on the subject of classification of protocols. Moreover, your essay on the founding of Central, a topic which you selected, I might add, is now quite overdue. Can I ask why?”
Alex was a bit thrown off by the diplomatic approach, having anticipated a lecture, but he refused to be mollified.
“I guess I have too much other stuff going on that seems more important than this class,” Alex said curtly. “No one is going to shoot me in the head for not knowing how the Black Sun rose to prominence, or when the Agreement was expanded to include vampires, or whatever random topic we’re working on right now.”
Mr. Windsor, against all expectations, laughed and gave Alex a knowing nod.
“It’s true, and I do understand, the Operations track is an intensive and difficult one,” Mr. Windsor said sincerely. “But, it is important for you to understand that you are not attending the Academy solely for the benefit of Central. The Academy exists to help you become a more complete person, Alex, and no amount of physical training or combat experience can create a whole, rational, functional being. Operators are asked to function under tremendous stresses, and some of what we discuss here is designed to give you tools to understand and deal with that stress. The topics of the class may seem haphazard, I admit, but I am trying to provide you with a gloss, an overview of the principals by which the world you live in functions, and the alternatives available to you. The rest of the Academy teaches you to obey and to execute, and they do an admirable job of it. I am allowed a few hours every week to try and teach you to think critically. Do you see why this is so important?”
Alex sighed and shook his head.
“Look, I don’t understand how a car works, or an ATM, okay? But I can use both of them just fine.”
This was actually untrue. Alex had never driven in his life.
“I’m not here to teach you how things work, Alex, I am here to help you understand
Alex had to stop to consider it for a moment.
