The light was just around the corner in a section of tunnel that looked just like any section of tunnel except for the light itself, a whatever that I couldn’t really see. It was more a blue shivering in the air, an evocation of some other…what? Without thinking about it, I took two steps into it and found myself somewhere else. Though I couldn’t see where, not clearly, it was very definitely somewhere else.
I held very still for a long moment. This was not something I wanted to do right at that moment. Some other time, maybe, but not right now. Carefully, I stepped back, one step, and two, and was back in the tunnel once more, with the very strong feeling I had just avoided some very great danger.
Watching my feet carefully to be sure I didn’t stumble into some other unsuspected threat, I climbed carefully down the rock face and jogged back to Zibit, all the while reviewing what I’d seen and felt in the cave, saving it, as it were, in my mental memorabilia box. Something to take out and look at from time to time. Something to keep for the future.
Occasionally, as time went on, and only when I was out of sorts, I regretted having been so successful in that first cadet exercise, for it had an unanticipated result. I had ended up with Caspor, Ferni, and Poul as constant companions in the dormitory, and with Jaker and Flek tightly attached to the group during field exercises. Ferni, I really, genuinely liked. It was a feeling I couldn’t really identify, one I’d never had before, an internal heat, a wanting feeling. It wasn’t an appropriate feeling. Or maybe it was an appropriate feeling but not…not for an appropriate person, even though something inside me felt Ferni was…completely appropriate. More likely I felt this way because he and I were so much alike. We were both orphans. Both reared by foster parents. Both, surprisingly, with vacant spaces in our memories, and both of us ending up at the academy without warning or provocation. After some thought, I decided it would be best for me just to set the feeling aside and enjoy working with him.
As for the others…Jaker and Flek could have been sisters, both quiet, both unexpectedly strong and very determined in everything they did. Caspor and Poul had been sent by their parents. None of them seemed to have particular skills except for Caspor’s uncanny mathematical abilities and Flek’s mysterious affinity for armaments—she could break down and reassemble the model RB27 faster than the rest of us could decide how to start.
“What they’re like doesn’t matter,” I told myself sternly. “It’s just like building rock wall. You don’t complain about what you have to work with, you just make it work!”
I set out to learn everything I could about each of the five, so we could knit together to stand strong and indivisible. It turned out, the best way to do this was by involving the whole group in solving problems. It let us see everything from as many points of view as possible. Even though Jaker didn’t usually solve problems on her own, she always saw something in them the others had not seen, and the same was true of each of them. I began to see things differently myself. Here was the problem, and there was the way it went, and it swerved around Caspor and fled toward Ferni, then Flek, then went on, touching each of them, sometimes circling back, until suddenly, one of us saw it! There it was, the route laid out as if in flashing lights, an avenue so well marked that we could not possibly mistake it. A high road, paved and guttered. We had only to point it out to the others, lead them down it, and at the end, there was the solution, right where it should be.
“The talk road,” Ferni called it. “Let’s help old Naumi find the talk road.” And help they did, to their own benefit no less than mine. It was a new experience, this having friends and working together. I hadn’t realized until then how lonely my life had been before.
Neither Sergeant Orson nor Captain Orley seemed to take any notice of this. Several dormitory mates did take notice of this to their dismay, for we had become so tight that bullying any one of us brought a quick and unpleasant retaliation.
A plump, gray-haired woman who worked in the kitchen had taken a bit of liking to me. She thought I looked like her son, long since grown and gone away, so she sneaked me extra cookies that I shared with the others, and she kept me up-to-date on the local news, like who was dropping out and who wasn’t. So, one evening I went to see if she had anything for us. She told me to go through into the kitchen next to the officers’ dining room and wait for her while she finished putting tomorrow’s loaves in the oven.
I went where she told me, quietly, as was my habit, though not with any idea of sneakiness. I heard people talking in the dining room. One of my professors said, “Cadet Poul. You know the boy, Captain Orley.”
“Of course I know the boy, the son of…”
“Very much the son of the largest import-export firm on Thairy, right! I didn’t think he’d last out the year.”
“You mean he will?” asked the captain in amazement.
“He will. It seems a trio of his dormitory mates plus a couple from the women’s dorm have a study group led by young what’s-his-name, the foundling boy from Bright? Ah, Naumi.”
“A study group?” in a tone of slight dismay.
“It’s not unheard of, Captain. We even suggest it.”
“I wasn’t saying it’s a bad idea. I was just surprised. Poul’s actually learning something? He’ll
