Dinosaurs didn't die out, is what Biology Instructor Baker told us.

Rather, they evolved into birds. Imagine that: dinosaurs swimming through air.

The hawk spotted something. It twisted its head around sharp.

Wings flared; then a tuck and a roll and it dropped like a diving Stuka.

A moment later it was climbing again, some kind of dead rodent in its talons. Beautiful.

Uh oh. A couple uppercla.s.smen walked into my peripheral vision. I screwed my back muscles just a t.i.tch tighter, stuck my chin out just a hair further, and locked my vision on the great ambiguous beyond. As they walked by, I snapped off a quick, robot-perfect salute.

They stopped, looked me over. Surrept.i.tious, I checked out their131 braids: Grade Twos. d.a.m.n. Just uppercla.s.s enough to be utter jerks.

One stepped up, smiled, and gently asked, "Do you have a name, plebe?"

"Sir! I am a worthless, insignificant maggot, sir!"

He nodded, sage. "I thought as much." He started to turn away, then turned back. "Say, weren't you out here last week, too? You must be a slow learner, plebe."

"Sir! I don't have the sense G.o.d gave a garden slug, sir!"

He nodded again. "Very well. Carry on." He started to turn away.

"Yes, sir! f.u.c.k you very much, sir!"

He hesitated a mo, shook his head just a bit. Gotcha, you s...o...b..!

Amazing how if you soften the "F" and run the "k'you" together, no one is really sure what you said. They think they know what they heard, but they can't quite believe they heard it, and by the time they loop through it a few times and decide it bugs them, they've got enough doubt so that they feel d.a.m.ned silly making an issue of it- The Grade Two decided to let it go. Him and his buddy, they strolled off.

Me, I went back to watching the sky.

Fat old Jupiter was rising, a bright whitish blob making his slow, ancient way through Taurus. Some nights it was so clear out there I could swear I saw the Galilean moons. One night I shook up Physics Instructor Schmidt real good by picking out Mizar and Alcor with my naked eyes.

I turned my head just a bit, trying to get a look at the Big Dipper.

Cadet boots came pounding across the quad behind me. d.a.m.n. Eyes front, Harris! Ten-shun, Harris! The kid came into view, and I relaxed a half notch. It was just another Grade One, like me: Billy Pickett, from Georgia.

"Yo, Cyberpunk!"

Scratch that. He's not quite like me; he's got a name. Me, I'm maggot, to Roid Rogers. Plebe, to any other uppercla.s.sman. But more132 and more, to the guys in my bunkhouse, I'm stuck with the t.i.tle of Cyberpunk. Dear G.o.d, how I truly hate that name!

"Y'all listenin' to me, Cyberpunk?"

"Yes, sir." I've learned to call everyone sir. Saves time.

"Cadet Captain Rogers says y'all can come in now."

"Thank you, sir." I didn't move. This threw him for a mo.

"Well?" Pickett thought it through. "Uh, at ease." Nope, try again.

"How 'bout, dismissed?" There, that's the magic word. Turning stiff, I started marching across the quad, towards my bunkhouse. The gang back home should see me now; I'm so good at robodancing I can hardly stand it.

Pickett fell in beside me. "Tell me something, Cyberpunk. Do y'all go out of yo' way to p.i.s.s off Captain Rogers?"

"Sometimes we do," I said.

"It's called objectification," Lewellyn said. "It's a fairly common technique for building group unity. One of the weird constants of human behavior is that every group seems to have one natural goat: one member who's slower, or dumber, or clumsier, or in some way different from the rest. So you tighten up the group by encouraging everyone else to pick on the goat." He paused, to run a liver-spotted hand through his thin white hair and adjust his bifocals.

"But I'm not slower, or dumber, or..."

Lewellyn waved a hand to cut me off. "No, Mikey, you're different.

Jesus G.o.d, son, you're one of the smartest ones that's ever come through here! You can shut off your cyberpunk speech markers whenever you want to; I've heard you do it. You can switch on your att.i.tude problem whenever you want to; I've heard about you doing it. You could sleepwalk through your cla.s.ses and still get straight A's, if you wanted to.

"But no, for some reason you want to work at being a problem case.

Why, Mikey?"

I shrugged. "Because I hate being here?"133 "So what. You are here. You've got to bloom where you're planted, Mikey. You've got to be where you are-my G.o.d, I sound like a Rod McKuen greeting card." He took off his bifocals, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and put them back on again.

"Look, we were talking about objectification, right? The problem is that most people-even fourteen year old boys-feel empathy for the goat. They don't enjoy seeing another person humiliated. So if you're going to use that technique to build unity, you've got to short-circuit empathy somehow.

"And that's where the nickname comes in. Give your goat a demeaning name-strip him of his ident.i.ty as a human being and turn him into an object-and pretty soon everyone forgets about that pesky empathy business." Lewellyn shook his head, and smiled in a sad kind of way.

"Funny thing is," he said, more to himself than me, "it doesn't really seem to matter what the name is. Piggy, Lardb.u.t.t, Jew Boy; I've seen them all work. Kraut, j.a.p, commie, gook, honky, sand n.i.g.g.e.r..."

"Cyberpunk," I added.

"Yeah, well-" Lewellyn shook it off. "So where were we, before we got off on this tangent?" He adjusted his gla.s.ses again, picked up the spiral-bound manual. A clump of pages fell out. "Ah, here we are. The 2K memory range from location $C80/0/ to $CFFF is reserved for driving subroutines or a 2K PROM on the peripheral..."

He stopped, looked at the guts of his Apple ][ strewn all over the table. Poked a k.n.o.bby finger at a dead peripheral card. "Right." He frowned, looked at the book again. Gently closing it, he put it down, came up with a big, sunny, fraudulent smile. "Say, Mikey, what do think about the idea of starting over with a completely different approach?"

I took my fingers off the Apple's keyboard, drummed a roll of frustration on the edge of the case, thumbed the power light a few times.

"I'd say it was bogus," I decided.

"Now, Mikey-"

"Look, Mr. Lewellyn, I'm real glad you want to take the time to134 teach me about computers. I just don't understand what 6502 registers have to do with anything."

He sighed a little; exasperation, I'd guess. "Self- discipline," he said at last. "Yes, of course this thing is an archaic piece of junk." He reached over, laid a hand on the frame of the Apple. "Yes, there haven't been any new computers built around this processor since the turn of the century." He took a deep breath, blew it out, considered his words.

"But Mikey, you've been living in the stratosphere! You're up there messing around with code objects, and icons, and fifth-generation structured query languages. You're an expert at manipulating symbols.

"Here; this is programming down to the bare metal. Up 'til now you've been a technological shaman, calling up your wind and rain demons without the slightest idea of what they really do. When I'm done with you, you'll know how to make weather. Believe me, Mikey, some day you'll thank me for this."

Why do olders always say that just before they dump on you?

I looked at Lewellyn. I looked at the Apple. I looked at that thick stack of gibberish manuals.

What the h.e.l.l. It sounded like more fun than going back to the bunkhouse and polishing Roid Rogers' boots again, anyway. "Okay. So what's this new approach you were thinking about?"

Mr. Lewellyn stroked the white stubble on his chin. "First, let's do an EXAMINE. What's in the P register?"

I keyed in the command. "Uh, $B0/ ."

"And that is?"

C'mon, Mikey, think! You should know this one! "Uh, branch on carry clear."

"And the addressing mode?"

"Is absolute."

"Mail call, Cyberpunk!" I stood the mop in a corner and accepted the envelope. The handwritten address was big and sloppy, with smiley faces in the cursive loops. My name was spelled "Mickile Haris."135 I tore open the envelope and read: #.

"Dear Mikey; "Things have been real quite around here since you went away to summer computer camp colege and everything. At first I was worried about you then I ran into your mom in the skyway and she told me how you wer acsepted for a special colege for brillant kids and you wer doing reel good and happy with all your new friends and you wer your just too buzy to right. I'm so jealus, how'd you get to be so smart, ha ha!

"School is such a bore and everything. I keapt getting F's from Lewis but he pased me anyway just to get me out of his cla.s.s I think.

Georgie has turned into like a total straight nerd t.u.r.d and he wont talk to me any more or anything, most times if we meet in the hall he pretends like he doesnt even see me. I dont know what his problem is but if cant be nice then I just say f.u.c.k him. Without you and Georgie though the cyberpunk stuff just isnt any fun so we dont do it much any more. Ive been listening to alot more music lately, my favrite band is The Smegs.

Do you get to listen to music much at your colege?

"Well, study halls about over so Ive got to sing off now! Have a super fantastic time at colege and dont burn your brains out studying and dont party too much with those sororitty babes, ha ha! C U next summer!

"XOXOXO.

"Lisa "P.S. Rayno says hi."136

Chapter 11.

During the regular academic year, the Von Schlager Military Academy was a different place, totally. Sure, the basic environ was the same: the uniforms, the marching around the quad, the saluting and discipline and all that stuff. But there were times you might even mistake it for something like a normal high school. Geometry cla.s.s, for example. Three hours a week of plain old cla.s.s instruction with Instructor Minelli, who didn't bark or scream or bounce kids off the wall or any of that stuff. No proctors; no discussion about guns or troops or bronze swords; just three hours a week of putzing around with compa.s.s and dividers and getting all full of chalk dust. Sure, it would have been easier with a computer and some good CAD software, but geometry is geometry, and if a line outside a plane is parallel to a line of the plane, the line is parallel to the plane. (In Euclidean s.p.a.ce, anyway. I brought up Einsteinian s.p.a.ce and got two hours of KP for being a smarta.s.s.) The Von Schlager regular year curriculum was heavy on the math, science, history. Okay, so there were some m.u.f.f courses; no Multicultural Empowerment Studies or anything like that, but I did get stuck with Freshman Comp. Even then, though, the slant was different: "I don't care about creativity," was Instructor Coleman's favorite rant. "I don't care if you never find your unique, self-expressive voice.

You are here to learn to communicate effectively, Harris! Some day men's lives may depend on your ability to say what you mean and have it understood!" He sighed, heavy, and rubbed his forehead. "Now, let's take another look at this paper.

"No, I'm not going to say anything about the way you make nouns of verbs and vice versa. I'm not up to that headache. But will you kindly learn to use adverbs? Look here: "I turned slow." Read my lips, Harris: I137 turned slowly. He ran quickly. Now, how would you rewrite this sentence?"

I squinted, scratched my chin, came up with a tentative. "The rope lay tangledly on the ground?"

"ARGH!" Coleman slapped himself hardly on the forehead. "Like water off a duck's back! I don't know why I bother. I just do not know why I bother!"

I didn't know why he bothered that muchly, either.

Some of the cla.s.ses I got into, in spite of myself. Instructor Schmidt's Astronomy course, for starters. Some nights he'd take a bunch of us out for open sky fieldwork, and tramping through the woods and across the fields under a starry winter sky is just about the most beautiful thing in creation. The crisp snow crust breaking away under your feet; in places little drifts of powder snow so dry with cold they squeak when you walk on them. The air that burns your lungs and yet tastes so sweet and pure; the water vapor in your breath freezing into a rime of frost around the hood of your parka. On full moon nights the woods were so flooded with light you could practically read, which is real cool and goes a long way towards making you feel comfortable in the dark, but on clear, moonless nights- The stars! My G.o.d, it's full of stars! Sirius, hanging there like a incredible bright blue sapphire. Ursa Major, turning stately around Polaris like a great big combination clock and compa.s.s. The Milky Way, all splashed across the sky, more real and vivid than you ever would've believed possible. And Gemini, with friendly Castor and Pollux, and Procyon right below, so close and so sunlike we might actually go there some day.

It took me a full month to realize the Fuji-DynaRand platform was just one tiny pip, fading into the treetops and scatter just above the horizon. Insignificant. Hardly worth the work of noticing.

I liked that.

Some nights there were aurorae, slow dancing in purple and green138 ribbons around the sky. Once History Instructor Feinstein came out with us, and he was interesting for a change. While we watched the aurora twist and caper he talked soft about what it was like to be a kid during the Star War, with all the lasers scattering ghost light off the upper atmospheric dust, and the kinetic killers popping and flashing and raining streaking debris like meteorites, and the charged particle beams spiralling down the Earth's magnetosphere to trigger auroral displays that still glowed livid in his memory.

Another night Biology Instructor Baker came along, to give us a little object lesson in the limits of eyes. We humans are so dependent on daylight, and color. Go out on a still winter night, sometime, and stand there with your eyes closed. Amazing how much life is going on-and how much of it you walk right by, when you depend on your eyes.

My favorite part of Astronomy, though, was Orion: Some nights when I felt rotten, I could just step outside and look at the big guy in the sky, I got a charge. It's a male thing, I think; you look at Orion hanging up there, tall and proud in the winter sky, and you stand up a bit straighter, square your shoulders a bit broader. Almost gets to be religious.

I mean, not like Chaplain Thomas droning at us during Sunday morning a.s.sembly, or the guys in the Wotan Club with all their drumpounding.

The big guy in the sky touches something deep, something that makes you resonate. Gets real easy to see where all those Father Sky and Mother Earth religions come from: Orion. He's up there, and you know he's been up there for three thousand years, not watching, not beckoning. Just saying, Be proud, boy. You can be like me.

A freezeframe from my memory: Me, alone, in the middle of a frozen field, under a crystal bright winter sky. If you don't think about G.o.d then, you're dead.

Of course there was a down side, and the down side had a name, and lo, its name was Roid Rogers. Seventeen hours a week, I belonged in the cla.s.sroom. Five hours a week, I could hide out with Mr. Lewellyn.139 Another five hours, I was in the gym or out on the parade field with Payne.

The rest of the time, I belonged to Cadet Captain Rogers.

I spit-polished Rogers' boots. I made his bunk. I washed and pressed his uniforms, and the d.a.m.n creases had to be absolute perfect or he'd throw his clothes on the floor and make me start over. As Lewellyn would say, he did a real good job objectifying me, and by December he'd successfully zeroed out all the coolness points I'd acquired in the Peloponnesian Wars and turned me into the Grade One cla.s.s's designated dump. Some weeks I wound up polishing every d.a.m.n boot in the whole d.a.m.n bunkhouse.

Of course, on the days Rogers was feeling mean, it gave him a special thrill to make me stand at attention for an hour or two out on the quad, all the while saluting every uppercla.s.sman who happened by and telling them what a jerk I was.

At night, when I was finally allowed to drop exhausted on my bunk, I'd have the most incredible livid technicolor dreams about Rogers, and the day I'd finally catch him alone down at the firing range ...

I wouldn't kill him; at least, not right away. No, I'd start by shooting him in the throat. He'd turn around, a look of horrified surprise on his face, and try to cry out, but all he'd be able to do is cough blood. Then, before he could move another step, my second bullet'd take out his left kneecap, and he'd fall down on his one good knee.

He'd raise his hands to beg, look at me real pitiful, and try to sort of plead for his life, but all the while he'd be choking on his own blood and gasping for air. I'd watch him cold and calm, reload slow, and wait for him to turn his head to see if anyone was coming to help him. When he did, I'd put my third bullet right through both his eyes.

Oh, it'd be beautiful, blood spraying everywhere, him flopping around like a beached carp! He'd fall over backwards and lie there, trying to scream, while I walked over, rested my rifle muzzle lightly on his nuts, and gave him a slow count of five to realize exactly what was coming next. Then I'd turn him into a boy soprano the hard way.140 And then, not being a totally cruel guy, I'd give him two in the heart at point-blank range. Beautiful.

Okay, I admit this isn't everyone's idea of a sweet dream, but you try living with a guy who makes you get up half an hour before reveille just to pre-warm his boots. My pa.s.sive resistance phase lasted almost until Spring.