23
The chief instructor at the Examiner’s school was named Josef. The only thing Josef had in common with Carver was that he was probably human. It was hard to tell, though, behind all that hair.
Josef was a soft-spoken, fumbling, benevolent giant. He topped eight feet by a couple of inches. He welcomed them with a warmth that shone through his shock of grey-blond hair and beard. He bowed to the Counselor and Carver, then swallowed Sean’s hand with his. By the first day’s end, Sean wondered if perhaps Josef was actually shy and loathed towering over everyone, so he twisted his massive trunk whenever addressing a group. Trying to bring himself down as close to everyone else’s level as he could manage. It was clear that the students adored him. And for good reason. Josef did not possess a single negative element in his four-hundred-pound frame. He was not actually fat. More like almost everything about him was huge—bones, head, beard, limbs, heart—everything but his manner and his voice, which were gentle as a baby bird’s.
Josef handed them another diadem to wear that night. Their dream-time lessons were shifted from Serenese to Lothian, the dominant language of the world where the Examiner’s school was located. The new speech was nothing like the old. Gone was the sibilant music. In came a guttural drumbeat. It seemed to Sean that every consonant was formed at the back of his throat.
He was repeating some of the words to the mirror the next morning when Dillon appeared in the doorway and said, “It makes my throat hurt.”
“If Arabic married German,” Sean agreed, “their kid would speak Lothian.”
The transit chamber opened into a pair of locker rooms. Around the school, students wore navy sweats made from some fabric that actually felt great. Dillon groused that they all looked like magnets for interstellar bullies. But they had not met any yet, so Sean didn’t mind.
As they were dressing the second day, Dillon muttered, “Your idea about attending here was a good one. It really comes down to us.”
Sean glanced around. The school’s two hundred students came from a dozen and more worlds. Classes ran pretty much around the clock, so students came and went at all times. The shouts and laughter in many languages formed a wash that enveloped them in a private bubble. “I thought maybe you were going to let this go. You know, because of Carey.”
“That doesn’t change anything.” Dillon gave that a beat, then amended, “And it changes a lot.”
“When are you going to tell her?”
“Later,” Dillon said. “Right now it’s already more than I can handle.”
Josef appeared to Sean like a man who never got angry. Stern, certainly. When their class went into a kid-style riot, his worst mood was a very slow burn. Even so, he kept the class in absolute order. He’d show that smoldering disappointment and the most unruly student was brought into line.
Initially Josef placed them with the newest recruits, the oldest of whom was eleven. This lasted all of two days. When Josef was certain they could do what Tatyana and Carver had claimed, he shifted them into the class of their own age. And Josef shifted with them. The instructors must have been used to being swung around, for they moved without a peep. The students, however, knew something was up. The only thing that saved Sean and Dillon from more serious trouble was everybody in the older class was delighted with Josef’s unexpected arrival.
A few of the students lived at the school. Most departed at the end of class. For the first two weeks, everybody left Sean and Dillon in their very own isolation bubble. It bothered Sean, but not as much as he might have expected. Basically he was too tired to care. Classes ran ten hours straight. This was followed by the nightly dream routine. Spoken Lothian was combined with the written language. Sean often woke up feeling more tired than when he went to bed.
By the end of the third week, Sean had defined a new normal. Up at six. Threaten his brother with a kitchen pot of water to get him moving. Dillon was out late every night with Carey, mostly just sitting on the patio, their laughter filtering through the loft’s balcony doors. Quick breakfast at the kitchen counter. Bike to the apartment Carver rented. Transit to class. Sit through a lecture that defined boring. At least nothing had changed there. Then begin another day of learning new destinations.
The problem was, all these new destinations were nothing more than names. Ditto for the school itself.
The school had no windows. It also had no doors linking them to the outside world. They came, they studied, they went home. There were a lot of reasons for this isolation. But it all added up to one thing, as far as Sean was concerned. The guys in charge had spent four thousand years straining away every ounce of adventure. Leave it to the adults to turn the galaxy’s most thrilling ride into a class on tedium. If he hadn’t spent his entire life wanting what he couldn’t name, Sean would have done his own version of the roadrunner. Adios, baby. Off to see what’s out there beyond the monotony.
Twenty days in, they got their first free time. They didn’t even know it was happening until they showed up and the school was empty save for a lone instructor who smiled and told them to go play. They would have, definitely, except for how they were both totally beat. They went home and collapsed, for once without the language police invading their dreams. When they woke up they biked over and saw their folks, who were living in apartments a mile or so apart. They listened as first their mother and then their father tried to convince themselves their separation and eventual divorce was best for everyone. Then they went home and spent their first free afternoon of the summer elbows-deep in the adventure of laundry.
Sean was sorting socks when Carey called up the stairs. He greeted her with, “Dillon’s wandered off somewhere. My brother’s always been afraid of soap.”
Carey smiled at his feeble attempt at a joke and said, “He’s over talking with Dad.”
“What about?”
“Me, probably.” She shrugged that away. “I wanted to speak with you.”
“I’m all ears.”
She made a process of slipping up onto the kitchen counter. “I’m really interested in your brother.”
“I know. And he’s the same. Only about a billion times stronger.”
“I doubt that.” Then she must have realized what she’d said and blushed.
Her beauty and her vulnerability and her heartfelt eagerness left Sean swallowing against a sudden hollow feeling. It wasn’t so much that he was jealous. It was just, well, he could use a little of the same for himself.
Carey asked, “Are you okay with this?” When Sean did not answer, she pressed, “I mean, you’re his twin and all. I just—”
“I know what you mean. And it’s great.”
“It’s better than that.” He struggled to say what he had never spoken about to anyone. Thought about, sure. But never said aloud. “Things around our house have never been good. Dillon has spent his entire life looking for someone to give him what he never had. Only he didn’t know it.”
Carey nodded, and then the motion grew until it took in her entire body. Swinging back and forth on the kitchen counter beside the washing machine, watching Sean fold his laundry, her gaze distant and unfocused. Sean liked being this close to her, looking at her beauty, and knowing she was as much in love as Dillon.
Carey said, “Dillon is sure lucky to have you.”
For some reason the words brought a lump to his throat. Sean pounded a fist into the soft fabric and said, “I just wish there were two of you.”
Carey slid off the counter so she could hug him. She smelled of vanilla and a spice he could not name. “That would be so cool.”
After Carey left, Sean phoned Carver. He’d been doing this every few days, just checking in. When the colonel called back, he was his normal clipped, direct self, only with an edge of barely repressed impatience. Sean gave the sort of terse report Carver seemed to expect, then finished as usual with, “Is there anything to report about the attack?”
Carver replied as always before. “Your task is to study, learn, progress.”
“The investigation is none of your concern at present.”
“Except for how we were the target,” Sean shot back.
“The Counselor specifically ordered you to let this go.”
“Whether or not you tell us isn’t going to change anything. This is our lives we’re talking about. We were the ones who were attacked.”
Carver was silent long enough for Sean to fear he wasn’t going to answer. Then, “There is no progress on any front. We have found no trace of your attacker.”
“What about the Examiner?”
“I just told you.”
“And I’m saying the Examiner isn’t your guy.”
They’d had this same conversation before, and Carver had commended Sean for backing his brother. Even though Carver remained certain they were both wrong. Today, however, Carver asked, “If that is so, why did the Examiner flee?”
Sean had been thinking about that. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was captured by the spookies.”
“What is this ‘spookies,’ please?”
“My word for the ladies in the first attack. Have you considered that?”
“There are issues which I cannot discuss with a raw recruit,” Carver replied flatly. “Once again, you are hereby ordered to leave this in the hands of your superiors.”