81: Mission

First — Prev — Archive — Next

The day after my eleventh birthday (hand charm, an industrious year), I got a message from Yamin, and so did all the adults in my family. He wanted to meet with me in three days’ time. My parents arranged a meeting in our home, and we got to work.

Everyone was nervous, even though there was no need to be. Most of them didn’t want me to accept the apprenticeship anyway, so why did they care how the meeting went? I did want it (or at least I felt like I would need it), but that was no reason to be nervous; this wasn’t an interview or a test or anything, it wasn’t something that I could fail unless it was a total disaster. Yamin had always been very clear that he wanted to offer me the apprenticeship. I’d met him when he’d shown up to offer it, and my parents had chased him away.

But what if things had changed? It had been years. What if he was still meeting with me and giving me a change out of courtesy, but he’d actually lost interest? What if some other kid had had some stupid plan to break into the treegrave within the last five years and he was more impressed by them?

Probably not. He still seemed pretty interested. But still, I went out and got myself a jumpsuit, like the ones that lots of the Administrators and other workers up in the treegrave wear, and had it tailored. It was plain, pale yellow, and the fabric was a bit stiff, and it felt very weird to wear. I didn’t usually wear stuff that circled my left like this or covered so much of my body. I’d had to wear protective gear for a couple of tasks on my jaunts, and there had been that terrifying trip outside the spaceship on Hexacorallia, but that was about it. I tried to wear it like I knew exactly what I was doing, like I belonged in Administration.

On the day of the interview, Aunt Shorin took the younger kids out to play while Lia and Moli braided my hair in an older style, fingers used to manipulating paintbrushes and carefully setting electronic pins twisting my hair into complicated styles with perfect symmetry. My father’s face said that he still didn’t like this, but he didn’t say so as he carefully filed and buffed my nails. (“Strangers judge you a lot on how well you take care of your hands,” he said.) My mother, equally unhappy about the whole thing, had dealt with Administration types the most in her Security job, so she gave me tips while the others work – how to sit, how to answer questions, how direct to be.

“This is a really good opportunity,” I told my parents.

“It is,” Mum said.

“You don’t seem happy.”

“That’s not important,” Dad said. “You have to make your own decision. We’d just prefer that you were a bit older before making any big, permanent ones.”

Which was stupid. A ‘no’ might be a permanent decision for this, but a ‘yes’ wasn’t, because if the apprenticeship didn’t work out then I could just quit and go back to jaunting. Today was much less of a big deal than going on the trip with Plia had been, and they’d agreed to that right away.

But I’d been with my sister, then. And my parents had known that I would be coming home.

“I still live here,” I pointed out. “You’ll still see me every day, just like normal.”

They didn’t say anything. I knew that that wasn’t the problem. They’d built a home of love and laughter and support and safety, and Plia had left as soon as she could. And then, so had Laisor. Klei would be old enough to choose that soon, if he wanted to, and I’d already left for a while once, and now I was doing this, which was different to what kids were expected to do and where I’d learn things they couldn’t relate to and where I might even do things I couldn’t tell them about. I might be sleeping in their house still, but there were other ways to leave.

Yamin arrived. Aunt Moli made us both tea and seated us in the big table in the common area. Aunt Shorin was still out with the children, but nobody else made any motion to leave; they all sat down in various areas with various projects to work on and didn’t even pretend to hide the fact that they were there to watch us.

“Taya,” he said. “Thank you for meeting me. You’ve grown.”

“So have you,” I said, noting the deeper wrinkles in his face, and for some reason, that made him laugh.

“Have you thought about my offer?”

“Yes. What, exactly, would such an arrangement entail?”

“It’s relatively simple. We’d start out on your current jaunt schedule, except instead of shuffling around between jobs every month, you’ll be split between shadowing me, and Education. You’ll likely be doing more Education than the average person of your age, because there’s rather a lot to learn to do my kind of work, but that all depends on how much you know and how quickly you learn. Over time, we’ll increase your hours, phase you out of more general Education and into private, specialised classes, and increase your workload. It’ll be a private jaunt, because you’re my only apprentice, but my colleagues also have some apprentices that you’ll meet, and work with, eventually. Probably not for a while, though.”

“And what exactly is your ‘line of work’?”

“I’m an interdepartmental administrator. We’re sort of like the glue of Administration. It’s not unusual for specific, specialised departments to get wrapped up in themselves, and not communicate properly with each other or take into consideration each others’ problems. My job, essentially, is to know a little bit about what everybody is doing, find problems where they exist, and help departments work together to solve them.”

“The fleet as a whole could do with some of those,” I said. “It’d certainly help some of the ships I visited.”

Yamin smiled. “Perhaps that’s an improvement that you can suggest to the departments.”

“And taking this apprenticeship wouldn’t lock me into anything?”

“Not at all. Either of us can terminate the arrangement at any time, and you can slot right back into a normal jaunt schedule. Even if you complete the apprenticeship, it only gives you more options; most of what we’ll be doing for the next few years is looking at how all the different Administration departments work, so if you don’t end up working in interdepartmental administration, you’ll have a good knowledge of many other departments to consider.”

“And what if I choose to work outside of Administration?”

“Then you might join the workforce a little late since you’ll have to do your jaunt shifts in your chosen field, but most of the major fields of work are organised and overseen by one of the Administration departments that I’ll introduce you to. So you’ll enter that job with a better understanding of how it works and fits into the ship.”

His lack of questions for me bothered me a little bit, even though it made total sense. He already knew about me. This was a sales pitch, not an interview. ‘Depends on how much you know and how quickly you learn’… he had that information already. This whole thing was a performance. He wanted me, and I needed him. We were doing this for the four adults, watching us from various corners of the room.

“What I propose,” Yamin said, “is a short trial period. You shadow me for three months, do another shift of Education, and then we both sit down and decide whether we should continue the arrangement.”

“You were a lot more jump-right-in last time,” Mum said from across the room, before Aunt Lia shushed her.

Yamin smiled, but didn’t look away from me. “I was… overenthusiastic last time,” he said. “It’s somewhat of a running joke among my workmates that I’m very picky about apprentices, and I was very excited to find a good candidate. But I should have waited for you to be older and moved more slowly. This is your entire future that we’re talking about. It’s better to be slow and certain.”

I pretended to think a bit, for my parents’ benefit. “A trial period,” I said.

“Yes.”

“That seems like a good idea. More information and experience is good, right?”

“Excellent. I’ll make the arrangement with my workplace and your parents.” He stood up, and looked at my family for the first time since we’d sat down. He gave them each a deep, grateful nod. “Thank you for inviting me into your home. You have raised a remarkable child.”

And then he left.

My family all seemed to let out a breath at once.

“A trial period,” Mum said. “Very sensible. Taya, are you – ?”

I stood up quickly. “I need to take a walk and clear my head,” I said.

“Taya – ”

But I was already out the door, the stiff fabric of the jumpsuit feeling weird against my legs as I rushed after Yamin.

He seemed to be heading for the elevator, until he noticed me. Something in the way that he caught sight of me, and then immediately let his gaze drift like he hadn’t seen me at all, told me that I shouldn’t run up to him in public right now. But he didn’t continue on his way; he took a moment to think, then turned and headed off in another direction, at a much slower pace. A pace I could keep up with easily. And he paused, before turning the next corner, as if to make sure that I could track him.

Ah. We were playing that game, then. This was just like the cafeteria meetup, all those years ago – it would be a pretty bad look for him to finish our meeting under my parents’ supervision and then immediately approach me and take me somewhere to talk in private. But if I chased him down, well, he couldn’t be blamed for that, could he?

I followed him, far enough back that he could pretend not to notice me, up the ramp to the trolleys. We were taking a trolley somewhere? That might be awkward.

But no, we weren’t. As soon as we got up to the station, he turned to one of those doors in the station wall, that lead into whatever was up here that wasn’t trolley stations. I had assumed it was all storage, once upon a time, but that was an awful lot of storage. He waited until I was fairly close before opening the door with a keycard and walking into a large room.

I ducked in under his arm. He blinked at me in surprise that probably didn’t look too obviously fake from a distance. “Taya?”

“We need to talk,” I told him.

“Chi?” said a young woman, standing behind a counter. I looked around the room.

It was some sort of reception room, with benches to sit on and a tap with some drinking cups in one wall. It looked like a view port without the actual view of space. The only people in the room were me, Yamin, and the young woman, seated behind a large bench and with a folder open in front of her. She seemed to be some sort of secretary or receptionist or something, and was frowning at me. “Chi, you can’t – ”

Yamin made some kind of quick hand sign over my head, and her expression brightened. “Oh. Ah, never mind.” She went back to her files.

“I have some time,” Yamin told me. “This way.”

He lead me into a very small office. I could tell immediately that it wasn’t anybody’s office in particular; there weren’t any knicknacks or notes or anything lying around. This was everybody’s and nobody’s office, a place with a desk and some chairs and probably a projector tucked away somewhere for anyone in this area who needed one. He sat down behind the clean desk, and I sat down on the other side of it. He locked his shrewd eyes on mine.

“You have questions,” he said.

“Why me?” I asked.

For some reason, this didn’t seem to be the question he was expecting. It seemed to confuse him. Which confused me, because it was the most obvious question in the world.

“There are a lot of kids on this ship,” I said, “and I’m sure that a lot of them do dumber things than try to break into the treegrave to find a grandparent every day. You waited years for me, and you said earlier that you don’t have any other apprentices. Why would you wait all that time hoping that I would say yes? It’s a bit of a gamble.”

“There was no gamble,” Yamin said. “I mean, I suppose you could’ve died before now, but that’s true of anyone. Outside of that, of course you would say yes.”

“What, you think that just anyone would fall over themselves to work with you?”

“Not just anyone. You. I explained why you before, didn’t I? You have the right kind of mind.”

“Why, because I’m smart?”

“Whoever convinced you that you’re smart did you a real disservice. Maybe you are; you’re certainly academically successful. Frankly, I don’t care about any of that. If I’m not smart enough for something, that’s what the treegrave is for. You are curious, Taya, and you are creative, and you are naturally suspicious, and you are, above all else, proactive. That’s what I need. That’s what we need. If I couldn’t have you, then I do have other candidates, but none of them have all of those characteristics in the quantities that you do. And we are living in an absolutely critical time, where we need the best of the best to be given the opportunities to do the best that they can.”

“Because of the Dragonseye colony.”

“Yes.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sure how me being a suspicious and curious interdepartmental administrator will help the fleet build a great colony.”

Yamin just looked at me. I narrowed my eyes. This wasn’t about building the colony.

“Can you keep a secret from your family, Taya?”

“Yes.”

“From your friends? From everybody? A really dangerous, really important one?”

“Yes.”

He watched me carefully for a few more seconds, and then leaned forward. “I’m not recruiting you to build some space colony,” he said. “I’m recruiting you to save the Courageous.”

First — Prev — Archive — Next