“Okay, okay.” Markel was practically dancing with impatience. “But what is this ‘terribly successful’ work, and when do I get to see it?”
“You’re not having these papers,” Johnny told him. “Nobody but Council heads and a few selected experts have been invited “Like who?”
“Well … yours truly, for one, which is how come I know enough to know that you shouldn’t be asking questions right now. Sengrat, because if we can find a useful application for the work, he’ll be in charge of building the equipment needed. J don’t know who else. Not many.”
Markel could tell when he was beaten. “You could at least tell me what its about.”
“I could at least get my head ripped off by your father for breaching security to the extent I already have,” Johnny muttered. “Look, kid. If I tell you the general area Hoa’s been working on, do I have your word of honor that you’ll stop asking questions, and you won’t hack into the ship’s system to get any more information on it, until it’s released for public consumption? He’s taking a big step here. He doesn’t trust his own people to use this work wisely, but he does trust the Starfarers. Do you have any idea what that says about the reputation men like your father have built up in a decade of fighting for justice? And do you see what a betrayal of Hoa’s trust it would be if we let word of the results spread as soon as we knew what he’d been working on?”
Dry-mouthed, Markel nodded. “Okay,” he said. “You have my word I won’t ask any more.” The next thing cost him an effort to say, but he managed it anyway. “You don’t even have to tell me what it’s about, if you don’t want to. Besides,” he couldn’t resist adding, “I bet I can guess.”
“Anything but that,” Johnny exclaimed in mock horror. “Better you should know than we should be subjected to the guesses you’ll dream up… . He’s moved from studying weather prediction to studying weather manipulation. Everybody knows that if you zap a planet’s ionosphere with enough energy you can disrupt communications and cause unusual* weather patterns;
well, Hoa’s been refining on that, getting more accuracy, working -with a series of targeted laser beams and precise timing sequences. From what I’ve seen of the preliminary results, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he can call down lightning out of the heavens.”
True to his word, Markel did no more investigating of Dr. Hoa’s recent research. Instead, he put in a casual quarter of an hour answering the questions the electronic math tutor had Allocated for that week, then decided to revert to last year’s childish pursuits and play a few rounds of SimArmageddon. But the console beeped a warning at him instead of bringing up the sim game, and neon green capital letters flashed a message on the screen.
YOUR ACCESS TO GAMES HAS BEEN RESTRICTED UNTIL YOU WRITE THAT TERM PAPER FOR THE LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION TUTOR. LOVE, ILLART.
Markel hated actually composing papers-language was so clumsy compared to the pure, sparse beauty and rigorous meanings of mathematics and computer languages. He felt sure that he could easily enough hack his way around whatever restrictions Illart had imposed. No First-Gen Starfarer could know his way around the Haven’s computers the way the children of the Starfarers did. But Illart would probably consider that dishonorable.
With a sigh Markel settled down to think over the assignment. Research am) write the biography of an aault with whom you are personally acquainted. Verify all statements with documentation am) interviews. Where there if a conflict between documentation am) the personal account, resolve the conflict without either falsifying the Documented facts or offending the interviewee. Oh, great. Not only was he going to have to write complete sentences and paragraphs and do footnotes, he was going to have to practice Tact and Diplomacy 101.
Well, let’s see. Doing Ximena would give him an excuse to “interview” her … but he felt sure the tutor would not count a Starfarer of his generation as an “adult,” even if she was four years older than him and inclined to identify herself with the older generation. Johnny Greene wouldn’t take offense at anything Markel wrote, but he was a slippery customer; Markel had already discovered that Johnny was vague about certain episodes in his past and that a lot of his life had somehow slipped through the bureaucratic meshes of the galactic Lattice.