“You’re on, Doctor,” Vik said, and they tried to shake hands, but Vik’s exosuited hand just clanged against Tom’s wrist.
This was in the bag. Tom leaped up in one great bound, flipping on the clamps so they instantly sealed to the pole. No problem. He’d be up and back before anyone was the wiser. . . .
But he didn’t get another arm’s length up before a hand closed around the back of his exosuit and tore him down. Tom’s exosuit clanged against another behind him. He looked back, and his stomach sank as his neural processor identified Blackburn’s IP address.
“See, Raines, when I said you’d do something reckless and phenomenally stupid?” Blackburn’s voice said right in his ear. “This is the sort of thing I was talking about.”
“I wasn’t climbing it,” Tom lied quickly. “I was smashing this huge spider and the clamp accidentally turned on and stuck me to the pole.”
Blackburn dragged him across the roof and shoved him down, by the door leading to the fifteenth floor. “You stay here. Sit. Don’t move.” There was a sort of dark fury in his voice.
Tom wasn’t pleased about sitting. It wasn’t dignified. He shoved himself up, but Blackburn’s heavy hand anchored on top of his head and manhandled him back down. “I said don’t move!”
Tom clenched his jaw and stayed on the ground.
“Thatta boy,” Blackburn said. “I’m going to talk to Ashwan. You—stay here by yourself, don’t talk to anyone, and ponder how stupid that was. Think of it as a time-out.”
“Time-out?” Tom blurted. “What am I, five?”
Blackburn laughed unpleasantly. “Color me astounded that you are even vaguely familiar with that term, Raines. But if I can’t pound some sense through your thick skull by treating you like the other trainees, then maybe I should try treating you like an undisciplined young child, which is exactly the way you’re acting. Would that work?”
“No!” Tom protested. “I’m fifteen.”
“Then prove to me you have the attention span of a fifteen-year-old and sit there.”
Simmering, Tom stayed there, until Blackburn seemed satisfied and his footsteps clanged away. But then Tom got to thinking, and he realized what must be going on: Blackburn was probably coming down hard on Vik. Maybe Vik had thought of some great excuse already? Tom knew he had to corroborate whatever story it was, so he eased himself to his feet and moved as quietly as he could back toward them, determined to hear what Vik said. He settled around the curve of the base of the pole, ears straining to pick out their conversation.
He caught Blackburn’s words. “. . . really think this is a good idea, Ashwan?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh, but it sounded like you did. After all, you were rooting him on, so show me what a brilliant idea this is. Climb the pole.”
Vik was silent a moment. “Sir?”
“I said climb it.”
Tom felt incredulous. That was not fair. Vik got to climb it? He leaned forward, and saw the wavering air in Vik’s location.Vik obviously wasn’t climbing.
“Let me guess: it looks awfully high now, doesn’t it, Ashwan? Let’s say you climbed it. This thing”—there was a waver of air, and then a ringing of exosuited knuckles clapping on the pole—“sends transmissions to vessels in the neutral zone around Earth. One communication with a ship while you’re climbing this, and the signal will short out the centrifugal clamps and maybe send a good old shock straight through all this metal into your neural processor. Tell me, still sound like a good idea?”
Vik sounded astonished. “No, sir.”
“No, it isn’t. Odds are, nothing’s going to get sent in the time it would take you to pull it off—and even less likely, in the time it would take Raines . . . but what if something did get transmitted? Then I’ll tell you what would happen: the person up there falls to this roof or maybe to that one down there, and that’s it, Ashwan. They’re a pancake. How much did you bet over this? I didn’t make out the number.”
“Uh, fifty dollars, sir.”
“Your friend’s life for fifty dollars.”
“I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known.”
“Here’s the thing about you, Ashwan.” And Tom could see one shimmering form draw back as the other moved closer. “I’ve got this hunch you have a decent brain. I think there’s a voice of reason somewhere in that skull, and I’d be willing to make a bet of my own: that you suspected there was some sort of risk here. That must’ve made it all the more exciting, getting some vicarious thrill out of a friend doing something phenomenally dangerous that you are too smart to do yourself.”
Tom felt a surge of outrage, and it was all he could do not to tear forward and tell Blackburn he was wrong about Vik. Vik must’ve felt angry, too, because he protested, “It’s not like that at all, sir.”
“Uh-huh. Do you know how many times I’ve seen this same thing with you two? Back in the war games, I remember Raines raring to pounce, ready to give me a problem whether I outranked him or not. Let’s face it, that kid screws up over and over and over again, I’m surprised when he doesn’t at this point. But you? You don’t. You snapped to attention and said ‘sir, yes, sir’ to me like an obedient little drone, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and you know it. You don’t step a toe out of line, and I know why: because someone, at some point, taught you better than that.”
“But it’s not like . . . You’re wrong. Sir, you’re wrong. That’s my best friend. I wouldn’t set him up.”
Tom hung back, feeling strange. He had this sense it would embarrass Vik a lot knowing he’d heard all this.
“Then God save Tom Raines from his well-wishers,” Blackburn said. “You have to know you aren’t doing him any favors.”
Tom returned to the spot where Blackburn had left him. He was still sitting there when Blackburn set up a few lines, giving the trainees a chance to rappel down the side of the Spire if they preferred to try that rather than exosuiting. Blackburn belayed Makis, Kelcy, and Vik down, but the rest preferred to climb down the same way they’d climbed up—clamp by clamp. Blackburn gathered up the climbing equipment, shoved it in a bag, then dumped it into Tom’s arms and popped open the door. “Walk down the stairs, and wait for me on the second-story flight of the stairwell. I’ll come as soon as the others are done.”
“I can’t climb down?”
Blackburn tore off the hood of his optical camouflage, giving Tom a glimpse of his face. “Get this through your head, Raines: this activity was a privilege, not a right. Actions have consequences. You messed around, you abused that privilege, so that means you’re out.”
“Fine. Whatever. It’s not like I care.”
Blackburn gave him a knowing look. “Oh yes, you do.”
Tom stepped into the stairwell, and knocked the door closed with his boot. Dimness enveloped him as the door clanged shut. Fine. So he wouldn’t climb down. It didn’t matter; he still had the exosuit, and that was the awesome part. He tore off the last of the optical camouflage, leaned over to peer down the railing, and didn’t see anyone, so with a little thrill of excitement, Tom flipped forward down one flight of stairs, landing at the bottom with a clang. He did the same thing with the next flight, taking a ferocious pleasure at getting away with this.