BOOK III

DUTY

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.

—Will Durant

23

New Avalon

Cruris March, Federated Suns

19 July 3029

Riva Allard ran fingers back through her short black hair, then stretched. Something is definitely odd about this exam.She narrowed her blue eyes and read aloud the answer to a question about artificial stimulation of involuntary muscles from the viewer screen. "Though the technology of using electrical impulses to stimulate voluntary muscles and transform their tissue to resemble that of involuntary muscles has been available since the late twentieth century, the biomechanics of the change was not fully understood until 2947. Use of the transformation process information has made the manufacture of myomer muscles for internal organ transplant far more feasible." Nope, that answer was not like Bob Clark at all.

She looked over at her teaching assistant. "Julie, when we gave this exam in Biomech 104, the Thursday section, who was Clark sitting beside?"

Julie's brown eyes looked upward as she concentrated. "Linda Hoffmann, the transfer from the Lyran Commonwealth." She dug through a small pile of disks, plucking one from near the bottom of the stack. She tossed it across the narrow alley between their desks. "Here you go. She knows her stuff. I think I had her down for a 121 out of 128."

Riva deftly caught the disk and inserted it into the auxiliary disk drive. With a few quick keystrokes, she placed Hoffmann's answer for the question she'd been grading next to the answer offered by Bob Clark. "Deja vu! It appears Mr. Clark liberally copied from Ms. Hoffmann." She turned in her chair to face Julie. "Give me a good reason I shouldn't flunk him right into some front-line unit. . ."

Julie glanced down then up again with a sheepish look. "You should have seen him in the lab. He was in my section and really knew his stuff. He's a natural with the equipment, Riva. He did all the neural suturing for the myomer transplant on that dog earlier in the trimester . . ." She hesitated, searching for a word. "I guess I can only describe his performance as intuitive because he knew from the readouts others were giving him what needed to be done and what doublechecked. He also knew when one of the monitors had wandered out of calibration just from the data he was hearing."

Riva nodded slowly. I know he's good with the tools and can get the work done, but his performance has dropped off from where he started at the beginning of May."Do you have any idea what the problem is? His performance has deteriorated badly. He's still got the final exam, but even if he aced it and maxed your mark for his lab work, he'd still be looking at a 2.4 for the course. With those grades, he'll get chucked to a front-line unit faster than a shipment of coffee runs out these days."

Julie nodded, then sighed heavily. "I think things went to hell when he heard about the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers' getting hammered on Sarna. He's got a brother ... Tom ... who was in that unit. He's not heard from him since the attack a month and a half ago. Not knowing is killing him . .."

Riva glanced at the picture of her brother Dan sitting on her desk. Bob Clark's not alone in worrying about loved ones in this war, but we all have to persevere. He doesn't know what happened to his brother, and I get to see holovids of mine getting shot up!

She looked back at Julie. "All right. We'll play it this way. Tell him he's got five days to get me a 20k report on how he knew the monitor was out of whack during the operation, and the logical consequences of the problem. I also want a covering letter stating that his concern for his brother was what distracted him during the exam." I'll see if I can talk to my father and find out if Tom Clark is O.K., or what the story is. Bob Clark will be more valuable here learning how to patch people up from the war than he will be dying to get some Liao soldier a medal.

Riva jotted down a note about speaking to her father, then looked up and smiled as Kym Sorenson entered the office and perched herself on the corner of her own desk. The pretty blond woman leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes for a moment. Riva smiled sympathetically. "Bad down in the wards, huh?"

Kym nodded, her eyes still closed. "We got a new load of casualties from the front. Over a dozen are from Sarna, late of the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers. For them, being shipped to New Avalon is something worse than being sent to hell." Her blue eyes came slowly open. "But I think I might have two subjects who'd be willing to take a chance on your program."

Kym glanced at her small compad. "One was looking forward to a career playing Zero-G soccer. His legs got badly burned when his Warhammertangled with two Maurauders,and so the doctors don't think they've got enough neural tissue to make fully articulated limbs work. The other was a pianist who lost her left hand. She's got an allergy that makes her a poor candidate for a cybernetic hand, and she doesn't believe a metal hand would give her the feel she needs to play anyway."

Riva smiled. "Good. Dr. Banzai wants to tour the wards on Friday. I'll give him their names and case histories tomorrow. Anybody else look promising?"

Kym sighed heavily. "Not really. Only the usual clowns who claimed they needed 'special stimulation' and they'd be fine. I took their names for Julie ..."

Julie blushed and all three women laughed aloud. Riva shut down her computer and stacked the disks it spat out at her on the left side of her desk. "Nearly quitting time. What are we going to do tonight?"

Julie shrugged expressively. "I'm not going to go watch The Immortal Warrior, Part 47again. I don't mind looking at his body when they have him running around with no shirt on, but if I see him use a photon sword to cauterize that needier wound on his stomach again, I'll throw up."

Riva laughed lightly. "Second that motion. Every time I see the finale where he drives a Saladin Hovertank into that Phoenix HawkLand-Air 'Mech, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I also like the scenes where they didn't get around to covering the Kurita insignia with Liao insignia ... You can't tell what front they're supposed to be fighting on."

Kym affected an air of wounded artistic pride. "Don't you two get it? This is an allegory for man's struggle against ignorance." She shook her head, letting golden curls ripple down over her shoulders. "I'm with Julie—oiled pecs are fine for a while, but the rest of that film is creative graveyard."

"Graveyard, that's what New Avalon's been like since the Interdiction." Riva ticked items off on her fingers as she spoke. "We all knew publicly broadcast holovid programs were insipid, but now we're limited to those produced here on New Avalon. The difference between yogurt and New Avalon is that yogurt has culture—all we've got is diplomats, soldiers on leave, and aging holovid stars who can't get offworld because they've not got priority."

Julie shook her head. "You're setting your sights too high, Riva. I'd gladly settle for something more than surly service and bland food in a restaurant."

Kym nodded enthusiastically. "I understand the need for rationing, but some of the chefs are hoarding spices as if they're worth their weight in gold."

"Hey, on the black market, the spices areworth their weight in gold." Riva locked her hands into talons and lightly clawed the surface of her desk. "I'd kill right now for a bottle of Tharkad Nicht-lager or Timbiqui dark."