the student problem 7

 well, after several days of being predicted snow, the Good Lord is teasing the BBC by sending it on the day predicted to be warmer before a big freeze. It's taking it moderately seriously too, for such late snow.

Chapter 7

 

The Diary of Serenaa Kerufin

 

Well, I’m not such a fool as to write down what happened last night at the ball, but I was absolutely devastated and furious so I have banged into my room telling Mumsy that I have no desire to speak to her about Harry.

I don’t think he was indifferent to me, at all. I will be glad to get back to college. I wish Daddy was here. But I can’t really write to him.

I want to talk to Gunny...

 

 

oOoOo

 

I couldn’t leave the child... young woman. And it wasn’t just her safety, it was mine, and that of the Imperium. A clever interrogator could easily make her talk, and give up more without her even being aware of it.

I didn’t bother to go back to my normal strip cut; I put on the same expensive black jump-suit, with  marine boots, and a casual jacket, with a wide belt under it, to make the outfit different. I do have expensive clothes these days, but not many.

And not here.

I wasn’t expecting to have to gladhand the great and the greasy.

I screeched up to the door of the Kerufin house, a nice place in the suburbs, very swish, on about an acre of land, I imagined, at the back. It was built on the elegant lines of Wiłanu architecture, which was decorative and yet fairly functional, the lines of bracing  members sinuous and pleasing.

I knocked peremptorily on the door. I pushed past the flunky who opened it.

“Serenaa!” I called. “You can pack; we’re going.”

Serenaa appeared on a mezzanine layer. She was still in her nightclothes.

Her nightclothes were shorts and a loose top of some kind, no fancy ‘sexy’ nightgown. It was though. Sexy. All that leg.

“G... Harry! I need to dress and pack. Now Mumsy knows, there’s no point hiding it.”

“That’s what I thought. And your father’s not a kindly man, I don’t want you around when he gets home.” I managed to wink at her.

“He... he has never struck me,” she said.

“He’s known as a martinet,” I said.

Understanding flooded her lovely eyes.

“I’ll be about twenty minutes,” she said.

She was, too, to the minute.  I ran up the stairs to help her down with one of the bags she had packed.

“Did you forget the kitchen sink?” I teased.

“I folded it up and put in my pocket,” she said.

We were walking out of the door by the time Lady Kerufin had managed to get up and turn up on the mezzanine shrieking.

We ignored her.

“You think I’m a security risk,” said Serenaa.

“That too,” I said. “That and that I worry about you because I broke all the rules.”

“Oh?”

“I fell in love,” I told her.

Now was the time for her to laugh at me, and say she had only been playing.

But she gasped.

“You have? Oh, I never dared hope,” she said. “Are we going to your place?”

“No,” I said. “We’re going to the spaceport; I have a ticket booked out of here for you to take a report to your father. I don’t dare disappear, but it needs to be a report in person. I love you too much not to stay and cover for you.”

She frowned.

“You could be cagey at first and then say we’d had a lover’s tiff and I went to find Daddy.”

I nodded.

“That would work,” I said. “Damn, I’m going to miss your bright brain. And your beautiful body,” I added.

“Good save, there,” said Serenaa. “I’ll miss you and I’ll worry about you, but you are right about the report.”

And that was why I loved her. She knew what was what.

 

oOoOo

She was working on not crying when I kissed her goodbye at the airport. But she shimmied through the extrality gate to check-in like a good’un, without a backward glance. She had also spent her time in my gravcar changing her appearance, slicking her curls down, slimming her face with blusher, until she looked almost horse-faced with her forehead revealed by slicking her hair back – I did mention that her face was inclined to be long, when she was wearing the monoringlet – and light powder around her eyes made them a little protuberant. She had been wearing a fairly utilitarian jumpsuit anyway, as many people do for space travel, and with the addition of spike-heeled ankle boots [so the one she had worn to the ball had been one of a pair; I should have guessed] and a businesswoman’s jacket, and she looked as though she might be someone’s secretary, or a member of the press, or a sole trader putting together a business. But not at all like an effervescent and bubbly student.

 

I watched her through customs; she should be safe on the other side. Then I drove to the flat off-campus, which was not in my name, and which boasted a garage with separate booths for privacy.  I drive a Ford Shuttle, red, no distinguishing features, the most common vehicle in the most common colour to be found in most cities where Ford makes transport systems. Which is to say, anywhere Solcentic and throughout most of the Central sector. The incidence of people who drive something virtually identical to mine is around one in eleven. And that meant, even on a relatively sparsely occupied garden world, assuming one person in ten had personal transport, there were ten million of the things.

If there were fewer than a million in Puułaf City here, I’d be surprised. One passed the block where I lived as I left the garage and walked to the front entrance – just to eyeball whether I had been made – and by the time I had walked up the stairs, glancing out of the [mirrored] glass stair well, two others had passed. And one drew up outside to let someone out before heading for the parking level. That was good luck; and the fellow was even dark. His passenger was even blonde, or possibly blond, I was not sure if the person was male, female, or ungender. It didn’t matter, only brief descriptions that would cover me and Serenaa.

There was still a hair over the lock of my flat door; nobody had been in since I was last here. Either that, or they were pros. Some people have cleaning firms handle their cleaning. I keep my own bot. I call it ‘Irri’ short for ‘irritation’ since it will ask about clearing up books I have left out, and can’t seem to recognise real paper and pseudopaper books, of which I have a number. He – one anthropomorphises an ‘it’ to a gender – keeps asking if this is packaging and rubbish. I had to give a direct order not to throw away anything I had not put in the garbage bin.

There’s something satisfying in browsing real pages. I grew up with it on a world where electricity was... dodgy, and if you wanted to study, you had to read real books, sometimes by the light of something we called a ‘candle’ made out of artificial waxes and oils, which burned by lighting a real flame at the wick end. I know, I know, enough of my primitive upbringing. At least it means I know how to improvise in less than ideal situations. I’ve never had a buddy bleed out like some of these clueless high-tech losers have, because I know how to pinch the lips of a wound together, and how to sew it up until such time as we get to use a flesh replicator.

Why do we think of weird, irrelevant things when we are tense?

I let myself in, and checked the flat out. It was as I had left it only cleaner. Irri was deactivated in one corner, and that suited me fine. Unless called for, the pesky bot activated on the last day of the month to deal with sundry dust which might have accumulated. And I had not been back here since the semester started so presumably the pest had dusted, polished, and scrubbed the patina of life out of the flat twice.

I threw myself down on the sofa, and activated the trid.

And turned to the private channel I had installed to my flat on campus.

How glad I was that I had set up another pad, and this surveillance system.

The place had been trashed, and a couple of heavies were waiting fruitlessly for me to come home.

There was nothing for them to find; I’m good at security hygiene. Presumably the explanation over why the place had been trashed was to be a warning over touching up debutantes. Likewise the beating the goons planned to give me. They were getting resty.

I did the only thing I could think of. I heated a bowl of popcorn, chilled a carton of icecream, and called the local cops on my pocket box. I explained that I had rescued a student of mine from an abusive home and installed her in a safe house where nobody could find her, no, so sorry, I did not know what pull her abusive mother had to coerce or bribe the few, the very few, rotten apples that might potentially exist in the law enforcement structure, and so I was not about to give up the location of the accredited safe house. I knew there had to be rotten apples because of the laws of averages, and this was proven when the desk sergeant shut up over the words ‘accredited safe house.’ I waved ID as a social worker, and confessed to having pretended to be her boyfriend to help her escape, and that I suspected that my flat might contain coercion to make her go home and make me leave her alone; and if they didn’t send a team equipped to handle goons, that wasn’t my problem.

The cooker pinged, and I got out my popcorn and sat back to watch the show.

Trouble on campus elicited a fast response, and the black-and-yellow cop gravcars screeched to a halt, setting down with indecent haste, and took two years off the maintenance warranty of the grav unit. I was amused to see they were Ford Cruisers, the big brother of my runabout. Ford was one of the bigger factory complexes here, and Miss Ondarool was the daughter of the local CEO. Well, poor kid, she was bereft of Serenaa at the moment but hopefully at least not in danger.         I had seen Serenaa hanging out with... Kassi, the kid’s name was, and she had performed better in class too. And looked more wholesome.

... ’The hell?”  There was a knock at the door of my campus flat. A timid knock, not like the police.

One of the goons opened the door, and a hand shot out, and Kassi Ondarool shot in. She screamed.

This encouraged the police to get a move on, and suddenly they arrived, forcing their way in. The thug who had hold of Miss Ondarool went down very quickly, and the other thug followed him shortly. Miss Ondarool picked up one of my chairs, and I could see why, the first thug, having been left without being properly secured, was up again. She hit him. Good girl! Serenaa would be delighted. This time the cops noticed and put cuffs on him. The nasty cuffs, which is to say the ones which start firing nasty electric jolts into anyone who moves more than a few feet from the cop holding the control box.

      I put in a call to the school councellor to get to my flat for Miss Ondarool, who had walked into an incident there as she needed support. I cut short her firing a battery of questions.

“I’m not there. The kid has been attacked by thugs and the cops are there. That’s your job; do it,” I snapped.

I give Miss Ondarool her due; she was refusing to answer any questions and was asking to phone her mother.

“So your mother doesn’t abuse you? Why did you leave your home with Mr. Lime then?” demanded one officer.

“I think you think I’m someone else,” said Miss Ondarool. “But I’m not going to say anything without my mother or father present. And you can’t make me,” she added. “If you harass me in any way, I’ll make a complaint. I don’t know why you’re here, or why those men were here, but it’s nothing to do with me, so you have nothing with which to hold me.”

This was when Miss Ballbrecker turned up. She’s a starchy piece with a stick so far up her arse you could fly a flag from between her teeth, but she takes care of the kids when they need it.      

“Why are you questioning a minor without a parent present?” demanded Miss Ballbrecker.

The senior officer frowned.

“I understand that Miss Kerufin is of age,” he said.

“Miss Kerufin may well be, but what has that to do with Miss Ondarool?” demanded Miss Ballbrecker. “It’s all right, Kassuli, dear, they can’t do anything to you.”

“We only wanted to know what she was doing here,” asked the officer.

Kassi gave him a fishy look.

“Miss Ballbrecker, is there something wrong with him? I wanted to ask Professor Lime a question, but when I knocked, that goon grabbed me and pulled me into the flat. And I had no intention of doing anything compromising like coming into a male professor’s living quarters,” she added. “And now my fingerprints and hair and so on are here, they’ll try to make it into something smutty.”

“They’d better not try,” said Miss Ballbrecker. “What did you want to ask the professor, dear?”

“Oh! Only if he knew where Miss Kerufin is,” said Kassi. “I called her personal box and couldn’t get it, so I called her home, and Lady Kerufin said she had gone off with Mr. Lime, only she wasn’t very polite about it.”

“He called me to come here for you,” said Miss Ballbrecker, grimly.

I sighed and activated the intercom I also had installed.

“I was removing Miss Kerufin from a situation where she was in fear, and took her somewhere safe,” I said. “I was monitoring the situation in my home and observed that Miss Ondarool had arrived into the middle of mayhem. Naturally I called the campus councellor.  Miss Ondarool, it was improper of you to come to my apartment, but I honour your bravery in concern for your friend. No, she is not with me; she is safe and cannot be reached by anyone who might wish her harm. You should go home, Miss Ondarool, and I am sure that Miss Kerufin will contact you in due course. She may even have written to you, and there may be a message on your box by now.”

“Oh!” Miss Ondarool fished out her pocketbox. “Yes, she has! She says she’ll be out of the city for a week or two, and apologises if that’s upset any plans we had... Oh dear! Can I go home, now?”

“Yes, of course,” said Miss Ballbrecker. “Mr. Lime, perhaps you’ll swing by my office later today?”

“Of course,” I said.

That would be uncomfortable, but I might actually tell her the truth.

“And,” I added, “The officers should take a full sampling of my apartment to prove that Miss Kerufin is not and has never been there.”

That for Serenaa’s protection as well as mine.