“I work for a department called the Office of Technological Archival and Control. We’re a sort of technological think tank. If somebody gets a bright idea on Alpha Centauri III, we make sure it’s passed on to Tau Ceti IV.” These were places Pirius had never heard of. “But the name says everything: Archival and Control. Not a word about innovation, eh? Or development? The Commission’s cold hand is at our throats, and our opportunity to think is restricted. Because that’s the last thing the high-ups want us to do. Oh, yes, the very last. And that’s why I’m here. Do you see?”
Pirius tried to pick his way through all this. “No, sir, I don’t.”
“I heard about your heroics—or rather, Pirius Blue’s. I knew that to have captured a Xeelee, even to have survived such an encounter, he must have innovated. He must have found some new way of striking back at our perennial foe. And I’ve come to find out what that is. Of course, I’m unqualified for the job, and from the wrong corner of the Commission. I had to fight my way through a few administrative thickets to get this far, I can tell you.”
Out of all that, one word stuck dismayingly in Pirius’s mind: unqualified.
“But why is all this so important to you—to Earth?”
Nilis sighed. “Pirius, have you no sense of history? Perhaps not—you young soldiers are so brave, but so limited in your horizons! Have you any idea at all how long this war has been going on—how long this Front has been stalled here? And then there are the deaths, Pirius, the endless deaths. And for what?”
“The Xeelee are powerful. FTL foreknowledge leads to stalemate—”
Nilis waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes. That’s the standard justification. But we have got used to this stasis. Most people can’t imagine any other way of conducting the war. But I can. And that’s why I am here. Listen to me. Don’t you worry about this absurd trial. I’ll get you both cleared—you and your older twin. And then we’ll see what we will see—eh?”
Pirius stared, bemused. He was no fool, and in fact had been selected for pilot training because of his capacity for independent thought. But he had never in his life come across anybody as strange as this Commissary, and could make nothing of what he said. Bewildered, disoriented, he longed only to be out of here, out of Officer Country, and back in the great orderly warmth of the Barracks Ball, safe under his sheets’ coarse fabric with Torec.
Pirius had to wait an agonizing week for the trial to be called. He tried to immerse himself in the mundane routines of his training.
Arches was under the control of the Training and Discipline Command, jointly run by the Navy and the Green Army, and every child hatched here was born into the Navy’s service. Most were destined to live out their lives performing simple services, administrative or technical support. But at the age of eight, a few, a precious few, were filtered out by a ruthless program of tests and screening, and submitted for officer training.