A Princess of the Aerie Read Free Page A

channels.”
    Jak shuddered.
    The Dean nodded a few times to himself, his sharp face and small head bobbing on his long neck. Jak tried not to think of
     it as stork-like, because he was already feeling like a bite-sized frog. When the Dean spoke again, that smile was back. “Now
     let me tell you what you did. You had exactly the effect you’re claiming to have intended—in the Hive. Millions of our younger
     citizens accessed those illegal recordings and were fascinated. Venerean diplomats are getting fan mail from pornography buffs.
     Interest in and affection for all things Venerean surged—we’re predicting dozens of best-selling entertainments with Venerean
     themes soon. Intrigue and adventure vivs, vids, and novels for the next few years will feature many Venerean sidekicks, love
     interests, or other important secondary characters, and there are going to be practically no Venerean villains for the next
     six or seven years. You truly have made the Venereans the lightest of the light, Jak.
    “You’ve made them deeply angry, too. The average Venerean likes us less than ever, and the anti-Hive parties and organizations
     are growing fast.
    “When you pulled your little trick, we were in secret negotiations for a more equitable trade treaty. You’ve just strengthened
     their hardliners and our accommodationists— so guess what you’ve done to the negotiations? Guess who will be making concessions
     and who will be accepting them?
    “Now, you don’t have to
like
Venereans, Jak, but if you don’t want to give the store away to them, you have to know who they are. Can I make that any
     clearer?”
    “No sir.”
    The Dean’s smile had become very, very deep and strangely warm. He settled back, letting his back straighten so that Jak became
     aware that Caccitepe was actually well over two meters tall, and beamed down his long nose at Jak. “No doubt you are well
     aware that the time is almost here to set your Junior Task.”
    Jak tried not to hold his breath. All students were given a task to be completed by the end of the junior year. Caccitepe
     was one of the dozen or so administrators who set Junior Tasks … and he was legendary for setting difficult tasks, sadistically
     aimed straight at your weaknesses.
    “Jak, we have to maintain your independence and your talent for improvisation while finding a way to harness them. There are
     two kinds of people that can’t be trusted with any important job—those who always follow directions and those who always tear
     them up. Before you graduate, you
must
be able to completely understand directions, intentions, and context, and then do the right thing, which is
often but not always the thing you were ordered to do.
Am I making myself clear?”
    “Toktru clear, sir. I dak.”
    “Well, then. Right now, you are compulsive about not following directions, which makes you as much their prisoner as any robot,
     and you willfully refuse to understand any point of view other than the most narrowly chauvinistic one, which means you can’t
     modify the directions intelligently. By the end of your junior year we will have fixed all this completely.”
    Jak felt a cold chill up his spine, but he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”
    The Dean smiled at him, very kindly and warmly, and the chill became a vast glacier of frozen helium. “So. First of all, you
     will continue on the Maniples team and you will not be on academic suspension.”
    He relaxed a little.
    “You will be under a much tougher condition. Every term while you remain here, and via correspondence during Long Break, you
     will repeat Solar System Ethnography, regardless of how many times you pass it,
until
you actually earn top rank in the class, after which you will repeat the optional class in Advanced Ethnography until you
     earn top rank in that class. If you insist on being a fool and a boor we cannot fix that, but we can make sure that it’s a
     choice, rather than a matter of ignorance.”
    Jak