Safety Tests Read Free Page B

think you’ll have to finish the test another time,” I say as I bring us back to dock.
    “Nooo.” She actually wails. I hate it when they wail.
    “Sorry, LaDonna,” I say. “Those are the rules.”
    She bows her head. “One more chance?”
    They all ask that. As if I’d risk my job for them. As if I really want someone who freezes when something out of the ordinary happens to pilot ships in the tight traffic routes that spider out of Earth’s orbit.
    “Sorry,” I say. “You can try again in thirty days.”
    It only takes a few seconds to get back into the confines of the dock. She has to reverse the actions she took just a moment ago, but I don’t let her. I take control of the ship.
    “Thirty days.” She chokes out the words. “I don’t know if I can make it for thirty days.”
    I hit the docking controls, and the ship slides into place as if it’s never left.
    “Sorry,” I say, not sorry at all. “But I don’t make the rules.”
    I used to say, See you then , but I no longer believe I can make it another thirty days. Sometimes I doubt I can make it another hour. Today, though, I can make it.
    One more test and I’m done. For a whole twelve hours. (And fifteen minutes.)
     
    ***
     
    I go back in and immediately glance at the waiting area. Only the sleeping woman remains, head tilted back, mouth open, small snores emerging at regular intervals.
    Real pilots can sleep anywhere. I’m impressed, even though I don’t want to be.
    I’m also impressed that Connie has taken pity on me and hasn’t added four more candidates to my pile. She could have, given the four she dismissed this morning.
    I don’t thank her, though. Instead, I pick up the last candidate’s info screen and actually peruse it. I should do that with every candidate, but I don’t, and then I pay for it, like I did with LaDingdong.
    This woman’s name is Iva, and she’s here for recertification. What a surprise. She’s flown cargo for decades, preceded by some classified military stuff. She went private for five years, and then a spectacular personal implosion—involving name-calling, food throwing, and a refusal to take her client wherever he wanted to go. (The report states [probably because the report writer can’t resist] that she would take her client anywhere he wanted provided it was hell. Because he belonged in hell, and nowhere else, and she wasn’t about to inflict him on the good people of the universe.) That made me smile. It also made me like her.
    I didn’t want to like her.
    Such behavior would have gotten her disqualified from any public and/or corporate job, but she worked for herself. She did lose her license for a while—that food-throwing thing led to a near-accident with a really expensive ship—and that lost license led her here.
    She had to retest for everything and of course, she was passing with stellar grades. An easy test for the end of the day.
    “Iva,” I say, and she sits up, the kind of awake soldiers have when aroused on the battlefield—hair mussed, eyes sleep-covered but alert, body ready for anything. “You still want this test?”
    “No,” she says. Her voice is deep and sarcastic. “Who wants these tests? I’m told I need it.”
    Oh, God, I like her. I don’t want to like her. I want her to be as impersonal a candidate as Buff Guy or LaDingdong. I want to be able to flunk her for picking her nose at the wrong moment, for farting indiscriminately and pissing me off, or for putting her hand on my knee and trying to flirt with me. I want to feel nothing for her like I feel nothing for all the others, not even a sense of duty.
    “If you don’t want to take the test, that’s fine with me,” I say in my most dispassionate voice.
    “That’s not what I meant—ah, hell.” She shakes her head, runs her hand through her badly cut hair, and stands up. “Yes, sir, I am ready for the test, sir.”
    “All right then,” I say. “Let’s go.”
     
    ***
     
    She’s going for a cargo