"This bell has to ring once when you push the left-hand button and twice when you push the right-hand button," the Super said, and Florian listened as the problem clicked off against the things he knew. So far it was easy to wire. "But—" Here came the real problem, Florian knew. "But you have to fix it so that if you push the left-hand button first it won't work at all and if you push the right-hand button twice it won't work until you push the left-hand button. Speed does matter. So does neatness. Go."
Parts and tools were all over the table. Florian collected what he needed. It was not particularly hard.
The next job was somebody else's project. And you had to look at the board and tell the instructor what it would do.
His fingers were very fast. He could beat the clock. Easy. The next thing was harder. The third thing was always to make up one for somebody else. He had fifteen minutes to do that.
He told the Instructor what it was.
"Show me how you'd build that," the Instructor said. So he did.
And the Instructor looked very serious and nodded finally and said: "Florian, you're going to double up on tape."
He was disappointed. "I'm sorry. It won't work?"
"Of course it'll work," the Instructor said, and smiled at him. "But I can't give that to anybody on this level. You'll do double-study on the basics and we'll see how you do with the next. All right?"
"Yes," he said. Of course it was yes. But he was worried. He was working with Olders a lot. It was hard, and took a lot of time, and they kept insisting he take his Rec time, when he had rather be at his job.
He was already late a lot, and Andy frowned at him, and helped him more than he wanted.
He thought he ought to talk to the Super about all of it. But he made them happy when he worked hard. He could still do it, even if he was tired, even if he fell into his bunk at night and couldn't even remember doing it.
The Instructor said he could go and he was late again. Andy told him the pigs didn't understand his schedule and Andy had had to feed them.
"I'll do the water," he said, and did it for Andy's too. That was fair. It made Andy happy.
It made Andy so happy Andy let him curry the Horse with him, and go with him to the special barn where they had the baby, which was a she, protected against everything and fed with a bucket you had to hold. He wasn't big enough to do that yet. You had to shower and change your clothes and be very careful, because they were giving the baby treatments they got from the Horse. But she wasn't sick. She played dodge with them and then she would smell of their fingers and play dodge again.
He had been terribly relieved when Andy told him that the horses were not for food. "What are they for?" he had asked then, afraid that there might be other bad answers.
"They're Experimentals," Andy had said. "I'm not sure. But they say they're working animals."
Pigs were sometimes working animals. Pigs were so good at smelling out native weeds that drifted in and rooted and they were so smart at not eating the stuff that there were azi who did nothing but walk them around, every day going over the pens and the fields with the pigs that nobody would ever make into bacon, and zapping whatever had sneaked inside the fences. The machine-sniffers were good, but Andy said the pigs were better in some ways.
That was what they meant in the tapes, Florian thought, when they said one of the first Rules of all Rules was to find ways to be useful.