Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(13)

Or maybe everything had been faked from the start. Maybe he had been told he was smart, and had been given wildly inflated scores on all his tests. Maybe the easy tests he took were not the same ones Ender Wiggin had been given. Maybe the Charles G. Conn School for the Gifted was nothing of the kind, and the visit of the Minister of Colonization had not been because Dabeet was anything special, but because the Minister wished to provoke exactly this kidnapping. Because Dabeet really was a rather stupid boy, with a reputation for genius, if Dabeet happened to be killed or left in the custody of some monstrous foreign power, it would be no loss to anyone except, perhaps, Mother.

But this was obviously not true. The tests had been genuine. The questions had been hard. Dabeet had answered them all correctly. The other children at Conn Gifted were, in fact, quite clever in their way. Dabeet was a genuine target for genuine kidnappers.

And now he realized what was going on. Graff had set him up. The news media had carried several recent stories of Battle School alumni and students who were either kidnapped or assassinated upon their return to Earth. Some said this was why Ender Wiggin himself remained in space, because he was too much at risk. Newly released from the constraints of the Formic Wars, nations were maneuvering for advantage and preparing for wars; Battle School–trained children might be the secret weapons that could be used to save one nation—or destroy another.

The country that has taken me doesn’t think it has enough clever Battle Schoolers, and so they want me. Or they want to deprive some other country of my services.

But I have no training in war. I didn’t think I’d need any. Yes, I’ve read about Ender Wiggin and I’ve read about other generals, but not with any serious intent. Fleet School has different purposes now. So whoever has taken me, they’re going to be disappointed with my performance.

Disappointing them won’t lead to any good outcome for me.

So I’ll pretend to know whatever they need, and then I’ll learn it in order to perform superbly. If I decide I want to help them. If not, I’ll figure out how to seem to be helping while actually sabotaging them.

At about that point in his thinking the grogginess and inaction overcame him, and he slept again.

*

When he awoke he was sitting in a different chair. Still strapped in, but now he looked over the top of a rather large desk to see a man in a civilian suit, sipping at a tiny coffee cup while another voice droned on in a language that only sometimes sounded like Spanish. Dabeet looked for the source of the other voice, and finally concluded, from the periodic breaks and cracks in the voice, that he was listening to a speakerphone that carried a signal via satellite.

Dabeet understood colloquial Spanglish, the language of the immigrant community in Indiana, and he had learned some formal Spanish. But this sounded as if a Frenchman had inserted his DNA into the conversation.

Nasals. Otherwise Spanish-like. Português. Brazilian, then? Why in the world would Brazil, one of the major powers, need a definitely not-Brazilian boy untrained in war?

No, the other people on the plane had spoken Spanish flawlessly and smoothly. It was quite possible that for some reason Brazil had funded a poorer Latin-American country in this kidnapping. Perhaps Brazil wanted to help one of its dependent countries prevail in some minor local squabble without getting directly involved itself.

Finally the man behind the desk spoke—and in Spanish, but slowly, as if to allow the man on the other end of the conversation to understand him more easily. Dabeet learned little from the conversation: “The visitor is awake and listening. I will find out what I can.”

So Dabeet would be interrogated. About what, he did not know, since he possessed no state secrets, and, between his mother’s lies and Graff’s, he did not know if he knew the things he did know.

“Your visitor,” began the man behind the desk.

Dabeet knew at once that the man wished to ask about Graff. So Dabeet would pretend not to understand him. “No, sir,” said Dabeet—in English. “I am not your visitor, nor am I your guest. I am your captive, and I’m a child as well.”

“The boy pretends to be an idiot,” said the man, in Spanish.

After a second: “No,” said the Brazilian on the speakerphone, this time in English. “He pretends to believe you are an idiot.”

“You are all idiots,” said Dabeet in low Spanish, guessing that the Brazilian would not understand him, especially because he added a few colorful fighting words to the statement.

As Dabeet had hoped, the man behind the desk was forced to interpret his words, though he paraphrased considerably. All the while, he placidly looked Dabeet in the eye, like a cow chewing its cud.

After a couple of seconds of satellite lag, the voice over the telephone, again in English, said, “We are curious to know why a genius is so stupid as to insult those who hold his life in their power.”

“You are playing into the hands of the Minister of Colonization,” said Dabeet. “You noticed me because he came and spoke to me. But what did he say? That there was no more Battle School. Now they train the children of the Fleet to explore and colonize, and I am badly suited to such a mission. So even though I am a child of the Fleet, I will not be taken off Earth to study. This is the prize you have captured.”

“He’s convinced me,” said the man at the desk. “He’s worthless to us.”

“I’m a child of the Fleet,” said Dabeet. “Do you imagine that the Ministry of Colonization has not been watching everything you do? I’m quite sure this airplane is being watched from space. I’m sure the IF knows who is aboard this plane, where it took off, and where you think it will land. Even if they have no use for me, do you think that the IF will overlook any harm you might do to a child of the Fleet?”