Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(17)

—No, it’s a new question. A small one. I don’t believe for a moment that my father, whoever he is, was involved with my kidnapping. Yet the principal said that the man who came to claim me passed the DNA test, affirming that he was my father.

—Oh, Dabeet, do you really need me to answer that?

—My assumption now is that the DNA test that the principal mentioned consisted of a sum of money being passed to him from a foreign agent.

—The principal is being detained until we can determine whether that is true. He might have been under duress. He claims, of course, that he was taken completely by surprise by the gas attack on the two of you. But he has no plausible reason for having brought you to his office in the middle of lunch hour.

—“Until we can determine”?

—Because you are a child of the Fleet, the IF is participating in the investigation.

—So my status as a child of the Fleet has been openly declared at my school?

—To the local police, but I’m sure they’ve already mentioned it at Conn. Thus you are vindicated to the faculty and students who thought you and your mother were falsely claiming Fleet status.

—I’m ashamed that it matters to me, but it does.

—You’re ashamed that you were ashamed? Soon you’ll be ashamed of being ashamed of being ashamed. This will have no happy ending.

—I assume that my captors were allowed to leave.

—The airplane is, technically speaking, a diplomatic pouch. The local authorities had no authority to inspect it or, for that matter, detain it.

—But the IF does what it likes.

—At our first indication of interest, Fleet inspectors were invited to enter. They were shown a compartment under a seat that contained, not only your DNA from sweat and skin, but also the residue of various drugs, explosives, and other munitions. Also three species of animals that it is illegal to traffic in. But I assume you weren’t actually confined there?

—No, they had me in a very comfortable seat. Only when they had decided to return me did we need to find a place to make it appear that I had been hidden on board, and then I needed to be confined there long enough to leave those traces that you found.

—How did you persuade them to return you instead of making you disappear over the Atlantic?

—I assumed that we were over the Caribbean.

—You thought they were taking you to a Latin American country.

—I told them that the IF would be tracking them with your enormous satellite surveillance system, and that you had the power to take them out of the air at any time.

—They know that we wouldn’t do that.

—I convinced them that I’m so important that you might. And people who would do anything for power can’t believe that the IF, with more power than anybody, might really refrain from using it.

—Interesting insight.

—Obvious, and therefore not an insight, just an observation.

—What did you promise them?

—Everything I could think of. I have no idea which was the promise that tipped the balance.

—They’ll hold you to it.

—The best way to avoid any such outcome is for me to leave planet Earth.

—The Moon?

—I had Fleet School in mind, sir.

—But you haven’t passed my tests, Dabeet.

—I matter to you, Minister Graff, or you would not have invested so much time in me. If you’re uncertain whether I have the qualifications you require, why not take me to Fleet School and make the attempt to inculcate me with them? Do I need to be curious? Do I need to be capable both of following and of leading in groups? Do you need to know whether I’ll be obedient? Or whether I’ll disobey orders when that’s the course that will have the best outcome for my team or my mission? Take me to Fleet School and let’s both find out whether I have judgment to match my native intelligence.

—A decent stab at my first test, I must admit.

—The Formic Wars are over, sir. Not so much is at stake. If I’m a bust, what have you lost, really? With my test scores and my parentage, no one will fret that I didn’t deserve a chance at Fleet School. If your curriculum is worthwhile, trust me to make the most of it.

—You make a strong argument, but it isn’t the only argument.

—On board the airplane, the civilian in charge was on satphone with a Portuguese-speaking man who was clearly the ultimate source of authority for the mission to kidnap me.

—Brazilian, then, you think?

—He made sure to insist that he was not.

—And a civilian was in charge.

—He had the private office and the big desk and the comfortable chair. The general in colonel’s uniform was relegated to making sure I kept my seat belt on.

—And why did you tell me this now, instead of before?

—I waited until I thought you might need a demonstration of my loyalty before deciding to take me off planet.

—So you thought you were coming close to persuading me.

—I also know you’re not the kind of leader who changes his plan just to prove that a subordinate is wrong.

—You know? Or you hope?

—How could you be where you are, if you acted out of petty vanity?

—Someday I’ll ask you to tell me where, exactly, you think I am.

—You’re in charge of whatever you care to be in charge of, sir. You care most about colonization, so that’s the position from which you lead the International Fleet and seek to control events on Earth.