Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(22)

—Do you think I’m naive enough to think you would lose sleep over depriving someone of their “right” if granting it would atrapalliate some program you value?

—Why should some nation on Earth have the use of him, when he may prove valuable as an explorer or expedition commander or colony governor?

—Since we don’t know how your experiment with Ender Wiggin as a colony governor is going to turn out, I hope you’re not thinking of trying this with other children.

—I’m in no hurry. We can wait to see who he becomes in training. I am quite sure that within a few more years, we’ll have a good idea of what this boy will or won’t be worth to us.

—And if he’s dangerous?

—A combat position is possible. Then his dangerousness will be directed against the enemy.

—We’re not at war. The Formics are destroyed.

—It’s difficult to imagine that there’ll be no combat in his lifetime.

—You’re not going to train him for war, anyway.

—If he needs to learn war, he’ll learn it.

—Why did you continue this bizarre program, once we had Ender and Bean?

—We had no way of knowing how long the war would last, or how thoroughly Ender and his jeesh might lead us to victory. Many scenarios were possible in which the war lasted long enough for Dabeet to be part of the next generation of child warlords.

—It’s always such a bother, disposing of war surplus goods.

—I’m taking that as a joke, my friend. Because Dabeet is definitely a person not a “good.” A person, I might add, whose good side it may someday be very important for you to be on.

—With any luck, I’ll be dead by then.

—It’s all about how you die, my friend.

—If he’s that dangerous, then kill him now.

—The bear and the bee are only dangerous if you provoke them.

—Warning taken.

They finally gave him a date for his departure in the lunar shuttle, and from lunar orbit, he’d board an outbound supply craft that would be making a stop at Fleet School. During the Formic Wars, there had been direct shuttles to Battle School, each one full of new students. But now that the school was no longer recruiting on Earth, it was cheaper to funnel all Earth–to–Fleet School transport through ordinary IF channels. Civilian clothes, in a civilian shuttle to lunar orbit, and only then boarding an IF supply ship to finish the trip.

Dabeet read as much as he could about spaceflight, especially near-Earth shuttles. The only thing that frightened him about it was weightlessness. So many people got very sick the first few times they went through it. Some never lost that uncontrolled nausea. Wouldn’t it be ironic if they had to send him back because he couldn’t function in zero-gee?

Life in Fleet School was mostly in a near-Earth-gravity environment, but the battleroom—which still, according to what he could learn, played a large role in the curriculum—was in null-gee, and if Dabeet couldn’t stop puking, his future with the IF would be in considerable doubt.

None of the other students will have problems like that, because they grew up in space, or at least they’ve been off Earth long enough to get over the nausea.

And that led him to realize: They’ll all think of themselves as True Children of the Fleet, and I’ll be a child of Earth, a complete outsider. If I’m puking in the battleroom, what choice will they have but to shun me? One dose of vomiting, and I’ll have lost my value to Fleet School. If they send me home right away, then Mother and I really will have to go into hiding, because I won’t be there to open the door for a tiny invading army. Which won’t happen because they ban all private electronics so I won’t have their stupid phone.

Dabeet got his mother to take him to a doctor to inquire about medicine for space sickness. The doctor merely looked at him as if he were insane. “Are you planning a space voyage soon?”

“Not a ‘voyage,’ but yes, a trip. To L-5.”

“There’s nothing there but the old Battle School, and they don’t allow tourists,” said the doctor.

“If there’s a preventive for motion sickness, I’d appreciate a good dose. I don’t suppose there’s anything like an inoculation.”

“Motion sickness isn’t caused by an infectious agent, Dabeet.”

“Perhaps something with laser or ultrasound involving the semicircular canals in the ears?”

“You don’t want to mess with those delicate organs.”

“I don’t want to puke my guts out, either, especially when I’m in the null-gee battleroom.”

The doctor, who hadn’t made any kind of study of Battle School, had no idea what Dabeet was talking about. “If there’s some kind of problem that arises in space, I’m sure the IF doctors already have appropriate treatments for it.”

Including the option of sending pukers home.

“But here’s my advice. Relax about it. Don’t fill your body with stress. Trust that you probably won’t get sick—most people don’t, or it passes within a couple of minutes. And if you do, they’ll have a way to treat it.”

“Very comforting,” said Dabeet.

Yet all his worry was in vain, because when the shuttle took off and, more importantly, when he was in the cargo ship flying from Luna to Fleet School, he felt not even the slightest twinge of nausea.