Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(25)

Commandant Urska Kaluza did not rise from her chair when Lieutenant Oddson introduced him and then immediately left. “I thought we’d seen the last Earthside student.”

Not knowing whether she was pleased or displeased to have her expectation broken, Dabeet said nothing.

“You tried hard enough to get here—yes, we saw all your applications and petitions and pathetic pleas and test scores. Now I’d like to know what you expect from this school. If you have in mind a panacea for all your problems, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Disappointments are unavailable to those without expectations,” said Dabeet.

“What a strutting little prig you are,” she commented, seemingly without rancor or distaste. “It will be interesting to see if you make any friends at all.”

Dabeet restrained himself from saying, My strutting priggishness may be nearly as great a handicap to friend-making as your complete disregard for the feelings of others. Instead, he stood in silence, regarding her without a trace of an expression that might be construed as a response to her rudeness.

I’m like a machine that self-programs to get through social situations.

In this case, a complete lack of expression was the most challenging response he could give Urska Kaluza, because she could not possibly detect anything in his face for which she could punish or even criticize him, and yet it would be infuriating that her rudeness had no effect whatsoever. “Deadface,” Dabeet called this expression, and it was his favorite to use with adults who were impressed with their own authority.

He thought of several things to say. “Where are you going to place me, to maximize my opportunity to make no friends?” or “Since you’re my only friend now, I hope I can visit here often,” or “What did you say? I’m sorry, I was praying.” He could use such verbal jabs with teachers at Conn, because they were used to him and sometimes they would even laugh. But with Kaluza, it would be taken as insubordination at a level that might get him sent back to Earth. So she got deadface, and nothing else, until she decided to speak again.

“Don’t you have any questions? You’re the least curious child I’ve seen here.”

“You’re already annoyed with me, sir,” said Dabeet. “Perhaps because I wrote too many petitions and applications. I can’t unwrite them, and whatever I say, including what I’m saying now, will only annoy you.”

“You sound like a robot,” said Kaluza. “They’ve sent me a robot to turn into a human.”

Again, Dabeet remained silent. But he took her words and spun them into a series of thoughts. He knew he didn’t really sound like a robot, partly because the software that produced speech for most robots nowadays was pretty natural-sounding, and partly because he spoke with normal intonation, as if he were giving directions to a lost traveler. His face might be expressionless, but his voice had the ordinary music of the English language, spoken calmly.

All that nonsense that Graff was so interested in, my story about a puppet who wanted to cut the strings. I am a puppet—but I control the strings myself. A self-operating puppet isn’t a puppet at all, is it? Being a puppet means that someone else controls you. So the truth is that I’m the only non-puppet in a world of puppets—all of them responding to whatever emotional strings are pulled by people and events around them, while I alone am free to choose any or none of those responses.

“And stubborn,” she said.

“Yes, sir,” said Dabeet.

“Defiant,” she added.

“I am not, sir,” said Dabeet. “I’m waiting for directions or orders, which I intend to obey to the degree that they’re within my power. I believe, sir, that obeying your orders to your satisfaction may be out of my power, but I intend to do my best, and I hope you’ll come to judge who I really am by what I do in the days and weeks to come, rather than by how much I annoy you at our first meeting.”

“Graff said you’d be my best student.”

This seemed to require no answer, so Dabeet gave none.

“If I send him a vid of this meeting,” said Kaluza, “he’ll laugh and tell me that since I left you no possibility of an appropriate response, I had no choice but to accept your complete nonresponse.”

If you know that, thought Dabeet, then why did you behave that way, and why are you still pissed off at me?

“I suppose this means that in Graff’s eyes, you’ve passed yet one more examination. Perhaps he’ll suggest I put you on the diplomacy track.”

Diplomacy? That was a field where total control over face and voice could be useful. But what would diplomacy have to do with exploration and colonization?

“But I doubt you’ll be in Fleet School by the time we start sorting you into tracks. Step outside the door, Mr. Ochoa, and Lieutenant Oddson will take you to your assigned barracks and introduce you to your team.”

Team, and not army. So the old terminology of Battle School had been replaced. But would there be any real difference?

The door opened. Dabeet stepped through it. The door closed behind him.

“Well?” asked Oddson.

“She said you’d take me to my barracks and introduce me to my team.”

“So you didn’t annoy her enough to incur immediate punishment?”

“Is that a failure or a success on my part?” asked Dabeet.