Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(26)

“It’s an interesting fact. Her normal method is to goad each new student into doing something that puts them on report, so they have to do some kind of unpleasant duty. It unites new students against a common enemy.”

“So the commandant poses herself as our enemy?” asked Dabeet.

“Apparently not you,” said Oddson. “Kind of a shame, since there’s a sort of competition in the armies about who got the worst punishment after their first interview.”

“Thanks for tipping me off, so I could make sure to get a spectacular one.”

“Nobody’s ever gotten away without a punishment, as far as I know,” said Oddson. “Your colors are Green Blue Green, so if you’re ever lost, you touch the wall on either side. Your colors will appear, and you can find your barracks, at least.”

Dabeet wanted to say, “I don’t get lost,” but he decided that it was important not to boast. He recognized that his impulse to be boastful was the result of fear—no one knew him here, and so he wanted to assert his abilities as a means of winning respect. But this only worked on faculty members at Conn, and it was pretty plain that the IF didn’t work like the faculty and staff at an elementary school for gifted students in Indiana.

Rather than asserting his strength, it might work better to show—no, not weakness, but vulnerability.

“I wish,” said Dabeet, “that I could observe for a while before I actually have to interact with anyone.”

“It can be a bit intimidating. But I can promise you, holding yourself aloof won’t work at all. Don’t just watch. Engage.”

Engage. Dabeet had seen plenty of that, even at a school of intellectuals and artists like Conn. To engage usually meant to challenge, to compete. A new male baboon, demonstrating and asserting himself until the rest of the troop pummeled him enough that he felt like he belonged. The pummeling wasn’t literal at Conn—or at least not usually—but here it might be. Because Kaluza might have called it a team, but Oddson still called it an army, and the military culture might have survived the name change.

Maybe I should have taken martial arts and self-defense classes seriously instead of regarding them as a waste of time.

No. If somebody wants to pound on me a little, to make sure I know my place, my best tactic is to give a couple of punches at first and then curl up in a ball and call out my surrender. Accept whatever place I’m assigned by the other kids, and then work to improve it over time. To live among baboons, you have to accept the baboon rituals and pretend to believe in the baboon religion, whatever it is.

And then try not to think of your peers as baboons, because if this is going to work out at all, you have to be able to lead them, rely on the ones who have useful abilities, and keep everybody happy.





6

—Whatever you expect this arrogant little git to accomplish, what makes you think Fleet School can help him?

—My question is whether he can help Fleet School.

The barracks was surprisingly small. When Oddson touched a panel and the door slid open, Dabeet stepped through and found himself at one end of a long narrow bunk-lined room that ran parallel to the corridor. This meant that the floor of the barracks rose up at the far end, so the last bunks weren’t visible unless you knelt down.

Dabeet did not kneel down. Instead he looked at the boys in the nearer bunks. Most of them were reading, typing, or manipulating three-dimensional objects in the space above their holodesks. Only two of them looked up enough to notice him.

No. They didn’t notice Dabeet. They noticed Oddson. And they immediately scrambled out of their bunks and stood at attention in front of their bunks.

Without a single word being spoken, each boy noticed the movement of the other boys near him, looked to see what was going on, and then immediately stood at attention by his bunk. The last boy to notice what was happening set his holodesk down with a sigh and stood at attention with a posture and facial expression that were eloquent with despair.

“I’m glad you concentrate so deeply on the things you read, Mr. Cabeza,” said Oddson. “Standing order, young man.”

Cabeza clambered up to the top bunk and stood on it. Only you couldn’t stand on it—the ceiling was too low. So he struck a pose with his back flat along the ceiling, pressing upward from his half-bent legs. It looked very uncomfortable and wearying.

“I’m here to bring you the twenty-third member of your exalted company,” said Oddson.

“We only have nineteen, sir,” said a babyish boy near the door.

“You only have nineteen that bunk with you right now,” said Oddson. “Nor do you know enough about the new boy’s ability to assess whether he alone is enough to bring the whole team up to snuff.”

“Too bad he doesn’t have a name,” said the babyish one.

“My name is Dabeet Ochoa.”

“A talker,” said one of the boys.

“What’s his punishment?” asked another.

“None assigned,” said Oddson.

This spread in a buzz of reaction to the far end of the room.

“Didn’t he meet Commandant Kaluza?” asked the babyish one.

“He did, Mr. Timeon,” said Oddson.

“And no punishment?”

A few chuckled. A few made faces of disgust and stared coldly at Dabeet.