Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(31)
This is the only important problem faced by the IF after the “end” of the Formic Wars, precisely because we have no reason to imagine that those wars have ended.
Dabeet, your third essay on the diagnostic test was nonresponsive and shows a combative and rebellious attitude. It is inappropriate and imprudent to speak with such authority on matters you know so little about. If you bandy about such ideas and attitudes with other students, your continuation here at Fleet School will be in doubt.
Dabeet learned the theory and rules of the battleroom almost instantly. Hadn’t everyone seen the movies about Ender and his jeesh, movies in which kids in flash suits skittered across the interior of the hundred-meter cube, carrying out intricate maneuvers and zapping each other, freezing parts of each other’s suits or immobilizing them completely in death? Dabeet had found them interesting as he evaluated the physics of the computer simulations to see if they were accurate in depicting real null-gravity movement. Usually there were flaws; usually nobody at school or at home cared about Dabeet’s explanations of why they would be impossible.
So Dabeet needed no introduction to the real flash suit, except to be shown how the pieces linked together as he put it on. Nor was he surprised at the way the handles on the wall popped out as his hand drew near to catch one, while remaining recessed if he approached in a different orientation, so that a protruding handle wouldn’t injure him as he struck it, or interfere with the billiard-ball perfection of his rebound.
Dabeet thought: Bacana, smart walls. Nothing that happens in real war is analogous to this. The battlefield doesn’t reach out to enfold soldiers in a cozy embrace. Not unless they’re dead.
Only after a few practice sessions did Dabeet turn his analysis inward: I’m bad at this, and I’m not getting better fast enough to contribute to my team in actual games. Everybody’s patient with me, but that’s because the emphasis in Fleet School now is on cooperation as well as competition. Niceness counts. What do they really think of me? Not hard to guess. I’m a burden when I’m in play, and at my rate of improvement I always will be. I’ll never catch up with any of the other kids.
And I don’t care. I’m not even interested in becoming that good at this putative game. I don’t want to spend the time it would take to overcome my natural clumsiness.
So maybe it’s a good thing the game isn’t as important in the life of Fleet School as it was in Battle School. Our worth as individuals isn’t completely defined by our win-loss record on the leaderboards.
Yet I still have to spend hours a day in the battleroom for practice sessions, where I take up someone else’s time trying to change this donkey into a steed. I need to find something else to do that doesn’t waste other people’s time.
It was in pursuit of that goal that Dabeet did something to annoy somebody, and now that he was standing in front of Urska Kaluza’s desk, he assumed he was going to find out what.
“So if you can’t immediately win at something, you won’t continue?” she asked.
“I’ll continue if you tell me that I must, sir,” said Dabeet. “I didn’t quit going, I simply asked if I could employ my time elsewhere, freeing up the time of whoever would have had to babysit me during practices. I really have tried to improve, Commandant Kaluza, and I am improving, but not fast enough.”
“So you’ll spend your time surpassing everyone in academic subjects,” said Kaluza.
“If you don’t think that’s a better use of my time, sir, I’m happy to be guided by you in another direction.”
“In Fleet School, we do teamwork. We do cooperation. We don’t do solo grandstanding. So no, you may not be excused from practice time in the battleroom. You’ll wear your flash suit and you’ll be there ready to take part in whatever way your leaders require, or sit and do nothing if that’s what they require. But if you do nothing, we’ll be asking sharp questions of the other students.”
“Thank you for the clarification, sir,” said Dabeet.
“That wasn’t a clarification,” said Kaluza. “That was a denial of your request and a set of strictures and warnings. Don’t use weaselly words with me. We both know what’s going on. You’re a competitor in a cooperative place. You aren’t willing to occupy the lowest rung on a ladder; if you can’t climb as fast as the others, then you want to change ladders. Ain’t happening … lad.”
He was quite sure that what she wanted to call him was not “lad,” but in the IF even the watchers were watched, and she couldn’t be caught calling a boy “mudfoot” or one of the other charming words for someone who had never been off Earth before.
He saluted and left. She had judged him wrongly—he was actually trying to be cooperative and help accomplish the larger purposes of Fleet School, but it was not surprising that she couldn’t grasp the distinction. If a low motive could be attributed to him, then she would hear no argument. That’s fine, ma’am, he thought. I’ll work within whatever fence you build around me. And I’ll find a way to build up my army in the process, until even you have to admit that I am not flying solo. I’m helping support and even form a community.
If, that is, I can’t think of something to do in the battleroom that isn’t just more of the same clumsy thumping around like the clodhopper I am.
Besides the battleroom practices, Dabeet threw himself into strength and dexterity training in the gym. Though there was definitely gravity in the gym and the martial arts training room, Dabeet was pretty sure it wasn’t Earth-normal, or he wouldn’t have been so strong. Here’s the place where his recent departure from Earth would have given him an advantage—so of course the gravity was fudged to help out the breakable spaceborn children.