Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(35)

“Anything is shameful if people use it to ridicule you,” said Zhang He. “But I know that they mostly do it because it’s fun to say ‘Wu-Hu.’”

Sure enough, Zhang He’s toon leader and then the commander, Bartolomeo Ja, came to remonstrate with him. Zhang He answered cheerfully enough, but he neither obeyed them nor explained his reasons for working with Dabeet.

“This is taking pity way too far,” said Bartolomeo. “He’s useless, but you’re the heart of your toon.”

Zhang He’s answer was a gratified smile. “Why, it’s nice of you to say so.”

The commander went on and on, to no avail, and then began yelling at Dabeet that he was forbidden to take up the time of such a valuable soldier.

Dabeet’s answer was also mild. “Would you like to learn how to do this, too, sir, so we can get our time even faster?”

“I think we should try a timed run now,” said Zhang He to Dabeet.

Bartolomeo gave one last warning. “There’s no way that Kaluza will let you tear up my army like this,” he said.

Dabeet thought he was probably right. But in the meantime, he and Zhang He had time enough for one real try. Zhang He was a quick learner, and even though his skill at extruding and binding the blocks wasn’t up to Dabeet’s level, he was nearly as quick.

They divided their activities. First they both extruded and linked pillars of eight blocks each until they had enough to make the whole bridge. Then Zhang He, staying at the wall, launched them up to Dabeet, who caught each one and joined it to the growing pillar. Finally, Zhang He tossed the penultimate piece and then carried the last one as he scrambled up the bridge. They set the last piece in place together.

“4:10,” said both their hands.

“That’s less than a third of my pace working alone,” said Dabeet.

“That was your first time, and you had to keep making the trip back and forth to the wall,” said Zhang He.

“If I could figure out how this would have any effect on the battle,” said Dabeet, “then I’d be really excited that this can be built by two guys in about the time it takes for a battle to really get under way.”

Zhang He grinned. “I wonder what we could do building four pillars at once. With a whole toon.”

“Forget pillars,” said Dabeet. “I wonder what would happen if we built a fort that completely enclosed the gate.”

“Or built a bridge from one gate to the other,” said Zhang He.

“Or a tube that you could crawl through, where nobody could shoot you from one side of the battleroom to the other.”

“Nothing stops them from tearing the tube apart as fast as we build it, of course. Like Nehemiah’s enemies tore down the walls of Jerusalem at night, after Nehemiah’s people had worked on it all day.”

“Nehemiah?” asked Dabeet.

“The book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament,” said Zhang He. “Come on, Dabeet, you’ve read everything and you remember everything.”

“But you’re Chinese,” said Dabeet.

“Chinese Christian,” said Zhang He. “Not very well accepted in China, I’m afraid. Our family was already part of a Chinese Christian community on Luna before either of my parents enlisted in the IF. They didn’t really enlist. The Fleet just took over the company they worked for, and they either took the oath or they were out of work.”

“And you’re a Christian?” asked Dabeet.

“We don’t talk religion here in Fleet School,” said Zhang He. “It’s one of the rules.”

The end-of-practice light was already flashing.

“Come on, let’s head for chow,” said Zhang He.

This implied that Zhang He was actually going to eat with him. Dabeet was baffled. “Don’t we have to clean up all these blocks?” he asked.

“If we have to, they’ll make us come back and do it. But I think the blocks know where they belong,” said Zhang He.

Then it dawned on Dabeet. “Helping me was an act of Christian charity, wasn’t it?”

Zhang He looked at him like he was crazy. “You’re the only person here doing anything interesting,” he said. “You letting me help you—that was charity.”

Dabeet, trying to shape his responses to fit the expectations of others as normal people do, tried to detect any hint of humor or irony in Zhang He’s words. Dabeet? Charity? He knew enough about the word to associate it with generosity, as well as Christian teachings and practice. How had it been generous of Dabeet to …

Well, he could have ordered Zhang He to go away and not interfere with Dabeet’s work. This would have been a preemptive strike on Dabeet’s part, to protect himself from ridicule. But Dabeet had not ordered Zhang He to leave him alone. He had felt no fear of him. Why was that?

Partly it was Zhang He himself. Dabeet had never seen him as one of the smug ones, who tried to elevate themselves by putting vulnerable kids down. And when he approached, Zhang He’s soberness of manner never wavered. He seemed genuinely interested, and, as his hard work and quick mastery of the techniques soon demonstrated, he was interested.

Partly, though, Dabeet had to recognize a change in himself. At Conn, Dabeet never embarked on a project that would benefit from the help of others. His teachers always tried to intrude on his work in order to—as they imagined—give him guidance. Their guidance was always based on false assumptions about his purpose, their own ignorance making them worse than useless.