Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(40)

“Somebody checks all of that, of course—at the time it’s put into the container,” said the accountant. “Then, as long as the seal is unbroken, we know it’s the same stuff that was put into it in the first place.”

“Unless somebody knows how to unseal and reseal those seals,” said Dabeet.

“Only the proper authorities can do that.”

“And there are no improper authorities, is that what you believe?”

The accountant was angry, and ready to utter a retort that would put Dabeet in his place, when Zhang He spoke up. “It’s good to assume that everyone is faithful and law-abiding in carrying out their assignments.”

The accountant seized on this seeming olive branch. “We have to believe that other people are reliable, or we could never board a spaceship or eat a meal or go under a surgeon’s scalpel.”

“And yet there are some incompetent surgeons, and some surgeons who are bribed to commit undetectable assassinations, and some surgeries that simply turn out badly despite everybody’s best efforts,” said Zhang He.

“We aren’t doing surgery here!”

“I was merely agreeing with Dabeet that this system allows anything to be put aboard our space station, awaiting transfer to another vehicle, and we’d never know whether our own safety was being compromised,” said Zhang He.

His tone was so mild, his expression so open and honest, that the accountant didn’t show any anger at all. He took Zhang’s I’m-so-helpful act at face value.

I have to learn how to do that, thought Dabeet. Instead of my you’re-so-stupid attitude. Zhang really is helpful. And this man really is dim-witted. But Zhang is only helping me, yet convinces this git to react as if Zhang were helping him.

“I’m going to teach the whole lesson,” said the accountant. “And you’re going to listen.”

“Why not let me continue the recitation, and you correct me if I get anything wrong? That way I’ll have a task to keep me awake.”

“They should have sent you outside,” said the accountant. “Wise-asses die out there.”

“And in here, too,” said Dabeet. “Of boredom. Drowned in mindless rote. Do you even remember how to do this job? Are you capable of evaluating our hands-on work? Or do they bring in somebody else to actually teach?”

“You think you’ve mastered it, just because you have a photographic memory?” asked the accountant. “Show me.”

“Show you what?”

“On that example bill of lading. Any errors?”

“I don’t have any tallies to compare it to,” said Dabeet. “But here are seven errors of spelling and punctuation.” He tweaked them in the holodisplay. “And here are three arithmetic mistakes that will cause the bill to be rejected by the computer. However, since the bill presumably came out of a computer, the real discovery here is that the computer must be seriously malfunctioning to produce an error-filled bill of lading like this.”

“I think these errors were deliberately introduced,” said Zhang He, “to test our ability to spot them.”

“I think you’re right,” said Dabeet. “But what are they actually testing? Since this class of error can’t come up on a computer-generated bill of lading, they’re testing our ability to spot errors that will never exist. While the real errors remain impossible to see.”

“And what real errors do you suppose those are?” asked the accountant.

“I imagine that most of the time, there aren’t any errors at all. The tallyboys will spot any discrepancies. And the people who seal and unseal the containers are the only ones who can vouch for the contents, right? So examining the books and bills of lading at this level serves no purpose except proofreading the spelling of odd names, and serial numbers that spell-checkers can’t catch.”

Dabeet heard a very faint beep.

The accountant sighed. He left the room.

“I think his earpiece gave him an alert,” said Zhang He.

“Didn’t realize he had an earpiece,” said Dabeet.

“I think it might only be on the side of his head that I can see.”

One of the other kids said, “If you oomays have won us an early lunch, bacana. But if you’ve gotten us some kind of punishment, then eat kuso and die.”

“I’m not from your culture,” said Dabeet. “The flavor of kuso remains a mystery to me.”

“‘Kuso’ means ‘shit,’” said the boy.

“I knew what it meant,” said Dabeet. You couldn’t be in Fleet School for three days without getting a full vocabulary dump of all the offensive slang. “I just lacked your firsthand knowledge of how it tasted.”

He gave the boy his best grin. The kind of grin, Dabeet realized, that several books he’d read described as “shit-eating.” What a happy confluence of fecal references.

It was someone else who came back in. A woman. “My name is Enya Polonia. I’m the supervisor of loading and cargo here at Fleet School.”

Dabeet, unintimidated, asked, “Is there really enough traffic that somebody has that as a fulltime job?”

“I’m also inventory manager for Fleet School. And one of the two purchasing agents. You’re a very perceptive young man.”