Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(44)

“I won’t type them into the desk.”

“You’re not going to use paper, are you?”

“I have those numbers, Zhang. When I have them, they don’t go anywhere I don’t want them to.”

“You’re so full of brag,” said Zhang.

“If it’s true, it ain’t bragging.”

“Yes it is. In fact, it’s especially bragging when it’s true.”

“I don’t forget numbers,” said Dabeet. “And so I rely on that, because my brain has never let me down.”

“Don’t look them up, not even in a couple of weeks,” said Zhang He.

“You’re even more paranoid than I am.”

“They monitor everything we do,” said Zhang. “Even if they don’t instantly recognize the numbers, they’ll pass around a memo about what you looked for and what you found. You think that won’t come under the gaze of the people who might feel a need to silence us?”

Dabeet had no answer for that.

“If somebody’s smuggling, then that’s a career-stopper if they’re caught. That’s Earthside jail and never going back out into space. Of course they’d kill us, especially you, once they realize that you’ll never forget those numbers.”

“You won’t remember them?”

“Whether I have a good memory for numbers or not,” said Zhang, “I don’t know how it does me any good to say.”

Dabeet smiled. “I think you’re right. No search on those numbers. Not as long as I’m at Fleet School.”

“Unless,” said Zhang.

“Unless what?”

“Unless we both agree that there’s somebody we can trust who might have the authority to investigate.”

“And has protection enough that he won’t get killed himself, along with us,” added Dabeet.

“As if somebody at that level would ever talk to us!” scoffed Zhang.

“Hey, if they’re really monitoring everywhere we go in Fleet School,” said Dabeet, “what’s to say they haven’t recorded our whole conversation in the corridors?”

Zhang He smiled wanly. “Or simply read our lips from the security cameras.”

They walked the last few strides to the conference room in silence. But Dabeet was thinking: I do know somebody who has the authority to investigate things, and probably wouldn’t get killed if he launched an investigation.

But how can I get a message to Graff? thought Dabeet. And more to the point, how will I know that there’s anything illegal to look into? If nobody is crooked and this is part of the test, then they’ll all behave exactly as they would if everybody’s in on a smuggling operation.

A dead end. Just like trying to get to a door so I can open it and save Mother’s life. And I thought I was powerless on Earth.





9

—You told me to bring you anything concerning Dabeet Ochoa.

—What has he done this time?

—He’s obsessing over the construction system inside the battleroom, but I wouldn’t interrupt you for that. Look at this.

—He wrote to me. How sweet. A thank-you letter?

—What would you conclude if it were a thank-you letter?

—That he wanted something and thought that stroking me would help.

—Does it?

—If you had ever tried, you’d know.

—I suspect that if I had tried, I wouldn’t be here today handing you this printout.

—True, but mostly because you’d probably be terrible at it. You’ve never been much of a sycophant.

—How about you?

—I was a champion at it. How do you think I got things done back when I was a junior officer? The vanity of high officers is a career-eating tiger, always needing to be fed on the blood of lesser ranks, but prone to purring when properly petted.

—You’re a poet of bureaucratic maneuver, sir. How was that?

—Obvious, but also true, and therefore completely believable. The note?

—Should I leave while you read it?

—He wants a private conversation.

—Remarkable. That brings the number of people seeking a few minutes of your time to, let me see … everybody with ambition or a crackpot plan.

—Which of those is Dabeet, I wonder?

—He’s already famous for his relentless ambition.

—Not sure yet how much of that was his upbringing and how much his innate character.

—I forgot, sir, that you’re the one educated person in the world who believes in innate character.

—Most people believe in it. They just don’t know what it would look like if they ever ran across its trail. So they pretend to believe that it doesn’t exist.

—Just as you pretend to believe that all those tests for Fleet School you put out there actually measure something.

—They do measure something. They are excellent tests of the mental skills that we have agreed to call “intelligence.”

—But you have long pretended that they also measure a child’s future potential for leadership and command.

—And as long as we continue to censor any negative comments about the testing of children, we will continue to get excellent results from gathering the data from people who think their children are as clever as Andrew Wiggin.