Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(47)

Are they the best or worst of the players in the game? So far the leaders haven’t come over and told us to stop playing around. They haven’t demanded that any of my kids stop working with me. They might, of course, anytime they choose. But it’s also possible that these are the worst players, so their absence isn’t missed.

Some of them might be the worst players of that game, but they are the best players in the entire universe of the game I’m playing, and they’re getting better with every practice. I’m getting better when I practice, too, no matter which of them is coaching me, because they’ve all learned to look for the right things. I taught them everything—Zhang and I taught them—but now they coach us and we all get better together.

Is this the great secret of Ender Wiggin’s leadership? Do I have any chance of equaling him in a skill that I never thought I’d be able to learn—leading other kids?

Are there any records of his games and his practices when this was Battle School? Is there any chance I could watch them?

Not if I have to get Urska Kaluza’s permission.

*

“They don’t allow me to go outside the ship,” said Dabeet, almost as soon as he entered the office of the head of Fleet School Station security.

“Why am I hearing this sad tale?” asked Robota Smirnova. “It’s not my policy. Pick a door, I’ll let you go right out. Unless you want a spacesuit.”

“I realize that you’re the head of station security, not school security, so you don’t normally deal with students,” said Dabeet.

“You misunderstood completely. I don’t deal with students. Period. Not ‘normally’ and not ever.”

“I was never in space before I came here. I’m way behind the other students. And I’ll never catch up, because Urska Kaluza hates me, for some reason.”

“An excellent reason, I’m sure. What do you really imagine is going to come from meeting with me, Dabeet Ochoa?”

“It depends on how private this conversation is,” said Dabeet.

“Is anyone else in the room? This is as private as it gets.”

“I don’t know who reports to whom,” said Dabeet. “Do you report to Kaluza? Or to someone else, outside the station?”

Robota Smirnova looked at him, her half-lidded eyes showing no more interest than before. But that look went on for a long time. Five seconds. Fifteen seconds. An eternity.

Then Robota Smirnova arose from her desk and walked to the door. It opened as she approached. “Coming?” she said impatiently.

Dabeet followed her. Out into the corridor. Up one of the tubes toward the center of the station. Then into a corridor, then into a door a few steps up into the tubular wall, and this time their path was parallel to the axis of the station.

Dabeet was well-enough-oriented now to understand that they were moving from the main wheels of the station, where all the activities of Fleet School were conducted, to the next wheel up. Or over. When Dabeet helped with the cargo tally, he wasn’t sure yet of the geography of the station, so he didn’t know if they were now heading toward the wheel that held all the cargo, storage, mechanical, and port functions of the station, or the other direction, toward one of the unoccupied and, rumor had it, unfinished wheels on the other side.

Curious as he was, Dabeet said nothing, because this little expedition had come directly after, and therefore probably as a direct result of, his question about whom Robota Smirnova reported to.

He had meant this question really to mean, Is this conversation being recorded? If so, who will be able to hear the recording? I have things to say for you alone.

If she had taken it that way, then maybe she was leading him into an unwatched portion of the station. If anybody should know a place that was unrecorded, it was the head of station security.

It was the unfinished portion of the station. Not that it was stacked up with construction materials or anything—it looked every bit as clean and tidy as the occupied section. But there was a different smell, a lack of all the living smells of human occupation. And it was cold. This section was not maintained at the steady twenty-two degrees of the school. Closer to ten degrees, so as not to waste energy. They couldn’t let it get lower than that, or condensation of water vapor would become a problem, and if it went to zero, the water would freeze. So … Dabeet had an answer to one question: At least part of the unused portion of the station was airtight, had atmosphere, and was connected to an air-heating system.

Robota Smirnova stopped at the door leading into an airlock. It took a moment for Dabeet to realize this, because there were no signs at all. But otherwise, it was identical to the personnel-sized emergency airlocks that came every fifty meters in the populated part of the station. This one also lacked the spacesuits, adult-and child-sized, that always hung in frames just outside the airlock.

“No suits,” said Dabeet.

Robota’s hand flashed out and covered Dabeet’s mouth. Then her other hand reached around behind his neck and a little way down his uniform. She touched something. Pressed hard on something so it dug into his back. He felt a slight tingle, like the tiniest electric current. And then he didn’t feel it.

“No,” she said. “No suits, because nobody is authorized to be here anyway.”

“So is this how you’ll fulfil my request to let me go outside? Here? Without a suit?”