Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(6)

Mother said nothing.

“I need to talk to Dabeet Ochoa alone,” said Graff.

After a few moments, everybody got up and filed out of the apartment. When no one was left but Dabeet and Mother, Graff shook his head. “Dabeet Ochoa. Alone.”

“He may not be interviewed outside the presence of his parents.”

“You know the law,” said Graff. “Insist on it, and I’ll leave right now. If you want me to stay, then you leave.” He looked at his watch.

Mother got up and left the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

Graff sat down on the tallest chair, the one with sturdy arms. He sighed as he lowered himself into it. “I have to sit in a chair I have some hope of getting up out of without assistance,” he said.

Dabeet simply looked at him. He had not expected Graff to come.

“Do you know why I’m here?” asked Graff.

“I do not, sir,” said Dabeet.

“But you have a guess?”

“If you were still head of Battle School, I would imagine you had come to tell me that I was accepted, or to give me some kind of final test to see if I were qualified.”

“But I am now Minister of Colonization,” said Graff.

“That means that you’re really the boss of the International Fleet,” said Dabeet.

“Oh, no, that’s far from the truth. The International Fleet is ready to fight an interstellar war at any time, and I play no part in war readiness and training.”

“Neither does Battle School,” said Dabeet.

“We are no longer drafting the brightest potential commanders from among Earth’s children, because there is no present enemy and the nations have withdrawn our authority to take such actions,” said Graff.

“The IF still takes volunteers,” said Dabeet.

“As adults, age seventeen and above. All volunteers are then screened for command potential. You still have … six years left?”

“Battle School has been repurposed as Fleet School,” said Dabeet.

“It’s a very different school now,” said Graff. “We aren’t really training soldiers there anymore.”

“Commanders, though.”

“Commanders of exploratory, recon, outpost, and colonizing missions. A very different set of tasks than we require of war leaders.”

“But a nearly identical set of qualifications,” said Dabeet. He did not say what they both knew: that command of an exploration, reconnaissance, outpost, or colonization mission required exactly the skill set of a military commander—and more.

“Less centered on killing,” said Graff.

“You only recruit among the children of the Fleet,” said Dabeet.

“And here you are, a boy without a birth certificate, but making claims based on … what?”

“My mother’s word,” said Dabeet.

“Do you believe your mother?”

“I neither believe nor disbelieve,” said Dabeet. “I have submitted my DNA to be tested against the IF rolls. Either I’m the son of an IF soldier or I’m not. You know the answer, and I don’t.”

“Your mother does, or thinks she does,” said Graff.

“What I know is that the Minister of Colonization has come to visit a poor eleven-year-old Venezuelan immigrant to the United States in his mother’s humble apartment, presumably in response to either my mother’s petitions, if she ever really made them, or my own repeated submission of my test results and my DNA through every channel I could find.”

“Most of those channels having nothing to do with admissions to the IF or Fleet School or … anything.”

“My test scores are very, very good,” said Dabeet. “I thought they might make their own channels.”

“They did,” said Graff. “Which is why every single one of your submissions has been brought to my attention, regardless of the channel you submitted it through.”

“A year of silence,” said Dabeet. “And now … you.”

“If you couldn’t bear a year of silence,” said Graff, “what possible use could we make of you? Every voyage our ministry undertakes is at least thirty years long.”

Dabeet rolled his eyes. “I know about relativity. Nobody will experience all thirty years.”

Graff smiled. “But everybody they leave behind will be at least sixty years’ worth of old or dead by the time they get back. If they ever do.”

It was fine to discuss abstractions, but Dabeet saw that Graff was steering around the questions that mattered right now. “What about my mother’s petitions?”

“What you’re really asking is whether your mother actually made those petitions. What you’re asking is if she ever really meant for you to go into space.”

“I’m asking about whether you received any petitions from my mother.”

Graff nodded. “I know what you’re asking and what you’re not asking, what you don’t know and what you do know.”

“But you’re not answering.”

“You’re an eleven-year-old boy.”

“Nearly twelve. I’m vastly more mature than I was a year ago.” Dabeet hoped that the irony would make Graff smile.

It didn’t. “Why should I provide you with information that your mother hasn’t given you?”