Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(62)

“Your brute-force method only works if the message is arranged the way you’re guessing—all in one orientation, with the Spanish and English parts separated like the Rosetta stone.”

“Rosetta stone. Do you think it’s possible the two languages both say the same thing?”

“You didn’t listen to me,” said Zhang He. “They’re not trying to make this too hard, but you have the reputation of being the smartest kid in the world. They expect you to be able to solve it quickly by getting some great insight. But to do that, there has to be an insight to be found. A trick that opens it all up.”

“That’s exactly what I need,” said Dabeet. “A trick that solves it all! You don’t happen to have one, do you?”

“Getting snotty with me?” asked Zhang He. “You’re such an emossen dollback.”

“I’m not trying to be snotty with you. I just—my mother’s life depends on my cracking this, and you’re right, I have this stupid reputation to live up to, and what if I can’t? Passing tests designed by professional educators doesn’t show whether I can actually think.”

“Too bad everybody thinks those tests measure intelligence,” said Zhang.

“Now who’s being snotty?” asked Dabeet.

“Whose fault is it that you have that reputation?”

“Excuse me for doing my best on the examinations so I could win the prize of being up here with you.”

“It’s not your test scores that cause you problems, Dabeet, it’s the fact that you can’t shut up about them.”

“I’m not the one who spread it all over Fleet School that I…” But Dabeet couldn’t finish that, because yes, he had made sure to drop modest references to his higher-than-Ender test scores, not daily, but now and then, in a self-deprecating way, saying things like, “If those tests mean anything,” and, “All I can do is try to live up to those tests.” What a stupid lump of charach he had been. And it was compounded by the fact that Mother wouldn’t shut up about it back in the barrio, at Conn. And then he made it worse by it by sending emails in her name to everybody with a shred of authority in the IF. That’s what had drawn the attention of the South Americans in the first place. Unless it was that pointless visit by MinCol.

“é,” said Dabeet. “You’re right. I’ve been acting like I think I’m toguro, and I’m just a nuzhnik.”

“Pretty much.”

So they agreed on something. But Dabeet still had a message to decipher. “Look, do you have any idea what you were talking about?”

Zhang interrupted him. “No, how could anyone but you have any—”

“I didn’t mean it that way. What you were talking about—the insight that would make it easy? Do you have any idea of the kind of thing it would be?”

“You already said one thing, that Greek word, boustrophon—”

“Boustrophedon, the lines alternating directions.”

“é, that’s the kind of idea.”

“But it didn’t help.”

“I didn’t say it was the idea, I said it was that kind of idea,” said Zhang. “You really aren’t willing to let go of your mindset, are you. Like this: What if the Spanish and English aren’t in two separate sections. What if they’re in alternating words—no, better yet, alternating letters. Like, ‘como’ and ‘how,’ spelled C-H-O-O-M-W-O.”

“That’s good,” said Dabeet. “That produced a double letter that didn’t exist in either word. That could be it.”

“I wasn’t saying that was it.”

“But I’m saying that I can’t do anything else till I at least try that. Most obvious case, both languages read left to right across the lines, from the top to the bottom of the word-search layout. Look.” Dabeet started moving the letters into two separate boxes, the odd-numbered letters in one spot, the even-numbered ones in another. The desk quickly caught on to what he was doing and proposed a pair of completed boxes. Dabeet saved it, then began to look at each one.

“Two different languages, two different looks,” said Zhang. “If this is an A and this is an O, here they are at the ends of a lot of words, nouns with gender. This one could be Spanish.”

“And the other one—look how this pattern repeats. That has to be ‘the,’ which makes the R stand for E.”

“My work here is done,” said Zhang He.

“Thank you,” said Dabeet. “Really. I was too tired to think, but this works.”

“Will you tell me what the message says, when you get it figured out?”

Dabeet wanted to say no, straight out, because he saw the way Zhang reacted when Dabeet referred to the South Americans as terrorists. If the message made it clear that Dabeet was supposed to open a back door for a raid, there was no way to predict how Zhang would react. The last thing Dabeet needed was to have to fight or sneak his way past a bunch of angry students trying to prevent him.

Or I could decide not to do what the message says. What then? Why not share it with Zhang? It’s only a problem if I plan to carry out whatever assignment they give me.

Zhang rolled his eyes and started to turn away.

“Zhang, I don’t know what the message says. I don’t know if I can tell you.”