Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(77)

Dabeet shook his head. “I wondered how they knew so much about me,” said Dabeet.

“Come on, Dabeet, you were so proud of being smart that it didn’t surprise you at all that they found you.”

Dabeet was almost dizzy with Monkey’s heartless, relentless cataloguing of his mistakes and ignorance. “You figured it out.”

“I figured things out mostly because I walked these corridors with you and you also told me about your mom and the South Americans. Nobody else knew all that, and neither did anybody on Earth. So who is really behind this? Not some South American country trying to get the IF to intervene. Maybe those clowns who took you believe that, but whoever told them about you, whoever came up with whatever asinine plan they’re following, that’s who figured out that you were the one they needed.”

“And who was that?” asked Dabeet.

“Nobody knows who’s taking all those Battle School alumni,” said Monkey. “But whoever it is has found a way to track every one of them, wherever they went all over the world.”

“Maybe it’s a whole bunch of countries taking the kids.”

“No, Dabeet. Read the news. All the countries used legal process before Battle School even closed down. Very openly. All the kids were repatriated to their legal country of origin. The kidnappers are taking them somewhere else. Or killing them.”

“But why take me? The most ignorant kid in Fleet School, the least experienced in space—”

“They knew you’d be feeling disconnected. No loyalty to Fleet School, no friends,” said Monkey. “Easy to intimidate.”

“Scaring me doesn’t confer on me the competence to do anything. And who is it who’s manipulating me?”

“I don’t know,” said Monkey. “But that’s a real question. We don’t know if there is a solution. Maybe all my assumptions are wrong. There’s no answer key that will be compared to our decisions and checked off whenever we get an answer wrong.”

“I’m so out of my league.”

“By ourselves, we all are. Together, maybe just as badly off. But with more brains working on it, bringing different experiences and perspectives to the problem, maybe we can come up with better hypotheses.”

“I get it now, Monkey, I really do. It would be insane for me to keep this secret any longer.”

“Well, don’t go crazy on me here,” said Monkey. “You don’t know that there isn’t a co-conspirator here on the station.”

“You mean, besides me.”

“You’re not a conspirator, you’re a tool. Like somebody who holds up a bank because the real robbers are holding their family hostage.”

“If there’s another conspirator, then what’s with all the door-opening?”

“If investigators afterward are steered to evidence showing that you opened the doors and you let them in—because they held your mother hostage—then they’re not going to look to see who the real inside guys were here in Fleet School, are they?”

“So I’m not just a tool, I’m the patsy.”

“See? Isn’t it a lot more fun to count alcoves in the corridor?”

“When did you figure all this out?” asked Dabeet.

She looked at him in consternation. “I haven’t figured anything out. We don’t know if we’re right about anything. I’ve been brainstorming this with you right now, I only know what I think of when I hear myself say it. Like you. That’s how working things out as a team works.”

Dabeet could only agree with her. “Of course I’m only really useful because I’m the sole witness of the original kidnapping. I mean, this is bound to work out like doing the wall structures in the battleroom. You or Zhang He or somebody will take over and make all the plans and—”

“Maybe that’s how it’ll go,” said Monkey. “So what?”

“I’m just saying, it’s not like I’m useful for anything except telling everybody how stupid I am.”

“Self-pity—that’ll make them all respect you.”

“I’m a traitor. Nobody’s going to respect me.”

“Well, if you tell us your history, and then you shut us all out the way you did with the wall-building team, then é, that’s right, everybody else will solve the problem without you because you’ll do your normal thing and refuse to take part. Otherwise, you’ll be part of the team, and you’ll think of whatever you think of, and so will everybody else. And nobody will care who thought of what, as long as it works.”

“In utopia, maybe. People care who thinks of stuff.”

She nodded. “Yes, that’s right, you’re right. We had a major system failure on my ship when we were three months out of the nearest port. The problem was enormously technical so let me just summarize it by saying that there wasn’t enough breathable air to get us all to a port alive. People set up all kinds of possible solutions, including having about half of us voluntarily step out into space so there’d be enough air for the remaining half.”

“Would they have done that?” asked Dabeet.

“Maybe. We’ll never know. Because somebody thought of a much better idea that involved an alteration in the way the hydroponics functioned. We’d stop growing food crops and convert everything to oxygen production—a different set of plants—but it could be done in time. And we did it, and it worked, and nobody had to leave the ship.”