Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(98)

How can I waste time speculating when I have no pertinent information?

All this time, Dabeet had been putting on the new, fully charged suit. He would be good for sixteen hours now, before he had to come back in.

No he wouldn’t.

He peeled down the suit, opened his uniform, and peed into the first mop bucket he could reach with his suit around his ankles. Very awkward. He had to hold the bucket up above where the suit bunched around his shins, so he wouldn’t spatter urine all over inside the suit. Ah, the glories of being in space.

The suit itself held plenty of water to keep him hydrated. Real workers would wear a honey suit under the spacesuit to deal with waste elimination, if they expected to be outside for the full sixteen-hour charge. But Dabeet knew that if it became necessary, he’d pee all over inside the suit rather than come inside if his job wasn’t complete.

What was his job? Sentry. He was the lone sentry on the circular walls of the station. He imagined some solitary Chinese soldier on the Great Wall. Or perhaps the lone Quechua warrior on a pinnacle of the Andes, ready to run and give warning of the approaching Spaniards. He was pretty sure that heroic soldiers didn’t wet themselves. Then again, they could pee off the wall or the pinnacle whenever they wanted, because they weren’t wearing spacesuits.

He got the suit on, double-checked it even as the suit double-checked itself. All connections secure. All systems fully charged and ready.

Dabeet stepped back into the airlock, closed the inner door, discharged the air, and in a few moments he was back at the peak of the inner wheel, scanning nearby space, looking for the flash of light that would mean a stealthy ship was approaching through sunlight.





17

—Let’s pretend that Dabeet will figure out a way to defeat the terrorists. Let’s say that he and everybody else survive.

—You’re pretending. I’m predicting.

—Are you going to tell him who he is? Who you are?

—What good would that do? It might raise expectations that he would inherit my—what is it I’ve built?

—Secret government.

—Web of influence. But it can’t be inherited, it can’t be used by anybody but me, because it’s all personal. Not this office liaising with that office, but me talking to this friend.

—Or you talking to that mousy, intimidated official, or that ambitious-but-stupid officer—

—Not really many of those. They aren’t of much use to someone like me. I need the help of competent women and men who share my vision of spreading the human species among as many colonies as possible. I often have to explain to each one how the thing I’m asking them to do relates to that overall purpose. They help me because they can see that I’m leading them to accomplish the only cause that matters now.

—No coercion at all? No extortion, no blackmailing, no log-rolling?

—You were one of the toughest birds I ever brought into the aviary. Did I do any of those things to you?

—Wouldn’t have worked.

—It wouldn’t work with any of the people I need. Fearless, independent, insightful, generous people. People who use their own wits to solve problems instead of wringing their hands and wondering what I would want them to do.

—Too bad people like that rarely run for public office.

—They do, all the time. Then they lose. There’s always a secret government that nobody knows about except the people who are in it. And they don’t think of it that way. They just know that if they need something done, this is the person to talk to in this department, and that is the person to talk to in another.

—And you hold all this inside your head.

—If Dabeet is going to be part of the secret government, he won’t have any trouble holding everything in his head. Perfect memory has its uses.

—Until you get old and it fades.

—He’s not old yet. And yours hasn’t faded.

—Has so. I’d give you an example, but I can’t remember any.

—Your memory hasn’t faded. Neither will his. Look, I’m doing the job I’m doing, and, once we get enough colonies established, it’ll be done. Over, accomplished. The whole colonization project will take on momentum of its own because people will found new colonies out of pure self-interest. Adam Smith’s invisible hand. So Dabeet won’t need to have my job, because my job won’t exist.

—Doesn’t mean he won’t still try to do it, if he knows who you are and what you’ve done. He’s competitive. He’ll have to find a way to be better than dear old Dad.

—You’re wrong about that. Dabeet was raised to be arrogant, his amour propre depended on being the best, the smartest. But I think that’s already been taken out of him. He’s at the level of amour de soi, to use Rousseau’s terms precisely. He doesn’t choose his actions based on what other people think of him. He hasn’t made any effort to force the other kids to do things his way.

—He’s smart enough to realize you can’t lead if nobody will follow.

—But ambitious people don’t learn that. They just break their hearts trying.

—You sure Dabeet isn’t walking around with a broken heart?

—The heart of that fatherless boy was broken from birth, do you think I don’t know that? But he never tried to assert ownership of this crisis. He never tried to take charge of things. He only looked for ways he could help. Isn’t that right?