Children of the Fleet

by Orson Scott Card

  —You thought they were taking you to a Latin American country.

  —I told them that the IF would be tracking them with your enormous satellite surveillance system, and that you had the power to take them out of the air at any time.

  —They know that we wouldn’t do that.

  —I convinced them that I’m so important that you might. And people who would do anything for power can’t believe that the IF, with more power than anybody, might really refrain from using it.

  —Interesting insight.

  —Obvious, and therefore not an insight, just an observation.

  —What did you promise them?

  —Everything I could think of. I have no idea which was the promise that tipped the balance.

  —They’ll hold you to it.

  —The best way to avoid any such outcome is for me to leave planet Earth.

  —The Moon?

  —I had Fleet School in mind, sir.

  —But you haven’t passed my tests, Dabeet.

  —I matter to you, Minister Graff, or you would not have invested so much time in me. If you’re uncertain whether I have the qualifications you require, why not take me to Fleet School and make the attempt to inculcate me with them? Do I need to be curious? Do I need to be capable both of following and of leading in groups? Do you need to know whether I’ll be obedient? Or whether I’ll disobey orders when that’s the course that will have the best outcome for my team or my mission? Take me to Fleet School and let’s both find out whether I have judgment to match my native intelligence.

  —A decent stab at my first test, I must admit.

  —The Formic Wars are over, sir. Not so much is at stake. If I’m a bust, what have you lost, really? With my test scores and my parentage, no one will fret that I didn’t deserve a chance at Fleet School. If your curriculum is worthwhile, trust me to make the most of it.

  —You make a strong argument, but it isn’t the only argument.

  —On board the airplane, the civilian in charge was on satphone with a Portuguese-speaking man who was clearly the ultimate source of authority for the mission to kidnap me.

  —Brazilian, then, you think?

  —He made sure to insist that he was not.

  —And a civilian was in charge.

  —He had the private office and the big desk and the comfortable chair. The general in colonel’s uniform was relegated to making sure I kept my seat belt on.

  —And why did you tell me this now, instead of before?

  —I waited until I thought you might need a demonstration of my loyalty before deciding to take me off planet.

  —So you thought you were coming close to persuading me.

  —I also know you’re not the kind of leader who changes his plan just to prove that a subordinate is wrong.

  —You know? Or you hope?

  —How could you be where you are, if you acted out of petty vanity?

  —Someday I’ll ask you to tell me where, exactly, you think I am.

  —You’re in charge of whatever you care to be in charge of, sir. You care most about colonization, so that’s the position from which you lead the International Fleet and seek to control events on Earth.

  —Events can’t be controlled, Dabeet. They can only be influenced.

  —Just like people.

  —You’ve passed all my tests now, Dabeet. Welcome to Fleet School.

  What do you do when all your plans work out? When all your dreams come true?

  In his heart, Dabeet was already gone. From the moment Graff told him he was accepted into Fleet School, Dabeet detached from his friends. None had been close—or so it seemed to Dabeet, since he never felt toward his friends the kind of relentless dependency that others seemed to feel. He noticed when he wasn’t included in some event—a party, a movie, a new game—but he didn’t mind much, because he had other things to do. And now that he was preparing to go to Fleet School, he declined such invitations as he received. There was no point in investing any more time and effort with people he would never see again.

  His friends, if they noticed his increased distance, said nothing about it. It was the teachers who were most demanding. Dabeet had not understood until now how much his teachers valued him. They were so eager to congratulate him—not just once, but over and over. And without Dabeet telling a soul about it, news of his acceptance into Fleet School flew through Charlie Conn. But only the teachers seemed to think it mattered much.

  There was only one real surprise for Dabeet—how painful it was to think of leaving Mother. For more than a year, he had bent all his efforts to get away from her, preferably with many miles of empty space between them. Now that he was really leaving, he began to realize how completely she had given over her life to him, and how dependent he was on her. Perhaps one of the reasons he hadn’t minded that he didn’t have close friends was that his mother cared about everything he did, praised what was praiseworthy, commiserated with his miseries, and constantly told others how gifted he was. That which had been most annoying about her—the constant brag, the promises and lies—was now the mainstay of his life, and he could not imagine living without seeing her every day.

  And yet when she immediately started trying to think of ways to come with him, he resisted her almost instinctively. Yes, he would miss her, and going to this new school would be frightening because of her absence. But he also knew that it would be disastrous if, through some fluke, she were allowed to come along.

  “They must need some kind of nursing staff for the children,” said Mother. “It wouldn’t take me long to take a refresher course.”

  “Nursing staff?” asked Dabeet.

  “I was a school nurse, once upon a time,” said Mother.

  It was the first Dabeet had ever heard of it. “Then why aren’t you working in medicine?”

  “Because I chose not to,” said Mother. “I chose to work at the same kind of job as the other women in the neighborhood.”

  “They hate their jobs.”

  “And so do I,” said Mother. “Why do they do their jobs even though they hate them?”

  “To put food on the table for their families.”

  Mother shrugged as if that answer would do for her, as well.

  “Mother, with a nursing job you could put far more food on the table!”

  “Have you ever been hungry? Did you aspire to be fat?”

  “Why would you work at a job beneath your ability when—”

  “And they probably need cleaning staff in Fleet School, too. Anything. I could be useful.”

  “It’s a boarding school, Mother,” said Dabeet. “Do you want to infantilize me by being the only mother who followed her child to school?”

  “Nobody even has to know I’m your mother.”

  “Then what would be the point?” asked Dabeet. “Stay here and … get a real job, one you like.”

  “I have the job I like, Dabeet.”

  “But that job is disappearing. This household is being downsized, from two persons to one. You’re the one. Now it’s time for you to take care of yourself.”

  Mother’s eyes filled with tears so suddenly that Dabeet thought for a moment that tears had squirted out away from her face instead of merely spilling over her lids and down her cheeks. “What self do you think I have left?” she asked softly.

  Dabeet’s first response was the one that Mother had intended: He threw his arms around her and began to weep as well.

  But his mind could not stop working, and he thought: She took me when I was too young to ask. She freely offered the gift of caring for me, and I’m grateful. But I’m not in bondage to her. In the sense that I never consciously incurred a debt, being a child, I owe her nothing, not in a way where she has a right to compel me to repay. “Am I not what you raised me to be?” whispered Dabeet. “Am I not doing what you always said you wanted me to do?”

  “I wanted your father to recognize you,” Mother answered in a voice made almost unintelligible by weeping. “I want
ed you to have your heritage. But I never thought I’d lose you.”

  “Every mother loses every child,” said Dabeet.

  “Not when they’re ten!”

  “Some much younger than eleven,” said Dabeet. “You let the child go when it’s for the child’s own good.” Almost he added, The way my birth mother gave me to you. But it was better to let her believe that he still believed her version of his birth and infancy.

  “Dabeet, I always said that I meant for you to go to Fleet School, but I never…”

  “You never actually applied,” said Dabeet. “You never even submitted my DNA for analysis.”

  She wept even more bitterly.

  “Why else do you think I went ahead and submitted the application myself?” he asked.

  “I should have known you’d take matters into your own hands,” she said. “You’ve always been such a responsible boy.”

  Buying groceries and bringing back the correct change was about all the experience she had with his “responsibility.” That and doing his own homework without nagging. “You let me ride my bicycle to the store, carrying money.”

  “It was safe enough. None of the mothers would let their boys rob you or steal your bike. That’s why I didn’t work at a better job. I wanted the other women to know me and trust me.”

  And that’s one of the lessons Graff wants me to learn, Dabeet realized. Mother could have had more money, more prestige—but it was more important, more useful for her to be able to trust in the neighbor women so they would watch over her child. Mother knew it already. She is a wise woman. Who’s to say I couldn’t have acquired whatever wits I have from her?

  “Mother, all your plans have worked out well, and now I’m going to Fleet School. The war’s over, so they don’t censor mail now—I looked it up. We’re going to be free to email each other.”

  That only made her cry a little harder as she waved him away. But he didn’t leave the room.

  “Do you think I don’t know how much you sacrificed for me, Mother? How much I owe you?” Of course she didn’t know that he knew how much she had done for a child who was, after all, no kin of hers.

  Then again, it was also possible that Graff was lying to him.

  But if he asked her for the truth, she would only affirm the same lies she had always told him—if they were lies. He would know no more than now, and she would be even sadder in the bargain. Or angry—it might make her angry. What was the point of that?

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh. I almost forgot.” Her tears stopped. She seemed eager, for a moment. She stood up and got a box from beside the sink. She unplugged from it a cord that was attached to the wall. “It’s a little old-fashioned, I know, but this was delivered for you today.”

  It was a phone. Not an expensive one, but he saw that several games were pre-installed, along with various programs that looked promising. It was the kind of phone that could access anything and function as a real computer, if you attached the right things to it.

  “Why would they give me this?” asked Dabeet. “There’s no phone service between Fleet School and Earth.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Mother.

  “You didn’t order this for me, did you?” Dabeet asked.

  “Ay, que pudiera,” she said. “But if I had that kind of money, would I buy you a phone you couldn’t use in space?”

  Only then did Dabeet realize that this phone was not from Fleet School, either. They would almost certainly have the most capable holographic desks for their students, not a flat-screen phone. This came from the people who had kidnapped him. This was certainly part of the plot that he had proposed—to open an entry point to an invading force.

  I have to take it, even if I never use it.

  Then he realized that the phone was also a message. We know who and where your mother is. Don’t think you can betray us with impunity just because you’re up in space. As long as your mother is on Earth, we can hurt you.

  Maybe she could be brought into space.…

  “What are you thinking? Do you like it?”

  “It’s a strange thing for them to give me,” said Dabeet. “Maybe it’s a mistake.” Then he grinned. “If it is, I can’t think of a single reason to correct it.”

  * * *

  Dabeet did not use the phone at all—he kept it switched off and never connected it to his mother’s laptop. He did keep it charged, because why not?

  But he was aware of it whenever he was at home, clinging to its lifeline plugged into the wall. Wireless charging was out of the question, because Mother believed it wasn’t safe to have loose electricity ricocheting off the walls. And they didn’t make wireless chargers these days that didn’t automatically connect the device with any computer or net connection in the house.

  Dabeet continued going to school every day, but he only went to the few classes that interested him, and otherwise stayed in the library, reading or, when he had an idea worth working on, writing. He found that unexpressed ideas remained inchoate, with only a few broad strokes clearly in mind. But the moment he started to write them down, all sorts of complications and implications emerged, requiring further tweaking or exploration before the thoughts could be considered worthy of full-fledged idea status.

  Only a week ago, there would have been complaints about Dabeet’s nonattendance. Long ago the administrators and teachers had realized that the argument “You’re going to fall behind” simply did not apply to Dabeet, who seemed perpetually to fall ahead.

  So the argument of choice became “You’re setting a bad example for students who do need to attend class in order to keep up,” and Dabeet had learned enough about social niceties to leave unspoken the obvious point that it wasn’t his problem if they didn’t do what was required to excel.

  “They’re in a school for the gifted,” Dabeet would reply. “If they haven’t the sense to do the work they need to do, they don’t belong here. The sooner they flunk back into regular schools, the better.”

  He had once heard an adult behind a closed door say, quite clearly, a single word: “Merciless.” Dabeet had had no idea whether the word applied to him. He wasn’t so vain as to think himself the subject of every conversation among the faculty. But he took the word personally, all the same.

  Why should I show mercy to those who choose not to make the most of their abilities and opportunities? Let them show mercy to themselves first. So he had carried the word “merciless” inside his head as if it were a tattoo he was rather proud of wearing.

  Only after Graff issued his challenges did Dabeet realize that perhaps mercy was an attribute of a good leader. Suppose I’m on an expedition and one of my team has a moment of mental weakness, making a dangerous mistake. Suppose it costs the life of another team member. It would be simple justice to kill the offender—that way he could never endanger anyone else by his careless errors.

  On the other hand, it was quite likely that all the team members were chosen because of the contribution they would make to mutual survival and the success of the mission. How would it benefit those goals to add a second corpse to the first? Or even to inflict some kind of punishment on the offender? He would, as a leader, have to take that person’s weakness into account. But he would still need to show enough mercy to allow the weakling to continue doing whatever had made him valuable enough to be on the expedition in the first place.

  Graff never asked him about that or any other hypothetical, because Graff didn’t ask him anything, really, after he had informed him he was being tested. Besides, Graff didn’t know how the word “merciless” was graven in Dabeet’s heart. I would be merciful, Graff, if mercy would work for the good of the team and the mission. And if harsh justice would be the best course, then I know how to be merciless as well.

  When it came to lazy students who might follow Dabeet’s example of class-cutting, Dabeet’s feeling was, If, like me, you cut class in order to study and think and write at a much higher level than anything in the curriculum, then you should do it
. I’m the hardest-working student in this school, which is why I don’t always have time for class.

  Besides, I’m going into space soon. Or at least sometime. So why should I get involved in any of my classes, if I’m only going to be torn away at short notice? Well begun is a waste of time, if you can’t also finish.

  It was a nice spring day, with the lawn thick and dry on the practice field, when Dabeet took his notebook out to sit by the fence and jot ideas as they came to mind. A dirt maintenance road ran along the outside of the fence.

  A motorcycle came sputtering along, moving barely fast enough to keep from tipping over. It stopped directly opposite Dabeet.

  Dabeet deliberately did not look up.

  The engine turned off. “Please climb the fence and come with me,” said a man. It was the general from the airplane.

  “If this is another kidnapping,” said Dabeet, “you’re going about it all wrong.”

  “It’s a private conversation,” said the general. “But no conversation on the grounds of this school can possibly be private.”

  “People will see me go with you. Cameras will see me climb over the fence.”

  “People see what they see. Our business is that they not hear what they shouldn’t hear.”

  Dabeet reached over the fence and handed his notebook to the general. “Treat the book with respect,” Dabeet said. “I may be saving the human race on one of those pages.”

  “You’re not,” said the general, “unless you added something preternaturally brilliant since we last scanned it at three A.M. today.”

  “How intrusive you are,” said Dabeet. “And stealthy.”

  “We prefer ‘sneaky,’” said the general. “Don’t think we aren’t intrigued by the things you write. You just haven’t saved the world yet.”

  While they talked, Dabeet made it over the fence—which was meant to be more of a boundary marker than a serious barrier. Soon he was behind the general on the motorcycle, and away they rode, slowly on the dirt road, then at the posted speed limit on paved roads.

  It was at the top of a grassy, windswept hill that the general brought the motorcycle to a stop and switched it off.

  “You got the phone,” the general said at once.