Children of the Fleet

by Orson Scott Card

  —I think MinCol wanted me to tell you about the thing that really has me scared.

  —É. Speak.

  —That’s the thing. I’m really scared.

  —Been there. I was right to be scared. People wanted me dead, it was scary, and nobody came to the rescue. I certainly can’t come to your rescue from a ship that’s already accelerated to a significant percentage of c.

  —They have my mother hostage back on Earth.

  —They?

  —The people who threatened her. The people who kidnapped me and told me what to do or else she would die.

  —MinCol knows about this?

  —Do you ever know what MinCol knows? I wanted to tell him but he sent me to you.

  —What do you have to do?

  —Maybe I’ve already done it, so she’s safe. But who thinks hostage takers will keep their word? She’s still there, they’re still there, so if they tell me to do something else what am I going to do?

  —What did you already do that might be it so maybe she’s safe?

  —I lied to the head of security, because she was the only person with door access who didn’t report to the Fleet School commandant.

  —You don’t trust the commandant.

  —I don’t trust Robota Smirnova, either—head of security—but the South Americans were going to kill my mother, so I had to trust somebody. And anyway I lied to her, said it was about the smuggling that goes on here—this place is so corrupt—but I got her to open some doors for me. It’s a signal to them back on Earth. They see it when Fleet School is directly over them.

  —A signal saying what.

  —Saying that I can get to the doors and open them to let in a small raiding force.

  —They want to raid Fleet School?

  —They want to raid it safely. So nobody gets killed. The way I understand it, the free-for-all that’s happening on Earth right now, with the Hegemon powerless, all the weak nations are afraid of getting crushed or absorbed by the strong nations. So some of them want to force the IF to get involved on Earth.

  —Never happen.

  —But if somebody from Earth takes the children of the Fleet hostage—

  —Oh, they may come and pound the kuso out of whoever sent a raid against Fleet School. But they can’t get involved on Earth in favor of any nation because it tears the whole fleet apart. Maybe in twenty or fifty or a hundred years, all the old loyalties will be gone, but Dabeet, get sane here. The Fleet will never intervene. Retaliate, but not intervene.

  —I only know what they told me. Maybe that’s what they actually believe. And maybe you’re right, and it won’t work the way they think. But they don’t know that yet, so they’re going to act as if they’re right, né? And maybe it’s all a lie, anyway, and they’re really coming here to take over the smuggling operation, or shut it down, or assassinate somebody, or outrage the whole fleet by killing every kid up here. I don’t know.

  —So you’re afraid you’ve jeopardized the lives of the other kids.

  —Even if they don’t intend to hurt anybody, as soon as you start shooting things up, people can die. Anybody might die. They might compromise life support, they might blow out a wall, entirely by accident but if it kills you, you don’t care if it was on purpose.

  —An excellent analysis. You did this to save your mother. One life, important to you. Unthinkable not to try to protect her.

  —Except she’s not my biological mother.

  —Biological mothers lay their eggs and swim away and die. She’s your primate mother, you don’t let her get killed by the hyenas.

  —But I’m still responsible for whatever happens when these raiders arrive.

  —First, whoever set you this task may already be out of power in whatever country they thought they served. So absolutely nothing might happen. Right?

  —É, but I’m not going to bet on that.

  —Second, when they come, station security may drive them off right from the start. There’s no way to secretly approach a space station at one of the Lagrange points. There’s a lot of empty space but it’s totally watched, so you’ll get pinged even if you come in quiet and dark.

  —Unless they think you’re something else that’s safe and expected.

  —Deception might work. But if deception was a tool they were prepared to use, what would they need you for? They’d get in through the cargo ports, the entry bay, the docking tubes.

  —So what they need me for is to take the blame. Look, this kid signaled us, he opened the door for us, he’s the traitor.

  —As if spaceships obeyed the commands of nine-year-olds.

  —Eleven almost twelve, but that’s right. They blamed you, though.

  —They didn’t court-martial me.

  —You weren’t allowed to go home to Earth.

  —We children of the Fleet have all the universe before us, and only one place that we can’t go.

  —You’re not a “child of the Fleet,” technically speaking.

  —I’m a child, and the Fleet owns me. Dabeet, what is your main concern here? To absolve yourself of any blame, no matter what happens?

  —I want to keep anybody from being hurt. Not my mother, not any of the kids here, not the teachers, not even the corrupt administration.

  —And not you, either.

  —If possible.

  —Minimize risk.

  —As much as I can.

  —Go to the commandant and tell her everything you’ve told me.

  —As if she’d believe me. As if she’d even let me talk to her.

  —You’re talking by ansible to an unidentified person, Dabeet. That’s making her insane even as we converse. You want to meet with her? Tell a teacher—tell whatever adult is talking to you—that the person you talked to by ansible told you to fully inform the commandant of everything you told me.

  —And never tell her whom I talked to?

  —She’ll assume it’s MinCol, and that serves your purpose better than invoking my famous but powerless name.

  —What do you think will happen? She’ll treble security and fight off the bad guys, then give me a medal?

  —Oh, I think the likeliest thing is that she’s the most corrupt person at the station, and the bad guys you met with have already bought their way past security in exchange for allowing her smuggling to continue. They’ll promise not to hurt anybody, and then they’ll kill her first thing. If you were those would-be raiders, wouldn’t you do it that way?

  —So what will I have accomplished?

  —Moved responsibility to the adults, where it belongs. It’s not supposed to be your job.

  —But you’re right, she probably won’t do anything useful. Whether she believes me or not, she’s probably committed to—

  —You don’t know what she’s committed to. Maybe she will fight off the bad guys, and give you a medal when it’s done. Or a court-martial. Does it matter, as long as the station is safe?

  —Even if she fights them, there’s still a good chance of kids dying or being injured as collateral damage. Or the whole station getting blown to smithereens. Same thing if she’s in cahoots with them.

  —I’ve always wondered what a cahoot is, and how many people can fit in one.

  —You’re playing language games?

  —Why not? Our whole conversation is about games.

  —No it’s not. It’s about a real threat to Fleet School.

  —Oh, you remembered that.

  —That’s all I care about!

  —I thought you were playing a game, Dabeet. The game of shifting the blame away from yourself, then hiding your head and hoping it all goes away.

  —I told you it isn’t about the blame!

  —Isn’t it? Because you don’t seem interested in taking responsibility for what you’ve done, signaling people on Earth who want to attack Fleet School Station.

  —I’ll take responsibility! That’s why I’m talking to you!

  —No, no. You’re still talking about blame. Yo
u’ll take the blame when everything turns to kuso, very brave of you, but you’re not taking responsibility for the invitation you just sent to the would-be invaders.

  —I don’t see what the difference is between—

  —Don’t you read history, Dabeet? MinCol said you were exceptionally bright and broadly educated.

  —What does history have to do with—

  —Weaseling politicians love to say, “I take full responsibility.” “The buck stops here.” But they only say that when they’ve been caught. When they’re being blamed. What they always mean is, “Some underling of mine ran amok and I’ll find him and lop off his head.” Or his career, or whatever. They’re taking charge of the punishment, if they can. But think about it: What does it look like when a disaster looms and somebody actually takes responsibility for it?

  —You’re not my teacher. Don’t play Socratic games with me. Just tell me.

  —If I just told you then I would be your teacher. I’d be taking responsibility for the problem you’ve known about and so far done nothing to prevent.

  —So I’ll tell Urska Kaluza what I did and—

  —Put the responsibility on her. That’s pretty much Plan A for dodging ultimate blame. “I told the commandant everything I knew, even though I know she’s corrupt and unreliable and just as likely to flee the station on some pretext rather than try to prevent the attack.”

  —What do you want me to do?

  —I don’t want you to do anything. What do you want you to do? What kind of human being do you want to be?

  —A living one. With a living mother. And all the kids on the station alive and safe.

  —Who’s responsible for making sure that happens?

  —Greeyaz.

  —No, not greeyaz.

  —Me. I need to make that happen.

  —You need to do all that you can do to make that happen. Is there anything you can do about your mother, that you haven’t already done?

  —If I work against them, then I put her in danger all over again.

  —Go back into the brain-place where you keep the storage shed of historical information that you never thought you’d need. Why do you believe there’s any scenario in which your mother doesn’t die?

  —Because I did what they said!

  —Not what I was asking. Are they good and decent guys who keep their word? Or are they monsters who’ll kill her just for the pleasure of showing you that they can do whatever they want and you’re completely helpless to stop them?

  —I don’t know. I only met a couple of guys. I took them seriously but I don’t know what they’ll do.

  —Probably neither do they, Dabeet. The bunducks you met are not the goons who’d be sent to kill your mother. Those guys might just kill her because they got sick of having to watch every move she made, so when they get the order to call off the surveillance, they may kill her just to get it out of their system. Can you do anything to control that?

  —No.

  —What can you control.

  —Damn all. Nothing.

  —Don’t be stupid, Dabeet.

  —I control what I do.

  —And what you can plan and organize for others to help you with.

  —Making structures in the battleroom.

  —Making a team that works together to accomplish a difficult task.

  —I’d have to …

  —You’d have to tell them about betraying everybody. You’d have to trust your team not to spread it around what a traitor you are.

  —I’m not a traitor! When I agreed to do it, I didn’t know anybody at Fleet School, I only knew my mother, so I wasn’t betraying the school, I was not-betraying my mother.

  —But you can’t possibly explain that to the others and then submit to their judgment.

  —What if they hate me?

  —You’re an obnoxious little self-obsessed twit. What makes you think they don’t already hate you?

  —We talk for fifteen minutes and you think you know me?

  —MinCol didn’t tell me nothing about you, and I see that he’s right. “What if they don’t like me?” Come on, Dabeet. What’s your real priority here. Keeping up the illusion of you as smartest kid? You did something dumb and potentially disastrous for everybody. Take responsibility. Warn them what’s coming, tell them that it’ll be up to the kids to organize themselves for defense of Fleet School because Urska Kaluza is corrupt and cowardly, if she turns out to be, and then watch as they appoint somebody else, somebody they like and trust, to be the leader of the kids’ resistance. What does Dabeet Ochoa do then?

  —I don’t know.

  —I do. Dabeet Ochoa runs off to his bunk, curls up and cries. Or he goes off to the library to do smart-guy stuff, or to plan his revenge, or—

  —I’m not a baby.

  —Good to hear.

  —I’ll … help them as much as they let me. I’ll try to earn their trust again.

  —They’ll never give it to you.

  —Why tell me that? You can’t know that. Some of these guys really are my friends, you know!

  —Why are they your friends? Because you were doing something, and they joined in. Why do you think they trust you? What have you done to earn it?

  —I let them help. I trained them. I let them train me. We’re getting really good at it.

  —And you’ve never used it in battle. No tests. No trials. Still just a game. Building with blocks. All you did was let them help you and allow them to obey your orders.

  —Why do you hate me? What have I ever done to you?

  —I’m showing you a road out of the particular hell you got yourself into. Is that what hate looks like? I’ve told you how to take responsibility. You do whatever you want, Mr. Test Scores.

  Urska Kaluza looked bored when Dabeet came into her office. She had one elbow on her desk and leaned her head on that hand, regarding him as if she were barely able to stay awake. “You had your mysterious ansible chat,” she said to him. “What do you want now.”

  “It was suggested to me that I inform you fully about a threat to this station.”

  She closed her eyes. “What threat could you possibly know about, that I don’t? Did your ansible pal make threats?”

  Dabeet really did not like her. But he was trying to train himself to pay better attention to what people actually did, as well as what they said. Urska Kaluza sounded contemptuous and looked lazy. But Dabeet thought he could detect a rigidity in her, tension that arose from what, fear? Dread? General anxiety? She believed that he had talked to MinCol, and now he had something he’d been told to tell her. So she thinks this is some kind of danger to her career, not to the school. If she responds wrong, it might anger MinCol, who would either cashier her, transfer her, or … what, notice how resourceful she was and promote her?

  Yes, thought Dabeet. She has the kind of ego that would believe somebody might want to promote her.

  “Before I came up here from Earth,” said Dabeet, “I was taken onto an airplane by some men with South American accents, who told me that many small nations were terrified of the chaos on Earth and wanted the International Fleet to intervene and stabilize things.”

  A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth.

  “Yes,” said Dabeet, “it was foolish of them to imagine that the IF would ever do any such thing, no matter the provocation.”

  He saw a bit of eye movement that he realized might have been the beginning of an eye roll, nipped in the bud. Her smile was not at his captors’ foolishness. Her smile was at the lie she assumed Dabeet was telling. Didn’t she realize that if he were lying, he’d at least try to come up with something halfway plausible?

  “If you don’t want to listen,” Dabeet said, “it was only a suggestion that I should tell you.”

  “I’m listening,” said Urska Kaluza.

  “They intended to force the IF to intervene by means of a provocation involving Fleet School.”

  That got her attention. He could see her body gr
ow more tense, her gaze sharper.

  “They knew I was coming here. They instructed me to signal them when I got the capability to open exterior doors in the unfinished portion of this station.”

  “You don’t have that capability,” she said.

  Dabeet ignored her. “If I didn’t signal them that I had that capability within six months of my arrival here, they would kill my mother.”

  Now she did roll her eyes. “Haven’t you been getting enough attention? After all your efforts to get here, are you trying to get me to send you home to Mommy?”

  “The deadline was approaching, so I sent the signal.”

  “You did not,” she said scornfully.

  “I did,” said Dabeet. “After all your time here with the brightest children of the Fleet, do you still think you’re capable of predicting what is and is not within our ability?”

  “You’re a child,” said Urska Kaluza. “You don’t know anything.”

  “If that were true, that would be a pretty severe indictment of your incompetence as head of an educational institution.”

  “You don’t know anything that the adults here do not know.”

  “Here’s what I don’t know: I don’t know if the men who gave me my orders and threatened my mother are still in power in their home countries. I don’t know if they actually have the ability to bring a raiding party here to Fleet School. I don’t know how they expect to let me know when to open a door again.”

  She sniffed in disdain.

  “I don’t know if they’re smart enough not to arm themselves with heavy projectile weapons. The shell of the station is self-sealing to a point, but too many bullets punching their way through and the nanooze on the surface won’t be able to cope. They might also damage life-support equipment.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “So I said,” Dabeet agreed. “All speculation about possibilities—which is what I was instructed to tell you. I don’t know if the raiding party will be led by competent military leaders or by clowns. But most importantly, I don’t know what their objective really is. The men who gave me my orders seemed to believe what they were telling me, but who knows if getting the Fleet to engage with Earth really is their goal? Nor can I even guess whether their purpose is extortion or terrorism.”