The station was rotating at a decent clip. He hadn’t realized how fast they were moving.
But not moving in a straight line. Spinning. So if he fell away from the station, he would continue, not in the station’s general line of movement through the universe, but rather in the exact line where he happened to be going when he let go of the station. It would basically shoot him in that direction like a ball flying out of a jai alai player’s cesta. He’d have to work out the physics of that.…
Later.
Still gripping the bar outside the airlock door, Dabeet tried to push himself up—no, down—from the surface of the hull by pressing with his other hand. But all that happened was his other hand got caught in the nanooze.
Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby. Whatever you touch to get leverage, you’re stuck to that, too.
Not possible. Nanooze wouldn’t be useful if you couldn’t unstick yourself, and easily.
He raised his hand from the nanooze. There was only a momentary tug and his hand was free.
Instead of trying to push himself off the hull, Dabeet simply rolled toward the side where he was gripping the bar. The nanooze let him go quite easily. Good thing he hadn’t trusted it to hold him. It was there to seal breaches in the hull, not to fasten stupid boys to the surface.
So let’s say that the enemy ship is docked at an airlock on the main level of the … which ring? This uppermost ring?
He needed a clearer map of the station in his head. He remembered what he had seen. Not this ring, the next ring down. The middle one.
He tried to imagine what the jointure between the rings would be like. Could he get from this ring to the other one without letting go and just flying there?
No flying. Rule One.
Because he was now hovering just over the open airlock door, he was tempted to go back inside. Hadn’t he learned a lot already? That was a good first day, wasn’t it?
Dabeet tried to imagine two-year-old Monkey doing just this much, and her father saying, Come inside now, Monkey, come inside. And Monkey would say, No, Papa, no, no, I want to do more, I haven’t done nothin’ yet.
Am I afraid of Monkey’s contempt?
Yes sir, that I am.
What goal would be reasonable for this first expedition? Dabeet cast his gaze along the tube and saw that the next airlock was only about … about … he had no idea of the distance. He remembered inside the tube. How far to the next airlock? Much farther than it seemed to be out here. But that was a reasonable goal.
He looked around the perimeter of the open airlock door and found the CLOSE button. He almost pressed it before realizing that perhaps he should make sure no part of his body would be between the closing door and the frame. Ouch, that would have been nasty. He pulled himself away from the open door, which involved holding on to the bar with both gloves.
Then he could hardly bring himself to let go of the bar with one hand so he could press the button.
I’m going to have to let go of things all the time. Not till I have hold of other things, right, but still. Most of the time, only one hand will hold me to this ship that’s right overhead.
Overhead.
Dabeet gently pulled his legs free of the nanooze and let them drift up … no, downward, so that now he really was hanging from the bar by both hands. Gravity wasn’t tugging him “downward,” but at least now he could feel like both hands were his connection to the station. Yet he could let go with one hand and reach upward to the button. Push. Slow but steady closure of the door. Dabeet counted. Four seconds to close. Looked slow, was actually fairly quick.
Now I’m here. Outside the ship. Hanging here with the next airlock only about fifty meters away.
He could see the bars around that other airlock.
And absolutely nothing to hold on to between this airlock and that one.
Oh, this is such a very bad design. Maybe I’m not supposed to have any handholds at all. Maybe I’m supposed to walk along in the nanooze and—
Don’t walk. Don’t run.
Dabeet looked at the curved metal sheet that was riveted to the frame of the wheel. Smooth, unbroken …
Except that the corners were rounded. And since each corner was aligned with three other corners, each junction had about a ten-centimeter gap. A full-sized person could easily reach one of those corners, but …
So could a child. Dabeet slid himself along the bar to one end, then reached out his hand.
“Reaching for that gap between plates,” he said aloud. “Definitely attached to the ship by a bunch of rivets.”
He found that the rounded corners had a gap behind them, so there was room for gloves to reach in and get a grip. He could easily hang from this.
But could he reach the next one?
That was nowhere near as important as the question, Could he get back to the bar around the airlock door, if he once let go of it?
It took him a long time to let go of that bar, move his free hand up to the same gap, and hang there by both hands. Then, almost convulsively, he started to reach again for the bar. But he stopped himself. “Reaching for the airlock bar. Left hand stays here, right hand moves to the bar.”
It turned out to be easy.
Slow at first, Dabeet began to get a rhythm once he realized that even a child could bridge from gap to gap. Each time, he’d say, “Next gap. Next gap.” But about halfway across to the other airlock, he stopped himself. He had been getting too comfortable with it. The process was repetitive, and he had the illusion that he had mastered the physical routine of it.
But that’s how I’ll die, thought Dabeet. The first time I let go before realizing that the gap isn’t at the same spot in this place.
And, sure enough, even though he hadn’t consciously noticed it before stopping himself, the plates aligned differently in one band around the hull. He remembered now that inside the hull, there was another structure that intruded into the topmost corridor. And here on the outside, that structure was represented by longer, narrower plates. Their corners were not rounded. There was no gap.
But the whole band was raised about three centimeters above the level of the regular plates. He reached his glove into the space and found that it was deep enough for his hands to find purchase there. But the reaching hand was facing the wrong way, his hand didn’t bend that way, he—
I’m hanging below the ship, he reminded himself. He pulled his hand back to the gap he was hanging from and now reached again, this time with his hand held the other way, palm out from the station surface. “Reaching for the lip of that plate,” he said. Now his fingers went under the plate in the right direction. Once his grip there was secure, he let go of the old gap and rotated his body so that when he reached the other side …
There was no gap between the two narrow plates. Combined, they were wider than the spaces between corner gaps. He hadn’t reached the far side, where presumably there was another lip. Immediately he laid his palm flat against the surface. The nanooze gripped his glove. But he didn’t count on it. He was hanging from the station, he couldn’t count on the nanooze holding him.
I didn’t say, “The other side of these plates” out loud, thought Dabeet. And he realized that if he had said it, he would have looked to estimate the distance, would have been prepared for this.
He slid his extended hand through the nanooze toward the far side. Stretched farther and farther.
Could I reach it with my toe? Or is the toe of the boot too thick to fit into the gap?
By tilting his head backward so his chest was pressed against the plates, he was able to reach far enough that his fingers caught the lip. He gripped as tightly as he could. Finally his heads-up display showed him that both gloves were locked into their life grip on the ship’s hull.
He let go with the first hand. At once his body relaxed into its new position, beyond the narrow patch, hanging in place. He inserted his other hand into the same gap. Gripped with both. Breathed slowly and carefully.
Now he w
as back to the land of the corner gaps. He could see that this path continued unbroken to the next airlock. Slowly, word by word and grip by grip, he made his way across. He forced himself to push the VACATE button before he pressed the OPEN button on the airlock. The last thing he needed was a tsunami-force puff of air to blow him off the face of the station.
Do not feel relieved, he warned himself. Relief makes you careless. I can lose my grip here in the airlock entrance as easily as anywhere else. “Reaching for the bar above the airlock door.” Then, “Reaching for the bar inside the airlock.”
With his arm hooked through the bar on the interior door, he pushed the CLOSE button and saw the band of dazzling sunlight disappear as the door blocked it.
RECHARGE. It took about ten seconds for atmo to level out, yet when the light turned green, Dabeet wasn’t yet ready to open the interior door.
I’m alive. But that was harder than I ever thought it would be.
He tried to imagine making that same passage with Monkey supervising. She would have been helpful. He would have been more confident. Or would he? Monkey was kind, but she couldn’t have kept the “of course” tone out of her voice each time he figured something out.
Better that I did this alone.
I don’t want her to watch me do this till I’m a lot better.
I’ll never be good enough for her not to demand that I name my next grip before reaching for it. I’ll never be as good as her. As good as anybody else who grew up in space.
I never want her to watch me do this.
But then he realized: It won’t matter. Maybe whatever needs doing will require more than one of us. Her or somebody else. Somebody who hates me, somebody with disdain. Somebody I have contempt for. It won’t matter. I’ll concentrate and say my next grip out loud, just like a two-year-old, and they can think what they want. I’ll be alive. I’ll get where I’m going.
16
—Dabeet isn’t Ender, my friend, and he’s not facing a fellow student. Get him out of there.
—I can’t.
—You most certainly can. I know the disposition of the ships near the station, and you have three close enough to get there with hours to spare.
—Suppose only one person is saved from Fleet School, and he happens to be the very child that all the evidence is designed to point at. I think not.
—Alive is better than dead.
—I believe that’s almost certainly his opinion, too.
—He matters to you. Apparently more than you understand. Unless you have fifty more scions scattered around the solar system. Do you have a spare?
—He’s the only one.
—All your eggs in one basket. Doesn’t sound like you.
—Sounds exactly like me. It’s what I did with Ender.
—Get him off that station.
—Can I evacuate everybody?
—In a pinch, maybe.
—Count the ships, estimate the life support. And what would that teach Dabeet? All of them? Adults will step in and save you. These kids are supposed to go on exploratory missions, colonization, with no recourse closer than ten, fifteen, twenty years away. They can’t expect God to come out of the machine and save them. Ever.
—I wonder how useful that lesson will be to them when they’re dead.
—I wonder how many times that lesson will save their lives.
—Who saves their lives this time?
—Dabeet.
—You hesitated. Because you don’t believe he can do it.
—I know he can do it.
—Can, but it relies on luck, it relies on …
—He’s doing his best to prepare himself, isn’t he?
—How about giving them a serious security force to help.
—You know that won’t do any good. And it’s just another variant of adults stepping in to save them. They’ll all let down, they’ll all think, Now it’s up to them to protect us.
—I know you’re right. I do know that. But I also know what can go wrong.
—Everything can go wrong.
—Good. I wasn’t sure you knew the whole list.
—Tell you what. I’ll make you a bet. Let’s send a ship, demanding that he be removed for reassignment. If he goes willingly, then we also blow the raiders out of the sky, everybody’s safe, they don’t even know if the raiders would even have come.
—That sounds good.
—But I’m betting that he won’t go.
—You think you know him?
—Yes.
—You sure you’re not assuming that he’ll be like you?
—Oh, I would have taken the chance to leave. At that age? You have no idea how careful I already was.
—So you’re counting on his mother’s genes to—
—I’m counting on Dabeet. I’m counting on him. Is it a bet?
—If I win, you get Dabeet alive and safe and also all the kids in Fleet School. Safe. But what if you win? What kind of fool makes a bet where if he wins, he loses?
—We really shouldn’t bet on this, I get your point.
—I’m still going to give the orders and make a try to save him. Can you live with that?
—He won’t come.
* * *
Nobody treated Dabeet any differently in the mess hall or during classes, and from this Dabeet learned that Monkey hadn’t told anybody about his plan to become competent outside the safety of the station’s atmosphere. She kept her word. The way Zhang He also kept his word. You didn’t have to be a friend to be loyal. You only needed to have honor.
Do I have honor?
I do if I want it. All I have to do is keep my word.
No, I have to mean my promises when I make them. When I say I’ll do something, I mean to do it, and then I do it. That’s honor. Not to give your word unless you can keep it, unless you intend to keep it. To be the kind of person who, when they say they’ll do a thing, the other people can go about their business because that job is as good as done.
How did I get through this many years of life without understanding that?
Because I was always competing. Always working to win, to be best. Nobody to promise anything to.
Except Mother. Never promised her anything, but I knew my duty. I did whatever it took to keep her safe.
Only I don’t have it in my power to keep her safe.
Trying my best to be honorable, but it isn’t in my power. Finally told the truth to the others, so they could prepare, but … was that honor, or the need to tell them before they found out some other way? Leaving them ignorant would certainly have been a betrayal. So I could have been less honorable.
Such were Dabeet’s thoughts as he ate alone in the mess hall. Everybody else was divided into their squads and teams for the coming crisis. And won’t I feel stupid if nothing ever happens? Embarrassed, yes, but relieved.
He also had other scattered thoughts. For instance, he was glad that he hadn’t thrown up in his spacesuit. Atmo suits were claustrophobic and clumsy, but outside the ship it was different. Then he had to deal with vertigo, genuine danger, the momentary terror of being surprised by the terrain. And he never threw up. Never even got nauseated. That was something, wasn’t it? Not a virtue, but … a strength? Maybe a sign that he wasn’t a complete …
It was a sign that he didn’t have to deal with vomit inside his helmet. That’s all it was. No hidden talent suddenly revealed. No path from here to being impressive to anybody. His highest aspiration right now was adequacy, and not puking helped.
And he thought about his schoolwork. That was his refuge. The thing he knew he could do well.
From what he overheard, he had a general idea of the other kids’ strategy. It was all about luring the raiders to the battlerooms, and then … something. At least they weren’t talking about trying to find some weapons stash, probably because they sent everybody through all the hidden corridors one day and didn’t find anything. As if they could possibly match trained soldiers after only a few days or weeks o
f practice.
Like I’m trying to match trained spacewalkers after …
Not trying to match anybody. Just trying to be adequate.
And thus his mind went round and round.
One conversation that mattered. Zhang He and a couple of other leaders came to his lone table in the mess hall and sat across from him. “What’s the signal?”
“I already told you everything I knew,” said Dabeet. “The complete decipherment of the sole message I’ve received. It told me October 18th but I think they’ll come earlier.”
They pondered that for a moment.
“When?” said one of the boys Dabeet didn’t know.
“Because that’s what I would do.”
“What if they don’t come till after?”
“For all I know, they’ve been caught by authorities on Earth and I’ll never hear from them again. For all I know, the whole thing has been called off. Or maybe they never meant to do it. I don’t know anything beyond what I’ve already told you. I’m not holding anything back.”
“Including what a koncho you are.”
Dabeet said nothing to that. He hadn’t betrayed them. He had warned them. But they’d spin it however they wanted. Arguing wouldn’t change that.
They left him then, and there were no more conversations. When he had cooled down a little, he realized: Zhang He must have already told them this, but the older boys didn’t believe him. They needed to hear it for themselves. Zhang He didn’t think he was holding back.
It came as an announcement on all their desks, during class.
NOTICE
THE FOLLOWING ARE ORDERED TO
EMBARCATION 2 FOR IMMEDIATE
NEW ASSIGNMENT
The list was headed by Urska Kaluza’s name, followed by the names of all the training masters, including Odd Oddson. There was only one student’s name on the list. Dabeet Ochoa.
Dabeet got up from his seat.
“Sit down, Cadet,” said the teacher.
“His name is on the list,” said Monkey, who happened to be in the same logistics class with him.
The teacher, nonplussed, looked down the list again, starting to say, “No he…” and then “This is ridiculous…”