First Meetings Read online

  “Does it?” said Mother. “I keep hearing about this terrible enemy, these Buggers, these monsters from space, but where are they?”

  “The reason you don’t see them,” said Graff patiently, “is because we defeated their first two invasions. And if you ever do see them, it will be because we lost the third time. And even then you won’t see them, because they will do such terrible things to the surface of the Earth that there will be no humans alive when the first of the Buggers sets foot here. We want your son to help us prevent that.”

  “If God sends these monsters to kill us, maybe it’s as it was in the days of Noah,” said Mother. “Maybe the world is so wicked it needs to be destroyed.”

  “Well, if that’s so,” said Graff, “then we’ll lose the war, no matter what we do, and that’s that. But what if God wants us to win, so we have more time to repent of our wickedness? Don’t you think we ought to leave that possibility open?”

  “Don’t argue theology with us,” said Father coldly, “as if you were a believer.”

  “You don’t know what I believe,” said Graff. “All you know is this: We will go to great lengths to get your son into Battle School, because we believe he is extraordinary, and we believe that in this house he has been and will continue to be frustrated. Wasted.”

  Mother lurched forward and Father bounded to his feet. “How dare you!” cried Father.

  Graff also stood, and in his anger he looked dangerous and terrible. “I thought you were the ones who didn’t like lying!”

  There was a momentary silence, Father and Graff facing each other across the room.

  “I said his life was being wasted and that’s the simple truth,” said Graff quietly. “You didn’t even know that he was really reading. Do you understand what this boy was doing? He was reading with excellent comprehension, books that your college students would have had trouble with, Professor Wieczorek. And you didn’t know it. He did it in front of you, he told you he was doing it, and you still refused to know it because it didn’t fit into your picture of reality. And this is the home where a mind like his is going to be educated? In your list of sins, doesn’t that count as perhaps a tiny little venial sin? To take this gift from God and waste it? Didn’t Jesus say something disparaging about casting pearls before swine?”

  At this, Father could not stand it. He lunged forward to strike a blow at Graff.

  But Graff was a soldier, and blocked the blow easily. He did not strike back, but used only as much force as was needed to stop Father until he could calm himself. Even so, Father ended up on the floor, in pain, with Mother kneeling over him, crying.

  John Paul knew, however, what Graff was doing. That Graff had deliberately chosen words that would cause Father to get angry and lose control of himself.

  But why? What was Graff trying to accomplish?

  Then he realized: Graff wanted to show John Paul this scene. Father humiliated, beaten down, and Mother reduced to weeping over him.

  Graff spoke, as he gazed intensely into John Paul’s eyes. “The war is a desperate struggle, John Paul. They nearly broke us. They nearly won. It was only because we had a genius, a commander named Mazer Rackham who was able to outguess them, to find their weaknesses, that we barely, barely won. Who will be that commander next time? Will he be there? Or will he still be somewhere in Poland, working two miserable jobs that are far beneath his intellectual ability, all because at the age of six he thought he didn’t want to go into space.”

  Ah. That was it. The captain wanted John Paul to see what defeat looked like.

  But I already know what defeat looks like. And I’m not going to let you defeat me.

  “There are still Catholics outside Poland?” asked John Paul. “Noncompliant ones, right?”

  “Yes,” said Graff.

  “But not every nation is ruled by the Hegemony the way Poland is.”

  “Compliant nations continue to be governed by their traditional system.”

  “So is there some nation where we could be with other noncompliant Catholics, and yet still not have such bad sanctions that we can’t even get enough food to eat, and Father can’t work?”

  “Compliant nations all have to have sanctions against overpopulators,” said Graff. “That’s what being compliant means.”

  “A nation,” said John Paul, “where we could be an exception, and nobody would have to know it?”

  “Canada,” said Graff. “New Zealand. Sweden. America. Noncompliants who don’t make speeches about it get along decently there. You wouldn’t be the only ones who had children going to different schools, with the authorities looking the other way, because they hate punishing children for the sins of the parents.”

  “Which is best?” asked John Paul. “Which has the most Catholics?”

  “America. The most Poles and the most Catholics. And Americans always think international laws are for other people anyway, so they don’t take Hegemony rules quite as seriously.”

  “Could we go there?” asked John Paul.

  “No,” said Father. He was sitting up now, his head still bowed in pain and humiliation.

  “John Paul,” said Graff, “we don’t want you to go to America. We want you to go to Battle School.”

  “I won’t go unless my family is in a place where we won’t be hungry and where my brothers and sisters can go to school. I’ll just stay here.”

  “He’s not going anyway,” said Father, “no matter what you say, no matter what you promise, no matter what John Paul decides.”

  “Oh, yes, you,” said Graff. “You just committed the felony of striking an officer of the International Fleet, for which the penalty is imprisonment for a term of not less than three years—but you know how the courts put much heavier penalties on noncompliants who are convicted of crime. My guess would be seven or eight years. It’s all recorded, of course, the entire thing.”

  “You came into our house as a spy,” said Mother. “You provoked him.”

  “I spoke the truth to you, and you didn’t like hearing it,” said Graff. “I did not raise a hand against Professor Wieczorek or anyone in your family.”

  “Please,” said Father. “Don’t send me to jail.”

  “Of course I won’t,” said Graff. “I don’t want you in jail. But I also don’t want you issuing foolish declarations of what will or will not happen, no matter what I say, no matter what I promise, no matter what John Paul decides.”

  This was why Graff had goaded Father, John Paul understood now. To make sure Father had no choice but to go along with whatever John Paul and Graff decided between them.

  “What are you going to do to me to make me do what you want,” said John Paul, “the way you did with Father?”

  “It won’t do me any good,” said Graff, “if you come with me unwillingly.”

  “I won’t come with you willingly unless my family is in a place where they can be happy.”

  “There is no such place in a world ruled by the Hegemony,” said Father.

  But now it was Mother who stopped Father from speaking more. With a gentle hand she touched his face. “We can be good Catholics in another place,” she said. “For us to leave here, that doesn’t take bread out of the mouths of our neighbors. It harms no one. Look what John Paul is trying to do for us.” She turned to John Paul. “I’m sorry I didn’t know the truth about you. I’m sorry I was such a bad teacher for you.” Then she burst into tears.

  Father put his arm around her, pulled her close, rocked her, the two of them sitting on the floor, comforting each other.

  Graff looked at John Paul, eyebrows raised, as if to say, I’ve removed all the obstacles, so…do what I want.

  But things weren’t yet the way John Paul wanted them.

  “You’ll cheat me,” said John Paul. “You’ll take us to America but then if I still decide not to go, you’ll threaten to send everybody back here, worse off than before, and that’s how you’ll force me to go.”

  Graff did not answer for a moment
.

  “So I won’t go,” said John Paul.

  “You’ll cheat me,” said Graff. “You’ll get me to move your family to America and set you up in a better life, and then you’ll refuse to go anyway, and you’ll expect the International Fleet to allow your family to continue to enjoy the benefits of our bargain without your living up to your end of it.”

  John Paul did not answer, because there was no answer. That was exactly what John Paul was planning to do. Graff knew it, and John Paul didn’t bother to deny it. Because knowing John Paul planned to cheat him did not change anything.

  “I don’t think he’ll do that,” said the woman.

  But John Paul knew she was lying. She was quite concerned that he might do that. But she was even more concerned that Graff would walk away from the bargain John Paul was asking for. This was the confirmation John Paul needed. It really was very important to these people to get John Paul into Battle School. Therefore they would agree to a very bad bargain as long as it gave them some hope that he might go.

  Or else they knew that no matter what they agreed to now, they could go back on their word whenever they wanted. After all, they were the International Fleet, and the Wieczoreks were just a noncompliant family in a noncompliant country.

  “What you don’t know about me,” said Graff, “is that I think very far ahead.”

  That reminded John Paul of what Andrew had said when he was teaching him to play chess. “You have to think ahead, the next move, the next move, the next move, to see where it’s all going to lead.” John Paul understood the principle as soon as Andrew explained it. But he stopped playing chess anyway, because he didn’t care what happened to little plastic figures on a board of sixty-four squares.

  Graff was playing chess, but not with little plastic figures. His game board was the world. And even though Graff was only a captain, he obviously came here with more authority—and more intelligence—than the colonel who had come before. When Graff said, “I think very far ahead,” he was saying—this had to be his meaning—that he was willing to sacrifice a piece now and then in order to win the game, just like chess.

  Maybe that meant he was willing to lie to John Paul now, and cheat him later. But no, there would be no reason to say anything at all. The only reason to say that was because Graff did not intend to cheat him. Graff was willing to be cheated, to knowingly enter into a bargain where the other person could win, and win completely—as long as he could see a way, farther down the road, for even such a defeat to turn to his advantage.

  “You have to make us a promise that you’ll never break,” said John Paul. “Even if I don’t go into space after all.”

  “I have the authority to make that promise,” said Graff.

  The woman clearly did not think so, though she said nothing.

  “Is America a good place?” asked John Paul.

  “There are an awful lot of Poles living there who think so,” said Graff. “But it’s not Poland.”

  “I want to see the whole world before I die,” said John Paul. He had never told this to anyone before.

  “Before you die,” murmured Mother. “Why are you thinking about dying?”

  As usual, she simply didn’t understand. He wasn’t thinking about dying. He was thinking about learning everything, and it was a simple fact that he had only a limited time in which to do it. Why did people get so upset when somebody mentioned dying? Did they think that if they didn’t mention it, it would skip a few people and leave them alive forever? And how much faith in Christ did Mother really have, if she feared death so much she couldn’t bear even to mention it, or hear her six-year-old child speak of it?

  “Going to America is a start,” said Graff. “And American passports aren’t restricted the way Polish passports are.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” said John Paul. “Come back later.”

  “Are you insane?” asked Helena as soon as they were out of earshot. “Isn’t it obvious what the boy is planning?”

  “No to the insanity, yes to the obviousness.”

  “These vids are going to be even more embarrassing for you than the earlier ones were for Sillain.”

  “Not really,” said Graff.

  “Why, because you intend to cheat the boy after all?”

  “If I did that, then I truly would be insane.” He stopped on the curb, apparently meaning to finish this conversation before getting back into the van with the others. Had he forgotten that what he was saying now was still being recorded?

  No, he knew it. He wasn’t speaking to her alone.

  “Captain Rudolf,” he said, “you saw, and everyone will see, that there was no way we could get that boy willingly into space. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t care about the war. That’s what we’ve accomplished with this stupid repressive policy in the noncompliant nations. We have the best we’ve ever seen, and we can’t use him because we’ve spent years creating a culture that hates the Hegemony and therefore the Fleet. We pissed on millions and millions of people in the name of some stupid population control laws, in defiance of their core beliefs and their community identity, and because the universe is statistically more likely to be ironic than not, of course our best chance at another commander like Mazer Rackham popped up among the ones we pissed on. I didn’t do that, and only fools would blame me for it.”

  “So what was that all about? This agreement you promised? What’s the point?”

  “To get John Paul Wieczorek out of Poland, of course.”

  “But what difference does that make, if he won’t go up to Battle School?”

  “He’s still…he still has a mind that processes human behavior the way some autistic savants process numbers or words. Don’t you think it’s a good thing to get him to a place where he can get a real education? And out of a place where he’ll be constantly indoctrinated with hatred for the Hegemony and the I.F.?”

  “I think that’s beyond the scope of your authority,” said Helena. “We’re with the Battle School, not some Committee to Shape a Better Future by Moving Children Around.”

  “I’m thinking of Battle School,” said Graff.

  “To which John Paul Wieczorek will never go, as you just admitted.”

  “You’re forgetting the research we’ve been conducting. It may not be final in some technical scientific sense, but it’s already conclusive. People reach their peak ability as military commanders much earlier than we thought. Most of them in their late teens. The same age when poets do their most passionate and revolutionary work. And mathematicians. They peak, and then it falls off. They coast on what they learned back when they were still young enough to learn. We know within a window of about five years when we have to have our commander. John Paul Wieczorek will already be too old when that window opens. Past his peak.”

  “Obviously you’ve been given information I don’t have,” said Helena.

  “Or figured it out,” said Graff. “Once it was obvious John Paul was never going to Battle School, my mission changed. Now all that matters is we get John Paul out of Poland and into a compliant country, and we keep our word to him, absolutely, to the letter, so he knows our promises will be kept even when we know we’ve been cheated.”

  “What’s the point of that?” asked Helena.

  “Captain Rudolf, you’re speaking without thinking.”

  He was right. So she thought.

  “If we have more time before we need our commander,” she said, “then do we have time for him to marry and have children and then the children grow up enough to be the right age?”

  “Just barely, yes. We have just barely enough time. If he marries young. If he marries somebody who is very, very brilliant so the gene mix is good.”

  “But you aren’t going to try to control that, are you?”

  “There are many steps on the continuum between controlling something and doing nothing at all.”

  “You really do think in the long term, don’t you?”

  “Think of me as Rumpe
lstiltskin.”

  She laughed. “All right, now I get it. You’re giving him the wish of his heart, today. And then, long after he’s forgotten, you’re going to pop up and ask for his firstborn child.”

  Graff clapped an arm across her shoulder and walked with her toward the waiting van. “Only I don’t have some stupid loophole that will let him get out of it if he can guess my name.”

  TEACHER’S PEST

  This was not the section of Human Community that John Paul Wiggin had tried to register for. It wasn’t even his third choice. The university computer had assigned it to him because of some algorithm involving his seniority, how many first-choice classes he had received during his time there, and a slew of other considerations that meant nothing to him except that instead of getting one of the top-notch faculty he had come to this school to study with, he was going to have to suffer through the fumbling of a graduate student who knew little about the subject and less about how to teach it.

  Maybe the algorithm’s main criterion was how much he needed the course in order to graduate. They put him here because they knew he couldn’t drop.

  So he sat there in his usual front-row seat, looking at the backside of a teacher who looked like she was fifteen and dressed like she had been allowed to play in her mother’s closet. She seemed to have a nice body and was probably trying to hide it behind frumpiness—but the fact that she knew she had something worth hiding suggested that she was no scientist. Probably not even a scholar.

  I don’t have time to help you work through your self-visualization problems, he said silently to the girl at the chalkboard. Nor to help you get past whatever weird method of teaching you’re going to try out on us. What will it be? Socratic questioning? Devil’s advocate? Therapy-group “discussion”? Belligerent toughness?

  Give me a bored, worn-out wreck of a professor on the verge of retirement over a grad student every time.

  Oh well. It was only this semester, next semester, a senior thesis, and then on to a fascinating career in government. Preferably in a position where he could work for the downfall of the Hegemony and the restoration of sovereignty for all nations.