“No I’m not,” said Tzu.

  “Of course you are,” said Father.

  “You know that I’m not,” said Tzu.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “If you thought I was best child, you wouldn’t have given Guo-rong all the answers.”

  Father just looked at him for a moment. “I was just making sure. You didn’t need them.”

  “Then why did you have him teach them to me?” said Tzu.

  “To be sure.”

  “So you weren’t sure.”

  “Of course I was,” said Father.

  But Tzu had been studying logic. “If you were sure I would know the answers on my own, then you wouldn’t have to make it sure by getting the answers. But you got the answers. So you weren’t sure.”

  Father looked a little bit upset.

  “I’m sorry, Father, but it’s how we play the logic game. Maybe you need to play it more.”

  “I am sure that you’re the best child,” said Father. “Don’t you ever doubt it.” He set Tzu down and took his hand again. They went through the gate and walked up the street.

  Tzu wasn’t interested in this road. There were no people here, except in cars, and they went by too fast for Tzu to hear them. There were no children. So when they came to a side street, Tzu began to pull his father that direction. “This way,” he said. “Here’s all the people!”

  “That’s why it isn’t safe,” said Father. But then he laughed and let Tzu lead him on into the crowds. After a while it was so jammed with people and bicycles that Father picked him up. That was much better. Tzu could see the people’s faces. He could hear their conversations. Some of them looked at Tzu, being held up by his father, and smiled at them both. Tzu smiled and waved back.

  Father walked slowly alongside a high fence, which Tzu realized was the back fence around their garden. Eventually came to a gate, which Tzu knew was the gate to their garden. “Don’t go in yet,” said Tzu.

  “What?”

  “This is our gate, but don’t go in.”

  “How did you know it was our gate? You’ve never been on this side of it before.”

  “Father,” said Tzo impatiently, “I’m very smart. I know this is our gate. What else could it be? We’ve just made a circle. Let me see more before we go in.”

  So they walked past the gate, and on into one of the streets that seemed to go on forever, more and more people, flowing into and out of the buildings. Starting and stopping, buying and selling, calling out and keeping still, laughing and serious-faced, talking on phones and gesturing, or listening to music and dancing as they walked.

  “Is this China, Father?” asked Tzu.

  “A very small part of it. There are hundreds of cities, and lots of open country, too. Farmland and mountains, forest and beaches. Seaports and manufacturing centers and highways and deserts and rice paddies and wheatfields and millions and millions and millions of people.”

  “Thank you,” said Tzu.

  “For what?”

  “For letting me see China before I go off into space.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The man and woman with the test, they were from the International Fleet.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “They wore the uniforms,” said Tzu impatiently. But then he realized: He hadn’t passed the test. He answered the questions wrong. He wouldn’t be going to space after all. “Never mind,” he said. “I’m staying.”

  Father laughed and held him close. “Sometimes I have no idea what you’re talking about, Little Master.”

  Tzu wondered if he should tell him that he answered the questions wrong, but he decided against it. Father was so happy. Tzu didn’t want to make him angry tonight.

  The next morning, Tzu was eating breakfast in the kitchen with Mu-ren when someone came to the door. The visitor did not wait for old Iron-head, as Mu-Ren and Tzu secretly called him, to fetch Father. Instead, many feet began walking briskly through the house.

  The kitchen door was flung open. A soldier with a weapon in his hand stepped in and looked around. “Is Han Pei-mu here?” he asked sternly.

  Mu-ren shook her head.

  “What about Shen Guo-rong?”

  Again, the head shake.

  “Guo-rong doesn’t come till later,” said Tzu.

  “You two stay right here in the kitchen, please,” said the soldier. He continued to stand in the doorway. “Keep eating, please.”

  Tzu continued eating, trying to think what the soldiers were there for. Mu-ren’s hands were shaking. “Are you cold?” asked Tzu. “Or are you scared?”

  Mu-ren only shook her head and kept eating.

  After a while he could hear his father shouting. “Let me at least explain to the boy!” he was saying. “Let me see my son!”

  Tzu got up from his mat on the floor and jogged toward the kitchen door. The soldier put his hand on his shoulder to stop him.

  Tzu slapped his hand and said to him fiercely, “Don’t touch me!” Then he jogged on down the hallway to Father’s room, the soldier right behind him.

  The door opened just before Tzu got to it, and there was the man from the test yesterday. “Apparently someone already decided,” said the man. He ushered Tzu into the room.

  Father’s hands were bound together behind his back, but now one of the soldiers loosed them and he reached out to Tzu. Tzu ran to him and hugged him. “Are you under arrest?” asked Tzu. He had seen arrests on the vids.

  “Yes,” said Father.

  “Is it because of the answers?” asked Tzu. It was the only thing he could think of that his father had ever done wrong.

  “Yes,” said Father.

  Tzu pulled away from him and faced the man from the tests. “But it was all right,” said Tzu. “I didn’t use those answers.”

  “I know you didn’t,” said the man.

  “What?” said Father.

  Tzu turned around to face him. “I didn’t like it that you were only going to pretend I was best child. So I didn’t use any of the answers. I didn’t want to be called best child if I wasn’t really.” He turned back to the man from the fleet. “Why are you arresting him when I didn’t use the answers?”

  The man smiled confidently. “It doesn’t matter whether you used them or not. What matters is that he obtained them.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Father. “But if my son did not answer the questions correctly, how can you prove that any cheating took place?”

  “For one thing, we’ve been recording this entire interview,” said the man from the fleet. “The fact that he knew he had been given the right answers and chose to answer incorrectly does not change the fact that you trained him to take the test.”

  “Maybe what you need is a little better security with the answers,” said Father angrily.

  “Sir,” said the man from the fleet, “we always allow people to buy the test if they try to get it. Then we watch and see what they do with it. A child as bright as this one could not possibly have answered every question wrong unless he absolutely had the entire test down cold.”

  “I got the first three right,” said Tzu.

  “Yes, all but three were wrong,” said the man from the fleet. “Even children of very limited intellect get some of them right by random chance.”

  Father’s demeanor changed again. “The blame is entirely mine,” he said. “The boy’s mother had no idea I was doing this.”

  “We’re quite aware of that. She will not be bothered, except of course to inform her. The penalty is not severe, sir, but you will certainly be convicted and serve the days in prison. The fleet makes no exceptions for anyone. We need to make a public example of those who try to cheat.”

  “Why, if you let them cheat whenever they want?” said Father bitterly.

  “If we didn’t let people buy the answers, they might figure out much cleverer ways to cheat the test. Ways we wouldn’t necessarily catch.”

  “Aren’t you smart.”

  Father was being sarcastic, but Tzu thought they were smart. He wished he had thought of that.

  “Father,” said Tzu. “I’m sorry about Yuan Shikai.”

  Father glanced furtively toward the soldiers. “Don’t worry about that,” he said.

  “But I was thinking. It’s been so many hundred years since Yuan Shikai lived that he must have hundreds of descendants now. Maybe thousands. It doesn’t have to be me, does it? It could be one of them.”

  “Only you,” said Father softly. He kissed him good-bye. They bound his wrists behind his back and led him out of the house.

  The woman from the test stayed with Tzu and kept him from following to watch them take Father away. “Where will they take him?” asked Tzu.

  “Not far,” said the woman. “He won’t be imprisoned for very long, and he’ll be quite comfortable there.”

  “But he’ll be ashamed,” said Tzu.

  “For a man with so much pride in his family,” said the woman, “that is the harshest penalty.”

  “I should have answered most of the questions right,” said Tzu. “It’s my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said the woman. “You’re only a child.”

  “I’m almost six,” said Tzu.

  “Besides,” said the woman, “we watched Guo-rong coaching you. Teaching you the test.”

  “How?” asked Tzu.

  She tapped the little monitor on the back of his neck.

  “Father said that was just to keep me safe. To make sure my heart was beating and I didn’t get lost.”

  “Everything your eyes see,” said the woman, “we see. Everything you hear, we hear.”

  “You lied, then,” said Tzu. “You cheated too.”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “But we’re fighting a war. We’re allowed to.”

  “It must have been boring, watching everything I see. I never get to see anything.”

  “Until last night,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “So many people on the streets,” she said. “More than you can count.”

  “I didn’t try to count them,” said Tzu. “They were going all different directions and in and out of buildings and up and down the side streets. I stopped after three thousand.”

  “You counted three thousand?”

  “I’m always counting,” said Tzu. “I mean my counter is.”

  “Your counter?”

  “In my head. It counts everything and tells me the number when I need it.”

  “Ah,” she said. She took his hand. “Let’s go back to your room and take another test.”

  “Why?”

  “This test you don’t know the answers to.”

  “I bet I do,” said Tzu. “I bet I figure them out.”

  “Ah,” said the woman. “A different kind of pride.”

  Tzu sat down and waited for her to set up the test.

  2007

  A Young Man with Prospects

  “Do you know what I did today, Alessandra?”

  “No, Mother.” Fourteen-year-old Alessandra set her book bag on the floor by the front door and walked past her mother to the sink, where she poured herself a glass of water.

  “Guess!”

  “Got the electricity turned back on?”

  “The elves would not speak to me,” said Mother. It had once been funny, this game that electricity came from elves. But it wasn’t funny now, in the sweltering Adriatic summer, with no refrigeration for the food, no air-conditioning, and no vids to distract her from the heat.

  “Then I don’t know what you did, Mother.”

  “I changed our lives,” said Mother. “I created a future for us.”

  Alessandra froze in place and uttered a silent prayer. She had long since given up hope that any of her prayers would be answered, but she figured each unanswered prayer would add to the list of grievances she would take up with God, should the occasion arise.

  “What future is that, Mother?”

  Mother could hardly contain herself. “We are going to be colonists.”

  Alessandra sighed with relief. She had heard all about the Dispersal Project in school. Now that the Formics had been destroyed, the idea was for humans to colonize all their former worlds, so that humanity’s fate would not be tied to that of a single planet. But the requirements for colonists were strict. There was no chance that an unstable, irresponsible—no, pardon me, I meant “feckless and fay”—person like Mother would be accepted.

  “Well, Mother, that’s wonderful.”

  “You don’t sound excited.”

  “It takes a long time for an application to be approved. Why would they take us? What do we know how to do?”

  “You’re such a pessimist, Alessandra. You’ll have no future if you must frown at every new thing.” Mother danced around her, holding a fluttering piece of paper in front of her. “I put in our application months ago, darling Alessandra. Today I got word that we have been accepted!”

  “You kept a secret for all this time?”

  “I can keep secrets,” said Mother. “I have all kinds of secrets. But this is no secret, this piece of paper says that we will journey to a new world, and on that new world you will not be part of a persecuted surplus, you will be needed, all your talents and charms will be noticed and admired.”

  All her talents and charms. At the coleggio, no one seemed to notice them. She was merely another gawky girl, all arms and legs, who sat in the back and did her work and made no waves. Only Mother thought of Alessandra as some extraordinary, magical creature.

  “Mother, may I read that paper?” asked Alessandra.

  “Why, do you doubt me?” Mother danced away with the letter.

  Alessandra was too hot and tired to play. She did not chase after her. “Of course I doubt you.”

  “You are no fun today, Alessandra.”

  “Even if it’s true, it’s a horrible idea. You should have asked me. Do you know what colonists’ lives will be like? Sweating in the fields as farmers.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Mother. “They have machines for that.”

  “And they’re not sure we can eat any of the native vegetation. When the Formics first attacked Earth, they simply destroyed all the vegetation in the part of China where they landed. They had no intention of eating anything that grew here naturally. We don’t know if our plants can grow on their planets. All the colonists might die.”

  “The survivors of the fleet that defeated the Formics will already have those problems resolved by the time we get there.”

  “Mother,” said Alessandra patiently. “I don’t want to go.”

  “That’s because you have been convinced by the dead souls at the school that you are an ordinary child. But you are not. You are magical. You must get away from this world of dust and misery and go to a land that is green and filled with ancient powers. We will live in the caves of the dead ogres and go out to harvest the fields that once were theirs! And in the cool evening, with sweet green breezes fluttering your skirts, you will dance with young men who gasp at your beauty and grace!”

  “And where will we find young men like that?”

  “You’ll see,” said Mother. Then she sang it: “You shall see! You shall see! A fine young man with prospects will give his heart to you.”

  Finally the paper fluttered close enough for Alessandra to snatch it out of Mother’s hands. She read it, with Mother bending down to hover just behind the paper, smiling her fairy smile. It was real. Dorabella Toscano (29) and daughter Alessandra Toscano (14), accepted into Colony I.

  “Obviously there’s no sort of psychological screening after all,” said Alessandra.

  “You try to hurt me but I will not be hurt. Mother knows what is best for you. You shall not make the mistakes that I have made.”

  “No, but I’ll pay for them,” said Alessandra.

  “Think, my darling, beautiful, brilliant, graceful, kind, generous, and poutful girl, think of this: What do you have to look forward to here in Monopoli, Italia, living in a flat in the unfashionable end of Via Luigi Indelli?”

  “There is no fashionable end of Luigi Indelli.”

  “You make my point for me.”

  “Mother, I don’t dream of marrying a prince and riding off into the sunset.”

  “That’s a good thing, my darling, because there are no princes—only men and animals who pretend to be men. I married one of the latter but he at least provided you with the genes for those amazing cheekbones, that dazzling smile. Your father had very good teeth.”

  “If only he had been a more attentive bicyclist.”

  “It was not his fault, dear.”

  “The streetcars run on tracks, Mother. You don’t get hit if you stay out from between the tracks.”

  “Your father was not a genius but fortunately I am, and therefore you have the blood of the fairies in you.”

  “Who knew that fairies sweat so much?” Alessandra pulled one of Mother’s dripping locks of hair away from her face. “Oh, Mother, we won’t do well in a colony. Please don’t do this.”

  “The voyage takes forty years—I went next door and looked it up on the net.”

  “Did you ask them this time?”

  “Of course I did, they lock their windows now. They were thrilled to hear we were going to be colonists.”

  “I have no doubt they were.”

  “But because of magic, to us it will be only two years.”

  “Because of the relativistic effects of near-lightspeed travel.”

  “Such a genius, my daughter is. And even those two years we can sleep through, so we won’t even age.”

  “Much.”

  “It will be as if our bodies slept a week, and we wake up forty years away.”

  “And everyone we know on Earth will be forty years older than we are.”