These children are no match for me.

  And, with just as much certainty: I will never catch up to them. They’ll always be bigger, stronger, quicker, healthier. Happier. They talked to each other boastfully, spoke wistfully of home, mocked the children who had failed to qualify to come with them, pretended to have inside knowledge about how things really were in Battle School. Bean said nothing. Just listened, watched them maneuver, some of them determined to assert their place in the hierarchy, others quieter because they knew their place would be lower down; a handful relaxed, unworried, because they had never had to worry about the pecking order, having been always at the top of it. A part of Bean wanted to engage in the contest and win it, clawing his way to the top of the hill. Another part of him disdained the whole group of them. What would it mean, really, to be top dog in this mangy pack?

  Then he glanced down at his small hands, and at the hands of the boy sitting next to him.

  I really do look like a doll compared to the rest of them.

  Some of the kids were complaining about how hungry they were. There was a strict rule against eating for twenty-four hours before the shuttle flight, and most of these kids had never gone so long without eating. For Bean, twenty-four hours without food was barely noticeable. In his crew, you didn’t worry about hunger until the second week.

  The shuttle took off, just like any airplane, though it had a long, long runway to get it up to speed, it was so heavy. Bean was surprised at the motion of the plane, the way it charged forward yet seemed to hold still, the way it rocked a little and sometimes bumped, as if it were rolling over irregularities in an invisible road.

  When they got up to a high altitude, they rendezvoused with two fuel planes, in order to take on the rest of the rocket fuel needed to achieve escape velocity. The plane could never have lifted off the ground with that much fuel on board.

  During the refueling, a man emerged from the control cabin and stood at the front of the rows of seats. His sky blue uniform was crisp and perfect, and his smile looked every bit as starched and pressed and unstainable as his clothes.

  “My dear darling little children,” he said. “Some of you apparently can’t read yet. Your seat harnesses are to remain in place throughout the entire flight. Why are so many of them unfastened? Are you going somewhere?”

  Lots of little clicks answered him like scattered applause.

  “And let me also warn you that no matter how annoying or enticing some other child might be, keep your hands to yourself. You should keep in mind that the children around you scored every bit as high as you did on every test you took, and some of them scored higher.”

  Bean thought: That’s impossible. Somebody here had to have the highest score.

  A boy across the aisle apparently had the same thought. “Right,” he said sarcastically.

  “I was making a point, but I’m willing to digress,” said the man. “Please, share with us the thought that so enthralled you that you could not contain it silently within you.”

  The boy knew he had made a mistake, but decided to tough it out. “Somebody here has the highest score.”

  The man continued looking at him, as if inviting him to continue.

  Inviting him to dig himself a deeper grave, thought Bean.

  “I mean, you said that everybody scored as high as everybody else, and some scored higher, and that’s just obviously not true.”

  The man waited some more.

  “That’s all I had to say.”

  “Feel better?” said the man.

  The boy sullenly kept his silence.

  Without disturbing his perfect smile, the man’s tone changed, and instead of bright sarcasm, there was now a sharp whiff of menace. “I asked you a question, boy.”

  “No, I don’t feel better.”

  “What’s your name?” asked the man.

  “Nero.”

  A couple of children who knew a little bit about history laughed at the name. Bean knew about the emperor Nero. He did not laugh, however. He knew that a child named Bean was wise not to laugh at other kids’ names. Besides, a name like that could be a real burden to bear. It said something about the boy’s strength or at least his defiance that he didn’t give some nickname.

  Or maybe Nero was his nickname.

  “Just . . . Nero?” asked the man.

  “Nero Boulanger.”

  “French? Or just hungry?”

  Bean did not get the joke. Was Boulanger a name that had something to do with food?

  “Algerian.”

  “Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it’s actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn.”

  Nero grumbled something.

  “Listen—another flatulence, but this time even less articulate than before. Tell us, Nero. Speak up. You are teaching us all by the example of your courage, however half-assed it might be.”

  A couple of students laughed.

  “And listen—your fart has drawn out other farts, from people equally stupid, for they think they are somehow superior to you, and that they could not just as easily have been chosen to be examples of superior intellect.”

  There would be no more laughter.

  Bean felt a kind of dread, for he knew that somehow, this verbal sparring, or rather this one-sided verbal assault, this torture, this public exposure, was going to find some twisted path that led to him. He did not know how he sensed this, for the uniformed man had not so much as glanced at Bean, and Bean had made no sound, had done nothing to call attention to himself. Yet he knew that he, not Nero, would end up receiving the cruelest thrust from this man’s dagger.

  Then Bean realized why he was sure it would turn against him. This had turned into a nasty little argument about whether someone had higher test scores than anyone else on the shuttle. And Bean had assumed, for no reason whatsoever, that he was the child with the highest scores.

  Now that he had seen his own belief, he knew it was absurd. These children were all older and had grown up with far more advantages. He had had only Sister Carlotta as a teacher—Sister Carlotta and, of course, the street, though few of the things he learned there had shown up on the tests. There was no way that Bean had the highest score.

  Yet he still knew, with absolute certainty, that this discussion was full of danger for him.

  “I told you to speak up, Nero. I’m waiting.”

  “I still don’t see how anything I said was stupid,” said Nero.

  “First, it was stupid because I have all the authority here, and you have none, so I have the power to make your life miserable, and you have no power to protect yourself. So how much intelligence does it take just to keep your mouth shut and avoid calling attention to yourself? What could be a more obvious decision to make when confronted with such a lopsided distribution of power?”

  Nero withered in his seat.

  “Second, you seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time.”

  Bean silently disagreed. The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them—noticing them—that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

  The part of the man’s statement that was true, however, was about the uselessness of speaking up. If I know that the teacher is wrong, and say nothing, then I remain the only one who knows, and that gives me an advantage over those who believe the teacher.

  “Third,” said the man, “my statement only seems to be self-contradictory and impossible because you did not think beneath the surface of the situation. In fact it is not necessarily true that one person has the highest scores of everyone on this shuttle. That’s because there were many tests, physical, mental, social, and psychological, and many ways to define ‘highest’ as well, since there are many ways to be physically or socially or psychologically fit for command. Children who tested highest on stamina may not have tested highest on strength; children who tested highest on memory may not have tested highest on anticipatory analysis. Children with remarkable social skills might be weaker in delay of gratification. Are you beginning to grasp the shallowness of your thinking that led you to your stupid and useless conclusion?”

  Nero nodded.

  “Let us hear the sound of your flatulence again, Nero. Be just as loud in acknowledging your errors as you were in making them.”

  “I was wrong.”

  There was not a boy on that shuttle who would not have avowed a preference for death to being in Nero’s place at that moment. And yet Bean felt a kind of envy as well, though he did not understand why he would envy the victim of such torture.

  “And yet,” said the man, “you happen to be less wrong on this particular shuttle flight than you would have been in any other shuttle filled with launchies heading for Battle School. And do you know why?”

  He did not choose to speak.

  “Does anyone know why? Can anyone guess? I am inviting speculation.”

  No one accepted the invitation.

  “Then let me choose a volunteer. There is a child here named—improbable as it might sound—‘Bean.’ Would that child please speak?”

  Here it comes, thought Bean. He was filled with dread; but he was also filled with excitement, because this was what he wanted, though he did not know why. Look at me. Talk to me, you with the power, you with the authority.

  “I’m here, sir,” said Bean.

  The man made a show of looking and looking, unable to see where Bean was. Of course it was a sham—he knew exactly where Bean was sitting before he ever spoke. “I can’t see where your voice came from. Would you raise a hand?”

  Bean immediately raised his hand. He realized, to his shame, that his hand did not even reach to the top of the high-backed seat.

  “I still can’t see you,” said the man, though of course he could. “I give you permission to unstrap and stand on your seat.”

  Bean immediately complied, peeling off the harness and bounding to his feet. He was barely taller than the back of the seat in front of him.

  “Ah, there you are,” said the man. “Bean, would you be so kind as to speculate about why, in this shuttle, Nero comes closer to being correct than on any other?”

  “Maybe somebody here scored highest on a lot of tests.”

  “Not just a lot of tests, Bean. All the tests of intellect. All the psychological tests. All the tests pertinent to command. Every one of them. Higher than anyone else on this shuttle.”

  “So I was right,” said the newly defiant Nero.

  “No you were not,” said the man. “Because that remarkable child, the one who scored highest on all the tests related to command, happens to have scored the very lowest on the physical tests. And do you know why?”

  No one answered.

  “Bean, as long as you’re standing, can you speculate about why this one child might have scored lowest on the physical tests?”

  Bean knew how he had been set up. And he refused to try to hide from the obvious answer. He would say it, even though the question was designed to make the others detest him for answering it. After all, they would detest him anyway, no matter who said the answer.

  “Maybe he scored lowest on the physical tests because he’s very, very small.”

  Groans from many boys showed their disgust at his answer. At the arrogance and vanity that it suggested. But the man in uniform only nodded gravely.

  “As should be expected from a boy of such remarkable ability, you are exactly correct. Only this boy’s unusually small stature prevented Nero from being correct about there being one child with higher scores than everybody else.” He turned to Nero. “So close to not being a complete fool,” he said. “And yet . . . even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day. Sit down now, Bean, and put on your harness. The refueling is over and we’re about to boost.”

  Bean sat down. He could feel the hostility of the other children. There was nothing he could do about that right now, and he wasn’t sure that it was a disadvantage, anyway. What mattered was the much more puzzling question: Why did the man set him up like that? If the point was to get the kids competing with each other, they could have passed around a list with everyone’s scores on all the tests, so they all could see where they stood. Instead, Bean had been singled out. He was already the smallest, and knew from experience that he was therefore a target for every mean-spirited impulse in a bully’s heart. So why did they draw this big circle around him and all these arrows pointing at him, practically demanding that he be the main target of everyone’s fear and hate?

  Draw your targets, aim your darts. I’m going to do well enough in this school that someday I’ll be the one with the authority, and then it won’t matter who likes me. What will matter is who I like.

  “As you may remember,” said the man, “before the first fart from the mouthhole of Nero Bakerboy here, I was starting to make a point. I was telling you that even though some child here may seem like a prime target for your pathetic need to assert supremacy in a situation where you are unsure of being recognized for the hero that you want people to think you are, you must control yourself, and refrain from poking or pinching, jabbing or hitting, or even making snidely provocative remarks or sniggering like warthogs just because you think somebody is an easy target. And the reason why you should refrain from doing this is because you don’t know who in this group is going to end up being your commander in the future, the admiral when you’re a mere captain. And if you think for one moment that they will forget how you treated them now, today, then you really are a fool. If they’re good commanders, they’ll use you effectively in combat no matter how they despise you. But they don’t have to be helpful to you in advancing your career. They don’t have to nurture you and bring you along. They don’t have to be kind and forgiving. Just think about that. The people you see around you will someday be giving you orders that will decide whether you live or die. I’d suggest you work on earning their respect, not trying to put them down so you can show off like some schoolyard punk.”

  The man turned his icy smile on Bean one more time.

  “And I’ll bet that Bean, here, is already planning to be the admiral who gives you all orders someday. He’s even planning how he’ll order me to stand solitary watch on some asteroid observatory till my bones melt from osteoporosis and I ooze around the station like an amoeba.”

  Bean hadn’t given a moment’s thought to some future contest between him and this particular officer. He had no desire for vengeance. He wasn’t Achilles. Achilles was stupid. And this officer was stupid for thinking that Bean would think that way. No doubt, however, the man thought Bean would be grateful because he had just warned the others not to pick on him. But Bean had been picked on by tougher bastards than these could possibly be; this officer’s “protection” was not needed, and it made the gulf between Bean and the other children wider than before. If Bean could have lost a couple of tussles, he would have been humanized, accepted perhaps. But now there would be no tussles. No easy way to build bridges.

  That was the reason for the annoyance that the man apparently saw on Bean’s face. “I’ve got a word for you, Bean. I don’t care what you do to me. Because there’s only one enemy that matters. The Buggers. And if you can grow up to be the admiral who can give us victory over the Buggers and keep Earth safe for humanity, then make me eat my own guts, ass-first, and I’ll still say, Thank you, sir. The Buggers are the enemy. Not Nero. Not Bean. Not even me. So keep your hands off each other.”

  He grinned again, mirthlessly.

  “Besides, the last time somebody tried picking on another kid, he ended up flying through the shuttle in null-G and got his arm broken. It’s one of the laws of strategy. Until you know that you’re tougher than the enemy, you maneuver, you don’t commit to battle. Consider that your first lesson in Battle School.”

  First lesson? No wonder they used this guy to tend children on the shuttle flights instead of having him teach. If you followed that little piece of wisdom, you’d be paralyzed against a vigorous enemy. Sometimes you have to commit to a fight even when you’re weak. You don’t wait till you know you’re tougher. You make yourself tougher by whatever means you can, and then you strike by surprise, you sneak up, you backstab, you blindside, you cheat, you lie, you do whatever it takes to make sure that you come out on top.