He tossed his suit pieces onto the floor and slid down the frame of the bunk. A lot of the other kids were talking, flipping clothes at each other, playing with their weapons. Bean tried to put on the cut-down suit, but couldn't figure out some of the jury-rigged fastenings. He had to take off several pieces and examine them to see how they fit, and finally gave up, took it all off, and started assembling it on the floor.
Wiggin, unconcerned, glanced at his watch. Apparently three minutes was his deadline. "All right, everybody out, now! On your way!"
"But I'm naked!" said one boy -- Anwar, from Ecuador, child of Egyptian immigrants. His dossier ran through Bean's mind.
"Dress faster next time," said Wiggin.
Bean was naked, too. Furthermore, Wiggin was standing right there, watching him struggle with his suit. He could have helped. He could have waited. What am I getting myself in for?
"Three minutes from first call to running out the door -- that's the rule this week," said Wiggin. "Next week the rule is two minutes. Move!"
Out in the corridor, kids who were in the midst of free time or were heading for class stopped to watch the parade of the unfamiliar uniforms of Dragon Army. And to mock the ones that were even more unusual.
One thing for sure. Bean was going to have to practice getting dressed in his cut-down suit if he was going to avoid running naked through the corridors. And if Wiggin didn't make any exceptions for him the first day, when he'd only just got his nonregulation flash suit, Bean certainly was not going to ask for special favors.
I chose to put myself in this army, Bean reminded himself as he jogged along, trying to keep pieces of his flash suit from spilling out of his arms.
PART FOUR
SOLDIER
13
Dragon Army
"I need access to Bean's genetic information," said Sister Carlotta.
"That's not for you," said Graff.
"And here I thought my clearance level would open any door."
"We invented a special new category of security, called 'Not for Sister Carlotta.' We don't want you sharing Bean's genetic information with anyone else. And you were already planning on putting it in other hands, weren't you?"
"Only to perform a test. So ... you'll have to perform it for me. I want a comparison between Bean's DNA and Volescu's."
"I thought you told me Volescu was the source of the cloned DNA."
"I've been thinking about it since I told you that, Colonel Graff, and you know what? Bean doesn't look anything like Volescu. I couldn't see how he could possibly grow up to be like him, either."
"Maybe the difference in growth patterns makes him look different, too."
"Maybe. But it's also possible Volescu is lying. He's a vain man."
"Lying about everything?"
"Lying about anything. About paternity, quite possibly. And if he's lying about that --"
"Then maybe Bean's prognosis isn't so bleak? Don't you think we've already checked with our genetics people? Volescu wasn't lying about that, anyway. Anton's key will probably behave just the way he described."
"Please. Run the test and tell me the results."
"Because you don't want Bean to be Volescu's son."
"I don't want Bean to be Volescu's twin. And neither, I think, do you."
"Good point. Though I must tell you, the boy does have a vain streak."
"When you're as gifted as Bean, accurate self-assessment looks like vanity to other people."
"Yeah, but he doesn't have to rub it in, does he?"
"Uh-oh. Has someone's ego been hurt?"
"Not mine. Yet. But one of his teachers is feeling a little bruised."
"I notice you aren't telling me I faked his scores anymore."
"Yes, Sister Carlotta, you were right all along. He deserves to be here. And so does ... Well, let's just say you hit the jackpot after all those years of searching."
"It's humanity's jackpot."
"I said he was worth bringing up here, not that he was the one who'll lead us to victory. The wheel's still spinning on that one. And my money's on another number."
Going up the ladderways while holding a flash suit wasn't practical, so Wiggin made the ones who were dressed run up and down the corridor, working up a sweat, while Bean and the other naked or partially-dressed kids got their suits on. Nikolai helped Bean get his suit fastened; it humiliated Bean to need help, but it would have been worse to be the last one finished -- the pesky little teeny brat who slows everyone down. With Nikolai's help, he was not the last one done.
"Thanks."
"No ojjikay."
Moments later, they were streaming up the ladders to the battleroom level. Wiggin took them all the way to the upper door, the one that opened out into the middle of the battleroom wall. The one used for entering when it was an actual battle. There were handholds on the sides, the ceiling, and the floor, so students could swing out and hurl themselves into the null-G environment. The story was that gravity was lower in the battleroom because it was closer to the center of the station, but Bean had already realized that was bogus. There would still be some centrifugal force at the doors and a pronounced Coriolis effect. Instead, the battlerooms were completely null. To Bean, that meant that the I.F. had a device that would either block gravitation or, more likely, produce false gravity that was perfectly balanced to counter Coriolis and centrifugal forces in the battleroom, starting exactly at the door. It was a stunning technology -- and it was never discussed inside the I.F., at least not in the literature available to students in Battle School, and completely unknown outside.
Wiggin assembled them in four files along the corridor and ordered them to jump up and use the ceiling handholds to fling their bodies into the room. "Assemble on the far wall, as if you were going for the enemy's gate." To the veterans that meant something. To the launchies, who had never been in a battle and had never, for that matter, entered through the upper door, it meant nothing at all. "Run up and go four at a time when I open the gate, one group per second." Wiggin walked to the back of the group and, using his hook, a controller strapped to the inside of his wrist and curved to conform to his left hand, he made the door, which had seemed quite solid, disappear.
"Go!" The first four kids started running for the gate. "Go!" The next group began to run before the first had even reached it. There would be no hesitation or somebody would crash into you from behind. "Go!" The first group grabbed and swung with varying degrees of clumsiness and heading out in various directions. "Go!" Later groups learned, or tried to, from the awkwardness of the earlier ones. "Go!"
Bean was at the end of the line, in the last group. Wiggin laid a hand on his shoulder. "You can use a side handhold if you want."
Right, thought Bean. Now you decide to baby me. Not because my meshugga flash suit didn't fit together right, but just because I'm short. "Go suck on it," said Bean.
"Go!"
Bean kept pace with the other three, though it meant pumping his legs half again as fast, and when he got near the gate he took a flying leap, tapped the ceiling handhold with his fingers as he passed, and sailed out into the room with no control at all, spinning in three nauseating directions at once.
But he didn't expect himself to do any better, and instead of fighting the spin, he calmed himself and did his anti-nausea routine, relaxing himself until he neared a wall and had to prepare for impact. He didn't land near one of the recessed handholds and wasn't facing the right way to grab anything even if he had. So he rebounded, but this time was a little more stable as he flew, and he ended up on the ceiling very near the back wall. It took him less time than some to make his way down to where the others were assembling, lined up along the floor under the middle gate on the back wall -- the enemy gate.