Dolo directed the skimmer to a cluster of buildings huddled within the wall. These blocky huts had been set around a rectangle of cleared ground, and fenced off from the rest of the Navy base. Once inside this compound within a compound, Dolo and Luca got out of the skimmer and walked across obsessively swept dirt.
Everywhere Luca could see children. They were of varying ages from ten or so through to perhaps sixteen. One group marched in formation, another was lined up in rows, a third was undergoing some kind of physical training over a crude obstacle course, a fourth was standing in a rough square, watching something at the centre. Luca imagined this place must be big enough to hold a thousand children, perhaps more.
‘What is this place?’
‘Call it a school,’ Dolo said. ‘Keep your eyes open; listen and learn. And remember—’
‘I know. I am the Commission. I mustn’t show what I feel.’
‘Better yet that you should feel nothing inappropriate in the first place. But not showing it is a start. First impressions?’
‘Regularity,’ Luca said. ‘Straight lines everywhere. Everything planned, everything ordered. Nothing spontaneous.’
‘And the children?’
Luca said nothing. There was silence save for barked commands; none of the children seemed to be saying anything.
Dolo said, ‘You must understand that children brought in from the wild are more difficult to manage than those raised in birthing centres from soldier stock, for whom the war is a way of life; they know nothing else. These wild ones must be taught there is nothing else. So they will spend six or more years of their lives in places like this. Of course past the age of thirteen – or younger in some cases – they are used in combat.’
‘Thirteen?’
‘At that age their usefulness is limited. Those who survive are brought back for further training, and to shape the others. It helps them become accustomed to death, you see, if they are returned from the killing fields to a place like this, which keeps filling up with more people, people, people, so that mortality becomes trivial, a commonplace of statistics … Here now; this is where that pretty little girl from the coast will be brought, when the troopers extract her from her clinging mother.’
It was a nondescript building, before which children had been drawn up in rows. Male and female, no older than ten or eleven, they were dressed in simple orange coveralls, and were all barefoot. A woman stood before them. She had a short club in her hand. The children’s posture was erect, their heads held still, but Luca could see how their eyes flickered towards the club.
One child was called forward. She was a slim girl, perhaps a little younger than the rest. The woman spoke to her almost gently, but Luca could hear she was describing, clinically, some small crime to do with not completing laundry promptly. The girl was wide-eyed and trembling, and Luca, astonished, saw urine trickle down her leg.
Then, without warning, the woman drew her club and slammed it against the side of the child’s head. The child fell in the dust and lay still. Luca would have stepped forward, but Dolo had anticipated his reaction and grabbed his arm. Immediately the woman switched her attention to the others. She stepped over the prone form and walked up and down their rows, staring into their faces; she seemed to be smelling their fear.
Luca had to look away. He glanced up. The Galaxy’s centre glowed beyond a milky blue sky.
Dolo murmured, ‘Oh, don’t worry. They know how to do such things properly here. The child is not badly hurt. Of course the other children don’t know that. The girl’s crime was trivial, her punishment meaningless – save as an example to the others. They are being exposed to violence; they have to get used to it, not to fear it. They must be trained not to question the authority over them. And—ah, yes.’
The woman had pulled a boy out of the ranks of silent children. Luca thought she could see tears glistening in his round eyes. Again the woman’s club flashed; again the child fell to the ground.
Luca asked, aghast, ‘And what was his crime?’
‘He showed feelings for the other, the girl. That too must be programmed out. What use would such emotions be under a sky full of Xeelee nightfighters?’ Dolo studied him. ‘Luca, I know it is hard. But it is the way of the Doctrines. One day such training may save that boy’s life.’
They walked on, as the children were made to pick up their fallen comrades.
They came to a more ragged group of children. Some of these were older, Luca saw, perhaps twelve or thirteen. It disturbed him to think that there might actually be combat veterans among this group of barefoot kids. At the centre of the group, two younger children – ten-year-olds – were fighting. The others watched silently, but their eyes were alive.
Dolo murmured, ‘Here is a further stage. Now the children have to learn to use violence against others. The older ones have been put in charge of the younger. Beaten regularly themselves, now they enjoy meting out the same treatment to others. You see, they are forcing these two to fight, perhaps just for entertainment.’
At last one of the fighters battered her opponent to the ground. The fallen child was dragged away. The victor was a stocky girl; blood trickled from her mouth and knuckles. One of the older children walked into the crude ring, grinning, to face the stocky girl.
Dolo nodded with a connoisseur’s approving glance. ‘That fighter is strong,’ he said. ‘But now she will learn afresh that there are many stronger than she is.’
‘These barefoot cadets must long to escape.’
‘But their prison is not just a question of walls. In some places the regime is – harsher. When they are taken from their homes, the children are sometimes made to commit atrocities there.’
‘Atrocities?’
Dolo waved a hand. ‘It doesn’t matter what. There are always criminals of one class or another who require corrective treatment. But after committing such an act the child is instantly transformed, in her own heart, and in the hearts of her family. The family may not even want the child back. So she knows that even if she escapes this place, she can never go back home.’ He smiled. ‘Ideally, of course, it would be a family member who is struck down; that would be the purest blow of all.’
‘How efficient.’
‘Even in the face of violence a child’s social and moral concepts are surprisingly resilient; it takes a year or more before such things as family bonds are finally broken. After that the child crosses an inner threshold. Her sense of loyalty – why, her sense of self – becomes entwined not with her family but with the regime. And, of course, the first experience of combat itself is the final threshold. After that, with all she has seen and done, she cannot go home. She has been reborn. She doesn’t even want to be anywhere else.’
They walked on to the edge of the compound. Beyond the rows of buildings there was a break in the fence. On the rocky plain beyond, a group of children, with adult overseers, were lying on their bellies in crude pits dug into the ground. They were working with weapons, loading, dismantling, cleaning them, and firing them at distant targets. The weapons seemed heavy, dirty and noisy; every firing gave off a crack that made Luca jump.
Dolo asked, ‘Now. Do you see what is happening here?’
‘More indoctrination. The children must be trained to handle weapons, to deploy destructive forces – and to kill?’