"We hear rumors about a child who makes the Wiggin boy look slow."
"They all have their different strengths."
"There are those who want you relieved of your command."
"If I'm not to be allowed to select and train these kids properly, I'd prefer to be relieved, sir. Consider this a request."
"So it was a stupid threat. Advance them all as quickly as you can. just keep in mind that they need a certain amount of time in Command School, too. It does us no good to give them all your training if they don't have time to get ours."
***
Dimak met Graff in the battleroom control center. Graff conducted all his secure meetings here, until they could be sure Bean had grown enough that he couldn't get through the ducts. The battlerooms had their own separate air systems.
Graff had an essay on his desk display. "Have you read this? 'Problems in Campaigning Between Solar Systems Separated by Light-years.'"
"It's been circulating pretty widely among the faculty."
"But it isn't signed," said Graff. "You don't happen to know who wrote it, do you?"
"No, sir. Did you write it?"
"I'm no scholar, Dimak, you know that. In fact, this was written by a student."
"At Command School?"
"A student here."
At that moment Dimak understood why he had been called in. "Bean."
"Six years old. The paper reads like a work of scholarship!"
"I should have guessed. He picks up the voice of the strategists he's been reading. Or their translators. Though I don't know what will happen now that he's he's [sic - should be a single "he's"] been reading Frederick and Bulow in the original - French and German. He inhales languages and breathes them back out."
"What did you think of this paper?"
"You already know it's killing me to keep key information from this boy. If he can write this with what he knows, what would happen if we told him everything? Colonel Graff, why can't we promote him right out of Battle School, set him loose as a theorist, and then watch what he spits out?"
"Our job isn't to find theorists here. It's too late for theory anyway."
"I just think ... look, a kid so small, who'd follow him? He's being wasted here. But when he writes, nobody knows how little he is. Nobody knows how young he is."
"I see your point, but we're not going to breach security, period."
"Isn't he already a grave security risk?"
"The mouse who scutters through the ducts?"
"No. I think he's grown too big for that. He doesn't do those side-arm pushups anymore. I thought the security risk came from the fact that he guessed that an offensive fleet had been launched generations ago, so why were we still training children for command?"
"From analysis of his papers, from his activities when he signs on as a teacher, we think he's got a theory and it's wonderfully wrong. But he believes his false theory only because he doesn't know about the ansible. Do you understand? Because that's the main thing we'd have to tell him about, isn't it?"
"Of course."
"So you see, that's the one thing we can't tell him."
"What is his theory?"
"That we're assembling children here in preparation for a war between nations, or between nations and the I.F. A landside war, back on Earth."
"Why would we take the kids into space to prepare for a war on Earth?"
"Think just a minute and you'll get it."
"Because ... because when we've licked the Formics, there probably will be a little landside conflict. And all the talented commanders - the I.F. would already have them."
"You see? We can't have this kid publishing, not even within the I.F. Not everybody has given up loyalty to groups on Earth."
"So why did you call me in?"
"Because I do want to use him. We aren't running the war here, but we are running a school. Did you read his paper about the ineffectiveness of using officers as teachers?"
"Yes. I felt slapped."
"This time he's mostly wrong, because he has no way of knowing how nontraditional our recruitment of faculty has always been. But he may also be a little bit right. Because our system of testing for officer potential was designed to produce candidates with the traits identified in the most highly regarded officers in the Second Invasion."
"Hi-ho."
"You see? Some of the highly regarded were officers who performed well in battle, but the war was too short to weed out the deadwood. The officers they tested included