"You will. Because I'll be right and you'll know it," said Bean. "And I can promise you, it'll be a hell of an army. With Wiggin to train us, we'll kick ass."
"Just do the hypothetical assignment, and talk to no one about it. Ever."
That was dismissal, but Bean didn't want to be dismissed yet. They came to him. They were having him do their work. He wanted to have his say while they were still listening. "The reason this army can be so good is that your system's been promoting a lot of the wrong kids. About half the best kids in this school are launchies or on the transfer lists, because they're the ones who haven't already been beaten into submission by the kiss-ass idiots you put in command of armies or toons. These misfits and little kids are the ones who can win. Wiggin will figure that out. He'll know how to use us."
"Bean, you're not as smart about everything as you think you are!"
"Yes I am, sir," said Bean. "Or you wouldn't have given this assignment to me. May I be dismissed? Or do you want me to tell you the roster now?"
"Dismissed," said Dimak.
I probably shouldn't have provoked him, thought Bean. Now it's possible that he'll fiddle with my roster just to prove he can. But that's not the kind of man he is. If I'm not right about that, then I'm not right about anybody else, either.
Besides, it felt good to speak the truth to someone in power.
***
After working with the list a little while, Bean was just as glad that Dimak hadn't taken him up on his foolish offer to make up the roster on the spot. Because it wasn't just a matter of naming the forty best soldiers among the launchies and the transfer lists.
Wiggin was way early for command, and that would make it harder for older kids to take it - getting put into a kid's army. So he struck off the list all who were older than Wiggin.
That left him with nearly sixty kids who were good enough to be in the army. Bean was ranking them in order of value when he realized that he was about to make another mistake. Quite a few of these kids were in the group of launchies and soldiers that practiced with Wiggin during free time. Wiggin would know these kids best, and naturally he'd look to them to be his toon leaders. The core of his army.
The trouble was, while a couple of them would do fine as toon leaders, relying on that group would mean passing over several who weren't part of that group. Including Bean.
So he doesn't choose me to lead a toon. He isn't going to choose me anyway, right? I'm too little. He won't look at me and see a leader.
Is this just about me, then? Am I corrupting this process just to get myself a chance to show what I can do?
And if I am, what's wrong with that? I know what I can do, and no one else really gets it. The teachers think I'm a scholar, they know I'm smart, they trust my judgment, but they aren't making this army for me, they're making it for him. I still have to prove to them what I can do. And if I really am one of the best, it would be to the benefit of the program to have it revealed as quickly as possible.
And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?
"Ho, Bean," said Nikolai.
"Ho," said Bean. He passed a hand across his desk, blanking the display. "Tell me."
"Nothing to tell. You looked grim."
"Just doing an assignment."
Nikolai laughed. "You never look that serious doing classwork. You just read for a while and then you type for a while. Like it was nothing. This is something."
"An extra assignment."
"A hard one, neh?"
"Not very."
"Sorry to break in. Just thought maybe something was wrong. Maybe a letter from home."
They both laughed at that. Letters weren't that common here. Every few months at the most. And the letters were pretty empty when they came. Some never got mail at all. Bean was one of them, and Nikolai knew why. It wasn't a secret, he was just the only one who noticed and the only one who asked about it. "No family at all?" he had said. "Some kids' families, maybe I'm the lucky one," Bean answered him,