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 [sic - no idea what this means]."
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,