First Meetings In the Enderverse

TEACHER'S PEST

This was not the section of Human Community that John Paul Wiggin had tried to register for. It wasn't even his third choice. The university computer had assigned it to him because of some algorithm involving his seniority, how many first-choice classes he had received during his time there, and a slew of other considerations that meant nothing to him except that instead of getting one of the top-notch faculty he had come to this school to study with, he was going to have to suffer through the fumbling of a graduate student who knew little about the subject and less about how to teach it.

Maybe the algorithm's main criterion was how much he needed the course in order to graduate. They put him here because they knew he couldn't drop.

So he sat there in his usual front-row seat, looking at the backside of a teacher who looked like she was fifteen and dressed like she had been allowed to play in her mother's closet. She seemed to have a nice body and was probably trying to hide it behind frumpiness—but the fact that she knew she had something worth hiding suggested that she was no scientist. Probably not even a scholar.

I don't have time to help you work through your self-visualization problems, he said silently to the girl at the chalkboard. Nor to help you get past whatever weird method of teaching you're going to try out on us. What will it be? Socratic questioning? Devil's advocate? Therapy-group "discussion"?

Belligerent toughness?

Give me a bored, worn-out wreck of a professor on the verge of retirement over a grad student every time.

Oh well. It was only this semester, next semester, a senior thesis, and then on to a fascinating career in government. Preferably in a position where he could work for the downfall of the Hegemony and the restoration of sovereignty for all nations.

Poland in particular, but he never said that to anyone, never even admitted that he had spent the first six years of his life in Poland. His documents all showed him and his whole family to be naturalborn Americans. His parents' unlosable Polish accents proved that to be a lie, but considering that it was the Hegemony that had moved them to America and given them their false papers, it wasn't likely anybody was going to press the issue.

So write your diagrams on the board, Little Miss I-Want-to-Grow-Up-to-Be-a-Perfesser. I'll ace your tests and get my A and you'll never have a clue that the most arrogant, ambitious, and intelligent student on this campus was in your class.

At least that's what they told him he was back when they were recruiting him. All except the arrogant part. They didn't actually say that. He just read it in their eyes.

"I wrote all this on the board," said the grad student with chalk, "because I want you to memorize it and, with any luck, understand it, because it's the basis of everything else we'll discuss in this class."

John Paul had already memorized it, of course, just by reading it. Because it was stuff he hadn't seen before in his outside reading, it was obvious her "method" was to try to be "cutting edge," full of the latest—and most likely to be wrong—research.

She looked right at him. "You seem particularly bored and contemptuous, Mr.... Wiggin, is it? Is that because you already know about the community selection model of evolution?"

Oh, great. She was one of those "teachers" who had to have a goat in the class—someone to torment in order to score points.

"No, ma'am," said John Paul. "I came here hoping that you'd teach me everything about it." He kept every trace of sarcasm out of his tone; but of course that made it even more barbed and condescending.

He expected her to show annoyance at him, but instead she merely turned to another student and began a dialogue. So either John Paul had scared her off, or she had been oblivious to his sarcasm and therefore had no idea she had been challenged.

The class wouldn't even be interesting as a blood sport. Too bad.

" 'Human evolution is driven by community needs,' " she read from the board. "How is that possible, since genetic information is passed only by and to individuals?"

She was answered by the normal undergraduate silence. Fear of appearing stupid? Fear of seeming to care? Fear of seeming to be a suck-up? Of course, a few of the silent students were honestly stupid or apathetic, but most of them lived fear-driven lives.

Finally a tentative hand went up.

"Do communities, um, influence sexual selection? Like slanting eyes?"

"They do," said Miss Grad Student, "and the prevalence of the epicanthic fold in East Asia is a good example of that. But ultimately that's trivial—there is no actual survival value in it. I'm talking about good old rock-solid survival of the fittest. How can that be controlled by the community?"

"Killing people who don't fit in?" suggested another student.

John Paul slid down in his seat and stared at the ceiling. This far into their education, and they still had no understanding of basic principles.

"Mr. Wiggin seems to be bored with our discussion," said Miss Grad Student.

John Paul opened his eyes and scanned the board again. Ah, she had written her name there. Theresa Brown. "Yes, Ms. Brown, I am," he said.

"Is this because you know the answer, or because you don't care?"

"I don't know the answer," said John Paul, "but neither does anyone else in the room except you, so until you decide to tell us instead of engaging in this enchanting voyage of discovery in which you let the passengers steer the ship, it's naptime."

There were a few gasps and a couple of chuckles.

"So you have no ideas about how the statement on the board might be either true or false?"

"I suppose," said John Paul, "that the theory you're suggesting is that because living in communities makes humans far more likely to survive, and to have opportunities to mate, and to bring their children to adulthood, then whatever individual human traits strengthen the community will, in the long run, be the ones most likely to get passed along to each new generation."

She blinked. "Yes," she said. "That's right." And then she blinked again. Apparently he had interrupted her lesson plan by getting to the answer immediately.

"But what I wonder," said John Paul, "is this: Since human communities depend on adaptability in order to thrive, then it isn't just one set of traits that strengthen the community. So community life should promote variety, not a narrow range of traits."

"That would be true," said Ms. Brown, "and indeed is true in the main, except that there are only a few types of human communities that actually survive long enough to improve the chances of individual survival."

She walked to the board and wiped out a swath of material that John Paul had just blown through by cutting to the chase. In its place, she wrote two headings: Tribal and Civil.

"There are two models that all successful human communities follow," she said. Then she turned to John Paul. "How would you define a 'successful' community, Mr. Wiggin?"

"One that maximized the ability of its members to survive and reproduce," he said.

"Oh, if only that were true," she said. "But it's not true. Most human communities demand antisurvival behavior from large numbers of their members. The obvious example would be war, in which members of a community risk their own death—usually at the very age when they are about to begin family life. Many of them die. How can you possibly pass on the willingness to die before reproduction? Those who have this trait are the least likely to reproduce."

"But only males," said John Paul.

"There are women in the military, Mr. Wiggin."

"In very small numbers," said John Paul, "because the traits that make good soldiers are far less common in women, and the willingness to go to war is rare in women."

"Women fight savagely and die willingly to protect their children," said Ms. Brown.

"Exactly—their children. Not the community as a whole," said John Paul. He was making this up as he went along, but it made sense and was interesting—so he was quite willing to let her play the Socratic questioning game.

"And yet women are the ones who form the tightest community bonds," she said.

"And the most rigid hierarchies," said John Paul. "But they do it by social sanctions, not by violence."

"So you're saying that violence in males but civility in women is promoted by community life."

"Not violence," said John Paul. "But the willingness to sacrifice for a cause."

"In other words," said Ms. Brown, "men believe the stories their communities tell them. Enough to die and kill. And women don't?"

"They believe them enough to..." John Paul paused a moment, thinking back on what he knew about learned and unlearned sex differences. "Women have to be willing to raise their sons in a community that might require them to die. So men and women all have to believe the story."

"And the story they believe," said Ms. Brown, "is that males are expendable and females are not."

"To a degree, anyway."

"And why would this be a useful story for a community to believe?" She directed this question to the class at large.

And the answers came quickly enough, because some of the students, at least, were following the conversation. "Because even if half the men die, all the women will still be able to reproduce."

"Because it provides an outlet for male aggressiveness." "Because you have to be able to defend the community's resources."

John Paul watched as Theresa Brown fielded each response and riffed on it.

"Do communities that suffered terrible losses in war in fact abandon monogamy or do a large number of women live their lives without reproducing?" She had the example of France, Germany, and Britain after the bloodletting of World War I.

"Does war come about because of male aggressiveness? Or is male aggressiveness a trait that communities have to promote in order to win wars? Is it the community that drives the trait, or the trait that drives the community?" Which John Paul realized was the very crux of the theory she was putting forth—and he rather liked the question.

"And what," she finally asked, "are the resources a community has to protect?"

Food, they said. Water. Shelter. But these obvious answers did not seem to be what she was looking for. "All these are important, but you're missing the most important one."

To his own surprise, John Paul found himself wanting to come up with the right answer. He had never expected to feel that way in a class taught by a grad student.

What community resource could be more important to the survival of the community than food, water, or shelter?

He raised his hand.

"Mr. Wiggin seems to think he knows." She looked at him.

"Wombs," he said.

"As a community resource," she said.

"As the community," said John Paul. "Women are community."

She smiled. "That is the great secret."

There were howls of protest from other students. About how men have always run most communities. How women were treated like property.

"Some men," she answered. "Most men are treated far more like property than women. Because women are almost never simply thrown away, while men are thrown away by the thousands in time of war."

"But men still rule," a student protested.

"Yes, they do," said Ms. Brown. "The handful of alpha males rule, while all the other males become tools. But even the ruling males know that the most vital resource of the community is the women, and any community that is going to survive has to bend all its efforts to one primary task—to promote the ability of women to reproduce and bring their offspring to adulthood."

"So what about societies that selectively abort or kill off their girl children?" insisted a student.

"Those would be societies that had decided to die, wouldn't they?" said Ms. Brown.

Consternation. Uproar.

It was an interesting model. Communities that killed off their girls would have fewer girls reach reproductive age. Therefore they would be less successful in maintaining a high population. He raised his hand.

"Enlighten us, Mr. Wiggin," she said.

"I just have a question," he said. "Couldn't there be an advantage in having an excess of males?"

"It must not be an important one," said Ms. Brown, "because the vast majority of human communities

—especially the ones that survive longest—have shown a willingness to throw away males, not females. Besides, killing female babies gives you a higher proportion of males, but a lower absolute number of males, because there are fewer females to give birth to them."

"But what about when resources are scarce?" a student asked.

"What about it?" said Ms. Brown.

"I mean, don't you have to reduce the population to sustainable levels?"

Suddenly the room was very quiet.

Ms. Brown laughed. "Anyone want to try an answer to that?"

No one spoke.

"And why have we suddenly become silent?" she asked.

She waited.

Finally someone murmured, "The population laws."

"Ah," she said. "Politics. We have a worldwide decision to decrease the human population by limiting the number of births to two per couple. And you don't want to talk about it."

The silence said that they didn't even want to talk about the fact that they didn't want to talk about it.

"The human race is fighting for its survival against an alien invasion," she said, "and in the process, we have decided to limit our reproduction."

"Somebody named Brown," said John Paul, "ought to know how dangerous it can be to go on record as opposing the population laws."

She looked at him icily. "This is a science class, not a political debate," she said. "There are community traits that promote survival of the individual, and individual traits that promote the survival of the community. In this class, we are not afraid to go where the evidence takes us.

"What if it takes us out of any chance of getting a job?" asked a student.

"I'm here to teach the students who want to learn what I know," she said. "If you're one of that happy number, then aren't we both lucky. If you're not, I don't much care. But I'm not going to not teach you something because knowing it might somehow make you less employable."

"So is it true," asked a girl in the front row, "that he really is your father?"

"Who?" asked Ms. Brown.

"You know," the girl said. "Hinckley Brown."

Hinckley Brown. The military strategist whose book was still the bible of the International Fleet—

but who resigned from the I.F. and went into seclusion because he refused to go along with the population laws.

"And this would be relevant to you because...?" asked Ms. Brown.

The answer was belligerent. "Because we have a right to know if you're teaching us science or your religion."

That's right, thought John Paul. Hinckley Brown was a Mormon, and they were noncompliant.

Noncompliant like John Paul's own parents, who were Polish Catholics.

Noncompliant like John Paul intended to be, as soon as he found somebody he wanted to marry.

Somebody who also wanted to stick it to the Hegemony and their two-children-per-family law.

"What if," said Ms. Brown, "the findings of science happen to coincide, on a particular point, with the beliefs of a religion? Do we reject the science in order to reject the religion?"

"What if the science gets influenced by the religion?" demanded the student.

"Fortunately," said Ms. Brown, "the question is not only stupid and offensive, it's also moot. Because whatever blood relationship I might or might not have with the famous Admiral Brown, the only thing that matters is my science and, if you happen to be suspicious, my religion."

"So what is your religion?" the student said.

"My religion," said Ms. Brown, "is to try to falsify all hypotheses. Including your hypothesis that teachers should be judged according to their parentage or their membership in a group. If you find me teaching something that cannot be adduced from the evidence, then you can make your complaint. And since it seems particularly important to you to avoid any possibility of an idea contaminated by Hinckley Brown's beliefs, I will drop you from the class... right... now."

By the end of the sentence she was jabbing instructions at her desk, which was sitting atop the podium. She looked up. "There. You can leave now and go to the department offices to arrange to be admitted to a different section of this class."

The student was flabbergasted. "I don't want to drop this class."

"I don't recall asking you what you wanted," said Ms. Brown. "You're a bigot and a troublemaker, and I don't have to keep you in my class. That goes for the rest of you. We will follow the evidence, we will challenge ideas, but we will not challenge the personal life of the teacher. Anyone else want to drop?"

In that moment, John Paul Wiggin fell in love.

Theresa let the exhilaration of Human Community carry her for several hours. The class hadn't started well—the Wiggin boy looked to be a troublemaker. But it turned out he was as smart as he was arrogant, and it sparked the brightest kids in the class, and all in all it was exactly the kind of thing Theresa had always loved about teaching: a group of people thinking the same thoughts, conceiving the same universe, becoming, for just a few moments, one.

The Wiggin "boy." She had to laugh at her own attitude. She was probably younger than he was. But she felt so old. She'd been in grad school for several years now, and it felt as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. It wasn't enough to have her own career to worry about, there was the constant pressure of her father's crusade. Everything she did was interpreted by everyone as if her father were speaking through her, as if he somehow controlled her mind and heart.

Why shouldn't they think so? He did.

But she refused to think about him. She was a scientist, even if she was a bit on the theoretical side.

She was not a child anymore. More to the point, she was not a soldier in his army, a fact that he had never recognized and never would—especially now that his "army" was so small and weak.

Then she got beeped for a meeting with the dean.

Grad students didn't get called in for meetings with the dean. And the fact that the secretary claimed to have no idea what the meeting was about or who else would be there filled her with foreboding.

The late summer weather was quite warm, even this far north, but since Theresa lived an indoor life she rarely noticed it. Certainly she hadn't dressed for the afternoon temperature. She was dripping with sweat by the time she got to the graduate school offices, and instead of having a few minutes in the air-conditioning to cool down, the secretary rushed her right into the dean's office.

Worse and worse.

There was the dean and her entire dissertation committee. And Dr. Howell, who had apparently returned from retirement just for this occasion. Whatever this occasion was.

They barely took time for the basic courtesies before they broke the news to her. "The foundation has decided to withdraw funding unless we remove you from the project."

"On what grounds?" she asked.

"Your age, mostly," said the dean. "You are extraordinarily young to be running a research project of this scope."

"But it's my project. It only exists because I thought of it."

"I know it seems unfair," said the dean. "But we won't let this interfere with your progress toward your doctorate."

"Won't let it interfere?" She laughed in consternation. "It took a year to get this grant, even though it's one with obvious value for the current world situation. Even if I had a new research project on the back burner, you can't pretend that this won't postpone my degree by years."

"We recognize the problem this is causing you, but we're prepared to grant you your degree with a project of... less... scope."

"Help me understand this," she said. "You trust me so much that you'd grant me a degree without caring about my dissertation. Yet you don't trust me enough to let me even take part in a vital project that I designed. Who's going to run it?"

She looked at her committee chairman. He blushed.

"This isn't even your area," she said to him. "It's nobody's area but mine."

"As you said," her chairman answered, "you designed the project. We'll follow your plan exactly.

Whatever data emerges, it will have the same value regardless of who heads it up."

She stood up. "Of course I'm leaving," she said. "You can't do this to me."

"Theresa," said Dr. Howell.

"Oh," said Theresa, "is it your job to get me to go along with this?"

"Theresa," repeated the old woman. "You know perfectly well what this is about."

"No, I don't," said Theresa.

"Nobody here at this table will admit it, but... it's only 'mostly' about how young you are."

"So what's the 'partly' that's left over?" asked Theresa.

"I think," said Dr. Howell, "that if your father came out of retirement, suddenly there'd be no objection to one so young running an important research project."

Theresa looked around at the others. "You can't be serious."

"Nobody has come out and said it," said the dean, "but they have pointed out that the impetus for this came from the foundation's main customer."

"The Hegemony," said her chairman.

"So I'm a hostage to my father's politics."

"Or his religion," said the dean. "Or whatever it is that's driving him."

"And you'll let your academic program be manipulated for... for..."

"The university depends on grants," said the dean. "Imagine what will happen to us if, one by one, our grant applications start being refused. The Hegemony has enormous influence. Everywhere."

"In other words," said Dr. Howell, "there really isn't anywhere else you can go. We're one of the most independent universities, and we aren't free. That's why they're determined to grant you a doctorate despite the fact that you can't do your research. Because you deserve one, and they know this is grossly unfair."

"So what's to stop them from keeping me from teaching, too? Who would even have me? A Ph.D.

who can't show her research—what a joke I'd be."

"We'd hire you," said the dean.

"Why?" demanded Theresa. "A charity case? What could I possibly accomplish at a university where I can't do research?"

Dr. Howell sighed. "Because of course you'd continue to run the project. Who else could manage it?"

"Without my name on it," said Theresa.

"It's important research," said Dr. Howell. "The survival of the human race is at stake. There's a war on, you know."

"Then tell that to the foundation and get them to tell the Hegemony to—"

"Theresa," said Dr. Howell. "Your name won't be on the project. It won't be listed as your dissertation. But everybody in the field will know exactly who did it. You'll have a tenure track position here, a doctorate, and a dissertation whose authorship is an open secret. All we're really asking you to do is swallow hard and get along with the ridiculous requirements that have been forced on us—and no, we will not listen to your decision now. In fact, we will ignore anything you say or do for the next three days. Talk to your father. Talk to any of us, all you want. But no answer until you've had a chance to get over the shock."

"Don't treat me like a child."

"No, my dear," said Dr. Howell. "Our plan is to treat you like a human being that we value too much to... what is your favorite term? ...'throw away.' "

The dean stood up. "And with that, we will adjourn this terrible meeting, in the hope that you will stay with us under these cruel circumstances." And he walked out of the room.

The members of her committee shook her hand—she accepted their handshakes numbly—and Dr.

Howell hugged her and whispered, "Your father's war will have many casualties before it's through.

You may bleed for him, but for God's sake, please don't die for him. Professionally speaking."

The meeting—and, quite possibly, her career—was over.

John Paul spotted her crossing the quad and made it a point to be leaning against the stair rail at the entrance to the Human Sciences building.

"Isn't it a little hot for a sweater?" he asked.

She paused, looking at him just long enough that he figured she must be trying to remember who he was.

"Wiggin," she said.

"John Paul," he added, holding out his hand.

She looked at it, then at his face. "Isn't it a little hot for a sweater," she said vaguely.

"Funny, I was just thinking that," said John Paul. Clearly this girl was distracted by something.

"Is this some technique that works for you? Telling a girl she is dressed inappropriately? Or is it merely the mention of clothing that ought to come off?"

"Wow," said John Paul. "You saw right to my soul. And yes, it works on most women. I have to beat them back with a stick."

Again a momentary pause. Only this time he didn't wait for her to come up with some put-down. If he was going to recover any chance, it would take some fast misdirection.

"I'm sorry that I spoke the thought that came into my head," said John Paul. "I said 'Isn't it a little hot for a sweater?' because it's a little hot for a sweater. And because I wanted to see if you had a minute I could talk to you."

"I don't," said Ms. Brown. She walked past him toward the door of the building.

He followed. "Actually, we're in the middle of your office hours right now, aren't we?"

"So go to my office," she said.

"Mind if I walk with you?"

She stopped. "It's not my office hours," she said.

"I knew I should have checked," he said.

She pushed open the door and entered the building.

He followed. "Look at it this way—there won't be a line outside your door."

"I teach a low-prestige, bad-time-of-day section of Human Community," said Ms. Brown. "There's never a line outside my door."

"Long enough I ended up clear out there," said John Paul.

They were at the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor. She faced him again. "Mr. Wiggin, you are better than average when it comes to cleverness, and perhaps another day I might have enjoyed our badinage."

He grinned. A woman who would say "badinage" to a man was rare—a tiny subset of the women who actually knew the word.

"Yes, yes," she said, as if trying to answer his smile. "Today isn't a good day. I won't see you in my office. I have things on my mind."

"I have nothing on mine," said John Paul, "and I'm a good listener, amazingly discreet."

She walked on up the stairs ahead of him. "I find that hard to believe."

"Oh, you can believe it," he said. "Practically everything in my school records, for instance, is a lie, and yet I never tell anybody."

Again it took her a moment to get the joke, but this time she answered with one yip of laughter.

Progress.

"Ms. Brown," he said, "I really did want to talk to you about ideas from class. Whatever you might have thought, I wasn't coming on to you with some line, and I'm not trying to be clever with you. I was just surprised that you seem to be teaching a version of Human Community that isn't like the standard stuff—I mean, there's nothing about it in the textbook, which is all about primates and bonding and hierarchies—"

"We'll be covering all that."

"It's been a long time since I've had a professor who knew things I hadn't already learned through my own reading."

"I don't know things," she said. "I'm trying to find out things. There's a difference."

"Ms. Brown," said John Paul, "I'm not going to go away."

She stopped at the door of her office. "And why is that? Apart from the fact that I could take that as a threat to stalk me.

"Ms. Brown," said John Paul. "I think you might be smarter than me."

She laughed in his face. "Of course I'm smarter than you."

He pointed at her triumphantly. "See? And you're arrogant about it, too. We have so much in common. Are you really going to shut this door in my face?"

She shut the door in his face.

Theresa tried to work on her next lecture. She tried to read several scientific journals. She couldn't concentrate. All she could think about was them taking her project away from her—not the work, just the credit. She tried to convince herself that what mattered was the science, not the prestige. She was not one of those pathetic on-the-make grad students who were all about career, with research serving as no more than a stepping stone. It was the research itself that she cared about. So why not recognize the political realities, accept their quislingesque "offer," and be content?

It's not about the credit. It's about the Hegemony perverting the whole system of science as a means of extortion. Not that science is particularly pure, except compared to politics.

She found herself displaying the data of her students on her desk, calling up their pictures and records and glancing at them. In the back of her mind she knew she was looking for John Paul Wiggin. What he had said about his school records being a lie intrigued her. And looking him up was such a trivial task that she could do it even while fretting over what they were doing to her.

John Paul Wiggin. Second child of Brian and Anne Wiggin; older brother named Andrew. Born in Racine, Wisconsin, so apparently he was an expert on what weather was appropriate for sweaters.

Straight As in the Racine public school system. Graduated a year early, valedictorian, lots of clubs, three years of soccer. Exactly what the admissions people were looking for. And his record here was just as good—nothing less than an A, and not an easy course on the list. A year younger than her.

And yet... no declared major, which suggested that even though he had enough credit hours that he could graduate at the end of this year, he still hadn't settled on a field of study.

A bright dilettante. A time-waster.

Except that he said it was all a lie.

Which parts? Surely not the grades—he was clearly bright enough to earn them. And what else could possibly be a lie? What would be the point?

He was just a boy trying to be intriguing. He spotted that she was young for a teacher, and in his school-centered life, the teacher was at the pinnacle of prestige. Maybe he tried to ingratiate himself with all his teachers. If he became a problem, she'd have to ask around and see if it was a pattern.

The desk beeped to tell her she had a call.

She pressed NO PICTURE and then ANSWER. She knew who it was, of course, even though no identity or telephone number appeared.

"Hello, Father," she said.

"Turn on the picture, darlin', I want to see your face."

"You'll have to search through your memory," she said. "Father, I don't want to talk right now."

"Those bastards can't do this to you."

"Yes they can."

"I'm sorry, darlin', I never meant my own decisions to impinge on you."

"If the Buggers blow up planet Earth," she said, "because you aren't there to stop them, that will impinge on me."

"And if we defeat the Buggers but we've lost everything that makes it worth being human—"

"Father, don't give me the stump speech, I've got it down pat."

"Darlin', I'm just saying that I wouldn't have done this if I'd known they'd try to take away your career."

"Oh, right, you'll put the whole human race at risk, but not your daughter's career."

"I'm not putting anything at risk. They already have everything I know. I'm a theorist, not a commander—it's a commander they need now, a whole different skill set. So this is really just...

what, their fit of pique because my leaving the I.F. was bad public relations for them and—"

"Father, didn't you notice that I didn't call you?"

"You only just found out."

"Yes, and who told you? Someone from the school?"

"No, it was Grasdolf, he has a friend at the foundation and—"

"Exactly."

Father sighed. "You're such a cynic."

"What good does it do to take a hostage if you don't send a ransom note?"

"Grasdolf is a friend, they're just using him, and I meant what I said about—"

"Father, you might think, for a moment, that you'd give up your quixotic crusade in order to make my life easier, but the fact is you won't, and you know it and I know it. I don't even want you to give it up. I don't even care. All right? So your conscience is clear, their attempt at extortion was bound to fail, the school is taking care of me after their fashion, and hey, I've got a smart, cute, and annoyingly conceited boy in one of my classes trying to hit on me, so life is just about perfect."

"Aren't you just the noblest martyr."

"See how quickly it turns into a fight?"

"Because you won't talk to me, you just say whatever you think will make me go away."

"Apparently I still haven't found it. But am I getting warm?"

"Why do you do this? Why do you close the door on everybody who cares about you?"

"As far as I know, I've only closed the door on people who want something from me."

"And what do you think I want?"

"To be known as the most brilliant military theorist of all time and still have your family as devoted to you as we might have been if we had actually known you. And see? I don't want this conversation, we've been through it all before, and when I hang up on you, which I'm about to do, please don't keep calling me back and leaving pathetic messages on my desk. And yes, I love you and I'm really fine about this so it's over, period, good-bye."

She hung up.

Only then was she able to cry.

Tears of frustration, that's all they were. Nothing. She needed the release. It wouldn't even matter if other people knew she was crying—as long as her research was dispassionate, she didn't have to live that way.

When she stopped crying she laid her head down on her arms on the desk and maybe she even dozed for a while. Must have done. It was late afternoon. She was hungry and she needed to pee. She hadn't eaten since breakfast and she always got lightheaded about four if she skipped lunch.

The student records were still on her desk. She wiped them and got up and straightened her sweaty clothing and thought, It really is too warm for a sweater, especially a sloppy thick bulky one like this. But she didn't have a shirt on underneath so there was no solution for it, she'd just have to go home as a ball of sweat.

If she ever went home during daylight hours she might have learned to dress in a way that would be adaptable to afternoon temperatures. But right now she had no interest at all in working late.

Somebody else's name would be on anything she did, right? Screw them all and the grants they rode in on.

She opened the door...

And there was the Wiggin boy, sitting with his back to the door, laying out plastic silverware on paper napkins. The smell of hot food nearly made her step back into the office.

He looked up at her but did not smile. "Spring rolls from Hunan," he said, "chicken satay from My Thai, salads from Garden Green, and if you want to wait a few more minutes, we've got stuffed mushrooms from Trompe L'Oeuf."

"All I want," she said, "is to pee. I don't want to do it on insane students camped at my door, so if you'd move to one side..."

He moved.

When she had washed up she thought of not going back to her office. The office door had locked behind her. She had her purse. She owed nothing to this boy.

But curiosity got the better of her. She wasn't going to eat any of the food, but she had to find out the answer to one question.

"How did you know when I was coming out?" she demanded, as she stood over the picnic he had prepared.

"I didn't," he said. "The pizza and the burritos hit the garbage half an hour ago and fifteen minutes ago, respectively."

"You mean you've been ordering food at intervals so that—"

"So that whenever you came out, there'd be something hot and/or fresh."

"And/or?"

He shrugged. "If you don't like it, that's fine. Of course, I'm on a budget because what I live on is whatever they pay me for custodial work in the physical sciences building, so this is half my week's wages down the toilet if you don't like it."

"You really are a liar," she said. "I know what they pay part-time custodians and it would take you two weeks to pay for all this."

"So I guess pity won't get you to sit down and eat with me."

"Yes it will," she said. "But not pity for you."

"For whom, then?" he asked.

"For myself, of course," she said, sitting down. "I wouldn't touch the mushrooms—I'm allergic to shiitake and Oeuf seems to think they're the only true mushroom. And the satay is bound to be cold because they never serve it hot even in the restaurant."

He wafted a paper napkin over her crossed legs and handed her a knife and fork. "So do you want to know which part of my records are a lie?" he asked.

"I don't care," she said, "and I didn't look up your records."

He pointed to his own desk. "I long since installed my own monitoring software in the database. I know whenever my stuff gets accessed, and by whom."

"That's absurd," she said. "They sweep for viruses on the school system twice a day."

"They sweep for known viruses and detectable anomalies," he said.

"But you tell your secret to me?"

"Only because you lied to me," said the Wiggin boy. "Habitual liars don't rat each other out."

"All right," she said. Meaning, all right, what's the lie? But then she tasted her spring roll and said,

"All right," again, this time meaning, Good food, just right.

"Glad you liked them. I have them cut down on the ginger, which allows the taste of the vegetables to come through. Though of course I dip them in this incredibly robust soy-and-chili-and-mustard sauce, so I have no idea what they actually taste like."

"Let me try the sauce," she said. He was right, it was so good she contemplated pouring some on her salad as dressing. Or just drinking it from the little plastic cup.

"And in case you wanted to know what part of my records is a lie, I can give you the whole list: Everything. The only true statement in my records is 'the.' "

"That's absurd. Who would do that? What's the point? Are you some protected witness to a hideous crime?"

"I wasn't born in Wisconsin, I was born in Poland. I lived there till I was six. I was only in Racine for two weeks prior to coming here, so if I met anybody from there, I could talk about landmarks and convince them I'd really lived there."

"Poland," she said. And, because of her father's crusade against the population laws, she couldn't help but register the fact that it was a noncompliant country.

"Yep, we're illegal emigrants from Poland. Slipped past the web of Hegemony guards. Or maybe we should say, sub-legal."

To people like that, Hinckley Brown was a hero. "Oh," she said, disappointed. "I see. This picnic isn't about me, it's about my father."

"Why, who's your father?" asked John Paul.

"Oh, come on, Wiggin, you heard the girl in class this morning. My father is Hinckley Brown."

John Paul shrugged as if he'd never heard of him.

"Come on," she said. "It was all over the vids last year. My father resigns from the I.F. because of the populations laws, and your family is from Poland. Coincidence? I don't think so.

He laughed. "You really are suspicious."

"I can't believe you didn't get Hunan wontons."

"Didn't know if you'd like them. They're an acquired taste. I wanted to play it safe."

"By spreading a picnic on the floor in front of my office door, and throwing away whatever food got cold before I came out? How safe can you get?"

"Let's see," said Wiggin. "Other lies. Oh, my name isn't Wiggin, it's Wieczorek. And I have way more than one sib."

"Valedictorian?" she said.

"I would have been, except I persuaded the administration to skip over me."

"Why is that?"

"Don't want any pictures. Don't want any resentment from other students."

"Ah, a recluse. Well, that explains everything."

"It doesn't explain why you were crying in your office," said the Wiggin boy.

She reached into her mouth and took out the last bite of spring roll, which she had only just put in.

"Sorry I can't return any of the other used food," she said. "But you can't buy my personal life for the price of a few takeout items." She set the morsel of saliva-covered spring roll on her napkin.

"You think I didn't notice what they did to your project?" asked the Wiggin boy. "Firing you from it when it's your own idea. I'd've cried, too."

"I'm not fired," she said.

"Scuzi, bella dona, but the records don't lie."

"That's the most ridiculous..." Then she realized that he was grinning.

"Ha ha," she said.

"I don't want to buy your personal life," said the Wiggin boy. "I want to learn everything you know about Human Community."

"Then come to class. And next time bring the treats there, to share."

"The treats," said the Wiggin boy, "aren't for sharing. They're for you."

"Why? What do you want from me?"

"I want to be the one who, when I telephone you, I never make you cry."

"At the moment," she said, "you're only making me want to scream."

"That will pass," said the Wiggin boy. "Oh, and another lie is my age. I'm really two years older than the records say. They started me in American schools late, because I had to learn English and... there were certain complications about a contract that they asserted I had no intention of fulfilling. But after they gave up, they changed my age so nobody would see how chronologically misplaced I was.

"They?"

"The Hegemony," said the Wiggin boy.

Only he wasn't a mere boy, she supposed. A man. John Paul Wiggin. It was wrenching to start thinking of him with a name. Unprofessional. Perilous. "You actually got the Hegemony to give up?"

"I don't know that they gave up completely. I think they merely changed goals."

"All right, now I'm actually curious."

"Instead of being irritated and hungry?"

"In addition to those."

"Curious about what?"

"What was your quarrel with the Hegemony?"

"The I.F., actually. They thought I ought to go to Battle School."

"They can't force you to do that."

"I know. But as a condition of going to Battle School I got them to move my whole family out of Poland first and set things up so that the sanctions against oversized families didn't apply to us."

"Those sanctions are enforced in America, too."

"Yes, if you make a big deal about it," said John Paul. "Like your father. Like your whole church."

"Not my church."

"Right, of course, you're the only person in history who is completely immune to her religious upbringing."

She wanted to argue with him, but she knew the science his assertion was based on that showed the impossibility of escaping from the core worldview instilled in children by their parents. Even though she had long since repudiated it, it was still inside her, so that there was a constant argument, her parents' voices sniping at her, her own inner voice arguing with them. "Even people who just quietly have lots of children get zapped by the law," she said.

"My older sibs were set up with relatives. Enough of us were boarded out that there were never more than two children home. We were called nieces and nephews when we 'visited.' "

"And they still maintained all this for you, even after you refused to go to Battle School?"

"Sort of," said John Paul. "They actually made me go to ground school for a while, but I went on strike. And then they talked about sending us all back to Poland or getting sanctions against us here in America."

"So why didn't they?"

"I had the deal in writing."

"Since when has that ever stopped a determined government?"

"Oh, it wasn't because the contract was particularly enforceable. It was the fact that it existed at all. I merely threatened to make it public. And they couldn't deny that they had fiddled with the population laws because here we were, physical evidence that they had made an exception."

"Government can make all kinds of inconvenient evidence disappear."

"I know," said John Paul. "Which is why I think they still have an agenda. They couldn't get me into Battle School, but they let me stay here in America and my whole family, too. Like the devil in all the old sell-your-soul stories, they're going to collect sometime."

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"I'll deal with it when their plan emerges. So what about you? Their plan for you is already quite clear."

"Not really," she said. "On the surface, it looks like typical Hegemony behavior—punish the daughter to get the highly visible father to cease his rebellion against the population laws.

Unfortunately, my father grew up on the movie 'A Man for All Seasons' and he thinks he's Thomas More. I think it only disappointed him that it was my head they cut off instead of his, professionally speaking."

"Only you think there's more to it than that?"

"The dean and my committee are still going to give me my degree and have me head the project—

I'm just not going to get any credit for it. Well, that's annoying, yes, but in the long run it's trivial.

Don't you think?"

"Maybe they think you're a careerist like they all are."

"But they know my father's not. They can't actually think this would make him give in. Or that it would even get me to try to pressure him."

"Don't underestimate the stupidity of the government."

"This is wartime," she said. "An emergency they really believe in. The tolerance for idiots in powerful positions is very low right now. No, I don't think they're stupid. I think I don't understand their plan yet."

He nodded. "So we're both waiting to see what they have in mind."

"I suppose."

"And you're going to stay here and head your project."

"For now."

"Once you start, you won't let go until you have your results."

"Some of the results won't be in for twenty years."

"Longitudinal study?"

"Observational, really. And in a sense it's absurd—trying to mathematicize history. But I've set up the criteria for measuring the key components of long-lived civil societies, and the triggers that collapse a civil society back into tribalism. Is it possible for a civitas to last forever? Or is breakdown an inevitable product of a successful civil society? Or is there a hunger for the tribe that always works its way to the surface? Right now it doesn't look good for the human race. My preliminary assessment shows that when a civil society is mature and successful, the citizens become complacent and to satisfy various needs they reinvent tribes that eventually collapse the society from the inside."

"So both failure and success lead to failure."

"The only question is whether it's inevitable."

"Sounds like useful information."

"I can tell them right now that population controls are about as stupid a move as they could make."

"Depending on the goal," said John Paul.

She thought about that for a moment. "You mean they might not be trying to make the Hegemony last?"

"What is the Hegemony? Just a collection of nations that banded together to fight off one enemy.

What if we win? Why would the Hegemony be permitted to continue? Why would nations like this one submit to authority?"

"They might, if the Hegemony were well-governed."

"That's the fear. If only a few nations want out, then the others might hold them all in, like the North did to the South in the American Civil War. So if you intend to break up the Hegemony, you make sure as many nations and tribes as possible detest it and regard it as an oppressor."

Well, aren't I the stupid one, thought Theresa. In all these years, neither Father nor I has ever questioned the motive of the population laws. "Do you really think there's anybody in the Hegemony who's subtle enough to think of something like that?"

"It doesn't take a lot. A few key players. Why do they make such a divisive program the absolute linchpin of the war program? The population laws don't help the economy. We have plenty of raw materials, and we'd actually accomplish more, faster, if we had a steadily growing world population.

On every count it's counterproductive. And yet it's the one dogma that nobody dares to question.

Like the way the class reacted when you just touched on the subject this morning."

"So if the last thing they want is for the Hegemony to last, why would they allow my project to continue?"

"Maybe the people who push for the population laws aren't the same people as the ones who are letting your project go on under the table."

"And if my father were still in the game, he might even know who."

"Or not. He was with the I.F. These people might be non-military. Might be within various national governments and not in the Hegemony at all. What if your project is being quietly supported by the American government while they make a show of enforcing the population laws for the Hegemony?"

"Either way, I'm just a tool."

"Come on, Theresa," he said. "We're all tools in somebody's kit. But that doesn't mean we can't make tools out of other people. Or figure out interesting things to use ourselves for."

When he called her by name, it annoyed her. Well, maybe not annoyed. She felt something, anyway, and it made her uncomfortable. "This was a very good picnic, Mr. Wiggin, but I'm afraid you think it's changed our relationship."

"Of course it has," said John Paul, "since we didn't have one and now we do."

"We had one—teacher and student."

"We still have that one—in class."

"That's the only one we have."

"Not really," said John Paul. "Because I'm also a teacher and you're a student, when it comes to the things I know and you don't."

"I'll let you know when that happens. I'll enroll in your class."

"We make each other think better," he said. "Together, we're smarter. And when you consider how incredibly bright we both are apart, it's downright scary to combine us."

"Intellectual nuclear fusion," she said, mocking the idea.

Only it wasn't mockery, was it? It was quite possibly true.

"Of course, our relationship is grossly unbalanced," said John Paul.

"In what way?" she asked, suspecting that he would find some clever way of saying that he was smarter or more creative.

"Because I'm in love with you," said John Paul, "and you still think I'm an annoying student."

She knew what she ought to feel. She ought to find his attentions touching and sweet. She also knew what she ought to do. She should immediately tell him that while she was flattered by his feelings, they would never lead to anything because she didn't have those feelings toward him and never would.

Only she didn't know that. Not for sure. There was something breathtaking about his declaring himself like this.

"We only met today," she said.

"And what I feel is only the first stirring of love," he said. "If you treat me like a hairball, then of course I'll get over it. But I don't want to get over it. I want to keep getting to know you better and better, so I can love you more and more. I think you're a match for me, and more than a match.

Where else am I ever going to find a woman who just might be smarter than I am?"

"Since when is that what a man is looking for?"

"Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women. Surely there's something about that in Human Community."

"So you saw me this morning and—"

"I heard you this morning, I talked with you, you made me think, I made you think, and it was electric. It was just as electric a moment ago as we sat here trying to outguess the Hegemony. I think they ought to be scared to death, having the two of us sitting here together plotting against them."

"Is that what we were doing?"

"We both hate them," said John Paul.

"I don't know that I do," said Theresa. "My father does. But I'm not my father."

"You hate the Hegemony because it isn't what it pretends to be," said John Paul. "If it were really a government of the whole human race, with a commitment to democracy and fairness and growth and freedom, then neither of us would oppose it. Instead it's merely a temporary alliance which leaves a lot of evil governments intact underneath its umbrella. And now that we know that those governments are manipulating things to try to make sure the Hegemony never becomes the thing we want it to be, then what are two brilliant kids like us to do, except plot to overthrow the present Hegemony and put something better in its place?"

"I'm not interested in politics."

"You live and breathe politics," said John Paul. "You just call it 'community studies' and pretend you're only interested in observing and understanding. But someday you'll have children and they'll live in this world and you already care very much what kind of world they live in."

She didn't like this at all. "What makes you think I intend ever to have children?"

He just chuckled.

"I'm certainly not going to have them," she said, "in order to flout the population laws."

"Come on," said John Paul. "I've already read the textbook. It's one of the basic principles of community studies. Even people who think they don't want to reproduce still make most of their decisions as if they were active reproducers."

"With exceptions."

"Pathological ones," said John Paul. "You're healthy."

"Are all Polish men as arrogant and intrusive and rude as you?"

"Few measure up to my standards, but most try."

"So you decided in class that I was going to be the mother of your children?"

"Theresa," said John Paul, "we're both at prime reproductive age. We both size up everyone we see as potential reproductive partners."

"Maybe I sized you up differently from the way you sized me up."

"I know you did," said John Paul. "But my endeavor for the next while is to make myself irresistible to you."

"Didn't it occur to you that saying it right out loud would be extremely off-putting?"

"Come on," said John Paul. "You knew what I was about from the start. What would I accomplish by pretending?"

"Maybe I want to be courted a little. I have all the needs of an ordinary human female."

"Excuse me," said John Paul, "but some women would think that I was making a pretty damn good start at courting you. You get really bad news, you have a bad phone conversation, you cry in your office, and when you come out, here I am, with comfort food that you know I've gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for you, without your asking—and I tell you that I love you and my intention is to be your partner in science, politics, and family-making. I think that's damned romantic."

"Well, yes. But something's still missing."

"I know. I was waiting for just the right moment to tell you how much I want to take that ridiculous sweater off of you. I thought I'd wait, though, until you wanted me to do it so badly that you almost couldn't stand it."

She found herself laughing and blushing. "It'll be a long time before that happens, buster."

"As long as it takes. I'm a Polish Catholic boy. The kind of girl we marry is the kind that doesn't give you the milk until you buy the cow."

"That's such an attractive analogy."

"What about 'Eggs until you buy the chicken'?"

"Try 'Bacon until you buy the pig'?"

"Ouch," he said. "But if you insist, I'll try to think of you in porcine terms."

"You're not going to kiss me tonight."

"Who'd want to? You have salad in your teeth."

"I'm too emotionally on edge to make any kind of rational decision right now."

"I was counting on that."

"And here's a thought," she said. "What if this is their plan?"

"Whose plan?"

"Them. The same them we've been talking about. What if the reason they didn't send you back to Poland is because they wanted you to marry a really smart girl—maybe the daughter of the world's leading military theoretician. Of course, they couldn't be sure you'd end up in my section of Human Community."

"Yes, they could," he said thoughtfully.

"Ah," she said. "So you didn't want my section."

He stared at the remnants of the food. "What an interesting idea. We might be somebody's idea of a eugenics program."

"Ever since co-ed colleges began," she said, "it's been a marriage market for people with money to meet and marry people with brains."

"And vice versa."

"But sometimes two people with brains get together."

"And when they have babies, watch out."

Then they both burst out laughing.

"That is way arrogant, even for me," said John Paul. "As if you and I were so valuable that they'd bet the farm on us falling in love with each other."

"Maybe they knew we were both so irresistibly charming that if we ever met, we couldn't help falling in love."

"It's happening to me," said John Paul.

"Well, it's not happening to me at all," she said.

"Oh, but I do love a challenge."

"What if we find out that it's true? That they really are pushing us together?"

"So what?" said John Paul. "What does it matter if, by following my heart, I also fulfill someone else's plan?"

"What if we don't like the plan?" she said. "What if this is like Rumpelstiltskin? What if we have to give up what we love best in order to have what we want most?"

"Or vice versa."

"I'm not joking."

"Neither am I," said John Paul. "Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by the parents, you're never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate."

"I'm not in love, Mr. Wiggin."

"All right then," he said. "Tell me to go away."

She said nothing.

"You aren't telling me to go away."

"I should," she said. "In fact, I already did, several times, and you didn't go."

"I wanted to make sure you knew exactly what you were throwing away. But now that you've eaten my food and heard my confessions, I'm ready to take no for an answer, if you want to say it."

"Well, I'm not going to say it. As long as you understand that not saying no doesn't mean yes."

He laughed. "I understand that. I also understand that not saying yes doesn't mean no."

"In some circumstances. About some things."

"So the kiss is still a definite no?" he said.

"I have salad in my teeth, remember?"

He got up onto his knees, leaned over to her, and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "No teeth, no salad," he said.

"I don't even like you yet," she said. "And here you are taking liberties."

He kissed her forehead. "You realize that about three dozen people have seen us sitting here eating.

And any one of them might walk by and see me kissing you."

"Scandal," she said.

"Ruin," he said.

"We'll be reported to the authorities," she said.

"It might just make their day," he said.

And since it was an emotional day, and she really did like him, and her feelings were in such a turmoil that she didn't know what was right or good or wise, she yielded to impulse and kissed him back. On the lips. A brief childlike kiss, but a kiss all the same.

Then the mushrooms came, and while John Paul paid for them and tipped the delivery girl, Theresa leaned against the door of her office and tried to think about what had happened today, what was still happening with this Wiggin boy, what might happen in the future, with her career, with her life, with him.

Nothing was clear. Nothing was certain.

And yet, despite all the bad things that had happened and all the tears she had shed, she couldn't help but think that today had been, on balance, a very good day.