On disadvantage of intellectual superiority

 

The chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing farther than others, is not to be generally understood. A man is, in consequence of this, liable to start paradoxes, which immediately transport him beyond the reach of the common-place reader. A person speaking once in a slighting manner of a very original-minded man, received for answer, “He strides on so far before you that he dwindles in the distance!”

Petrarch complains that ‘Nature had made him different from other people’ — singular’ d’ altri genti. The great happiness of life is, to be neither better nor worse than the general run of those you meet with, you soon find a mortifying level in their difference to what you particularly pique yourself upon. What is the use of being moral in a night-cellar, or wise in Bedlam? ‘To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.’ So says Shakespear; and the commentators have not added that, under these circumstances, a man is more likely to become the butt of slander than the mark of admiration for being so. ‘How now, thou particular fellow?’(1) is the common answer to all such out-of-the-way pretensions. By not doing as those at Rome do, we cut ourselves off from good-fellowship and society. We speak another language, have notions of our own, and are treated as of a different species. Nothing can be more awkward than to intrude with any such far-fetched ideas among the common herd, who will be sure to

 Stand all astonished, like a sort of steers,

‘Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race

Unwares is chanced, far straying from his peers:

So will their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.

Ignorance of another’s meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred: hence the suspicion and rancour entertained against all those who set up for greater refinement and wisdom than their neighbours. It is in vain to think of softening down this spirit of hostility by simplicity of manners, or by condescending to persons of low estate. The more you condescend, the more they will presume upon it; they will fear you less, but hate you more; and will be the more determined to take their revenge on you for a superiority as to which they are entirely in the dark, and of which you yourself seem to entertain considerable doubt. All the humility in the world will only pass for weakness and folly. They have no notion of such a thing. They always put their best foot forward; and argue that you would do the same if you had any such wonderful talents as people say. You had better, therefore, play off the great man at once — hector, swagger, talk big, and ride the high horse over them: you may by this means extort outward respect or common civility; but you will get nothing (with low people) by forbearance and good-nature but open insult or silent contempt. Coleridge always talks to people about what they don’t understand: I, for one, endeavour to talk to them about what they do understand, and find I only get the more ill-will by it. They conceive I do not think them capable of anything better; that I do not think it worth while, as the vulgar saying is, to throw a word to a dog. I once complained of this to Coleridge, thinking it hard I should be sent to Coventry for not making a prodigious display. He said: ‘As you assume a certain character, you ought to produce your credentials. It is a tax upon people’s good-nature to admit superiority of any kind, even where there is the most evident proof of it; but it is too hard a task for the imagination to admit it without any apparent ground at all.’

There is not a greater error than to suppose that you avoid the envy, malice, and uncharitableness, so common in the world, by going among people without pretensions. There are no people who have no pretensions; or the fewer their pretensions, the less they can afford to acknowledge yours without some sort of value received. The more information individuals possess, or the more they have refined upon any subject, the more readily can they conceive and admit the same kind of superiority to themselves that they feel over others. But from the low, dull, level sink of ignorance and vulgarity, no idea or love of excellence can arise. You think you are doing mighty well with them; that you are laying aside the buckram of pedantry and pretence, and getting the character of a plain, unassuming, good sort of fellow. It will not do. All the while that you are making these familiar advances, and wanting to be at your ease, they are trying to recover the wind of you. You may forget that you are an author, an artist, or what not — they do not forget that they are nothing, nor bate one jot of their desire to prove you in the same predicament. They take hold of some circumstance in your dress; your manner of entering a room is different from that of other people; you do not eat vegetables — that’s odd; you have a particular phrase, which they repeat, and this becomes a sort of standing joke; you look grave, or ill; you talk, or are more silent than usual; you are in or out of pocket: all these petty, inconsiderable circumstances, in which you resemble, or are unlike other people, form so many counts in the indictment which is going on in their imaginations against you, and are so many contradictions in your character. In any one else they would pass unnoticed, but in a person of whom they had heard so much they cannot make them out at all. Meanwhile, those things in which you may really excel go for nothing, because they cannot judge of them. They speak highly of some book which you do not like, and therefore you make no answer. You recommend them to go and see some Picture in which they do not find much to admire. How are you to convince them that you are right? Can you make them perceive that the fault is in them, and not in the picture, unless you could give them your knowledge? They hardly distinguish the difference between a Correggio and a common daub. Does this bring you any nearer to an understanding? The more you know of the difference, the more deeply you feel it, or the more earnestly you wish to convey it, the farther do you find yourself removed to an immeasurable distance from the possibility of making them enter into views and feelings of which they have not even the first rudiments. You cannot make them see with your eyes, and they must judge for themselves.

Intellectual is not like bodily strength. You have no hold of the understanding of others but by their sympathy. Your knowing, in fact, so much more about a subject does not give you a superiority, that is, a power over them, but only renders it the more impossible for you to make the least impression on them. Is it, then, an advantage to you? It may be, as it relates to your own private satisfaction, but it places a greater gulf between you and society. It throws stumbling-blocks in your way at every turn. All that you take most pride and pleasure in is lost upon the vulgar eye. What they are pleased with is a matter of indifference or of distaste to you. In seeing a number of persons turn over a portfolio of prints from different masters, what a trial it is to the patience, how it jars the nerves to hear them fall into raptures at some common-place flimsy thing, and pass over some divine expression of countenance without notice, or with a remark that it is very singular-looking? How useless it is in such cases to fret or argue, or remonstrate? Is it not quite as well to be without all this hypercritical, fastidious knowledge, and to be pleased or displeased as it happens, or struck with the first fault or beauty that is pointed out by others? I would be glad almost to change my acquaintance with pictures, with books, and, certainly, what I know of mankind, for anybody’s ignorance of them!

It is recorded in the life of some worthy (whose name I forget) that he was one of those ‘who loved hospitality and respect’: and I profess to belong to the same classification of mankind. Civility is with me a jewel. I like a little comfortable cheer, and careless, indolent chat, I hate to be always wise, or aiming at wisdom. I have enough to do with literary cabals, questions, critics, actors, essay-writing, without taking them out with me for recreation, and into all companies. I wish at these times to pass for a good-humoured fellow; and good-will is all I ask in return to make good company. I do not desire to be always posing myself or others with the questions of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, etc. I must unbend sometimes. I must occasionally lie fallow. The kind of conversation that I affect most is what sort of a day it is, and whether it is likely to rain or hold up fine for to-morrow. This I consider as enjoying the otium cum dignitate, as the end and privilege of a life of study. I would resign myself to this state of easy indifference, but I find I cannot. I must maintain a certain pretension, which is far enough from my wish. I must he put on my defence, I must take up the gauntlet continually, or I find I lose ground. ‘I am nothing, if not critical.’ While I am thinking what o’clock it is, or how I came to blunder in quoting a well-known passage, as if I had done it on purpose, others are thinking whether I am not really as dull a fellow as I am sometimes said to be. If a drizzling shower patters against the windows, it puts me in mind of a mild spring rain, from which I retired twenty years ago, into a little public-house near Wem in Shropshire, and while I saw the plants and shrubs before the door imbibe the dewy moisture, quaffed a glass of sparkling ale, and walked home in the dusk of evening, brighter to me than noonday suns at present are! Would I indulge this feeling? In vain. They ask me what news there is, and stare if I say I don’t know. If a new actress has come out, why must I have seen her? If a new novel has appeared, why must I have read it? I, at one time, used to go and take a hand at cribbage with a friend, and afterwards discuss a cold sirloin of beef, and throw out a few lackadaisical remarks, in a way to please myself, but it would not do long. I set up little pretension, and therefore the little that I did set up was taken from me. As I said nothing on that subject myself, it was continually thrown in my teeth that I was an author. From having me at this disadvantage, my friend wanted to peg on a hole or two in the game, and was displeased if I would not let him. If I won off him, it was hard he should be beat by an author. If he won, it would be strange if he did not understand the game better than I did. If I mentioned my favourite game of rackets, there was a general silence, as if this was my weak point. If I complained of being ill, it was asked why I made myself so. If I said such an actor had played a part well, the answer was, there was a different account in one of the newspapers. If any allusion was made to men of letters, there was a suppressed smile. If I told a humorous story, it was difficult to say whether the laugh was at me or at the narrative. The wife hated me for my ugly face; the servants, because I could not always get them tickets for the play, and because they could not tell exactly what an author meant. If a paragraph appeared against anything I had written, I found it was ready there before me, and I was to undergo a regular roasting. I submitted to all this till I was tired, and then I gave it up.

One of the miseries of intellectual pretensions is, that nine-tenths of those you come in contact with do not know whether you are an impostor or not. I dread that certain anonymous criticisms should get into the hands of servants where I go, or that my hatter or shoemaker should happen to read them, who cannot possibly tell whether they are well or ill founded. The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice. There are people whose good opinion or good-will you want, setting aside all literary pretensions; and it is hard to lose by an ill report (which you have no means of rectifying) what you cannot gain by a good one. After a diatribe in the Quarterly (which is taken in by a gentleman who occupies my old apartments on the first floor), my landlord brings me up his bill (of some standing), and on my offering to give him so much in money and a note of hand for the rest, shakes his head, and says he is afraid he could make no use of it. Soon after, the daughter comes in, and, on my mentioning the circumstance carelessly to her, replies gravely, ‘that indeed her father has been almost ruined by bills.’ This is the unkindest cut of all. It is in vain for me to endeavour to explain that the publication in which I am abused is a mere government engine — an organ of a political faction. They know nothing about that. They only know such and such imputations are thrown out; and the more I try to remove them, the more they think there is some truth in them. Perhaps the people of the house are strong Tories — government agents of some sort. Is it for me to enlighten their ignorance? If I say, I once wrote a thing called Prince Maurice’s Parrot, and an Essay on the Regal Character, in the former of which allusion is made to a noble marquis, and in the latter to a great personage (so at least, I am told, it has been construed), and that Mr. Croker has peremptory instructions to retaliate, they cannot conceive what connection there can be between me and such distinguished characters. I can get no farther. Such is the misery of pretensions beyond your situation, and which are not backed by any external symbols of wealth or rank, intelligible to all mankind!

The impertinence of admiration is scarcely more tolerable than the demonstrations of contempt. I have known a person whom I had never seen before besiege me all dinner-time with asking what articles I had written in the Edinburgh Review? I was at last ashamed to answer to my splendid sins in that way. Others will pick out something not yours, and say they are sure no one else could write it. By the first sentence they can always tell your style. Now I hate my style to be known, as I hate all idiosyncrasy. These obsequious flatterers could not pay me a worse compliment. Then there are those who make a point of reading everything you write (which is fulsome); while others, more provoking, regularly lend your works to a friend as soon as they receive them. They pretty well know your notions on the different subjects, from having heard you talk about them. Besides, they have a greater value for your personal character than they have for your writings. You explain things better in a common way, when you are not aiming at effect. Others tell you of the faults they have heard found with your last book, and that they defend your style in general from a charge of obscurity. A friend once told me of a quarrel he had had with a near relation, who denied that I knew how to spell the commonest words. These are comfortable confidential communications to which authors who have their friends and excusers are subject. A gentleman told me that a lady had objected to my use of the word learneder as bad grammar. He said he thought it a pity that I did not take more care, but that the lady was perhaps prejudiced, as her husband held a government office. I looked for the word, and found it in a motto from Butler. I was piqued, and desired him to tell the fair critic that the fault was not in me, but in one who had far more wit, more learning, and loyalty than I could pretend to. Then, again, some will pick out the flattest thing of yours they can find to load it with panegyrics; and others tell you (by way of letting you see how high they rank your capacity) that your best passages are failures. Lamb has a knack of tasting (or as he would say, palating) the insipid. Leigh Hunt has a trick of turning away from the relishing morsels you put on his plate. There is no getting the start of some people. Do what you will, they can do it better; meet with what success you may, their own good opinion stands them in better stead, and runs before the applause of the world. I once showed a person of this overweening turn (with no small triumph, I confess) a letter of a very flattering description I had received from the celebrated Count Stendhal, dated Rome. He returned it with a smile of indifference, and said, he had had a letter from Rome himself the day before, from his friend S —— ! I did not think this ‘germane to the matter.’ Godwin pretends I never wrote anything worth a farthing but my ‘Answers to Vetus,’ and that I fail altogether when I attempt to write an essay, or anything in a short compass.

What can one do in such cases? Shall I confess a weakness? The only set-off I know to these rebuffs and mortifications is sometimes in an accidental notice or involuntary mark of distinction from a stranger. I feel the force of Horace’s digito monstrari — I like to be pointed out in the street, or to hear people ask in Mr. Powell’s court, Which is Mr. Hazlitt? This is to me a pleasing extension of one’s personal identity. Your name so repeated leaves an echo like music on the ear: it stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet. It shows that other people are curious to see you; that they think of you, and feel an interest in you without your knowing it. This is a bolster to lean upon; a lining to your poor, shivering, threadbare opinion of yourself. You want some such cordial to exhausted spirits, and relief to the dreariness of abstract speculation. You are something; and, from occupying a place in the thoughts of others, think less contemptuously of yourself. You are the better able to run the gauntlet of prejudice and vulgar abuse. It is pleasant in this way to have your opinion quoted against yourself, and your own sayings repeated to you as good things. I was once talking to an intelligent man in the pit, and criticising Mr. Knight’s performance of Filch. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘little Simmons was the fellow to play that character.’ He added, ‘There was a most excellent remark made upon his acting it in the Examiner (I think it was) — That he looked as if he had the gallows in one eye and a pretty girl in the other.’ I said nothing, but was in remarkably good humour the rest of the evening. I have seldom been in a company where fives-playing has been talked of but some one has asked in the course of it, ‘Pray, did any one ever see an account of one Cavanagh that appeared some time back in most of the papers? Is it known who wrote it?’ These are trying moments. I had a triumph over a person, whose name I will not mention, on the following occasion. I happened to be saying something about Burke, and was expressing my opinion of his talents in no measured terms, when this gentleman interrupted me by saying he thought, for his part, that Burke had been greatly overrated, and then added, in a careless way, ‘Pray, did you read a character of him in the last number of the —— ?’ ‘I wrote it!’ — I could not resist the antithesis, but was afterwards ashamed of my momentary petulance. Yet no one that I find ever spares me.

Some persons seek out and obtrude themselves on public characters in order, as it might seem, to pick out their failings, and afterwards betray them. Appearances are for it, but truth and a better knowledge of nature are against this interpretation of the matter. Sycophants and flatterers are undesignedly treacherous and fickle. They are prone to admire inordinately at first, and not finding a constant supply of food for this kind of sickly appetite, take a distaste to the object of their idolatry. To be even with themselves for their credulity, they sharpen their wits to spy out faults, and are delighted to find that this answers better than their first employment. It is a course of study, ‘lively, audible, and full of vent.’ They have the organ of wonder and the organ of fear in a prominent degree. The first requires new objects of admiration to satisfy its uneasy cravings: the second makes them crouch to power wherever its shifting standard appears, and willing to curry favour with all parties, and ready to betray any out of sheer weakness and servility. I do not think they mean any harm: at least, I can look at this obliquity with indifference in my own particular case. I have been more disposed to resent it as I have seen it practised upon others, where I have been better able to judge of the extent of the mischief, and the heartlessness and idiot folly it discovered.

I do not think great intellectual attainments are any recommendation to the women. They puzzle them, and are a diversion to the main question. If scholars talk to ladies of what they understand, their hearers are none the wiser: if they talk of other things, they prove themselves fools. The conversation between Angelica and Foresight in Love for Love is a receipt in full for all such overstrained nonsense: while he is wandering among the signs of the zodiac, she is standing a-tiptoe on the earth. It has been remarked that poets do not choose mistresses very wisely. I believe it is not choice, but necessity. If they could throw the handkerchief like the Grand Turk, I imagine we should see scarce mortals, but rather goddesses, surrounding their steps, and each exclaiming, with Lord Byron’s own Ionian maid — 

So shalt thou find me ever at thy side,

Here and hereafter, if the last may be!

Ah! no, these are bespoke, carried of by men of mortal, not of ethereal mould, and thenceforth the poet from whose mind the ideas of love and beauty are inseparable as dreams from sleep, goes on the forlorn hope of the passion, and dresses up the first Dulcinea that will take compassion on him in all the colours of fancy. What boots it to complain if the delusion lasts for life, and the rainbow still paints its form in the cloud?

There is one mistake I would wish, if possible, to correct. Men of letters, artists, and others not succeeding with women in a certain rank of life, think the objection is to their want of fortune, and that they shall stand a better chance by descending lower, where only their good qualities or talents will be thought of. Oh! worse and worse. The objection is to themselves, not to their fortune — to their abstraction, to their absence of mind, to their unintelligible and romantic notions. Women of education may have a glimpse of their meaning, may get a clue to their character, but to all others they are thick darkness. If the mistress smiles at their ideal advances, the maid will laugh outright; she will throw water over you, get her sister to listen, send her sweetheart to ask you what you mean, will set the village or the house upon your back; it will be a farce, a comedy, a standing jest for a year, and then the murder will out. Scholars should be sworn at Highgate. They are no match for chambermaids, or wenches at lodging-houses. They had better try their hands on heiresses or ladies of quality. These last have high notions of themselves that may fit some of your epithets! They are above mortality; so are your thoughts! But with low life, trick, ignorance, and cunning, you have nothing in common. Whoever you are, that think you can make a compromise or a conquest there by good nature or good sense, be warned b a friendly voice, and retreat in time from the unequal contest.

If, as I have said above, scholars are no match for chambermaids, on the other hand gentlemen are no match for blackguards. The former are on their honour, act on the square; the latter take all advantages, and have no idea of any other principle. It is astonishing how soon a fellow without education will learn to cheat. He is impervious to any ray of liberal knowledge; his understanding is

Not pierceable by power of any star — 

but it is porous to all sorts of tricks, chicanery, stratagems, and knavery, by which anything is to be got. Mrs. Peachum, indeed, says, that to succeed at the gaming-table, the candidate should have the education of a nobleman. I do not know how far this example contradicts my theory. I think it is a rule that men in business should not be taught other things. Any one will be almost sure to make money who has no other idea in his head. A college education, or intense study of abstract truth, will not enable a man to drive a bargain, to overreach another, or even to guard himself from being overreached. As Shakespear says, that ‘to have a good face is the effect of study, but reading and writing come by nature’; so it might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man. The best politicians are not those who are deeply grounded in mathematical or in ethical science. Rules stand in the way of expediency. Many a man has been hindered from pushing his fortune in the world by an early cultivation of his moral sense, and has repented of it at leisure during the rest of his life. A shrewd man said of my father, that he would not send a son of his to school to him on any account, for that by teaching him to speak the truth he would disqualify him from getting his living in the world!

It is hardly necessary to add any illustration to prove that the most original and profound thinkers are not always the most successful or popular writers. This is not merely a temporary disadvantage; but many great philosophers have not only been scouted while they were living, but forgotten as soon as they were dead. The name of Hobbes is perhaps sufficient to explain this assertion. But I do not wish to go farther into this part of the subject, which is obvious in itself. I have said, I believe, enough to take off the air of paradox which hangs over the title of this Essay.

(1) Jack Cade’s salutation to one who tries to recommend himself by saying he can write and read — see Henry VI. Part Second.

William Hazlitt 

We all like smart kids

 Somebody has to roll the dice. Mine are the hands that hold those dice. I'm not a bureaucrat, placing my career above the larger purpose I was put here to serve. I will not put the dice in someone else's hands, or pretend that I don't have the choice I have.

 

  For now, all Graff could do was listen to both Dap and Dimak, ignore their bureaucratic attacks and maneuvers against him, and try to keep them from each other's throats in their vicarious rivalry.

 

  That small knock at the door -- Graff knew before the door opened who it would be.

 

  If he had heard the argument, Bean gave no sign. But then, that was Bean's specialty, giving no sign. Only Ender managed to be more secretive -- and he, at least, had played the mind game long enough to give the teachers a map of his psyche.

 

  "Sir," said Bean.

 

  "Come in, Bean." Come in, Julian Delphiki, longed-for child of good and loving parents. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the Fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life.

 

  "I can wait," said Bean.

 

  "Captain Dap and Captain Dimak can hear what you have to say, can't they?" asked Graff.

 

  "If you say so, sir. It's not a secret. I would like to have access to station supplies.”

 

  "Denied.”

 

  "That's not acceptable, sir.”

 

  Graff saw how both Dap and Dimak glanced at him. Amused at the audacity of the boy? "Why do you think so?”

 

  "Short notice, games every day, soldiers exhausted and yet still being pressured to perform in class -- fine, Ender's dealing with it and so are we. But the only possible reason you could be doing this is to test our resourcefulness. So I want some resources.”

 

  "I don't remember your being commander of Dragon Army," said Graff. "I'll listen to a requisition for specific equipment from your commander.”

 

  "Not possible," said Bean. "He doesn't have time to waste on foolish bureaucratic procedures.”

 

  Foolish bureaucratic procedures. Graff had used that exact phrase in the argument just a few minutes ago. But Graff's voice had not been raised. How long had Bean been listening outside the door? Graff cursed himself silently. He had moved his office up here specifically because he knew Bean was a sneak and a spy, gathering intelligence however he could. And then he didn't even post a guard to stop the boy from simply walking up and listening at the door.

 

  "And you do?" asked Graff.

 

  "I'm the one he assigned to think of stupid things you might do to rig the game against us, and think of ways to deal with them.”

 

  "What do you think you're going to find?”

 

  "I don't know," said Bean. "I just know that the only things we ever see are our uniforms and flash suits, our weapons and our desks. There are other supplies here. For instance, there's paper. We never get any except during written tests, when our desks are closed to us.”

 

  "What would you do with paper in the battleroom?”

 

  "I don't know," said Bean. "Wad it up and throw it around. Shred it and make a cloud of dust out of it.”

 

  "And who would clean this up?”

 

  "Not my problem," said Bean.

 

  "Permission denied.”

 

  "That's not acceptable, sir," said Bean.

 

  "I don't mean to hurt your feelings, Bean, but it matters less than a cockroach's fart whether you accept my decision or not.”

 

  "I don't mean to hurt your feelings, sir, but you clearly have no idea what you're doing. You're improvising. Screwing with the system. The damage you're doing is going to take years to undo, and you don't care. That means that it doesn't matter what condition this school is in a year from now. That means that everybody who matters is going to be graduated soon. Training is being accelerated because the Buggers are getting too close for delays. So you're pushing. And you're especially pushing Ender Wiggin.”

 

  Graff felt sick. He knew that Bean's powers of analysis were extraordinary. So, also, were his powers of deception. Some of Bean's guesses weren't right -- but was that because he didn't know the truth, or because he simply didn't want them to know how much he knew, or how much he guessed? I never wanted you here, Bean, because you're too dangerous.

 

  Bean was still making his case. "When the day comes that Ender Wiggin is looking for ways to stop the Buggers from getting to Earth and scouring the whole planet the way they started to back in the First Invasion, are you going to give him some bullshit answer about what resources he can or cannot use?”

 

  "As far as you're concerned, the ship's supplies don't exist.”

 

  "As far as I'm concerned," said Bean, "Ender is this close to telling you to fry up your game and eat it. He's sick of it -- if you can't see that, you're not much of a teacher. He doesn't care about the standings. He doesn't care about beating other kids. All he cares about is preparing to fight the Buggers. So how hard do you think it will be for me to persuade him that your program here is crocked, and it's time to quit playing?”

 

  "All right," said Graff. "Dimak, prepare the brig. Bean is to be confined until the shuttle is ready to take him back to Earth. This boy is out of Battle School.”

 

  Bean smiled slightly. "Go for it, Colonel Graff. I'm done here anyway. I've got everything I wanted here -- a first-rate education. I'll never have to live on the street again. I'm home free. Let me out of your game, right now, I'm ready.”

 

  "You won't be free on Earth, either. Can't risk having you tell these wild stories about Battle School," said Graff.

 

  "Right. Take the best student you ever had here and put him in jail because he asked for access to the supply closet and you didn't like it. Come on, Colonel Graff. Swallow hard and back down. You need my cooperation more than I need yours.”

 

  Dimak could barely conceal his smile.

 

  If only confronting Graff like this were sufficient proof of Bean's courage. And for all that Graff had doubts about Bean, he didn't deny that he was good at maneuver. Graff would have given almost anything not to have Dimak and Dap in the room at this moment.

 

  "It was your decision to have this conversation in front of witnesses," said Bean.

 

  What, was the kid a mind reader?

 

  No, Graff had glanced at the two teachers. Bean simply knew how to read his body language. The kid missed nothing. That's why he was so valuable to the program.

 

  Isn't this why we pin our hopes on these kids? Because they're good at maneuver?

 

  And if I know anything about command, don't I know this -- that there are times when you cut your losses and leave the field?

 

  "All right, Bean. One scan through supply inventory.”

 

  "With somebody to explain to me what it all is.”

 

  "I thought you already knew everything.”

 

  Bean was polite in victory; he did not respond to taunting. The sarcasm gave Graff a little compensation for having to back down. He knew that's all it was, but this job didn't have many perks.

 

  "Captain Dimak and Captain Dap will accompany you," said Graff. "One scan, and either one of them can veto anything you request. They will be responsible for the consequences of any injuries resulting from your use of any item they let you have.”

 

  "Thank you, sir," said Bean. "In all likelihood I won't find anything useful. But I appreciate your fair-mindedness in letting us search the station's resources to further the educational objectives of the Battle School.”

 

  The kid had the jargon down cold. All those months of access to the student data, with all the notations in the files, Bean had clearly learned more than just the factual contents of the dossiers. And now Bean was giving him the spin that he should use in writing up a report about his decision. As if Graff were not perfectly capable of creating his own spin.

 

  The kid is patronizing me. Little bastard thinks that he's in control.

 

  Well, I have some surprises for him, too.

 

  "Dismissed," said Graff. "All of you.”

 

  They got up, saluted, left.

 

  Now, thought Graff, I have to second-guess all my future decisions, wondering how much my choices are influenced by the fact that this kid really pisses me off.

Ender's Shadow 

Orson Scott Card 

The Universal Law of Gravitation

Of all Newton’s contributions to what by most people would be called scientific knowledge, but by us, since we are at present investigating whether it is true, cannot yet be given a name (like “knowledge”) which presupposes its accuracy, there is one in particular which has translated his name into legend. And if he is right about this one, his Universal Law of Gravitation, the fourth of his four basic laws of the universe,20 we can perhaps forgive him much else about which he may be wrong. Formally stated, this law, if it be a law, says that “every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the’ squares of the distances between them.”

And the first thing to be said about Newton’s fourth law is that it is not a law at all, but simply a hypothesis.21 Indeed it is not even a hypothesis. As is shown in more detail in
paragraphs 64-73 the purported law makes no attempt to say what gravity is, how it works, what causes it. It only attempts to give a basis of measurement; and a claim that a basis of measurement is a law about a thing would have been greeted by scientists of the Middle Ages with derision. They knew that one could never be truly certain of a theory until one knew its cause;22 that mathematics was not an explanation – did not try to explain, did not even try to prove a thing’s existence – but merely a method of calculation; and that quantity was only one attribute of things, and to them one of the least important.23 They also well knew that it was very possible to make assumptions which could form the basis of accurate or nearly accurate calculation, and were therefore useful, but which were nevertheless entirely false.24 The socalled Universal Law of Gravitation is a perfect example of the new scientific method that Newton gave to civilization. This method, of which the germ was contained in the scientific revolution initiated at turn of the seventeenth century by Francis Bacon25 and which has since been adopted by every branch of science and by countless pseudo-sciences such as politics, economics, the social sciences, and even art, religion, ethics and psychology, 26 is as follows. Take a phenomenon that can be observed, such as a weight falling to the ground, produce a mathematical measurement for it which fits, concoct a hypothesis which, however far fetched, could possibly account for the phenomenon, and finally call the hypothesis and the mathematical formula a law and, regardless of whether or not there is any theoretical justification for it whatever, apply it throughout the universe.

That is all that the famous Fourth Law consists of. To this day, after more than two millennia of hypothesizing about possible causes of action at a distance, no-one knows what gravity is and why it should be that two bodies should attract each other and thus whether they do. Newton’s theory enables certain calculations to be made with reasonable accuracy, however,27 and despite the facts that some of the calculations are not subject to independent check, leaving merely Newton’s theory as the sole authority on which we rely for belief in their accuracy, and that – as we shall see – some observations and calculations actually contradict the theory, the theory had become a law. “Hypothesis, my dear young friend, establishes itself by a cumulative process: or, to use popular language, if you make the same guess often enough, it ceases to be a guess and becomes a Scientific Fact.” (The Pilgrim’s Regress by C.S. Lewis)

Although proclaiming laws which have no logical justification is already unscientific enough to shock any reasonably well educated mind of the past, Newton went further still. [unclear] promulgated the Law of Gravitation in spite of his own clear conviction that it had no possible theoretical justification whatever. The indoctrination that the theory of gravitation is an indisputable law has been so effective that for most people a person who questions it is providing evidence of his insanity. It will come as a surprise to many, therefore, that it is not long since intelligent people held that it was belief in the concept of the pulling force of gravity that provided evidence of insanity, and it will certainly come as a surprise to most that Newton was emphatically one of these people. This conviction of his is well evidenced, perhaps most clearly in two of the four well known letters on gravitation he wrote to the Rev. Richard Bentley, who had studied his work carefully and was using it extensively in lectures he was giving at the time. In his second letter to Bentley, Newton wrote:

You sometimes speak on gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me. (Newton’s Correspondence, Royal Society edition, vol 3, p. 240 – Newton to Bentley 17th Jan, 1693) 66

In his third letter, Newton expounded his meaning more fully in this remarkable and much quoted passage:

It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else -which is not material, operate upon and affect the matter without mutual
contact; as it must do if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is the reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether the agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers. (Ibid. vol 3, p. 253 – Newton to Bentley 25th February, 1693)

Newton, it can be seen, went even further than Charles Darwin, who disbelieved his own theory of evolution28: he believed that his theory could not be held by anyone with a competent faculty of thinking in philosophical matters, which in plainer language means no more than a routine capacity to think straight.

The material agent which Newton proposed as an alternative to immaterial agents, such as Aristotle’s “immaterial substances” or spirits, was the ether, the “material substances of a more subtle kind than visible bodies, supposed to exist in those parts of space which are apparently empty.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Aether”) As mentioned in the last chapter there is no doubt as to the existence of the ether and until Einstein abolished it by decree no one ever did doubt it; but how the ether could possibly produce the effect which Newton ascribed to gravitation was something that remained unexplained – perhaps understandably when it is realized that, as Koestler points out, a steel cable of a thickness equalling the diameter of the earth would not be strong enough to hold the earth in its orbit and yet the gravitational force which is supposed to hold the earth in its orbit is transmitted from the sun across ninety-three million miles of space without any material medum to carry that force. (The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler: p. 151) “Newton endeavors to account for gravity,” Encylopaedia Britannica says, “by differences of pressure in an ether;” but he did not publish his theory, “because he was not able from experiments and observations to give a satisfactory account of this medium, and the manner of its operation in producing the chief phenomena of nature...” (Encylopaedia Britannica : “Aether”)29

Koestler expands this a little further.

Newton’s concept of a “gravitational force” has always lain as an undigested lump in the stomach of science... He in effect could only get round the “absurdity of his own concept by invoking either ubiquitous ether (whose attributes were equally paradoxical) and/or God in person. The whole notion of a “force” which acts instantly at a distance without an intermediary agent, which traverses the vastest distance in seconds, and pulls at immense stellar objects with ubiquitous ghost fingers – the whole idea is so mystical and “unscientific”, that modern minds like Kepler, Galileo and Descartes, who were fighting to break loose from Aristotelian animism, would instinctively reject it as a relapse into the past... What made Newton’s postulate nevertheless a modern law of Nature, was his mathematical formulation of the mysterious entity to which it referred. (The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler: p. 344)

The fact is that, far from disbelief in the notion that objects pull at each other by virtue of their masses being evidence of insanity, “magnetism, gravity and action-at-a-distance,” in the words of Koestler, “have not lost an iota of their baffling mystery since Dr. Gilbert...”30 ( Ibid. p. 507)

In the words of Professor Kline, the only sense in which gravitation has been accepted is as a “common unintelligibility.” (Mathematics in Western Culture by Morris Kline: p. 244)

It should not, incidentally, be imagined that the concept of gravitation was a new one when Newton encapsulated it into a law. His immediate predecessors in this field of science had considered the possibility but had discarded it for reasons that are equally valid and applicable today. Koestler writes:

Like Kepler who hit on the concept of gravity, then kicked it away, like Galileo who rejected even the moon’s influence on the tides, Descartes’ wide open mind boggled in horror at the idea of ghost arms clutching through the void – as unprejudiced intelligence was indeed bound to do, until “universal gravity” or “electro-magnetic field” became verbal fetishes which hypotized it into quiescence, disguising the fact that they are metaphysical concepts dressed in the mathematical language of physics. (The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler: p. 508)

There is one more important objection to the notion of a gravitational pulling force. No less important a failing than the lack of logical support for it that has just been shown up is the fact that it does not account for all observed phenomena. Chief of a number of experiments which contradict the theory are those concerning pendulums, which exhibit many properties which cannot be reconciled with the view of gravity that Newton founded. During eclipses of the sun, for instance, they behave strangely, and swing -irregularly; and if other masses are placed near them they do not swing in the directions that the laws of gravity would lead a mathematician to predict. (I add in parentheses that although these inconvenient experiments are occasionally recorded and commented on in specialized scientific journals, they are never thought worth including in text-books on physics.)

It would not be right to conclude this criticism of Newton’s gravitation theory without mentioning that it has one great triumph to its credit which does on the face of it give it experimental support. This is the story of the discovery of the planet Neptune.

In the nineteenth century it was observed that the orbit of Uranus deviates from the path that would be expected of it from the gravitational influences of the sun and the known planets. From this it was deduced that there must be some massive body beyond Uranus which causes these deviations from the calculated orbit. Two astronomer/ mathematicians J.L. Adams and U.J.J. Leverrier then used the observed irregularities and the general astronomical theory of Newton to calculate the orbit of the supposed new planet, and observers were instructed to search for the planet at the time and place which had been mathematically determined.

In 1846 the planet, now called Neptune, was found, just one degree from its predicted position. Very reasonably, this was at the time “widely proclaimed as the final proof of the universal application of Newton’s law of gravitation.”
(Mathematics in Western Culture by Morris Kline: p. 244)

What is the solution? Ruling out pure coincidence there are four possibilities.

The first and least likely is that despite what is said in this chapter and despite its offensiveness to common sense, Newton’s theory is correct after all.

The second is that an alternative theory to Newton’s, using very different forces but producing much the same mathematical effects, is correct, and that Newton’s theory therefore produced the right answer for the wrong reason. Such a theory is that of Le Sage, which I shall shortly be describing.

The third theory, which will be rejected by most readers but is in fact the most likely, is that the existence of Neptune has long been known, presumably discovered by an earlier civilization which possessed advanced technology, has been preserved in occult tradition, and was released to support Newton’s theory just as missing link fossils have been concocted to support Darwin’s evolutionary theory.

The fourth possibility is that the position of Neptune was revealed directly by Satan to his followers. This too is not improbable. Satan has limitations - he does not know the future and he cannot read our minds (except what he can guess from external observation) – but he certainly knows where the planets are. [ I'm afraid Satan would be unemployed if he couldn't read human minds. Anyway it is one of the reasons we should have some compassion for him, to look at contains of the most humans mind, isn't much different from searching in dustbin, I suppose. VB]

The circumstantial evidence, both negative and positive, in favour of one or other of the last two possibilities is in fact surprisingly good. On the negative side the mathematics involved in the calculation that Adams and Leverrier are supposed to have made are virtually impossible. Not only were they working backwards – in other words instead of calculating the effects of a planet whose mass and path were (supposedly, in the case of the mass) known, they had to deduce the mass and path from its effects on Uranus – but since they knew neither the mass nor the path of their hypothetical planet they were dealing with two unknowns. Under those circumstances, let alone the impossibility of making really accurate calculations over the distance involved, it is not credible that they could make even a reasonably accurate prediction of time and place.31

The positive evidence is that we know for certain that there are occasions when bodies in the solar-system are known about well before they are officially discovered. Of this inside knowledge I give two examples.

The first concerns the two satellites of Mars, Deimos and Phobos. In the year 1720 Jonathan Swift’s famous work of fiction Gulliver’s Travels was published. In it Swift gave a remarkable description of two moons belonging to Mars, one of which he said was three diametres of Mars away from the centre of Mars and had a period of revolution of ten hours, and the other five diametres away with a period of revolution of twenty-one and a half hours. More than one hundred and fifty years later, in the year 1877, it was discovered that Mars, which until then was thought to be on its own, did indeed have two satellites, so small that they were not observed until long after those of other planets (even of Neptune) had been discovered. Their respective distances from Mars and orbiting periods were just over two diametres and seven and a half hours and four diametres and thirty and a quarter hours. Swift’s figures are not quite correct but anyone who imagines that he plucked the number of moons, and their distances and orbiting times out of his imagination is living in a world of fantasy. It is worth adding that Kepler too predicted two moons for Mars in 1610, his ostensible reason being that since the earth had one moon and Jupiter, at that time, was known to have four it was clearly logical that Mars must have two. Although this provides an excellent example of a phenomenon I mentioned earlier in this chapter – that of a wrong theory producing the right answer – once again we can suspect that what was published was not the real basis for Kepler’s prediction.

The second example of inside knowledge, one that is even more analogous to the discovery of Neptune, concerns the discovery of the least known (so far) and most distant planet of the solar system, Pluto. After the discovery of Neptune there remained unexplained perturbations32 in Uranus’ orbit and in addition seemingly unexplainable perturbations were discovered in Neptune’s orbit. This time some calculations were made by Professor Percival Lowell. A still more distant planet was hypothesized, and in 1930, situated in approximately the right place at the predicted time, the planet Pluto was located. So far so good; but pay attention to the sequel. It then discovered that the calculations of Lowell, who had died even before the discovery of the new planet, were based on bad data; and, as all are agreed, the discovery of Pluto in approximately the right position at the right moment was pure chance. Certainly pure chance is possible, though no one who took a glance at the night sky would wish to calculate the odds against such a coincidence; but in my view it is more reasonable to suppose that the predictions of Pluto, of the two moons of Mars, and of Neptune were the result of neither pure chance nor mathematics and that their existence was already known.33

Instead of the Law of Gravity?

If the so-called Law of Gravity has now been sufficiently criticized, the fact that people in the twentieth century are so accustomed to the idea of gravitation that they will find it difficult to conceive the possibility that it may not exist requires the raising at this stage of a new question. If gravity be not explicable, if it be not proved, and if, for the sake of discussion, we assume that it is not true, what is the alternative? The planets do move in relation to the sun, either the earth or the sun does move in relation to the other, satellites do orbit round the earth, the tides are affected by the moon.

Something does happen. What is that something? If you are going to reject Newton’s explanation, Newton’s defenders may demand, you must produce a btter explanation.
It is, of course, not true that a better explanation must be produced before rejecting Newton’s. In the first place, Newton’s “explanation” itself is not an explanation. As we have alrady seen, it explains nothing but merely measures. In the second place, even if no alternative to the theory had been advanced there could be no excuse for describing it as a law. If in the days when it was held that things could be known for certain it was permissible to confess ignorance, and indeed it was permissible, it is clearly outrageous to refuse to confess ignorance in an age which no longer believes in absolute truth. Having made this proviso I shall try to answer the question nevertheless; for it is a little known fact that alternative theories that are a more rational than Newton’s have been advanced and seriously considered.
The most appealing of these theories, and the only one I shall describe, is the collision theory of gravity put forward by the Swiss physicist, George Louis Le Sage (1724-1803).34 It was first aired in 1782 in the Transactions of the Royal Berlin Academy in a paper called “Lucrece Newtonien” (“A Newtonian Lucretius”) and was published in its final form posthumously in Geneva in 1818 in Traite Physique Mecanique. Le Sage’s suggestion was that space was filled with a fluid – which of course was none other than the ether which, until Einstein, was generally held to exist (and undoubtedly does exist) throughout the universe35 – consisting of minute particles (he called them “ultra mondane corpuscles”) that traversed space in straight lines in all directions. They were so small that the collision between one particle and another was an event of rare occurence, but they did collide with any molecules of such other matter as lay in their path. Thus these corpuscles were physical agents which did not pull matter but pushed it.
The way in which Le Sage’s corpuscles affected the various bodies in the universe can most easily be understood with the help of an example. If a single ball is assumed to exist, the particles will bombard the ball equally from above, beneath and from all sides, so that, like a balloon held in equilibrium in the atmosphere, it will not move. If, then, a second ball is brought into the picture, each ball will shield the other; so that the first ball is bombarded with particles from every side except that shielded by the second ball, creating an inequality of pressure and a net force in the direction of the second ball, and the second ball is similarly pushed in the direction of the first ball. For the two balls can be substituted the earth and the moon, the earth and the sun, and any other celestial bodies which affect each other’s movement, and also any object on or near this planet which behaves as though it is attracted to it. The denser the materials are of which the matter under bombardment is composed, the less easily the particles will be able to penetrate the matter and therefore the greater the force that will be exerted on the matter, thus accounting for the variations in specific gravity between one material and another.

The theory, already attractive, has a further outstanding feature. Not only has the magnitude of the force postulated by it been computed to be exactly the same force as that postulated by Newton, but the aberrations in pendulum behaviour which, as mentioned in paragraph 74, the Newtonian model could not account for – for instance during eclipses of the sun or when the pendulum is approached by other masses – become, when the Le Sage model is applied, explicable and predictable. What Le Sage produced, therefore, was an explanation for gravity which required no metaphysical ghostly fingers or mind-straining concepts of action-at-a-distance but instead was both physical and entirely reasonable.36

Mental habit, hypnotized into existence, as Koestler says, by twentieth century verbal fetishes, may make most people wish to dismiss Le Sage’s collision theory as that of a crank. It was not thus dismissed in its day. Three of the leading and most reputed physicists of the nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin, Hermann Helmholtz and J.C.Maxwell, investigated the theory thoroughly and did considerable work on it. Each of them stated positively that it was the most satisfactory explanation for the phenomenon of gravity and that it explained all of gravity’s observed effects.37 The theory is reasonable, physical and was approved by leading physicists; and, it has been dropped. The reason officially given was that the amount of heat generated by the bombardment of the corpuscles would in a short space of time raise the temperature of the whole material universe to a white heat. “It does not appear to us that the theory can account for the temperature of bodies remaining moderate while these atoms are exposed to the bombardment,”(ibid.) wrote Professor Maxwell. It is doubtful whether much ingenuity would be needed to produce such an accounting.38 A Professor James Hanson of Cleveland State University has suggested a much more likely reason why the theory was abandoned and has never been considered by establishment scientists since. (The only place I know of where this suggestion has been published is in a taped lecture given on April, 27th, 1979 in St. Thomas Church, Houston, Texas at the 16th Annual Conference on Teaching in Christian Schools. The tapes were sold by The Rose Enterprises, P.O. Box 308, Port Hueneme, California 93041.) Using the geocentric model of the universe and applying Le Sage’s principle, the motions of the planets can be calculated showing not only their orbits but also their perturbations; and indeed every celestial phenomenon which needs Einstein to explain it becomes explainable on physical grounds and therefore without the help of Einstein.

Geocentricity, however, according to the modern scientific mind which denies absolute knowledge, is as absolutely untrue as evolution is absolutely true; and if Le Sage’s theory implies geocentricity it “cannot” be right.

In concluding the specific examination of gravitational theory on which I have engaged I emphasize strongly that I do not put forward Le Sage’s collision theory as proven fact. I put it forward only to demonstrate that in respect of Newton’s unquestioned “law” of gravitation there is at least one alternative theory which supplies a physical and reasonable explanation which Newton’s lacks and which accounts for observed phenomena better.

21 Defenders of Newton can at first sight reasonably claim that Newton himself would not dispute this statement, since when he set out the four laws covering the universe in the Principia he called them not laws but propositions and theorems, and it can be suggested that it is only subsequent interpreters and commentators who have raised them to the status of laws. Nevertheless, while it is true that he avoided the word “law” in the Principia, it is certain from elsewhere in his writings that he regarded his propositions and theorems as laws. Indeed in a later addition to the Principia itself, the General Scholium, he says, in a discussion on planets and comets: “These bodies may indeed continue in these orbits by the mere laws of gravity.” (My emphasis – N.M.G.)

22 Aristotle said: “We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing when we think we
know the cause on which the fact depends.” (Posterior Analytics by Aristotle: 71B)

23 In the time of Aristotle it was considered beneath the dignity of a gentleman, whose business was to know what
things were, to involve himself with calculating quantities. All making of calculations was therefore left to the slaves.

24 An example of this is Ptolemy’s cosmological system of cycles and epicycles described briefly in the last chapter. It enabled calculations and predictions to be made as accurately as was necessary for the purpose for which astromony was needed, of which much the most important was navigation, and without complicated mathematics. It was not supposed that this was necessarily how the universe was constructed, however. The function of the Ptolemaic system was that of a useful calculating tool. (See paragraphs 65 and its footnotes 1-4, and 66 in chapter “Galileo versus the Geocentric Theory of the Universe”.

25 See chapter...

26 The apostle of reducing the study of human nature to various branches, each constructed on mathematical principles, was Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). His system of ethics, for instance, was based on the principle that pleasure (which in some people can of course be caused by malevolence) promotes happiness, while pain provokes unhappiness; that since a particular act may please some and harm others, the greatest good of the greater number is the measure of right and wrong; and that since different acts cause different degrees of pleasure or pain, measures (i.e. mathematical values) must be assigned to each type of act. As a system it is a big departure from that of the Ten Commandments, which are based on the principle that God says so and that is all we need to know; but it is the system which is in use today, it is the whole basis of modern democracy, and it provides the justification for abortion, euthanasia and any other form of mass murder. A good description of the history and implications of the reduction of human affairs to various mathematical sciences is contained in chapter 21 of Mathematics in Western Culture by Morris Kline.

27 But the mathematics needed to make this calculation are greatly more complex than those needed for the Ptolemaic system and indeed without Newton’s and Leibnitz’ invention of Calculus it would not be possible to make the calculation.
Newton in fact did the very reverse of simplifying the universe as will be seen later in this chapter.

28 See chapter... (“Evolution or...”, paragraph...)

29 It is interesting that Newton actually hit upon Le Sage’s theory to explain gravitation (see paragraphs 88-91) and
then discarded it. Why he discarded it is by no means clear because Le Sage and the three most respected physicists of the nineteenth century – Kelvin, Helmholta and Maxwell – calculated that it was both in accordance with observed data and mathematically sound. A possible reason, that to me seems very probable, is that Newton, or the subversive forces associated with him, preferred to impose upon the world an occult and metaphysical explanation rather than an obvious and realistic one.

30 It was only thanks to Dr. Gilbert, who was court physician to Queen Elizabeth, that Newton’s concept of gravitation
was by his (Newton’s) day capable of being even remotely acceptable to the human mind. Of his contribution Koestler writes: “Dr. William Gilbert increased the confusion with the sensational theory that the earth was a giant lodestone, which induced Kepler to identify the sun’s action on the planet’s as a ‘magnetic force’. It was quite natural, and indeed logical, that the confusion between magnetism and gravity should arise, for the lodestone was the only concrete and tangible demonstration of the mysterious tendency of matter to join matter under the influence of a force which acted at a distance without contact or intermediaries. Hence the magnet, which demonstrated that the grappling by ghostly fingers was a fact, became the archetype of action-at-a-distance and paved the way for universal gravity. Without Dr. Gilbert, man would have been much less prepared to exchange the homely and traditional view that ‘weight’ meant the natural tendency of bodies to fall towards the centre for the adventurous notion that it meant the grappling of bodies at each other across empty space.- (Ibid. p. 601) Some readers may at first wonder why, given the definite existence of magnetic attraction, the idea of gravitation as a pulling force should be so unacceptable. Why, in other words, should not magnetism and gravity be confused (if confusion is the right term for something that appears so reasonable)? The answer is that magnetism is very different in its action from what is conceived of as gravity. To take just one example of difference, magnetism is as much a repelling force as an attracting force: opposite poles attract. and like like poles repel, and there is no way in which this law can be fitted into gravitational theory.

31 Further evidence of the virtual impossibility of making such a prediction will be found in the Appendix to this
chapter, in which I reproduce some extracts from Gravitation Versus Relativity by Professor Charles Lane Poor. In one of these extracts Professor Poor says: “So long as there are but two bodies in the system,... the actual position of the smaller body, (travelling) for ever and ever around and around its unvarying path, can be calculated at any time by a very simple formula. If, however, a third body be introduced into our universe,...the paths of the three bodies become so complicated as to defy mathematical description.”

32 A perturbation is the deviation of a heavenly body form its theoretically regular orbit. It is usually
assumed that the cause of the perturbation of any given of planet is either the attractions of bodies other than the primary body which attracts it (in the case of the planets and the sun) or its imperfect spherical form. This of course adds strength to my suggestion that the pinpointing of the whereabouts of Neptune was not genuinely based on mathematical calculations. Had they been genuine the perturbations of Uranus that remained unexplained after the discovery of Neptune would have thrown them out.

33 After completing this chapter I noticed a major piece of circumstantial evidence adding weight to my
insistence that the manner of the discovery of Neptune, as recorded by history up to the present, is false. In an important book called The Case Against Einstein, from which I quote in the next chapter (“Einstein and Modern Physics”), the author, Dr. Arthur Lynch, includes the following intriguing footnote on page 160. As evidence it is especially impressive in that Dr. Lynch is clearly at a complete loss as to what it could signify, and has no suspicions along the lines that I am suggesting. “The celebrated astronomer, Le Verrier, once showed to Wilfred de Fonvielle, who told me the story, the great mass of his “cahiers” (memoranda books) which contained the calculations that led to the discovery of the planet Neptune. He gazed for some time on these repositories of his genius and his patience, then suddenly remarked: ‘Si tout cela n’etait que de blaguel’. (What if all that were not mere humbug.) I have often meditated on the saying.” The most obvious, but most shocking solution apparently did not occur to Dr. Lynch, and he continues: “I think it was a philosophic reflexion, in Jacobi’s vein, of the perilous nature of a long series of deductions where any step may have lacked the necessary rigour. In any case Le Verrier – so M. de. Fonvielle assured me – burnt his book, though – as M. Escanglon has assured me – the calculations are preserved.” The burning of the books, the alleged preservation of the calculations, together with the clear inference that no one has undertaken the appalling labour of checking their validity, are strong confirmation, given that grounds for suspicion already existed, of fraud. See Appendix for a further discussion of the improbabilities involved in the claim that these heavenly bodies were located by calculation.

34 The account of Le Sage’s theory which follows is somewhat compressed because of limitations of space. The
reader who finds it difficult to grasp is referred to a fuller and very easily comprehended account in the article “Atom” in the ninth and tenth editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

35 See chapter “Galileo and the Geocentric Theory of the Universe”, paragraphs 20-27.

36 As mentioned earlier Newton did in fact consider a theory along the lines of Le Sage’s; but he discarded it because he was unable “to give a satisfactory account of the medium, and the manner of its operation in producing the chief phenomena of nature.” (See paragraphs 69 and 69F) It is, incidentally, reasonable to ask why, if the Le Sage theory be true, we do not become lighter if we walk underneath a thick lead roof. The answer is that, although the effect is extremely small, we do! To give an example, if a person bends himself over a modern gravimeter, the gravimeter records a small reduction of the earth’s gravity. The explanation for this of course is either, as Newton would assert, that the person’s body “pulls” against the earth’s pull; or, according to Le Sage, that the body “screens” a tiny bit of the universal . . .((this line on EU paper size cut off at bottom of US paper))

37 An example of such approbation of the theory is to be found in the articles on “Atom” and “Attraction”, in which the Le Sage theory is described, in the ninth and tenth editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica, the author of the articles in question being Professor Maxwell. For instance: “The force of attraction would vary directly as the product of the areas of the sections of the bodies taken normal to the distance between them. “Now the attraction of gravitation varies as the product of the masses of the bodies between which it acts, and inversely as the square of the distance between them. If, then, we can imagine a constitution of bodies such that the effective areas of the bodies are proportional to their masses, we shall make the two laws coincide. Here, then, seems to be a path leading towards an explanation of the law of gravitation, which, if it can be shown to be in other respects consistent with the facts, may turn out to be a royal road into the very arcana of science.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica: 9th and 10th editions: “Atom”) Moreover in the same article the account of the theory ends as follows: “We have devoted more space to this theory than it seems to deserve because it is ingenius and because it is the only theory of gravitation which has been so, far developed as to be capable of being attacked and defended.”

38 Maxwell himself did not regard his objection on the grounds of overheating as the final word on the subject, as
he admitted subsequently in the Philosophical Maqazine and other journals of that period. This difficulty with Le Sage’s theory that Maxwell has raised is that although energy can be turned into another form it is never lost. Therefore it would be expected that when the corpuscles struck a solid object either they would bounce off with exactly the same velocity as that with which they struck it, which would push the two objects apart again and result in no net “gravitational attraction” and thus destroy the theory, or the energy, which must go somewhere, would be converted into heat (which is what happens in normal collisions - the collision of two billiard balls warms up the balls). It is, however, purely an assumption that the energy released by the conversion must be converted into heat, and it is certainly not beyond the power of God to produce an alternative which solves the problem. In other words, if the Le Sage fluid exists, God could easily have endowed it with properties that allowed such disastrous effects on the universe not to take place, anyway within a time span of under ten thousand years. One solution, suggested in Maxwell’s own article in the Encylopaedia, is that the particles might some how acquire a spin on collision, and there are doubtless many other ways in which the energy might be stored.

From the paper
SIR ISAAC NEWTON AND MODERN ASTRONOMY
by
N. Martin Gwynne

Ender's Shadow - extracts

 "Yes, I'm paranoid and xenophobic. That's how I got this job. Cultivate those virtues and you, too, might rise to my lofty station.”

**
I'm not stupid!”

  In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.
**

Any time Poke's crew found something to eat -- especially if they located a dependable source of garbage or an easy mark for a coin or a bit of food -- they had to watch jealously and hide their winnings, for the bullies liked nothing better than to take away whatever scraps of food the little ones might have. Stealing from younger children was much safer than stealing from shops or passersby. And they enjoyed it, Poke could see that. They liked how the little kids cowered and obeyed and whimpered and gave them whatever they demanded.

  So when the scrawny little two-year-old took up a perch on a garbage can across the street, Poke, being observant, saw him at once. The kid was on the edge of starvation. No, the kid was starving. Thin arms and legs, joints that looked ridiculously oversized, a distended belly. And if hunger didn't kill him soon, the onset of autumn would, because his clothing was thin and there wasn't much of it even at that.

  Normally she wouldn't have paid him more than passing attention. But this one had eyes. He was still looking around with intelligence. None of that stupor of the walking dead, no longer searching for food or even caring to find a comfortable place to lie while breathing their last taste of the stinking air of Rotterdam. After all, death would not be such a change for them. Everyone knew that Rotterdam was, if not the capital, then the main seaport of Hell. The only difference between Rotterdam and death was that with Rotterdam, the damnation wasn't eternal.

  This little boy -- what was he doing? Not looking for food. He wasn't eyeing the pedestrians. Which was just as well -- there was no chance that anyone would leave anything for a child that small. Anything he might get would be taken away by any other child, so why should he bother? If he wanted to survive, he should be following older scavengers and licking food wrappers behind them, getting the last sheen of sugar or dusting of flour clinging to the packaging, whatever the first comer hadn't licked off.

  There was nothing for this child out here on the street, not unless he got taken in by a crew, and Poke wouldn't have him. He'd be nothing but a drain, and her kids were already having a hard enough time without adding another useless mouth.

  He's going to ask, she thought. He's going to whine and beg. But that only works on the rich people. I've got my crew to think of. He's not one of them, so I don't care about him. Even if he is small. He's nothing to me.

  A couple of twelve-year-old hookers who didn't usually work this strip rounded a corner, heading toward Poke's base. She gave a low whistle. The kids immediately drifted apart, staying on the street but trying not to look like a crew.

  It didn't help. The hookers knew already that Poke was a crew boss, and sure enough, they caught her by the arms and slammed her against a wall and demanded their "permission" fee. Poke knew better than to claim she had nothing to share -- she always tried to keep a reserve in order to placate hungry bullies. These hookers, Poke could see why they were hungry. They didn't look like what the pedophiles wanted, when they came cruising through. They were too gaunt, too old-looking. So until they grew bodies and started attracting the slightly-less-perverted trade, they had to resort to scavenging. It made Poke's blood boil, to have them steal from her and her crew, but it was smarter to pay them off. If they beat her up, she couldn't look out for her crew now, could she? So she took them to one of her stashes and came up with a little bakery bag that still had half a pastry in it.

  It was stale, since she'd been holding it for a couple of days for just such an occasion, but the two hookers grabbed it, tore open the bag, and one of them bit off more than half before offering the remainder to her friend. Or rather, her former friend, for of such predatory acts are feuds born. The two of them started fighting, screaming at each other, slapping, raking at each other with clawed hands. Poke watched closely, hoping that they'd drop the remaining fragment of pastry, but no such luck. It went into the mouth of the same girl who had already eaten the first bite -- and it was that first girl who won the fight too, sending the other one running for refuge.

  Poke turned around, and there was the little boy right behind her. She nearly tripped over him. Angry as she was at having had to give up food to those street-whores, she gave him a knee and knocked him to the ground. "Don't stand behind people if you don't want to land on your butt," she snarled.

  He simply got up and looked at her, expectant, demanding.

  "No, you little bastard, you're not getting nothing from me," said Poke. "I'm not taking one bean out of the mouths of my crew, you aren't worth a bean.”

  Her crew was starting to reassemble, now that the bullies had passed.

  "Why you give your food to them?" said the boy. "You need that food.”

  "Oh, excuse me!" said Poke. She raised her voice, so her crew could hear her. "I guess you ought to be the crew boss here, is that it? You being so big, you got no trouble keeping the food.”

  "Not me," said the boy. "I'm not worth a bean, remember?”

  "Yeah, I remember. Maybe you ought to remember and shut up.”

  Her crew laughed.

  But the little boy didn't. "You got to get your own bully," he said.

  "I don't get  bullies, I get rid of them," Poke answered. She didn't like the way he kept talking, standing up to her. In a minute she was going to have to hurt him.

  "You give food to bullies every day. Give that to one bully and get him to keep the others away from you.”

  "You think I never thought of that, stupid?" she said. "Only once he's bought, how I keep him? He won't fight for us.”

  "If he won't, then kill him," said the boy.

  That made Poke mad, the stupid impossibility of it, the power of the idea that she knew she could never lay hands on. She gave him a knee again, and this time kicked him when he went down. "Maybe I start by killing you.”

  "I'm not worth a bean, remember?" said the boy. "You kill one bully, get another to fight for you, he want your food, he scared of you too.”

  She didn't know what to say to such a preposterous idea.

  "They eating you up," said the boy. "Eating you up. So you got to kill one. Get him down, everybody as small as me. Stones crack any size head.”

  "You make me sick," she said.

  "Cause you didn't think of it," he said.

  He was flirting with death, talking to her that way. If she injured him at all, he'd be finished, he must know that.

  But then, he had death living with him inside his flimsy little shirt already. Hard to see how it would matter if death came any closer.

  Poke looked around at her crew. She couldn't read their faces.

  "I don't need no baby telling me to kill what we can't kill.”

  "Little kid come up behind him, you shove, he fall over," said the boy. "Already got you some big stones, bricks. Hit him in the head. When you see brains you done.”

  "He no good to me dead," she said. "I want my own bully, he keep us safe, I don't want no dead one.”

  The boy grinned. "So now you like my idea," he said.

  "Can't trust no bully," she answered.

  "He watch out for you at the charity kitchen," said the boy. "You get in at the kitchen." He kept looking her in the eye, but he was talking for the others to hear. "He get you all in at the kitchen.”

  "Little kid get into the kitchen, the big kids, they beat him," said Sergeant. He was eight, and mostly acted like he thought he was Poke's second-in-command, though truth was she didn't have a second.

  "You get you a bully, he make them go away.”

  "How he stop two bullies? Three bullies?" asked Sergeant.

  "Like I said," the boy answered. "You push him down, he not so big. You get your rocks. You be ready. Be not you a soldier? Don't they call you Sergeant?”

  "Stop talking to him, Sarge," said Poke. "I don't know why any of us is talking to some two-year-old.”

  "I'm four," said the boy.

  "What your name?" asked Poke.

  "Nobody ever said no name for me," he said.

  "You mean you so stupid you can't remember your own name?”

  "Nobody ever said no name," he said again. Still he looked her in the eye, lying there on the ground, the crew around him.

  "Ain't worth a bean," she said.

  "Am so," he said.

  "Yeah," said Sergeant. "One damn bean.”

  "So now you got a name," said Poke. "You go back and sit on that garbage can, I think about what you said.”

  "I need something to eat," said Bean.

  "If I get me a bully, if what you said works, then maybe I give you something.”

  "I need something now," said Bean.

  She knew it was true.

  She reached into her pocket and took out six peanuts she had been saving. He sat up and took just one from her hand, put it in his mouth and slowly chewed.

  "Take them all," she said impatiently.

  He held out his little hand. It was weak. He couldn't make a fist. "Can't hold them all," he said. "Don't hold so good.”

  Damn. She was wasting perfectly good peanuts on a kid who was going to die anyway.

  But she was going to try his idea. It was audacious, but it was the first plan she'd ever heard that offered any hope of making things better, of changing something about their miserable life without her having to put on girl clothes and going into business. And since it was his idea, the crew had to see that she treated him fair. That's how you stay crew boss, they always see you be fair.

  So she kept holding her hand out while he ate all six peanuts, one at a time.

  After he swallowed the last one, he looked her in the eye for another long moment, and then said, "You better be ready to kill him.”

  "I want him alive.”

  "Be ready to kill him if he ain't the right one." With that, Bean toddled back across the street to his garbage can and laboriously climbed on top again to watch.

  "You ain't no four years old!" Sergeant shouted over to him.

  "I'm four but I'm just little," he shouted back.

  Poke hushed Sergeant up and they went looking for stones and bricks and cinderblocks. If they were going to have a little war, they'd best be armed.


  Bean didn't like his new name, but it was a name, and having a name meant that somebody else knew who he was and needed something to call him, and that was a good thing. So were the six peanuts. His mouth hardly knew what to do with them. Chewing hurt.

  So did watching as Poke screwed up the plan he gave her. Bean didn't choose her because she was the smartest crew boss in Rotterdam. Quite the opposite. Her crew barely survived because her judgment wasn't that good. And she was too compassionate. Didn't have the brains to make sure she got enough food herself to look well fed, so while her own crew knew she was nice and liked her, to strangers she didn't look prosperous. Didn't look good at her job.

  But if she really was good at her job, she would never have listened to him. He never would have got close. Or if she did listen, and did like his idea, she would have got rid of him. That's the way it worked on the street. Nice kids died. Poke was almost too nice to stay alive. That's what Bean was counting on. But that's what he now feared.
**
"You get more food this way, too, Achilles. You get my crew. We get enough to eat, we have more strength, we bring more to you. You need a crew. The other bullies shove you out of the way -- we've seen them! -- but with us, you don't got to take no shit. See how we do it? An army, that's what we are.”

  OK, now he was getting it. It was a good idea, and he wasn't stupid, so it made sense to him.

  "If this is so smart, Poke, how come you didn't do this before now?”

  She had nothing to say to that. Instead, she glanced at Bean.

  Just a momentary glance, but Achilles saw it. And Bean knew what he was thinking. It was so obvious.

  "Kill him," said Bean.

  "Don't be stupid," said Poke. "He's in.”

  "That's right," said Achilles. "I'm in. It's a good idea.”

  "Kill him," said Bean. "If you don't kill him now, he's going to kill you.”

  "You let this little walking turd get away with talking shit like this?" said Achilles.

  "It's your life or his," said Bean. "Kill him and take the next guy.”

  "The next guy won't have my bad leg," said Achilles. "The next guy won't think he needs you. I know I do. I'm in. I'm the one you want. It makes sense.”

  Maybe Bean's warning made her more cautious. She didn't cave in quite yet. "You won't decide later that you're embarrassed to have a bunch of little kids in your crew?”

  "It's your crew, not mine," said Achilles.

  Liar, thought Bean. Don't you see that he's lying to you?

  "What this is to me," said Achilles, "this is my family. These are my kid brothers and sisters. I got to look after my family, don't I?”

  Bean saw at once that Achilles had won. Powerful bully, and he had called these kids his sisters, his brothers. Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging. They got a little of that by being in Poke's crew. But Achilles was promising more. He had just beaten Poke's best offer. Now it was too late to kill him.

  Too late, but for a moment it looked as if Poke was so stupid she was going to go ahead and kill him after all. She raised the cinderblock higher, to crash it down.

  "No," said Bean. "You can't. He's family now.”

  She lowered the cinderblock to her waist. Slowly she turned to look at Bean. "You get the hell out of here," she said. "You no part of my crew. You get nothing here.”

  "No," said Achilles. "You better go ahead and kill me, you plan to treat him that way.”

  Oh, that sounded brave. But Bean knew Achilles wasn't brave. Just smart. He had already won. It meant nothing that he was lying there on the ground and Poke still had the cinderblock. It was his crew now. Poke was finished. It would be a while before anybody but Bean and Achilles understood that, but the test of authority was here and now, and Achilles was going to win it.

  "This little kid," said Achilles, "he may not be part of your crew, but he's part of my family. You don't go telling my brother to get lost.”

  Poke hesitated. A moment. A moment longer.

  Long enough.

  Achilles sat up. He rubbed his bruises, he checked out his contusions. He looked in joking admiration to the little kids who had bricked him. "Damn, you bad!" They laughed -- nervously, at first. Would he hurt them because they hurt him? "Don't worry," he said. "You showed me what you can do. We have to do this to more than a couple of bullies, you'll see. I had to know you could do it right. Good job. What's your name?”

  One by one he learned their names. Learned them and remembered them, or when he missed one he'd make a big deal about it, apologize, visibly work at remembering. Fifteen minutes later, they loved him.

  If he could do this, thought Bean, if he's this good at making people love him, why didn't he do it before?

  Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.

  Achilles got to his feet, a little shaky, his bad leg more sore than usual. Everybody stood back, gave him some space. He could leave now, if he wanted. Get away, never come back. Or go get some more bullies, come back and punish the crew. But he stood there, then smiled, reached into his pocket, took out the most incredible thing. A bunch of raisins. A whole handful of them. They looked at his hand as if it bore the mark of a nail in the palm.

  "Little brothers and sisters first," he said. "Littlest first." He looked at Bean. "You.”

  "Not him!" said the next littlest. "We don't even know him.”

  "Bean was the one wanted us to kill you," said another.

  "Bean," said Achilles. "Bean, you were just looking out for my family, weren't you?”

  "Yes," said Bean.

  "You want a raisin?”

  Bean nodded.

  "You first. You the one brought us all together, OK?”

  Either Achilles would kill him or he wouldn't. At this moment, all that mattered was the raisin. Bean took it. Put it in his mouth. Did not even bite down on it. Just let his saliva soak it, bringing out the flavor of it.

  "You know," said Achilles, "no matter how long you hold it in your mouth, it never turns back into a grape.”

  "What's a grape?”

  Achilles laughed at him, still not chewing. Then he gave out raisins to the other kids. Poke had never shared out so many raisins, because she had never had so many to share. But the little kids wouldn't understand that. They'd think, Poke gave us garbage, and Achilles gave us raisins. That's because they were stupid.
**
Bean, seeing that Achilles was trying to get the adults to protect them in line, decided the time was tight for him to be useful. Because this woman was compassionate and Bean was by far the smallest child, he knew he had the most power over her. He came up to her, tugged on her woollen skirt. "Thank you for watching over us," he said. "It's the first time I ever got into a real kitchen. Papa Achilles told us that you would keep us safe so we little ones could eat here every day.”

  "Oh, you poor thing! Oh, look at you." Tears streamed down the woman's face. "Oh, oh, you poor darling." She embraced him.

  Achilles looked on, beaming. "I got to watch out for them," he said quietly. "I got to keep them safe.”

  Then he led his family -- it was no longer in any sense Poke's crew -- away from Helga's kitchen, all marching in a line. Till they rounded the corner of a building and then they ran like hell, joining hands and putting as much distance between them and Helga's kitchen as they could. For the rest of the day they were going to have to lie low. In twos and threes the bullies would be looking for them.

  But they could lie low, because they didn't need to forage for food today. The soup already gave them more calories than they normally got, and they had the bread.

  Of course, the first tax on that bread belonged to Achilles, who had eaten no soup. Each child reverently offered his bread to their new papa, and he took a bite from each one and slowly chewed it and swallowed it before reaching for the next offered bread. It was quite a lengthy ritual. Achilles took a mouthful of every piece of bread except two: Poke's and Bean's.

  "Thanks," said Poke.

  She was so stupid, she thought it was a gesture of respect. Bean knew better. By not eating their bread, Achilles was putting them outside the family. We are dead, thought Bean.

  That's why Bean hung back, why he held his tongue and remained unobtrusive during the next few weeks. That was also why he endeavored never to be alone. Always he was within arm's reach of one of the other kids.

  But he didn't linger near Poke. That was a picture he didn't want to get locked in anyone's memory, him tagging along with Poke.

  From the second morning, Helga's soup kitchen had an adult outside watching, and a new light fixture on the third day. By the end of a week the adult guardian was a cop. Even so, Achilles never brought his group out of hiding until the adult was there, and then he would march the whole family right to the front of the line, and loudly thank the bully in first position for helping him look out for his children by saving them a place in line.

  It was hard on all of them, though, seeing how the bullies looked at them. They had to be on their best behavior while the doorkeeper was watching, but murder was on their minds.

  And it didn't get better; the bullies didn't "get used to it," despite Achilles' bland assurances that they would. So even though Bean was determined to be unobtrusive, he knew that something had to be done to turn the bullies away from their hatred, and Achilles, who thought the war was over and victory achieved, wasn't going to do it.

  So as Bean took his place in line one morning, he deliberately hung back to be last of the family. Usually Poke brought up the rear -- it was her way of trying to pretend that she was somehow involved in ushering the little ones in. But this time Bean deliberately got in place behind her, with the hate-filled stare of the bully who should have had first position burning on his head.

  Right at the door, where the woman was standing with Achilles, both of them looking proud of his family, Bean turned to face the bully behind him and asked, in his loudest voice, "Where's your children? How come you don't bring your children to the kitchen?”

  The bully would have snarled something vicious, but the woman at the door was watching with raised eyebrows. "You look after little children, too?" she asked. It was obvious she was delighted about the idea and wanted the answer to be yes. And stupid as this bully was, he knew that it was good to please adults who gave out food. So he said, "Of course I do.”

  "Well, you can bring them, you know. Just like Papa Achilles here. We're always glad to see the little children.”

  Again Bean piped up, "They let people with little children come inside first!”

  "You know, that's such a good idea," said the woman. "I think we'll make that a rule. Now, let's move along, we're holding up the hungry children.”

  Bean did not even glance at Achilles as he went inside.

  Later, after breakfast, as they were performing the ritual of giving bread to Achilles, Bean made it a point to offer his bread yet again, though there was danger in reminding everyone that Achilles never took a share from him. Today, though, he had to see how Achilles regarded him, for being so bold and intrusive.

  "If they all bring little kids, they'll run out of soup faster," said Achilles coldly. His eyes said nothing at all -- but that, too, was a message.

  "If they all become papas," said Bean, "they won't be trying to kill us.”

  At that, Achilles' eyes came to life a little. He reached down and took the bread from Bean's hand. He bit down on the crust, tore away a huge piece of it. More than half. He jammed it into his mouth and chewed it slowly, then handed the remnant of the bread back to Bean.

  It left Bean hungry that day, but it was worth it. It didn't mean that Achilles wasn't going to kill him someday, but at least he wasn't separating him from the rest of the family anymore. And that remnant of bread was far more food than he used to get in a day. Or a week, for that matter.
**
Bean stayed as quiet as possible during the school sessions, never speaking up and never giving an answer even when Sister Carlotta tried to insist. He knew that it wouldn't be good for him to let anyone know that he could already read and do numbers, nor that he could understand every language spoken in the street, picking up new languages the way other children picked up stones. Whatever Sister Carlotta was doing, whatever gifts she had to bestow, if it ever seemed to the other children that Bean was trying to show them up, trying to get ahead of them, he knew that he would not be back for another day of school. And even though she mostly taught things he already knew how to do, in her conversation there were many hints of a wider world, of great knowledge and wisdom. No adult had ever taken the time to speak to them like this, and he luxuriated in the sound of high language well spoken. When she taught it was in I.F. Common, of course, that being the language of the street, but since many of the children had also learned Dutch and some were even native Dutch speakers, she would often explain hard points in that language. When she was frustrated though, and muttered under her breath, that was in Spanish, the language of the merchants of Jonker Frans Straat, and he tried to piece together the meanings of new words from her muttering. Her knowledge was a banquet, and if he remained quiet enough, he would be able to stay and feast.

  School had only been going for a week, however, when he made a mistake. She passed out papers to them, and they had writing on them. Bean read his paper at once. It was a "Pre-Test" and the instructions said to circle the right answers to each question. So he began circling answers and was halfway down the page when he realized that the entire group had fallen silent.

  They were all looking at him, because Sister Carlotta was looking at him.

  "What are you doing, Bean?" she asked. "I haven't even told you what to do yet. Please give me your paper.”

  Stupid, inattentive, careless -- if you die for this, Bean, you deserve it.

  He handed her the paper.

  She looked at it, then looked back at him very closely. "Finish it," she said.

  He took the paper back from her hand. His pencil hovered over the page. He pretended to be struggling with the answer.

  "You did the first fifteen in about a minute and a half," said Sister Carlotta. "Please don't expect me to believe that you're suddenly having a hard time with the next question." Her voice was dry and sarcastic.

  "I can't do it," he said. "I was just playing anyway.”

  "Don't lie to me," said Carlotta. "Do the rest.”

  He gave up and did them all. It didn't take long. They were easy. He handed her the paper.

  She glanced over it and said nothing. "I hope the rest of you will wait until I finish the instructions and read you the questions. If you try to guess at what the hard words are, you'll get all the answers wrong.”

  Then she proceeded to read each question and all the possible answers out loud. Only then could the other children set their marks on the papers.

  Sister Carlotta didn't say another thing to call attention to Bean after that, but the damage was done. As soon as school was over, Sergeant came over to Bean. "So you can read," he said.

  Bean shrugged.

  "You been lying to us," said Sergeant.

  "Never said I couldn't.”

  "Showed us all up. How come you didn't teach us?”

  Because I was trying to survive, Bean said silently. Because I didn't want to remind Achilles that I was the smart one who thought up the original plan that got him this family. If he remembers that, he'll also remember who it was who told Poke to kill him.

  The only answer he actually gave was a shrug.

  "Don't like it when somebody holds out on us.”

  Sergeant nudged him with a foot.

  Bean did not have to be given a map. He got up and jogged away from the group. School was out for him. Maybe breakfast, too. He'd have to wait till morning to find that out.
**
This test is to see if you are one of the children who will be taken to Battle School and trained to be a commander of the forces that will try to stop them. This test is about saving the world, Bean.”

  For the first time since the test began, Bean turned his full attention to her. "Where is Battle School?”

  "In an orbiting platform in space," she said. "If you do well enough on this test, you get to be a spaceman!”

  There was no childlike eagerness in his face. Only hard calculation.

  "I've been doing real bad so far, haven't I," he said.

  "The test results so far show that you're too stupid to walk and breathe at the same time.”

  "Can I start over?”

  "I have another version of the tests, yes," said Sister Carlotta.

  "Do it.”

  As she brought out the alternate set, she smiled at him, tried to relax him again. "So you want to be a spaceman, is that it? Or is it the idea of being part of the International Fleet?”

  He ignored her.

  This time through the test, he finished everything, even though the tests were designed not to be finished in the allotted time. His scores were not perfect, but they were close. So close that nobody would believe the results.

  So she gave him yet another battery of tests, this one designed for older children -- the standard tests, in fact, that six-year-olds took when being considered for Battle School at the normal age. He did not do as well on these; there were too many experiences he had not had yet, to be able to understand the content of some of the questions. But he still did remarkably well. Better than any student she had ever tested.

  And to think she had thought it was Achilles who had the real potential. This little one, this infant, really -- he was astonishing. No one would believe she had found him on the streets, living at the starvation level.

  A suspicion crept into her mind, and when the second test ended and she recorded the scores and set them aside, she leaned back in her chair and smiled at bleary-eyed little Bean and asked him, "Whose idea was it, this family thing that the street children have come up with?”

  "Achilles' idea," said Bean.

  Sister Carlotta waited.

  "His idea to call it a family, anyway," said Bean.

  She still waited. Pride would bring more to the surface, if she gave him time.

  "But having a bully protect the little ones, that was my plan," said Bean. "I told it to Poke and she thought about it and decided to try it and she only made one mistake.”

  "What mistake was that?”

  "She chose the wrong bully to protect us.”

  "You mean because he couldn't protect her from Ulysses?”

  Bean laughed bitterly as tears slid down his cheeks.

  "Ulysses is off somewhere bragging about what he's going to do.”

  Sister Carlotta knew but did not want to know. "Do you know who killed her, then?”

  "I told her to kill him. I told her he was the wrong one. I saw it in his face, lying there on the ground, that he would never forgive her. But he's cold. He waited so long. But he never took bread from her. That should have told her. She shouldn't have gone off alone with him." He began crying in earnest now. "I think she was protecting me. Because I told her to kill him that first day. I think she was trying to get him not to kill me.”

  Sister Carlotta tried to keep emotion out of her voice. "Do you believe you might be in danger from Achilles?”

  "I am now that I told you," he said. And then, after a moment's thought. "I was already. He doesn't forgive. He pays back, always.”

  "You realize that this isn't the way Achilles seems to me, or to Hazie. Helga, that is. To us, he seems -- civilized.”

  Bean looked at her like she was crazy. "Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?”

  "You want to get out of Rotterdam and go to Battle School so you can get away from Achilles.”

  Bean nodded.

  "What about the other children. Do you think they're in danger from him?”

  "No," said Bean. "He's their papa.”

  "But not yours. Even though he took bread from you.”

  "He hugged her and kissed her," said Bean. "I saw them on the dock, and she let him kiss her and then she said something about how he promised, and so I left, but then I realized and I ran back and it couldn't have been long, just running for maybe six blocks, and she was dead with her eye stabbed out, floating in the water, bumping up against the dock. He can kiss you and kill you, if he hates you enough.”

  Sister Carlotta drummed her fingers on the desk. "What a quandary.”

  "What's a quandary?”

  "I was going to test Achilles, too. I think he could get into Battle School.”

  Bean's whole body tightened. "Then don't send me. Him or me.”

  "Do you really think ..." Her voice trailed off. "You think he'd try to kill you there?”

  "Try?" His voice was scornful. "Achilles doesn't just try.”

  Sister Carlotta knew that the trait Bean was speaking of, that ruthless determination, was one of the things that they looked for in Battle School. It might make Achilles more attractive to them than Bean. And they could channel such murderous violence up there. Put it to good use.

  But civilizing the bullies of the street had not been Achilles' idea. It had been Bean who thought of it. Incredible, for a child so young to conceive of it and bring it about. This child was the prize, not the one who lived for cold vengeance. But one thing was certain. It would be wrong of her to take them both. Though she could certainly take the other one and get him into a school here on Earth, get him off the street. Surely Achilles would become truly civilized then, where the desperation of the street no longer drove children to do such hideous things to each other.

  Then she realized what nonsense she had been thinking. It wasn't the desperation of the street that drove Achilles to murder Poke. It was pride. It was Cain, who thought that being shamed was reason enough to take his brother's life. It was Judas, who did not shrink to kiss before killing. What was she thinking, to treat evil as if it were a mere mechanical product of deprivation? All the children of the street suffered fear and hunger, helplessness and desperation. But they didn't all become cold-blooded, calculating murderers.

  If, that is, Bean was right.

  But she had no doubt that Bean was telling her the truth. If Bean was lying, she would give up on herself as a judge of children's character. Now that she thought about it, Achilles was slick. A flatterer. Everything he said was calculated to impress. But Bean said little, and spoke plainly when he did speak. And he was young, and his fear and grief here in this room were real.

  Of course, he also had urged that a child be killed.

  But only because he posed a danger to others. It wasn't pride.

  How can I judge? Isn't Christ supposed to be the judge of quick and dead? Why is this in my hands, when I am not fit to do it?

  "Would you like to stay here, Bean, while I transmit your test results to the people who make the decisions about Battle School? You'll be safe here.”

  He looked down at his hands, nodded, then laid his head on his anus and sobbed.
**
Bean was tired of talking about this. She looked so happy when she talked about God, but he hadn't figured it out yet, what God even was. It was like, she wanted to give God credit for every good thing, but when it was bad, then she either didn't mention God or had some reason why it was a good thing after all. As far as Bean could see, though, the dead kids would rather have been alive, just with more food. If God loved them so much, and he could do whatever he wanted, then why wasn't there more food for these kids? And if God just wanted them dead, why didn't he let them die sooner or not even be born at all, so they didn't have to go to so much trouble and get all excited about trying to be alive when he was just going to take them to his heart. None of it made any sense to Bean, and the more Sister Carlotta explained it, the less he understood it. Because if there was somebody in charge, then he ought to be fair, and if he wasn't fair, then why should Sister Carlotta be so happy that he was in charge?

  But when he tried to say things like that to her, she got really upset and talked even more about God and used words he didn't know and it was better just to let her say what she wanted and not argue.

  It was the reading that fascinated him. And the numbers. He loved that. Having paper and pencil so he could actually write things, that was really good.
**
Some of the kids were complaining about how hungry they were. There was a strict rule against eating for twenty-four hours before the shuttle flight, and most of these kids had never gone so long without eating. For Bean, twenty-four hours without food was barely noticeable. In his crew, you didn't worry about hunger until the second week.

  The shuttle took off, just like any airplane, though it had a long, long runway to get it up to speed, it was so heavy. Bean was surprised at the motion of the plane, the way it charged forward yet seemed to hold still, the way it rocked a little and sometimes bumped, as if it were rolling over irregularities in an invisible road.

  When they got up to a high altitude, they rendezvoused with two fuel planes, in order to take on the rest of the rocket fuel needed to achieve escape velocity. The plane could never have lifted off the ground with that much fuel on board.

  During the refueling, a man emerged from the control cabin and stood at the front of the rows of seats. His sky blue uniform was crisp and perfect, and his smile looked every bit as starched and pressed and unstainable as his clothes.

  "My dear darling little children," he said. "Some of you apparently can't read yet. Your seat harnesses are to remain in place throughout the entire flight. Why are so many of them unfastened? Are you going somewhere?”

  Lots of little clicks answered him like scattered applause.

  "And let me also warn you that no matter how annoying or enticing some other child might be, keep your hands to yourself. You should keep in mind that the children around you scored every bit as high as you did on every test you took, and some of them scored higher.”

  Bean thought: That's impossible. Somebody here had to have the highest score.

  A boy across the aisle apparently had the same thought. "Right," he said sarcastically.

  "I was making a point, but I'm willing to digress," said the man. "Please, share with us the thought that so enthralled you that you could not contain it silently within you.”

  The boy knew he had made a mistake, but decided to tough it out. "Somebody here has the highest score.”

  The man continued looking at him, as if inviting him to continue.

  Inviting him to dig himself a deeper grave, thought Bean.

  "I mean, you said that everybody scored as high as everybody else, and some scored higher, and that's just obviously not true.”

  The man waited some more.

  "That's all I had to say.”

  "Feel better?" said the man.

  The boy sullenly kept his silence.

  Without disturbing his perfect smile, the man's tone changed, and instead of bright sarcasm, there was now a sharp whiff of menace. "I asked you a question, boy.”

  "No, I don't feel better.”

  "What's your name?" asked the man.

  "Nero.”

  A couple of children who knew a little bit about history laughed at the name. Bean knew about the emperor Nero. He did not laugh, however. He knew that a child named Bean was wise not to laugh at other kids' names. Besides, a name like that could be a real burden to bear. It said something about the boy's strength or at least his defiance that he didn't give some nickname.

  Or maybe Nero was his nickname.

  "Just ... Nero?" asked the man.

  "Nero Boulanger.”

  "French? Or just hungry?”

  Bean did not get the joke. Was Boulanger a name that had something to do with food?

Algerian.”

  "Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it's actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn.”

  Nero grumbled something.

  "Listen -- another flatulence, but this time even less articulate than before. Tell us, Nero. Speak up. You are teaching us all by the example of your courage, however half-assed it might be.”

  A couple of students laughed.

  "And listen -- your fart has drawn out other farts, from people equally stupid, for they think they are somehow superior to you, and that they could not just as easily have been chosen to be examples of superior intellect.”

  There would be no more laughter.

  Bean felt a kind of dread, for he knew that somehow, this verbal sparring, or rather this one-sided verbal assault, this torture, this public exposure, was going to find some twisted path that led to him. He did not know how he sensed this, for the uniformed man had not so much as glanced at Bean, and Bean had made no sound, had done nothing to call attention to himself. Yet he knew that he, not Nero, would end up receiving the cruelest thrust from this man's dagger.

  Then Bean realized why he was sure it would turn against him. This had turned into a nasty little argument about whether someone had higher test scores than anyone else on the shuttle. And Bean had assumed, for no reason whatsoever, that he was the child with the highest scores.

  Now that he had seen his own belief, he knew it was absurd. These children were all older and had grown up with far more advantages. He had had only Sister Carlotta as a teacher -- Sister Carlotta and, of course, the street, though few of the things he learned there had shown up on the tests. There was no way that Bean had the highest score.

  Yet he still knew, with absolute certainty, that this discussion was full of danger for him.

  "I told you to speak up, Nero. I'm waiting.”

  "I still don't see how anything I said was stupid," said Nero.

  "First, it was stupid because I have all the authority here, and you have none, so I have the power to make your life miserable, and you have no power to protect yourself. So how much intelligence does it take just to keep your mouth shut and avoid calling attention to yourself? What could be a more obvious decision to make when confronted with such a lopsided distribution of power?”

  Nero withered in his seat.

  "Second, you seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time.”

  Bean silently disagreed. The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them -- noticing them -- that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not  learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

  The part of the man's statement that was true, however, was about the uselessness of speaking up. If I know that the teacher is wrong, and say nothing, then I remain the only one who knows, and that gives me an advantage over those who believe the teacher.

  "Third," said the man, "my statement only seems to be self-contradictory and impossible because you did not think beneath the surface of the situation. In fact it is not necessarily true that one person has the highest scores of everyone on this shuttle. That's because there were many tests, physical, mental, social, and psychological, and many ways to define 'highest' as well, since there are many ways to be physically or socially or psychologically fit for command. Children who tested highest on stamina may not have tested highest on strength; children who tested highest on memory may not have tested highest on anticipatory analysis. Children with remarkable social skills might be weaker in delay of gratification. Are you beginning to grasp the shallowness of your thinking that led you to your stupid and useless conclusion?”

  Nero nodded.

  "Let us hear the sound of your flatulence again, Nero. Be just as loud in acknowledging your errors as you were in making them.”

  "I was wrong.”

  There was not a boy on that shuttle who would not have avowed a preference for death to being in Nero's place at that moment. And yet Bean felt a kind of envy as well, though he did not understand why he would envy the victim of such torture.

  "And yet," said the man, "you happen to be less wrong on this particular shuttle flight than you would have been in any other shuttle filled with launchies heading for Battle School. And do you know why?”

  He did not choose to speak.

  "Does anyone know why? Can anyone guess? I am inviting speculation.”

  No one accepted the invitation.

  "Then let me choose a volunteer. There is a child here named -- improbable as it might sound -- 'Bean.' Would that child please speak?”

  Here it comes, thought Bean. He was filled with dread; but he was also filled with excitement, because this was what he wanted, though he did not know why. Look at me. Talk to me, you with the power, you with the authority.

  "I'm here, sir," said Bean.

  The man made a show of looking and looking, unable to see where Bean was. Of course it was a sham -- he knew exactly where Bean was sitting before he ever spoke. "I can't see where your voice came from. Would you raise a hand?”

  Bean immediately raised his hand. He realized, to his shame, that his hand did not even reach to the top of the high-backed seat.

  "I still can't see you," said the man, though of course he could. "I give you permission to unstrap and stand on your seat.”

  Bean immediately complied, peeling off the harness and bounding to his feet. He was barely taller than the back of the seat in front of him.

  "Ah, there you are," said the man. "Bean, would you be so kind as to speculate about why, in this shuttle, Nero comes closer to being correct than on any other?”

  "Maybe somebody here scored highest on a lot of tests.”

  "Not just a lot of tests, Bean. All the tests of intellect. All the psychological tests. All the tests pertinent to command. Every one of them. Higher than anyone else on this shuttle.”

  "So I was right," said the newly defiant Nero.

  "No you were not," said the man. "Because that remarkable child, the one who scored highest on all the tests related to command, happens to have scored the very lowest on the physical tests. And do you know why?”

  No one answered.

  "Bean, as long as you're standing, can you speculate about why this one child might have scored lowest on the physical tests?”

  Bean knew how he had been set up. And he refused to try to hide from the obvious answer. He would say it, even though the question was designed to make the others detest him for answering it. After all, they would detest him anyway, no matter who said the answer.

  "Maybe he scored lowest on the physical tests because he's very, very small.”

  Groans from many boys showed their disgust at his answer. At the arrogance and vanity that it suggested. But the man in uniform only nodded gravely.

  "As should be expected from a boy of such remarkable ability, you are exactly correct. Only this boy's unusually small stature prevented Nero from being correct about there being one child with higher scores than everybody else." He turned to Nero. "So close to not being a complete fool," he said. "And yet ... even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day. Sit down now, Bean, and put on your harness. The refueling is over and we're about to boost.”

  Bean sat down. He could feel the hostility of the other children. There was nothing he could do about that right now, and he wasn't sure that it was a disadvantage, anyway. What mattered was the much more puzzling question: Why did the man set him up like that? If the point was to get the kids competing with each other, they could have passed around a list with everyone's scores on all the tests, so they all could see where they stood. Instead, Bean had been singled out. He was already the smallest, and knew from experience that he was therefore a target for every mean-spirited impulse in a bully's heart. So why did they draw this big circle around him and all these arrows pointing at him, practically demanding that he be the main target of everyone's fear and hate?

  Draw your targets, aim your darts. I'm going to do well enough in this school that someday I'll be the one with the authority, and then it won't matter who likes me. What will matter is who I like.

  "As you may remember," said the man, "before the first fart from the mouthhole of Nero Bakerboy here, I was starting to make a point. I was telling you that even though some child here may seem like a prime target for your pathetic need to assert supremacy in a situation where you are unsure of being recognized for the hero that you want people to think you are, you must control yourself, and refrain from poking or pinching, jabbing or hitting, or even making snidely provocative remarks or sniggering like warthogs just because you think somebody is an easy target. And the reason why you should refrain from doing this is because you don't know who in this group is going to end up being your commander in the future, the admiral when you're a mere captain. And if you think for one moment that they will forget how you treated them now, today, then you really are a fool. If they're good commanders, they'll use you effectively in combat no matter how they despise you. But they don't have to be helpful to you in advancing your career. They don't have to nurture you and bring you along. They don't have to be kind and forgiving. Just think about that. The people you see around you will someday be giving you orders that will decide whether you live or die. I'd suggest you work on earning their respect, not trying to put them down so you can show off like some schoolyard punk.”

  The man turned his icy smile on Bean one more time.

  "And I'll bet that Bean, here, is already planning to be the admiral who gives you all orders someday. He's even planning how he'll order me to stand solitary watch on some asteroid observatory till my bones melt from osteoporosis and I ooze around the station like an amoeba.”

  Bean hadn't given a moment's thought to some future contest between him and this particular officer. He had no desire for vengeance. He wasn't Achilles. Achilles was stupid. And this officer was stupid for thinking that Bean would think that way. No doubt, however, the man thought Bean would be grateful because he had just warned the others not to pick on him. But Bean had been picked on by tougher bastards than these could possibly be; this officer's "protection" was not needed, and it made the gulf between Bean and the other children wider than before. If Bean could have lost a couple of tussles, he would have been humanized, accepted perhaps. But now there would be no tussles. No easy way to build bridges.

  That was the reason for the annoyance that the man apparently saw on Bean's face. "I've got a word for you, Bean. I don't care what you do to me. Because there's only one enemy that matters. The Buggers. And if you can grow up to be the admiral who can give us victory over the Buggers and keep Earth safe for humanity, then make me eat my own guts, ass-first, and I'll still say, Thank you, sir. The Buggers are the enemy. Not Nero. Not Bean. Not even me. So keep your hands off each other.”

  He grinned again, mirthlessly.

  "Besides, the last time somebody tried picking on another kid, he ended up flying through the shuttle in null-G and got his arm broken. It's one of the laws of strategy. Until you know that you're tougher than the enemy, you maneuver, you don't commit to battle. Consider that your first lesson in Battle School.”

  First lesson? No wonder they used this guy to tend children on the shuttle flights instead of having him teach. If you followed that little piece of wisdom, you'd be paralyzed against a vigorous enemy. Sometimes you have to commit to a fight even when you're weak. You don’t wait till you know you're tougher. You make yourself tougher by whatever means you can, and then you strike by surprise, you sneak up, you backstab, you blindside, you cheat, you lie, you do whatever it takes to make sure that you come out on top.

  This guy might be real tough as the only adult on a shuttle full of kids, but if he were a kid on the streets of Rotterdam, he'd "maneuver" himself into starvation in a month. If he wasn't killed before that just for talking like he thought his piss was perfume.

  The man turned to head back to the control cabin.

  Bean called out to him.

  "What's your name?”

  The man turned and fixed him with a withering stare. "Already drafting the orders to have my balls ground to powder, Bean?”

  Bean didn't answer. Just looked him in the eye.

  "I'm Captain Dimak. Anything else you want to know?”

  Might as well find out now as later. "Do you teach at Battle School?”

  "Yes," he said. "Coming down to pick up shuttle-loads of little boys and girls is how we get Earthside leave. Just as with you, my being on this shuttle means my vacation is over.”

  The refueling planes peeled away and rose above them. No, it was their own craft that was sinking. And the tail was sinking lower than the nose of the shuttle.

  Metal covers came down over the windows. It felt like they were falling faster, faster ... until, with a bone-shaking roar, the rockets fired and the shuttle began to rise again, higher, faster, faster, until Bean felt like he was going to be pushed right through the back of his chair. It seemed to go on forever, unchanging.

  Then ... silence.

  Silence, and then a wave of panic. They were falling again, but this time there was no downward direction, just nausea and fear.

  Bean closed his eyes. It didn't help. He opened them again, tried to reorient himself. No direction provided equilibrium. But he had schooled himself on the street not to succumb to nausea -- a lot of the food he had to eat had already gone a little bad, and he couldn't afford to throw it up. So he went into his anti-nausea routine -- deep breaths, distracting himself by concentrating on wiggling his toes. And, after a surprisingly short time, he was used to the null-G. As long as he didn't expect any direction to be down, he was fine.

  The other kids didn't have his routine, or perhaps they were more susceptible to the sudden, relentless loss of balance. Now the reason for the prohibition against eating before the launch became clear. There was plenty of retching going on, but with nothing to throw up, there was no mess, no smell.

  Dimak came back into the shuttle cabin, this time standing on the ceiling. Very cute, thought Bean. Another lecture began, this time about how to get rid of planetside assumptions about directions and gravity. Could these kids possibly be so stupid they needed to be told such obvious stuff?

  Bean occupied the time of the lecture by seeing how much pressure it took to move himself around within his loosely-fitting harness. Everybody else was big enough that the harnesses fit snugly and prevented movement. Bean alone had room for a little maneuvering. He made the most of it. By the time they arrived at Battle School, he was determined to have at least a little skill at movement in null-G. He figured that in space, his survival might someday depend on knowing just how much force it would take to move his body, and then how much force it would take to stop. Knowing it in his mind wasn't half so important as knowing it with his body. Analyzing things was fine, but good reflexes could save your life.
  **
"How does he get along with the other children?”

  "I think the classic description is 'loner.' He is polite. He volunteers nothing. He asks only what he's interested in. The kids in his launch group think he's strange. They know he scores better than them on everything, but they don't hate him. They treat him like a force of nature. No friends, but no enemies.”

  "That's important, that they don't hate him. They should, if he stays aloof like that.”

  "I think it's a skill he learned on the street -- to turn away anger. He never gets angry himself. Maybe that's why the teasing about his size stopped.”

  "Nothing that you're telling me suggests that he has command potential.”

  "If you think he's trying to show command potential and failing at it, then you're right.”

  "So ... what do you think he's doing?”

  "Analyzing us.”

  "Gathering information without giving any. Do you really think he's that sophisticated?”

  "He stayed alive on the street.”

  "I think it's time for you to probe a little.”

  "And let him know that his reticence bothers us?”

  "If he's as clever as you think, he already knows.”
**
But Wiggin's willingness to give up hours every day to training kids who could do nothing for him -- the more Bean thought about it, the less sense it made. Wiggin was not building a network of supporters. Unlike Bean, he didn't have a perfect memory, so Bean was quite sure Wiggin was not compiling a mental dossier on every other kid in Battle School. The kids he worked with were not the best, and were often the most fearful and dependent of the launchies and of the losers in the regular armies. They came to him because they thought being in the same room with the soldier who was leading in the standings might bring some luck to them. But why did Wiggin keep giving his time to them?
  Why did Poke die for me?

  That was the same question. Bean knew it. He found several books about ethics in the library and called them up on his desk to read. He soon discovered that the only theories that explained altruism were bogus. The stupidest was the old sociobiological explanation of uncles dying for nephews -- there were no blood ties in armies now, and people often died for strangers. Community theory was fine as far as it went -- it explained why communities all honored sacrificial heroes in their stories and rituals, but it still didn't explain the heroes themselves.

  For that was what Bean saw in Wiggin. This was the hero at his root.

  Wiggin really does not care as much about himself as he does about these other kids who aren't worth five minutes of his time.

  And yet this may be the very trait that makes everyone focus on him. Maybe this is why in all those stories Sister Carlotta told him, Jesus always had a crowd around him.

  Maybe this is why I'm so afraid of Wiggin. Because he’s the alien, not me. He's the unintelligible one, the unpredictable one. He's the one who doesn't do things for sensible, predictable reasons. I'm going to survive, and once you know that, there's nothing more to know about me. Him, though, he could do anything.

  The more he studied Wiggin, the more mysteries Bean uncovered. The more he determined to act like Wiggin until, at some point, he came to see the world as Wiggin saw it.

Orson Scott Card