Marines came through the door and stationed themselves around the room.
When the time for prayer came, Ahmed and several others immediately prostrated themselves. Marines came to them, forced them to their feet, and handcuffed them. The Marine lieutenant looked around the room. âAnyone else?â
One more soldier lay down to pray; he was also handcuffed. No one else defied them. Five Muslims were taken from the room. Not roughly, but not all that gently, either.
Zeck turned his attention back to his food.
âThis makes you happy, doesnât it?â whispered Dink.
Zeck turned a blank face toward him.
âYou did this,â said Dink softly.
âIâm a Christian. I donât tell Muslims when to pray.â Zeck regretted speaking as soon as he finished. He should have remained silent.
âYouâre not a good liar, Zeck,â said Dink. And now he was talking loud enough that the rest of the table could hear. âDonât get me wrong, I think itâs one of your best pointsâyouâre used to telling the truth, so you never learned the skill of telling lies.â
âI donât lie,â said Zeck.
âYour words were literally true, Iâm sure. Our Muslim friends did not consult you on the timetable. But as an answer to my accusation that you did this, it was such a pathetically obvious lie. A dodge. If you really had nothing to do with it, you wouldnât have needed a dodge. You answered like someone with something to hide.â
This time Zeck said nothing.
âYou think this will help your chances of getting out of Battle School. Maybe you even think it will disrupt Battle School and hurt the war effortâwhich makes you a traitor, from one point of view, or a hero of Christianity, from another. But you wonât stop this war, and you wonât hurt Battle School in the long run. You want to know what you really accomplished? Someday this war will end. If we win, then weâll all go home. The kids in this school are the brightest military minds of our generation. Theyâll be running things in country after country. Ahmedâsomeday heâll be Pakistan. And you just guaranteed that he will hate the idea of trying to live with non-Muslims in peace. In other words, you just started a war thirty or forty years from now.â
âOr ten,â said Wiggin.
âAhmed will still be pretty young in ten years,â said Flip, chuckling a little.
Zeck hadnât thought of what this might lead to back on Earth. But what did Dink know? He couldnât predict the future. âI didnât start promoting Santa Claus,â said Zeck, meeting Dinkâs gaze.
âNo, you just reported a little private joke between two Dutch kids and made a big deal out of it,â said Dink.
âYou made a big deal out of it,â said Zeck. âYou made it into a cause. You.â
Zeck waited.
Dink sighed. âÃ. I did.â He got up from the table.
So did everyone else.
Zeck started to get up too.
Two hands on his shoulders pushed him back down. Hands from two different kids from Rat Army. They werenât rough. They were just firm. Stay here for a while. Youâre not one of us. Donât come with us.
8
PEACE
The Santa Claus thing was over. Dink didnât imagine that he controlled it anymoreâit had grown way past him now. But when the Muslim kids were arrested in the mess hall, it stopped being a game. It stopped being just a way to tweak the nose of authority. There were real consequences, and as Zeck had pointed out, they were more Dinkâs fault than anyone elseâs.
So Dink asked all his friends to ask everybody they knew to stop doing the stocking thing. To stop giving gifts that had anything to do with Santa Claus.
And, within a day, it stopped.
He thought that would be the end of it.
But it wasnât the end. Because of Zeck.
Nothing Zeck did, of course. Zeck was Zeck, completely unchanged.
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