First meetings in the Enderverse by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online Page B

America and given them their false papers, it wasn’t likely anybody was going to press the issue.
    So write your diagrams on the board, Little Miss I-Want-to-Grow-Up-to-Be-a-Perfesser. I’ll ace your tests and get my A and you’ll never have a clue that the most arrogant, ambitious, and intelligent student on this campus was in your class.
    At least that’s what they told him he was back when they were recruiting him. All except the arrogant part. They didn’t actually say that. He just read it in their eyes.
    “I wrote all this on the board,” said the grad student with chalk, “because I want you to memorize it and, with any luck, understand it, because it’s the basis of everything else we’ll discuss in this class.”
    John Paul had already memorized it, of course, just by reading it. Because it was stuff he hadn’t seen before in his outside reading, it was obvious her “method” was to try to he “cutting edge,” full of the latest-and most likely to be wrong-research.
    She looked right at him. “You seem particularly bored and contemptuous, Mr… Wiggin, is it? Is that because you already know about the community selection model of evolution?”
    Oh, great. She was one of those “teachers” who had to have a goat in the class-someone to torment in order to score points.
    “No, ma’am,” said John Paul. “I came here hoping that you’d teach me everything about it.” He kept every trace of sarcasm out of his tone; but of course that made it even more barbed and condescending. He expected her to show annoyance at him, but instead she merely turned to another student and began a dialogue. So either John Paul had scared her off, or she had been oblivious to his sarcasm and therefore had no idea she had been challenged.
    The class wouldn’t even be interesting as a blood sport. Too bad.
    “‘Human evolution is driven by community needs,’” she read from the board. “How is that possible, since genetic information is passed only by and to individuals?”
    She was answered by the normal undergraduate silence. Fear of appearing stupid? Fear of seeming to care? Fear of seeming to be a suck-up? Of course, a few of the silent students were honestly stupid or apathetic, but most of them lived fear-driven lives.

    Finally a tentative hand went up.
    “Do communities, urn, influence sexual selection? Like slanting eyes?”
    “They do,” said Miss Grad Student, “and the prevalence of the epicanthic fold in East Asia is a good example of that. But ultimately that’s trivial-there is no actual survival value in it. I’m talking about good old rock-solid survival of the fittest. How can that be controlled by the community?”
    “Killing people who don’t fit in?” suggested another student.
    John Paul slid down in his seat and stared at the ceiling. This far into their education, and they still had no understanding of basic principles.
    “Mr. Wiggin seems to be bored with our discussion,” said Miss Grad Student. John Paul opened his eyes and scanned the board again. Ah, she had written her name there. Theresa Brown. “Yes, Ms. Brown, I am,” he said.
    “Is this because you know the answer, or because you don’t care?”
    “I don’t know the answer,” said John Paul, “but neither does anyone else in the room except you, so until you decide to tell us instead of engaging in this enchanting voyage of discovery in which you let the passengers steer the ship, it’s naptime.”
    There were a few gasps and a couple of chuckles.
    “So you have no ideas about how the statement on the board might be either true or false?”
    “I suppose,” said John Paul, “that the theory you’re suggesting is that because living in communities makes humans far more likely to survive, and to have opportunities to mate, and to bring their children to adulthood, then whatever individual human traits strengthen the community will, in the long run, be the ones most likely to get passed along to each new