Fighting Gravity Read Online Free PDF Page B

ordering Chuck to follow.
    We stood before Director Kagawa’s desk and endured a long, loud scolding. Even when the truth of the story came out, corroborated by Dr. Laan according to what the other children had told him, I was still singled out as the source of the trouble. So when the three of us went over the desk, pants and undershorts around our ankles, I took twice the punishment the other two did. I endured in silence as always. Chuck grunted through clenched teeth after every blow. Sasha blubbered from almost the very first. That alone made the stripes worth taking.
    That was not the first of such scenes. Even when the fight stayed between Chuck and Sasha alone, I was still punished alongside them. I hated that Chuck had to defend me when I was quite capable of defending myself. But my hands were tied; my fear—not of the bully or the fight, but of giving Director Kagawa what he needed—was stronger than the guilt.
    For Chuck, it was much simpler. I was his friend, He defended his friends. No more complicated than that. I tried to talk him out of it, once, after he’d yet again been caned for fighting my battle. He looked at me as if I’d insisted the atom had never been split.
    The trips to the director’s office after a fight weren’t the only times I found myself before—or over—his desk. He requested regular reports from my teachers and when he had a large enough collection of infractions, I would be summoned to his office to be scolded for a list of things I usually hadn’t even done.
    “Cheating on a math test,” he said from behind his desk.
    “But I wasn’t cheating. I don’t even know why she thought I was.”
    “A liar as well,” he said to himself, shaking his head as he looked down at his list again. I bit hard on the inside of my cheek and glared at the floor.
    “Calling Sasha names during your exercise period in order to provoke him.”
    “But I didn’t say a word to him! He called me names.”
    He scoffed.
    “Late for curfew.”
    “That was the night we did the lab in the observatory. We didn’t start until after dark. Most of us were late for curfew.”
    He laid his tablet down and placed his hands on the desk in front of him, one over the other.
    “Do you know why the unclass exist?” he said.
    “No sir.”
    “Do you know why, in an empire that has spread peace and justice throughout the galaxy, poverty and lawlessness persist?”
    I knew where this was going. “No sir.”
    “It is because of you. All of the unclass, each and every one. You live in poverty and squalor because you can’t be bothered to work or to better yourselves. You suffer from crimes and violence because you yourselves commit them. You treat the laws of civilized society as if they were as worthless as you are.”
    I shoved my fists into my pockets.
    “No unclass has ever been brought to the IIC. Not one in three hundred years. Your intellect may be a genetic anomaly, but it doesn’t change what you are. The proof of that is clear in your sociological scores: propensity to anger and violence, no concept of self-sacrifice and the greater good. All of which is borne out in your behavior here.
    “This institution is a shining beacon of all that is good in the Empire. Your presence here is an outrage. You are a stain on our perfection, poison in our well. And until the Committee agrees with me, perhaps I can beat enough wickedness out of you to mitigate your effect on the rest of us.
    “Take down your shorts.”
    I hated the man with a passion, but each punishment only made me more determined, and more confident. If he had sufficient data to prove his hypothesis, I would already be gone. So no matter how many stripes I carried away from his office, or what insults still rang in my ears, I always left happier than when I had entered. Because I’d won again.

fg 5
    Three weeks after we’d arrived, I was sitting in math class. The class before had been physics. Not only were these two of my favorite