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did you bring up-Never mind, what’s your question?”
    “If religious observance is banned, then why does Battle School tolerate the commemoration of the day of Saint Nicholas?”
    “We don’t,” said Graff.
    “And yet you did,” said Zeck.
    “No we didn’t.”
    “It was commemorated.”
    “Would you please get to the point? Are you lodging a complaint? Did one of the teachers make some remark?”
    “Filippus Rietveld put out his shoes for Saint Nicholas. Dink Meeker put a Sinterklaas poem in the shoe and then gave Flip a pancake carved with the initial ‘F’ An edible initial is a traditional treat on Sinterklaas Day. Which is today, December sixth.”
    Graff sat down and leaned back in his chair. “A Sinterklaas poem?”
    Zeck recited it.
    Graff smiled and chuckled a little.
    “So you think it’s funny when they have their religious observance, but my religious observance is banned.”
    “It was a poem in a shoe. I give you permission to write all the poems you want and insert them into people’s wearing apparel.”
    “Poems in shoes are not my religious observance. Mine is to contribute a small part to peace on Earth.”
    “You’re not even on Earth.”
    “I would be, if I hadn’t been kidnapped and enslaved to the service of Mammon,” said Zeck mildly. You’ve been here almost a year, thought Graff, and you’re still singing the same tune. Doesn’t peer pressure have any effect on you?
    “If these Dutch Christians have their Saint Nicholas Day, then the Muslims should have Ramadan and the Jews should have the Feast of Tabernacles and I should be able to live the gospel of love and peace.”
    “Why are you even bothering with this?” said Graff. “The only thing I can do is punish them for a rather sweet gesture. It will make people hate you more.”
    “You mean you intend to tell them who reported them?”
    “No, Zeck. I know how you operate. You’ll tell them yourself, so they’ll be angry and people will persecute you and that will make you feel more purified.”
    For a man who didn’t recognize him when he came in, Graff certainly knew a lot about him. His face wasn’t known, but his ideas were. Zeck’s persistence in his faith was making an impression.
    “If Battle School bans my religion because it forbids all religion, then all religion should be forbidden, sir.”
    “I know that,” said Graff. “I also know you’re an insufferable twit.”
    “I believe that remark falls under the topic of ‘The commander’s responsibility to build morale,’ is that correct, sir?” asked Zeck.
    “And that remark falls under the category of ‘You won’t get out of Battle School by being a smartass,’” said Graff.
    “Better a smartass than an insufferable twit, sir,” said Zeck.
    “Get out of my office.”

    An hour later, Flip and Dink had been called in and reprimanded and the poem confiscated.
    “Aren’t you going to take his shoes, sir?” asked Dink. “And I’m sure we can recover his initial when he shits it out. I’ll reshape it for you so there’s no mistaking it, sir.”
    Graff said nothing, except to send them back to class. He knew that word of this would circulate throughout Battle School. But if he hadn’t done it, then Zeck would have made sure that word of how this “religious observance” had been tolerated would spread, and then there really would be a nightmare of kids demanding their holidays.
    It was inevitable. The two recusants, Zeck and Dink, both of whom refused to cooperate with the program here, were bound to become allies. Not that they knew they were allied. But in fact they werethey were deliberately stressing the system in order to try to make it collapse. Well, I won’t let you, dear genius children. Because nobody gives a rat’s ass about Sinterklaas Day, or about Christian nonviolence. When you go to war-which is where you’ve gone, believe it or not, Dink and Zeckthen childish things are put away. In the face of a threat to the