Father stepped back, his face grim. "What would you do, put me in jail? You've passed laws that forbid my wife from working, we have to teach our children at home, and now you'd deprive my family of any food at all."

"I don't make government policy," said the woman as she surveyed the room full of children. "All I care about is testing children."

Andrew spoke up. "Peter and Catherine already passed the government tests," he said. "Only a month ago. They're up to grade."

"This isn't about being up to grade," said the woman. "I'm not from the schools or the Polish government—"

"There is no Polish government," said Father. "Only an occupying army to enforce the dictatorship of the Hegemony."

"I'm from the fleet," said the woman. "By law we're forbidden even to express opinions of Hegemony policy while we're in uniform. The sooner I begin the testing, the sooner you can go back to your regular routines. They all speak Common?"

"Of course," said Mother, a little pridefully. "At least as well as they speak Polish."

"I watch the test," said Father.

"I'm sorry, sir," said the woman, "but you do not watch. You provide me with a room where I can be alone with each child, and if you have only one room in your dwelling, you take everyone outside or to a neighbor's house. I will conduct these tests."

Father tried to face her down, but he had no weapons for this battle, and he looked away. "It doesn't matter if you test or not. Even if they pass, I'm not letting you take them."

"Let's cross that bridge when we come to it," said the woman. She looked sad. And John Paul suddenly understood why: Because she knew that Father would have no choice about anything, but she didn't want to embarrass him by pointing it out. She just wanted to do her job and go.

John Paul didn't know how he knew these things, but sometimes they just came to him. It wasn't like history facts or geography or mathematics, where you had to learn things before you knew them.